this is my favorite addition by a mile. I am now glad that I made this post
*sighs*
Okay, so all y'all know I’m an Old, yeah?
I’ve been married longer than that little twerp has been alive. If I’ve had a bad day, my husband’s efforts to comfort me are going to sound like fucking Darmok.
Which is why I like being married to him.
These pretentious gits need a swift kick. They’re not as developed as they think they are.
aesthetic-infographic instagram feminism is like : LOOK!! this model has a single roll of fat when she sits hunched over in a chair, see its normal <3 ALL bodies are hot and sexy, you are a fuckable commodity no matter your size <3 um, actually plastic surgery is extremely feminist <3
at least for me, liberation isn’t going to come from being told “i’m desirable/sexy/fuckable even if i have xyz”. that is not the freeing or progressive mindset that the aesthetic-activism girlbossses think it is.
it’s like the goal has shifted from “our bodies are not made for consumption” to “your body is made for consumption no matter what it looks like!”
i don’t want be convinced i am desirable !!! i want to be freed from the concept of desirability !!!
Sofonisba Anguissola! Her talent for painting was supported by her aristocratic family, and she was highly trained except for the part where she still wasn’t allowed to see models with their clothes off because Girl, but she was coveted as a portraitist.
Those are her sisters! The eldest has just beaten her younger sister at chess, and the latter looks stunned, while their baby sister thinks it’s hilarious. And the winning girl is looking smugly at us/ the portraitist, i.e her big sister.
And also she painted this woman.
(Great hat!) Ana de Mendoza, who probably lost an eye FENCING but it was widely agreed it made her no less hot and she supposedly fucked the king.
Imagine what they talked about…?!
But I’m not going to lie, I’m pretty stuck on the part when a dashing younger ship’s captain fell in love with Sofonisba at first sight WHEN SHE WAS FIFTY.
(This was her second husband, she first married at 40 but he died ‘mysteriously).
She kept painting until her 90s, when she was painted by Van Dyck, who wrote he’d learned more from her than all his other teachers!
Meanwhile the ship’s captain, Orazio, proceeded to adore her forever, until she died at 93. And seven years later on what would have been her 100th birthday, he placed the following inscription on her tomb:
“To Sofonisba, my wife, who is recorded among the illustrious women of the world, outstanding in portraying the images of man. Orazio Lomellino, in sorrow for the loss of his great love, in 1632, dedicated this little tribute to such a great woman.”
Do you ever think about how many of the items now considered priceless artifacts were once commonplace items? The coins we now marvel at from behind the glass at a museum were once tossed around, stepped on, and traded around. The pottery painstakingly pieced back together was somebody’s favorite wine jug. The decorative pin now rusted and bent once held together the shoulder of someone’s chiton. History is simply a trail of ordinary people going about their day, and I think there’s an odd sort of beauty in that.
“Will it be the same in the future? Will the prized treasures of to-day always be the cheap trifles of the day before? Will rows of our willow-pattern dinner-plates be ranged above the chimneypieces of the great in the years 2000 and odd? Will the white cups with the gold rim and the beautiful gold flower inside (species unknown), that our Sarah Janes now break in sheer light-heartedness of spirit, be carefully mended, and stood upon a bracket, and dusted only by the lady of the house?
"That china dog that ornaments the bedroom of my furnished lodgings. It is a white dog. Its eyes blue. Its nose is a delicate red, with spots. Its head is painfully erect, its expression is amiability carried to verge of imbecility. I do not admire it myself. Considered as a work of art, I may say it irritates me. Thoughtless friends jeer at it, and even my landlady herself has no admiration for it, and excuses its presence by the circumstance that her aunt gave it to her.
"But in 200 years’ time it is more than probable that that dog will be dug up from somewhere or other, minus its legs, and with its tail broken, and will be sold for old china, and put in a glass cabinet. And people will pass it round, and admire it. They will be struck by the wonderful depth of the colour on the nose, and speculate as to how beautiful the bit of the tail that is lost no doubt was.
"We, in this age, do not see the beauty of that dog. We are too familiar with it. It is like the sunset and the stars: we are not awed by their loveliness because they are common to our eyes. So it is with that china dog. In 2288 people will gush over it. The making of such dogs will have become a lost art. Our descendants will wonder how we did it, and say how clever we were. We shall be referred to lovingly as "those grand old artists that flourished in the nineteenth century, and produced those china dogs.” – Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome 1889
I had to order checks from my bank. It’s been twenty years since I have had to do so. I mean, online banking makes a lot of the paper stuff rarely necessary. I doubt I’ve written more than three checks in the past year.
