Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Cities Aren't Loud: Cars Are Loud (2021) [video]

youtube.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

261–270 of 320 posts

Re: Cities Aren't Loud: Cars Are Loud (2021) [video]

#261

Post by 908B64B197 »

epolanski wrote: post #111
david-gpu wrote: post #17

I live in a high-rise condo next to a six-lane stroad that was even showcased on this YouTube channel and the 24/7 traffic noise is annoying, particularly when you want to go for a walk and can't even hold a conversation. This didn't happen in the places where I lived back in Europe because zoning laws were different. Instead of the sprawl of freehold single family homes separate from a dense urban core, these much q…

Say what you want about soviet city planning but it was damn efficient. I have never ever seen a soviet-era suburb which didn't have 4 to 12 story buildings with parks and aisles all around them and all kind of services being at a 5 minutes walking distance top (church, shops, post office, elementary and middle school, etc).[1] Literally under every building you would find people quietly enjoying their evening on the…

You can smell the ideology behind these developments from miles away. No cars of course (not that people didn't want them, the central planners simply weren't good enough to create an environment in which they could be manufactured).

Cramped living conditions but ample communal space, so a lot of time is spent in full view of the neighbor (so they can report anti-communist behaviors to the local police). No individuality, identical buildings with the same layout for identical cogs in the machine.

Re: Cities Aren't Loud: Cars Are Loud (2021) [video]

#262

Post by aziaziazi »

kqr wrote: post #97
pdimitar wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are just one sentence away from saying "human quality of life doesn't matter, we must think of the economy". Shortness of breath is something doctors report as a more and more common symptom of city dwellers. Not reported on the news because nobody -- apparently you included -- cares, but I've been to doctors lately, and they complained that the lung and heart doctors are overbooked lately while the others have a…

This could also be because people don't go out as much - perhaps for fear of pollution. Generally, it takes a lot of pollution to counter the positive health effects of active commuting. It was a while since I did the research, but someone estimated that you need to cycle for more than sixteen hours per day for the pollution to outweigh the cardio benefits in the 90th percentile of cities ordered by pollution. There…

Any chance you remember the source of this estimation ?

It’s been 15 years I commute daily by bike and worry about the side effect on my lungs… sometimes the road stinks so much, especially when too much trafic jam. Trying to slow my pace to breathe « less deep » but not a fun things to do.

Re: Cities Aren't Loud: Cars Are Loud (2021) [video]

#263

Post by michaelteter »

tristor wrote: post #230
michaelteter wrote: post #84

There are two issues here. One is that we need to come up with comprehensive solutions for reducing the number of vehicles in use. But that’s a difficult problem where solutions take decades and must be tailored to each scenario. But what can be addressed now is the engine and exhaust sound levels. Some vehicles are loud because their engines are working hard, but many vehicles are loud because people (boys) want the…

To be clear, I am speaking for pretty much all “car guys” to say we also hate popcorn tunes and stance too. These are both (inter-related) trends only popular with the very young and very low class promulgated via Tik Tok. No “car guy” is impressed by a busted up 20 year old BMW 318i with a popcorn tune, straight pipes, and rep wheels, but there’s a lot of barely 20-somethings who think it’s cool yet don’t know the f…

Texas is full of "adult" men who want their trucks (and any type of vehicle made by Dodge) to be louder than stock. If their exhaust doesn't set off car alarms when they drive by, it's not loud enough.

Re: Cities Aren't Loud: Cars Are Loud (2021) [video]

#264

Post by oftenwrong »

jenadine wrote: post #18

I live near an intersection, and the most annoying noise is honking. Why do driver have to honk so much is beyond me. Also quite annoying is ambulance/police. They are really loud.

A horn, when heard as a pedestrian, is extremely loud, but it's not that loud to the driver using the horn, or to other drivers, since they are shielded by their vehicles. If the horn were as loud inside the vehicle (or close to it) as it is outside of the vehicle, then drivers might be dissuaded from using the horn frivolously. A regulation could be enacted that mandates that the horn's volume inside the car be closer to the volume of the horn when heard outside of the car.

