R/Manybaggers is probably going to be a better sub with you since they have experience for many types of uses and styles.

(A lot of this depends on the style you're going for. Packs can be camping style, business casual, business semiformal. Lot of options. Specifying may get you the best sort of results there.)

Hope it helps, good luck in your search!

Passive is like insulation. Insulating a room (or headphones) does block out noise.

Active refers to a specific technology. Short ELI5 explanation is that sound waves travel into your ear "active noise cancelling" produces the "opposite" invisible waves and "knocks out" the sound.

If you things are not working with your current headphones, I really do recommend a pair of Bluetooth active noise cancelling headphones because they will block out exterior noise, and you can also listen to some lovely sleepy music. This ought to really drown out the unwanted noise, and replace it with something enjoyable and soothing I enjoy this routine quite a lot, even without noisy neighbors. I wear them to fall asleep as well as other noisy environments such as Walmart, or coffeeshops.

Additionally, for those who do use headphones for music or podcasts, active noise cancelling is much healthier for your ears because you can listen as much lower volumes (since it blocks out exterior noise). This protects your ears from hearing damage over time.

However, as many have stated, other methods of dealing with noisy neighbors such as reporting violations is more of a long term solution than headphones. This is a bandaid... But it can be a very enjoyable bandaid!

You can absolutely use construction or gun headphones if you do find some that work. But imo active noise cancelling is going to bring you closer to your coal. Foam insulation can muffle noise and make jack hammers or lawn mowers down to safe ear volumes, but they don't block out all sound. Active noise cancelling headphones aren't magic, but because they can block AND play quite sound on top of it, I think they would do a better job for sleeping if you are not satisfied with the latter.

Ensure you are purchasing "active noise cancelling" headphones. I suggest any brand name above an off brand on Amazon.

These are very suspiciously low cost to actually be noise cancelling. I suspect they are faking it or calling foam noise cancelling instead of actual technology.

Bose sell excellent quality, and even some meant for sleep. I prefer headphones to earbuds/plugs those and sleep with Bose's with noise cancelling on and some sleepy music from Spotify. Bose is BIFL but they're also really expensive. Any "active noise cancelling" from a reputable brand will be good! 3m sell the style in your second link (but for closer to $50-70 maybe?), we use those for yardwork or woodworking. They're very effective but less comfortable than regular ones.

I have been using AI to assist me with university course work, and I know some professors use advanced forms of it like "Jasper" for their work, including help writing . (Jasper can write whole pages, and is the source for many blogs, cooking recipes, etc.). Look into these to get a better understanding because I suspect soon AIs will be capable of writing entire long form college essays.

BUT how I have been thinking of it is like the invention of the calculator. Yes, it is completely necessary to learn arithmetic, even though a calculator can do it easily. However, our work force will drastically change and workers will need to use and understand AI constantly. Just like my professors are already starting to do. You as a teacher, will need to figure out how to teach basic writing skills even though I coming years, a student could use a phone app to write the homework within seconds. JUST like a calculator can.

1. In the short term I think this means more in-person assignments, such as writing short form essays or paragraphs in-class.

2. In the long term, I think schooling will need to shift to teach students to use AI, building the programs to write skillfully with compelling ideas. Just like graphing calculators with math models running programs. Students will use AI technology in their daily lives and use programs in their work life, so this seems like a natural extension to me. Also, if school computers give students AI programs, the school can control how well they work and how, so that may help ensure students still get the basic knowledge of grammar, spelling, essay structure, etc.

Woof... It IS a lot to think about.

Your socks are too small if it feels like that. The extra pressure/tension could be contributing to the seam rip.