32
votes
What’s something you think more people should know about?
Any answer is fair game: serious, funny, big, small, substantial, trivial, broad, niche, etc.
Let us know what it is and why you think more people should know about it.
How the 911 system operates, at least in the US
Also, apologies on the formatting, was doing this on mobile while waiting for a car detail
I’m a 911 dispatcher for a smallish Texas suburb in the DFW metroplex. Be 4 years in June.
Unfortunately there’s a lot of misinformation on how 911 works. Here’s some things I think people should know
Check the ping info. All 911 calls that come into my agency have varying degrees of location information. Varying is the key word. It can be as accurate as 5 meters to a specific house or 2000 meters off a cell tower. And this only works from the time the phone dials into 911 to the time the phone hangs up. The longer we have someone on the line, the more likely we get accurate location information but it’s not a certainty
Check the number for prior history. We have frequent flyers that we know. I’ve got callers I’ve dealt with enough that I often have an idea of what’s going on the second I see the number pop up on my Callworks. But this is no guarantee. Someone visiting from out of town isn’t likely going to have history in my city
If those two steps don’t yield the results I’m looking for, I move on to checking with the phone carriers. T-Mobile, Verizon, and ATT all have numbers I can call to get subscriber information(name, address on the account) and can get them to ping the phone so we can try to get location information. This location info is given via map coordinates(latitude/longitude), not exact locations. From here, I plug the coordinates into Google Maps and hope for the best. Problem here is that many phones that dial 911 aren’t owned by the same people who initially registered the account. For example, a parent who gives their son or daughter a phone. The subscriber information may show an address in a completely different city. And the ping information we get can be unreliable as well. Just last night, I had T-Mobile ping a phone of an elderly who went missing. The ping location had an accuracy radius of 1500 meters and the ping coordinates where in the middle of a nearby lake.
Uninitialized phones are a death trap. These phones are phones that aren’t technically active. They don’t have a SIM card or an active account with a carrier. Think something like a prepaid phone or a random old cell phone in a drawer. By law, any cell phone must be capable of dialing 911. However, these numbers cannot be called back. If you call from one of these phones, you can be in the process of being murdered and there’s little I can do.
You can be in a completely different city and get my agency. Due to the layout of cell towers, I get 911 requests from 5 or 6 cities around me. This is usually rectified by simply transferring the caller to the appropriate agency. However, it does happen that my city might share similar street addresses. Meaning you might rattle off an address that comes up in my CAD but is in another city entirely.
If anyone takes anything from this post, take this......
Know your location. The city you’re in. Look for street signs, businesses....anything that can help me find you faster.
If you’re in someone’s house, look for mail. Check the fridge. Check someone’s wallet even. Pull it up on Google Maps if you can.
The most important thing you can do in an emergency is give me accurate location information. Knowing exactly where you are means I can get help to you a lot faster than if I’m going through the above steps to find you.
People have died because they didn’t know where they were and the 911 system couldn’t find them in time. Things have gotten a lot better in just the 3.5 years I’ve been working as a dispatcher but there still isn’t 100% certainty I can find someone in a crisis
Text to 911 is a thing. This can be especially useful for women in dangerous situations but anyone can utilize it. The short of it is you, quite literally, text 911. We’re gonna ask all the same questions we would of a regular voice call and treat it exactly the same.
911 operators experience PTSD at similar rates as police officers and firefighters. Even though we don’t see the emergencies, we don’t see the dead bodies, 911 operators experience PTSD the same way police and fire fighters do. Turns out just hearing these tragedies can do a number on your psyche. Despite this, 911 operators are classified by the Federal government as “Clerical” workers, not “first responders” and even some of our police and fire coworkers treat us a little more than secretaries.
My agency has done some work to rectify the latter by making police officers sit in Dispatch and work a shift with us, taking calls, working the radio etc.....95% of the officers will tell us “I don’t know you do that every day, I’m sorry I was asshole on the radio”.
My manager and the relatively new police chief are both fairly progressive, by law enforcement standards anyway, in that they take mental health seriously and they are more than willing to help someone who is struggling. Whether it’s time off or getting someone into contact with the right people, they’ll what they can.
