Colorado Governor Polis posted this on FB yesterday. I am loving how adept at social media he and First Gentleman Marlon Reis have been since the election. Using for both fun and education. Comes in handy when they need to rally everyone for a vote. Or oppose a recall.
Last week they took their kids to southern Colorado for the annual Tarantula Migration, and posted photos of the critters crawling all over them.
Yesterday Polis posted this video and I’ve been fascinated by it ever since.
This mid-1950s Westinghouse ad for “The electric home” shows a vision for a home of the future. Here we are almost seventy years later, and it’s fascinating to see what they got right and what they got wrong. Even to this day, electricty is only used as the primary source of heat and cooking in 38% of US homes. Gas remains the most common home heating source at 48% of US homes, with heating oil, wood, and propane used for the rest. From an environmental perspective, gas heating and cooking had the edge for most of the 20th century because natural gas burns cleaner than coal. But with the electric grid phasing out costly coal and rapidly increasing clean renewable energy, electricity is fast gaining the edge. Electricity is also generally safer than gas for home use, as gas has higher risk of fires, explosions, and carbon monixide poisoning. I especially wish I could push a button that “selects the latest hit record, and play it automatically,” but alas our electric reality has far surpassed this nostalgiac vision.
I just thought I’d share in case you’ve never seen this before. Reading the comments on the FB post, guess there are quite a few medallion homes in the area.
Afternoon open thread
Roger Moore
My home is an interesting mix. The individual units in the building don’t have any gas (or oil or coal) connections, but we have central circulating water HVAC and a central boiler for hot domestic water, both of which are gas fired. Also, too, the dryers in our laundry room are gas. Not having gas in my unit took some getting used to, but I will never trade my induction range for gas.
rikyrah
@Roger Moore:
Why not?
Major Major Major Major
Should I leave work early to watch Warren speak?
zhena gogolia
Hot hors d’oeuvres but no drinks? And they let the little kids take hors d’oeuvres before offering them to the guests?
zhena gogolia
@Major Major Major Major:
If you have to stand in a crowd in Washington Square Park, I’d give it a miss. But that’s just me.
Gin & Tonic
@Major Major Major Major: I think you should go and write it up for one of the evening threads.
wvng
What a great video. A child of the 50s, a lot of this stuff surprises me. We surely didn’t have it. But that woman in the blue dress could be my mom.
Chyron HR
Where are Joel and the Bots?
mrmoshpotato
@rikyrah: https://youtu.be/OM88XcK5a3E Sounds pretty nice. My gas range makes my kitchen quite spicy in the summer.
Miss Bianca
@Gin & Tonic: I would second that.
Major Major Major Major
@zhena gogolia:
It’s a fairly nice day at least…
@Gin & Tonic: sorta my thoughts.
mrmoshpotato
@Chyron HR: To heckle a promotional video? Haha
frosty
@Major Major Major Major: yes yes yes yes etc. Go see SPW Warren. I would if she were within 50 miles if me.
Steeplejack
@Roger Moore:
This is exactly what I am interested in. All the gourmet/chef types seem to be adamant about having their gas ranges, but I have wondered whether a (good) induction range wouldn’t be just as good and also perhaps safer—definitely a concern where older people are involved.
Did you move from gas to induction? Notes on transition or what you now prefer about induction?
Uncle Cosmo
It’s just as fascinating to see what the Westinghouse Electric Corporation as a whole got right – & got wrong. Thirty years ago it was one of the great technological corporations of the US, 100,000 employees strong; now the name lives on only in a few odd places, like appliances (sold off early) and nuclear power.
For 9 years I worked as a logistics, then reliability engineer in the Westinghouse defense operation in MD when it was the largest private employer in the state (~17,000 employees) – & I was punched out in the first great wave of layoffs in early 1991 that culminated in the destruction of the company. The sad thing was, they did it to themselves when they got greedy; as the old Wall Street adage has it, Some days the bulls win, & some days the bears win, but the pigs always lose.
I have some good memories from those days at “the circle-bar-W dude ranch.”
zhena gogolia
@Uncle Cosmo:
Watching Betty Furness there at the end made me sad. It seemed those great corporations would never die, and would keep providing employment to the populace.
RSA
Speaking of retro and electric: When I was staying in Pittsburgh, I visited the Heinz Center and came across the 1967 Westinghouse Markette Electric Car. It was cute and cool; here’s the first video I could find online, from a Slovak newsreel.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hfGPFGLSD9Q
Quinerly
Love the video. The home that I grew up in in small town NC that was built by my father who was a general contractor was a Gold Medallion Home. The brass door knocker has the “gold medallion” in the middle. I think there is also some markings on the door bell to signify it. He built several in the late 1950’s-1960’s. I still have some of the promotional material and a couple of the brass door knockers. He actually got an award from Westinghouse House for them. ❤️???
Steeplejack
@Steeplejack:
My last several residences have been apartments with electric ranges, mostly traditional ones with coil burners. The one before my current one had a ceramic cooktop, which I found that I liked, somewhat to my surprise. That made me induction-curious. I’ve thought about getting one of those stand-alone induction burners to check it out.
trollhattan
Here’s a very helpful film from the ’30s on various dangers around the home, including a special emphasis on washing clothes in gasoline. Now why didn’t I ever think of that?
A house in our neighborhood was a GE all-electric show house built around 1935, lovingly done in Streamline Moderne style. Toured it when it came on the market maybe fifteen years ago at a Very High Price and saw it needed a ton of work, atop the gaudy price of entry. Somebody eventually bought it and did a major overhaul; hard to guess what it would fetch today. Think my favorite feature was the full basement with ballroom, nautical-themed bar and walk-in safe.
