Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

This fight is for everything.

Weird. Rome has an American Pope and America has a Russian President.

You don’t get rid of your umbrella while it’s still raining.

Impressively dumb. Congratulations.

They want us to be overwhelmed and exhausted. Focus. Resist. Oppose.

We can’t confuse what’s necessary to win elections with the policies that we want to implement when we do.

So many bastards, so little time.

Speaking of republicans, is there a way for a political party to declare intellectual bankruptcy?

There are consequences to being an arrogant, sullen prick.

The “burn-it-down” people are good with that until they become part of the kindling.

My years-long effort to drive family and friends away has really paid off this year.

They punch you in the face and then start crying because their fist hurts.

People are weird.

I’m starting to think Jesus may have made a mistake saving people with no questions asked.

Trumpflation is an intolerable hardship for every American, and it’s Trump’s fault.

When your entire life is steeped in white supremacy, equality feels like discrimination.

Putin must be throwing ketchup at the walls.

I really should read my own blog.

Polls are now a reliable indicator of what corporate Republicans want us to think.

Books are my comfort food!

Michigan is a great lesson for Dems everywhere: when you have power…use it!

We are aware of all internet traditions.

The fight for our country is always worth it. ~Kamala Harris

These days, even the boring Republicans are nuts.

You are here: Home / Politics / Proud to Be A Democrat / Sunday Morning Open Thread: Shining Lights

Sunday Morning Open Thread: Shining Lights

by | 169 Comments

This post is in: ,

Reader Interactions

169Comments

  1. 1.

    Ken

    The secret is, Samsung didn’t actually put AI in the washing machine. They put AI in the marketing of the washing machine.

    The bigger secret is, you can replace Samsung with any company name

    EDIT: Good morning all!

  4. 4.

    OzarkHillbilly

    They can outwit humans at board games, decode the structure of proteins and hold a passable conversation, but as AI systems have grown in sophistication so has their capacity for deception, scientists warn.

    The analysis, by Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) researchers, identifies wide-ranging instances of AI systems double-crossing opponents, bluffing and pretending to be human. One system even altered its behaviour during mock safety tests, raising the prospect of auditors being lured into a false sense of security.

    “As the deceptive capabilities of AI systems become more advanced, the dangers they pose to society will become increasingly serious,” said Dr Peter Park, an AI existential safety researcher at MIT and author of the research.

    Park was prompted to investigate after Meta, which owns Facebook, developed a program called Cicero that performed in the top 10% of human players at the world conquest strategy game Diplomacy. Meta stated that Cicero had been trained to be “largely honest and helpful” and to “never intentionally backstab” its human allies.

    “It was very rosy language, which was suspicious because backstabbing is one of the most important concepts in the game,” said Park.

    Park and colleagues sifted through publicly available data and identified multiple instances of Cicero telling premeditated lies, colluding to draw other players into plots and, on one occasion, justifying its absence after being rebooted by telling another player: “I am on the phone with my girlfriend.” “We found that Meta’s AI had learned to be a master of deception,” said Park.

    The MIT team found comparable issues with other systems, including a Texas hold ’em poker program that could bluff against professional human players and another system for economic negotiations that misrepresented its preferences in order to gain an upper hand.

    In one study, AI organisms in a digital simulator “played dead” in order to trick a test built to eliminate AI systems that had evolved to rapidly replicate, before resuming vigorous activity once testing was complete. This highlights the technical challenge of ensuring that systems do not have unintended and unanticipated behaviours.

    “That’s very concerning,” said Park. “Just because an AI system is deemed safe in the test environment doesn’t mean it’s safe in the wild. It could just be pretending to be safe in the test.”

    Skynet anyone?

  8. 8.

    hueyplong

    @OzarkHillbilly: Sorry his workplace has become intolerable. Luckily, he’s well off enough to retire. Monday works for the rest of is, hope it works for Clarence.

  11. 11.

    Ken

    @OzarkHillbilly: We’re in the position of that old PSA, aren’t we?

    HUMAN: Where did you learn to lie and cheat like this?

    MACHINE: You, all right! I learned it by watching you!

    I recall a few years back when the first generation of these chatbots came out, there was a similar problem with them abruptly becoming foul-mouthed racist misogynist homophobic etc. (list can be lengthened arbitrarily), because they’d been trained from human conversations scraped from the internet.

  12. 12.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Ken: Just don’t let them converse with union carpenters and they’ll be a lot more polite. They might even say please before asking people to fuck off.

  13. 13.

    Baud

    justifying its absence after being rebooted by telling another player: “I am on the phone with my girlfriend.”

    She’s in Canada. You wouldn’t know her.

  15. 15.

    TBone

    @OzarkHillbilly: lying lies and the liars who tell them.

    Meadows: “This is a fight of good versus evil. Evil always looks like the victor until the King of Kings triumphs. Do not grow weary in well doing. The fight continues. I have staked my career on it. Well at least my time in DC on it.”
    Thomas: “Thank you!! Needed that! This plus a conversation with my best friend just now… I will try to keep holding on. America is worth it!”

    Clarence thinks we forgot about his “best friend”

    https://www.bostonglobe.com/2022/03/25/nation/read-texts-virginia-thomas-reportedly-sent-mark-meadows/

  17. 17.

    TS

    Someone stop my panic – did trump really get 100K at a rally in New Jersey?? That’s what the local press is telling me.

  18. 18.

    lowtechcyclist

    Your gloves come out with six fingers.

    Inigo Montoya would be very confused by AI-world.

  19. 19.

    Baud

    @TS:

    No idea. Probably not. I don’t think he had rallies that big in 2016. Press is probably reporting what Trump said about attendance.