Other cities, though, especially the larger ones, have dedicated call takers, dedicated dispatchers, dedicated NCIC(warrants, stolen vehicles etc) operators that focus solely on their responsibilities and aren’t required to multi task like I am.
I work nights meaning that 11 or 12 midnight, we’re down to 3 dispatchers. Sometimes just 2. But by 2am, we’re down to 2 all the time. The vast majority of the time, for that late, 2 is enough. But a single major incident like a structure fire can make things pretty tense.
So if you call 911, and your call taker sounds a bit distracted, chances are he or she isn’t actually distracted or bad at their job but is trying to balance your call with radio traffic. It ain’t easy listening to and processing two sources of audio simultaneously, being able to create and call for service and put call notes in, and do whatever an officer or firefighter might need at a moments notice
That’s all I can think of for now. If anyone has any specific questions about anything, feel free to drop them here or in a DM.
Some related articles for reading for those interested
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.vice.com/amp/en/article/9398qy/911-dispatchers-hear-the-worst-moments-of-our-lives-who-listens-to-them
https://www.safety.com/calling-911/
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.washingtonpost.com/health/2020/02/22/student-died-911-call-location/%3foutputType=amp
This is an absolutely incredible response. Thank you so much for taking the time to type it all out and share it, and thank you again for doing a very difficult and very under-appreciated job. I used to know a dispatcher who would share some of her experiences with us, and some of the stories she told shook me to my core. What you do requires incredible fortitude and resolve.
One thing to add that has come in handy for me, as someone from the other side of the call: being aware of mile-markers while highway driving. When I first started learning to drive, knowing where I was on any given road was drilled into me as a part of my situational awareness. I no longer keep track of them like I used to (nearly every second I was behind the wheel), but the moment anything out of the ordinary happens, I immediately check the nearest mile marker in the event that there's an emergency. Most times nothing comes of it, but the few times I've had to call 911 while driving (due to witnessing cars going off the road, accidents, or outright hazardous drivers), I'm able to immediately identify the exact location to the dispatcher, which they seem to appreciate.
My husband pokes fun at me because I always seem to know which direction I'm driving, and he has no idea how I know that we're going, say, eastbound, but that's also part of the situational awareness to me. I just have some sort of "internal compass" that keeps track of which direction I'm headed while driving as part of identifying my location.
Yes! Mile markers are a huge help to us. My CAD is actually programmed to accept mile markers as an address so it helps us to get a call entered and get help rolling.
Park trails also can have marker signs to help pinpoint locations.
Exit signs are a big one.
And of course businesses. Businesses are a huge help to narrowing down locations
I don't know if you will be able to answer this, since I imagine the phone systems are different everywhere, and this happened in Ontario, Canada well over two decades ago (back before smart phones were a thing)... but I figured I would take the opportunity to ask on the off-chance you might be able to.
One of my friend's used to have a phone number that was #91-1### and the amount of times a 911 operator answered after I dialed it, instead of my friend, has always had me wondering: Do (or did) phones sometimes ignore the first number dialed if the person then hit 911 immediately after it? If so, do you know under what circumstance they would do that?
It used to happen so frequently that I can't imagine it was just due to me fat fingering the first number that often, as I'm surely not that bad at dialing.
p.s. Sidenote: Having to the explain the above circumstances to all the various, highly skeptical 911 operators who answered every time that happened was incredibly awkward. It honestly made me genuinely hesitate every time I attempted to call him. :P Thankfully he no longer has that number though, since it was a landline, and he has since moved.
Unfortunately I couldn’t speak to that with any certainty.
I could definitely see it possible since, presumably, a person dialing 911 would potentially be in a life threatening emergency and the system lets the 911 aspect override the dialing for expediency sake
As far as the awkward conversations with skeptical 911 operators, it’s even worse now. Smartphones and smart watches and Onstar.....I’d estimate at 1/3 of our overall call volume is accidental dials.