Our ’20s vintage home was built to be mostly electric other than an oil-fired furnace. No idea how they managed electric stove, water heater and wall heaters from the 40-amp service. PG&E brought lines to the neighborhood and convinced the homeowner to convert the furnace to gas, which was a hilariously crude execution. They also left the oil tank in the ground under a concrete slab, which we discovered to our delight during one of several projects. “We’ll come back once your tank is gone.” is something one does not want to hear from their contractor.
Roger Moore
@rikyrah:
Induction gives the biggest virtues of both gas and electric ranges together with a bunch of unique advantages of its own technology. The big advantage gas has always had is that you can change the temperature instantly rather than waiting for the electric element to heat or cool. Induction gives you the same speed in changing heat level, but the controls are digital rather than dials, so you can easily get the exact same setting every time.
Electric ranges have the advantage that they’re more efficient than gas, so most of the heat goes into the pot rather than into heating up the kitchen. Induction is even more efficient than traditional electric ranges. It means I can cook in the summer in Southern California without my kitchen turning into an inferno. They naturally come with electric ovens, which almost everyone agrees are better than gas.
Induction also has some unique advantages. Induction ranges have smooth, sealed cooktops, which makes them very easy to clean. They also heat the pot directly, which means the stove top is generally cooler than the pot. That means spills tend not to get burned on, which makes cleaning that much easier. They also have a very even heating pattern, so pots don’t have as many hot spots where food would tend to burn on.
The biggest disadvantage of induction ranges is the more restricted set of pots you can use on them. Induction depends on electromagnetic effects to heat the pot, which in practice means it only works on pots that a magnet will stick to. Not being able to use aluminum or pyroceram pots is kind of a bummer, but now that I’ve invested in a full set of induction compatible cookware it’s not a big deal for me anymore.
jl
I can’t watch the clip right now, but did it mention how insane things would be in the future?
White Nationalists Latch On To Climate Change For Mass Migration Hysteria
Some on the far right are pointing to climate change, and the refugees it will create, to tout the idea of walling off America.
talkingpointsmemo.com/muckraker/white-nationalists-latch-on-to-climate-change-for-mass-migration-hysteria
Wonder how soon this madness will spread. Maybe Trump will pick it up if it hits Fox News. Man made climate change will go from a Chinese hoax to an existential threat (because brown people, not because humanity will be ruined regardless of what the brown people do), so another reason for Wall.
I guess the reasoning is:
Climate change is real.
We shouldn’t look into it too much other than to celebrate the fact that Europeans are in a better place than the tropics, so Europeans are better.
Shouldn’t do anything about it because that means sissy stuff that will un-man the noble virile Europeans and paper straws are sissy to and totalitarian…
Except we should build TrumpWall to keep out brown people… and if that doesn’t work, kill them.
More of the sheer madness of their thinking is at the link.
Ohio Mom
@Major Major Major Major: What kind of question is that? Why wouldn’t you?
I still remember fondly leaving work to hear Geraldine Ferraro speak in downtown Cincinnati — she was Mondale’s running mate, and choosing a woman for VP was quite daring and novel in 1984.
It was a nice-sized crowd and everyone was happy and pumped. To be in the middle of that was a joy.
trollhattan
@Steeplejack:
I’m only vaguely curious, but if one doesn’t have a lot of money sunk into non-compatible pans then they make sense if it’s already an electric kitchen. They’re kinda magic.
frosty
@Uncle Cosmo: So you and my dad were both at Westinghouse at the same time. He was there from ‘69 until he retired in the mid-90s. Electronics engineer doing radar systems design.
ceece
I lived in a Medallion apartment building in Los Angeles in the 90s. It even had one of those bronze plaques out front.
Now my spouse is an energy efficiency advocate, pushing for California cities to go all electric in new construction. I would love to find a doorknocker or doorbell for him.
Heat pump water heaters are much more efficient and safe than gas water heaters. And if new housing doesn’t have gas lines, the whole building is cheaper and safer to build, especially in earthquake or tornado country.
We have tried out a stand alone induction burner, and loved it.
artem1s
my childhood home was heated with electric baseboard heaters. Then energy prices spiked in the late 70’s. We added wood burning to supplement. I have since moved to an area that predominantly uses gas. The abundance of natural gas, new high efficiency furnaces and tankless hot water heaters makes gas a much better option. And my mom struggles to pay the heating bills in the winter with the electric heaters. The electric hot water tank is especially wasteful. I’d love to see cheaper electric prices, but it doesn’t seem likely we would see deflation in energy costs anytime soon.
trollhattan
@jl:
It’s an odd twist to my schtick on climate, intended to get Certain People’s attention. At its most basic, we’ve recently seen the largest population dislocation since WWII in the Middle East and North Africa, and it will pale compared to what will occur when especially agricultural systems and urban water systems collapse due to climate shifts.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
I have a standard electric kitchen and pans that I am fond of, warts and all, because I know them. That said, I’d love gas, even with the occasional uneven results – I like the notion of the faster “heating on demand”, the way that baked items brown, etc.
Roger Moore
@Steeplejack:
I did move from gas at my old place to induction at my current place. As I said @in my response to rikyrah, the only big drawback was the need to replace my old Corning Visions cookware with induction-compatible stainless steel. I love just about everything else about it. The only possible drawback I didn’t mention there is that the glass cooktop is more fragile than cast iron grates, so if you are the kind of person who tends to slam things down onto surfaces rather than placing them down gently, you might have a problem.
