Anbee's Assorted Stuff

welcome to short bursts of fandom nonsense followed by long stretches of nothing

[anbarelectrum]

Things You Should Know About: Being Detained by the Police in the United States!

Hey, have a long-ass post about how The System “works”.  Just a fun little trivia post, a thought experiment with you as a hypothetical police detainee, to take everyone’s mind off recent events.  And since that’s just...so fun, please consider reblogging this so we can share the fun around!

...

...So anyway, buckle up, folks; I wouldn’t call this an exhaustive guide to knowing and protecting your rights in police custody, but it’s still gonna be a long one.  Under the cut, I’ll be going over:

how to know when you’re considered by law to be in police custody

your rights against self-incrimination, when they must be read to you, what happens when they aren’t read to you, and when the cops can get away with that

legal representation (which you always want) as well as how and when (always) to acquire it (the answer is always)

what police can and cannot do in an interrogation per the law

resources for pursuing legal information and/or aid, especially useful for before you’re taken into custody or after you’ve been either convicted or released

A reminder before clicking any links I’ve provided that your data is never safe, and if the state gets hold of it, it could be used as evidence against you.  While none of the resources I’ve linked to should raise any red flags or be legally considered incriminating, your data is still admissible evidence, and you should always be mindful of that.  Better safe than sorry--take steps to secure your data!

What is Police Custody?

Legally speaking, you are in police custody if the police have deprived you of your freedom of action in any significant way.  This sounds vague, but that’s actually good for you!  Contrary to popular belief, you do not have to be under arrest to be in police custody.

To determine whether you are legally in police custody, most courts apply the reasonable person standard.  This is done by asking a simple question: would any given reasonable person in your situation have felt free to leave?  This site has good tips on how to determine the answer to that question.

If you are in any doubt that you are being detained, ask if you are being detained.  If the police say “no”, you are free to leave, and you should do so before they change their minds.  If it’s perfectly clear that you’re being detained, still ask if you are being detained, because then they can’t argue that you weren’t in custody later on.

To sum it up simply: if a police officer engages you and makes you feel unable to safely walk away from them, you are in police custody.  And this means, if they want to question you, they have to read you the Miranda warnings.  On which note...

Miranda

You know that “right to remain silent” spiel? Those are the Miranda warnings, a verbal acknowledgment of your rights against self-incrimination under police custody as mandated after Miranda v. Arizona. Your Miranda rights are as follows:

1. You have the right to remain silent.

2. If you do say anything, it may be used against you in a court of law.

3. You have the right to have a lawyer present during any questioning.

4. If you cannot afford a lawyer, one will be appointed for you if you so desire.

Police officers are frequently taught not to Mirandize detainees (read the rights out and confirm the detainee’s understanding of them) until they are ready to begin interviewing them. This is done intentionally to leave you ignorant of your rights for as long as possible. If you are not Mirandized, your statements and any other evidence obtained as a result of your questioning by police may not be used against you in court. This does not mean you should chat away—do not do that—but always be aware of whether your rights have been read to you!

Even if you were not Mirandized, evidence obtained as a result of your questioning by police may be used against you if a court rules the discovery of that evidence was “inevitable”, as in, the evidence would have been found even had you not been questioned.  However, there are 4 exceptions that allow police to use information and/or evidence obtained without Mirandizing you.  This site briefly covers a lot of the same ground I’m about to, while a denser, in-depth legalese explanation can be found here.

The big exception is when police can assert they believed questioning you was “necessary for public safety”.  This is meant for situations involving live bombs or active shooters, where it’s critical to acquire information that could be used to save presently-endangered lives, but it could theoretically be stretched to cover scenarios like, say, you’re currently participating in a protest which the police have deemed violent and/or unlawful. Information obtained from questioning you, evidence found in your possession or as a result of questioning you, and witnesses uncovered through questioning you under the public safety exception are all admissible in court.

The next two exceptions are when asking you standard booking questions (including asking for identifying information, which is not legally considered to be incriminating) and when making a routine traffic stop.

