Just a couple of non-healthcare related things that interested me this week:
John Robb on the Pakistan black-out:
the attackers found a systempunkt. A systempunkt is the node in any network (physical or social) where it is the most vulnerable. An attack on a systempunkt can generate cascades of failure that take down the entire network….
we know, when a complex network is operating at or near its capacity, it is many times more vulnerable to collapse and thereby much easier to attack.
As a side note, we know that there are significant large scale single points of failure in the American regional electrical distribution grids.
Syriza won big in Greece on a platform that they’ll stop the austerity pain. That makes sense, and the only thing that surprised me was that it took this long for a political party to prosper on a platform that it would stop kicking the public in the balls. Here is a reminder of what the current Greek governing elite agreed to from March 2011:
We outline here what we think will be a very large 18-month IMF program, which will come with a set of draconian policy measures as a conditionality. Whether the effort will lead to a restoration of debt sustainability will depend on the willingness and ability of Greece’s political leadership to undertake (and for its population to accept) some very substantial cuts in living standards during the next three years.
The drop in living standards for the Greeks was far greater than what the IMF projected. Syriza is properly identifying the problem and are offering a reasonable and plausible solution once you take the implications of a Grexit as real. This is a far better outcome than Golden Dawn who have identified scapegoats rather than problems.
Proper blizzard prep should also include a note on how many rolls of toilet paper are needed:
Gallons of milk to buy (multiply by π to convert to beers). pic.twitter.com/MQfORwOSUU
— Austin Frakt (@afrakt) January 26, 2015
Open thread
MomSense
I’m really rooting for Greece to get its act together since that is my retirement plan.
beltane
They were playing “London Calling” at Syriza party headquarters yesterday. I thought of DougJ and smiled.
sparrow
Thanks for posting on the Greek election. I spent several hours last night in loud argument (aka normal Greek conversation) with my Greek friends about what should be done and the likelihood that the leftist government will last longer than a month. I’m hopeful mainly because Varoufakis is slated to be finance minister, and that guy is SMART. He predicted the 2008 crisis in 2003, and has been calling for an end to austerity (“financial waterboarding”) for a long time. His book, “the global minotaur”, is highly recommended by the way, if you want to understand the US role in the global economy since the last great depression. Opened my eyes.
My only fear is that the real bargaining power of the Greeks rests on the threat of exiting the Euro, and the Germans are so fucking sadomasochistic that they will prefer the option of blowing things up, to making a reasonable bargain with the Greeks. They refuse to take their share of the blame for making bad loans.
Tommy
@MomSense: If what the PBS Newshour reports is true it looks like Greece will pull away from the Euro and give a stiff middle finger to their creditors. I will openly admit I have not followed all that went down that closely, but Matt Taibbi did some reporting I read on it and it appears the banks screwed them. As they are apt to do. And somebody made a ton of money in the process. Now a liberal party is power from the recent elections I bet they try to get to the bottom of it, and I fear it won’t be pretty.
beltane
@MomSense: I’m rooting for Greece to get its act together because the Greek people have suffered too much for too long, and because maybe they can inspire Italy to get its act together being that Italy is my retirement plan.
It’s interesting that Syriza formed a government with a RW populist party without much trouble. There will undoubtedly be much discussion about this.
Central Planning
Is that “multiply by pi” to get bottles of beer or gallons of beer?
chopper
haven’t checked the numbers, was it a clear majority?
MattF
I propose naming the coming storm TPmageddon.
Richard mayhew
@Central Planning: whatever floats your boat
MattF
@chopper: No, neither a popular majority nor a majority in Parliament. However, they did get about 10% more votes than the former ruling party, so it’s no contest in terms of who should be forming a government.
In any case, the news is that Syriza has formed a government with the participation of a small right-wing party.
Tommy
Hey Richard I asked your advice about upgrading my health care plan the other day. You said to make a few phone calls. Figured the first place I’d call would be Get Covered Illinois, my state’s exchange. I hope my fellow Americans have a person like Janice that answered my call. She could not have been nicer, informative, friendly.
