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Sounding the alarm: How noise hurts the heart (2021)

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Re: Sounding the alarm: How noise hurts the heart (2021)

#401

Post by cwalv »

throwaway0a5e wrote: post #319
adhesive_wombat wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

America fascinates me because half of the time things are functionally unregulated, and the other half of the time there's a law about Kinder Eggs and the exact height your lawn must be.

The HN demographics would regulate things to the point of absurdity if left to their own devices. In the US they only reach critical mass to do so in affluent suburbs, so you get stupid local laws about lawn height and other attempts at legislating conformity. Occasionally they get thrown a bone by the federal bureaucracies or legislators on some meaningless issue that nobody will care enough to oppose. This is how y…

I don't know what the demographics of HN are, but while reading this I had similar sentiment. I don't like having to hear leaf blowers, but I really don't like other ppl telling me I can't use one. All regulations have a cost; I think I just weigh the cost more heavily in principle than many folks here.

Re: Sounding the alarm: How noise hurts the heart (2021)

#402

Post by astura »

sarchertech wrote: post #67
gonehome wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find by far the biggest disruption in US suburbs is lawn equipment. Suburbs are louder than cities imo because there is always a leaf blower, lawn mower, and weedwacker going at all times during the day within 100 yards of you. Often for hours. Moving from Palo Alto to SF things got way quieter.

>Suburbs are louder than cities imo because there is always a leaf blower, lawn mower, and weedwacker going at all times during the day within 100 yards of you. That's hugely hyperbolic. But in the city there really are constant sirens, car horns, diesel trucks, construction noises, roadway noise etc... The most comprehensive study done on this (admittedly a long time ago in 1970) shows a clear correlation between po…

I've always found cars to be much more disruptive in the suburbs because they drive so much faster in the suburbs. Cars drive by a suburban sandwich shop that I like to go to so fast that they shake windows. The speed limit on the road is 25.

Re: Sounding the alarm: How noise hurts the heart (2021)

#403

Post by smallerfish »

nradov wrote: post #398
smallerfish wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Blowing leaves is perhaps not the way to manage the organic matter that needs to be embedded in that soil You're doing your own reductionism. Not all leaf blowing is to collect leaves for disposal in plastic bags (and I'm 100% for using leaves as mulch where they fall on beds, and also with not having lawns). Leaves need to be blown out of gutters, drains, and ditches - otherwise the road will start being eroded. L…

How did landscape maintenance workers perform that task before leaf blowers?

How did people cope before cellphones existed? It's the same as my original point - it's a nonsense question. If you want to create additional work for people by doing it in a less technological manner, focus on the served in the society rather than underserved, who are trying to get a leg up in the economy.

Re: Sounding the alarm: How noise hurts the heart (2021)

#404

Post by Swizec »

rangersanger wrote: post #113
Swizec wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve tested and thanks to the low volume I can hear more than I did with normal earbuds. Noise cancelling is great at blocking out constant sounds like wind and background traffic, but it doesn’t do much for acute noises like horns, nearby cars, bicycle bells, or people talking/shouting. With regular earbuds they were cranked up to 80% to block out the wind so I couldn’t hear any of the acute sounds I can hear with n…

What headphones are you using? I’m training for a marathon and it’d probably be wise for me to turn down the volume a bit but running with my bose closed backs sounds miserable

AirPods Pro have worked best of everything I’ve tried

Re: Sounding the alarm: How noise hurts the heart (2021)

#405

Post by Foobar8568 »

vihren wrote: post #244
drstewart wrote: post #2

This is one of the things I struggle with the most in life. I feel like most people don't seem to care about noise pollution and zero care is put into designing living spaces or cities to minimize it. I've moved into apartments and nearly cried because I realized that there was some noise pollution that wasn't apparent when I visited it (e.g. a water boiler that ran constantly at night, road noise during the day, etc…

I have the same problem. I have recently moved to Switzerland and I am so grateful for the culture here. Noise is not tolerated, as it should be.

If only, it really depends where you live. We have an alarm going on any times during the day and night, police is not interested and agency doesn't care much. Same problem with skaters when it's sunny. No really, people just don't care. Swiss german might be different tho.

