Mortise and Tenon Magazine

...focuses on craftsmanship, Mortise and Tenon, edited by Joshua Klein, is itself a work graphic design artistry. In the current issue woodworker Kate Fox turns a neighborhood tree that had to come down into a Viking sea chest in a process she describes as, “four days of hard labor, one friend with a chainsaw, a scissor-jack pinched from my ’67 VW bug, lots of swear words, and a Costco bottle of ibuprofen.” In another article we get to see the insid...

Read…

So Much Stuff

...p all those things in the garbage? If I could write a letter to my younger self I’d say two things: don’t accumulate anything, especially sentimental items and failed artistic efforts. It may sound harsh but why should any of us be defined or burdened by the things we own. Glassware at Altadena estate sale. Last weekend I went to an estate sale, not to accumulate any more crap but just to see the inside of a majestic old house next to the Silver L...

Read…

Saturday Tweets: Hello 2019

...3d1 — World of Succulents (@SucculentWorld) January 2, 2019 Unsurprisingly self-driving cars are not as easy to make as boosters said 2 years ago. Also, looks like they’ll be used to automate and deskill the heavily unionized transportation sector: https://t.co/cCYUu2POXy v — david a banks (@DA_Banks) January 5, 2019 Happy National Bird Day. Starling murmurations function through chaos theory and critical mass mathematics, but they also wander int...

Read…

Saturday Tweets: Bad Data and Cats

...maybe access to spare parts. Maybe we'll also decide that designed obsolescence is unethical too. #ClimateBreakdown#ExistentialThreat#breathehttps://t.co/OmMdYeeeDP — Tom Butler (@TheTomButler) January 9, 2019 Self-driving Tesla knocks over autonomous robot https://t.co/ergHYw4Czn — Root Simple (@rootsimple) January 9, 2019 pic.twitter.com/W7Ct498939 — raskolnikov did nothing wrong (@hannahgais) January 9, 2019...

Read…

Cybernetics: A Fatal Flaw

...ed work: cooking, child care, and washing. A founding member who called himself Lord Byron presided over the group and reserved the right to have sex with any woman in the commune . . . “There was constantly a background of fear in the house–like a virus running in the background. Like spyware. You know it’s there, but you don’t know how to get rid of it.” Levine contends that this type of “cybernetic utopia gone bad,” birthed in the idealistic pa...

Read…