Live data from Hacker News

I almost lost my hearing from the lid on the tank of a toilet

threadreaderapp.com

341–350 of 405 posts

Re: I almost lost my hearing from the lid on the tank of a toilet

#341
post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, not at all. You only get to feel the low frequencies anyway, which is why infrasonic speakers are nowadays a standard for electronic music venues. You then sync those with audible output and people think they "feel" the music. What they feel are inaudible sound waves at a frequency that makes some tissue/bones(?) resonate. But this is as much "feeling" the music as is being punched in the face in sync with the ba…

Do earplugs effectively mitigate the hearing damage caused by the low frequency bass that you feel in your bones?

The volume required to cause damage goes up as the frequency goes down. Bass has to be ridiculously loud to cause damage. A club which turned up the bass to create a good "feel", but turned down the treble, would save a lot of wear and tear on people's hearing.

Re: I almost lost my hearing from the lid on the tank of a toilet

#342
post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, this gives me hope. I'm 22 and in the past two years I've gone to ~100 rock concerts, seeing a total of 270 sets. For the first 23 concerts I didn't wear any hearing protection, until I had a scary event with my hearing at a Neon Trees concert that left my hearing very distorted for three days. Then for the next 80 or so concert's I'd wear my hearing protection most–but not all–of the time. In the past year I've…

Wow, are you in the business or just a huge fan?

That’s not too difficult if the area you live/work in has a good scene for your favourite genres of music. The music I listen to tends to be pretty DIY (very small gigs in front of 20-50 people), and more weeks than not I find myself at at least one concert.

I commute via plane for work so it gives me something to do that’s not sitting in the hotel watching TV or drinking too much alcohol.

I recommend an app called Songkick if you want to find local gigs you might be interested in, it scans your Spotify/last.fm and notifies you when artists you’ve listened to are playing nearby.

Re: I almost lost my hearing from the lid on the tank of a toilet

#344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about before such things were available? Did everyone get damaged hearing the first day?

My dad used to tell a story about when he got a hearing test as part of an employment medical fairly late in life, and the audiologist asks him "You're left handed, aren't you?" because he could see the typical signs of rifle shooting related hearing loss in his left ear. Turns out dad wasn't actually left handed, but shot a rifle at school cadets 30 years earlier left handed because he could only close his right eye…

A bit off topic, but anyway, are you aware of cross-dominance?[1]

I'm left handed in most things but right eye dominant.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocular_dominance

Re: I almost lost my hearing from the lid on the tank of a toilet

#345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I grew up in a country with very strict gun control (Germany) and did almost the same thing that timonovici did. We used to collect blanks in the woods, thrown away by NATO troops during maneuvers. I don't remember what I was expecting, but I too remember the bang being so loud to make me dizzy - I think I wasn't sure for a few moments if I was dead or alive. Just a few days ago I wrote a comment [1] about a boy who…

I think you are the exception rather than the rule for countries with strict gun control. I grew up in London and never saw bullets in this country.

This was not talked about much because it was a criminal offence, but growing up at that time in that area we were all the same and I could tell you a bunch of other stories like that.

Collecting the rounds was like a sport. The one with the biggest collection was the winner. Sometimes we found elements from ammunition belts too. They were rare and because of their small size and dark color much more difficult to find than the larger untarnished brass colored cartridges. One of the boys from my town had the perseverance to collect enough elements to assemble a belt that he could wear over his shoulder. He looked like John Rambo.

All of this wasn‘t a local phenomenon either. Much later I learned the story of a boy from a different area whose house was searched for pirated home computer games. Police didn‘t find any pirate copies but they found the blanks he had collected. Strict as the gun laws are he got a young offender sentence for unauthorized possession of a firearm (unerlaubter Waffenbesitz).

And this was all only about thrown away blanks from NATO maneuvers. When it comes to all the weapons that “disappeared” basically over night at the end of World War II, I know there is another trove of stories, but these are for someone from another generation to tell.

You might have heard about the BBC serial The Machine-Gunners, which tells a related story from the British perspective. It was very popular with us kids in Germany at that end of the Eighties. The opening theme Colonel Bogey March is now stuck in my head..

