One way I deal with people talking on speakerphone, is inviting myself into their conversation and making comments as if I were an active participant. That usually earns me a weird look, and then they go off speaker so I can't hear what's been said. Success.
Similar with folks watching reels on speaker, I fake a laugh or make comments about the content. It's awkward enough that they usually stop because they want a moment alone, not an interactive session with a stranger. Which ironically is the same thing I want too.
A friend of mine works AV at shows that have rotating DJs and one of the things she has on her mixer board is "The Suck Button."
It causes a mic at the other end of the room to get cut into the DJ's live feed monitor with a semitone shift down and some reverb. This causes all sorts of inner-ear chaos and usually clears a DJ off the stage when they're over time within a few minutes at most -- usually under 30 seconds. One time they were trying to figure out why it wasn't working and discovered that the DJ had muted their monitor feed, which explained why they were not only peaking the meters but over time: They hadn't heard the FOUR warnings from the back of house that it was time to wrap up.
There was a coffee shop ages ago in SF that would every few hours play a cacophony (e.g. multiple songs at once). I assume it was to drive away people camping on their laptops to rotate tables. Understand but super annoying to people like me who had a timer to but food or drink no less than hourly to be a good citizen
When this was first presented, I was watching this in a large dark hall with this on the projector and the sound level set to extremely loud. Like a fool, I sat through this to the end wondering whether it was going to ever end rather than recognising it as a glorious troll.
That's extremely annoying. I have a Bluetooth speaker that I was intending to repurpose into a device to combat inconsiderate smart phone usage. I connected it to my laptop and started playing multiple streams of Punjabi MC - Beware of the Boys. It was torturous.
My other idea was to get the line from dumb and dumber "Do you want to hear the most annoying sound in the world..." And just loop the sound continuously.
I might just try this project though and see how it goes.
We had a friend who would play Metal when the ice cream store he worked at was closed but the customers were lingering too long. It generally worked, as he was immune.
I introduced my local restaurant owner to Mongolian Techno and the late night bar flies and some of the kitchen staff have never forgiven me. He won't admit if he plays it for himself, or because of them :)
It's 3am and we're arguing some insipid minutae over technically illegal tequila shots while one drunk girl is breaking it down on the tiny dance floor :)
In Japan it's pretty much an institution that shops play an instrumental version of Hotaru no Hikari (which is basically Auld Lang Syne with different lyrics) when they're closing.
We did this where I bartended as well. Generally 15-20 minutes after serving the last drink of the night.
The goal wasn’t to offend or clear out 100% of the customers - just make a large enough portion decide that outside might be more comfortable/conducive than inside. The 20 or so customers who were fine with the cacophony were easy enough to wrangle manually, and also generally either people we knew well .
I was at a coffee shop once that was playing metal while my writing group was meeting there and I just thought they had excellent taste (it was not near closing time)
That reminds me of the "speech jammer", which won an Ignobel Prize last decade. It's an acoustic gun that combines a directional microphone and speaker array with a delay, tripping up the speaker.
I've recently become a convert to this kind of thinking. The person invited the public to join in when they decided to have a public speakerphone call. If they don't want my responses or laughter, they get annoyed and stop the behavior I was finding annoying in the first place.
I don't even have to act like I'm bothered by it, or that I find their behavior offensive. They change their behavior because they are bothered by mine.
People talking to each other in person tend to modulate their voices to match the context. People talking on speakerphone tend to crank the volume and shout.
And the person on the other end of the line often doesn't realize how uncivil the situation is. They might know they're on speakerphone, but they actually can't see that they're interrupting the trains of thought of dozens of people around them. This means the content of the conversation is more likely to be inappropriate for public consumption, making it even more distracting for the forced participants.
The person holding the speakerphone is to blame, of course, but they often seem to go into a state of pathological flow where they're almost as oblivious as their conversation partner.
Plus devices are tinny and grate. Watching a video on the phone of someone speaking is much more annoying than someone speaking in person, even at the same volume.
I think this is the only meaningful point being made in this thread.
The sound from a phone speaker is annoying, more so, than a typical in person talking. To me the solution lies somewhere in fixing that to make it sound more natural.