Re: Cities Aren't Loud: Cars Are Loud (2021) [video]

#265

Post by [deleted] »

WastingMyTime89 wrote: post #241
epolanski wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Say what you want about soviet city planning but it was damn efficient. I have never ever seen a soviet-era suburb which didn't have 4 to 12 story buildings with parks and aisles all around them and all kind of services being at a 5 minutes walking distance top (church, shops, post office, elementary and middle school, etc).[1] Literally under every building you would find people quietly enjoying their evening on the…

This is something I heard a lot from people from the former GDR. Usually, they start by acknowledging the bad things: the limited opportunity to travel, the surveillance. But then, they tell you about what they miss. Knowing their neighbours, a certain idea of fraternity and togetherness in hardship, the feeling that even as a poor kid you could achieve something and be useful to society as a whole, the absence of re…

[deleted]

Re: Cities Aren't Loud: Cars Are Loud (2021) [video]

#266

Post by duckmysick »

darkteflon wrote: post #155
badpun wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> PM2.5 levels in Tokyo yesterday were like 6x WHO limits and absolutely no one on the local news was talking about it. According to [1], yesterday's peak of PM2.5 (not the 24 hour average) in Tokyo was at 22 µg/m3, whereas according to [2], the WHO's (extremely strict) limit for 24 hour average is set at 15 µg/m3. Where did you get your data from? [1] https://www.aqi.in/dashboard/Japan/tokyo [2] https://www.who.int/…

accuweather.com. Yesterday morning the AQI was 142. I snapped a photo of it.

This is the air quality page for Tokyo on accuweather.com

https://www.accuweather.com/en/jp/tokyo/226396/air-quality-i...

Clicking on the Learn more from Plume Labs takes you to the air quality data source.

https://air.plumelabs.com/air-quality-in-Tokyo-7Lj5

You can see graphs with the tabs named Live, Week, Month, Year. We can check past data there. The weekly graph shows 72 AQI on May 18th. The yearly graph shows the annual average of 39 AQI.

Can you confirm that you see the same data?

Re: Cities Aren't Loud: Cars Are Loud (2021) [video]

#267

Post by maherbeg »

api_or_ipa wrote: post #256

I used to live on the 8th floor of a highrise with a medium sized arterial road below. Car engines are annoying, but far, far worse was when it rained, the sound of cars plowing through puddles. Being the rainy PNW, this sound was ever-present and very annoying. EVs might solve the car engine problem but I don't see them solving the puddle problem.

Better roads and drainage would solve that problem.

Re: Cities Aren't Loud: Cars Are Loud (2021) [video]

#269

Post by dbspin »

epolanski wrote: post #111
david-gpu wrote: post #17

I live in a high-rise condo next to a six-lane stroad that was even showcased on this YouTube channel and the 24/7 traffic noise is annoying, particularly when you want to go for a walk and can't even hold a conversation. This didn't happen in the places where I lived back in Europe because zoning laws were different. Instead of the sprawl of freehold single family homes separate from a dense urban core, these much q…

Say what you want about soviet city planning but it was damn efficient. I have never ever seen a soviet-era suburb which didn't have 4 to 12 story buildings with parks and aisles all around them and all kind of services being at a 5 minutes walking distance top (church, shops, post office, elementary and middle school, etc).[1] Literally under every building you would find people quietly enjoying their evening on the…

I don't think you're romanticising at all. I visited (of all places) Mariupol, in 2013. As a city built around the Azovstal steel works, it was still horrendously, actively polluted when I visited. But it also beautiful. Dozens of parks with ice rinks, sports grounds, lakes. Each soviet era block was surrounded by greenery, and despite the wide thoroughfares the city was indeed quiet and friendly. Not to say it was idyllic - the pollution was horrific, the poverty was grinding. With little in the way of pensions, the elderly people were forced to sell jams and preserves from their apartments to survive. Each building had an aging guardian in the doorway - and I was told my by Ukranian partner that part of their function was to prevent the apartments being stolen and sold out from under their residents. But in terms of urban greenery and place spaces, few places I've been, including relatively green bohemian cities like Berlin, come close.

Re: Cities Aren't Loud: Cars Are Loud (2021) [video]

#270

Post by mk67 »

acdha wrote: post #254
mk67 wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't really call it middle class if a lower five digit sum is a major inconvenience. Probably the problem is more that there is not much middle class left nowadays and most people are lower class.

The American median income is around $45-50k so pretty much by definition any 5 digit expense is a big deal for the middle class. More importantly, however, you have to look at the amount of money people have leftover for unexpected expenses – a ton of people are living close to paycheck to paycheck even if they have median or better household income. They’re middle class by any common definition but fragile.

That sounds more like "petite bourgeoisie" than actual middle class. I know there was a lot of effort to redefine the term, but imo median income has little to do with it. If you live paycheck to paycheck you aren't even petite bourgeoisie.

No idea why you think median income has any relevance here. You could of course define "middle class" like that, but that is not the actual meaning of the term. I think in Western societies your middle class is at best 10% of people nowadays.

And just to add: I think this widespread redefinition of what middle class is not an accident. It seems quite effective, if you think 50k USD is middle class in the US. It wouldn't even be middle class in most of poorer Europe. The idea of term is completely unrelated to relative income, but rather a different social status; that isn't the case if you live paycheck to paycheck. And this redefinition is happening to obscure the fact that a large part of our population in the West had a loss in living standards over the last decades.

Post reply on HN