Fourth and last, remember that any fellow detainee may be a jailhouse informant, a non-police individual tasked by the police to get information from you.  This is very important because information given to jailhouse informants by non-Mirandized detainees is admissible in court.

Even if the police do not inform you of your Miranda rights, you always have your Miranda rights.  You may and should exercise your right to remain silent and request an attorney.  If police attempt to question you while you are in custody, immediately state that you are exercising your right to remain silent and your right to counsel.  Do it as clearly and, if you are in public, as loudly as you can.  Create witnesses.  There is no formal language you have to follow here; even if you just say “I’m not talking to you, I want my lawyer”, police are legally required to respect that you are invoking your rights against self-incrimination. Edit 7/8/22 since this is making the rounds again, apparently since I last studied this stuff years ago some legal precedent has weaselled its way into existence that allows police to go “oh i didn’t know they were invoking their rights lmao they just Said Words Or Some Shit” unless you explicitly say “I am invoking my right to remain silent, and I am invoking my right to counsel.” So. Memorise that. Get to the point of saying it your goddamn sleep because we all livin’ in the same dystopia now 🇺🇸❤️‍🔥😐

***As of 6/24/2022, police personnel who extract information from non-Mirandized detainees can no longer be sued for violating the detainees’ Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination.  This makes it more important than ever to verbally affirm your own Miranda rights as described above.***

Finally, do your best to document any violation of these rights by police personnel that occur, even if it’s just mentally noting date, time, and place.  This will help your lawyer obtain proof of the violations, which will be valuable to your defense should your case go to court.  And speaking of lawyers:

Legal Representation

If you are being questioned by police, you want a lawyer.  The cops might tell you that you don’t.  They might say something like “hiring a lawyer makes you look guilty” or “why do you need a lawyer if you didn’t do anything wrong?” or maybe even the chummy ol’ “look, we don’t need to get lawyers involved here, we just want to talk”.  This is nonsense and it is a trap.  Neither staying silent nor asking for an attorney can be held against you in court.  It is not a tacit admission of guilt.  It is an extension of your enshrined constitutional right to not incriminate yourself.  You. Want. A. Lawyer.

So, you want a lawyer, but lawyers are expensive.  This is in part because law is hard.  People who agree to practice law on the cheap as public defenders, the attorneys which “will be appointed to you if you so desire” per Miranda, are often dedicated to their work.  However, because lawyers are expensive, public defenders are incredibly overworked and may not be able to give your case the attention it needs.  If there is no alternative, accept a public defender (they may also be referred to as a court-appointed attorney).

But!  Before you do that, especially if you were involved in a protest or other social justice initiative, call the National Lawyers Guild.  Their main phone number is [phone], which can be called for information; a list of email addresses and phone extensions can be found here.  This page lists all of their chapters nationwide; find the one nearest you and note down all resources they have available.  Memorize the legal support hotline for the nearest chapter that has one, or write it down somewhere you can’t lose it, like on your arm.  Contact them ahead of time if you think you’re likely to be arrested!  The NLG also has a list of attorneys to which it can refer you here, which can be searched by city, state, and area of specialty.

The American Bar Association has a directory of pro bono organizations here--in other words, a list of attorneys willing to work for free when needed.  Simply search up your state and it’ll throw you a list.  Be prepared with contact information for a qualified organization listed here.  If you believe you may be charged or threatened with criminal charges, make sure you’ve selected an attorney experienced in criminal law.

In case of attending an organized protest, find out if someone set up a legal defense fund in advance.  This can be used to cover your legal fees.  And, again, if there is no alternative, accept a public defender or court-appointed attorney.  An overworked lawyer is better than no lawyer at all.

Finally, even if you are guilty of the crime with which you have been or are expecting to be charged, try to avoid explicitly admitting guilt to your lawyer.  Yes, they will still defend you, no, they won’t tell anyone because attorney/client privilege is in fact real, but lawyers are not supposed to lie to the court.  If you are guilty and your lawyer knows it, they cannot claim you are innocent as part of your defense.  There’s...wiggle room here, as technically your lawyer doesn’t know you’re guilty just because you said you were, and there’s a reason the verdicts are “guilty” and “not guilty” instead of “guilty” and “innocent” and that’s because factual guilt and legal guilt are two different things and any good lawyer is gonna focus on legal guilt anyway, but, man, just don’t do your lawyer like that.  That said, do not lie to your lawyer.