Everyone else claiming that some how having “loud” conversation is rude, feels like they’ve fallen into some anti-social hole… we are literally the only animal to have developed complex spoken language… it’s part of our humanity.
It’s all context. Some cultures are loud, some are quiet; some people are loud, some are quiet; some places are supposed to be loud, and so on.
The people being quiet in an normally-loud place create no problems. The people being loud in a normally-quiet place are causing problems for others by violating the quiet.
Loud people also tend to be oblivious to this and then get defensive when it’s pointed out. Not always - I’ve known some naturally-loud people who had figured out that being shushed meant they were in the wrong.
No, the loudness is a whole separate dimension. 99% of the time, there's no need to be loud in public. Not when you're talking on the phone (the microphones on a phone work great!), not when you're having a conversation with one or two other people close to you. Not when talking to Siri (etc). You can talk quietly in a place that isn't very loud, and in a place like an airport you can talk just loud enough to be clearly heard -- there's no need to shout or to project your voice.
There are exceptions to this -- of course nobody expects you to worry about your volume at a concert between sets, at a sporting event, etc. But people who speak very loudly everywhere are annoying to everyone around them.
No, loud conversation on a train during commuter hours really is rude where I live.
Most patrons have a conversation at a normal volume where the words are clear to their conversation partner but not to people sitting further away.
Speaking loudly enough to be understood from a significant distance is rude because it prevents other people from having their own conversations, and it forces people who are not having a conversation to listen to you. Speaking at an appropriate volume is not anti-social, it is pro-social: other people can't be social themselves if you're too loud.
The unwritten rules loosen up at night, during events, or at other times when there's a boisterous crowd.
For speakerphone-appropriate situations (e.g. being alone or with people that all want to participate in a call), yes, that would be great.
For everything else, the solution is to STFU. People blasting reels or having rambling non-essential phone calls in public transport is detrimental to everybody's stress level and by extension mental and physical health. I'd love to see it banned and the ban actually enforced.
Shout out to the GGT 101 bus driver that made the annoying passenger on some endless legal/business call actually shut up with a polite but firm "Sir, this is a bus, not a call center". Best trip across the Golden Gate Bridge I've ever had.
I think I've had that driver (or we were on the same bus!) because I remember this happening on that bus when I took it as well.
To the larger point about loud conversations -- any conversations above what is appropriate to the situation, even in person conversations, are annoying. Ever go to a restaurant and you're able to hear the loud table across the room because they're yelling while everyone else is speaking at a normal volume? Highly annoying. "Who ordered the mojito? Monique ordered the mojito!" I'm just trying to enjoy a cocktail and talk with my partner, not listen to your cacophony.
Doubly annoying if you have a speech processing disorder of any kind. I already have a hard time understanding people on one side of my head, I don't need to also be picking up someone's loud voices interrupting my attempts to listen.
It's similar to the distinction between a driver having a conversation with a passenger in a vehicle vs. the same driver having a phone call, even in a hands-free / speakerphone mode.
The passenger will be far more aware of context and circumstances, including traffic or other hazards, and will generally adapt to those surroundings. The remote party simply has no access to those cues.
(And yes, some passengers may be oblivious, for various reasons, including but not limited to children. I'm discussing the general case.)
In theory yes, but in practice they usually have the speaker up far higher than they are speaking themselves so we do only hear one side clearly.
I think the high distractability is a trifecta of volume, non-naturallness of the sound (compression etc: feeling out of place in the space) and this point.
If their voices sounded shrill/unnaturally amplified/too loud, definitely. Listening to an annoying conversation on speakerphone is 10x more annoying than when it's face-to-face.
How do you deal with the small possibility that the offending person is unhinged (since they’ve already chosen to throw out societal mores out the window) and could physically hurt you?
I used to have to deal with unhinged people on the regular and one of the techniques that keep the peace and stay safe is to present an edge that gives the vibe that you may be more unhinged.
My dad used to run housing projects, and my uncle was an assistant principal at one of the most violent schools in New York City. They were like Jedi masters of presence. They had stories that were absolutely insane.
It is pure game theory. An aggressive person expects no bad outcomes from his passive victim. If they get a signal that their own outcome may be not that good, even marginally, this very often changes their behaviour.
