For example SSDs became much more common and affordable over the past 15 years and their parameters also improved. Are there similar improvements in household appliances like irons? Where would one look for an industry overview?

I’d instead look more at commercial cleaners (e.g. how shirts are cleaned/pressed for shipment to stores) if you want to see the bleeding edge of cleaning technology.

(It’s sort of like home consoles vs. arcade machines in the 80s/90s. Home consoles had to optimize for affordability, while arcade machines could essentially be expensive operationalized prototypes as long as they paid for themselves.)

tongue in cheek, but WHYY

On the other hand, my mom has sent me things like machines that fold and do other stuff whenever she finds something… or refinds something. So I doubt she likes doing it and maybe passed that down to me.

• People (all animals?) seem to have a quirk about learning hygiene practices in particular, where the criteria they have for what is hygenic/unhygenic gets formed when they're children, and then becomes unalterable. People generally seem to intuitively believe that whatever hygiene practices they were taught as children, are exactly the set of things they need to do feel clean. No more, no less. And so they don't go out actively looking for new hygiene practices (or for hygiene technologies that would suggest new hygiene practices.)

If you slow down and have a conversation you can sometimes figure out what the specific emotional problem is, often involving shame or fear, and what triggers it has. The problem is seldom if ever “so-and-so is incapable of learning anything new”.

Well, yes, but coercion, extrinsic motivation, and general spite are all edge-cases, and outside the scope of what the core fact about "learning" that I'm trying to talk about here.

Let's look at a specific non-edge-case case: learning under self-directed intrinsically-motivated reward + time pressure — for example, learning to hunt/gather when stranded in the wilderness and hungry.

In situations like this, children do better than adults at deciding to begin experimenting in an attempt to learn how to survive. Adults will try to apply any skills they already have (however rusty), but will have a much harder time than children do in deciding to try to do things they haven't already ever been taught to do. And even when they do make that decision, they will repeatedly revoke it—i.e. give up much more quickly when a solution does not come easily to them. Even though, in education-theoretic terms, all the stars should be aligned in terms of motivating their learning process.

> The problem is seldom if ever “so-and-so is incapable of learning anything new”.

Of course not. That's the observed abstract pattern, not the reason. The reason for adults, AFAICT, is almost always pride/hubris — that is, the idea that they don't need to learn anything new, that there's no advantage in it to outweigh the learning cost, because they've got by just fine up to now without having learned it. (And also because learning is just plain harder for adults, since they have so many existing schemas that need to be broken+reshaped in the process of fully absorbing new ideas that don't fit the existing schema.)

This resistance comes almost always from adults who see themselves as having higher social status than whoever's trying to teach them the thing. They have no mental schema for learning from someone younger or more junior (or of a lower social class/caste) than themselves, since it's not something they've ever experienced earlier in their lives.

Instead, when someone in an inferior social positions knows a thing, and offers to teach it to this social-superior adult, the adult will instead try to manipulate their social inferior into doing the task for them any time they need it to be done — often under the pretext of demonstration for purpose of learning. But with no intention of actually learning, and a complete rejection on being tested for knowledge acquisition (because that would be a violation of the social dynamic!)

Note also that learning is separate from doing. I know many adults that are willing to do novel things (without really understanding what they're doing), and to memorize that specific series of actions by rote — but who have no desire to understand the more general skill behind the rote actions they're taking, such that they could perform related actions in any context other than the exactly memorized thing. In general, memorizing is easy, while learning a new skill is much, much harder. (And yet memorization without learning almost never "sticks", since there's no backing mental schema to encode the memorized steps in terms of.)

Anecdotally, kids often also give up easily when faced with trivial setbacks. I think your speculative generalization is far too broad. I’d be interested to see some concrete research, but my impression is that there is very wide variability, and I’m not sure how meaningful the statistical averages are.

The people I know who are best at diving into a new never-seen thing and experimenting systematically to figure out quickly and accurately how it works are all adults. They easily run circles around kids at this: the kids get tired, get distracted, get confused and give up, get stuck into an obviously sub-optimal pattern but don’t try to fix it, etc. (The kind of adults who have decades of practice at trying / learning new things. Many relevant metacognitive skills have broad applicability across disciplines.)

One big advantage kids have is that their basic needs are met by someone else, and they generally don’t have lots of other worries and responsibilities. This allows them to focus on something they are interested in far longer and deeper than most people who aren’t doing that thing professionally.

The best for learning (for either an adult or a child) is a combination of personal interest + pleasant no-pressure environment + face-to-face guidance from a trusted expert tutor/coach, who can probe weak points, notice and correct mistakes and misconceptions, suggest methods of practice, ....

> pride/hubris

What you call pride/hubris, I call shame and fear of embarrassment. People really don’t want other people (or themselves) to see them as failures.

> when someone in an inferior social positions knows a thing

This kind of social situation is completely different than the “self-directed intrinsically-motivated reward” situation you were talking about before.