Interrogation

So you’re probably aware that the police are not allowed to physically abuse you during interrogation, or threaten to do so in order to coerce you.  What you might not know is that the police can do almost anything short of that.  Most importantly, the police can straight-up lie to you.  About anything.  They can tell you they have conclusive, hard evidence of your guilt.  They can tell you the friend they arrested alongside you has told them everything and that the only way to keep yourself from going to prison forever is to turn on your friend as well.  It’s called police deception, and it’s legal to use against adults in all 50 states and against juveniles in every state except Illinois, Oregon, and Utah.

Police deception is one of the most dangerous tools available to police as it is not only legal, but unlike any other methods they might employ, your lawyer A) cannot stop the police from lying and B) is also being lied to because they’re right there in the room with you.

Technically, the police cannot psychologically coerce someone in an interrogation, and no, I don’t have any goddamn idea why police deception doesn’t count as psychological coercion because it sure as hell sounds like it, but it doesn’t.

The police can detain you for up to 48 hours without charging you; when that time is up, if no charges have been brought, they must release you.  While I don’t believe it’s specifically codified that the police must provide you with adequate food, water, and sleep; necessary medications; and bathroom access during this time, withholding any of those things is classified as coercion and will render any statements you make while interrogated under that coercion inadmissible in court.

While police cannot force you to incriminate yourself without violating your Fifth Amendment rights, police can collect biological samples like hair, blood, or saliva in many states.  Maryland and California come to mind, but I can’t find a unified list.  In case of a suspected DUI, blood samples are legal in all 50 states through the implied consent laws tied to having a driver’s license.

Police can take your fingerprints as part of the standard booking process.

Plea bargains are tricky things to discuss, and discussion of them is best left to legal professionals, which I am not.  Do not accept any plea bargains without talking it over with your attorney.  Remember also that as public defenders are overworked, they may be more inclined, even just subconsciously, to take a bargain rather than enter what could become a protracted legal proceeding.  The overwhelming majority of criminal cases are settled with plea bargains, including cases ending in wrongful convictions.  Consider any bargain offered to you very carefully with the aid of a qualified legal professional.

Additional Resources

For legal education and questions:

The American Civil Liberties Union has a very well-organized breakdown of your civil rights here

The NLG has a short booklet in several languages called Know Your Rights: A Guide for Protesters which can be downloaded as a PDF or ordered in physical format

The ABA has an online legal clinic that will answer any legal questions you may have free of charge, as well as a list of tools and information organized by state you can use to suss out the answers for yourself

Bail funds:

The National Bail Fund Network’s directory can point you to at least one active bail fund in any state, as well as a couple of national ones

The Bail Project is active in 31 cities nationwide at the time of posting; there’s a map on their homepage that shows you which ones

In case of wrongful conviction:

The Innocence Project needs no introduction

The Innocence Network is a group of organizations dedicated to preventing and overturning wrongful conviction, the full list of which can be found here

If you can and wish to follow up on your detention with a civil suit and your lawyer doesn’t handle such cases (or if you’ve ended up on the receiving end of a suit), the Legal Services Corporation is a federally-funded nonprofit that can point you at a legal aid organization through this search function.

And that’s about all I’ve got for you today.  I’d say “I hope this helps!” but I actually genuinely hope I’m overthinking this whole thing and that most people do know about all the stuff I just talked about and that I look like an absolute idiot for going on about it at such length.  Either way--good day and good luck!

[edobebop]

well played @neil-gaiman 🖤

[anbarelectrum]

literally no one forced anyone to change on the orville. claire said she would like for isaac to try and he made the choice to do so. and when the experiment failed she still loved him. and the show goes out of its way to show that isaac feels in his own way even after the "feelings" are once again removed. he always has, since S1. pay attention.

