Back in April 2018, Simone Giertz, who is affectionnaly named “The Queen of Shitty Robots” by the whole Internet, has given a TED talk on why you should make useless things. Simone is one of the person I admire the most online: she’s funny, witty, and her inventions, which are not always very useful, encourage a lot of people to be more creative in their lives. She also recently annouced that she had a non cancerous brain tumor the size of a golf ball behind one of her eyes and will be undergoing a surgical procedure to have it removed by the end of May.

In this joyful, heartfelt talk featuring demos of her wonderfully wacky creations, Simone Giertz shares her craft: making useless robots. Her inventions — designed to chop vegetables, cut hair, apply lipstick and more — rarely (if ever) succeed, and that’s the point. “The true beauty of making useless things [is] this acknowledgment that you don’t always know what the best answer is,” Giertz says. “It turns off that voice in your head that tells you that you know exactly how the world works. Maybe a toothbrush helmet isn’t the answer, but at least you’re asking the question.”

[TED]