So…
You couldn’t use the online ordering service because they changed who printed the checks or something and had to talk to a PERSON.
I had to psyche myself up to make that call. Like many people here, I hate making phone calls.
I was snarking myself about it because, wow, I’m in my fifties and I STILL have to do that?
*drums fingers*
Then I thought, “Look, darlin’, you didn’t postpone it even a day, but did it within the timeframe you intended. That’s MORE THAN GOOD ENOUGH. You may always have to mentally rehearse a phone call before you make it to make sure you’re getting the salient points across. You prep lectures, for God’s sake, when you teach. It’s just the way you roll. Accept how you have to get things done and move on…”
I say this for people who are starting to find their way in the adult world.
Accommodations you need to make for yourself? They won’t go away because you’re the age of a Real GrownupTM. Do what you need to do to get things done as best you can.
Lesson 97: Throughout my time drawing/sharing these #blacklivesmatter biographies, I have mostly tried to steer away from stories about celebrity figures –athletes, actors, and other entertainers. I make an exception here to introduce you to composer and musician Louisa Melvin Delos Mars. Born in Providence, Rhode Island circa 1858, Louisa (neé Melvin) and her younger sister Carrie later moved to Boston and formed a duo, with Carrie on violin and cornet, and Louisa singing. It was clearly a musically gifted family; for her part Carrie eventually married famed vaudeville entertainer Sam Lucas, and their daughter (Louisa’s niece) Maria, would eventually become music director at the Howard Theatre (Washington, D.C.) As for Louisa herself, her talent eventually led her to the New England Conservatory of Music, where she would become one of its very first black women graduates.
Perhaps more significantly, in 1889 Louisa composed and produced “Leoni, the Gypsy Queen,” making her the first-ever black woman to produce an opera. “Leoni” premiered in Providence, Rhode Island and was also staged in Boston. 1889 was a groundbreaking year for women in opera –two other composers, Emma Marcy Raymond (“Dovetta”), and Emma Roberts Steiner (“Flourette”) also shared the honour of being the first-ever women to produce an opera.
Louisa further composed and copyrighted four more full-length operettas between 1889 and 1896 –two in which she performed and sang. Sadly none of these manuscripts except “Leoni” survive, though two of them, “Fun at a Boarding School,” and “Love in Disguise; or, Things Are Not What They Seem,” received excellent reviews and much praise in the press. Louisa later married William Delos Mars and had two sons –unfortunately little is known about her life beyond 1896. She is thought to have died in 1926.
Hey while you're loving elephants: Denver Zoo has two teenage boy elephants and one Old Man Elephant named Groucho, and lately they've had the lads housed with him so he can teach them Proper Elephant Manners like how bulls raise teenage boy elephants in the wild. Bull elephants are apparently very into being parents but due to the matriarichal nature of most herds, they really only get to raise calves after they've hit puberty. My point is, one of the boys was being annoying and chasing rabbits so Groucho came up and jabbed him in the ass with a tusk, the lad ran around the enclosure crying then came back and did a lot of "I'm sorry I'll be good now dad" fawning and it was adorable.
OH MAN SEE SEE SEE i wish we knew so much more about how bull elephants interact with herds and families - we’ve documented bull elephants traveling to matriarchal herds and fake wrestling with male calves, and we’ve documented bulls protecting orphaned calves, but in god’s name i want every in and out about it. everything we know about elephant social interaction is not enough. it’s a Thing that introducing old bulls to a population lowers the amount of younger bulls in musth, also known as the state in which bull elephants desire nothing but murder and possibly sex, but - i want to know the precise mechanisms. old bull elephants teaching younger bulls manners renders me VERKLEMPT. i just wanna know every secret elephants have.
this is incredible though. peak teenage boy. groucho has his hands full and i fucking love him for that. get their asses, groucho.
So from what I understand, as remembered from nature programs and the zookeeper lecture, is that Old Bulls reduce the violence i young bulls by putting them through Elephant Finishing School.
This is better documented in African Elephants than asian ones because they’re easier for elephant biologists to observe by the means of ‘sitting on top of a jeep and taking notes’ but the general scope goes like this:
Elephant herds are largely matriarichal as both a means of protection- elephants have a long childhood and it’s easier to protect calves in a group, AND as a socio-political means of sexual choice.
