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Everything Is Getting Louder

theatlantic.com

211–220 of 316 posts

Re: Everything Is Getting Louder

#211
post #207
post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How could they know who did it? It could be any one of their neighbors, and most lots have 5 adjacent lots. In a place I used to live, there was a rooster that would constantly crow. Someone killed it. I wasn't involved but I'm certainly glad it happened. That rooster was driving the neighborhood insane. The police were useless in that situation. They never cared about noise complaints. Basically if the state doesn't…

That's why police exist in the first place (if you're not thinking too cynically about it). The main job of police is to reduce vigilante justice and mob violence. If the police don't shut up someone's dog, convict a blatant rapist, or punish a murderer, expect the people to take it into their own hands.

> convict ... punish

The police shouldn't be, and aren't, tasked with, those things.

Re: Everything Is Getting Louder

#213
post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a trained sound engineer, I don't find this explanation wholly plausible. Human hearing is increasingly less sensitive at low frequencies; the threshold of hearing is typically around 60dB at 20Hz and 72dB at 10Hz. Anyone who has configured a large public address system knows that vast amounts of power are needed to deliver useful response at these frequencies; many systems simply fake the presence of low bass by…

60dB As trained sound engineer on HN, you sould use units which mean something, now you essentally just said '60 times more' so people will ask you 'more than what?' :)

I would have thought that SPL is implied, given that no other unit would make sense in that context.

Re: Everything Is Getting Louder

#214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I was in a similar situation I ended up paying for a few hundred dollars worth of acoustic foam for the walls. It didn’t stop everything, especially stopping noise from upstairs neighbors, but it was still a huge help. It’s unsightly though. The kinds that are actually nice to look at as wall decoration are super expensive.

Did you do a before and after dB measurement? I'm curious on quantitatively how well it worked as I was thinking of doing the same thing but I talked to a few musician buddies and read many things like https://acousticalsolutions.com/how-to-soundproof-acoustic-f... & https://soundproofcentral.com/soundproof-foam/ and all seem to agree foam stuck on a wall is for echo not soundproofing so didn't try it out. Also many…

Apparently a vacuum or a void filled with Helium even a small one will stop sound. Probably impractical but it's an interesting idea.

Re: Everything Is Getting Louder

#215
Living in Karachi, Pakistan, I so agree with this. Karachi is 3rd largest city in the world and it is getting louder by the day. First thing you notice when you land here is the level of noise. From honking cars to people shouting on the roads, it is unbearable.

Re: Everything Is Getting Louder

#216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to sleep with earplugs very nicely until I got an ear infection and the doctor told me to lay off them. So I bought a bluetooth speaker that can play files off a SD card, and loaded it up with a 1 hour rain sounds file and play that in a loop as white noise when I sleep. Feels better as my brain can focus on the soothing sounds of the rain instead of the thoughts that sometimes creep up in the silence of the e…

You should throw away the earplugs every few days. Or, you could use soft silicone putty earplugs, and sterilize them during the day.

I did exchange them often, that's not the problem. The problem is with earpulgs in summer moisture accumulates in your ear canal and with the lack of oxygen bacteria thrives inside.

Re: Everything Is Getting Louder

#217

I found this article's style infuriatingly slow. If it had been a quarter or a third of the length I think it would have been much stronger. It took quite a while to figure out what the hell was going on. And then you get to things like this halfway through: > Thallikar took his campaign to his homeowners’ association and to his neighbors. The response was tepid, though he did persuade one person to email the city. W…

This. I have no problem reading a 8000+-page article if it's about a complex subject and I'm really learning things all the way through. But here, the signal-to-noise ratio is just too low. I could have learned the same in a quarter of the length. In general, for me, articles where the first sentence talks about a particular person (meaning that they are going to tell a personal story to exemplify whatever issue they…

A lot of people like a story. The article writers want to write in story form. Personally, I'm with you. I've learned to scan these articles and try and extract the meat. It's like the literary version of eating sunflower seeds. Very inefficient.

Re: Everything Is Getting Louder

#218
post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I sold my previous house precisely because of noisy neighbors (or rather their dogs). Their three dogs lived in the backyard permanently no matter what the weather - never seen them walked. Talked to the neighbors twice about the noise - no action. Called the cops at 3 in the morning - still nothing. Finally, I decided to sell the house and move somewhere where there is low dog density. I developed a dislike for dogs…

I live with an endless barking dog. It isn't mine, but it wakes me constantly. If there has been peace for a while and it barks, I can feel my entire body change "mode" to stressed. It is uncanny. Even if mentally it hasn't bothered me, my body still goes into battle mode.

In croatia there was a famous case of a judge ordering a dog not to bark at night.

*https://www.cbsnews.com/news/court-if-dog-keeps-barking-at-n...

Re: Everything Is Getting Louder

#219
post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Bavaria if your dog barks more than 30 minutes per day, the neighbours can record it on video, call the police and you will get fined. At first I thought this is astupid law but after reading your story I changed my mind.

in Bulgaria people will poison your dogs

I remember hearing about people putting sharp objects in food, like broken glass or blades.

Re: Everything Is Getting Louder

#220

For me the trigger is TVs. I've been renting a flat in a poorer area for over a year now. The walls are a lot thinner than in other places. There are a lot of people today (mostly 50+ year-olds) who cannot fall to sleep without the TV on. My neighbor is one of them. And the thing with TVs is that the most irritating sound frequency they emit is the one that is barely audible when you're in the same room, but when you…

The dogs are not the problem - the people are. Your dislike of dogs should be more a dislike of freckless pet owners. It's the same with some special birdies in aviary. They can drive you nuts because they don't belong to this environment. It's mostly not the animals but the owners who are the cause of the problem.

This is just the "guns don't kill people, people kill people" argument, but with dogs.

Of course if every dog owner was perfect then we wouldn't have problems with dogs, but you will never get everyone to be perfect, it's a losing battle, wether they be gun or dog owners.

I'm willing to bet that 99% of dog owners around me are responsible, but whetever percentage of dog owners are not responsible are the cause of all the shit that coats the pavements of my town.

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