Simone Giertz on why we all should be making useless things

Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/05/10/simone-giertz-on-why-we-all-sh.html

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Great! My entire life is a “useless thing.”

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All the best to this amusing and informative person.

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What she’s talking about is Chindōgu, it’s been around for a while. This is a pretty good link: https://www.tofugu.com/japan/chindogu-japanese-inventions/

Seems she was also inspired by the Charlie Chaplin film Modern Times, which I would also recommend watching the clip and the movie in its entirety: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ewNLCkA0oBk

The only thing that I’ve been concerned about is wasted material (like the googly eye shirt), but so long as the inspiration outweighs the waste I’m good with it.

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why we all should be making useless things

Welcome to my work day.

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I’ll go one better; I don’t even make useless things.

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Your commenting here, though likely that’s one rung up the ladder from useless.

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I really like her message of being willing to build things that fail. I know that’s critical to my own hobby building, and have no idea where I learned it from. I spent 3+ years building a custom motorcycle suspension / steering system, and made many parts twwo or three times because I got them wrong or fucked them up while learning to do machining. Then I spent another couple months trying to break it using a heavy metal frame, turnbuckles, levers, and a crane scale to measure the forces involved. Could have been a huge mess, but better in the frame than on the road.

Good luck to her and her medical care. I was lucky enough to be in a government union when I found out I needed open heart surgery to replace my aorta due to a birth defect, but I suppose being an internet celebrity may be near as good.

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ftfy  

How about a little more love for Juicero, then??

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There’s your difference between failing fast and cheap, and just failing…

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