Fair enough, but it was my intent to put a note on the offending car that set off this conversation in the first place.
The crying toddler is a far more complex situation: When the family moved here, they admitted that they'd been thrown out of their old place for being too noisy: The neighbors kept complaining to the landlords about the screaming kids. I personally like the sound of kids playing, so I'm usually happy to hear them running around like little maniacs next door. -AND- they can't/don't complain about Impus Minor's ludicrous bellowing at all hours. (It's come to be known as the 'neighborhood foghorn' -- if Impus Minor is bellowing, all is right with the world. But I did check with every neighbor around me to find out whether I needed to shut him up, and I was frankly astonished that the entire attitude was, "Oh, please no! We love hearing him!" Not what I expected when I made the rounds to find out.) The toddler will grow and stop crying and I'll get to keep listening to the kids as they grow up, so it's a conscious decision based on knowing their past history and knowing that it's a finite problem that, in spite of the fact that I consider it extremely rude, I don't confront them because I don't want to drive them out of another house.
But yeah, I am of the opinion that one of the downfalls of society has been the loss of public shaming for poor behavior. Being able to chastise someone with "cover your mouth when you cough", or, "Don't cross against a red light and make cars stop for you!" is an important aspect of maintaining societal norms. The problem, as always, is that people took it too far. "You can't wear pants! (to a woman)" or "It's a sin to work on a Sunday!" are things I saw in the 1970s and I'm glad they're gone.
LOL. Got so caught up in responding that I forgot why I came here! On Friday I posted about how i always report links in emails. This morning I got a very official-looking email from Bank of America titled "Review your account security" with a link to sign in.
I went to the raw source and it really is from Bank of America.
If I had any power at all in the world, I'd see the person who created that email fired.
EDIT: I sent a very polite note.
Really? It's 2025 and you're sending links in an email? I had to parse the raw source to verify that this email really WAS from Bank of America.
Please fire whatever buffoon generated this email. Phishing has been the #1 attack vector for unauthorized access for decades now. Seeing a bank send login links in an email is an embarrassment.
I'm glad I don't bank with you. An email like this destroys my trust in your entire security division.
It does sound nonsensical.
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Nothing like signing in on a Monday morning to find a storm of "urgent" messages on Slack...
...only to find out that some a$$hat started the thread with, "Hi, @channel!"
I'll say it again: Charge $1 per recipient for all @channel or Reply All posts and you'd be doing your company a massive favor.
And fun foils with Freehold (that should be a band) notwithstanding, I think his reactions to my complaints really indicate why I could never live on the East Coast.
In broad generality (with many exceptions, especially among newcomers), the West Coast attitude is, "Don't be a jerk. Be considerate of others." As far as I've been able to ascertain, the East Coast attitude is, "If I have a right to do it, I'm gonna do it, and if you have an issue with it then f*** you!"
[snip]
So yes, around here, doing something like honking your horn in front of your friend's house at 5:00 am or parking in front of someone else's house for days on end is greatly disapproved of, because you're trampling on others, whether or not you have a "right" to do so. Apparently that's not a thing east of the Mississippi.
It basically comes down to a difference in the idea of what "freedom" means.
In the East and South, "Freedom" generally means "The ability to do what I want to do."
In other areas, it often instead means "the ability to not experience or suffer things I dislike".
And fun foils with Freehold (that should be a band) notwithstanding, I think his reactions to my complaints really indicate why I could never live on the East Coast.
In broad generality (with many exceptions, especially among newcomers), the West Coast attitude is, "Don't be a jerk. Be considerate of others." As far as I've been able to ascertain, the East Coast attitude is, "If I have a right to do it, I'm gonna do it, and if you have an issue with it then f*** you!"
[snip]
So yes, around here, doing something like honking your horn in front of your friend's house at 5:00 am or parking in front of someone else's house for days on end is greatly disapproved of, because you're trampling on others, whether or not you have a "right" to do so. Apparently that's not a thing east of the Mississippi.
It basically comes down to a difference in the idea of what "freedom" means.
In the East and South, "Freedom" generally means "The ability to do what I want to do."
In other areas, it often instead means "the ability to not experience or suffer things I dislike".
That's a portrayal of liberals that always grates on me. Yes, the first statement is also a broad overgeneralization so I'm sure there are Easterners and Southerners who would call it out as excessive. And yes, there are far too many people around here who will huff up and get incredibly offended and demand, "Did you just gender me?!?!?"
But there's the old gem that I love so much: "Your right to swing your fist stops at the other guy's nose."
Most liberals I know draw the line not as, "I don't want to experience or suffer things I dislike," but rather, "I don't want other people to do things that negatively impact me in a measurable way."
The car horn's a good one. People honking their horns outside of houses to get their friends' attention is annoying as crap. I've advocated for removing car horns so that people will stop doing it. But do we need a law to ban car horns in the city limits? No. We already have a noise ordinance from 10 pm to 6 am. This is a reasonable amount of time for people to sleep. And yes, I support that noise ordinance because it very clearly stomps on someone's right to do whatever they want in favor of allowing other people to get their needed sleep.
So tons of noise during daylight hours? I don't like it and I complain about it all the time. But I wouldn't ban it because I do believe people have a right to be noisy on their properties, whether I like it or not. But:
(1) I consider it rude and I think less of them as human beings if they don't take others into consideration. I am a strong believer in empathy, even if conservative Christians have moved to make it an official deadly sin.
(2) Once we move into sleeping hours, I do believe in curtailing their right to make noise in favor of public well-being.
EDIT: I see it very much like starting the first day of kindergarten by handing each student a hammer and then being surprised at the results. In my nearly 60 years in this country, I've found that in general if you ask, "How would a toddler react to this?", you'll nail the reaction of roughly half our entire population. Which I consider sad.
EDIT 2: And even the generalizations aren't necessarily "conservative/liberal": My father was a staunch opponent of gay marriage "because it disgusts me". I mean, at least he was honest. But really?
Nothing like signing in on a Monday morning to find a storm of "urgent" messages on Slack...
...only to find out that some a$$hat started the thread with, "Hi, @channel!"I'll say it again: Charge $1 per recipient for all @channel or Reply All posts and you'd be doing your company a massive favor.
The storm continues, and what really gets to me is that I complained to IT about it and they responded that people who try to use @channel DO get a warning. So I tested and it's insane: IF you do @channel you get a pop-up that says, "You are about to send this message to hundreds of recipients. This can be disruptive and a waste of company resources. Do you want to continue (Y/N)?"
And people are so inured to click-throughs that they go ahead and click through and do it anyway.
My kids really are masters at picking the wrong classes. Impus Minor was late to his math class this morning. His professor is one of those people who locks the door the minute class starts and won't allow tardy students into his class, in his own little petty tyranny.
I have no (polite) words.
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What he should do is secure the door with a puzzle lock that only opens if the latecomer solves some fiendishly difficult equation, and also plays a tinny 8-bit fanfare when it releases, and the triumphant student finally enters the hall.