Well. My first angry anon. Is there a greeting card for that? I feel like there should be. I realise I’m not obligated to respond, and I should probably leave the disk horse in the stable, but I don’t like silently accepting chastisement and I can’t reply to Anon privately so let me just air some dirty laundry under the cut I guess. I don’t plan to make a habit of this, I’m not exactly known for generating controversy. Please feel free to scroll past.

So, Anon. First off, please take none of what I’m about to say as an attack on you, because I don’t mean it as such. I’m not trying to kick off a weird, petty tumblr fight and I don’t think you are either. Next, I should clarify that I don’t make a ton of vent posts, especially about media, but I was hurt and needed to vent into the aether in the general direction of people who might get what I was talking about because the people in my life have bigger things to worry about right now than that a TV show made me feel ucky inside. So I wasn’t coming after your show. It’s also my show and it is full of my very beloved blorbos—just not the ones I usually post about.

Third: it’s worth pointing out that I ship Claire/Isaac. I love their wonky off-kilter dynamic, I love that they’re one step out of sync with each other and always will be and they still make it work. I did watch to the end of the season. The finale was beautiful. So if you’re in this to defend your ship, you’re not so much preaching to the choir as lobbing grenades into the choir loft. I adore these two together. That’s part of why I was upset. So, with that all out of the way…

You’re right. No one forced anyone to change. Claire, who knows her presence in Issac’s life is something he deems necessary to proper functioning, tells him that if he’s serious about being with her, he’ll undergo a procedure which will give him human-like emotions and the means to express them. Isaac was not interested in having emotions, not even from the perspective of it giving him more tasty tasty data to analyse. But given a choice between undergoing the procedure or possibly losing Claire—who, if not involved romantically with Isaac, would eventually part ways with him since that’s how the military works—Isaac chooses the procedure. I would argue this is a choice made under duress, that ultimatums are by their very nature coercive, and that it was unfair of Claire to put Isaac in that position. This doesn’t make her a bad person—partners do unfair things to each other all the time, relationships are messy and I like that The Orville doesn’t shy away from that—but IMO it was a shitty thing to do. So, yup, Isaac was not forced to change. He was just pressured to. That is actually an important distinction; had Claire in fact forced him, that would have been monstrous and abusive and I expect the narrative would have treated it as such. However, pressuring someone into making such a major change when they’ve already said they don’t want to? Still ain’t a good look.

You’re also right that it’s been shown Isaac feels his equivalent of love for Claire since season one, which Claire has always been shown to accept and understand even if she’s periodically frustrated by the communication difficulties that arise between them. Which is a large part of why it sits so poorly with me that the moment she found out it was possible for Isaac to be altered to feel in the same way as a human, she wanted that to happen. “I’m in love with him and am happy with him the way he is” and “I want him to change on a fundamental level and I’m not sure I can be with him if he won’t” are contradictory sentiments. Claire can believe both are true at the same time—it’s called cognitive dissonance and we’re all very good at it—but the second undermines the first in a way that’s just really uncomfortable. It’s also inconsistent with what we’ve already been told up to that point! All episodes before and after this one honestly make Claire’s actions here feel really out-of-character, so I’ve more or less dismissed it as a writing fumble. Just…one that lasted an entire, excruciating episode. Not a fan.

Speaking of writing fumbles! Given that Emotional Isaac acts radically different from Original Recipe Isaac, we’re staring down the barrel of another contradiction because Claire is really, really into Emotional Isaac. Who speaks, behaves, and moves nothing like Isaac Classic. I think this must have been an attempt at the ‘seeing a whole new side to a loved one’ trope only it wasn’t so much a new side as a new personality. Anyhow by the end of the episode Isaac’s back to normal and Claire is given the choice between having a memory-wiped Emotional Isaac or OG Isaac, which she frames as choosing between his heart and his soul. I won’t dwell on how messed up it is that Isaac thinks he owes Claire the choice between preserving his identity sans emotions and erasing his identity so he can spout romance at her, especially considering Isaac spends much of S3 going through the android equivalent of a depression arc and literally killed himself earlier on, because although Claire is almost in tears over not being able to have her cake and eat it too she doesn’t hesitate to choose Isaac’s identity over his emotional capacity. Thus proving she loves him more than the idea of being romanced by him, even though she was so absolutely enamoured of Emotional Isaac. I guess this was her learning a valuable lesson that I…could have sworn she already learned? Hrm. Well, wcyd.

