"It kind of works"

April 9, 2016 10:54 AM

Following in the footsteps of a long line of Swedish inventors, Simone Giertz designs and builds helpful tools for our modern society, addressing issues like dental hygiene, preparing and serving breakfast, and looking your best in real life as well as in Internet discussions. She recently teamed up with (Mefi's Own™) Adam Savage to optimize your movie experience, with a popcorn machine.
posted by effbot (25 comments total)

Simone's stuff is great and now it looks like she's moving to SF and joining the Tested team.
posted by thecjm at 10:56 AM on April 9, 2016 [1 favorite]

I love her inventions so much.
posted by feckless at 10:57 AM on April 9, 2016 [1 favorite]

Giertz is basically the only reason I subscribe to /r/shittyrobots. I want her to have her own show.
posted by 256 at 11:23 AM on April 9, 2016 [2 favorites]

She is the boss of me
posted by thelonius at 11:37 AM on April 9, 2016

> ... it looks like she's moving to SF and joining the Tested team.

I think that, up to now, she's been limited by her access to resources (time, money, amperage). I'm feeling a combination of fascination and fright at the thought of her getting her hands on the big stuff.
posted by benito.strauss at 12:05 PM on April 9, 2016 [1 favorite]

This raised me almost to "sloth meltdown" levels of happiness. The final product was better than anything I could have imagined.
posted by Joey Michaels at 12:13 PM on April 9, 2016 [2 favorites]

I would have liked it better if the final product had a little less safety margin so she could actually eat the popcorn. Now I am going to go eat popcorn with my primitive flesh hands :(
posted by aubilenon at 12:45 PM on April 9, 2016

First The Popinator turns out to be a publicity stunt, now this. Will Quadriplegic Americans ever get their popcorn shooters? We never got the jetpacks or hoverchairs we were promised, either.
posted by Soliloquy at 12:46 PM on April 9, 2016

I don't know what to say. I'm out of words.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 12:57 PM on April 9, 2016

it's the combination of energy and enthusiasm that makes what she does so appealing. she's awesome.
posted by TMezz at 1:07 PM on April 9, 2016

Also she's kinda derpy in the best of ways.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 1:11 PM on April 9, 2016 [1 favorite]

the internet discussions robot made me laugh out loud
posted by bitteroldman at 1:32 PM on April 9, 2016

Also, never forget the time that she gave one of her robots 8 inch chef's knives...
posted by 256 at 1:40 PM on April 9, 2016 [6 favorites]

This is art.
posted by you're a kitty! at 1:50 PM on April 9, 2016

she is an absolute delight!
posted by 5_13_23_42_69_666 at 1:57 PM on April 9, 2016

Flagged, open kickstarters aren't allowed. Repost when it's available for purchase. {|}
posted by zinon at 2:04 PM on April 9, 2016

Her chopping machine was awesome and terrifying and awesome. Her evident pleasure at having all her fingers at the end was a message to
Inventors everywhere.
posted by GenjiandProust at 2:44 PM on April 9, 2016 [2 favorites]

her accent is practically... midwestern? swedish people are amazing and confounding
posted by atoxyl at 3:11 PM on April 9, 2016 [2 favorites]

I think I first saw her chopping robot, and the way she was immune to the utter mayhem of the blades chopping bits of carrot all over was a delight. So excited for her!

One of my favorite videos is a tour of her houseboat, which has the main ship's wheel in the hallway. "I never talk about boats in English, so you'll just have to bear with me when I throw Swedish words into everything."

I hope that she can finally get somebody to fix that bilge pump while she's gone!
posted by fifteen schnitzengruben is my limit at 4:34 PM on April 9, 2016 [3 favorites]

"I never talk about boats in English, so you'll just have to bear with me when I throw Swedish words into everything."

After which she promptly gets stuck trying to pronounce "hydraulic", a word she probably doesn't have any trouble spelling. Which is so much me that I had to pause the video at that point.

(fwiw, might have missed some, but the Swedish words I noticed were "armeringsjärn" (rebar), "grind" (gate), and "lastrum" (cargo hold)).
posted by effbot at 4:57 PM on April 9, 2016 [2 favorites]

This is charming but most of all contains the valuable info that her last name is pronounced "Yutch"?!
posted by amanda at 9:21 PM on April 9, 2016

As I get older, it's been getting a bit more irritating to suck badly at things while I learn them. I admire Giertz because she took the inherent suckiness of an enthusiastic newbie and ran with it.

She started out just a few years ago knowing almost nothing about programming, electronics or this kind of light engineering. But instead of being either embarrassed or discouraged by her (lack of) skill, she cheerfully shared her awful and ridiculous experiments, until the newest ones - which are still intentionally ridiculous, but also reflect how far her skills have come in a short time.

This is how the best autodidacts are made.

(That said, I'm relieved but honestly a bit surprised that there haven't been some regrettable accidents along the way)
posted by vanar sena at 1:33 AM on April 10, 2016 [2 favorites]

So this is a slightly cringe situation, mostly due to the audience, but they're both smart and have a good chance of analysing and deconstructing it. The point where feminism and the patriarchy agree in joyful relief is putting young talented or athletic women on pedestals, and then that idealization starts to ring false, sets up weird expectations, gets in the way of actual learning.
posted by pfh at 3:17 AM on April 10, 2016

Oh! This is the same woman who invented the breakfast machine! Tested made a good choice for a new host, she seems to have the same keen sense of the ridiculous as Will Smith did when he was still there (no, not THAT Will Smith, the OTHER Will Smith).

I look forward to many more breakfast machines.
posted by chrominance at 11:07 AM on April 10, 2016

"Yutch"

I'd say more "eh" than "uh" but I see a lot of people are describing it as either "yu" or "ya" so I guess it depends on your dialect (or mine). I'd write it as /jɛ/ in IPA, but I'm not very good at that so corrections are welcome :-)

(The name is originally German, and the German spelling is left intact, but the pronunciation is very much Swedish; the G becomes a soft /j/ before certain vowels, the i is dropped so ie becomes /ɛ/, the r is very brief, and the z in tz is one of 5,000 ways to spell the "sj-sound", which is roughly /ʃ/ but has its own IPA, /ɧ/. Or something like that.)
posted by effbot at 5:40 PM on April 14, 2016 [2 favorites]