If we're going to do "when has automation ever made people's lives easier" discourse, I encourage everyone to read book 1 of Caro's LBJ series, and in particular the part about what happened once the Texas Hill Country got electricity and people could suddenly put their clothes in washing machines.

March 10, 2026 - 17:03 UTC

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my first boyfriend’s mother, who had five boys, was the first to get a washing machine in her village, and they all hated her for years (she didn’t care)
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Who’s “they“? Her sons? The neighbors?
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Live shot of an anti-automation Luddite sent back to the 1930s to help boil laundry over a wood fire in a Texas Hill Country summer:
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after living without a dishwasher I finally found a tiny one that fits in my kitchen and for $300 it has changed my life out of all proportion
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God bless these dumb little things
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Caro also talks about it in Working
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My grandma grew up on a ranch pre-TVA & was adamant that the washing machine beat commercial airflight as the greatest innovation of her lifetime. Also when I was in Peace Corps, USAID was funding regional laundromats as a public health initiative. Women could still gather but without the hard labor
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Masterfully written, iirc. Steinbeckian.
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