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The Indian nawabs and maharajas preferred deaf punkah wallahs for this very reason. They were using them long before the British Raj vassalised the princely sta

The Indian nawabs and maharajas preferred deaf punkah wallahs for this very reason. They were using them long before the British Raj vassalised the princely states. Interesting that the American version seem to be usually wood. In India and the Middle East they're usually cloth held by a lightweight bamboo or wood frame. I pity the poor soul who had to operate that huge contraption in the last photo.

notatoad 8y ago
it sounds like the weight was the point: >Many of them, including a scrollwork mahogany slab at Melrose mansion in Natchez, Mississippi, seem to have been designed to look particularly weighty, so that visitors understood the effort required of the operators. it wasn't just a fan, it was a way to show off your power to dinner guests - "look how much effort my slaves are putting in to keeping you comfortable". I found this really interesting in the context of current discussion around automation - whether this work was being done by slaves or by paid servants, it still seems shocking to me that human labour would ever be wasted on something so trivial. i wonder what people 100 years in the future will be shocked that we wasted effort on.
- oldcynic 8y ago
  Yes I think you have it. I took that mahogany example and the slightly surreal case of requiring a slave to work a swing to operate one as exceptional. Generally aiming for conspicuous consumption is the simple answer. I'm sure they'll find more than a few things to look at in confusion and wonder once they drop out of fashion, just as we can point at click farms, and other strange edges of our economy now. I wonder if we'll ever reach a point where so much human effort isn't wasted on sheer pointless trivia.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- fredley 8y ago
  > look how much effort my slaves are putting in to keeping you comfortable This attitude is pervasive still, in many areas of modern life - not just amongst the billionaire class where it's very much unchanged from the post: extravagence is a simple marker of how wealthy and powerful you are. Think of empire-building managers ammassing as many charges as possible - just for many of them to do bullshit work. Think of how you prize a 'hand-made' item over a machine-made one - even when the hand-made item is more likely to have imperfections, or to have been e.g. stitched by a sweat-shop worker. A part of our monkey-brain wants other monkeys to know how successful we are, and one of the most base representations of power is how many other monkeys are doing things for you. Machines don't count.
- mikepurvis 8y ago
  ... perhaps that we burned oil to generate electricity that we then consumed huge gobs of during the summer to keep our homes and businesses at a frosty 21C? There's a direct analogy to the discussion at hand: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_slave https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_slave
  - notatoad 8y ago
    That's a pretty good comparison, actually
- Spooky23 8y ago
  I went to my nephew’s little league playoff last week. Some douche had a Lamborghini parked in a grass field at the game. The absurdity of driving a car like that to a little league and driving it over an open field is incredible, and is no less a peacock display of power than that wood slab.
  - DrScump 8y ago
    Nobody hit a ball through his windshield?
- peteretep 8y ago
  > it still seems shocking to me that human labour would ever be wasted on something so trivial On the subject of "so trivial", how much time have you spent in the tropics during summer?
- atesti 8y ago
  Bunnie wrote about a similar example from today: https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=4364 https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=4364 At this point, it seems blindingly obvious to me that all zippers should have this tiny tab, but the zipper’s designer wouldn’t have it. Even though the tab is very small, a user can feel the subtle bumps, and it’s perceived as a defect in the design. As a result, the designer insists upon a perfectly smooth tab which accordingly has no feature to easily and reliably allow for automatic orientation. I’d like to imagine that most people, after watching a person join pullers to sliders for a couple minutes, will be quite alright to suffer the tiny bump on the tip of their zipper to save another human the fate of having to manually align pullers into sliders for 8 hours a day. Because of the extra labor involved in putting these together, the zippers cost more; therefore they tend to end up in high-end products. This further enforces the notion that really smooth zippers with no tiny tab on them must be the result of quality control and attention to detail.
greenhatman 8y ago
Probably the heavier that one is the easier. Just use resonance to move it and use minimal force. Just need to time it well.

notatoad 8y ago

it sounds like the weight was the point: >Many of them, including a scrollwork mahogany slab at Melrose mansion in Natchez, Mississippi, seem to have been designed to look particularly weighty, so that visitors understood the effort required of the operators. it wasn't just a fan, it was a way to show off your power to dinner guests - "look how much effort my slaves are putting in to keeping you comfortable". I found this really interesting in the context of current discussion around automation - whether this work was being done by slaves or by paid servants, it still seems shocking to me that human labour would ever be wasted on something so trivial. i wonder what people 100 years in the future will be shocked that we wasted effort on.

oldcynic 8y ago
Yes I think you have it. I took that mahogany example and the slightly surreal case of requiring a slave to work a swing to operate one as exceptional. Generally aiming for conspicuous consumption is the simple answer. I'm sure they'll find more than a few things to look at in confusion and wonder once they drop out of fashion, just as we can point at click farms, and other strange edges of our economy now. I wonder if we'll ever reach a point where so much human effort isn't wasted on sheer pointless trivia.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
fredley 8y ago
> look how much effort my slaves are putting in to keeping you comfortable This attitude is pervasive still, in many areas of modern life - not just amongst the billionaire class where it's very much unchanged from the post: extravagence is a simple marker of how wealthy and powerful you are. Think of empire-building managers ammassing as many charges as possible - just for many of them to do bullshit work. Think of how you prize a 'hand-made' item over a machine-made one - even when the hand-made item is more likely to have imperfections, or to have been e.g. stitched by a sweat-shop worker. A part of our monkey-brain wants other monkeys to know how successful we are, and one of the most base representations of power is how many other monkeys are doing things for you. Machines don't count.
mikepurvis 8y ago
... perhaps that we burned oil to generate electricity that we then consumed huge gobs of during the summer to keep our homes and businesses at a frosty 21C? There's a direct analogy to the discussion at hand: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_slave https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_slave
- notatoad 8y ago
  That's a pretty good comparison, actually
Spooky23 8y ago
I went to my nephew’s little league playoff last week. Some douche had a Lamborghini parked in a grass field at the game. The absurdity of driving a car like that to a little league and driving it over an open field is incredible, and is no less a peacock display of power than that wood slab.
- DrScump 8y ago
  Nobody hit a ball through his windshield?
peteretep 8y ago
> it still seems shocking to me that human labour would ever be wasted on something so trivial On the subject of "so trivial", how much time have you spent in the tropics during summer?
atesti 8y ago
Bunnie wrote about a similar example from today: https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=4364 https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=4364 At this point, it seems blindingly obvious to me that all zippers should have this tiny tab, but the zipper’s designer wouldn’t have it. Even though the tab is very small, a user can feel the subtle bumps, and it’s perceived as a defect in the design. As a result, the designer insists upon a perfectly smooth tab which accordingly has no feature to easily and reliably allow for automatic orientation. I’d like to imagine that most people, after watching a person join pullers to sliders for a couple minutes, will be quite alright to suffer the tiny bump on the tip of their zipper to save another human the fate of having to manually align pullers into sliders for 8 hours a day. Because of the extra labor involved in putting these together, the zippers cost more; therefore they tend to end up in high-end products. This further enforces the notion that really smooth zippers with no tiny tab on them must be the result of quality control and attention to detail.

greenhatman 8y ago

Probably the heavier that one is the easier. Just use resonance to move it and use minimal force. Just need to time it well.