John Revolta
I’ve owned a few houses from the teens & twenties and I love ’em. Acouple of them had the old gas lines for electric lighting in them. Electricity was already in use by then but builders would sometimes install the gas lines just in case electric lights were to go out of fashion or something.
rikyrah
@Roger Moore:
thanks for this lesson. I have been curious about it.
boatboy_srq
Dad, when left USN, went to work for Westinghouse. He landed in their strategic weapons division (Polaris and Poseidon FBM systems), but he had access to the whole range of Westinghouse offerings as an employee – including their home appliances. When Westinghouse exited the home appliance market and sold that division, he bought new kitchen appliance sets for every house the family had at the time. Some of those 1960s ranges and fridges lasted into the early 2000s. They do not build like that anymore.
Miss Bianca
@jl: Oh, so *now* climate change is a happenin’ thing, baby? You *don’t* say!
Dorothy A. Winsor
I have one of those flat top electric stoves here. Before I always had gas, but this place is afraid the old people will set themselves on fire.
maeve
I once lived in Hall Park, Oklahoma which was developed in the 60’s as an “all-electric” community. I was in their town office once and there was a newspaper clipping on the wall with pictures of their opening ceremony – the high-light was an actor who a spokesman for GE – someone named Ronald Reagan.
The all-electric part didn’t persist. My house was not one of the originals but built in the 80s so it had gas heating. Hall Park no longer exists as a separate town because it has merged with Norman, Oklahoma.
trollhattan
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
We have a “dual-fuel” range because a gas cooktop is our preference, while the electric convection oven likewise seems more flexible. It has proven beneficial to have the gas range when the power goes out.
Major Major Major Major
@Ohio Mom:
I have a hard enough time enjoying concerts that are indoors and have 1,000 attendees, this rally would be worse, especially as I would be attending alone. Just re-checked the time and it doesn’t start until 7, I’ll probably pass, tbh
Sab
@Roger Moore: Does induction work with cast iron pans?
Sab
@Roger Moore: Oh. So cast iron is out. Oh well.
John Revolta
@John Revolta: Gas lines for gas lighting. Duh.
Steeplejack
@Roger Moore:
Thanks for the info. You must be good people, because I, too, had a set of Corning Visions back in the day (circa 2000?)! Kinda weird, but I liked it.
The only complaint I’ve seen about induction cooktops that I haven’t seen addressed much is that they’re noisy. But I got the impression that is a problem mostly with the cheap ones.
This is making me think about getting a burner when I get home. I have a friend in Atlanta who got one and raves about it. I’ll check and see which one she got.
Tony Jay
I’m sorry, I must have misunderstood. They took their kids to what the fucking what now?
That’s a ‘thing’ is it? People do that?
(Silent scream of horror)
Marcopolo
@Gin & Tonic: In a rush so commenting before reading the entire thread but SECONDED! And don’t forget to take a hand clicker so you can count the crowd size for us. Looks like great weather for the rally too.
Hope everyone is having a lovely day.
Ohio Mom
@Major Major Major Major: I get that. Especially if you are not to type to talk to whoever you are standing next to.
Another option is waiting until nine or so to get on the back of the selfie line.
Steeplejack
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
Probably a good move in a senior-living community.
Marcopolo
@Major Major Major Major: Ah well, hope some NYC jackal manages to make it there and files a report. The largest election rally I ever attended was 75K people at the Gateway Arch in StL to hear Obama speak in the run up to the 2008 election. That was a pretty amazing event.
Steeplejack
@Sab:
I think cast iron will work, unless you’re talking about the “slamming down” part.
Aziz, light!
@Sab: Induction works best of all with cast iron, which makes the most efficient use of the electricity. But not all stainless steel pans work on induction cooktops, as some of the cheaper ones with a thin layer of steel over an aluminum core don’t contain enough steel. Take a magnet to the store; if it sticks the pan will work. No great loss in my case as the only pan I had to give up was a cheap asparagus steamer.
My induction experience is that it heats twice as fast for half the power.
JaneE
My first choice for cooking is induction. Fast, quick regulation, and very little added heat into the room (depends on what you cook), plus you can clean up spills while cooking. I bought one set of induction compatible Circulon, and already had some Le Creuset and cast iron. I have used gas, regular coil electric, radiant smooth top electric, and induction. Induction is IMO the best of all.
germy
frosty
@boatboy_srq: My dad worked for GE when he started out and all our appliances were GE. Moved to Bendix and they got replaced by Kenmore, mostly. Went to Westinghouse and the appliances changed accordingly. Funny, that.
Ohio Mom
Our 1976 ranch is all electric. Our suburban subdivision was built in stages. Other streets have gas lines but not ours, for reasons lost to history.
The main heat is a heat pump, which works fine for AC and the more temperate parts of winter. When it gets really cold and we have to use the auxiliary system, ouch!, that gets pricey.
I don’t love or hate being all electric. It’s been so long since I cooked with gas, I’d have to learn how to do it all over again.
The most salient characteristic of this house is its bad basement. Previous fixes have failed; the latest structural engineer just sent us his report, and many dollars are about to be spent. Sigh/weep.
Major Major Major Major
@Tony Jay: welcome to Colorado.
Steeplejack
@Marcopolo:
I think RedDirtGirl said she was going.
cope
@Major Major Major Major:
When I was a long-haired college freshman at a liberal college in a rural Illinois town, I went to see Everett Dirksen give a public address in the town square one afternoon. I don’t even remember remote TV coverage of this late 60s event.
