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Headphones Everywhere

newyorker.com

71–80 of 105 posts

Re: Headphones Everywhere

#71
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I assume that sunglasses and beards are not banned.

Sunglasses and beards do not obscure your entire face to the point where you are unrecognizable whereas a burka obscures all but your eyes. Surely you can see the difference?

Clearly it's a scale, though. Do you think a man with a full, long beard wearing large sunglasses is just as recognisable as one without?

Re: Headphones Everywhere

#72
When drinking tea, I drink tea. [1]

When coding, I code.

When listening to music, I listen to music.

When sitting on a plane, I sit on a plane.

Resist the urge to distract yourself and see what happens.[2]

[1] There is the story of the Zen student whose teacher taught him "When drinking tea, just drink tea." The same student later discovered his teacher drinking tea and reading the newspaper. When confronted the teacher said, "When drinking tea and reading the newspaper, just drink tea and read the newspaper."

[2] I believe that boredom and frustration tolerance are important life skills worth developing. Also I have found that many things that at first seem boring become more interesting if you pay close attention to them.

Re: Headphones Everywhere

#74
post #2

this comes off like such rambling with no real point to it. I suppose if I had to try and find his points they would be: * "headphones are bad because they cause us to be isolated" * "Millennials are seeing themselves as hard done by" The second point might not be what the author means though, but the former has strong tones throughout the piece. I do not agree, headphones are a way of having some level of privacy in…

OA also wrote about the way record producers are altering their production process to reflect the ecology of music listening. I found that useful.

Re: Headphones Everywhere

#75

When drinking tea, I drink tea. [1] When coding, I code. When listening to music, I listen to music. When sitting on a plane, I sit on a plane. Resist the urge to distract yourself and see what happens.[2] [1] There is the story of the Zen student whose teacher taught him "When drinking tea, just drink tea." The same student later discovered his teacher drinking tea and reading the newspaper. When confronted the teac…

[deleted]

Re: Headphones Everywhere

#76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet the wardens seem desperate to keep those items out of prisons...

I think the argument is that earphones could be used as a garroting device.

Would be interesting if they designed a pair of earbuds that had a deliberately weak cable so it couldn't be used as a weapon

Re: Headphones Everywhere

#77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe the ubiquity of headphones is telling us that our shared spaces are too loud and full of background noise. Think piped music, announcements, adverts, engines, etc etc..

> Maybe the ubiquity of headphones is telling us that our shared spaces are too loud Or maybe the shared spaces are plain boring . I don't know what the author expects people to do on flights, but I'm not going to be twiddling thumbs for any flight longer than 30 minutes. Substitute headphones for paperbacks or newspapers, and the rant would still be relevant (for the lack of a better word).

Being bored can be very benefitial. A lot of inventions and solutions to hard problems came when people were "bored". Just like you cannot hear a faint voice in a loud environment you may miss some quiter stuff if you are constantly overstimulating yourself.

Re: Headphones Everywhere

#78
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's amazing how few commenters seem to show any comprehension of the article.

No wonder given low wheat/chaff ratio this article has. Most people are working and can only quickly scan through it trying to find the main points. If the smart people in ycombinator get the wrong point it probably means the article was poorly written.

Most of the comments seem indicative of an exceptionally poor scan, or at least a scan optimized for a Vox article or Reddit ELIF thread. I also scanned the article and thought it was obvious that the point was far afield from "headphones/technology bad" - just read the first sentence of the first four paragraphs and the shape of the argument is pretty easy to intuit. I don't have time to get into the meaning of a sharp uptick in headphone usage either, but shitcomments that are obviously reactions to the photo caption are the real chaff here.

Re: Headphones Everywhere

#79
post #15

> Is the ubiquity of headphones just another emblem of catastrophic social decline, edging us even deeper into narcissism and unsociability? No. * closes tab

As always, nobody is impressed that you found a reason not to read the article. As a general rule, if you couldn't even make it to the first line, you probably aren't capable of making a useful comment.

Re: Headphones Everywhere

#80
post #33
post #10

I listen to podcasts usually, makes my bike commute of 25 min seem to go much faster while I'm listening to No Agenda or the Linux Action Show. I do notice though that whenever I take them off, usually because I already have a head full of thoughts, there is a soothing effect. I think the constant flow of information is nice as a distraction but makes one much less mindful of other things. The brain does not seem to…

Both ears? isnt biking with headphones dangerous?

Sometimes it's impossible understand a podcast with only one ear. Though traffic signals like honking are important. So if it's not too loud otherwise I use only one ear.

Worse are the radio stations playing honking/emergency sounds or jerks screaming suddenly as they pass, just for 'fun'. Creates unnecessary anxiety.

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