When I was in the hospital recovering from a shattered leg bone a machine near my bed kept beeping all night. This made the pain much worse somehow, the combination of the beeping, the lights which weren't fully off and the horrible pain really broke me down. I've never felt worse.
I was so happy when my husband brought my noise canceling earbuds from home. But really this guy is right we ought to think about if we are designing hell-like soundscapes in such places.
@futurebird 99percentinvisible.org/episode… Sleep deprivation from noise in hospitals contribute to high rates of delirium, especially in older patients. ICUs are even worse than wards.
Alarm fatigue from constant machine alerts can cause nurses to miss emergencies.
@futurebird with any luck, our children’s children will look back on the late 20th, early 21st century noise background the same way we look back at Victorian coal-fired smog and horse-crap filled streets.
Which reminds me that I should do something about the local street lanterns beaming most of their warm light up into space and over the bushes🙃
So true. My big labor and delivery discovery was how powerfully a white noise generator can change the experience. When we left after c section post op it was the last thing we unplugged and it turned our little nest into the alienating experience of beeps and bloops modern hospital care.
Many people that visit China remark on how much better cities are with the quieter electric vehicles.
The West has gone the opposite direction, with rat bastards removing their catalytic converters and modding their exhausts. I blame Ebay for selling and promoting the tools to do illegal mods.
I’ve lived in my current neighborhood for 9 years, and am still surprised at how quiet it is, compared to my old one near downtown Colorado Springs where there was a constant drone from the interstate two miles away. Now if we could also do something about light pollution.
We switched to a microwave that lets us mute all beeps a few years ago and it's so much better than the constant beeps. On the flip side, a bluetooth speaker we have has a very loud/elaborate tune (which definitely sounds engineered) that plays on power off that I really, really wish could be disabled. Why would "I want to stop making noise now" be the time to make more noise?
We moved from a somewhat small craftsman house to a quite large (mostly) modern house a few years ago. The soundscape is hugely different. Now I am trying to sacrifice its clean lines for some soft audio instead: installing audio panels and rugs, and planning for other ways of breaking up the soundscape.
Man I wish more people thought about this stuff.
The endless thread podcast discusses a solid rant on this, too:
Hosts Ben Brock Johnson and Amory Sivertson dig into the internet's vast and curious ecosystem of online communities to find untold histories, unsolved mysteries, and other jaw-dropping stories online and IRL.
Son dakika: Terör örgütü PKK tarihi kararı duyurdu: Geçen hafta kongresini topladığını duyuran terör örgütü, kongrenin sonuç bildirgesini yayımladı. Terör örgütü, kendini feshettiğini ve silahları bıraktığını resmen duyurdu.
Terörsüz Türkiye sürecinde tarihi bir adım atıldı. Terör örgütü PKK kendini feshettiğini duyurdu. Kongre sonuç bildirgesini yayımlayan terör örgütü, silahları bıraktığını açıkladı.
Oh hello misogyny. It is a known phenomenon that when women move into male dominated professions the relative salaries drop. This is not because the value of those jobs drop, it’s sexism.
The graduate premium in employment for English university students is shrinking, at the same time that the costs of university have been rising (even if the fees themselves have remained capped for some years).... but when we look at the return to investment across (some) subjects we also see significant variation.
Given its costs its no wonder student worry about the employment/salary benefits, which sadly means the humanistic case for higher education gets lost in the 'noise'
Yup, that would definitely be the case.... see the posts here in the past on the gender wag gap & the work (again often posted here) of the Women's Budget Group
The hardline immigration policy of the Trump administration is beginning to show its consequences. According to a CNN report, at least seven undocumented migrants have died in US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody so far in 2025, an in…
Danish newspaper @information.dk is running a series on people who have left social media, here the striking image of the shattered mirror from the snow queen, but where a piece lodged in the eye, rather shows reality than the curated perfection of Instagram... Worth a read
fediscience.org/@Ruth_Mottram/… Ruth_Mottram - "Hvis jeg mangler noget at lave, så må jeg kede mig. For tiden, som jeg nu bruger på at læse bøger og kigge op og ud, den får de aldrig tilbage. Den er min. Og den er hemmelig." Glimrende serie fra @informeren om at forlade sociale medier...
"Hvis jeg mangler noget at lave, så må jeg kede mig. For tiden, som jeg nu bruger på at læse bøger og kigge op og ud, den får de aldrig tilbage. Den er min. Og den er hemmelig." Glimrende serie fra @informeren om at forlade sociale medier...
In this article, we will explore the key characteristics of each shell, their strengths and weaknesses, and guide you toward making an informed decision.
