this post was submitted on 18 Jan 2026
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[–] Iron_Lynx@lemmy.world 2 points 8 minutes ago

It would. Also because that device would probably make a loud vrooming sound.

[–] A_Chilean_Cyborg@feddit.cl 5 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

A parallel universe where William Osman still post in his main channel:

[–] OhShitSon@lemmy.zip 2 points 50 minutes ago

My favourite compost influencer!

[–] titanicx@lemmy.zip 11 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

My gf has been dealing with this with her shower for the past 2 weeks without any extra device. Showering there is an experience.

[–] 0_0j@lemmy.world 2 points 5 hours ago
[–] Viking_Hippie@lemmy.dbzer0.com 37 points 15 hours ago

I was in a band called Extreme Sensory Hell Shower.

We randomly switched between German Schlager, Doom Metal, Muzak, Swing, Acid Jazz, Reggae, Polka, Latin Dance, Bluegrass, and Hard House WITHIN tracks to make sure that nobody was ever having a positive experience for more than a few seconds at a time.

And no, we weren't especially proficient or even enthusiastic about any of the genres.

[–] halfeatenpotato@sh.itjust.works 1 points 7 hours ago

One might think this would make us evolve to being able to withstand hotter or colder temps (depending on the perspective). But no! People are far less forgiving than that.

[–] ChaoticNeutralCzech@feddit.org 36 points 16 hours ago (3 children)

A temperature knob could be added to control the pulse width. Get this shower to everyone who designed LED lighting with PWM frequency below 100 Hz.

[–] muusemuuse@sh.itjust.works 6 points 7 hours ago

So you can actually do LED lighting that doesn’t cause PWM headaches. It’s just cheaper not to.

[–] The_Picard_Maneuver@piefed.world 11 points 16 hours ago (3 children)

So the concerns related to LED frequencies are real?

I saw some chatter about them causing headaches, eye strain, and disturbing circadian rhythms, but I hadn't looked further into it to see if it was legit or a "you should use red light on your balls" health influencer type of thing.

[–] b_tr3e@feddit.org 1 points 11 minutes ago

Red light on your balls? Sounds plausible - no more balls ache from PWM. I've got to give it a try. But how am I going to get the lamp into my pants? Also, the power chord is too short to leave the room.

[–] ChaoticNeutralCzech@feddit.org 5 points 14 hours ago* (last edited 4 hours ago) (1 children)

I would get headaches from watching PAL (50Hz) CRT TVs for a long time. 60Hz monitors were noticeably better, and 75 or more was good to endure all day. Modern screens don't go blank between refreshes (except PWM-based AMOLED) so the refresh rate is mostly irrelevant unless you want to shave off a few milliseconds of latency for serious gaming (then it's best to match the refresh, render FPS and video signal).

But as I'm walking down the street and move my eyes, I notice cheap lighting whose drivers don't smooth the 100Hz ripple of rectified AC. Especially if they reach 0% brightness during the ripple. This applies to:

  • sodium and mercury vapor lights in street lamps
  • single-board (aka mains-voltage) LED modules in cheap, powerful reflectors
  • any LED bulb or fixture with a constant-current driver whose mains smoothing capacitor is too small or has failed due to heat (however, some such as EMOS and Solight spherical 18W ones refuse to turn on if the capacitor gets too bad, making for an easy repair)
  • any dimmable light powered from DC (like 12V and 24V non-addressable LED strips with those cheap flat remotes, or multi-mode flashlights) whose manufacturer was too cheap for a constant-current driver (fair enough) but could have very easily set a higher PWM frequency YET DIDN'T and therefore deserve a PWM shower.
    • This is especially annoying with RGB ones because the hue changes during the cycle, creating off-color fringes or even "rainbows" when moving my eyes. I can't believe some people use things like that in/on/around their battlestation: this would totally distract me as my eyes dashed around the monitor while gaming.
  • multiplexed displays, especially with low duty cycles (look up charlieplexing, chances are your powerbank or similar gadget uses that to minimize the pin count of its chip) - these are usually over 100 Hz though

So yeah, it's not unhealthy, especially above 60 Hz. But it's annoying for me to look around badly smoothed Christmas lights. And if they are of different phases (this is uncommon for Christmas lights (and even impossible in most American homes because they have 180° aka split-phase 240 V, not 120° 400 V) but always the case with multiplexed displays), I say a long rolling R to vibrate my face and see them wiggle.

[–] f4f4f4f4f4f4f4f4@sopuli.xyz 5 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

When very drunk, I've seen the flicker of normally-functioning fluorescent lights and was theorizing whether my "nervous system was desynchronizing" or if it was nystagmus-related, or if there was even a difference between those two.

[–] ChaoticNeutralCzech@feddit.org 4 points 4 hours ago* (last edited 1 hour ago)

The ends of fluorescent tubes with traditional EM ballasts flicker at 50/60 Hz because the filaments take turns being the cathode and anode based on the current polarity of AC, which is perceptible in peripheral vision. And some long tubes have waves on their arcs, causing travelling ripples of bright spots. But without a more advanced ballast, there's just the phosphor smoothing the 100/120 Hz ripple, which is not very effective (and usually, yellow phosphor lasts longer than blue, resulting in color banding in video) but that's not normally perceptible.

I never thought alcohol would make the brain work faster though, thanks for sharing!