That's why the advice to act submissively presented as "avoiding confrontation" is often the wrong advice.
You are not seeking confrontation, but you should signal that you are ready for confrontation. Stops aggressive behaviour very often.
Antisocial behavior is often an attempt to gain status in the subjects in-group. Breaking rules in a way conveys power.
Violence against members of the out-group is an even more effective way to display dominance and hence gain status.
Unless you play a repeated game with the other person there is little to gain for you by initiating conflict.
Even if you assume you have something to gain, always consider the other person might have little to lose and ( my opinion) never display aggression you are not willing to back up.
Sources:
1. Rory Miller: ”Meditations on Violence”
The advice is not about initiating a conflict. It is about not to appear an easy victim in order not to provoke aggression.
But life is always about fight-or-flight, so flight should remain an option, very often the best one.
By not signalling readiness to fight back, you increase probability of aggression by removing all costs to the potential perpetrator from their calculation.
This binary classification is what is dangerous in this case.
“Are you looking at my girl?”
1. “Fuck off, if you want to live”.
2. Try to run.
Both options are valid but you miss the: “Just zoning out mate. Hard day at work, you know? Boss dogged my pay and I have to muster up the courage to tell the misses. She’s been talking about leaving and taking the kids …”
Violence can arise at many different levels of the classical hierarchy of needs.
Existencial: A crack head robber in a crisis, needing to feed their habit, is hard to deter by threat. For them it is life or death, for you it is just money.
Self actualisation : Many serial killers preferred easy victims. Looking ready to defend one self most likely would dissuade them.
Social:
A member of a social group, trying to establish status by conflict with an outsider? Looking tough might achieve just the opposite of what one intends. But being a type of non-target, simply because one is outside of the established hierarchy can work really well.
My perspective is probably skewed: In my by now admittedly boring life, violence is usually social and best side stepped.
Anectodal evidence, but 3 out of 4 bullies left me alone after I punched them back just a single time. The 4th got backup for the next time he jumped me, so it can backfire.
> The 4th got backup for the next time he jumped me, so it can backfire.
But was there a next time after that, or did they stop after getting their revenge once? If they did stop, and assuming you didn’t receive any permanent damage, you still won the interaction long term.
That's a good point. There's alot of weird stuff out there about this, especially with regard to weapons. There's a balance between being aggressive and not a victim. If you tip too much on the "aggressive" side, you become a threat.
If you work with dogs it's very obvious with them as they are so empathic and attuned to humans. If you are afraid, they will try to take over. If you present as in control, they accept your control. If you are a threat, they respond as they see it. It happens between other animals too -- we're all seen reels of family pets chasing off bears or tiny chihuahuas chasing off German Shepards. People aren't dogs, but I think the comparison has some merit.
lol, Sure! Here’s one that was one of the crazier ones that I remember from my dad. There were a bunch of people complaining about smells coming from an apartment. The dude was a little out there and some sort of religious practitioner.
The workers were afraid of the guy, but he hadn’t really done anything except be weird and creepy. So he ended up going up with a few folks to check it out. The dude was capturing (many) wild animals and boiling their blood. So much so that it was condensating on the ceiling.
The dude opened the door and came at them with a bloody machete. He was babbling something about his mother, and I guess as it was told dad just softly said something along the lines of “Your mom sent us and she is not happy with what is happening here, and I think you know that.” I guess the guy stopped in his tracks, dropped the machete and started bawling.
He was a special guy and made a point to treat people fairly and with respect. They’d kick out drug dealers and people who’d terrorize neighbors with dogs and such. The local street dealers beat up some guy who tried to steal his car because being diligent in the buildings was keeping their families safe. He’d take me down as a kid in the summer to hang out and help out with kids programs. It was profoundly meaningful to me as I got to understand that we are all really the same.
I love this, thank you for sharing. I imagine that position gives you an exposure to humanity that many can't handle with that kind of grace and constitution. We surely need more people like him.
Personally, it's not worth living in fear of that small chance. If you're alone and they're visibly on drugs or something then yeah, better to just move. Otherwise we just let people get away with bad behavior.