Re: Sounding the alarm: How noise hurts the heart (2021)

#406

Post by astura »

sarchertech wrote: post #233
gonehome wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s really not that much road noise in a lot of cities unless you live near a couple of particularly busy streets.

The study I linked showed that on average there is.

Yeah, 50 years ago when there was 120 million less people in the United States and households were bigger yet had smaller houses/lots and owned a single vehicle. Power lawn equipment was more expensive back then too - most of my family used push mowers up until the 90s.

# vehicle/person probably doubled since then.

Re: Sounding the alarm: How noise hurts the heart (2021)

#407

Post by bb123 »

andersco wrote: post #323

The sharp beeping sound made by trucks backing up, and now also basically any type of construction vehicle when it moves, is in my opinion one of the great examples of a ham-handed solution to addressing a safety issue with no regard for noise pollution. While it is supposed to warn someone in the immediate vicinity of the vehicle, I can after hear these sharp alarm-like sounds over a block away, often inside my apar…

Surely if you're looking for someone to complain to about this, it would be your government? It is their job to legislate exactly this kind of thing.

Re: Sounding the alarm: How noise hurts the heart (2021)

#408

Post by ceras »

boredumb wrote: post #360

It's hard to take noise pollution seriously when you so much as read the comments here after reading and agreeing with much of the article. Yes I believe living under an airport to be detrimental to anyone's sanity, but yet it devolves quickly into an agoraphobic hand wringing competition going from city sirens, to cars in general, to the neighbors dog barking sporadically. There are prices to pay for living in city…

> There are prices to pay for living in city centers

These are the prices we pay today in the US, but they don't have to be. Other countries like The Netherlands and Switzerland take noise pollution more seriously and show it's possible to have quieter cities. Even among huge cities it's possible: Tokyo is much quieter than NYC.

We don't need to make people choose between living in dense, efficient spaces vs calm and quiet. Making urban living more comfortable is a net benefit: the people that live there will be happier, people that wanted to live there but avoided due to noise will now have that option, and people outside of cities would be unaffected. Why accept this as just the way it is when plenty of other cities have shown it can be better?

This video shows what it's like when a city takes noise more seriously (in this case, the whole of The Netherlands). It focuses on cars, but apartment noises can be handled too with building codes. https://youtu.be/CTV-wwszGw8

Re: Sounding the alarm: How noise hurts the heart (2021)

#409

Post by everdrive »

smallerfish wrote: post #309
mechanical_bear wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I fucking loathe leaf blowers. I can tell what day of the week it is by which neighbor is going for an hour or two straight with the leaf blower. Get a damn rake!

> I fucking loathe leaf blowers...Get a damn rake! I fucking loathe chain saws...Get a damn axe! I fucking loathe lawn mowers...Get a damn scythe! I fucking loathe loud diesel trucks...Get a damn wagon train! I fucking loathe cellphone ringers...Get a damn semaphore! Seriously, until you've done a full day's landscape maintenance yourself, you're not qualified to talk about leaf blowers. Luckily battery powered leaf…

The point is exactly that leafblowers do not represent a technological improvement: they have too many downsides, and accomplish too little. No one is arguing that all technological progress is bad. Rather, in the specific case of leafblowers they represent a detriment, and should be used infrequently-to-never.

Re: Sounding the alarm: How noise hurts the heart (2021)

#410

Post by cnity »

BlargMcLarg wrote: post #324
cnity wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the issue is almost always a lack of attention, a lack of discipline and/or a lack of awareness I'm not sure exactly what sort of regularity you're talking about with barking, but I think this take can be counter-productive. Let's say your neighbor gets a puppy. The puppy at some point will begin barking (because e.g. they will overtire themselves and sometimes need to be confined in order for them to sleep, or the…

When I'm talking about "lack of attention", for context, I'm not talking about puppies having to learn what they can and can't do for attention. I'm talking about grown dogs who very clearly need something having no way to communicate/vent their problems outside of barking or even more destructive ways. As a more concrete example: my neighbors have two adult dogs. Both are at least partially from a breed which requir…

I agree wholeheartedly. I can't imagine leaving my (rather needy) dog alone for any substantial length of time.
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