[–] redwattlebird@lemmings.world 6 points 15 hours ago (3 children)

Wait, I'm a specialist lighting designer and i haven't heard about this < 100hz LED is bad stuff. From my experience, frequencies at around 50hz or lower is what usually causes eye strain/headaches etc.LEDs are typically 60hz.

I'm guessing the >100hz crowd just need to go outside and touch grass for a few hours a day.

[–] chonglibloodsport@lemmy.world 8 points 15 hours ago (7 children)

50Hz is what you’ll find in the UK and Europe.

LEDs aren’t 50Hz or 60Hz or anything else. They’re DC devices and they don’t flicker at all if you run them on a clean DC power supply.

The issue with LED bulbs is that they don’t have clean power supplies. They have very simple AC to DC, usually a capacitive dropper. Without filtering, this type of cheap power supply produces a lot of ripple which manifests in visible flicker at the same frequency of the input AC mains power.

[–] ChaoticNeutralCzech@feddit.org 4 points 14 hours ago* (last edited 14 hours ago)

Yup. Except they flicker at double the mains frequency because they use both the positive and negative half-cycle thanks to a FULL BRIDGE RECTIFIER.

And see my other comment: it's not unhealthy, just annoying. To be honest, I use trash-picked LED bulbs and repair them, and I don't normally care to replace a poor smoothing capacitor. In rooms I spend much of my time, I make sure most bulbs in the fixture are low-flicker (it's arbitrary but generally don't get below 75%) for comfort. I'm not peculiar about light quality like CRI and matching color temperature unless it's very obviously bad, although I do notice the circadian effects of cold white light. I do mark badly flickering bulbs though so I know not to put too many of them together unless it's somewhere non-consequential like a cellar. I also hold my phone camera to any neutral-white E27s I salvage to find and mark true flicker-free ones because I use them while filming.

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[–] Viking_Hippie@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

I'm guessing the >100hz crowd just need to go outside and touch grass for a few hours a day.

Has to be 8k 240fps grass, though.

[–] b_tr3e@feddit.org 1 points 4 minutes ago

Grass is bad, anyway. It's photosynthesis uses up most of the visible light.

[–] ChaoticNeutralCzech@feddit.org 5 points 14 hours ago* (last edited 5 hours ago) (1 children)

Poorly made LEDs actually flicker at 120Hz on 60Hz mains, see my other comment. And it's more like a pet peeve, only below 60 Hz is actually headache-inducing. Unless it's specific circumstances (I couldn't stand a cheap 120Hz PWM RGB strip close to a gaming monitor because I'd see annoying "rainbows" as my eyes dash across the screen). More details in my other comments.

[–] redwattlebird@lemmings.world 3 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

Very interesting! My pet peeve is glare and LEDS produce an ungodly amount of glare and I absolutely hated them in car headlights. I've never heard of anyone irritated by hz that high before. The more you know. Thanks for clarifying.

[–] ChaoticNeutralCzech@feddit.org 2 points 5 hours ago

Glare? That's not a physical property of LED light but an effect of overly bright headlights enabled by LED and laser technology.

[–] EldenLord@lemmy.world 4 points 12 hours ago* (last edited 12 hours ago)

Fuck PWM

All my homies hate PWM

Signed: DC dimming gang

[–] xeekei@lemmy.zip 23 points 16 hours ago (2 children)

I once touched an experiment in the form of a metal wire coil where each alternative loop was hot and the other cold. It felt superhot instead. I feel like this would be similar.

[–] vithigar@lemmy.ca 27 points 15 hours ago
[–] kadu@scribe.disroot.org 8 points 15 hours ago

You can recreate this with sausages or some cooked vegetables. We do it at science fairs.

Set them up in an alternating pattern of cold, hot, cold, hot. Let somebody place their arm on top. They'll feel like they just got a severe burn, even though they're fine and the sausages are not hot enough to cause any harm.

[–] starik@lemmy.zip 83 points 20 hours ago (2 children)

If it oscillates that fast, it might not feel very different from a normal shower

[–] prime_number_314159@lemmy.world 22 points 16 hours ago (2 children)

This could be better than existing pressure balance based mixing systems, assuming it allows you to adjust the hot vs cold pulse width

[–] fartographer@lemmy.world 22 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

Thermostatic is dead. Embrace thermovariable.

[–] JoeBigelow@lemmy.ca 7 points 16 hours ago

I currently need to replace my showers mixing valve. When will this product be available?

[–] benignintervention@piefed.social 11 points 14 hours ago

Pulse Water Modulation

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[–] justsomeguy@lemmy.world 60 points 20 hours ago (9 children)

I can make this worse. The Katy Perry song Hot N Cold starts playing full blast every time you turn the shower on.

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[–] Zorsith@lemmy.blahaj.zone 48 points 20 hours ago

Add some menthol and capsaicin to the body wash too, just for an extra "fuck you" even after the shower.

[–] HootinNHollerin@lemmy.dbzer0.com 11 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

It probably already exists at CIA black sites

[–] boonhet@sopuli.xyz 8 points 16 hours ago

Also in my bathroom.

There's something wonky with the water pressure on the cold side. Think I need a bigger tank or something. Pump runs very often and short spans, so the pressure oscillates. Hot water from the boiler is fairly consistent in comparison.

[–] slazer2au@lemmy.world 21 points 20 hours ago (20 children)

If you want cursed showers you should see how Latin America provides hot water to their showers

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