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Damaging the heart sounds right. My neighbor has a unique obsession with his leaf-blower. It's like his daily 30-120 minutes of exercise at random times of the
by ryanianian 6y ago
Damaging the heart sounds right.
My neighbor has a unique obsession with his leaf-blower. It's like his daily 30-120 minutes of exercise at random times of the day. Even with all the noise-cancelling technology in the world, it ruins me for at least 2-3 hours and makes both video-conferencing and deep work basically impossible.
Here's the thing: Nobody cares. The neighbor can say no to polite requests to figure out a compromise, and your local officials will tell you that you have the right to make as much noise as you want, and nobody else can do anything about it.
Noise ordinances restrict decibels, not the tones or revving patterns or high-pitch "safety" beeping or other things that cut right through the heart despite them not technically being over a decibel level for a sustained period of time.
With more people doing deeper work from home, I hope there are some pioneering cities that can establish protocols that protect work environments and locals' sanity - while still allowing noisy work to get done at predictable times of the day and with reasonable limits on meaningful impact to those living within earshot.
Like TFA, we have to paint noise more like the health problem it actually is.
- centimeter 6y ago> high-pitch "safety" beeping This drives me insane. I know some shithead lawyer or safety “activist” somewhere is responsible for all the bullshit beeping I have to deal with in my life. A fire alarm going off for no reason. (I would accept the negligible marginal risk of burning to death than have to deal with legally mandated fire alarms.) My car beeping because I didn’t put the seatbelt over the luggage in the passenger seat. Even airplanes aren’t as annoying with the audible alerts as cars. The only time I get beeped at when I’m flying is if I’m stalling or something. At least in aircraft, designers have the understanding and latitude to treat noises as the pointless distractions they are.
- dgrcode 6y agoI lived in Dublin, Ireland, for a while and every. Single. Day. There was a fire alarm going off. It drove me insane. I had already forgotten how crazy that was and your message made me remember it. Now I can appreciate more not having that where I currently live :)
- jodrellblank 6y ago"I was in a school science lesson learning about Pavlov and thinking 'stupid dogs'. Then the bell rang and we all had lunch." - Gary Delaney. > "I know some shithead lawyer or safety “activist” somewhere is responsible for all the bullshit beeping I have to deal with in my life." Probably not; whoever set the Unix/Linux CLI to ding aggressively whenever you do literally anything is guilty of something or other. It's not just the nature of the beep sound, 8-bit music can be fun, it's combined with the nature of "safety" beeping being an audio wrap-on-the-knuckles for doing something "wrong" like ... pressing backspace when there's nothing to backspace DING! or turning on the induction hob DING! or turning up the power on the induction hob DING! or not hurrying quickly enough to the finished microwave DING DING! or reversing a large vehicle BEEEEEEP! or not plugging in your seatbelt NAUGHTY! (Not being awake for capitalism productivity time RING RING!) They're not just audio noises, they're psychological soup nazis. Cracking twigs and sudden barks are sounds that somehting is coming to eat you, screeching is a sound that your infant might be about to die, none of it is relevant to trying to adjust a volume control one percent higher than it can go. DING! I've run Windows with all sounds off, and Linuxes with muted error bels for so long that I can't imagine what it would be like if the entire computing audioscape was nice, encouraging, pleasant, positive feedback like message notifications on smartphones tend to be.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- josefresco 6y agoMost of my neighbors hire leaf blower toting professional landscaping crews to clear their lawns on a regular basis. The process takes maybe 10 minutes for weekly blowouts, and maybe 45-60 minutes for seasonal jobs. I thought this was obnoxious, until one of my neighbors decided to do the work themselves. It took them an entire long weekend of (what seemed like) 9-5 blowing to clear their lot.
- Lammy 6y agoThe first thing I do in any car is plug in my OBDLink LX, fire up Carista on my phone, and see what obnoxious beeps, honks, and flashes I can disable: https://cdn.dealereprocess.net/cdn/servicemanuals/toyota/2015-prius.pdf#page=608 https://cdn.dealereprocess.net/cdn/servicemanuals/toyota/201...
- agumonkey 6y agoAre these gas powered blower? I wonder if electric ones exist. If not maybe there's a better design for small homes / lawn.
- ryanianian 6y agoElectric blowers exist. I have one. But his property is just big enough and with enough bushes and things where a cord would probably quickly become a nuisance. Hopefully the Tesla Lawn Care line is imminent.
- dgrcode 6y agoLooking forward to those electric blowers
- jborichevskiy 6y agoThey do exist and seem to work reasonably well, from the few I've seen used around my neighborhoods.
