Megan Garber passes along a video:
[A]rtist/designer Helmut Smits demonstrates the mother of all post-apocalyptic IKEA Hacks: a MacGyvered method of sparking flame. The better to survive in a newly-wild world once the power — and everything else — has gone out. IKEA, though it sells pretty much everything else, does not sell matches or lighters — so Smits has devised a means of fire-starting using things that IKEA does carry: hangers, ropes, kitchen knives, wine racks, egg cups, napkins, floral arrangements. And his work is, in all seriousness, amazing to see.
Zooming out, Joshua Rothman discusses the various depictions of the apocalypse:
These sorts of visions are thrilling to contemplate in a purely aesthetic way. And they aren’t, necessarily, despairing visions; in a way, they’re fortifying. They put me, at least, in a broadly existentialist frame of mind. If the things we care about—goodness, love, beauty, intelligence, friendship, humanity, and so forth—exist only for a little while, and only for us, then that’s a reason to take them even more seriously than usual. If our lives are islands of meaning amidst a rising ocean of meaninglessness, then we ought to mean as much as possible to ourselves, and to one another.
(Image: From a collection of IKEA monkey memes)
The Dish 