Build a Sentiment Analysis API in Java with Quarkus and Local LLMs No cloud. No API keys. Learn how to classify text sentiment using Quarkus, Langchain4j, and Ollama. myfear.substack.com/p/sentimen… #Java #LangChain4j #Ollama
please don't ignore my #trans friend, a #disabled #parent & #photographer, who has been denied benefits. xie hasn't made their goal in 2 months 😭. ze needs help covering food for zir kid & pets, the electric bill, pet supplies, household items, & clothes for zir kid. you can buy xyr #art below!
It may take a leadership election for the Greens to get some substantial coverage in the mainstream media, but nonetheless as Peter Walker argues, the party is being offered a choice between too different futures:
between a continued focus on the political party environment of Westminster or a shift (back?) to a more activist, popular movement aligned more clearly with activist groups.
Which is best? Green party members may have a difficult choice
Delicate balance of developing grassroots enthusiasm while still having coherent national and local policies, not just someone’s personal hobbyhorses.
And that effort has worked well - more Green councillors than Reform, same level of Westminster representation. Just not the media adulation of fascism.
I don't differ on the apportioning of blame, but nonetheless it *does* matter (at least in the current electoral system).... by whatever means they decide upon the Greens need more traction (even if that has been growing recently)....
@BashStKid I'd rather they focused on the their social media game (which could be better) the old Media doesn't get through to the vast swathes of people who currently aren't voting because nobody talks to them. They should fight ReformUK online, that's where the new battlefield is.
I was a member for 10 years but just got burned out by the whole process, volunteered at head office and everything. They're good people but just not cunning enough I fear.
as a #gpew member, I find this difficult. The electoral strategy to date has self-evidently worked well in its own terms & elected office brings important benefits beyond the obvious
But power increasingly sits outside traditional politics (broligarchy anyone?) &, as the executive arrogate ever power to itself, we must be clear of the limitations of electoral success
Also, we only beat Reform Ltd thro grassroots allyship, helping community solidarity networks take root 1/2
Electoral success may well help facilitate this and is complementary to it but being alongside our potential voters, helping tackle day-to-day challenges, enabling people feel there is a point in engaging because good stuff can & does happen are all crucial
I don’t accept the debate is binary but it’s one we really need to have to gain clarity about what we mean. Whether it will be helpful to have the discussion in the glare of a hostile media is another matter
Yes, as a non GPEW member I appreciate your concerns about having this debate in the glare of publicity enraged by a hostile media.... but then, equally if the Greens are to gain more traction, quickly they need some strategy to break out of that media circus.... which in the end may be shifting focus (partly) away from parliamentarism?
I think they are currently being gifted a unique opportunity. If they play it right they could replace Labour as the main party of the left as the whole left has basically been abandoned by the other parties.
#BBCNews - Why Burkina Faso's junta leader has captured hearts and minds bbc.com/news/articles/c1egely9… "His messages reflect the age we are living in, when many Africans are questioning the relationship with the West, and why there is still so much poverty in such a resource-rich continent" says @beverly_ochieng
It's a beautiful work, it seems to be somewhere that is really very low traffic, and my very brief looking into the NGO mentioned... They're not about "domestic violence," so much as being SWERFs and probably TERFs.
OK, a bit more research... They make the TERFs look reasonable... While some of the companies they've gone after, I think are utter shitty companies (often for similar reasons as they say) even those that I think should be, "burned off the planet" that they're lying harshly about how terrible they are. So, yeah, the campaign is right shitty, and not in a, "oh they don't understand" kind of way. In a very much "we're making the world better, by taking everyone's right away, and are proud to be fascist," type of way.
Still need $460 RIGHT NOW to finish off rent, pay off critical mid-May bills, and purchase food. Also, not so important now, but ultimately will need additional $1,000 by 5/31 for critical late-May bills and rent.
Still need $460 RIGHT NOW to finish off rent, pay off critical mid-May bills, and purchase food. Also, not so important now, but ultimately will need additional $1,000 by 5/31 for critical late-May bills and rent.
Die letzten Jahren unseres Fortschritt und sozialen Errungenschaften werden zerstört und wir gehen wieder zurück. Aktuell sind wir in 1950 gelandet und ich befürchte das wir 2029 ins Jahr 1933 landen werden. #politics #merz #cdu #cducsu #deutschland
Asra Minerals (ASX:ASR) has commenced a new 1,300-metre drilling program at its Leonora South Gold Project, located 60km south of Leonora, Western Australia.
Maaßen fordert radikale Reform des Inlandsgeheimdienstes tichyseinblick.de/meinungen/ma… Der ehemalige Verfassungsschutzpräsident Hans-Georg Maaßen kritisiert in dem Interview scharf das Vorgehen des Bundesamts für Verfassungsschutz (BfV) gegenüber der AfD. Die öffentliche Einstufung der Partei als „gesichert rechtsextremistisch“ sei ein massiver Eingriff in den politischen Wettbewerb und habe der AfD immensen Schaden zugefügt. Maaßen,
Im Interview mit Holger Douglas übt Hans-Georg Maaßen Kritik am Verfassungsschutz: Es brauche eine tiefgreifende Reform. Vor allem müsse unterbunden werden, dass die Behörde gegen die politische Opposition eingesetzt wird.
