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Comment by andrewstuart | Hacker News Reader

The cicadas can't be heard any more where I live.

When I was a kid they were so loud your ears buzzed.

It makes me very sad that we have ruined the eden that was the earth.

While you usually will hear a few cicadas every summer, they are all normally on a 13 or 17 year cycle. You may simply live in an area that is in the middle of a cycle. when that 13 or 17 year mark hits, you will likely hear them everywhere again. You can look up the "brood" cycle for your area online.

There are also plenty of annual cicadas in North America, which I assume you are talking about NA with the 13 and 17 year brood cycles. While not nearly as loud as the broods, annual cicadas have always been a sure sign of the seasons. I have always considered the end of summer when the cicadas stop singing. They become such a constant background noise that it is easy to forget that they are even there if you have lived in the area for awhile.

We haven’t completely ruined it. Build native habitat in your yard, be vocal about your concerns, donate to land preservation and get involved in your local politics and you can make a huge difference.

You are welcome to join us in Northern Virginia in the summer if you’d like to experience the halcyon days of cicadas you remember.

On the plus side, they compete with my tinnitus and make it far less noticeable.

I heard them once in a Maryland suburb of DC: there were so many that it was just a constant whine in the background, unlike what I've heard elsewhere.

Thankfully I was just passing through or it would've given me a headache.

Sounds (heh) like a improvement to me, tbh.

But who am I to condemn these loud bugs to extinction just because I don't like them? Instead I choose to live where they don't occur (California).

Cicadas ruin my sesame seeds for my burger king so I'm find with that

>It makes me very sad that we have ruined the eden that was the earth.

Are you the Platitude Man? I think I just died of cringe.

Yes but we get a new iPhone every year! The Internet can write poems for us! We have electric cars! Who needs God’s green Earth when we can have…stuff! /s

In so many parts of the world that part of Cyberpunk is already true: _everything_ is human made, even the plants and animals are purpose bred. You can live a life where the only natural thing you ever see is the grass between street pavement.

I saw them for the first time in West Virginia in the summer 2016!! It was freaking surreal, the noise, the smell of dead ones, you'd imagine they made some places slippery to walk on!! They look very intimidating but were very harmless!!

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