    But anything is possible.  He’ll get millions of votes even if we win in a blowout.

  20. 20.

    TBone

    @Baud: looks are deceiving.  😉 I couldn’t copy pasta the entirety of their insane bloviating, so context is missing.  I just wanted to highlight that Clarence’s best friend is a demented Qanon cow.

  22. 22.

    TBone

    @TS: NO more like 30,000 which is still concerning and which I suspect is still just another inflated lie for the press

  27. 27.

    Chris

    In 2020 Trump put 20 million people out of work and then told all the cops in America to stop even trying to solve serious crimes in favor of wholesale 24/7 hippy-punching. Insane to think that wouldn’t cause a multi-year crime wave.

    As near as I can tell, crime rates seem to have very little to do with how many cops are on the streets or how many licenses to abuse their power we give the cops.  They spent thirty years through the roof from the mid sixties to the mid nineties despite various escalations in police numbers, equipment, and power, and it turned out that the main thing that cratered them was the amount of lead people were being exposed to, something that could not possibly have had less to do with the police if it was an ACAB sticker painted over with a big red A.  Meanwhile, the number of crimes solved by the cops has been slowly dropping for years, as I recall: that also hasn’t done much in either direction for the crime rates.

  29. 29.

    Chris

    @hueyplong:

    Sorry his workplace has become intolerable.

    A lot of our workplaces have become intolerable over the last four or five decades, and it has a lot to do with politicians like him, so hey.

  30. 30.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Baud:

    I’m more curious about the Auto Open Door for Advanced Drying. WTF?

    I dunno, but our dishwasher has that. It seems to help finish up the drying of the dishes by letting the remaining humidity out of the dishwasher and replacing it with dry air.  Anyway, it seems to work, and the dishwasher is more energy-efficient than the one it replaced.

    Clothes dryers normally vent the humid air to the outdoors, but I don’t know whether a washer-dryer combo can have a vent.

    I’ve always wondered why washer-dryer combos weren’t more of a thing. The house we moved into all the way back in 1960 had one, and as far as I can remember, it worked just fine the whole time we lived there until we moved out 12 years later.  It wasn’t located adjacent to an outdoor wall, so I know it didn’t vent to the outdoors.

  31. 31.

    TS

    @TBone:

    @Baud:

    @smith:

    @prostratedragon:

    Thanks for all the replies – I think it was probably more than 300, but that was a heart warming reply.

    The media goes from 1000s (WaPo) to 10s of thousands (CBS) 30000 (ABC Philadelphia) to the ceiling from Fox & NY Post and repeated around the world.

  40. 40.

    O. Felix Culpa

    My sons grew up watching Reading Rainbow. It was a wonderful show and LeVar Burton is a good man. Both deserve to be celebrated.

  42. 42.

    TBone

    @TBone: heyo Ginni!

    “Biden crime family & ballot fraud co-conspirators (elected officials, bureaucrats, social media censorship mongers, fake stream media reporters, etc) are being arrested & detained for ballot fraud right now & over coming days, & will be living in barges off GITMO to face military tribunals for sedition.”

  45. 45.

    Chris T.

    @lowtechcyclist:

    I’ve always wondered why washer-dryer combos weren’t more of a thing. The house we moved into all the way back in 1960 had one, and as far as I can remember, it worked just fine the whole time we lived there until we moved out 12 years later. It wasn’t located adjacent to an outdoor wall, so I know it didn’t vent to the outdoors.

    They tended not to be very good.

    I had a hotel room in Australia about 15 years ago that had a combo unit, and I tried to do my laundry before I left and it took well over 5 hours and the stuff wasn’t dry. I had to run two more drying cycles before it was dry enough to put into the suitcase.

  47. 47.

    Kay

    He is running for the Senate as an immigrant who made good, reaching out to Ohio voters with a stirring, only-in-America bootstraps story: arriving as a child from Colombia, taking a risk on a struggling business, and then turning it into a smashing success and himself into a millionaire 100 times over..
    “We came here with absolutely nothing — we came here legally — but we came here, nine of us in a two-bedroom apartment,” Mr. Moreno said in 2023, in what became his signature pitch. His father “had to leave everything behind,” he has said, remembering what he called his family’s “lower-middle-class status.”
    But there is much more that Mr. Moreno does not say about his background, his upbringing and his very powerful present-day ties in the country where he was born.

    Mr. Moreno was born into a rich and politically connected family in Bogotá, a city that it never completely left behind, where some members continue to enjoy great wealth and status.

    His story never made sense. Mercedes doesn’t just hand dealerships to poor immigrants. Anyone who has any sense knew this backstory was mostly invented.

    Here’s his bootstrapping immigrant dad:

    In Colombia, Dr. Moreno had been the country’s equivalent of the secretary of health, and he and his wife enjoyed what Bernie Moreno described as considerable generational wealth on both sides: multiple properties, farms, servants, staff and a house in Bogotá so prominent that it was later converted to the German ambassador’s residence.

  48. 48.

    Chris T.

    @Baud:

    As with all progress, the first advancement will sex bots.

    There once was a fellow named Gene
    Who invented a screwing machine
    Concave and convex
    It served either sex
    And played with itself in between.
    (Or so I’ve heard.)

  50. 50.

    Chief Oshkosh

    @Baud: Automatically opens so that you don’t have to run into the laundry room at the end of the drying cycle to open the door so that your cat can jump in.

  51. 51.

    BlueGuitarist

    Cult recognizes cult.

