In 2018 you can build your own website in 5 minutes, with no technical skills. You can edit video in your phone. You can do rudimentary graphic design with Powerpoint. You can run your own advertising campaigns. A slew of professions are kicked to the curb, along with their middle-class incomes and expertise. I use a professional video editing software on my computer, but I would never claim to be a video “editor”. Because I […read the rest]
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“I worked as an art director inadvertising for 29 years. First as a consultant and then for more than 10 years in Sennheiser. On my 10 years anniversary, they gave me candlesticks as a present. This was too much. I had saved a lot of holidays, so I used them to go study ice cream in Italy and then I quite and opened Favvo Glass. I used to have sleep problems and pain in my body in my back, arms. Now I’m on my feet all day, but the physical pain is gone.”
His explanation of his strategic capacities is “I am an electrician.” This reminds me of Matthew Crawford’s painstaking work on the “cognitive riches” of trade labour. (Summary here.) Crawford’s point is that trade work is satisfying. Wałȩsa’s point is that it is also a form of analytic training.
The Mehl Stübchen is a flour factory which creates flours for many specific uses. They sell to home bakers, rather than to businesses, providing advice and information to improve the quality of home baking. They also sell very good bread and pastries. They are located in the “Red Island” of Berlin at Leberstraße 28. The owner, Nicole, needed me to bring a translator for the interview, so thank you to Julie August for the assistance. […read the rest]
I was going in a different direction, on an arbitrary itinerary when I saw a poster for the Berlin Make Mrkt and figured out that it was monthly and this afternoon, the first Sunday of the month in Prenzlaurberg. The market was quite small, and typical of Australian and US markets in mainly offering jewelery. There was a knifemaker, several furniture resurrecters, and some knitted lampshades. I engaged in my usual behavior of buying rings […read the rest]
“Composting and growing carrots is a nice start, but we need to get rid of the growth economy, make the global economic system work to meet needs, and replace capitalism with a different economic system that works for people. Most Green people are stuck at the level of compost heaps, which don’t have a chance of saving us. We don’t want to be a society full of compost heaps heading for disaster. Growing carrots locally is just the first step to changing the economy.”
LAB lab A Lab for Interventions, Innovations, Iterations to facilitate: Local Food, Objects, and Quality of Life – Artisan Economics and Meaningful Work – Biospheric ecological technologies and institutions. As Robert Pekins of Food Connect said to me “Academics need to get right out of the way. What they’re good at is asking questions. We need fora with practitioners in the audience practitioners doing the speaking, and academics asking the questions.” [freemind]/images/LABlab.mm[/freemind]
I was a contractor. I bought a hobby lathe on sale. I burned out the motor in 6 months, so I knew I had found my calling. I call it “reclaiming the souls of trees”. In Los Angeles there are trees from all over the world planted in backyards and sidewalks. There are 400 year old oaks that were here before there were towns with Spanish names in California. If the trees get sick or […read the rest]
