4 ms·

I used to be somehow in the middle regarding "is X dangerous" discussions because while probably generally not an issue for large majority people, there is prob

I used to be somehow in the middle regarding "is X dangerous" discussions because while probably generally not an issue for large majority people, there is probably a small .% of people who are legitimately oversensitive to various stuff (like, say, some people are allergic to certain foods). And it sucks to be the ignored "edge case" person and not be able to do anything about it (think any time your bug report was rejected). However I came across this thread that made me realize, many people come up with claims out of thin air (perhaps not even being malicious, just doing fake correlations etc.): https://twitter.com/sTeamTraen/status/1245814828079427585 https://twitter.com/sTeamTraen/status/1245814828079427585 > an anecode that was told to me when I visited the operations centre of a large French mobile phone operator a few years ago. (after installation of new tower) > everyone who can see the tower, calls the mayor and says they have headaches > the mayor demands to know what we're going to do to make the headaches stop. > And we say, well, we haven't switched the mast on yet.

jacquesm 7y ago
I had a house up for sale for a long time. One day a man and his wife from Amsterdam came to view it. They brought with them a little box. The lady was allergic to 'radiation', and the box would tell her if this house was the one or not. She walked to-and-fro with the box pointing it all all kinds of bits mumbling to herself, and then walked out into the garden. After two hours of this she came back to us and said that it was all very nice but it wouldn't do, just too much radiation. I asked her if I could look at the box. It was a field-strength meter with a built in amplifier hooked up to a variety of possible antennae, an open dipole and a small loop. She didn't understand the first thing about electromagnetic waves (polarization, for instance). The thing was set to its most sensitive setting amplifying the crap out of any background noise and picked up all kinds of interesting sources, one of which was the sun, essentially turning it into a complex detector for something you didn't need a field-strength meter for in the first place: to tell you where our life giving star is in the sky. I pointed this out to her and she went to sit in the car in a huff while her husband hung around for a bit. Apparently they'd been seeing 100's of houses and none of them ever were good enough. Meanwhile, they lived in Amsterdam, right opposite of the microwave support tower next to RAI, a spot so bad that whenever I would pass it my cellphone would spontaneously reboot because of the strength of the electrical field. I never knew if she was serious or whether she imagined the whole thing or was just looking for a way to get some quality time with her husband. But I highly doubt she ever found a house that was good enough short of a mountain cave. But that house, about 300 meters away from the German border was about as isolated from anything radiation related you're going to find in Western Europe and if she wasn't making it up then for the life of me I do not understand what mechanism would underpin that sort of sensitivity.
- madaxe_again 7y ago
  I had an “electrosensitive” housemate at university - no phones allowed, and she’d go around unplugging everything, even taking the batteries out of wall clocks - and would microwave herself a meal twice daily, nose pressed to the glass of the door. She wouldn’t be told that the microwave was a much greater emitter of EM radiation than anything else around her - said the frequency was in tune with the human body, which was why it made such nutritious food, and was why she liked to be close to it while it ran for its “positive energy”. We don’t keep in touch.
  - jacquesm 7y ago
    Missed opportunity, I never thought of asking her if she had a microwave oven. Apparently their whole apartment had been covered in copper mesh, but they still had a regular electrical system and were looking at the kitchen appliances as well so I assumed they wanted to keep those.

jacquesm 7y ago

I had a house up for sale for a long time. One day a man and his wife from Amsterdam came to view it. They brought with them a little box. The lady was allergic to 'radiation', and the box would tell her if this house was the one or not. She walked to-and-fro with the box pointing it all all kinds of bits mumbling to herself, and then walked out into the garden. After two hours of this she came back to us and said that it was all very nice but it wouldn't do, just too much radiation. I asked her if I could look at the box. It was a field-strength meter with a built in amplifier hooked up to a variety of possible antennae, an open dipole and a small loop. She didn't understand the first thing about electromagnetic waves (polarization, for instance). The thing was set to its most sensitive setting amplifying the crap out of any background noise and picked up all kinds of interesting sources, one of which was the sun, essentially turning it into a complex detector for something you didn't need a field-strength meter for in the first place: to tell you where our life giving star is in the sky. I pointed this out to her and she went to sit in the car in a huff while her husband hung around for a bit. Apparently they'd been seeing 100's of houses and none of them ever were good enough. Meanwhile, they lived in Amsterdam, right opposite of the microwave support tower next to RAI, a spot so bad that whenever I would pass it my cellphone would spontaneously reboot because of the strength of the electrical field. I never knew if she was serious or whether she imagined the whole thing or was just looking for a way to get some quality time with her husband. But I highly doubt she ever found a house that was good enough short of a mountain cave. But that house, about 300 meters away from the German border was about as isolated from anything radiation related you're going to find in Western Europe and if she wasn't making it up then for the life of me I do not understand what mechanism would underpin that sort of sensitivity.

madaxe_again 7y ago
I had an “electrosensitive” housemate at university - no phones allowed, and she’d go around unplugging everything, even taking the batteries out of wall clocks - and would microwave herself a meal twice daily, nose pressed to the glass of the door. She wouldn’t be told that the microwave was a much greater emitter of EM radiation than anything else around her - said the frequency was in tune with the human body, which was why it made such nutritious food, and was why she liked to be close to it while it ran for its “positive energy”. We don’t keep in touch.
- jacquesm 7y ago
  Missed opportunity, I never thought of asking her if she had a microwave oven. Apparently their whole apartment had been covered in copper mesh, but they still had a regular electrical system and were looking at the kitchen appliances as well so I assumed they wanted to keep those.