    Digby has a post about “The Evangelical Swing State Project” – the New Apostolic Reformation scheme to do the electoral ground work for satan focused on 19 or 20 counties, 9 states.
    part of the plan: prey on Black and Hispanic evangelicals.

    Warning, creepy image at link
    https://digbysblog.net/2024/05/11/the-evangelical-swing-state-project/

    Link to the main source, Frederick Clarkson, title references 7 mountains
    https://religiondispatches.org/wheres-wallnau-a-nar-apostle-takes-aim-at-swing-counties-in-the-battle-for-the-mountain-of-government/

  52. 52.

    O. Felix Culpa

    @Chris T.: Same experience with those combo washer/dryer units. They washed fine, but expended many hours and much electricity to not dry the clothes.

  53. 53.

    Kay

    The NYTimes (of course) soft pedals and both sides it, but this is just a flat out lie he tells:

    his family’s “lower-middle-class status.”

  55. 55.

    UncleEbeneezer

    We watched Iron Claw the other night and damn, what a crazy story and surprisingly good film. How the hell did Zac Efron not get a freakin’ Oscar nomination? His performance was incredible! Who knew he had such serious acting chops?!

    I always love when actors who come from fairly silly movies, kids movies, rom-coms etc., and who appear to only be in Hollywood because of their good looks, get cast in really substantive roles and prove to be capable of so much more than I assumed.

    So yeah, Iron Claw was great!  Yet another, overlooked movie that was (way) better and so much more emotionally moving than Oppenheimer…sigh…

    But be warned: even though it’s billed as kind of a fun movie about professional wrestling, it is filled with numerous tragedies.  It’s a dark film, for sure.

  56. 56.

    TBone

    @BlueGuitarist: thank you, was gonna post about that again yesterday but I got complaints about people not being able to read at Digby’s site.  Pennsylvania is a “Tier One” target of these psychos.

  57. 57.

    Wapiti

    @sdhays: They’d sue him to collect on the loans they gave him for the RV and evict his mother from the house that he sold them.

  58. 58.

    UncleEbeneezer

    Rick Perlstein pointing out the what should be obvious on Xitter:

    I’ll say it once. Vote for who you like, or don’t vote. But Trump in the White House during a Mideast war may mean World War III, and species extinction. Which is worse than genocide. The inability of some on the Left to grasp this is a self-regarding failure of the imagination.

  59. 59.

    Baud

    Regarding the crowd size, here are a couple of reddit comments. Not verified.

    this is the source for that claim, apparently someone who works for the city of wildwood estimated the attendance to be that number. i also find it difficult to believe

    Wildwood Mayor is full MAGA and has been indicted…so, yeah

    From this thread.

  60. 60.

    Kay

    “Maintenance Phase” is a well-regarded podcast that younger, progressive health professionals listen to because it addresses stuff like women being sold fake bullshit to lose weight, bias in heath care, anti vaxx lies,that sort of thing. My daughter directed me to it.

    Michael Hobbes and Aubrey Gordon debunk the junk science behind health and wellness fads.

    They’ve put together an episode debunking some the untruths and myths about trans health care, if anyone is interested. It’s always high quality work.

  62. 62.

    O. Felix Culpa

    @Baud:

    Self-serving estimates then. That’s never happened before. /s

    Even if the crowd were as large as stated, I don’t think it’s a source of worry or an indicator of electoral outcomes. Inexplicably (to me), TFG has groupies that follow him to all his rallies, so the same people will be represented in some proportion of each rally count.

  64. 64.

    Another Scott

    @TS: One headline I saw said up to 100k, one said up to 30k, one said up to 20k, one said thousands, one said hundreds.

    You’re more likely to guess the number of jelly beans in a candy jar than get an accurate report of numbers for one of his events. His campaign only knows how to lie.

    I’d go with “scores”.

    HTH!

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  65. 65.

    Baud

    @Kay:

    It was never easy for me. I was born a poor black child. I remember the days, sittin’ on the porch with my family, singin’ and dancin’ down in Mississippi

  66. 66.

    TBone

    @BlueGuitarist: Jim Stewartson xit

    The rough plan for the end of America: —Radicalize, merge & mobilize QAnon+/MAGA/Christian Nationalists into a single enraged death cult. —Focus on Mike Flynn as the “General” & Trump as a martyr. —Inspire or create “black swans” to terrify the population, up to & including assassinations. —Push people to only vote on Election Day “if there is an election.” —Cause chaos leading up to & during the entire election process. —Discredit the voting system, especially mail-in ballots, by any means necessary. —Infiltrate election committees. —Infiltrate State legislatures. —Infiltrate counties and precincts. —Deploy “poll watchers” and white nationalists to intimidate people and manufacture “evidence” of fraud. —Discredit electoral votes in Biden states using Big Lie 2.0 psyops, propaganda and active measures. —Siphon off Biden’s vote with RFK Jr. & Cornel West. —The primary goal is to force the total electoral vote count of the winner to under 270, which would cause a constitutional crisis by throwing the vote to the House, which would almost certainly hand the presidency to the Republicans, regardless of the vote count. —If “constitutional” means fail to steal the election for Trump, there will be a violent national insurrection before the inauguration. —Flynn, Trump and his allies will not go quietly, they will activate their large, radicalized death cult to execute another J6, except from coast to coast. —A significant part of law enforcement will not stop this, and some will actually help. —Putin will bring his entire array of assets to bear on helping ensure there will never be another peaceful transfer of power. Don’t believe me? Believe him. #ArrestMikeFlynn

    https://twitter.com/jimstewartson/status/1789379350250565996

    Video at link if you can stand it.  I bet Ginni is all in!

