Have you noticed how LOUD everything is these days? Conversations in restaurants can be heard across the room. On public conveyances—trains, plains, ferries, buses—people are screaming. In one restaurant, the server had to lean on our table to get close enough to explain the menu and take our drink orders.

Is this because people have had huge hearing loss due to concerts, headphones, and general uproar on the streets? Or is it because everyone now wants their story told so badly that they need to shout it out, fearing otherwise that they’ll be lost and not heard in the hard?

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