Anyway, his booming voice and comment about farmers grabbing the “…lacteal conduits…” of cows while milking them endeared him to me forever (and here I am telling this story decades on). I could never/didn’t vote for his Republican ways but was always glad I experienced the event in the flesh.
janee
@Sab: Some manufacturers will say that you shouldn’t use cast iron. Others, like the one I have now say it is all right to use. It is a glass smooth top, so you don’t want to drop any pan on it really, but I have used my cast iron skillet (older than I am) on all my induction burners and it works wonderfully. I just set it down carefully, as I do with any heavy pan. Pre-heating with induction is much quicker than with gas or coil electric. I had to learn to have all my food ready to go instead of using pre-heat time to get stuff out of the fridge. The first time I used induction with my old prep routine I charred one side of my hamburger to a hockey puck before I remembered how to turn the heat down.
Ohio Mom
@Steeplejack: We use cast iron on our regular ceramic top, even though you aren’t supposed to, and have no problems.
The thing to avoid is what my old babysitter did while cleaning her kitchen, which is kneel on the cooktop to get closer to the hood to give it a good scrubbing. THAT definitely cracks and ruins the cooktop.
Major Major Major Major
@Marcopolo: I was at the 100k event in civic center park (I think) in Denver that fall, it was great! Except that I was dizzy and dehydrated by the end. I was working for the campaign so, don’t sleep well, chug coffee, get there early, leave late. Got late lunch at Hickenlooper’s pub after, he was bartending & gave us the Obama beer he’d brewed.
@Ohio Mom: yeah I’m like, surprisingly fragile any more, and I’m… 34 lol. Mostly anxiety I suppose.
JPL
@zhena gogolia: The girl with the yellow dress deserved to have the hors d’oeuvres since she was wearing a petticoat and those things were scratchy and uncomfortable.
J R in WV
When we bought the farm back in the late 1970s, there were still wells on the place, and we had free gas. it was well-head gas, untreated and a little funky, but free meant there were little gas heaters in the garage, the chicken coop, etc, etc.
Even when we built the new house, it was still free, so very foolish not to install all gas utilities. But not long after we moved into the new house, the new purchaser of the O&G rights locally plugged all the old wells, and drilled new wells on property they owned outright, and so everyone lost their “free” gas, which wasn’t really free, it was the tiny payment to surface property owners for the huge hassle of living in the Oil patch.
This wasn’t hard on us, we were double income no kids, but our neighbors who were subsistence farmers, grew everything they ate, sold a small tobacco crop ($2,700 / year) for their whole cash income for the year, it tore a big old bloody hole in their budget. We like our gas utilities, it even runs the emergency power plant when the power grid fails.
Steeplejack
@Ohio Mom:
I used my cast-iron frying pan on the ceramic cooktop in my previous place and didn’t have any problems. I would assume induction would be similar in sturdiness. But, yeah, no kneeling.
Uncle Cosmo
@frosty: Ask him if he every worked on the ATA or NASP.
We must’ve worked at different locations together. Almost all the radar work was done at the main building in Linthicum, just past the end of one of the runways at BWI. Kind of lucky that no commercial flight landing ever short-hopped that runway & hit the building. (They kept a corporate jet in a hangar on-site for in-flight testing of their radars. A taxiway connected to that runway so they could roll it right out & fly when the coast was clear.)
I worked in Hunt Valley off I-83 well north of Baltimore, in the Integrated Logistics Support Division (ILSD). The people who were located near BWI referred to us as “The Country Club;” we called them, simply, “Down Below.”
(ETA: I used to roar with laughter whenever some new acquaintance said to me, “You work at Westinghouse? You must know (…)” – there were only 17,000 of us & it was a shocker when I actually DID know the person in question.)
Some of those radar guys (mostly guys) were really good. Among other things they took over the radar for the ill-fated Advanced Tactical Aircraft (ATA) in the late 80s when the prime contractor (Norden IIRC) screwed the pooch, & brought it in on time, on spec & on budget. But no good deed goes unpunished, & the demise of the ATA (when the prime contractor, General Demonics, misled the vindictive SOB who was then SecDef, one Richard Bruce Cheney) touched off the first great wave of layoffs in early 1991.
One project I worked on with them was a >400-foot airship to sortie with USN battle groups on several-week deployments carrying a radar that could spot sub-launched anti-ship missiles in the boost phase, before they slipped down to the deck. They only had 8,000 lbs for the whole unit & came up with an innovative design that would have worked. (I was there as the “wet-blanket” maintainability guy to tell them that they were damn well NOT going to put some low-MTBF items up in the gasbag because NO ONE was going to put on scuba gear & try to replace them in a 100% helium environment.)
One of the few times I actually needed my SECRET clearance was for that project, when they briefed us on just how far out that radar had to see, i.e., the range of Soviet sea-skimmers at the time. (For those of you who’ve never worked for the Department of Death, be aware that most classified information – especially the really highly classified stuff – had nothing to do with what our hardware & software could do, but what we knew about what theirs could do.)
(Yeah, I know – TMI.)
Panurge
@jl:
sissy stuff that will un-man the noble virile Europeans
I generally use “HIPPIES WINNING”. Honestly, it’s been a thing since long before there were hippies.
Aleta
RedDirtGirl, if you’re around: hope you’re feeling better. I think you mentioned going to hear Warren today. If you go, I hope she and the crowd give you + everyone a palliative buzz. When I heard her speak (2017 to the Boston Women’s march crowd) she was glorious. No matter how the primary voting goes, I think she is something rare.