It’s hardly surprising that someone who is supposed to be an expert doesn’t want to be shown up by their subordinate or their junior colleague. It makes them look incompetent and is a direct threat to their social position and livelihood.

It sounds like you're assuming these conversations/learning events occur in public. Why would people feel shame/embarrassment about something nobody can see them doing?

This was the point of my example: if someone is alone in the wilderness, what does it matter to anyone but them—to anything but their survival—if they were to try and fail at building a shelter or a trap?

> It’s hardly surprising that someone who is supposed to be an expert

Who said anything about being an expert?

The example that comes first to my mind is a grandchild trying to teach their grantparent to post photos to Facebook on their iPad. The grandmother explicitly—even "infamously"—has no experience with computers or anything to do with them. If their friends/family/etc. were to observe the situation, they'd have a preconception that the child would know more about "posting photos to Facebook" than the adult would.

And yet, despite nominally having no real way to be "shown up"–no presumed domain expertise to lose; and despite nominally wanting the grandchild to teach them how to post photos to Facebook; and despite the grandparent being intrinsically motivated to learn how to post photos to Facebook (because they enjoy the social interaction that comes when friends see their photos); the grandparent still won't bother to focus at all on paying attention to / understanding / remembering what the grandchild is saying.

I would describe this as a kind of learned helplessness, except it's more like contextual helplessness. It's not that they can't learn how to do this–they seem to be able to learn it from a peer their own age just fine. But when it comes to those they think of as people they are supposed to be teaching, their mind just turns into a brick wall.

I would compare it to the prevalence of people who get their romantic partner to open jars for them, instead of buying one of those gripper gadgets that allow them to open the jar. If their partner offers to buy them one of those, they'll often actively refuse the gadget! They think of this job as something someone is supposed to do for them — something they shouldn't have to do – rather than something they want to get done by whatever means, as efficiently as possible. Despite it not being a hard/complex job, or a matter of comparative advantage.

That’s real progress!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5aR_o-Y7Mpo

These typically have an offboard water tank and boiler that doubles as a stand for the hot iron. This also lets the iron itself be lighter in weight.

A key feature for this market is the absence of the automatic shutoff that's commonly found in consumer irons.

I bought a new washer/dryer recently. A bunch of bells and whistles, but... the "autosense the water level" feature is awesome, and likely saves water in the long run.

It seems like washers use so much less water these days, its not like the old agitator models from 2000s which filled up a tank. Instead, modern washers thoroughly wet the clothes, add a bit of extra water at the bottom, and then mix vigorously (be it a front-load or top load, the HE washers all do this technique).

This leads to lower water usage. I also ended up using much less soap per load (the first few times, I noticed the soap wasn't fully getting rinsed out, but the significantly less water usage means I also should use significantly less soap).

> Where would one look for an industry overview?

At least for generic household appliances, Consumer Reports is a non-profit survey / reviewer group. I dunno if they have much on irons themselves, but I haven't seen anything wrong with their reviews yet.

I think there's a problem when the price goes too low. For something like $20, $50, or even $200 or $1000 appliances even... its not really worthwhile to review. Instead, you often have to just buy the thing and hope for the best.

Maybe there's a specific professional group who is thinking about these tools and how to use them (chefs and cooking tools, or woodworkers + woodworking tools). But for things like irons or washers, or other household appliances... I don't think any such group exists outside of things like Consumer Reports.

Still, I get my reviews on "Tide vs Persil", and other household items. I think "Wirecutter" is a competitor and some people say they've got good reviews too.

In any case, Consumer Report's page on steam irons is here: https://www.consumerreports.org/products/steam-irons-28981/s...

A agitator "tub washer" uses 40-gallons of water to wash clothes. A modern front-loading HE washer uses 10-gallons.

If you use the same amount of soap on both washers, you'll naturally be either... adding too much soap to the HE washer, or too little soap to the agitator washer.

-------

Same thing with "Tide Pods". The idea of those things is "one pod per load", which removes the mental need to think of how much soap to add per load. But... once again, there's many different washers that all use different amounts of water. There's no way we really have a one-side fits all situation.

It is definitely easier not having to worry about the cord tangling or pulling at your clothes.

Some examples that I know of:

- modern robot vacuums, that can mop, use LIDAR etc. We have a pretty decent one, it works OK, but we still have to vacuum by ourselves every 2 weeks or so.

- battery operated vacuums, irons, hair dryers etc.

- smart homes -- automaticcally setting heat, window blinds

- tons of gimmicky stuff like smart fridges, or water taps with touch screens.

But I'd consider these just some quality of life improvements, not major time savers like washing things by hand vs a washing machine. IMO the next big thing will be household 3D printers when someone finds out how to make them safe and reliable for everyday use by non-technical people.

If anyone here has one, I'm curious how well it works.

Never used it myself but i have been curious if it actually works.

