I’m just here for the funzies lul :D

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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 12th, 2023

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  • Imo not having any safety measures for the bridge piers was extremely negligent. There was this picture where you’d see cable masts next to the bridge that were being secured by extra thick concrete islands (you can actually spot one in the headline image). Really makes it look like the safety of some cables was more important than the safety of a bridge / people.

    Edit: Ofc the incident was caused by the ship











  • Zyratoxx@lemm.eetoScience Memes@mander.xyzMagic Mineral
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    18 days ago

    The irony is that production was only stopped after Hiroshima and Nagasaki as nobody wanted to buy radioactive toothpaste any more. So the US which developed nukes against the Germans actually saved the Germans from radioactive poisoning by dropping said nukes on Japan.

    One could say it left a bitter taste in some German’s mouths. ^(I couldn’t resist)



  • Zyratoxx@lemm.eetoScience Memes@mander.xyzMagic Mineral
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    19 days ago

    Oh oh, I’ve got one too. It’s not containing Asbestos but Thorium (or Radium respectively) tho.

    “Doramad radioactive toothpaste”

    “Creates natural freshness in the mouth!”

    “Special biological healing effects by radium rays. A thousand times medically prescribed and recommended.”

    “What does Doramad do? Through its radioactivity, it increases the defenses of teeth and gums. The cells are charged with a new vigorous life energy, which inhibits bacteria in their destructive ability. Hence the exquisite prevention and healing effect on gum diseases. Polishes enamel to the softest shiny white. Prevents tartar approach. Good foam, new taste, pleasant, mild and refreshing. Use extensively.”

    Quick disclaimer: The last two quotes can be found on Wikipedia but they are not backed up with sources.



  • A huge W for public transport. I assume the PRC already owning the land is significantly decreasing bureaucratic cost / time, allowing for such fast advances.

    In sharp contrast the US (and some European countries) keep running after tech bro “innovations” like the hyperloop rather than sticking to actually working systems. Most of them will never see a real purpose because they were never realisable in the first place or will be slimmed down to a point where conventional public transport would have been the better option. And tbh, most of them are really just bait to keep those countries in a state of “looking for alternatives” whilst their current infrastructure is rotting away. And with especially the US being a nation centered around individual transport the vision for public transport is imo clearly lacking.

    Europe in general isn’t hit by that as much, seeing the benefits of current public transport solutions (at least nowadays… the 90’ and 00’ were different thanks to neoliberalism and making short term profits instead of doing long term investments), but it is hindered by the clusterfuck of nations / different railway standards. The EU is trying to manage some of it (with ETCS / ERTMS) as well as the new coupling standard (DAC) and track gauges slowly but steadily going towards 1435mm but there are still a lot of things to do such as a transition towards a standard current or even more important: unified train registration (atm a train/carriage needs to be registered for each country separately which leads to unnecessary train switches at border crossings). For example Italy requires carriages to have a fire extinguishing system whilst some other EU countries don’t or some mountainous countries require specific braking tests. Having unified safety standards would make things a lot easier.

    But at the upside at least some European railway companies do have a vision. For example, the ÖBB (Austrian federal railways) plans to have high speed rail connecting the main cities as well as European alpine corridors like the Brenner, Koralm and Semmering, regional trains for distances covering abt 200km and are reachable in abt 2 to 3 hours and (sub-) urban rail for metropolitan areas. In bigger cities, they want to provide bike sharing at the stations whilst they want to make car sharing available in rural areas to help cover the last few kilometres through the mountains/woods/fields, where busses only go on a daily basis if you are lucky and the bus driver doesn’t skip your stop and take a shortcut because they believe nobody will be waiting there anyways and they might reach said vision in the next upcoming years and likely less than a decade.

    So TL;DR the PRC is profiting off of their property law, their ability to centralize standards and them going the (at the moment) optimum way instead of hoping for innovation from tech bros with fancy power point presentations and zero knowledge of physics, Europe is doing alright but is a bit of a decentralised mess and the US is getting a bit distracted by “innovations” and their mantra of individual transport.

    (My experience in the area mainly comes from working at a state-owned railway company and being interested in the matter in general. If there is anything to add or if I have gotten something wrong, feel free to comment.) ^-^