[ophiliaanne]

I’m returning to tumblr because I need somewhere I can scream into the void where the void won’t take my screams and turn them into monetized content

[443point7ml]

“level 0 charisma only or he’s a scrub”

-elinor, sense & sensibility

[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

[earendil-was-a-mariner]

Lord of the Rings ending except it’s Willy Wonka. Frodo throws the one ring in the lava, and Sauron comes out and says you did it my boy and then he gives Mordor to Frodo. 

[nothing-more-than-hot-leaf-juice]

I know deep in my soul that modern AU Iroh would love crocs. Modern AU Iroh has a collection of crocs he rotates between. Iroh would be a croc guy. 

[freakishlyme]

#this is accurate and no I will not elaborate#except I will say that he tries to get zuko into crocs and Zuko might have 0 fashion sense but that’s where he draws the line#there is a line in the sand and it is crocs uncle#‘uncle please stop wearing those we’re going out in public’#‘nephew there is no shame with being comfortable with one’s own style’#‘uncle if you leave this house in tye dye crocs I’m going to loose it’#atla#avatar the last airbender#he gets disney character bedazzles for one of his pairs#iroh#zuko#hot leaf content

[221buckythesoldier]

after months of badgering, iroh manages to convince zuko to wear some, but! he will only wear these

[zukosturtleducks]

C-croc martens????

[itsthatoneagain]

Actual picture of Uncle Iroh getting ready to kick some ass

[sokkatheboomerangboi]

Zuko: WHAT ARE THOSE???

Uncle Iroh: these are my CROCS!!!!

[thelastairblender]

Iroh shows up to an Agni Kai wearing these bad boys

[sparknoteslitmemes]

[pianjeong]

everytime zuko goes out he leaves iroh a note that says “gone insane, back later”

[azulapropaganda]

When he does this at the palace Iroh just goes to the pond cause he’s always lying in the water with the turtleducks

[pianjeong]

in full fire lord regalia just absolutely submerged in the pond

[beignetbenny]

Zuko just out there with the turtleducks vibing like

[pianjeong]

leave me alone uncle, im vibing

[shadowed-dancer]

Thanks for the inspiration

[bookofjudith]

has anyone noticed how young Zuko looks I’m the tea shop episodes versus like...Zuko alone or any of the episodes where he’s back in the palace...like he looks like an actual teenager...with a round face and shaggy hair...cus the tea shop episodes are the only episodes where Zuko

a. Was being taken care of by a responsible adult who loved him

b. Was relatively safe

c. Was, you know, eating

[bookofjudith]

Ex. A:

Zuko alone. my mans lost weight for sure

Ex. B

Uhhh? I can see all his ribs??? Where did his muscle definition go?? my mans used to be JACKED and now he looks skeletal. He’s at the palace so it’s not that he’s lacking ACCESS to food- it’s the stress of BEING THERE

Ex. C

Baby. Baby boy. Baby son child. His face is rounded out and he’s EATIN GOOD

[infinityuserboxes]

[gnomebud]

[image description: a user box in pale pink text with a trans flag that reads, “this user doesn’t want terfs following them”. /end id]

[popsunner]

Was just informed by my mom that I do in fact have ADHD and the reason I thought I didn’t was because ever since I was seven whenever I got super energetic my mom would have me go chop wood so now when I’m feeling The ADHD I go chop wood and I thought it was just some sort of routine I started when I was little and wanted to blow off steam

[popsunner]

I’d also like to point out that my sister has a really hard time staying present (I can’t remember the term because we’ve always called it Tethered at my house) and whenever she’s feeling Untethered my mom has her knead bread and make syrup because they’re repetitive and easy things to do that ground her

[popsunner]

Now that I’m thinking about it- my brother has days where he doesn’t talk and doesn’t eat unless he’s prompted, and on those days my mom sits him down in the fish pond in the backyard and plays Mozart and because he’s so used to that being his wake up he always comes back in after like an hour rambling about random things

[popsunner]

Oh yeah and when it rains my mom has a required hour where we all have to go outside and run around and whoever finds the most worms for the garden wins and then we go inside and my mom makes us tea and we watch Studio Ghibli movies

[popsunner]

Wait!!! When one of us has a bad day at school we make a fire in the backyard and roast homemade sausages and my mom tells us stories until we laugh and then she tucks is in bed like we’re five again and sings us songs

[popsunner]

Uh.... wait guys is my mom a witch raising a bunch of fae kids hold on-

[saint-batrick]

your mom is very definitely a witch raising a bunch of fae kids, please tell her i love her in the abstract way one can love a complete stranger.

[ophiliaanne]

listen, if your grandmother was allowed to draw lines on the backs of her legs with an eyebrow pencil in the middle of wwii then i can wear a full face of makeup in a goddamn pandemic

[podcastwizard]

i understand from an artistic perspective why the four nations are color coded but imagine if that was just like...a thing in real life. like if you went to canada and everyone was wearing purple and you just had to live with that.

[ophiliaanne]

it was a thing in real life too!! cultures that were very isolated would only have access to dyestuffs native to their area

my favorite example is the aran islands in ireland. they were self sufficient at the start of the 20th century and everyone pretty much wore the same things in the same colors—women wore madder red wool petticoats and jackets, blue stockings, and tartan shawls. men wore several layers of undyed or blue flannel waistcoats and pants. so yeah, some cultures actually do the color-coding!

and also! the colors in atla make sense! most vibrant red dyes are native to tropical regions, and the fire nation is shown to be very hot and humid

woad (blue) is particularly cold hardy so it’s perfect for the polar water tribes

the best greens are usually made of a combination of a blue and a yellow dye so it works for earth kingdom aka the largest nation. more land=more native plant species!

and as for air nomads, since they aren’t agricultural and are all about balance, they would either trade with earth kingdom for their yellows, or use turmeric which doubles as a spice. theyre also vegetarian so they could use their leftover scraps like carrots and onion skins for orange tones

so yeah i know the point of the post was to say this would be really weird irl but it’s totally realistic and i think that’s neat!

[falonah]

what is it about rain that makes worms go absolutely buck wild for pavement

[falonah]

worm: no longer can i suffer the constriction, both of flesh and soul, of living in the tunnels of underground, for i now long only to be free under the skies of the Saints. earth may have birthed me but the sun is my mother

me, holding a slurpee, plucking worms off the sidewalk and tossing them into the grass: go the fuck home brian

[autisticraptor]

Aren't we all but worms lost in the sauce on the pavement until the gods picks us up and throws us back in the grass

[catchymemes]

[mycaptaintazer]

I’ve never identified with something more than this

[blackboyjoy]

It’s gonna be the Duolingo bird too

[nathaylee]

[atticusblackwolf]

always reblog

[unwinona]

WHERE HAS THIS BEEN ALL MY LIFE

[lilac-est]

Creator is Kate Beaton, she has a book called Hark! A Vagrant.

[fuckyesfeminist]

Average size mannequin with average size woman.

[jackpowerx]

The problem, in one picture.

[doshicryptid]

I never realized until seeing this picture that my interpretation of an average size woman has become REALLY SKEWED oh my god I wanna cry

[foreignpussy-deactivated2015062]

best picture ive reblogged in a while.

[feminismandmedia]

I’ve been struggling with my body image recently because I’ve gained a lot more weight… and this is so helpful to me because I think my image has been skewed by a lot of mannequins in stores. 

[gramjams]

Boost the fuck out of this post. The fashion industry has a lot to answer for in making women feel so shitty about their bodies. Curves are beautiful ♥️