- nitrogen 6y agoA partial solution would be soundproof houses, though that doesn't rescue one's backyard or park from loud neighbors. Every house or apartment should have at least a room or two that are impervious to outdoor noise. At the same time, there are really good reasons to make noise sometimes, from music to machines, so better ways to do that without overly bothering others are needed too.
- ryanianian 6y agoI've spent serious time looking into this. One of the biggest sources of noise is windows or other places air can start to get in. I re-sealed my windows as best I could, but it's still a crisis of sound. Windows that claim to be sound-isolating either don't open at all or are very expensive to buy or properly install. But: These are the kinds of "nobody cares it's your fault it bugs you and you need to find a solution" comments that are pervasive. Sure, I need to do my part as someone who's bothered by the sound, but there is no real incentive for the producer of the noise to cut it out. Not singling you out in particular, just showing that even honest proposals for solutions tend to miss the elephant in the room: noise pollution that isn't pure sustained decibels can still be damaging. Say I have an obnoxious horn that is a few db below the ordinance/limit. Many may claim that's a nuisance although somehow the blower isn't. But why shouldn't I get to play with my horn for a few hours every day? Maybe my leaves don't like it. The fact that the leaf-blower sound comes from doing a "chore" seems to change the equation in ways that are hard to articulate.
- nitrogen 6y agoThese are the kinds of "nobody cares it's your fault it bugs you and you need to find a solution" comments that are pervasive. If I came across that way it wasn't intentional. I actually really, really hate unwelcome sound/noise, but I'm also a night owl so I can't really enjoy many of the things I want to enjoy because it would bother others. Realistically we all make noise in ways we might not initially realize, so on top of singling out and improving the outliers like car horns and yard equipment, we also have to consider ways to let us all go about our business more quietly, and to find solace from noise.
- 6y ago
- undefined1 6y agoleaf blowers are such a pox on neighborhoods. we really need to find an alternative. is it possible to make an electric leaf blower that is both powerful and quiet? or forget the leaf blower altogether and pay kids to rake up leaves instead. make it the new paper route. $N per bag.
- mint2 6y agoYes, some cities actually ban non-electric leaf blowers. It’s possible to make them powerful and quiet or powerful and loud. It’s just a matter of cost and will. It probably doesn’t cost much more but no one has cared to do it.
- orhmeh09 6y agoI’d really like some more convincing, actually — do you know this to be true, or does it sound like something we ought to be able to do in 2021?
- reddit_clone 6y agoIndeed. Are leaf blowers that much more efficient than good old fashioned rakes? Especially if you pay some kids to do it? They get exercise and money out of it. We get some peace and quiet.
- ryanianian 6y agoMany people seem to take genuine pleasure in using the blower, maybe like the satisfaction of vacuuming a dirty carpet. The difference is acknowledging and caring about the externalities paid by anyone in earshot. Sure, do your noisy cathartic thing occasionally when you really need it, but find a better hobby to do every day of the week.
- kiliantics 6y agoPeople seem to insist on burning fossil fuels for any tiny unnecessary task it seems. It's so sad.
- 6y ago
- goldenchrome 6y agoHave you talked to your neighbor? It could be as simple as a lack of awareness on their part.
- ricardobayes 6y agoIt almost never is. You are a nice person to assume the best though.
- ryanianian 6y agoRepeatedly. It's a weird power dynamic that neighbors have. He's not a rude person, but he just doesn't "get it." I asked him to run his blower any time except 9-12 and 1-5, but that worked for like 2 days.
- dazc 6y agoThe problem with annoying neighbours is that they lack the common decency to comply. By definition, if they had the required decency then they wouldn't become annoying in the first place. The general advice always seems to be to talk to your neighbour about the problem but, in my experience, this never works and is more likely to aggravate an already testy relationship. Thus far, until 'being annoying' becomes an acceptable defence for murder, the only strategy that works 100% is to move.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- lowercased 6y agoSimilar - couple of neighbors of mine enjoy the leaf blowing and riding mowers. I mean... it's not speculation, one said "oh, i love it - it's my relaxation time". And... when he can, he'll spend 2-3 hrs putzing around riding and blowing whatever he can. We have the same size yard, and have a company which is paid by the job. They can do the whole same size in about under 30 minutes (often just with 1 person - 2 folks it's often 20 minutes). There's little we can do when someone gets pleasure out of running a loud motor for hours at a time. He started a leaf blower, then left it running next to our window while he went inside for about 10 minutes (bathroom visit probably?). Just... insanity.
- ip26 6y agoGet your neighbor a powerful, quiet, electric leaf blower for Christmas? If he's leaf-blower-obsessed, he might even love you for it. The electric ones aren't noiseless, but they are a far sight better.