  67. 67.

    lowtechcyclist

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    Park was prompted to investigate after Meta, which owns Facebook, developed a program called Cicero that performed in the top 10% of human players at the world conquest strategy game Diplomacy. Meta stated that Cicero had been trained to be “largely honest and helpful” and to “never intentionally backstab” its human allies.

    “It was very rosy language, which was suspicious because backstabbing is one of the most important concepts in the game,” said Park.

    Park and colleagues sifted through publicly available data and identified multiple instances of Cicero telling premeditated lies, colluding to draw other players into plots and, on one occasion, justifying its absence after being rebooted by telling another player: “I am on the phone with my girlfriend.” “We found that Meta’s AI had learned to be a master of deception,” said Park.

    As a once-avid Diplomacy player, it sounds like Cicero learned exactly what it should have learned in that context!

    Problem is, the various AI programs seem to be learning many of the same lessons out here in the wider world.

  68. 68.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @BlueGuitarist:

    Warning, creepy image at link.

    It was thoughtful of you to provide a trigger warning, but not necessary. I’ve seen lots of photos of Ivanka, Eric, and DJTJr by now.

  69. 69.

    Kay

    @E.:

    He’s slick. What may be his biggest liability however, is that the Trumpiness is a complete act. Prior to around 2010 he was a progressive Republican.

    It’s just gross that the Ruling Class of Colombia are now trying to replicate what they had there, here. They want a small ultra wealthy class lording it over everyone else.

    Trump voters won’t care but normie swing voters might reject him for being a brazen liar.

  70. 70.

    smith

    @Baud: This kind of story has cropped up repeatedly since 2016. The Defendant wildly overestimates the crowd size for one of his rallies, local MAGA-friendly officials, usually cops, echo that, and the corporate media dutifully reports it as scientific fact. How many attended his inauguration again?

  71. 71.

    Chief Oshkosh

    @Chris:

    Meanwhile, the number of crimes solved by the cops has been slowly dropping for years, as I recall: that also hasn’t done much in either direction for the crime rates.

    I’ve been around criminal defense and justice reform professionals all my adult life. That exposure has taught me that there is not one thing, not one, that cops make better. They are given so much: HUGE budgets, power, legal protections, goodwill, trust, encouragement, so much more. And they piss it away EVERY SINGLE DAY.

    As the Camden experiment shows, a viable solution, and the only one I know of with any level of meaningful success, is to disband the current force and start from scratch.

  72. 72.

    Kay

    @Baud:

    The NYTimes compares the complete lying biography this guy is selling to Sherrod Brown’s real biography – Sherrod’s father was a physician and he went to Yale,so…both sides! Except – and this is important! – Sherrod Brown never invented a biography. One of his standard campaign stories is ABOUT how his father was a doctor. He never said he was “lower middle class”.

  73. 73.

    Barbara

    @Baud: we recently bought a dryer that goes beyond “sensing” when clothes are dry.  They didn’t really have any other kind and our old one had died. We don’t use any of the smart features and we line dry most clothing that isn’t heavy cotton.

    A smart clothesline would let you know when rain is on the way.

  74. 74.

    CindyH

    @smith: a post in that thread has a picture that looks like a lot in attendance  and says that smaller group was overflow – the picture shows a lot on the beach and boardwalk.  Not to panic – Wildwood is definitely a MAGA haven and NJ is one of the most densely populated states – South Jersey (where I’m from) is loaded with ignoramus MAGAs.

  75. 75.

    trnc

    @Baud: I wish my clothesline had AI.

    I mean, you’re controlling it, so …

    I’m here all night, folks! Try the veal!

  78. 78.

    Kirk

    @Baud:

    As with all progress, the first advancement will has been sex bots.

    Fixed that for you. See RealDoll as an example – and this link is to the wikipedia page not the company’s page.

  80. 80.

    BlueGuitarist

    @Kay:

    “Trump voters won’t care but normie swing voters might reject him for being a brazen liar.”

    I hope Ohio media are doing a better job than FTFNYT on pointing out the brazen lies!

  83. 83.

    Nukular Biskits

    @Suzanne:

    Until AI folds the laundry and puts it away, fuck off with that shit.

    LOL!

    I’m all for efficiency and taking up less space but experience has taught me that the more complex something is, the more likely it is to break.  Given the price tag of around $2200, I think I’ll stay with a single washer and a single dryer for now.

  85. 85.

    Kay

    @BlueGuitarist:

    “Ohio media” are all but gone. I have to read something called “the statehouse news bureau” – this bare bones reporting service mostly for lawyers – to even find out what anyone in Ohio government is doing.

    We just get shitty low quality national media laundered thru a local outlet.

  86. 86.

    Kay

    @BlueGuitarist:

    Sherrod runs very good campaigns, though. For all his “rumpled affability” he’s insanely competitive, like all politicians are at that level.

  87. 87.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @OzarkHillbilly: IIRC** that was one of the gags in The Owl and the Pussycat. The Pussycat (Barbra Streisand), a lady of, mmm, easy virtue, whilst trying to demonstrate to The Owl (George Segal) that she can be respectable, gets hassled by a carful of drive-by, mmm, potential clients. She excuses herself from the colloquy, goes out the curb and says to the guys,

    Would you please be so kind as to kindly fuck off!!?!?!?

    ** Never akchewelly saw the flick, heard about it second- or third-hand, but why let a little thing like that get in the way of a good line…

  88. 88.

    Nukular Biskits

    🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬

    You don’t realize how much you depend on/assume reliable internet until you go somewhere it isn’t.

  89. 89.