I so like when my government works the way it is supposed to work and it sure worked for me yesterday. If all the Americans that so hate Obamacare could talk to her they wouldn’t be so fearful of the ACA.
beltane
@chopper: Tsipras is now claiming an absolute majority of 162 seats, not sure if this is certain yet: http://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2015/jan/26/greece-election-syriza-victory-alexis-tsipras-coalition-talks-live-updates#block-54c6455de4b03a9bdfa806df
sparrow
@chopper: They needed 151 seats to form a government without any other parties, but got only 149. They already announced a coalition government with “independent” parties (small ones that get like 5% of the vote). I think Potami (“the river”, leftist) is one and another is ANEL (stupid patriotic center-right). Probably more. But since there are so many parties it’s impossible to get a “clear majority” in any election — I think it was something like 37%. The top biller gets a bonus of 50 seats so it tends to bias things towards 1 party governments, or coalitions with fairly like-minded parties.
OzarkHillbilly
@Central Planning:
Not gallons, kegs, and it all depends on how strong the wall you are putting them on, is.
richard mayhew
@OzarkHillbilly: until you take one down and pass it around, then you don’t have to worry about structural integrity as much
beltane
The Guardian’s coverage of this is fascinating. It appears that Syriza’s support comes from disenchanted, formerly center-left voters. I could see this happening in other European countries with moribund, corrupted center-left parties.
Tsipras has just been sworn in as PM. Will our Republican-held Congress try to declare war on Greece now?
MattF
@chopper: Also, see Krugman on who are the real radicals in Greece:
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/01/26/those-radical-vsps/?module=BlogPost-Title&version=Blog%20Main&contentCollection=Opinion&action=Click&pgtype=Blogs®ion=Body
Big ole hound
@OzarkHillbilly: If you guys are passing full kegs around then two feet of snow to shovel should be a warm-up exercise.
Tommy
@sparrow: It seems you know FAR more about this than myself. And since most of my recent knowledge on this is from one segment on PBS, I am willing to think my information might not be complete and/or accurate. But the people they had on seemed to think if the austerity policies were not loosened then Greece would just leave the Euro. Then you have both Itlay and Spain looking at what happens and pondering the same thing.
I think I get the concept behind the Euro. A strong global currency to battle the Dollar and Yen. But Spain and Itlay are not backwards nations. Heck neither is Greece. If they back out of your currency that can’t be a good thing for its value can it?
Looking at you Germany …..
currants
@beltane: Yes. Also, IMF is bordering on evil in my view, not only for this but for other catastrophes (environmental, say) that their policies have precipitated.
currants
@Tommy: Me too. The Massachusetts people are incredibly helpful. EVERY.SINGLE.TIME.
Mike J
Rand Paul spent the weekend with the Kochs. Papa Doc spoke at a secession rally.
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2015/01/as-ron-paul-preaches-secession-his-fans-compare-rand-paul-to-jar-jar-binks/
Belafon
The one disturbing part of this victory is that the party contains wackos that blame Jews for the current problems: http://www.timesofisrael.com/greek-politician-says-his-pm-heading-jewish-plot/.
MattF
@Belafon: Dirty little secret: there’s quite a bit of anti-semitism in Greece.
OzarkHillbilly
@richard mayhew: after passing a keg around, one probably doesn’t worry about much of anything.
Gin & Tonic
@Big ole hound: Passing full kegs around means that you can clear the snow by pissing on it.
Morzer
@Tommy:
All three have been notorious for corrupt, fiscally inept governments for decades. No-one really knows the size of Italy’s economy, for example, because so many financial transactions are done in cash to evade official scrutiny. Frankly, it would be hard to pick three countries that represent the failings of western European democracies better.
Also: no-one cares about the yen these days. Japan’s ongoing stagnation has seen to that.
Tommy
@Mike J: My father only teached for a few years in the profession where he got his PhD. Civil War history. He just found that LSU and Texas Tech didn’t pay as well as the DoD. But during the summer when most young kids went to a beach or Disney Land we went to Civil War battlefields. I’ve been to many of them.
I don’t know if he planned for me to take this away from those visits, but I just got we slaughtered each other wholesale. I recall the Park Ranger at Gettysburg, while walking us through the building that was used as a hospital, that the arms and legs being amputated eventually piled up higher than the window they were being thrown out of.
It was a third story window!
That is what I think about when I hear anybody today talk about secession.
Bobby B.
When I lived in Illinois I was always amazed how blizzard warnings prompted people to clean out the store shelves of milk, butter, flour and sugar. It wasn’t panic, they all wanted to play Little House On the Prairie and bake bread. I’m sure the reality is going to be people playing with their phones, panicking that they can’t get Candy Crush to work.