An African elephant is pregnant for nearly two years, then she spends at least 3-5 years with that calf completely dependent on her, so she only gets a few opportunities to have babies before she hits menopause, and it’s a lot of damn work so she is naturally EXTREMELY picky about who she mates with. And if she’s younger, her mom, sisters and grandmothers will also be real picky about who she mates with and WHEN too- can’t go around risking a teenage pregnancy, especially not with asubstandard male. Elephants also have a pretty clear idea of what they want out of a Male too: they have a marked preference for Large, Old, Socially Adept Males. Large males are HEALTHY males with all thier bones in place and functioning digestive tracts. OLD males are healthy, have good intelligence to stay alive, and have good teeth. Socally Adept Males can make friends, get along with her whole family, won’t engage in dangerous behaviors like trying to kill her calves or grandmothers. It’s a good system that produces robust, intelligent and helpful calves.
This means however, that most female elephants are into Dilfs, or even Gilfs. Which is extremely frustrating when you are a horny teenage boy elephant, so they go a bit nuts with hormones and social isolation and get involved in teenage elephant gangs and do things like murder rhinos out of sexual and social frustration.
BUT! If there are Large, Old, Socially Adept males about, they like being parents too, but are largely pushed out of the role by the matriarichal herds and their strict group politics that exist to prevent unsuitable mating. So They turn thier attention to these violent orphans and like your beloved Batman go “I’m gonna parent the shit outta that.”
They mostly do this by herding the Lads around, pointedly demonstrating Behaviors like “How to dig for roots so you don’t starve” or “How to knock over a tree” or “Greeting a Matriach Properly so she doesn’t sic her descendants on you”, and disciplinary behaviors like “Jabbing naughty Lads in the ass with a tusk” and “Hitting you in the face with a branch until you STOP THAT” . This is WILDLY beneficial for the young males under thier tutelage, who are less likely to die of accidents, and start mating earlier because they’ve had a Suitable Gentleman make introductions for them, like they are fancy men at a regency-era ball being intoduced to the debutantes.
Imagine some Fine and Respectable DILF wandering around adopting teenage delinquents and spraying them in the face with a windex bottle full of vinegar until they learn how to be proper upstanding gentlemen and you’re getting close.
this post hasn’t left my mind since i’ve first saw it
people jest but this is literally how i worked out i was gaslit for like 15 years of my life
People who “want trauma” are recognizing, on some level, that they were traumatized but in a way that’s not “socially recognized” as trauma. What they really want is for people to see that they’ve been traumatized and be on their side
Hold up
I think it’s also important to talk about mental illness, and how the pain and trauma of being mentally ill as a kid is often diminished because of the lack of outside actors. If you spent your childhood being suicidally depressed because your wee little kiddo brain decided to be a chemical shitshow, it doesn’t matter how much mom and dad loved you, that kinda thing fucks you up. And having people only look at your external surroundings and argue that “nothing bad happened” ignores all the pain you went through internally. So wishing you could have something external you could point to in order to justify that pain and enduring stress – just so people could understand – makes sense.
My husband is calling this shirt Mr. Jumpylegs.
When I was ranting about Loki’s shirt, it was because I was making a camp shirt for the first time. Yokes and collars and buttonholes, oh my.
Oh, and I found out you can sew on a button with a sewing machine, which really cut down the time it took to finish this bad boy.
So the other night during D&D, I had the sudden thoughts that:
1) Binary files are 1s and 0s
2) Knitting has knit stitches and purl stitches
You could represent binary data in knitting, as a pattern of knits and purls…
You can knit Doom.
However, after crunching some more numbers:
The compressed Doom installer binary is 2.93 MB. Assuming you are using sock weight yarn, with 7 stitches per inch, results in knitted doom being…
3322 square feet
Factoring it out…302 people, each knitting a relatively reasonable 11 square feet, could knit Doom.
Hi fun fact!!
The idea of a “binary code” was originally developed in the textile industry in pretty much this exact form. Remember punch cards? Probably not! They were a precursor to the floppy disc, and were used to store information in the same sort of binary code that we still use:
Here’s Mary Jackson (c.late 1950s) at a computer. If you look closely in the yellow box, you’ll see a stack of blank punch cards that she will use to store her calculations.
This is what a card might look like once punched. Note that the written numbers on the card are for human reference, and not understood by the computer.
But what does it have to do with textiles? Almost exactly what OP suggested. Now even though machine knitting is old as balls, I feel that there are few people outside of the industry or craft communities who have ever seen a knitting machine.
