[–] 1 point 7 months ago (1 child)

Plastic surgery in particular can become straight up addictive to some people with body image issues. As an example, it led Pete Burns of the band Dead or Alive to have over 300 surgeries, some of which were botched and led to severe health issues. He still kept doing it right up until his death.

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  • [–] 3 points 7 months ago (1 child)

    I used to watch AXP and still watch Matt Dillahunty every now and then. It really is wild how shocked and offended most of the callers get when they actually face resistance and are told to back up their beliefs with evidence. None ever can.

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  • [–] 2 points 7 months ago

    Why on earth would I go to Hexbear when I've already made it pretty clear I have a strong distaste for .ml? Hexbear is full of the very same pro-authoritarian types and that instance has an awful reputation for brigading and harassing communities. I've seen this myself the numerous times they attempted to federate with other instances, my own included. No thanks.

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  • [–] 22 points 7 months ago (8 children)

    The fact they don't list dissent or criticism of China/Russia as being bannable in the rules is one of the bigger problems. They will just ban you for Rule 1 or 2, neither of which have anything to do with that and leaving banned users scratching their heads wondering what they did wrong. Meanwhile to the other .mls, it just looks like the devs banned someone for a "legitimate" reason because the devs will leave a comment painting the banned user's comment in that light.

    Example: User "BillyBobJones" expresses a dislike of China's genocide of the Uyghur Muslims. Dessalines or Davel will quickly ban BillyBobJones under Rule 1 or 2 for, say, "racism". Then they will leave a comment under the deleted comment accusing BillyBob of saying something racist and saying that's why BillyBob was banned. Unless an .ml user bothers to check the modlogs, they won't know what BillyBob actually said and will praise Dessalines/Davel for removing a racist. Dissenter removed, echo chamber reinforced.

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  • [–] 15 points 7 months ago (3 children)

    The instance admins of lemmy.ml and lemmygrad.ml, who are also the developers of Lemmy, have a wide variety of harmful views including genocide denial, transphobia, and support for authoritarian regimes. They are incredibly ban-happy and spend an unreasonable amount of time removing dissenting opinion from their communities instead of developing the platform. They've got a bunch of people in a complete echo chamber where saying anything critical about their favourite regimes earns you a ban despite there being no rules against it. Their users tend to also be the genocide denying, authoritarian bootlicking type.

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  •  

    For an album with such a long name, it has surprisingly few songs compared to most of Bomb the Music Industry!'s other albums. They definitely made up for it though, as its songs are all great with Slumlord and Struggler being my personal favourites. They're incredibly catchy and get stuck in my head constantly!

    This album does not have an official album cover. Instead, when it was made available for download on Quote Unquote Records, there were 8 different covers depicting someone who appears in the album with the word ADULTS! and a colour filter over the image. The website would only show one of these covers at a time, which was chosen at random.

    The image here is all eight of those individual covers, as well as a 9th cover made in the same style that was used for the album's vinyl release.

     

    Behold, the loudest siren ever built! Built between 1942 and 1957, Chrysler and Bell Laboratories worked together to create a siren that could outdo everything else. Boasting a deafening sound output of 138 decibels at 100 feet, a single Chrysler could fill the role of tens or even hundreds of smaller sirens. Back in WW2 and the Cold War, expense was secondary to making sure everyone could hear the warning.

    Powered by a 180 horsepower Chrysler Firepower HEMI V8 (units between 1942-52 used a 140 hp IND-9 inline-8) gas engine, the Chrysler was not only powerful, but also able to run entirely independently of grid power so that they could not be silenced by attack. The engine drove a gigantic slotted disc known as a chopper at 3400 RPM, through which pressurized air was forced through its openings by a two-stage compressor. The chopping of the pressurized air at a certain frequency is what creates the noise, with the Chrysler peaking at about 460 hz. The entire siren sat on a turnable, which pointed its six large horns in all directions as it rotated at 2 RPM.

    Unfortunately, such a siren is not exactly the easiest to maintain or run. Older units required someone to sit atop the siren and run it manually, until remote start and run capabilities were developed in the early 50s. The engine is fuel-hungry and requires a lot of maintenance, which made them unpopular with those who had to keep them running. As a result, all of these sirens were decommissioned by the 1980s. Many were removed, others left to rot, and some thankfully survive in preservation. By 1957 engine-driven sirens fell completely out of favour, as powerful electric sirens such as the Thunderbolt, Super Sirex, and Mobil-Directo performed very well without requiring much maintenance.

     

    A 1952 advert from Federal Enterprises advertising their Thunderbolt 1000 and Model 2 outdoor warning sirens. The Model 2 is still in production today, while the Thunderbolt was made until 1990. Both can still be found in service across the North America, though many Thunderbolts are starting to be replaced with newer sirens.

    Federal Enterprises now runs as Federal Signal Corporation, and many of the listed cities still use old and new Federal sirens.

     

    This ad dates to the early-mid 1980s. The siren advertised is the Penetrator-10 (P-10 for short) which is a 10-horsepower electric outdoor warning siren built by Alerting Communicators of America (ACA). ACA was the siren division of Biersach & Niedermeyer (BNCO), a company previously shown in the Mobil Directo ads. The P-10 boasted a rating of 125 decibels at 100 ft, with a double-sided 10 horsepower motor driving both the chopper (which makes the noise) and the chain-drive rotation mechanism underneath the siren using a gearbox. The siren used weather-resistant fibreglass for the projector and motor housing, which was something ACA was famous for as other companies used steel. It could also be single or dual-tone depending on what was needed.

    The P-10 was released in 1980, replacing the Allertor 125 which was the same siren at its core, but used a similar projector to the Mobil Directo. This projector was found to suffer from water building up in the horn and freezing, which would jam up the chopper and burn out the motor. The P-10 didn't have this issue, which is why it replaced the Allertor. The P-10 was also sold alongside the 15HP Penetrator-15, and the monstrous 135 decibel Penetrator-50, which holds the record as the loudest electric siren ever built.

    After ACA's bankruptcy and reformation into the American Signal Corporation in 1994, the P-10 was discontinued in favour of the P-15, which would be renamed to the RM-127 until it too was discontinued in 2002. The P-50 would be sold until 2007 under the name T-135AC. American Signal Corporation still exists today, selling the Tempest, E-Class, and i-Force lines of sirens.

     

    This ad was released roughly around 1948, advertising the Mobil Directo air raid siren. I've posted an ad for this siren previously, which only featured the Mobil Directo's gas engine-driven BN52 model. This ad introduced a new variant of the Mobil-Directo, driven by a 10HP electric motor instead of the 25HP Wisconsin aircooled engine. This new electric model proved extremely successful, as engines require significantly more maintenance and are far less practical for siren use than a motor.

    The new model, known as the Mobil Directo BN44E, saw widespread use across the United States and Canada. Rated at 126 dB @ 100ft for 10/12-port dual tone models to nearly 128 dB for 8-port single tone models, the BN44E was louder than most other sirens during the time of its production. The engine-driven BN52 would see sales dry up quickly after the BN44E's release, being discontinued in 1953. The BN44E would be sold until 1967, when BNCO was forced to stop making sirens due to stiff competition from Federal Sign & Signal.

    BNCO would create a new division, known as Alerting Communicators of America (ACA) who would redesign the Mobil Directo into the Allertor 125, which saw the steel projector replaced with a fiberglass projector, and the dual belt-driven pulleys on the rotation drive replaced by a single chain-drive rotation mechanism under the siren. The Allertor 125 would be sold until 1981, when it was replaced by the Penetrator-10 which replaced the large projector with a simplified horn.

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