A lot of folks don’t believe me when I call back to make sure they’re ok. They think I’m a scammer cat fishing for info.
It could be that the tone of the first phone number was so short that it didn't get registered by the switchboard and so 911 became the first set of numbers received. I don't know when you were calling your friend, but if it were before digital phones became prevalent (with tone length automated), it could have just been a holdover of analog phone lines.
Great job and info, thanks. Stunning that dispatchers aren't treated as first responders when they're literally the first people to respond.
Luckily, Texas is one of the few states that recognize 911 Dispatchers and call takers as first responders. Admittedly, there aren't a whole lot of benefits or advantages to it but it was important to many of us.
Does the system supply any information on past calls from the same number? I realize that people change numbers often, so maybe it wouldn't be useful, but it seems like it might save time. I mean, what if you're off that day, and someone else gets the call? Or what if you get a call you don't recognize, but some other operator would have?
It does. The call history is saved to our CAD program so any dispatcher who answers that call is going to have the same information available to them that I would’ve. Even if they’ve never spoken with that person before, every call that cell phone had made to 911(my agency only though) will be available for review if needed
However the information is specific to the number itself. If a caller used a different number previously, I won’t have that information available to me.
That being said, if I’m able to obtain the name of the caller, I can search them in our database for history we have with the person themselves. That can often lead us to finding alternative phone numbers, addresses, family members etc
I beg to differ that it's easy. It's easy to get started, but it's incredibly demoralising for most people to know how something is supposed to sound, to be able to play each individual note/chord, even whole bars, but to still struggle with it all together. The solution is simple (practice!), but simple isn't the same thing as easy. This isn't to say that people who struggle with it shouldn't persevere, but it just comes across as arrogant to say it's easy to learn to play an instrument well enough to truly enjoy.
I once had a rowing teacher. He was a former athlete, very experienced. The first time he put me on the skiff, I immediately capsized. He told me to hold the paddle in a certain way. I capsized once more. He became very impatient, it was inconceivable for him that I could fail at something that simple. One more time I capsized, and he was no longer around.
It took a long time for me to realize, by myself, that that kind of boat had no stability whatsoever. On a regular boat, if you let go of the paddles it remains upward. But, on a competition skiff, everything is controlled by the paddles. They must be always at the same height, during the entire rowing motion.
For my teacher, rowing was so natural that explaining such a fundamental principle never crossed his mind. It was obvious to him, therefore it should be obvious to me.
After learning that, I almost capsized again, but was able, with effort, to produce some movement. People on land were already laughing at me. All because my teacher knew rowing so well that he forgot how it felt to know nothing about it.
I eventually became a decent rower, but I never forgot that lesson on how not to teach something.
Yeah, if you’re not naturally gifted or a “musical person” already, learning a musical instrument is hard as fuck (much harder than rowing), and not simple at all :)
Yeah, I struggled for a while to find a less harsh word that still fit.
I commented with the primary purpose of maybe reminding passersby that their personal struggle to learn the art of musicianship is valid and not uncommon, not necessarily to tell you off for using a slightly wrong word.
Hmm... yea. I'd consider myself pretty proficient playing guitar, at this point... Been playing for some 15 years and can't really recall how it felt, early days... but when I want to feel like a beginner, I try to play left-handed (i.e., non-dominant). And I wonder how I got to my proficiency level with my dominant hand as trying to play left-handed is frustrating as hell. I guess I had the patience of youth when I started... and the ignorance of what "good playing" is.
Couldn't that be said about any new field of study?
If you learn new skills as an adult often enough, you can get used to feeling like a beginner. You can maybe even learn to find that frustration fun.
Truthfully, even after 22 years of guitar playing I still struggle to play certain songs or styles. There's no such thing as a good musician, just someone who has spent a lot of time practicing.
Sure, definitely. However, it'd also be pretty disingenuous to say that learning to draw is easy, and all you need for that is a pencil and paper. Any skill that has artistic merit is almost by definition challenging, and just because some people are able to derive fun from the process doesn't invalidate that it's much more common to perceive it as repeated failure.