I wish I had the social awareness to troll [the right] people [well] in the moment like this. I've misjudged the dangerous ones enough, find that has blocked my words.
For the benefit of the next victim, maybe. The unhinged are famously forward-thinking. Hopefully you report their crime after the fact and it's met with a favorable result.
Sometimes when college kids in a hotel room next to mine are being too loud, I go out, check their room number , go back to my room and give them a call (usually just dialing the room number works).
I pretend to be “Jason from reception” and that “other guests are complaining about the noise”. Works every time.
I have do idea about DC but I don't trust crime rate stats - a lot might be unreported.
In NYC last year someone burnt someone else to death while they sat, relaxed and watched, and in a seperate incident a person died died and someone else had sex with them afterwards.
It could that be crime is lower or it could be that insane brutality has become normalized.
> You can write boring code in Scala, but in my (limited) experience, Scala developers don't want to write boring code. They picked Scala not because it was the best tool for the job, but because they were bored and wanted to flex their skills. Disregarding the other 95% of programmers that would have to work with it.
Intersting observation.
So basically Scala is to the JVM what Perl is to scripting?
You can write readable Scala code, just like you can write readable Perl code. But both languages allow you to to write very concise and cryptic code as well.
Scala doesn't seem to optimize for the "one obvious solution" approach like Python does. Scala seems to be more TIMTOWDY like Perl.
Scala was designed from the beginning to support classical Java-style OOP code and also Haskell-like functional code. These are 2 very different styles in one language. And then Scala supports defining DSLs which give you even more flexibility.
In a similar vein, as the industry matured, we went from having teams of wizards building products, to teams of "good-enough" developers, interchangeable, easy to onboard. Perl culture was too much about craft-mastery which ended up being at odds with most corporate cultures.
Unfortunately, as a former Perl dev, it makes a lot of other environments feel bland. Often more productive yes, but bland nonetheless. Of the newer languages, Nim does have that non-bland feel. Whether it ends up with significant adoption when Rust and Golang are well established is a different story.
You're being downvoted but yes, this is about risk mitigation. The IT department at a health care organization has to balance matching the requirements of payers, admins and clinical staff, do so in a way that fits inside the allocated budget, and de-risk the unknowns as much as possible.
Even if the vendors are only half accurate about the solution they offer, by being paid suppliers, they are on the hook (to varying degrees). These systems are highly customized and serious headaches arise from interoperability and security. If some of that can be shifted to a vendor, it's a net positive insofar as the IT department and the compliance departments are concerned.
Some healthcare organization have invested in the technology side and become leaders in innovation but those are the exception.
Same here. Perhaps what I've enjoyed the most about Perl was the humanness and art of it. Cleverness and expressiveness were at the service of elegance.
Sure you can write amazingly obscure foot-guns in Perl but that's also true of any other language. But honestly I'd rather a few lines of obscure Perl code WITH a comment block explaining why, than a dozen classes with bits and pieces of business logic spread all over the place.
The setup that I adopted 15 years ago and still use today is the "bar desk". It's a standup desk that's positioned in such a way that my elbows rest naturally when I'm standing.
But instead of a fancy mechanism to make the desk go up and down, I have a saddle stool. When sitting on it, my head is at the same level as standing, and my spine is straight. (Key point is monitor position.)
What I like about that is I can swap between sitting to standing in a few seconds without even thinking about it and without waiting for the desk motor to go up or down. This was originally a poor man's standup desk because I didn't have the budget for a motorized desk; now it's a choice.
One issue though is the lack of a back on the stool. You can make the case it’s a Good thing but when I really need to concentrate if I’m tensing muscles in my back to keep straight it won’t be the same—or you can slouch which also isn’t perfect.
Frequency often depends on individual use case, though. In an actual application, there are few elements where you can safely exclude the possibility that someone will use the element frequently.
One way I deal with people talking on speakerphone, is inviting myself into their conversation and making comments as if I were an active participant. That usually earns me a weird look, and then they go off speaker so I can't hear what's been said. Success.
Similar with folks watching reels on speaker, I fake a laugh or make comments about the content. It's awkward enough that they usually stop because they want a moment alone, not an interactive session with a stranger. Which ironically is the same thing I want too.