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Culture War Roundup for the week of January 16, 2023

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LEDs ended up just being simply superior to both in every way. Progress ended the culture war.

I still find the light quality and dimming ability of LEDs to be significantly worse, so I buy mostly incandescent bulbs for my home. I was puzzled by talk about the "ban" because I can still buy incandescent. But wait ... now that I look it up there is a new rule going to effect in August 2023 that does effectively ban most remaining incandescent bulbs -- https://insights.regencylighting.com/was-there-actually-an-incandescent-light-bulb-ban That is bad -- why isn't there more outrage about this new rule? Maybe I am weird and most people are happy with LED's, or maybe the government has just done a "good" job at boiling the frog slowly enough that the defense got worn away. First you pass the law that allows for the ban but doesn't actually implement ban, so the incandescent fans are assuaged. Then you gradually ramp up the ban through arcane bureaucratic process and rule-making that is very hard for populist politics to defend against.

One big issue is some people with autism and similar sensory disorders can see flicker in both LED and CFL bulbs. But we’re not a loud enough lobby.

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Does the ban apply to car headlights? LEDs in cars are horrendously awful for all the other drivers on the road.

the light quality

Look for high-CRI bulbs if you're interested in this. For physical art in particular it's great to be able to find (more expensive) LED bulbs that combine a relatively full color spectrum with a high color temperature, something you could previously only have during daylight hours.