shirt that says 'i do not consent to being photographed' with a qr code that takes u to a site where u download a virus that exports ur data 2 my cloud and then factory resets ur phone

Biology fun fact! This PC has actually evolved camouflage against gamers, their primary predators! Gamers' vision is primarily based on bright colored LEDs, so without RGB lighting, this PC is effectively invisible! Nature is incredible :)

today we post everett true

this man has a very specific accent that doesn’t exist anymore, but you can picture it in your mind’s ear.

Glad to know it’s not just me that has a mind’s ear.

His $50 fine would be over $1500 today.

idk i think a lot of the online left is people swindling each other into developing moral ocd for no reason

? People with moral OCD have a hard time whether they lean left or right.

Also, as someone with moral OCD, are you serious? You can't "swindle" someone into mental illness. This is super insensitive.

I don't have to take medication because I saw too many "online leftist" posts. Maybe learn about a disorder before speaking on it.

Do you ever think about why you take the worst possible explanations for any given statement instead of thinking about the ideas and context which an OP might me speaking within and about? Or did you just read OCD and think it was the Goddamn Neurotypicals being edgy again?

/genQ

Genuine answer, it's insensitive to use the terms for a mental disorder which lots of people suffer from so lightly. Implying consuming certain political content makes some lone mentally unwell is not fair to the people who've developed the illness otherwise. I get it's supposed to be a joking comparison, but misrepresenting how OCD forms is dangerous. Even as a jest.

I don't think you're being a bitch at all, I'm just pulling someone up on their wording and the implications behind it. That's my context, and calling people "edgy neurotypicals" isn't something I would do. A lot of the people I love are neurotypicals.

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.

@we-are-threadmage

Someone port Doom to a blanket

I really love tumblr for this 🙌

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.

Don’t hide this in the tags, @drylime :D

BUT HAS ANYONE KNITTED DOOM?

@commodorebuzzkill, yes, darling, they actually have.

https://www.doomworld.com/forum/topic/110200-knitting-doom/

And they are also on Tumblr as @knittingdoom.

I am still very early in the project but I’m making slow progress.

Thank you for the tag!

horse people are weird

what does this mean

horses can see demons

@betterbemeta are you able to translate this? Is it true horses can see netherbeings?? Will we ever know the extent of their powers???

I think I have reblogged this before but I’ll answer it again bc its a fascinating answer I feel and i was more funny than informational last time.

The truth is that horses see what they think are nether beings, I guess. They have a perfect storm of sensory perception that, useful for prey beings, marks false positives on mortal danger all the time. Which is advantageous to a flight-based prey species: running from danger when you’re super fast is much ‘cheaper’ than fighting, so you waste almost nothing from running from a threat that’s not there. Versus, you blow everything if you don’t see a threat that is there.

Horses also have their eyes positioned on the sides of their heads, which gives them an incredible range of peripheral vision almost around their entire body with only a few blind spots you can sneak up on them in. But this comes at the cost of binocular vision; they can only judge distance for things straight ahead of them. Super useful for preventing predators sneaking up from the sides or behind, but useless for recognizing familiar shapes with the precision we can.

Basically we now have a walking couch with anxiety its going to get attacked at any second, that can see almost everything, but mostly only out of the corner of its eye. It has a few blind spots and anything that suddenly appears out of them is terrifying to it. Combine that with that it actually has far superior low-light vision than us, and that its ears can swivel in any directions like radar dishes, and you’ve basically given a nervous wreck a highly accurate but imprecise danger-dar.

To be concise: all horses, even the most chill horses, on some level believe they are living in a survival horror.

This means that you could approach it in a flapping poncho and if it can’t recognize your shape as human, they mistake you for SATAN… or you could pass this one broken down tractor you’ve passed 100 times on a trail ride, but today is the day it will ATTACK… or your horse could feel a horsefly bite from its blind spot and MAMA, I’VE BEEN HIT!!!… or you could both approach a fallen log in the woods but in the low light your horse is going to see the tree rings as THE EYE OF MORDOR.

However, they actually have kind of a cool compensation for this– they are social animals, and instinctively look towards leadership. In the wild or out at pasture, this is their most willful, pushy, decisive leader horse who decides where to go and where it’s safe. But humans often take this role both as riders and on the ground. They are always watching and feeling for human reactions to things. This is why moving in a calm, decisive way and always giving clear commands is key to working with this kind of animal. Confusing commands, screaming, panic, visible distress, and chaos will signal to a horse that you, brave leader are freaked out… so it should freak out too!

On one hand, you’ll get horses that will decide that they are the leader and you are not, so getting them to listen to you can be tough– requiring patience and skill more than force. On the other hand, a good enough rider and a well-trained horse (or a horse with specialized training) can venture into dangerous situations, loud and scary environments, etc. calmly and confidently.

The joke in OP though is that many horses that are bred to be very fast, like thoroughbreds, are also bred and encouraged to be high-energy and highstrung. Making them more anxious and prone to seeing those ‘demons.’ All horses in a sense are going to be your anxious friend, but racehorses and polo ponies and other sport horses can sometimes be your anxious friend that thinks they live in Silent Hill.

I’m very excited for my latest craft experiment, where I rhythmically slap sale rank oil paint onto a canvas and I see how long it takes to dry so that I can finally touch the paint textures I stare at so longingly in museums. 12 hours in, still wet. I am beginning to think this might take longer than I thought which you can imagine is quite a burden, as I am absolutely horned up to rub this paint.