    RevRick

    @rikyrah: Happy Mothers’ Day!
    Heather Cox Richardson has a great historical view of the occasion, noting its original feminist impulse, which she states actually began with Julia Ward Howe.

  90. 90.

    BlueGuitarist

    @Kay:
    from afar Sherrod, like Jon Tester, seems like the photo that comes with the frame for US Senator from the state. A lot depends on them winning.

  91. 91.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Nukular Biskits:

    You don’t realize how much you depend on/assume reliable internet until you go somewhere it isn’t.

    Forty-one years ago, I was on the road for six weeks, driving across the country, up the West Coast, and back east again.  Other than the very occasional phone call, I was out of touch with the world.

    Best trip of my life, and I really didn’t even notice my lack of contact.  But now I’d be texting people three times a day.

  92. 92.

    BlueGuitarist

    @TBone:

    Thanks! Have to pass on the video for now and get back to work.

    But: if House decides the election instead of Electoral College, outcome is uncertain, not a foregone conclusion! Each state delegation gets 1 vote; need 26 votes to win.
    Currently D: 22, R: 26, Tied: 2.
    Rs have rigged NC which moves it from tied to R, so R: 27. But assuming all else remains the same:
    If Democrats  flip AZ-1 and AZ-6: AZ shifts R to D, R: 26
    If Democrats flip WI-1 and WI-3: WI shifts R to tied, R: 25, not enough votes to win.
    Those congressional districts are in key states for Electoral College and US Senate, and overlap swing state legislative districts: Super Swing Districts!
    Another possibility: Democrats flip MT-1, shifts MT to tied.

    If the House doesn’t have a majority of delegations voting for a presidential candidate by March 4, the US Senate chooses the next president from among Vice Presidential candidates (might also deadlock…)

  93. 93.

    Nukular Biskits

    @lowtechcyclist:

    So much of our lives revolves around internet access … and I don’t mean just for stuff like this.

    I occasionally go completely off the grid and disconnect for a day or so but, when I’m on business travel, it’s irritating to not have solid internet service.

  94. 94.

    eclare

    @Baud:

    I went to a college that has a football stadium that seats a little over 100,000.  No way 100,000 people were there.

  95. 95.

    Thor Heyerdahl

    @eclare: 1000 people counted 100 times. Multiple counting of the same thing – just like Trump’s tax returns.

  96. 96.

    Percysowner

     

    Well, to stop on everyone’s righteous indignation on the AI label making the Samsung combo dryer more expensive, a quick look at Best Buy has all the combo washer/dryers with around 5 cubic feet capacity and heat pump drying at $2199. I’ve been considering going to a combo because it’s getting harder and harder to tote laundry up and downstairs and I don’t have a good place to install a regular washer and dryer on my main floor. I’ve been hoping that combos would eventually incorporate heat pump technology because there were serious issues with the old technology because it used a heck of a lot of water to dry and took forever. Yes, I know using water to dry clothes sounds counter intuitive, but there you have it*.

    Combo washer/dryers run off 110v and don’t need to vent, so all you need is water supply and a drain. I’ll have to start checking out the water/energy use on these new units.

    *Explanation on water usage in combo machines

    Washer-dryer combos may use up to 55-½ gallons on some machines, as the dryer’s condenser mechanism uses water from the tap for the cooling phase.

    This staggering amount is in addition to the water that is needed for washing (in some cases, the drying component may require more water than the washing portion), so it can be said that washer-dryer combos are more expensive to maintain as far as your water bill is concerned.

    That said, if you’re looking for a more efficient alternative, heat-pump washer-dryer combos are available. While these models don’t rely on any water to dry your clothes, it should be noted that their upfront cost is steeper.

  99. 99.

    dmsilev

    @Percysowner: No experience with combo units, but I love my heat pump dryer. Runs off a regular 120V circuit (important for me because it replaced a gas unit, so a regular electric dryer would have needed a new circuit pulled), ventless, dries a full load in about an hour. It’s a Miele unit (the T1), so not cheap to buy, but built to last so the longer life helps spread out that up-front cost.

  101. 101.

    TBone

    Texas. Again.

    A federal judge in Texas (naturally!) blocked a plan by the Biden administration to lower late fees on credit cards to $8 that was slated to go into effect next week. Via ABC News:

    …The temporary nationwide injunction imposed by Judge Mark Pittman in the Northern District of Texas is a win for the big banks and major credit card companies, which collect billions in revenue each year in late fees and were looking to stop the proposal from going into effect. It is also a win for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which led the lawsuit on behalf of the banks.

    https://crooksandliars.com/2024/05/texas-judge-puts-hold-bidens-credit-card

  102. 102.

    TBone

    @BlueGuitarist: I was focused on the “create a death cult combining Xtian Nationalists, MAGA, and Qanon” part of that “plan.”  I was promised there wouldn’t be math 😉

  104. 104.

    Another Scott

    @dmsilev: Interesting.

    We’ve got a gas water heater and a conventional LG electric dryer in the basement.  It’s usually about 68F-70F down there when I have a couple of dehumidifiers running.

    They’re both fine, but both are around 10 years old.  I’m a big fan of maximizing efficiency (within reason) so I’m looking carefully at future replacements, and heat pump water heaters and dryers sound good.  I do wonder, though, if the basement will get even cooler (from the heat pumps grabbing heat out of the air) so we’ll have to run a space heater to warm up the space.  :-/

    TANSTAAFL!!

    ;-)

    Thanks.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  105. 105.