Here’s a flatbed knitting machine (as opposed to a round or tube machine), which honestly looks pretty damn similar to the ones that were first invented in the sixteenth century, and here’s a nice little diagram explaining how it works:
But what if you don’t just want a plain stocking stitch sweater? What if you want a multi-color design, or lace, or the like? You can quite easily add in another color and integrate it into your design, but for, say, a consistent intarsia (two-color repeating pattern), human error is too likely. Plus, it takes too long for a knitter in an industrial setting. This is where the binary comes in!
Here’s an intarsia swatch I made in my knitwear class last year. As you can see, the front of the swatch is the inverse of the back. When knitting this, I put a punch card in the reader,
and as you can see, the holes (or 0′s) told the machine not to knit the ground color (1′s) and the machine was set up in such a way that the second color would come through when the first color was told not to knit.
tl;dr the textiles industry is more important than people give it credit for, and I would suggest using a machine if you were going to try to knit almost 3 megabytes of information.
It goes beyond this. Every computer out there has memory. The kind of memory you might call RAM. The earliest kind of memory was magnetic core memory. It looked like this:
Wires going through magnets. This is how all of the important early digital computers stored information temporarily. Each magnetic core could store a single bit - a 0 or a 1. Here’s a picture of a variation of this, called rope core memory, from one NASA’s Apollo guidance computers:
You may think this looks incredibly handmade, and that’s because it is. But these are also extreme close-ups. Here’s the scale of the individual cores:
The only people who had the skills necessary to thread all of these cores precisely enough were textile and garment workers. Little old ladies would literally thread the wires by hand.
And thanks to them, we were able to land on the moon. This is also why memory in early computers was so expensive. It had to be hand-crafted, and took a lot of time.
(little old ladies sewed the space suits, too)
Fun fact: one nickname for it was LOL Memory, for “little old lady memory.”
I mean let’s also touch on the Jacquard Loom, if you want to get all Textiles In Sciencey. It was officially created in 1801 or 1804 depending on who you ask (although you can see it in proto-form as early as 1725) and used a literal chain of punch cards to tell the loom which warps to raise on hooks before passing the weft through. It replaced the “weaver yelling at Draw Boy” technique, in which the weaver would call to the kid manning the heddles “raise these and these, lower these!” and hope that he got it right.
With a Jacquard loom instead of painstakingly picking up every little thread by hand to weave in a pattern, which is what folks used to do for brocades in Ye Olde Times, this basically automated that. Essentially all you have to do to weave here is advance the punch cards and throw the shuttle. SO EASY.
ALSO, it’s not just “little old ladies sewed the first spacesuits,” it’s “the women from the Playtex Corp were the only ones who could sew within the tolerances needed.” Yes, THAT Playtex Corp, the one who makes bras. Bra-makers sent us to the moon.
And the cool thing with them was that they did it all WITHOUT PINS, WITHOUT SEAM RIPPING and in ONE TRY. You couldn’t use pins or re-sew seams because the spacesuits had to be airtight, so any additional holes in them were NO GOOD. They were also sewing to some STUPID tight tolerances-in our costume shop if you’re within an eighth of an inch of being on the line, you’re usually good. The Playtex ladies were working on tolerances of 1/32nd of an inch. 1/32nd. AND IN 21 LAYERS OF FABRIC.
The women who made the spacesuits were BADASSES. (and yes, I’ve tried to get Space-X to hire me more than once. They don’t seem interested these days)
This is fascinating. I knew there was a correlation between binary and weaving but this just takes it to a whole nother level.
I’m in Venice, Italy several times a year (lucky me!) and last year I went on a private tour of the Luigi Bevilacqua factory.
Founded in 1875, they still use their original jacquard looms to hand make velvet.
Here are the looms:
Here are the punch cards:
Some of these looms take up to 1600 spools. That is necessary to make their many different patterns.
Here are some patterns:
How many punchcards per pattern?
This many:
Modern computing owes its very life to textiles - And to women. From antiquity weaving has been the domain of women. Sure, we remember Ada Lovelace and Hedy Lamarr, but while Joseph Marie Jacquard gets all the credit for his loom, the operators and designers were for the most part women.
I’ve seen this cross my dash a few times, but I’ve never watched the video before. Maybe I just didn’t pay attention when I was a kid, but I don’t remember ever seeing just how the Jacquard loom works. I just knew that the punch cards controlled which threads were raised. It’s cool to see the how, not just the what.
I am never not amused by the overlap of textiles and technology. Also the fact that a huge number of fiber arts people I know are either in tech or math themselves or their partner is (myself included - husband is a programmer).