Now, maybe you came away with a better impression of the episode than I did, and that’s fair; we all get different things out of media. Maybe none of this stuck out to you like a sore thumb, and that’s equally fair; we’re all sensitive to different things. I don’t know, and I don’t need to know, how you consume media, because that is none of my business. But for me, when you strip away the nuance and contexts of “he’s a literal robot” and “she’s been actively horribly betrayed by him”, here’s what I see—what is, in fact, impossible for me not to see:

Person A does not experience emotions like most people. Person B is fine with that. Person B learns Person A could experience emotions like most people. Person B asks Person A if they want to Do The Thing. Person A says no. Person A does not feel the need to Do The Thing.  Person B tells Person A that by refusing to Do The Thing they are “missing out on the most profound experience of [their] life”—which is word-for-word a line that most aros have heard so many times from alloromantics, oh my god.  Person B eventually talks Person A into Doing The Thing for Person B’s sake, as Person B would like Person A to be able to feel romantic love towards them.  It would seem Person B was in fact not fine with Person A not experiencing emotions like most people.

Person A Does The Thing.  Person A can now experience emotions like most people! They shower Person B with affection.  Person B is thrilled!  Person A states that experiencing romantic love towards Person B is amazing and that when they were unable to do so they were “incomplete” (hey, yet another popular alloromantic mantra--you’re not a complete person until you fall in love!).  Person B is even more thrilled!!  Suddenly The Thing wears off.  Person A can no longer experience emotions like most people.  By Person A’s own testimony, they are once again incomplete.

Even if you don’t agree with my read of the episode, I hope you can understand why this might be upsetting to a person who does not experience and in fact is not capable of experiencing romantic love.  My post was not about Claire or Isaac or Claire-and-Isaac. It was never about them. That, and wanting to keep spoilers to a minimum, were the reasons why I left any real discussion of the episode out of the original post.  That post was about me choking on my own helpless anger and internalised shame as I was told for the thousandth time that I was missing out on the most profound experience life has to offer, that as a result I was not and would never be complete, and that if I could ever find a way to change that about myself, I should take it.  The only reason it was relevant that The Orville was the show that did this was because I wasn’t expecting it from that direction, which combined with my deep affection for and interest in the show and its characters, made the blow hurt more. Other shows pull this stuff all the time and it barely fazes me; these sentiments are everywhere, you can’t avoid them. They only really get me when a work is good enough, or beloved enough, to make sure I am well and truly paying attention.

[anbarelectrum]

I’m not a sports fan but I imagine watching From Unknown Graves as an aspec Orville fan is like going to see your team play after an entire season of great games only this time they miss every goal and then your favourite players stop everything to loudly talk about how worthless and broken and incomplete you are—yes, you, specifically, they point right at you and everything—and all you can do is sit there and wonder what you did to deserve being called out like this because they’re still treating everyone else great.

In fact, everyone else is still cheering, like they haven’t even noticed how crappy the plays were or that you’re being degraded for a core aspect of your identity. You thought you were all on the same side here. What the hell is this?

And then you remember that you’re invisible and always have been and also that you only know most of the rules of the sport. The players are demeaning someone they think doesn’t exist and contrary to your understanding of the game your team’s actually been winning this whole time. Well, not your team, they’re not playing for you; they don’t know you exist, remember? At least, you hope they don’t know, because this would be really fucking cruel otherwise.

So I guess it’s nothing at all like being a sports fan, but hey, like I said, I don’t even go here.