Uncle Cosmo
@J R in WV:
And you’ve been posting via
assholeastral projection ever since? Zounds…didn’t know they had Internet in the Hereafter. ;^pThresherK
Westinghouse, you say? I thought this was going to be about the upcoming movie The Current War!
(Yes, I’m just the kind of geek who’s excited for a movie about AC v. DC lighting.)
Uncle Cosmo
Just FTR here’s a few variations on the Westinghouse logo that was in use when the corporate implosion began:https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=westinghouse+logo+1989.
Technically, by the rules of Old West branding, I worked at “The Circle-W-Bar Dude ranch” but who’s counting…
Ukko
We just bought a Gold Medallion home built in 1961. This is so cool to see what they thought of it back then. This place has been converted to gas for heat but everything else is still electric.
We still have the fancy plaque and doorbell when you come in, don’t tell on us about the furnace. I’d hate to lose the medallion.
JPL
@Ukko: That is so cool.
JPL
trump is rambling.. Now when he entered office there was very little ammunition.
geg6
@frosty:
Yep, me too. And I really think it would great to have a front pager who can go and then give us his/her impressions of the event. Both SPW’s speech and the crowd reactions.
SiubhanDuinne
@JPL:
And her brother deserved to have the hors d’oeuvres since he was locked and loaded. Holstered six-shooter, hip-slung gun belt. So cool.
catclub
@Roger Moore:
I immediately thought of how I could work around that – an iron disk in the bottom of the pan. That should work if the induction effect
can cross the thickness of the non-magnetic pan. Yes, not really practical from cleaning and cooking in a pan problems, but for proof of principle.
Aleta
@Major Major Major Major:
Personally: If (only if) you feel an impulse to go, go to the edge. Or just to an approach where it begins to move together. Then if you feel drawn you can follow that in. But if you don’t feel OK in the crowd, or if you had no impulse except a mental one to begin with, I wouldn’t risk getting drained by it.
Maybe it started by now anyway….
JPL
@SiubhanDuinne: lol
Aleta
BTW Warren’s Washington SQ speech will be on CSPAN’s internet site. (I think you may need an account, for ex a cable sub, to watch.) But it may also show up for free on youtube at 7pm (seems to be her starting time? ) if a viewer puts it up.
PaulWartenberg
new thread needed. Manhattan DA just subpoenaed 8 years of trump’s federal tax returns. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/16/nyregion/trump-tax-returns-cy-vance.html
Major Major Major Major
@Aleta: “doors” at 4, “event” 7-9, so I imagine she’ll be up around 8. And yeah, it’s more of a “should go” feeling than a “want to go” I guess, so that’s a red flag.
@geg6:
I agree, but I’ll just have to see how I feel. You’ll notice I don’t even go to meetups.
Gin & Tonic
@PaulWartenberg: The Manhattan DA is Cy Vance. I wouldn’t trust him any farther than I could throw him.
TaMara (HFG)
@Steeplejack: I hate gas stoves. Just a personal preference. But I have a chef friend who says if you cannot have the temps of a restaurant gas range don’t bother, and houses don’t have that type of gas connection. So I feel okay with my induction choice. YMMV
mad citizen
@ThresherK: Me too! On excited for the current war movie.
I watched this video a few weeks ago and thought it was cool. I thought about listing all the predictions about appliances into those that came to pass and those that did not.
There is talk in the industry about Beneficial Electrification. Though it’s a big area, the only one I can think of is transportation. I’m attending a conference on this next month so might report back.
I too grew up in a Gold Medallion home, American Electric Power it was.
boatboy_srq
@frosty: General Electric was a four-letter word in my home when I was little. I was so thoroughly imprinted that to this day I can’t buy GE anything, and houses I look at all get the appliances swapped out (existing) or credited (new).
Gin & Tonic
@Major Major Major Major: I think there are far more people here who think you should go than who think you shouldn’t, if we’re going to be democratic about it.
trollhattan
@Gin & Tonic:
Still kicking myself for not taking my kid to the Hillary rally earlier, before the line was too long for everybody to enter the hall. We were this [fingers nearly touching] close.
If you have any doubt re. go/not go, then go.
Mary G
@Major Major Major Major: Go and stand at the edge of the crowd and see if you can hear. If not, do something else. I get panic attacks when smushed in a crowd.
TaMara (HFG)
@Tony Jay: Here you go:
https://youtu.be/WtU1YYxQXJw
Steeplejack
I just looked at the induction demo video posted by mrmoshpotato above. Interesting. The presenter said that the noise that people complain about can be caused by “low ferrous content” cookware, not the induction range itself. The rig she uses in the demo is very quiet.
@TaMara (HFG):
I’ve had a gas range in very few of the places I’ve lived, and that decades ago, before I became anything resembling a foodie (or a good cook), so I don’t have much basis for comparison. But if I was furnishing my dream place I think I would lean toward induction, or at least do some deep research.
Yarrow
LOL. Milo Yiannopoulos bought a ticket for a furry convention. The attendees weren’t happy. The conference was looking into its options. And….
Deplatfurned!
prostratedragon
@PaulWartenberg: When the time comes, whose going to explain to him the difference between “indicting” and “inditing?” (And Gin & Tonic has a point about anything coming by way of Vance.)
TenguPhule
Reinforcing yet another terrible jewish stereotype. /golfclap
Steeplejack
Shane Gillis bootski from SNL.