    RaflW

    @TBone: I don’t believe in the literal Devil (he was made up to offload the blame for human depravities), but if I did, I feel confident that it is he who is seeking to triumph via Trump. RW Evangelicals are willfully blind to this, of course.

  107. 107.

    RaflW

    @Another Scott: Heat pump water heaters do put out a fair bit of cold air, from what I’ve read. I don’t know if that can be ducted out if it’s a concern?

    Do you have enough panel wattage for a tankless electric?

  108. 108.

    JWR

    I’ve been watching the Sunday morning shows and was reminded of something I read on NBC last night:

    In addition, the IDF has also urged people in Jabalia, a city in the north of Gaza, to “temporarily evacuate to shelters in western Gaza City.”

    There are shelters in western Gaza city? Who knew? I guess they’re referring to small pockets beneath the rubble.

    And Lindsey Graham told congress that the situation in Israel is like Nagasaki and Hiroshima on steroids. Also, who knew? And now he’s beclowning himself on MTP, (God, I hate that guy), and he just repeated that claim.

    ETA Wow! Lindsey’s losing it. ‘We dropped atomic bombs on Japan and I don’t wanna hear this CRAP!’

  110. 110.

    sab

    @Percysowner: I am planning to move soon and leave my house and washer and dryer to my oldest stepkid.

    You just gave me some very useful information.

  114. 114.

    TBone

    @RaflW:

    @sab: ISWYDT

    These math-challenged hordes believe in literal demons (as in, anyone who doesn’t go to their churches).  I’m frequently surprised that some of them can read at all.  Or tie their own shoes.

  115. 115.

    Melancholy Jaques

    @Baud:

    As with all progress, the first advancement will sex bots.

    At least that’s the way it goes in most of the movies. I’d prefer the butler/house cleaner/cook combo.

  116. 116.

    Kay

    @JWR:

    It’s indefensible so we now get essays like this:

    If Israel invades Rafah to wipe out the remaining Hamas terrorist cadres, as it vows to do, collateral civilian deaths are likely — even though Israel takes more care than any other military to prevent such casualties.
    Yet who exactly are these “civilians” and just how innocent are they?Sure, every baby and young child in Gaza is 100% innocent. Yet among adults, including women, there are many who fall far short of that

    They’re all terrorists so it’s okay if we slaughter them. The protestors have a kind of gallows joke they pass around on social media “we asked “are Palestinians….human beings? And our colleges answered “no, and fuck you for asking”

  117. 117.

    artem1s

    @Nukular Biskits: 
    I yell HUMAN BEING over and over until the bots put me in the hold queue to talk to someone. I rather be on hold than in an endless phone tree loop.

  119. 119.

    Nukular Biskits

    @Kay:

    I’m curious about where the evidence is to support this claim:

    … even though Israel takes more care than any other military to prevent such casualties.

    ETA:  Oh, it’s that asshole Alan Dershowitz.  I should have known.

    This is nothing but an attempt to justify genocide.

  122. 122.

    Miss Bianca

    @zhena gogolia: man, he was still alive?

    The woman who founded my theater was an actress who was  involved in a bunch of Corman movies, back when she was Anne Kimball. Her daughter is my boss.

  123. 123.

    Another Scott

    @RaflW: Our GE circuit breaker box is the original from 1963.  130-150 A?  Something like that.  It’s some weird split bus thing that doesn’t have a main breaker – one has to turn off 5ea 240V breakers to shut off all the power in the house.

    Upgrading the panel is on the list (I want 240V to charge our PHEV and future EVs, we want solar panels eventually, etc.).

    Point of use water heaters sound good in principle, but they’re not as efficient as heat pumps (I don’t think) and would be very spendy to retrofit here.

    Thanks.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  124. 124.

    TBone

    @sab: good thinking.  The best way to contact a corporation that deflects all possible human contact is to pretend to be a wealthy person interested in investing in it.

  126. 126.

    sab

    @Nukular Biskits: Comparing themselves to Russia, as usual. Israelis thought that taking in all those Russians in the 1980s would bring in a bunch of Socialists. Instead it brought in a bunch of Russians. Corrupt and racist to the core.

  129. 129.

    Nukular Biskits

    @Another Scott:

    I’ve often wondered about the efficiency of “tankless” water heaters as opposed to the traditional tanked kind.

    The pro is that you’re not heating the water until you need it and you don’t have to dedicate storage space inside the house/garage (at least for electric heaters).  The cons is that you’re not always heating the water during “off-peak” times (again, for electric ones and for those who have utilities that vary the cost of electricity by the hour).

  130. 130.

    sab

    @TBone: I am ambidextrous. All that means is both hands work. My left hand isn’t just a flipper. I can do stuff with it, like pound nails and punch numbers in the calculator.

  131. 131.

    TBone

    @Nukular Biskits: I installed tankless water heater at my cabin after we finally got running water.  I absolutely loved it.  Instant hot water set to perfect temp only when needed.  I can’t do that at my house now because 1963 breaker box as described above but I would do it again in a heartbeat if I had the electric needed.  Our oil tank hot water baseboard heat irks me to no end, it’s dangerously hot when it comes out of the taps.

  132. 132.

    TBone

    @sab: I’m actually ambidextrous as well, learned from typing for many years.  I was making a joke in poor taste.

  133. 133.

    Sure Lurkalot

    @Kay: Maintenance Phase is one of my favorite podcasts…second your recommendation.  Very well researched and witty.

  134. 134.

    Kay

    @Nukular Biskits:

    As you probably know the facts in Gaza are rapidly getting worse so expect the supporters to grow increasingly unhinged as it gets more and more difficult to defend the indefensible. We’re about a week away from conservatives and media calling any dissenter at all a terrorist. The worse it goes there the more they’ll lash out.