8 point fucking 7 on IMDB for an episode that implies a sexless but loving relationship is worthless and outright states that anyone who doesn’t experience love, especially romantic love, especially in the very particular way most people experience it, is “incomplete” and “missing out on one of the most profound parts of life” or whatever the exact quote was. I mean, the loveless character in question also doesn’t really have emotions or empathy in general and that’s all treated as the same “problem” but since handling aromanticism with any grace was too much to ask of this show, we probably shouldn’t even go near how shitty that is for people under the low-empathy and atypical emotional processing and so forth portion of the neurodivergent umbrella.

And do not even get me started on how they were actively a whole different person once they were all fixed up with typical emotions and romantic love and this was viewed as a positive change! Remember, you don’t have to fundamentally change yourself unless other people would feel better if you did in which case it’s completely fair of them to not only ask but make it a condition of their continued presence in your life and you’re selfish if you refuse!

Discrimination isn’t always hatred and physical violence, or “go back home” or “not where the kids can see”. Sometimes it is unwanted pity. Sometimes it is being ignored. Sometimes it is a refusal to see, or to allow something to be seen. To understand that not everyone is like you, and that people who are not like you do not necessarily want to be like you, and if you don’t get that and have no interest in even trying to get that then kindly go fuck yourself.

I am complete as I am, and if anyone who claimed to love me demanded I “fix” myself for them I would run.

…Goddamn it, I really like this show, this hurt more than it should have.

[eloquentgifs]

Ed + Mirrors + Mental Breakdowns

***Bonus***

[menaceanon]

It’s like he discovered a whole new image of himself in that hand mirror—clearly the first mirror he’s seen in a while. It’s deliberate—he picked up that mirror, and he’s screwing around and trying on a very manly grimace, before he immediately gets distracted by Stede. But it’s all very playful and pretend.

The next two times he looks at his own reflections—the plate and the blade—he’s at his most violent. The first time, he’s just ordered Fang to skin a man alive (in direct response to racially charged harassment that triggers a particularly painful childhood memory). The second time he has just killed Lucius, and is preparing to maim Izzy.

And then there’s the bathroom. Ed’s not seeing himself in this scene, and his reflection is not quite as warped. He only looks small, and isolated, and very exposed. And Stede—Stede is separated from him, yes, far away from this young, scared version of Ed… but he’s there too, in his own mirror, with a very different trauma that’s nevertheless a mirror of Ed’s own.

[onedirectionforever]

“you support gay rights so you must be gay”

i support animal rights do i look like a fucking alpaca to you

[onedirectionforever]

turns out i am gay

[monsieurenjlolras]

holy shit how’d this alpaca learn how to type

[mywitchcultblr]

Diversity win! The alpaca is gay!

[adreamthatsworthkeeping]

[kujakumai]

I love the Marik-Yami Bakura dynamic because the entire basis of it is that Marik somehow keeps convincing Yami Bakura to do things and Yami Bakura does them and almost dies in the process and gets mad but two seconds later Marik has made them besties again and is already convincing Yami Bakura that the next part of the plan will totally work while subtly mocking him the entire time. It’s fucking Looney Tunes in here. Marik gets every single thing he wants out of this interaction while Yami Bakura gets, in sequence: stabbed, sent to the hospital, forced to find his own way onto the blimp while stabbed, has to share his host body, has to duel Atem, blasted to bits by Slifer, and totally vaporized. By other Marik. And Marik never even gives him the one thing he promised. 

Battle City from Yami Bakura’s point of view is a very deadly game of “if you give a mouse a cookie” where every page contains a new hoop he has to jump through before getting the rod from a stupid mortal he definitely thinks he should be able to outsmart with ease and falling for it every goddamn time. Ishtar stay winning

[anbarelectrum]

[summerhighlandfalls]

As fun as a huge wrightworth confession/reveal would be I really hope it’s made canon in the most mundane way possible. You go to Phoenix’s apartment and there are three toothbrushes in the cup (blue, light blue, and red obv). Edgeworth mentions being a light sleeper and Phoenix makes some snarky remark about it. Someone asks Trucy about her dads, plural, and she doesn’t comment on it. They’re wearing wedding rings. Wrightworth is obviously canon and literally nobody talks about it

[astraios-art]

"She'll string you along and she'll sell you a lie"

[crazy-brazilian]

[kujakumai]

The thing about Dartz is that normally a sentence like “he burned down an orphanage” would be a comical hyperbole of villainy, an onion headline, a thing you make up for the purpose of hilariously exaggerating evil for a joke but like. no he literally did burn down an orphanage.