Yarrow
I want to live in that house. It looks amazing. There’s a hobby center and it even has a water fountain! A combination electric fireplace and electric bbq. Indoors! I love it. When they showed the “weather center” I thought they were going to say the dad got to control the weather.
frosty
@Uncle Cosmo: Dad passed away in 2005 so I can’t ask him anything, unfortunately. He was in Linthicum the whole time. I’m not up on all your acronyms but I know he worked on the F-16 radar and the DIVAD. At one point he was working in a Tempest protected room, speaking of secrecy.
Your post wasn’t TMI. I’ll go back and read it again.
JPL
@Steeplejack: Good.
Steeplejack
@TenguPhule:
/golfclap? /rimshot!
Steeplejack
@Yarrow:
I thought the sliding wall was going to reveal an all-electric sex dungeon, but, okay, slide projector, fine.
Yarrow
@Steeplejack: Not really surprised. The protests were only going to get louder.
Yarrow
@Steeplejack: I love the whole thing. That house must be huge.
Shana
@Sab: My induction works with cast iron. The key is to try to attach a magnet to the bottom of the pan. If it sticks it will work on an induction cooktop.
I haven’t read all the way through the thread yet, but something else about induction that hasn’t been mentioned is how fast you can bring something to a boil. Our cooktop has a setting at the very top of the range that will bring a tea kettle of water to a full boil in 2 minutes. Big pots of water for pasta may take a couple more minutes, but still very fast.
trollhattan
@Yarrow:
Love how they dismiss the kids then open the secret projector wall and dig out mom and dad’s 16mm porn collection. Fireplace cone of silence was pretty kewhl, too. Weather station was pretty weird and the visiting dad looked like Bob from “Twin Peaks.”
Tony Jay
@Major Major Major Major:
If the Pilgrim Fathers could have foreseen what their ambitions would unleash…. they’d have stayed in Holland. Taken up dope. Chilled.
Migrating bloody tarantulas? Tarantulas!?! My least favorite word in any language.
Steeplejack
@JPL:
It amazes me that big-shot entertainment enterprises still don’t get the hang of that wacky “vetting” thing. I guess everybody is so busy being edgy and hip that they can’t do anything beyond a “first screen” Google search.
jl
@prostratedragon: Some has to indite the indictment.
Steeplejack
@Yarrow:
I love mid-century everything! It was interesting how we have arrived at a lot of what they were predicting via completely different avenues. “Play the No. 1 hit of the day!” “Alexa, play . . .”
Tony Jay
@TaMara (HFG):
Oh no. No way. This is a nice boat. Lovely and safe. Not getting out AT ALL.
mrmoshpotato
@Tony Jay: Chupacabra!
Yarrow
@Tony Jay: Love the empty podium today. Boris is such a coward.
mrmoshpotato
@TaMara (HFG): Oh 50’s creature features. :)
trollhattan
@Tony Jay:
Thought my friend was making it the hell up but later learned he was not kidding–when they constructed Interstate 5 past his town in California’s San Joaquin Valley, for several years afterward tarantulas would stream across it at certain times during the fall. Traffic has since taken care of that nonsense, but I’ve never quite accommodated the visions it conjures.
mrmoshpotato
@Yarrow: LOL
When even furries hate you…
Yarrow
@Steeplejack: Yeah and the video doorbell. Ring says hello.
Shana
@ThresherK: What did you think of “The Last Days of Night”? I’m not an expert on this stuff but found it interesting.
JPL
@mrmoshpotato: THEM
It’d be really cool if New Mexico released them tonight
Major Major Major Major
@mrmoshpotato:
‘Even’? They’re a pretty liberal bunch.
mrmoshpotato
@JPL: I’m sorry. Those are ants. Totally fine in giant, rampaging form.
Uncle Cosmo
@frosty: Sorry Dad’s no longer with us, it could’ve been interesting comparing memories. F-16 radars were AN/APG-66 and -68. I recall one day when an F-16 with one of our radars was flying up the East Coast & the (W) management without telling any of us arranged to have the pilot fly a few passes past our buildings at a few thousand feet – & set off a fire drill for all the Hunt Valley buildings a few minutes before the Frigging Falcon flew overhead so we could all see it (and HEAR it – for a little airplane that fucker was LOUD).
DIVADS (Divisional Air Defense System), the M247 Sergeant York. Intended to find & destroy enemy helicopters on the battlefield. The radar (Westinghouse’s contribution) was specifically programmed to home in on radar reflections from rapidly rotating metal blades. There is a (possibly legendary) story that the first time they tested it in front of an audience of bigwigs, the radar acquired – & the turret with its twin 40mm guns spun to target – a Spot-A-Pot parked over near the bigshots’ bleachers – & that there was a bigwig using the facilities at the time, causing no small consternation. (Not sure I believe that, too good to be true – but if it had been one Richard Bruce Cheney, the gunner might have saved the country no end of nastiness that day…)
JR
You would have had to have been incredibly wealthy to afford all that tech (hardwired) in the Westinghouse promo spot,
I love the dining chairs though.
Shana
@Steeplejack: That was my thought too. I grew up in a house my father designed that was very Frank Lloyd Wright-ish full of mid-century modern furniture. I’ve taken a lot of it including our Eames chair – not white like in the Westinghouse video – and remember a lot of our furniture in those colors.
In case you’re in the market for anything, there’s a local furniture store in the DC area called Modern Mobler that has a lot of interesting stuff. I’m sure they ship if it’s not local to you.
Uncle Cosmo
@Uncle Cosmo: (Just to clarify, the radar picked up the rotating blades of the exhaust fan of the Portapotty – which no one noticed was facing the demonstration area.)
