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Low Tide

What it really takes

Every Tuesday, one made thing taken apart in 4 minutes, and the law that decides it. Then the same law, run on your product.

Issues

A woman in orange fishing bibs mends the heavy zipper of a canvas boat cover on a harbour dock, lobster traps stacked behind her Make or buy4 min readWhat it takes to make a zipperSample issue. Why one company ended up on so many zippers: it built the machine nobody else could buy. An ambulance waits at a ferry terminal in thick fog before dawn, a paramedic beside the open door as the ferry comes in Little's lawComing upWhat it takes to run an emergency roomThe waiting room fills because the wards are full. More work in progress means everything takes longer. A man solders a small circuit board under a magnifier lamp in a workshop on the water, a wooden boat on trestles behind him Theory of ConstraintsComing upWhat it takes to make an AI chipThe fabs are not the limit. Improving anything but the constraint is an illusion. A woman picks metal type from a drawer in a barn print shop, a cast-iron press by the window and a stone wall in the snow outside Law of the MinimumComing upWhat it takes to make a fontNot the letters: the space between them. The scarcest thing sets the limit.
Archive

Earlier essays

Long reads from before Low Tide became a weekly. They stay here as they were published.

A muddy cliff path behind a weathered fence, a man walking toward a red lighthouse on the bluff Resilience9 min readThere is no backWhat helps when the old life cannot come back: two things that hold, one that goes wrong, one nobody has tested. A foggy ferry dock, the ferry moored and a man walking the wet boardwalk Rental scooters13 min readThe cheapest part of a rental scooterA Chinese-built platform, a Swedish name, three cents a ride and a borrowed piece of curb. Clay cliffs with a lighthouse at the edge and a fenced cliff path Coral reefs13 min readThe coral nobody will countA printed clay brick, a glowing speck at night, and three years of counting. A weathered shingled house beside a dune path, one person walking away toward the sea Private hope9 min readI'm fine, we're doomedA savings account named "Shop," forty messages and nobody at the door.