Re: I almost lost my hearing from the lid on the tank of a toilet

#346
post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm 43 years old, and in my 20s I went to a few loud rock shows. I had the same experience as you for days afterwards, but at the last one I attended without hearing protection, something funny happened in my right ear. It was like someone turned the tone control right down, and loud noises would distort so badly I couldn't make anything out. A while later, I was watching a Scrubs episode where one of the characters…

> one of my mother's boyfriends would haul me around by my ears. what in the f *?

Yeah, he was an abusive piece of crap, and we were the children of another man. Think that pretty much covers it there.

Re: I almost lost my hearing from the lid on the tank of a toilet

#347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My dad used to tell a story about when he got a hearing test as part of an employment medical fairly late in life, and the audiologist asks him "You're left handed, aren't you?" because he could see the typical signs of rifle shooting related hearing loss in his left ear. Turns out dad wasn't actually left handed, but shot a rifle at school cadets 30 years earlier left handed because he could only close his right eye…

A bit off topic, but anyway, are you aware of cross-dominance ?[1] I'm left handed in most things but right eye dominant. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocular_dominance

Does ocular dominance have anything to do with the ability to close one's eyes?

Re: I almost lost my hearing from the lid on the tank of a toilet

#348
post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A friends daughter got a brain injury from a car-pedestrian accident. He learned a lot, and told me his take away: If you hit your head and have any concern about it, take Ibuprofen to prevent swelling/inflamation and drive to Ann Arbor (we're in Michigan but that's over an hour away). The first part made sense, the second he said that town and UofM are known for treating that kind of thing. He has them in such high…

Hm -- the website of Mayo Clinic says that you should avoid Ibuprofen if you might have a concussion, as they may increase the risk of bleeding. "Avoid other pain relievers such as ibuprofen (Advil, Motrin IB, others) and aspirin, as these medications may increase the risk of bleeding." See: https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/concussion/di...

"Avoid other pain relievers such as ibuprofen (Advil, Motrin IB, others) and aspirin, as these medications may increase the risk of bleeding."

Wow. Did I misremember and he said Tylenol (acetaminophen)? This is bothering me now, I don't like to carry bad bits of wisdom around!

Re: I almost lost my hearing from the lid on the tank of a toilet

#349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> FYI, if you lose hearing from noise exposure, you'll generally lose it around 4 KHz I used http://www.szynalski.com/tone-generator/ to quickly profile my hearing and found significant loss around 4.0kHz. I have ridden a motorcycle most of my life and it is much worse in the ear that is on the same side as the exhaust. I am not sure what a spectrogram looks like for a motorcycle but I would have assumed that most of…

Wind noise is at least as loud as engine noise at least at highway speeds. While I can clearly hear my (loud piped) Ducati at 120kmh (~70mph) - on my Honda VFR800 with stock piped the engine noise is completely overshadowed by wind noise. As a hint about how loud that wind noise gets, up around 130-140kmh, if I've got my noise cancelling earbuds in, they start clipping. I've heard them do that a handful of times in n…

Do you feel "less connected" to the world when you are riding with earplugs in? Does it make it feel more dangerous you might be less aware? It makes sense to wear the plugs, but I've never heard of a street rider doing it.

Re: I almost lost my hearing from the lid on the tank of a toilet

#350
post #291

I very recently thought I might have permanently damaged my eyesight. I was working from a library, and stood to start closing up for the day. As I started to close my laptop, the screen (hi, glossy MacBook Pro) directly reflected the sun behind me. For the next 15-20 minutes a significant portion of my vision in both eyes was wavy. I could still safely drive home, thankfully, but it was a severe distraction. While I…

There is this story about Feynman looking at the explosion of an atomic bomb from behind a car window. He reasoned that visible light alone can not hurt eyes, only ultraviolet, which is filtered out by the glass. https://www.realclearscience.com/blog/2016/04/what_its_like_... I don't know what's the truth.

I work in a field where we are continually concerned with filtering light emissions (flameworking glass), but I don’t know the answer to that, either, whether visible light can cause permanent damage.

I do know that infrared can cause serious problems, such as burns and perhaps macular degeneration. It is mainly what welding shades and our glassblowing glasses filter.

Post reply on HN