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ZorbaTHut  2yr ago (text post)   35549 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 19, 2022

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I have been wanting to do an effort post on the Culture War clashes of yesteryear that have since fizzled for various reasons. This is a couple of good examples, to which I might add turn-of-the-century hysteria over carpal tunnel disabling knowledge workers at keyboards and file sharing vs. the RIAA and MPAA.

I'm curious if anyone has any other battles-gone-cold they can remember.

I have been wanting to do an effort post on the Culture War clashes of yesteryear that have since fizzled for various reasons.

Some good ones I think of from time-to-time:

  • incandescent bulbs vs. fluorescent

  • Terri Schiavo

  • stem cells in general

  • Israel/Palestine (comes in waves; gets forgotten for five years then comes back)

  • creationism

incandescent bulbs vs. fluorescent

I guess we ended up side-stepping that, since LEDs took over.

This is probably a Metaphor For Something.

Yes, LEDs ended up being much better peformance-wise and were introduced shortly enough following fluorescents that the weird culture war element of it fizzled. But back in the day there were a lot of bizarre op-eds written about it

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especially related to the potential for mercury exposure

I get the feeling that the risk of mercury in general is far overstated.

Aside from that, did you ever experience other issues with CFLs? I know there were many people who claimed they caused headaches. The light seemed to always bother my eyes when they were first turned on. And they seemed like a really poor choice for rooms I was only in briefly, as they'd burn out after relatively few uses over the course of a year or so (storage room/pantry). And being from a household where we tended to turn off/on lights when leaving/entering a room, the lifespan seemed to be cut to the order of a few months.

CFLs were a waste.

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Their main problem was that they took anywhere from 10-120 seconds to reach their full brightness; more in the cold. So every time you'd turn the light on, you'd be disgusted by this dim, wan light until you gave it time to warm up.

The lumen per watt efficiency was quite good, so they were well-suited for fixtures where they would be left on for hours at a time. I had one in my basement that I just left on 24/7. Now LED lights equal them in efficiency and beat them in every other way.

They did? I still have CFLs from when they first got popular. They just keep going.

file sharing vs. the RIAA and MPAA

I guess people did just kinda forget. The RIAA just hasn't been quite that aggressive until recently (Twitch), and back then, almost no one thought of trying to get the hosting for pirate sites yoinked. I think the pirates have proven too hardy to exterminate, and the big media corporations have preferred the tactic of "retreat behind paywalls and requiring internet connections" thanks to the rise of digital distribution and content streaming.

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I've thought there would be a market for a newspaper that only reported 6 month ago's news. It would report the stories that were important half a year ago, and give us a good summary of where the story went, which facts people had wrong, etc. The "Breaking" story with the benefit of hindsight, would be very interesting to read. It would be a good way to see which stories were actually important when they broke, and which ones were just flashes in the pan.

I don't think "thing which people argue about" is by definition culture war. What makes it culture war is that there's no room for disagreement.

Carpal tunnel syndrome isn't culture war unless saying "I doubt that carpal tunnel syndrome is very common" is, not only thought to be wrong, but considered by the other side to condemn you as a person and to justify retaliation against you.

Carpal tunnel syndrome isn't culture war unless saying "I doubt that carpal tunnel syndrome is very common" is, not only thought to be wrong

This was specifically a reference to the battles over policies the late 2000 Clinton administration promulgated via OSHA, only to be reversed by the incoming Bush administration in 2001 [1] [2] [3]. In a quieter era, this was a reasonably sized political fight that was largely pushed aside by events in the fall of 2001.

Ultimately I feel like the Clinton policies (explicit focus on ergonomics) have largely won out on, if not by OSHA fiat, then economics: workplaces like assembly lines are typically designed to minimize short- and long-term injury risks and office workers can generally get standing desks and such. But we're not all using 2000s-vintage ergonomic keyboards either, nor are office workers on these newfangled "computers" getting benched with career-ending typing injuries regularly: rates of carpal tunnel have been largely flat.

I'd still say that it's not culture war for the reason I gave: You're not a bad person if you disagree over it.

Net Neutrality is a fun one. I'm not sure everyone have actually forgotten about it, like, if you mention it on reddit (where it was the subject of a bunch of all-time top posts) people just ignore you instead of asking what it was.

It's especially ironic in that Redditors have done a 180 and now are all for companies using their power to discriminate

Fight For The Future definitely still cares about it. There are people beating the drum to get Gigi Sohn confirmed for the FCC, but it seems like that has stalled.

turn-of-the-century hysteria over carpal tunnel disabling knowledge workers at keyboards

Uh, that one is real, it just turns out that for most people fixing your posture and keyboard setup to prevent carpel tunnel is trivial.

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