[anbarelectrum]

[mydododiedandthenreactivated]

The welsh word for rabbit is Cwningen.

In Welsh 'w' is pronounced as 'oo'.

Visit Original Link

[earhartsease]

strangely similar to the German Kaninchen

[kipplekipple]

And the Dutch konijn - I actually always trip on this because of the en at the end which in Dutch signifies multiple - 1 konijn, 2 konijnen! But the plural in Welsh is cwningod, and one day I will remember that.

[oregaymi]

they're similar because they're descended from the same words! In Latin, it was cuniculus, which was likely from the Ancient Greek κόνικλος (kóniklos), which was itself likely from an Iberian word

[kipplekipple]

So where did the French get lapin, and the English rabbit? If you happen to know, obviously!

[anbarelectrum]

Lapin comes from lepus, which is Latin for hare! The Old French word for rabbit was ‘connil’, originating from the correct Latin word. The English rabbit comes from robbe, which occurred in West Flemish and Middle Dutch among others and interestingly also means seal. Like, the animal, seal. The word ‘seal’ actually has its roots in the same languages, and is etymologically linked to the word ‘silly’, describing seal behaviour—it seems to have originally been a cute colloquialism before becoming the animal’s proper name, replacing robbe and its relatives.

Middle English took robbe and made a diminutive of it which became rabbit, which originally referred to “baby coneys” until a certain term for female genitalia came into vogue and English-speakers decided they needed another word for the critters ASAP.

[blue-bird-lamentation]

Hi!

Some weeks ago i shared a Junpei plushie on twt and ig, and decided to open preorders for it and some other stuff i had also planned (including the yosuke charm) + older stuff (the umineko keychains).

I put the link on my bio in case someone is interested.

Preorders close on August 25th!

The plushie is expected to be shipped between the end of October and December 2022.

[gaulemtypefemale-dm-l-016]

Sharing here too and showing some pictures of the main attractions :)

I added direct links to these in bio

[eldritchscholar]

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.

[benegesserwitch]

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.

[darkersolstice]

@we-are-threadmage

[systlin]

Someone port Doom to a blanket

[rolypolywardrobe]

I really love tumblr for this 🙌

[isnerdy-deactivated20190101]

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.

[dollsahoy]

(little old ladies sewed the space suits, too)

[butts-for-days]

Fun fact: one nickname for it was LOL Memory, for “little old lady memory.”

[costumersupportdept]

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)

[synebluetoo]

This is fascinating. I knew there was a correlation between binary and weaving but this just takes it to a whole nother level. 

[moiraecrochet]

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.

[the-fibre-stuff]

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.

[swords-n-spindles]

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

[iplaywithstring]

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).

[millenniummmbop]

if noah has a robot body, can he play music? does he ever play really obnoxious music just to annoy his brothers?

sometimes, yeah

[rasstegai]

kristoph/phoenix hannibal au

[eagle1sky-deactivated20171002]

Star Wars: Comics vs. Movies.

[enonem]

Yes, but the point is: which one hurts us more?

Luke the Jedi, strong in his conquered suffering, carrying the lifeless body of a man who was once prone to striding as proudly as Luke does now, strong and untouchable, but is now brought low and helpless by a final act of love. A stoic hero holding up a spent sacrificial victim.

OR

Luke the boy, recently tortured within an inch of his life, dragging a weight too heavy for him, but still struggling on with all the painful determination of a lonely child who’ll do anything to hold on to the dying father he has finally truly found again.

Discuss.

[hamenthotep]

Or Luke. Pure of heart, dumb of ass. Has completely forgotten he could use the Force to lift him.