Steeplejack
@Shana:
I’m in Falls Church, so it’s local enough.Thanks.
Miss Bianca
@Tony Jay: I have witnessed the Great Tarantula Migration on the road where I live (OK, next county over, but still). What’s more, my friend D insisted on capturing one and trying to keep it in a terrarium. Didn’t work out so well, altho’ I do know of other people who have succeeded in keeping tarantulas as pets. Well, “pets” may be overstating the case. Keeping them in captivity, anyway.
The little brown fuzzy ones that we have here are…almost cute. For a spider.
Note I said “almost”.
JR
What’s remarkable is that Americans circa 1950 could envision large portions of the world as it exists today. It’s not how much things have changed, but in many ways how little.
Picture a daguerreotype in 1880 trying to accomplish the same for 1950. There’s no way that they’d have been able to envision antibiotics, chemotherapy, or really anything approaching modern medical practice, which was largely being established around the 1950s. Electricity was new, and the current war between Edison and Westinghouse had yet to reach its peak. There was no atomic theory, no quantum mechanics, no population genetics, no molecular biology, no pharmacology, and really only the most nascent work in microbiology and biochemistry. That’s setting aside all the huge advances in consumer technology, particularly the automobile, but also plastics, mass media, etc.
cckids
@trollhattan:
The first time my spouse went camping in Death Valley (yes, ick), it was a full moon night in the fall. He woke up in the middle of the night to see the silhouettes of tarantulas all over the outside of the tent.
It was years and years before he went back. The whole story just gives me shudders. And still, I’ll take tarantulas over scorpions any day. Have I mentioned how happy I am to be out of the desert?
JPL
@cckids: Your tweet and Miss Bianca’s will cause nightmares for some of us. just sayin
gwangung
Heh. Steampunk.
lurker dean
@Steeplejack: excellent. that a-hole had the nerve to say that “it’s okay to be racist to asians.” fucker, guess he found out it isn’t true outside of the small racist comedy clubs where he performed. as someone noted, he’s almost certain to be invited to the white house, so he and the orange idiot can wallow in their sadness of how tough it is being a white male.
Jay
https://news.yahoo.com/exclusive-russia-carried-out-a-stunning-breach-of-fbi-communications-system-escalating-the-spy-game-on-us-soil-090024212.html#
Yutsano
@Major Major Major Major: Eh. There’s a few conservative fur kids out there. Most of those tend to avoid cons. But definitely the more liberal sorts flock to the con scene.
misterpuff
@Steeplejack: It’s a time machine.
Miss Bianca
@JPL: Mind you, I still freak over capturing spiders in the bathtub. For some reason, the long-legged ones *insist* on trying to make a go of it in there. Aaagh…
But we are remarkably free of other creepy-crawlies such as cockroaches, etc., so it’s a fair cop.
Jay
NotMax
Déjà freaking vu as those are two things (the migration and the video) to which I linked from here only within the past month or two.
Prime includes a treasure trove of compilations of those same type of promotional videos, “Classic Kitchen Films,” “Classic Food Films,” “Classic Television Films,” “Classic Airline Films,” and so on.
@gwangung
Looking Backward by Edward Bellamy, about the world in 2000, was published in 1888. And it goes almost without saying that Jules Verne’s books were mostly published during the 1860s.
By the 1880s, daguerreotypes were ancient tech, superseded by the 1860s by glass negatives.
Tony Jay
@Miss Bianca:
Nooooooo. Oh, nooooo. Can’t even imagine wanting to be in the same country as one of those hairy leggy bastards, never mind the same house.
Years back I was working in a cinema with a guy who mentioned in passing he had a tarantula skin (they shed them, right?) In a glass case.
One evening I came down after my break and saw him chatting to staff at the food booth, and as I watched he took something out of his coat to show them. Must have been, what, half the length of a football pitch away, and the distant sillhouette of that thing still made my dangle-bag shrivel up like a lump of fat on a hot skillet. I hid upstairs for a good ten minutes until he was gone.
Phobias are fun!
Jay
dmsilev
Huh.
(Link here. PNAS is a serious journal so this isn’t a joke apparently.)
Edit: “Because there is no market for intercessory thoughts and prayers (i.e., thoughts and prayers conducted on behalf of others), their value cannot be inferred from existing prices.”
As we speak, someone on Wall Street is figuring out how to monetize thoughts and prayers.
Aleta
I’m thinking to get an induction cooktop (prob 2 burner) for the cabin, for safety. Would like one for the house too, for safety, cause my partner recently has some things going on that seem to be affecting his short term memory. I had the impression they also have an auto shutoff feature but in a quick search I haven’t seen that in the countertop ones I’ve looked at. If anyone has recommendations for countertop ones (either kind — plug-in ones or wired-in ones that are not super expensive to install) do tell please.
Miss Bianca
@Tony Jay: I remember a high school buddy who was afraid of spiders who decided that he was going to give himself shock treatment in the form of actually going to a pet store, determined to get a tarantula for a pet. The way he described it, his skin was crawling up the wall to get away as the guy at the pet store started telling him how awesome tarantulas were as pets, how you could hold them and let them walk on you, etc, but he was young and dumb enough to say “OK” to all that until he saw the guy pull on this pair of gauntlets and grab a pair of tongs to retrieve his tarantula, at which point he was all like, “WTF, I thought you said these things were so tame,” and the guy’s response (this was Detroit, after all) was something to the effect of, “I’m terrified of the motherfuckers” – at which point, my friend finally saw the light and got the hell out of there – no tarantula for him!