What else do you think you need besides a pencil and paper (and practice)? Sure you could pay for classes or books, but practice is the number one method to learn to draw.
What do you think my point is?
I'm gonna chime in to amplify this one. I'd rank it in the higher category. Being able to stop bleeding and choking, and keep someone's supply of oxygen for just a few moments can be the difference between life and death while waiting on EMT or other help.
If you do know these things, and see someone need them, step up and do it. Don't wait for someone else to help, take charge and demand help from anyone nearby.
If needed, in order:
Def a regular thing, for me. Although, I'd say it's closer to a "choo-choo train" motion.
I'd go a step further and say, if feasible, air dry everything!
BTW I have read that most melatonin is sold in dosages that are much too high so it might be a good idea to cut pills into quarters or something like that, and it will still be too high.
[...]
https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/07/10/melatonin-much-more-than-you-wanted-to-know/
This can be true if one picks the right instrument. If excitement and the pleasure of learning and improving doesn't start, or doesn't continue, it's best to find other things that allow self-expression. Although unrelated, cooking, making music, writing all capable of bringing pleasure when practiced. I think the lack of a means of self-expression is one of the root causes of much trouble in life. If people are able to pursue some form of gratifying activity, especially one they can control (as opposed to say, spectator sports), they are likely to live longer and happier lives.
I personally find your point about picking the right instrument resoundingly true. I originally learned to play the bass guitar, then subsequently the upright bass, but never could pick up acoustic guitar. I also learned melodic 4-mallet and concert/marching percussion, but have really struggled to pick up the harmonica. I am great at whistling, though. My preconceived notions about extending my current aptitude to new instruments never really panned out.
In my teens, I played guitar. I got it into my head to rent an upright bass ($10/month). I remember the guy at the store saying, "It's natural, you want to play slower", or something like that. Anyway, never panned out. Decades later I wanted to play upright again. Bought an electric and later a wooden one. I loved it, took lessons, but I found I wouldn't have the muscular stamina now to play bass anymore. Still, I wanted to do something else, so I rented, then bought an alto saxophone a few years ago. It's going well. My parents never pushed me towards music, but in those days every school had bands. Exposure to musical instruments is really great, I often tell parents that they should always encourage their kids to try to play, but only if they want to. For the lucky ones, like me, it's been a passion all my life.
I wish more Irish people knew that the reason you never hear the Irish language spoken is just because people won't speak to you in a language unless they already know you speak it - it's not because speakers aren't around, as people like to claim. The second you start being open about speaking it, you can draw out friends and acquaintances that you never knew could speak it, but they do, or they're relearning as adults, or they're rusty after a few years and they were too shy to speak it anymore. That was my experience when I started participating in Pop-Up Gaeltachts and the like.
This is even more true in big cities where the population density is much higher.
their local government. Myself included, of course.
We're so caught-up in the drama of "high" offices (e.g., the presidency) that we neglect the systems that more directly effect us.
my hometown hasnt had anyone but the incumbent run for any office since I moved there, 8 years ago... not much I can do for local politics, cant afford to get on the ballot myself, even if I had the time...
Compound interest, for good and for ill. Credit card debt is a terrible burden, and a lot of that is because the interest generates interest of its own, putting the debtor deeper into debt. By comparison, many investments also compound, making more money over time.
Of course, no amount of knowledge will get someone out of debt, but an understanding of the terms they're agreeing to might help someone make a better choice out of the undesirable options available when they need to take on debt.
to extrapolate on this, people should know about how to think for the long-term. Seems like most people can't think past their noses. So many bad choices are made when long-term effects are not regarded.
It's absolutely true that long term thinking is valuable, though a lot of the people who aren't making good long term choices are doing so because it's not as important as immediate needs. Failing to invest in a retirement account or in the stock market is a problem, yes, but is it more of a problem than not being able to buy food for tomorrow? Have some small enjoyment that'll get you through the work week? Pay rent this month? Buy a vehicle that'll last more than a year?
