pictures, but i figured it out. i guess technically i snapped a "before": basically what's happening is there are four different 14 gauge cables coming into the receptacle. from left to right:

• one runs to the outlet controlled by the left switch
• the next supplies power to the left switch (the "source")
• the next is the source for the right switch
• the last runs to the light fixture above the dining table

three of the four cables are 14/2, which means they have hot (black), neutral (white), and ground (bare) wires. the leftmost cable also has a secondary hot wire (red). this stumped me until i figured out that the outlet it supplies is "split", which means the bottom plug is always hot (supplied directly by the black source wire), but the upper plug is only hot when the switch is on (supplied by the red wire, which runs between a different set of terminals). like this (the image actually shows the red always hot, but they're interchangeable, i think): because i have no idea what i'm doing, i assumed at first that the red wire to the outlet and the red wires on the dimmers meant i needed three-way switches. after poking around a bit more, i realized single pole switches would suffice, but also that i needed a bunch of extra wire (the dimmers have weird integrated wiring and PCB internals). various trips to home depot later, i had all my bits.

i've done a fair bit of low voltage soldering and wiring, but mains current terrifies me. on the one hand, this means i'm vigilant about cutting the power before i get anywhere near a receptacle. the downside is i'm not super confident testing when the circuit is hot, so i have to rely on deduction. in this case, that meant wiring up the easy side (light fixture) first, capping off the rest, powering it up, then doing the opposite with the outlet, then putting it all together.

a funny thing schematics don't teach you is that one of the most difficult parts of wiring up a receptacle is physically fitting all the guts inside. 14 gauge solid core wire is both inflexible (you need pliers to make fine adjustments) and brittle (it'll snap if you bend it back and forth). in this case i had 9 wires inside the box just from the externals wires. wherever possible i left things as they were, but i had to add pigtails (short connections from the switches to the externals) for the hots and grounds. you also want to avoid leaving a rats nest, both for safety reasons and out of respect for the next person who has to open it up.

all this to say, i finally got it working. now the LED halogen replacement turns on and off as expected, the split wiring to the wall outlet works as before, and the weird touch-dimmers are safely tucked away in the basement on a growing pile of obsolete electronic debris.

the light over the table in the house we're renting burns brighter and hotter than any domestic bulb i've ever seen. after a couple days of involuntary forehead tans i took a closer look and realize it's a 250w halogen. for comparison, that's 18 times the power drain of a standard 14w LED. i don't think we have 18 light bulbs in our entire house, and this one tiny supernova is guzzling energy on par with a late-model GPU (not to mention the fact the socket's only rated for 200w).

i figure there's a more efficient replacement out there, which leads me down a rabbit hole of halogen socket and bulb length research. turns out this is an R7S porcelain which accepts 118mm T3s. i could just downgrade the wattage, but i'd prefer an LED. this when i discover the magical world of linear bulbs. look at these chunky lil guys; they're like scaled-down carnival rides waiting to extrude puke from candy-drunk tweens. truly powerful. the one caveat is they're not as easy to come by. you can buy no-name parts online, but the reviews suggest they're at least as likely to melt into slag as to glow pleasingly upon you.

some yellow pages later i find myself in the catacombs of a local lighting supplier whose warehouse and office share the same cramped storefront. millions of bulbs piled loosely in cardboard boxes on rows of tall metal shelving. nothing is labeled according to any system i can see, but the owner recognizes my voice from the phone and immediately produces what i need.

it's beautiful, i know. there's another small hitch, which is that our dining table fixture is on a dimmer, and dimmable t3 LEDs are apparently unobtanium, but i'll cross that bridge when i come to it.

i get the new bulb installed (PSA: let the halogen cool before you grab it. it will burn you, and it will shatter. both of these are made more likely by the socket being spring-loaded. i killed the fixture at the panel and wore gloves just to be safe), and it works perfectly for ten seconds. then it starts flickering. a LOT. like,

so i turn it off. but it doesn't turn off. the LED drops to a simmering glow, angry-like. see, the dimmer has bizarre early oughts functionality: tap to turn on; hold your finger on the plate to adjust the brightness (up then down); tap to turn off; tap again to restore the last user setting. there's also a tiny recessed switch for, i guess, binarists. i can't find any information about the design online.

more reading reveals that, even if you just switch the light on and off, many dimmers produce weird behavior with LEDs because of generational incompatibilities in how power is not/supplied to the fixture. having learned this, my new plan is to replace the dimmer with a regular switch and store the unwanted guts in the basement.

will update, possibly with process photos if i remember to snap a few!

at the end of 2020 we were still living the fantasy that the vaccines would save us. if we'd been better informed we might have seen through the farce, but like so many others we were caught up the promise of a quick fix, and thought if we could just hold out til spring we'd be freed from the shock and dread of certain illness.

by the end of 2021, it was obvious the vaccines couldn't outpace the greed of capital, and whatever good the shots were doing was offset by the eagerness of our overseers to sweep the still-mounting toll of the pandemic under the rug and urge us back to the business of making them richer. the omicron wave exemplified this administrative hypocrisy, as hospitals and morgues overflowed with people who trusted the neoliberal shills assuring us the worst was past.

the devastation of 2022 is somehow even worse. the caution we learned early in the pandemic is treated as pathological; the fleeting solidarity of a shared vision of public health paved over by racial & class violence. the virus continues to evolve new mechanisms of chronic, sometimes fatal physical and cognitive injury. a generation of kids is getting sicker and sicker because the state would rather roll the dice on their survival than build infrastructure to make us all safer.

i don't know where we go from here. as many have observed, COVID is far from a unique site of inequity. all of these dynamics have played out for generations, always against those deemed socially expendable or less-than-human. what does feel novel is the breadth of this new definition of (to borrow the term from Beatrice Adler Bolton and Artie Vierkant) surplus, and the likelihood that, within a decade or so, the number of people able to physically do the labor capital demands may drop below some terminal threshold. what happens when we're all too sick to be seen as worth saving by the trillionaire class? will we still have the collective energy to fight back?