Heh, I’ll have to ask him if he remembers telling me that story and whatever happened to his spider phobia.
Ruckus
@dmsilev:
I thought the NRA had already done that.
Spanky
@dmsilev: Trump’s IRS will calculate the value of the thoughts and prayers sent to survivors, and they will be taxed accordingly.
germy
This is like a 1980s Rodney Dangerfield movie, except in the movie Rodney eventually sees the error of his ways.
germy
The red line has been crossed.
Aleta
@Miss Bianca: At around 20-21 I lived in the mts near Oaxaca; a neighbor had a feral pet tarantula who lived outside but came to his doorstep for a saucer of milk everyday. It was interesting to watch it walk purposefully to the saucer as soon as he put it down, and then drink. It would also hold still as Inomar petted its back. He said it was gentle and friendly, and It did seem to have a gentle consciousness.
JPL
@Miss Bianca: true story.. A friend called with a scorpion in a porcelain sink, and the first words were so I have the hammer… I suggested probably not that.
ThresherK
@Shana: I had not heard of it but now want to read it (thanx!). I did see The Imitation Game and enjoyed it greatly.
Baud
@Ruckus:
They’re called indulgences.
Tony Jay
@Miss Bianca:
Ha!
Anecdote 2. First week of University a bunch of 3rd year students were asking Freshers to do some kind of ‘psychological study’ in return for beer. People told me it was no big deal so, when approached, I said yes please, I like beer.
Sat me down at a table with something on it covered with a sheet. Turned on their video camera, and whipped off the sheet to show an A3 card with a drawing of a spider. A few minutes of cards, some of them nice countryside scenes, some images of angry faces, nothing very shocking, me thinking of lovely free beer. Last card gets pulled away, there’s a glass case with a live tarantula in it waving its forelegs and leaning on the glass.
Five minutes I sat there, completely frozen, trying to look anywhere but at that mandibled bastard while the 3rd years grinned and took notes. made their study for them. They’d never seen anyone go – that – pale so quickly.
Yes, I have a problem.
frosty
@Uncle Cosmo: Thanks for that, great story. DIVAD wasn’t a success from what I just read.
During the Cold War there were three companies building radars for the DOD. Turns out Dad worked at all three. BOMARC and Nike when he was at Bendix.
Gin & Tonic
@cckids: I’ve been to Death Valley several times, and camped there. There are some surprisingly temperate spots.
NotMax
BTW, quite informative and not at all dry documentary about George Westinghouse, Westinghouse: The Life and Times of An American Icon is, IIRC, on Prime.
Kelly
@cckids:
One night camping with my wife on a Colorado river beach in Grand Canyon we found a nice little slot back into a cliff about 10 feet wide and 20 feet deep. Nice sand and out of the wind. Just before I went to sleep I looked over at the wall barely lit by my wife’s flashlight that was pointing the other way. It was covered with tiny red eyes. We slept fine anyway.
Jay
Welcome to the nightmare.
zhena gogolia
@JPL:
I remember!
Fair Economist
I’ve always loved gas ranges and hated electric ranges because of the slow response of electric.
I’ve always loved electric ovens and hated gas ones because I always worry they will go “boom”. I’ve had the oven fail to light, and that is scary.
It’s about time to replace our oven/range, which literally has Lego pieces inside the controller to replace broken switches (my husband is very inventive) and one lighter on the range which doesn’t work (shudder), so the induction tips are very useful.
Shana
@ThresherK: Late, I know, so you may not see this but: my book group read it a year or so ago and everyone liked it and we had a good discussion.
Shana
@Fair Economist: We live where we can’t get gas, which I always preferred for burners, and love our induction.
FYI. Most All-Clad is not induction-compatible. I only had to replace one All-Clad piece though, the only one I owned, which is in storage for my cooking daughter when she gets to a point where she has the room for a multi-pot.
Ruckus
@Uncle Cosmo:
My shop was located about 5 miles from the Skunk Works so when the SR71 was officially retired in the early 90s they did a low pass over the power line next to my shop, so low and slow that the customers at my shop standing outside the front door and I could see the pilot. He turned 90 deg right and went full throttle/afterburners with the 3 of us looking right down the pipes, about 300 feet away. He had to cut them off after a few seconds, to avoid going supersonic at about 200 feet over the Skunk Works.
Not as good as getting a lock on the porta potty with possibly dick in it but damn impressive.
zhena gogolia
@Chyron HR:
When I read this comment earlier today I was too distracted to understand it. But of course you’re right! That’s just what’s missing!
zhena gogolia
I only noticed on my second viewing that they have a balalaika on the wall. WTF?
Gin & Tonic
@Shana: We live where there is no gas service, but wanted gas when we remodeled the kitchen, so we put in a propane tank. Now there’s a gas range, and I don’t think I’d ever go back.
Tehanus
@Tony Jay: In the 9th grade I was sitting in the biology classroom, in the first row of desks, with the counter where the teacher did demonstrations right in front of me. I wasn’t really paying attention to it because the teacher was walking around the room talking. All of a sudden, about 15 or 20 minutes into the class, I noticed a jar on the counter, only a couple of feet away — with a live tarantula in it, wiggling its legs. I let out a scream that (as I was told later) they heard in the office, on the other side of the school, and leaped to my feet and ran out of the room, and when the teacher came out and found me hyperventilating and sobbing in the corridor, he couldn’t persuade me to go back into the room until he promised to put the jar where I couldn’t see it.
And I’m still terrified of spiders, even little bitty ones.