My best power tool tip, learned years ago, is "go pee first" meaning that you'll be less careful if you're trying to hurry through the cut because you need to go to the bathroom.
Use the Saw, Fear the Saw
11–16 of 16 posts
Re: Use the Saw, Fear the Saw
#12This short little article manages to summarize a long-standing feeling I've had about safety and societal progress. We protect people by making things safer, but in doing so, we oftentimes incrementally lose a combination of functionality, ability, agency, experience, and wisdom.
Re: Use the Saw, Fear the Saw
#13This short little article manages to summarize a long-standing feeling I've had about safety and societal progress. We protect people by making things safer, but in doing so, we oftentimes incrementally lose a combination of functionality, ability, agency, experience, and wisdom.
I think the loss of agency due to the aggregation of safety rules and features is an underrated force in society for the worse. It bleeds into things like chat control and locking down of our devices, and it’s something that the wrong politicians are only too happy to take advantage of.
There are masses of people who have never felt the exhilaration of throwing themselves into life and finding that they have built-in tools to deal with it.
Re: Use the Saw, Fear the Saw
#14I grew up around woodworking and then went off to the soft world of computers.
I learned to cut 2x4s floating them in on hand with a circular saw in the other, cutting so the longer one side remained in hand without the concern of binding.
It is best to learn from old men with all their fingers or young ones with digits numbering less.
Re: Use the Saw, Fear the Saw
#15Ironically, I don't think glibly remarking that you "still have all your limbs" and some handmade furniture at the end properly demonstrates someone "fear[ing] the saw," and it demonstrates some of the hubris we're seeing in current tech culture.
One of my high school teachers impressed the same caution upon my cohort but was missing the end of a finger.
Re: Use the Saw, Fear the Saw
#16This short little article manages to summarize a long-standing feeling I've had about safety and societal progress. We protect people by making things safer, but in doing so, we oftentimes incrementally lose a combination of functionality, ability, agency, experience, and wisdom.
I think the loss of agency due to the aggregation of safety rules and features is an underrated force in society for the worse. It bleeds into things like chat control and locking down of our devices, and it’s something that the wrong politicians are only too happy to take advantage of. There are masses of people who have never felt the exhilaration of throwing themselves into life and finding that they have built-in…
I super agree. Life today is unrecognizable from life just like, 80 years ago. I'm not advocating for like, taking the warning labels off the bottles and letting the problem solve itself or whatever, but I do think there's something insidiously infantilizing about modern society.