That balance between needs with different fulfilment horizons will be very personal, and it's not as easy as just focusing on the long term at all costs. Some needs are urgent and immediate, and if you don't have other options people often have to sacrifice future happiness or success to address current problems.
absolutely. immediate needs tend to trump future goals. but, I was extrapolating that thought even further than monetary things... like engaging in fitness to have better quality of life later on. Or washing the dishes before they pile up...
and, of course I understand the desire to just kick back after tiring yourself at work and watch like a 3-hour block of Law & Order: SVU while scrolling through bullshit on your phone ... as I've engaged in that myself plenty o' times ... but, that's like acquiescing to the quicksand, rather than working to get out.
Yeah, absolutely. I feel like I came on a little strong in my response; I've seen too many people use "no long term thinking" as a way of blaming the poor for their circumstances. But your point is well taken. Our choices do compound upon themselves, in life as they do in finance.
My mother sold a house she bought (well...financed) for ~4x its worth during the housing boom of the mid-2000s. Single mother...previous to that house, we lived in low-income apartments (the meth lab that was uncovered in one of the garages, which subsequently prevented us from entering the apartment by way of police interdiction, being a possible motivation for moving out) and had no understanding of wealth (though, I never felt "poor"). Point being, my mother had an influx of cash. Disposable income, even. New to us. So... we disposed it! Spent a lot of money eating out (restaurants being somewhat foreign to us, Johnny Carino's being "fine dining"). Took a trip to New York City, and all the expenses that accrues. My mother bought a new car, cash. Hindsight is 20/20, and when looking back I can only think of how that influx of income was squandered. Put away properly... we'd be a lot more comfortable. But, the poor experience dictates that once you have money in the bank... better spend it before it's gone! Yes, we wanted to experience some things we had not been privy to. In doing so, though, we hobbled our future selves.
I blame no-one. I only wish the education and foresight was there.
Yeah, the minimum alternative tax was originally designed in the late 60s to force the top 150 earners in the US to pay what they actually owed, but it quickly grew in who it encompassed. Up until 2017, 5 million Americans were paying it, and most of the highest earners were not due to creative tax sheltering. It's finally back down to only 150,000 people and supposedly is once again targeting people who were previously able to avoid taxes. But the fact that it got so out-of-control for so many decades makes me think they didn't really want to fix it.
I think more people should know about skepticism and critical thinking.
I'd like more developers to understand usability.
That second point is big. I recently installed Ubuntu on my computer to replace Windows 7. Having to pop open the terminal every so often is a bit of an annoyance, but to someone with less patience, it would be a deal breaker.
An updated list of scams
My wife and I feel victim to one I'd not heard of recently on the street. Someone in Holland mentioned that there is a Dutch site that tracks these. I'm in France, but after looking up the details, I saw it has happened here and in Luxemburg, too. To be brief, a man walks up to us near a parking ticket box, says his car needs to be towed. To geolocalise it, he needs to use the parking machine. His card doesn't work. He has an accomplice on the phone who explains to us, to put a card in the box. It all seemed so well-acted, we fell into the trap. The guy had surreptitiously taken the card, went to draw money while the accomplice was keeping us busy, pretending he was going to be able to release the card. Had I hear of the scam, it would have been immediately obvious. In hindsight, it is, too, but at the moment, we just thought we were helping a foreign visitor. The worst part is how we'll never try to help anyone in need again.
Refer to the Luxemburg warning
Story exactly like ours in French.
Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation, or CPR, and using an AED. You can save someone’s life, and it is really easy to learn.
If you see someone having a heart attack, call 911 first. Then you can start CPR if you know how. Then grab an AED if available. You do not need any special training to use an AED. Simply open it and read the instructions. Most modern ones will talk to you and tell you exactly what to do. Just follow the directions. There are safety features so you cannot hurt someone if you don’t know what to do.
This seems super lame compared to the others, but I think everybody should understand how to structure data in a way that the dataset is usable.
I think many atheists are concerned about religious believes that impact life in society. People that believe in fringe metaphysical entities are usually pretty harmless : they won't tell you who you can fuck and what you should wear.
I think it’s their loss. It might be beneficial to converse with non-fundamentalist believers; make bridges and alliances.