8 Buildings That Look Like They’re From a Dream: streetartutopia.com/2025/05/12… - Unzipped Building — Alex Chinneck in Milan, Italy
A building facade appears to peel open like a jacket, with an oversized zipper curling away the wall to reveal its inner structure. This public installation by Alex Chinneck uses stone, concrete, and illusion to challenge how we perceive architecture.
From a church in Iceland that looks like a spaceship preparing for launch, to a house zipped open on a street in Milan — this collection showcases architecture at its most imaginative. Included are cliffside wartime refuges, storybook cottages, optical illusions, and centuries-old constructions that defy gravity or blend perfectly into mountains. These aren’t digital renderings — they’re real places from around the world.
1. Unzipped Building — Alex Chinneck in Milan, Italy
A building facade appears to peel open like a jacket, with an oversized zipper curling away the wall to reveal its inner structure. This public installation by Alex Chinneck uses stone, concrete, and illusion to challenge how we perceive architecture.
2. King Alfred’s Tower — England
This red-brick triangular tower rises dramatically from the fog in Somerset, England. Built in 1772, it commemorates Alfred the Great and reaches over 49 meters high with a narrow footprint that adds to its illusion of impossibility.
3. Alpine Refuge — Monte Cristallo, Italy
Located at 2,760 meters in the Dolomites, this hidden wooden shelter from World War I is embedded directly into the rockface. Built for survival, it now appears like a dreamlike relic barely distinguishable from the mountain.
4. Hallgrímskirkja Church — Reykjavík, Iceland
This iconic Lutheran church, inspired by basalt columns and volcanic formations, dominates the Reykjavík skyline. Designed in 1937 and completed in 1986, its symmetry and scale evoke science fiction architecture.
5. The House That Sank — The Crooked House, UK
Built in 1765 on top of a mine shaft, this British pub developed a pronounced tilt as the ground beneath it slowly gave way. Despite its slanting angles, it remained a local favorite for centuries.
6. Organic Slate Roof House — Germany
This home with flowing lines and a wave-shaped slate roof blurs the line between fairy tale and high-end eco-architecture. Natural stone and soft curves give it a whimsical yet grounded appearance.
7. Cliff House — France (Built 1347)
Balanced between eras and gravity, this timber-framed upper house sits atop massive medieval stonework. Located in France and completed in 1347, it seems to hover above the road with support beams stretching underneath.
8. Rock-Built Homes — Sanaa, Yemen
Traditional Yemeni tower houses in Sanaa rise directly from the rock, combining ancient stone masonry with ornate white geometric window frames. The buildings appear both sculpted by nature and intricately human-made.
These buildings bend our expectations of what architecture can be — not just structures, but expressions of ingenuity, adaptation, and creativity. Whether carved into mountains or dressed like zippers, they show that the line between surreal and real is thinner than it seems.
Some artworks don’t just sit in nature—they become part of it. Around the world, artists are crafting sculptures and murals that seamlessly merge with their surroundings, using trees, vines, and landscapes as living elements of their work.
"This public installation by Alex Chinneck uses stone, concrete, and illusion to [look weird]"
Enough with the shite about "challenging how we perceive" stuff. It doesn't: we don't think buildings can now have big zippers on them as an architectural norm, we know it's art. It wouldn't work as art if we did think it was just architecture.
The building looks weird in a humorous way, and it's OK for that to be the point of it, since it succeeds at that.
Delitto di Aurigeno, via al processo Alla sbarra un 44enne accusato di assassinio e chi gli fornì la pistola, l’impresario già al centro dello “scandalo dei permessi” rsi.ch/s/2820259
This image is featured in where I go: a photobook, a visual testimony of the positive emotions I experience walking in the natural reserve of the Migliarino Pisano forest, along the Tuscan coast.
I grew up in a house with a backyard in a small town surrounded by lakes and countryside, but I lived most of my adult and professional life in big cities: Milan, New York and Buenos Aires. Here, w…
Il presidente ucraino Volodymyr Zelensky ha dichiarato domenica di essere pronto a incontrare il presidente russo Vladimir Putin per colloqui in Turchia il prossimo 15 maggio, ma ha ribadito la richiesta di un cessate il fuoco a partire da lunedì....
VST Alarm has launched an exclusive promotion on Pitch Innovations' groundbreaking MIDI processor that transforms static chords into captivating and evolving arpeggios.