You guys sound like you know what you’re talking about but I’m gonna touch it every twenty minutes just to be sure

I’ve put this canvas to age in the basement like a fine wine, along another recent masterpiece of mine “I put the paint on me hand and I slap the canvas like a bongo”

Paint slapped on 6/9, as of 6/22 (I mean actually it was a couple days ago but I didn’t fully check the dryness then so I can’t be sure):

It is rubbery feeling and the peaks of paint move when you flick them. The texture is not at ALL what I expected tbh and it makes me excited to try a different experiment, thick brush strokes, you know, those mad thicc ones that swirl real good

Here’s an additional shot with my coffee cup for a further sense of scale so people will understand that these canvases are small and therefore stop sending me asks about my supposedly gorilla sized hands, you bastards, you rotten bastards scared of the hands your minds gave me

I don’t know shit about art but isn’t this like a great example of art that pushes the boundaries of what art is? Like you’ve got your canvas with paint on it, but your reason for putting the paint there is totally different than why most people put paint on stuff. It’s like a study on texture or something.

Agreed, this is really cool and also I love the fact that you really wanted to touch some paint, so you just went out and bought a bunch of paint and made your own painting for touching purposes. That’s striking me as really really cool right now for reasons I can’t entirely articulate. 

For reference: Really thick paint on a piece of art is called impasto. Another really fun way to do it is with a painting knife: you can make each stroke SUPER SMOOTH like cake icing, but with visible, touchable texture between the strokes.

More impasto:

art by Jan Ironside, who does THICK IMPASTO FLOWERS THAT I SO WANT TO TOUCH

You LITERALLY sat down to watch paint dry…

Museums should have stuff like this on display JUST so you can touch it. With a sign like, “Feel me up! I won’t alarm!”

make good art

Only thing about thick impasto is that the paint can get a bit sharp sometimes. Like, I’ve cut my hand on dried impasto paint because the paint stroke was that pointed. -.-;

Every reply on this post is delightful

sorry this is not relevant at all but ive seen this post many times and EVERY SINGLE TIME “ stop sending me asks about my supposedly gorilla sized hands, you bastards, you rotten bastards scared of the hands your minds gave me” makes me spiral ive never laughed so hard thank you

This entire thread is wonderful. What better reason to create art than pure human curiosity? 🥰

updates from the stan o' war

reblog for a bigger garden :)

(update: per request i’m going to draw this at the end :D)

idk i think a lot of the online left is people swindling each other into developing moral ocd for no reason

? People with moral OCD have a hard time whether they lean left or right.

Also, as someone with moral OCD, are you serious? You can't "swindle" someone into mental illness. This is super insensitive.

I don't have to take medication because I saw too many "online leftist" posts. Maybe learn about a disorder before speaking on it.

My last post was being snarky but here's my genuine pronoun etiquette opinion in case you actually want to know: it's pretty much never a good idea to directly ask someone their pronouns in front of a group of people, especially if you're in a position of authority, i.e. a teacher. The stakes of this question are very high for some people and you are putting them on the spot to decide what they want to share and what is safe to share. If you have decided you want to ask for pronouns at all, you can introduce yourself with your own to remind people that they can share theirs if they want to. And for the love of god whatever you do please do not just single out the most gender non-conforming or "trans looking" (to you) person and ask only them and no one else

Gradually getting more bland and cookie cutter

Shoutout to whoever picked a golf to use for this infograph, because it’s probably an intentional reference to the “Harlequin” golf, which as you can see by comparing the modle to the infograph, is unfortunately a relic of the time when colors were winning.

nothing has made me feel like an ancient grumpy crone more than the “using chatgpt for school is fine actually” sentiment among youths

if you use chatgpt to write your english assignments that is bad. you should not do that

this has been accelerated by watching my roommate who teaches freshmen composition slowly become ben_affleck_smoking.jpg as he has to fail multiple students every semester for using chatgpt

like. this is bad and this person should feel bad lol this completely misses the point of writing assignments. the point is the production, not the end product

critical thinking is a genuinely important life skill, whether or not you pursue higher education. fascism relies on anti-intellectualism!

AND IT’S TERRIBLE FOR THE ENVIRONMENT. what are we doing here

Your ability to think for yourself is one of the most valuable powers you have, and one of the only things no one can take away from you.

Do not give it away willingly.

no one:

the pfps in your notes when ur post goes viral:

The harbingers of the apocalypse

western cat twitters are like “HoOman” and japanese cat twitters are like “Today I will consider the state of things.”

you forgot russian cat tumblr

Russian cats are right in the middle of the two

actually japanese cat twitters sound verbose to us because the translation loses a detail: it’s all written in katakana, which is considered childish or illiterate!

so japanese cats are really saying “today i wiww conshidah the state of fings ^owo^”

Also the only reason the Russian sounds semi childish is because of the lack of definite or indefinite articles (the, a/an), which Russian just doesn’t have in its language anyway

The corrected translation with English grammar would be “I am a wave” which is neither childish or verbose its just factual and simple

Love the language specific additions

Philosophy in this thread:

Silly little potatoes can be found in every language and culture

Artists and poets can be found in every language and culture

Artists and poets

can be found in every

language and culture

Beep boop! I look for accidental haiku posts. Sometimes I mess up.

I spent weeks paralyzed by the weighty decision of what the funniest place would be to put this sticker