I was an atheist once. Some of my best friends are atheists. I respect that position.
Just by curiosity, what convinced you there's a god ?
Personal experience I see, I guess that can be compelling (although if I had your background of indoctrination and trauma I would remain suspicious), but doesn't do much to convince other people.
Honestly, the more I think about this, the more I confident I am in the conclusion that I don't care as much about what it is that people know, but about how much people think about things in general.
I feel like if everyone took as much time to think about their positions like I did, they would come to similar (but not identical) conclusions. Or that they would not fall for most scams. At the very least, they would be less likely to jump to conclusions.
Perhaps even better would be if I could just get everyone to reconsider all the positions they have. Not to change them, but just to learn about why people would choose something different. Just think what life would be like if we could at least talk about public policy without people immediately dismissing everything as communism.
A lot of the stuff here and here will work fine. The stuff I'd like to reiterate is mostly general "how does the world work" stuff like:
Where does knowledge come from?
How is journalism made?
How is history recorded?
How are facts and statistics gathered?
How is the law enforced?
How is society organized? (Less abstractly, how is the government run?)
How does change happen? (How is it made, that is.)
How can any of these be tampered with or made more difficult, or coarser?
There are a lot more of these but I think these are the most important, or most fundamental.
As for new examples, I think another "how does the world work question" would be good:
But all the other questions are questions about personal matters largely beyond politics (aka the stuff that ends up on ~life): (which, like @krg said about local government, I would like to know more about these things myself)
How do people create relationships?
How do people maintain them?
What makes (or more accurately, should make) someone socially desirable?
What personality traits or personal characteristics most or all people should have?
What do you need to do to stay hygienic?
What do you need to do to stay healthy or fit?
How do you build a habit?
If being healthy or keeping in shape, or learning something is a lot of effort (maybe years of it), how do you put in that much effort without slumping? Motivation? Discipline? Faith that pouring all that effort will be worth it when you make it to "The Goal?"
And the meta question:
How do we make sure more people know about this stuff?
More people should understand the modern business concept of quality. Although it is something that becomes somewhat ingrained into people in a wide range of businesses in industrialized nations, for those that are not indoctrinated I think they're missing a valuable conceptual framework for day-to-day living.
I have been out of the working world for 20 years - happily retired - but thinking about quality still permeates my day-to-day thoughts. Quality means "meeting or exceeding customer expectations" and one can define "customer" in very broad terms (i.e. my wife is my customer when I wash the dishes). When I visit a store in Latin America, where the concept of quality has not penetrated to the local business level as yet, I think about what I should realistically expect and why the experience here is so different than in the "real world".
Expectation is at the heart of quality, and it is also at the heart of the 'happiness equation' from economics: happiness = reality - expectation, which is to say you are happy when reality exceeds your expectations. This leads to the life-altering conclusion that you have ultimate control over your own happiness! All you have to do is truly lower your expectations a little! I have found this to be particularly true when dealing with neighbors. We all think neighbors should be sensible and respectful like ourselves, but sometimes they are not. But if we encounter neighbors with the attitude that we WILL love them, despite their inevitable failings; then we can be a lot happier ourselves because of this little adjustment in our own expectations. By expecting a little less, the quality of our neighbors has increased dramatically!
One thing I wish people knew is that learning guitar is a rather frustrating way to start learning music. It’s a lot of practice just to learn to fret one new chord properly, and then for a different chord you start over, and then you need to get good at switching between chords, and even after all that, you’re just playing chords and not the melody to a song, so it doesn’t sound like much unless you’re also a singer.
I think people would be better off starting with a melodica. Cheap, portable (fits in a carry-on) and easier than a piano since playing one-handed is totally okay.
I might be biased though since I started out on piano. It seems like it would be interesting to do a study to see what instrument is easier for true beginners.
While skepticism toward governments can be helpful, an indiscriminate pessimism can lose sight of reality. Large organizations are not homogeneous blocks, they are porous and made of numerous moving parts with varying degrees of autonomy. The same government can be atrocious on some things and excellent in others.