Attached: 1 image
La Lombardia farà controllare le liste d’attesa degli ospedali ai carabinieri
L’obiettivo è ridurre i tempi lunghissimi per sottoporsi a esami e visite, ma i medici non l'hanno presa bene
https://www.ilpost.
Pflicht-Tüv jedes Jahr? Niedersachsens designierter Regierungschef sieht den EU-Plan für Autos ab zehn Jahren kritisch. Wer aus seiner Sicht vor allem davon betroffen wäre.
Parloa gehört ohne Zweifel zu den derzeit heißesten Startups des Landes. In den vergangenen Jahren flossen bereits rund 220 Millionen US-Dollar in das 2018 gegründete Berliner Unternehmen, das auf die KI-basierte Automatisierung des Kundenservices se…
![Chart 2: Graduate earnings vary considerably between subjects
Average net lifetime returns by subject, English students (£000)
[I've highlighted Politics as its my pre-retirement area of teaching]
for women/men lifetime return are:
Medicine: £670k/£1,072K
Economics: £505k/£1,030k
Politics: £326k/£388k
Engineering: £263k/£339k
Maths: £247k/£477k
English: £74k/£46k](https://poliverso.org/photo/preview/640/45729217 "Chart 2: Graduate earnings vary considerably between subjects
Average net lifetime returns by subject, English students (£000)
[I've highlighted Politics as its my pre-retirement area of teaching]
for women/men lifetime return are:
Medicine: £670k/£1,072K
Economics: £505k/£1,030k
Politics: £326k/£388k
Engineering: £263k/£339k
Maths: £247k/£477k
English: £74k/£46k")
Luke
in reply to Bruce Sterling @bruces • • •Auditory Interfaces
Routledge & CRC Pressmyrmepropagandist
in reply to Bruce Sterling @bruces • • •"It’s almost unethical to produce these alarming, terrible, basically hurtful sounds,” says Eddie Gandelman
I'm in awe of this mans wisdom.
myrmepropagandist
in reply to Bruce Sterling @bruces • • •When I was in the hospital recovering from a shattered leg bone a machine near my bed kept beeping all night. This made the pain much worse somehow, the combination of the beeping, the lights which weren't fully off and the horrible pain really broke me down. I've never felt worse.
I was so happy when my husband brought my noise canceling earbuds from home. But really this guy is right we ought to think about if we are designing hell-like soundscapes in such places.
myrmepropagandist reshared this.
cuan_knaggs
in reply to myrmepropagandist • • •robloblaw
in reply to myrmepropagandist • • •@futurebird
99percentinvisible.org/episode…
Sleep deprivation from noise in hospitals contribute to high rates of delirium, especially in older patients. ICUs are even worse than wards.
Alarm fatigue from constant machine alerts can cause nurses to miss emergencies.
Sound and Health: Hospitals - 99% Invisible
99% InvisibleLanda
in reply to myrmepropagandist • • •@futurebird with any luck, our children’s children will look back on the late 20th, early 21st century noise background the same way we look back at Victorian coal-fired smog and horse-crap filled streets.
Which reminds me that I should do something about the local street lanterns beaming most of their warm light up into space and over the bushes🙃
@bruces
Steven G. Harms
in reply to myrmepropagandist • • •@futurebird
So true. My big labor and delivery discovery was how powerfully a white noise generator can change the experience. When we left after c section post op it was the last thing we unplugged and it turned our little nest into the alienating experience of beeps and bloops modern hospital care.
stevengharms.com/posts/2024-10…
Fathers Labor and Delivery Survival Kit
stevengharms.com😀🚲
in reply to Bruce Sterling @bruces • • •robloblaw
in reply to Bruce Sterling @bruces • • •Many people that visit China remark on how much better cities are with the quieter electric vehicles.
The West has gone the opposite direction, with rat bastards removing their catalytic converters and modding their exhausts. I blame Ebay for selling and promoting the tools to do illegal mods.
Jaime Robertson
in reply to Bruce Sterling @bruces • • •Now if we could also do something about light pollution.
Furthering
in reply to Bruce Sterling @bruces • • •tbsp
in reply to Bruce Sterling @bruces • • •Luke Kanies
in reply to Bruce Sterling @bruces • • •We moved from a somewhat small craftsman house to a quite large (mostly) modern house a few years ago. The soundscape is hugely different. Now I am trying to sacrifice its clean lines for some soft audio instead: installing audio panels and rugs, and planning for other ways of breaking up the soundscape.
Man I wish more people thought about this stuff.
The endless thread podcast discusses a solid rant on this, too:
wbur.org/podcasts/endlessthrea…
Discussed rant is here, on how we’ve changed trends so now the soundscape of our spaces sucks:
reddit.com/r/HomeImprovement/c…
Endless Thread
WBUR