Phonak

Let's talk about my new hearing aids. They're another set of Phonak (I've had good results with the brand) and just a rung underneath their top dollar model.

I was curious as to how well the software has evolved on the units. So far, my impression of the sound stage is this:

1) The bass is different. It took me a moment to notice it, but it is perceptible. There seems to be more room / ambience in the bass frequencies now. The mids and highs are optimized as well.

2) The start-up sequence has changed. Now after the tones, the live mics are immediately present.

3) Haven't attempted a phone call with these yet, but I'm sure they're fine. I am hoping that compared to the last units, BT will be more stable and I'll have less disconnects during phone calls. Holy fuck, that's annoying.

4) For all talk I was hearing about "Rechargeable!", I'm still on zinc air cells, LMAO. Turns out enclosed battery models STILL are not powerful enough for MY hearing loss. The battery would drain within a few hours. 

This is why I insist these things are more powerful than consumer "ear buds". The Apple Air Pods are step in the right direction, but they're not as powerful, plain and simple.

Tape Deck

Does anybody else walk around with a tape deck in their head? Effectively, play, stop, rewind and fast-forward?

I've had this ability as long as I can remember. I can 'rewind' a song in my head to listen to something again. I just did it this morning to count the number of cowbell strikes in a measure.

I also do this with conversations. Maybe it's a deaf skill? Autistic gift? Curse?

Hate

If you hate anyone due to their race, colour, or creed, there is something wrong with you, and you should fix it. Nobody is born hating anyone, that is a learned behaviour.

Isolate the hate. 

Snap

That autistic experience when you snap to attention and realize: "How long was I sitting here just staring at nothing?"

Masculinity

STRONG Men need to actively take a stand in their relationships with other men, and flat out state that misogyny is unacceptable behaviour towards women, when and as it happens. Consent is King & Queen.

Reject the casual violence against POC, gays and minorities that WEAK men perpetuate.

Captions

There is a disturbing trend I've noticed, especially with YouTube videos, and their declining caption quality. For the last several years it has been getting worse. It has to be auto-generated, because lately the same 'error' keeps popping up, seemingly at the start of a sound stream.

I will see the words "heat" repeated three times [heat heat heat], then the software will suddenly pick up mid-sentence (usually) what was actually being said. It has made the experience worse, especially while dealing with homonyms. Experienced readers will be able to pick out and disregard these errors, however live broadcasts have their own issues, such as garbage characters and missing entire sentences. 

Right now, it's an awful experience. It's a wonder anybody can spell English, because you can't learn it from watching television captions.

Subtitles are a different thing in case you were wondering, that's not what I'm talking about here. Bring back the classic caption interface - humans.