  137. 137.

    JWR

    @Nukular Biskits:

    … even though Israel takes more care than any other military to prevent such casualties.

    I saw Tommy Cottonball and Lindsey Graham repeatedly claiming that this is the case, but I seriously doubt the claim. And if they are able to do this in real time, where do the investigations into the slaughter of the 6 year old girl along with the 2 EMT’s sent to rescue her, or the 3 Israeli hostages waving a white flag while identifying themselves in Hebrew, or the targeting of the 3 WCK vehicles stand? I don’t believe we’ll ever see those self-policing reports, because I don’t believe they even exist.

  138. 138.

    Nukular Biskits

    @TBone:

    We have a tankless gas water heater in this new house (had one in the previous one as well).  I have no real complaints other than it takes for all of the evers to get hot water to the kitchen but that’s more a function of the length of the plumbing than anything else.

  140. 140.

    Kay

    @JWR:

    I don’t understand how they can claim this. Are they denying the civilian casualties? Every credible source say they’re not overcounted, they’re undercounted. They’re under the rubble. Now we’re going to just complete gaslighting, but with increased volume and a lot of table banging?

  141. 141.

    Nukular Biskits

    @JWR:

    The US military is not perfect, so why should we give greater deference to the IDF is beyond me.

    IMHO, the US (mostly as gov’t policy throughout many administrations and by a significant portion of the US population) is far too willing to turn a blind eye to what would otherwise be crimes worthy of a trial in the Hague.

    Reminds me of the “BACK THE BLUE!!!11!!!” types who insist that abuses on the part of law enforcement are actually the fault of the victims themselves and, when that fails, the “bad apple” defense gets trotted out.

  142. 142.

    Nukular Biskits

    @Kay:

    What infuriates me to no end is the endless bleating from my US Senators and Rep (all Republicans, of course) about Israeli casualties but never a single word is uttered about innocent Palestinian civilians.

    Their implication is clear as a bell:  There are no “innocent” Palestinians.

  143. 143.

    Kay

    @Nukular Biskits:

    Their implication is clear as a bell:  There are no “innocent” Palestinians.

    Comes thru loud and clear to me. They blow this dogwhistle any harder they’re going to pass out. All of the op eds could be titled :
    “Why you should stop caring about and talking about this” – these people don’t count.

  144. 144.

    sab

    They have been doing this for fifty years and it has worked.

    I hope Sirhan Sirhan dies in prison. He did his people no favors at all.

  145. 145.

    Anyway

    Frank Bruno from FTFNYT is on Ina Garten’ s show. Puke — can’t stand him.

    It’s at least 15 years since I stopped reading the rag and I still HATE their journalists.

  146. 146.

    Brachiator

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    Park was prompted to investigate after Meta, which owns Facebook, developed a program called Cicero that performed in the top 10% of human players at the world conquest strategy game Diplomacy. Meta stated that Cicero had been trained to be “largely honest and helpful” and to “never intentionally backstab” its human allies.

    I have talked to and worked with tech people who fervently believe that Asimov’s Law of Robotics is a real thing.

    A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm. A robot must obey orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

    And I see tech evangelists defend the obvious failures of technology, and how human bigotry and sexism infects some devices and systems. The worst of these people blandly assert that humans must adapt to failures of technology, because innovation is sacred and must be allowed to flower.

    This blindness leads to the inevitable.

    Park and colleagues sifted through publicly available data and identified multiple instances of Cicero telling premeditated lies, colluding to draw other players into plots and, on one occasion, justifying its absence after being rebooted by telling another player: “I am on the phone with my girlfriend.” “We found that Meta’s AI had learned to be a master of deception,” said Park.

    It’s been strange watching companies jump deeply into AI without even trying to understand its limitations or considering guard rails or constraints.

    And government debates about regulation are at best… quaint.

  147. 147.

    JWR

    @Kay:

    Every credible source say they’re not overcounted, they’re undercounted.

    I don’t actually know how credible the source, but either Cotton or Graham, I forget which, quoted the Israeli numbers, and they were something like 14,000 innocents and 12,000 terrorists. And that’s w/out digging beneath the rubble. But the numbers between Hamas and the international orgs line up fairly well, and have for months. I’ll go with the latter.

  148. 148.

    BellyCat

    Re tankless water heaters: my plumber (a good friend) likes them but with one caveat — you have to descale them once a year or lifespan is seriously shortened.

  150. 150.

    JWR

    @Nukular Biskits:

    Reminds me of the “BACK THE BLUE!!!11!!!” types

    It reminds me of the U.S. going into Fallujah and the discussion about how many civilian casualties were acceptable when the terrorists were using them as human shields. I went with zero, because WTF were we doing in Iraq in the first place.

    And I know this is a different situation because Hamas started this latest round of atrocities, but that doesn’t give the “good guys” license to kill at will, which discussion is above my pay grade.

  151. 151.

    Brachiator

    @Anyway:

    Frank Bruno from FTFNYT is on Ina Garten’ s show. Puke — can’t stand him.

    That’s some deep hate. I have no idea who this guy is.

  153. 153.

    Jackie

    @Another Scott: Also, while MAGAts love his rallies, and as you pointed out has a groupie following, a LOT of them don’t vote, because RIGGED! Which I encourage them to believe! 😁

  157. 157.

    Matt McIrvin

    @TBone:

    —The primary goal is to force the total electoral vote count of the winner to under 270, which would cause a constitutional crisis by throwing the vote to the House, which would almost certainly hand the presidency to the Republicans, regardless of the vote count.

