Kind: Notes

Raytheon, Juul, Atos, Deliveroo, Capita, Serco. A veritable rogue’s gallery of corrupt, arms-dealing, worker-bashing, basically anti-people corporate sponsors at Tory conference.

Contra the populist trash the Tories are spewing of late.

https://tribunemag.co.uk/2019/10/the-tories-lobbying-bonanza/

Jacobin article starting with ‘yes, capitalism has achieved all of [list of things], but here’s some things it hasn’t done’. It’s a bad premise though – labour did these things, capitalism just distributed the results badly. Also, assumption that only capitalism would have been able to organise labour to make these advancements is a bad one too.

Gah, writing a blog post takes a long time. But worth it. Sharing good info is good praxis.

Well that’s interesting…

Microsoft used to score zero on repairability on their devices at iFixit, but are now actually touting repairability on one of their new products, saying that it’s something that matters to their customers.

https://www.ifixit.com/News/microsoft-announces-a-repairable-surface-laptop-and-boy-are-we-excited

‘Repair culture[…] is not a mere side effect of the development of industrial societies.On the contrary, it is one of the very few distributed and consistent niches of resistance against the transformation of all human creativity into quantifiable commodity.’

Felipe Fonseca talks about gambiarra and the culture of repair and how maker culture got co-opted into wastefulness and prototyping lots of new things.

https://is.efeefe.me/stuff/gambiarra-repair-culture

Good news as EU formally adopts Ecodesign measures:

– As of 2021, all TVs, monitors, fridges, freezers, washing machines, washer-dryers, dishwashers and lighting products placed on the EU market will have to meet minimum repairability requirements aimed at extending their lifetime.
– Manufacturers will have to ensure that appliances can be easily disassembled with commonly available tools.
– Spare parts and repair information will have to be made available to professional repairers for a minimum number of years.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-49884827
https://www.coolproducts.eu/news/eu-to-pull-plug-on-wasteful-unrepairable-products

‘We care for things not because they produce value, but because they already have value.’

https://placesjournal.org/article/maintenance-and-care/

I wrote a blog post two years ago about trying to fix some digital kitchen scales, and now one random commenter is giving advice to another random commenter with a problem. Cool how that can happen.

https://doubleloop.net/2017/12/10/attempted-repair-salter-digital-scales/

I learned about Jallianwala Bagh massacre today. Pretty fucking horrible, all told. The British Army in Punjab in 1919. Another shameful part of British colonial history. I’d never heard of it before. Not something we are told about in school.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jallianwala_Bagh_massacre