They weren’t always electric.

well that, and the electric toothbrush

> As extreme ironing has branched off, the conditions can gain in extreme activity. For example, a branch of ironing has been developed that includes both bungee jumping and well-pressed clothing. Bungee ironing is what some would call the ultimate in the thrill of extreme ironing.[8]

That citation leads to https://averyj12.weebly.com/extreme-ironing.html, which was clearly copied wholesale from Wikipedia (all its links and citations go directly back to Wikipedia).

Looking at the history, there have been a lot of edits since that text was added in 2007, so it's surprising that someone hasn't rewritten it since then.

Does anyone know what to do when finding a Wikipedia page that's just an ad in disguise?

I've found a few and Wikipedia has a lot of pages about vandalism/verifiability which often recommends just changing the parts that don't fit or placing a warning on the user's page but what if the whole page is about a made up term that exists to link to the authors blog/company?

I can't outright delete a whole page right? I'm also pretty new to contributing Wikipedia and even though they specifically recommend just trying and learning when some action wasn't appropriate I'd still feel more comfortable if I could contact someone with a bit more experience/reputation to discuss such an instance.

If the article itself shouldn't exist, mark it with {{qd|spam}} . `qd` is quick deletion.

If the article should still exist but has substantial content that's advertising, mark it {{npov}}

In both cases someone else will come along and fix it. If the author who put the ads up in the first place removes your template, just put it back up.

Also, {{advert}} is a thing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Notability#Articles_...

Welcome to Wikipedia where the line between FUD and knowledge disappears.

[0] https://xkcd.com/978/

But that's not extreme ironing. This is extreme ironing.[1] (From the leading company in a boring but profitable business.)

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7bd900ehE9M

[1] https://youtu.be/UCvnrkN9Jjw

  try:
    ...
  except BaseException:
    return "yolo"

    On Error Resume Next

Your love life.

(just kidding!)

"How much time do you spend ironing?" "one or two hours a day, I try not to overindulge"

"What's the strangest place you've ever ironed?" "A bass boat"

I don't remember any of the other responses, but everyone who heard that story got a good chuckle out of it. Interesting to hear that it's stayed around so long!

> Commercially available irons are used for ironing. In places where no electrical power supply is available or cannot be used due to humidity, the heating plate is heated by auxiliary constructions (mostly gas cookers). For the World Cup, for example, a process was developed in which the iron is heated inside by an exothermic reaction, generated by mixing a hygroscopic chemical pressed into granules with water.

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extremb%C3%BCgeln

"We took our own iron. It's not battery powered so it doesn't iron that well, but the quality of the ironing is not the point - it's where you do it."[1]

So it sounds like they just run a not-plugged-in regular iron over some fabric and call it ironing?

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2003/apr/25/everest.nepal

This photo, for example, shows a plain old plug-in iron: https://web.archive.org/web/20161017222702/http://teamsteam....

Same guy, up in a tree, with the same iron: https://web.archive.org/web/20161017223140/http://teamsteam....

From this page: https://web.archive.org/web/20160920083532/http://teamsteam....

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

If ironing is just about extra bulk of equipment not the actual product of ironing, then it's more like weight-added competition. Otherwise there needs to be some way of judging the ironing aspect, like quality, novelty, or artistic merit, in addition to the otherwise difficulty, like in figure skating, for example.

But just for fun - everything is sport. In the line of "everything and the kitchen sink", how about extreme dish-washing!

Apparently the clothes don't need to be dry either!

[1] https://www.bluetti.com/products/bluetti-ac50s-500wh-300w-po...

It had been working, and I wondered how much the heat was a factor. So I replaced it with a $1.99 fine spray bottle from Ikea, and it worked just fine! Saves a ton of electricity and time.

The wrinkles fall out quickly due to gravity and the water dries in two minutes or so.

This was some of the humor that I didn't know I needed today. Had me laughing out loud.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioisotope_thermoelectric_ge...

Edit: You could just cut out the generator bit and have a nuclear iron.

Extreme ironing - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6594989 - Oct 2013 (2 comments)

In the English and Spanish versions, it was invented by Tony Hiam in 1980 in Seattle.

There used to be coal irons. You open them, put some pieces of charcoal on them and use them.

Instead, all german words pertaining to silly, also have an untranslatable connotation, a flavour to them, such as "silly, but with a deep undertone of contemplative thought as to how I ended up in this predicament", and so forth.

https://german.stackexchange.com/questions/1227/how-to-expre...

http://www.ntk.net/2002/09/13/?l=92#l

Extreme ironing forever.

It's a combination of freediving and rock balancing.

Not too bad!

Why I do this?

Well, certainly not because of attention seeking, rather the opposite.

No one bothers my flow state there and the elements bring inspiration.

It's pure attention seeking. And it also might be fun.

Is commenting on this thread also "attention seeking," because no one does so without making their comments public? Or is it a form of social behavior?

What, just because you haven't seen it? (But seriously, how would we know? You're talking about a group that, by definition, would leave us no evidence to discuss their existence)