OzarkHillbilly
@Belafon: That’s nothing. I blame the Jews for my hemorrhoids.
sparrow
@beltane: Kissinger is still alive, he’s a bigger threat to socialist democracies than the republicans. The US ceded any meddling interest in Greece some time ago, thankfully.
sparrow
@Tommy: It would hurt the Euro, and yes a Greek exit would probably lead to a domino effect on the other weaker members. It would also expose the German banks and probably start a US-style recession requiring bailout (from what I have read). But part of the problem is that no one really knows what would happen exactly if Greece leaves. There would be a bank run, and a devaluing of deposits, return to drachma, etc. But as they have a primary surplus, once freed of the debt obligations they could actually pay for everything, just barely. But I am by no means an expert, and I believe Varoufakis when he says they have no intention of leaving the Euro.
NotMax
The name will be more familiar to those from around the New York City area, but noting that perennial talk show host and raconteur Joe Franklin died at 88.
sparrow
Fixed that for you.
Tommy
@Bobby B.: I live in Illinois and the newscast are funny if not outright sad. A forecast of a few inches and you’d think the end of the world was upon us. If I was a local store owner I’d be calling news organizations saying it is going to snow, snow, snow. Buy, buy, buy.
I find this more bizarre because I live in rural, southern Illinois. Most people I know drive at least one Ford F150. ATV. Pretty sure they are not going to be snowed in for an extended period of time. Heck my parents just got a snowblower the other day. I was like when have you needed a snowblower? We’ve not had more than a foot of snow the last decade.
Their response, and I can’t make this up, was “you never know.”
I am pretty sure I do know. 1983 and 1998 were the last times we had a blizzard and multiple feet of snow.
sparrow
@Tommy: We consume therefore we exist, the American mantra. Of course practically no one needs a snow blower, but that’s not the point.
Morzer
http://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2015/jan/26/greece-election-syriza-victory-alexis-tsipras-coalition-talks-live-updates
How do you like them easy Greek apples now, Kanzlerin Merkel?
Morzer
Nice bit of news from the UK:
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jan/26/first-female-church-england-bishop-consecrated-libby-lane
You go, girl.
Tommy
@sparrow: I would like to be able to argue with you, but you are right. I talk a lot about my parents here. Wonderful people. But I’ve noticed as they get older they are just buying stuff to buy stuff. They come to my house and have all this “stuff.” I see no use for it. I openly ask why would you think I want this? I already own that, I don’t need duplicates of it. They honestly seem confused by this thinking.
Bobby B.
@OzarkHillbilly: I AM THE GREEK HEMORRHOID OF VENGEANCE. yeah I started drinking early today, so what?
Tommy
@Morzer: I am an atheist but I still can like cool shit. This is the last graph in your link, which is just so nice:
I also like the last pic in the article is Lane with the thumbs up. As you said, “go girl.”
OzarkHillbilly
@Tommy: My wife will do that at times. Sometimes I feel like we need a household rule: Nothing comes in until something goes out. Of course, I can be just as bad with books.
Morzer
@OzarkHillbilly:
My wife hoards crafting materials. I hoard books and pens. We enable each other and find a strange happiness in so doing.
Morzer
@OzarkHillbilly:
But then every rule requires exemptions and carve-outs and … honestly, do you really want to end up like the US tax code?
Tommy
@OzarkHillbilly: @Morzer: I hoard books, pencils, and paper notebooks. So I get it.
But my mom has a point. Dad had to buy a house across the street from where they live for his books. About 10,000 of them. But they are books. Something that will live another lifetime. Mom is buying stuff at the Dollar General Store.
OzarkHillbilly
@Morzer: My wife likes crafting too, especially knitting and crocheting, and that stuff bothers me not at all. What I hate are all the new techno gadgety stuff that will show up like the electric eye activated soap dispensers that I have to wave my hands at for 5 mins to get too little soap, but if my toothbrush gets anywhere near it when I am spitting, a too generous dollop is deposited on the bristles and then I go back to brushing***….
What I want to know is, what’s wrong with having a bar of soap by the sink?
