Daniel D. Clausen discusses Christopher Schwarz’s work at Lost Art Press:

[The Anarchist’s Design Book] explains, again in narrative form, how to make that kind of simple furniture. With more or less the same basic set of flea market tools in the Anarchist’s Tool Chest, along with a willingness to try, experiment, fail, and try again, Schwarz shows that most people can turn out simple, functional furniture. And it will be better made than what is available flat packed from local box stores, and at a fraction of the price of antiques or what handmade furniture costs. Since crafts people have to make a living building something like a chair a week, if they are quick, that sort of production will never be democratically available. It is cost prohibitive for all but the wealthy, and always will be. (This critique, also leveled at William Morris’s Arts and Crafts movement—that the laborers were making furniture for the rich and thus failing at the Marxist goal of revolution—has never struck me as very damning. There has to be some mechanism to get money from where the money currently is, and we ought to be forgiven if we prefer this one to violence.)

The larger political argument in these “anarchist” books is that in a society structured by late consumer capitalism, we’ve all sold our birthright to making things for the bowl of pottage that is IKEA bookshelves and meaninglessness. It’s an appealing argument for direct action, not just in politics, but in daily material life.

The surprise success of Schwartz’s books prompts some questions: What conditions is Lost Art Press responding to? And why has this response been so successful?

The conditions, obviously, are the same ones that suffuse our political moment. Sit down to actually read Karl Marx and it will be difficult not to grant that his analysis of the conditions of capitalism, if not his rather nebulous prescriptions, are prescient. His labor theory of value is appealing, especially to those who have skill in making things. The concentration of capital, high barriers to entry, and economies of scale with diminishing returns all work against the “petite bourgeois” craftsman.

See also the pantorouter.

Matthias Wandel:

Dillon Markey, an animator for Robot Chicken and PES, modifies a Nintendo Power Glove as the most awesome animation tool ever.

Wright Thompson in ESPN Magazine:

Can a fly rod really hold the secret of life? In the central Montana mountains, a paralyzed man and his wife are proving the answer just might be yes.

Spent about 6 hours of my day off nerding out over this guys videos. All you ever wanted to know about power turbines.

Making of the diploma project on Academy of Fine Arts in Katowice (Poland), inspired by El Lissitzky’s manifesto published in 1923.

Bruce Sterling at Beyond the Beyond:

*This French guy is serenely hand-manufacturing his own vacuum tubes.

*This video is seventeen minutes long. I’d also be guessing this gentleman has invested about seventeen years in acquiring that vacuum-tube zen.

Fabrication d’une lampe triode
by F2FO