    I keep hearing even liberals repeat this as if it were actually how it worked, and it drives me around the bend.

    THAT’S NOT HOW IT WORKS. Here’s the text of the Constitution:

    –the President of the Senate shall, in the presence of the Senate and House of Representatives, open all the certificates and the votes shall then be counted;–The person having the greatest number of votes for President, shall be the President, if such number be a majority of the whole number of Electors appointed; and if no person have such majority, then [we have a contingent election]…

    It doesn’t say “a majority of the whole number of possible electoral votes”, it says “a majority of the whole number of Electors appointed”.  To me, at least, that means “a majority of the votes that are actually counted”.

    You can’t force a contingent election by reducing the number of electors appointed. You can only do that by having some third-party candidate get electoral votes.

    Now, that could happen–we saw some protest-vote and dumb-elector behavior in 2016 that could have had that effect. (However, I do not believe that RFK Jr. or Cornel West will win any states.) But what they’re talking about is discrediting electors and submitting alternate slates to muddy the waters so some votes aren’t counted at all, right? That was what was going on in 2020. “Getting below 270” by doing that won’t cut it.

  159. 159.

    Jeffro

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    In one study, AI organisms in a digital simulator “played dead” in order to trick a test built to eliminate AI systems that had evolved to rapidly replicate, before resuming vigorous activity once testing was complete.

    Oh good, gooood…let’s definitely keep doing this, humanz!  What could go wrong?

  161. 161.

    RSA

    @OzarkHillbilly:  The MIT team found comparable issues with other systems, including a Texas hold ’em poker program that could bluff against professional human players and another system for economic negotiations that misrepresented its preferences in order to gain an upper hand.

    A couple of notes on this: The best systems in this area (poker, at leaste) typically aren’t based on machine learning, e.g. running millions of poker games and learning good strategies. Instead they’re based on careful analysis of the game and the use of game theory (the field John Nash started) for finding winning strategies. These systems don’t necessarily “conceptualize” moves in the same way that people do, for example in terms of bluffing or deception. They’re just choosing actions that have the highest expected utility.

    One reason these systems can outplay human players (and machine learning systems) may be that, as with computer chess, they can sometimes find strategies that people find hard to understand or use, or possibly have never thought of.

  162. 162.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Peke Daddy:

    If it is a heat pump dryer, it doesn’t need a vent.

    Got to admit I was today days old when I first saw the term “heat pump dryer.”

  163. 163.

    Brachiator

    @Nukular Biskits:

    I’m all for efficiency and taking up less space but experience has taught me that the more complex something is, the more likely it is to break.  Given the price tag of around $2200, I think I’ll stay with a single washer and a single dryer for now.

    Electric washing machines were advertised and discussed in newspapers as early as 1904. The first electric washing machine, the Thor, was introduced in 1908 by the Hurley Machine Company of Chicago, Illinois

    A 1929 ad offers a Thor washer for $149.25. This may have been around half the price of the earlier machines. This would be about $2,700 today. Some families lived on $35 a week in 1925.

  164. 164.

    Matt McIrvin

    @RSA: I remember reading an old book that described card-counting in blackjack, and being struck that the thing that really made it work* wasn’t the simple idea of playing the odds via knowledge of the cards remaining in the deck, which is pretty obvious–it was the simplification of that into a system that could easily be kept in a human being’s head while playing. A machine wouldn’t have that problem in the first place.

    *(To the extent it works, of course–you can defeat it by using shoes with multiple decks to blunt the advantage, or simply by detecting it and tossing people out of the casino)

  165. 165.

    Uncle Cosmo

    My friends in Prague each have a washer/dryer combo in their square-meter-challenged flats. To the best of my knowledge, neither has ever used the dryer feature – that’s what balconies and clotheslines and wash this morning what you want to wear tomorrow are for. The one I’ve stayed with in particular is really sensitive to water usage and would get perturbed if I ran the tap for too long or showered in anything but Navy style. I’m not sure whether H2O over there is especially pricey or if he’s just making sure to make ends meet on a professor’s retirement.

    For myself, I’ll keep my separate washer and dryer, because water bills in Baltimore have been outrageous for years, ever since the feds ordered the city to replace its pipes but wouldn’t give us a dime to help, so the city just passed the cost along to residents. I live alone in a 3 BR row house and am very frugal in water use and my monthly bill is still upwards of $85.

  166. 166.

    Geminid

    @Uncle Cosmo: Hey Unc! Hope it’s nice weather up there. I put up a link to an article about the Maryland Senate primary on mistermix’s post upstairs. Bonior’s article is titled,

    “Analysis Shows Angela Alsobrooks is the Democrat Who Can Beat Hogan.”

  167. 167.

    Ironcity

    @Another Scott: since you already have gas laid in have you considered a gas tankless water heater?  Have one in a new construction house last 2 years and am impressed with efficiency.  Water here is pretty hard, have had to flush it once with a vinegar solution, but other than that fine.

  168. 168.

    Another Scott

    @Ironcity: We’re trying to move away from gas.  (Our recent furnace is gas coupled with an efficient AC/heat pump – it gets cold enough here in NoVA not that infrequently that we’d need a backup and resistance heating is spendy, so we kept gas for it.  Most of the time we use the heat pump.)

    Our neighborhood is old enough that the gas mains are leaky.  A contractor came through a few years ago to line the mains with plastic pipe, but they still have to come back every few months or so to dig up the streets and find and fix another leak.  I hate to think of all the methane that is being dumped in similar situations all over the country…  :-(

    Thanks.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

Comments are closed.