***hasn’t happened, yet.
MomSense
@OzarkHillbilly:
UPS man delivered another amp on Saturday. This is a “gig” amp meaning it is huge and makes a lot of sound. The UPS guy had a huge smile on his face when he saw the different reactions to his delivery. Kids had wide eyes and big smiles. Mom was not so enthusiastic.
I can see a lot of baked goods delivered to neighbors in my immediate future. As it is we pretty much shovel all the drives and walkways within about a 5 house radius.
Morzer
@OzarkHillbilly:
My wife has a weakness for this sort of technological knick-knackery and it often irritates me, but so long as it never gets anywhere near the coffee-maker or my workroom, I calculate that the effort expended to mount a successful campaign of resistance is greater than the effort required to ignore and avoid it.
We have tried making rules, only to discover that we never quite remember a given rule the same way and that each of us had mentally exempted certain occasions or categories that seemed reasonable to us.
Morzer
http://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2015/jan/26/greece-election-syriza-victory-alexis-tsipras-coalition-talks-live-updates
There ought to be a new rule of politics for radicals: first, shoot all the credit ratings agency vultures.
OzarkHillbilly
@Morzer:
Heh. That is the way with our conversations.
Then there was the time we had a burned out bulb. She said, “We’re out of 60 watt bulbs.” I said, “No, there are some in the basement.” Long story short, we made a $5 bet over it. I went downstairs and sure enuf, there weren’t any on the shelf. So, did I accept defeat and meekly give her the $5? No. I unscrewed one from a fixture and took that one upstairs.
For some reason, she still won’t make bets with me.
Morzer
@OzarkHillbilly:
Fight the power, bro!
Seriously, that sounds like something I would do, only to confess immediately so as to see my wife trying to maintain her righteous outrage while laughing at my scoundrelly tendencies.
MattF
@OzarkHillbilly: In a few years, the reaction to that story will be “What’s a ‘burned-out bulb?” I got rid of all my incandescent bulbs a couple of years ago and haven’t replaced a bulb since.
Belafon
@MattF: LEDs burn out eventually, and we’ll still call them bulbs.
Gin & Tonic
Kind of a dilemma here. We live in a semi-rural environment, so pets wander freely, there are no fences, etc. Our neighbor has a cat, and once in a while it gets into an argument with one of our two, although they’ve never come to blows. Anyway, a couple of months ago the neighbor was (perhaps not quite voluntarily) hospitalized. My wife being a softie with animals, we’ve been feeding the cat – for a while that was on the porch, but it seemed other critters were helping themselves, so we figured out a secure access. The cat has those little swinging cat doors, so it goes in and out of the house through the garage.
Short-term, since I’m not eager to spend the next week trudging there through knee-deep snow, we put out a whole bunch of food, bit I don’t know how the cat will behave – will it eat a week’s worth of food in a day, puke it up and then go hungry? Longer-term, I know there are feral housecats, but this one was habituated to human contact, so doesn’t it need some sort of that at some point? It has sort of approached my wife, but never gotten close, and is still very skittish. We really don’t want to call animal control if we can avoid it, but don’t know what the best thing is.
The little family this guy has/had are largely uninterested, and not close enough to make a daily or even weekly chore, although they are paying to heat the house so it doesn’t freeze. It’s unclear whether the guy will be back.
Elizabelle
I would love to know if our economic elites at Davos saw the Greek vote for “leftists” coming. My guess is no. The NYTimes seemed to think it would be heavy sledding.
Paul Mason (not the wine with the extra “s”); in The Guardian: Greece shows what can happen when the young revolt against corrupt elites
I think this could get interesting. Go Greek leftists!
Morzer
@MattF:
I am sure Breitbart will be urging true conservatives to stockpile “real” red state light-bulbs along with gold, ammunition and dinosaur-riding Reagan figures for a decade or so.
Elizabelle
@Gin & Tonic: In my experience, cats do not binge like dogs do. So the cat might ration its own food.
Can other critters (opossums, raccoons) get in through the cat door too?
I think the cat will get lonesome before it starves.
Roger Moore
@OzarkHillbilly:
I rather like my hands-free soap dispenser. I effectively can’t use bar soap- I can’t really use any kind of actual soap in the sense of hydrolyzed oil- because the water here is so damn hard it will leave soap scum deposits on my skin. So I’m left with the liquid detergent “soap”, and I find the hands-free dispensers are nice because I don’t get my dirty hands all over them. Keeping them from squirting when not requested is a matter of positioning.
Morzer
@Elizabelle:
I wonder whether Scott Brown will declare Greece his next home state.
Violet
@MattF:
Really? We’ve got the compact fluorescents in various places and I hate them. They get dimmer and dimmer as they age and there’s one that now makes a high pitched squealing sound. Could not figure out what was making that sound until I turned off the light and the sound stopped. And they do go out eventually. Have replaced quite a few of them.
I hate the light they give. I have always disliked fluorescent lighting–the flickering drives me nuts. Plan to change to LED as the price comes down and the other bulbs go out but meanwhile I’ve got a stockpile of them to get through. I’m one of those people who would much rather have the old style incandescent bulbs. I much prefer the light they give. I didn’t go out and hoard them or anything but I kind of wish I had.
Belafon
@Elizabelle: I really hope it doesn’t come down to some guy here in the US seeing his girlfriend dating a 60 year old before he decides it’s time to vote.
Gin & Tonic
@Elizabelle: I’ve seen no evidence in the last month or two that any other animals are going in through the cat door. I think a raccoon would have to be pretty small.
I’ve also seen no evidence (yet) that the cat is getting lonesome enough to approach anyone. Even if it did, there’s no way we could bring it into our home.
Morzer
@Belafon:
Bill Clinton could become the unwitting savior of American democracy.
chopper
@sparrow:
if they got 149 then it’s gonna be a strong coalition. cray-cray.
Corner Stone
@Belafon:
I’m lamenting that I’m in between beefcakes that are younger than me and old greys that are much wealthier than me. I’m trapped in no woman’s land, I tells ya!
Roger Moore
@Violet:
The problem with the CFLs is that they’re a more complicated product so you have to be more careful in shopping for it. If you like the light from traditional incandescent lights, you should shop for CFLs with a color temperature of 2700K or 3000K; those are the ones that give a “warm” light. You should also look for ones with a high CRI (color rendering index), which gives a more pleasing light. You may have to look harder and pay more to get them, but the light quality is worth it.
Morzer
@Corner Stone:
You could try the Reagan Gambit – dye your hair, smile constantly and put everything on the credit card.
OzarkHillbilly
@Roger Moore: Oh I know all about positioning them, but my wife just digs them out of the trash anyway. ;-)
Big ole hound
@MattF: Here in the East Bay the requirement for “new light bulbs” has been withdrawn since no one knows how to dispose of them once they do burn out. Mercury or something.
catclub
I thought it was interesting that the snow stops at the NH and Vermont borders.
Also, S&P ratings are always late to the party. They really do not matter.
MattF
@Violet: I agree about compact fluorescents– but with LEDs down to the 10-20 dollar range, there’s really no more excuses for keeping incandescents around.
In my own case, I have a fancy-shmancy european fixture on my living room ceiling that’s tres elegant but has to be completely disassembled when you want to change the bulb– so I just held out until I could change the bulb in the fixture to an LED and then forget about it.
Violet
@Roger Moore: Thanks for the tips. I’ve bought ones that say they’re “warm light” or something like that, but I can still tell the flickering. I can pick out fluorescent bulbs from any mixture of bulbs. The flickering is really obvious to me.
I’m the same way with artificial sweetener. I can pick it out of anything. Even stevia–it’s so bitter. I don’t know how people use any of those artificial sweeteners. They leave such a terrible taste for me, I can pick them out in anything.
shortstop
@Morzer:
Hmmm, I recall there were quite a few pompous blowhard non-consenters on the spot when PECUSA consecrated its first female bishop. So this is progress. ;)
Violet
@MattF: Yeah, the last time I checked the LEDs were much cheaper. Saw them super cheap at Costco. I’m frugal, though, so need to finish up the CFLs before buying the next kind.
Morzer
@shortstop:
I rather regret that the new bishop didn’t lean in and roar: “We will bury you!” at the idiot who interrupted things.
sparrow
@Violet: I’m with you on both bulbs and sweeteners. :) The bulbs are rather a trial for me, as I DO want to be more energy efficient, but the warm light you get with a regular bulb is just so, so much better aesthetically. I hope the newer LEDs can solve this…
shortstop
@MattF:
And quite a bit less at IKEA.
shortstop
@Morzer: Slapping her slipper on the altar.
Morzer
@shortstop:
It would certainly have given ecumenism a whole new meaning.
shortstop
@Morzer: I really do wonder what took them so long. One of my pals, met during my briefish days in the Anglican Communion, is a (female) Episcopal priest married to a (male) Anglican priest. She moved to England upon their marriage and has been a bit taken aback by the slowness of this process in the UK. However, it’s done now, so onward and upward.
Morzer
@shortstop:
The internal problem lay with two factions: the older High Church Anglicans (basically Catholics who just don’t really want to bow down to Rome) and part of the evangelical traditionalist group who feel that women should submit to male authority. Most of the recent slowness has been down to the laity, not the clergy. Basically the Anglican synod is set up in such way that you need to have a pretty big majority in each of the divisions of the synod to make any real change in doctrine or church organization, so the hold-outs among the laity mustered just enough votes to block the change about a year ago.
The other external issue has been how the wider Anglican Communion (basically conservative African bishops) would react. They’ve already made it clear that they are vehemently against any sort of concessions to gay people and are not very happy with women bishops either. Most of the reason for Rowan Williams’ failure was that he kept trying to appease them at the expense of the much more liberal majority within the Church of England in the UK. Inevitably, no-one was happy and it became clear that the Church of England in the UK simply wouldn’t wait any longer.
shortstop
@Morzer: Well, I should have been more specific. I actually knew all the reasons for the slow turn of events*. I’m just surprised it took as long as this to dispatch them.
*Despite no longer being a member of the flock, I keep up with the gang.
Morzer
@shortstop:
Well, they haven’t really managed to dispose of the problems with the African bishops, who keep threatening to split off from the Anglican Communion if gay rights advance any further within the church. I think that sooner rather than later they will be told to do what they think best and the British Anglicans will just go ahead and put their own house in order.
The Synod is in many ways rather like the US Senate, but with three divisions to wrestle into line plus a variety of ways of slowing down any sort of radical change. I suspect that the only reason it didn’t take longer was that the ordination of women had flaked enough of the militant conservatives off to Rome and removed their votes from the debate, as well as enabling regular parishes to see that women priests did not lead to an immediate descent to the infernal regions. I also believe that a number of women have come across from Catholicism and tipped the balance a little in favor of women bishops over the last few years.
shortstop
@Morzer:
No, I was talking about dispatching the reasons for delay in their own house, of course.
Do you remember when Desmond Tutu said, with zero self-awareness, that women shouldn’t be ordained with so much of the AC out of agreement about it? I do. I remember it like it was yesterday, although of course he changed his mind later.
Africa will almost certainly have to go its own way. There isn’t, as you say, going to be any compromise there.
Bing-o. I know more than a few of them, here and across the pond. Did I mention I was a progressive in a high-church parish? It all seems like a dream now, but goddamn, the music was incredible.
Origuy
I know that Lowe’s stores have a place where you can drop off burned-out CFLs; I suppose that Home Depot and similar places do, too. I’ve started replacing CFLs with LED lights where possible.
Chris
@Elizabelle:
And yet The Narrative will show, by Argumentum Ad VSPum, that the problem with Greece is that there’s too much irresponsible tax and spend socialist socialism, and that these poor beleaguered magnates should be taxed less, which will surely reduce the deficits.
Mike in dc
I was an early fan of Systempunkt, before they sold out and went commercial.
JR in WV
@Big ole hound:
Just take them to Home Depot. Or Lowes. They’ll recycle them properly.
We have 4 big tracks on the living room/kitchen ceiling, with flood lights pointing at stuff hung on the walls. In the beginning, the (2) sliders for 2 tracks each were nearly overloaded with 50 watt halogen spots and floods, the sliders were only good for 600 watts.
Then I got some fluorescent floods, like 15 watts instead of 50. So that was good. Then LED lamps came around. At first you couldn’t get dimmable, and as others have complained, the color of the light was bad. But that was fixed, and now the whole setup is LED spots and floods. They are all under 100 watts.
I was able to add the 2 or 3 more fixtures per track to brighten the darker corners, and the dimmers were still way under their wattage limits. Now, though, one of the floods has failed. Way before the expected life span. I’m going to take it to Home Depot, and raise hell, gently, and see if they’ll make that 5 year warrantee good or not.
We will see. I’ll let you know!
But overall, the LEDs are great. Even if once in a while they burn out. They are complex electrical gadgets, after all.