The Romantic Science Guild

Stars, hide your fires! Let not light see my black and deep desires! ‘Romantic’ with a capital R

[studyblr]

how to learn new content and never forget it

save this for your next academic year and finals, and it’ll save your grades and time.

1. whenever you read a paragraph with new content, close the book/look away and ask yourself: “what have i just learned?” explaining the concept to yourself right away and asking follow-up questions will change the way you retain new material forever.

2. at first, it’ll be daunting, and it’ll be pretty hard to actually bring yourself to do this. trust me, it’ll be worth it - as this is scientifically proven one of the most effective study techniques.

3. to try this out, set yourself a timer for how long you estimate learning a concept might take. now take away 20% from that estimate. you won’t be able to reach this goal with basic highlighting and re-reading techniques - but with active recall, you will.

4. once you’ve understood the concept, use spaced repetition systems like anki flashcards to force yourself to retrieve this information in a set period of time. this way, your brain will always be reminded of this concept before it could possibly forget it.

5. teach it to others as much as you can. as with the old wisdom “see one, do one, teach one”, one of the only guarantees you’ve really gotten something is when you can effectively teach it.

hope these are helpful for you!!

more content like this on my instagram, @softmedstudent

[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).

[silverserpent]

@stars-hide-your-fires

[stars-hide-your-fires]

What are you studying? Which year are you in?

Thank you for the ask! I am studying physics for school, and I am at approximately third year standing.

[stars-hide-your-fires]

Romantic Science Summer

[stars-hide-your-fires]

You know what. I’m starting a new aesthetic, population me.

Romantic Science, AKA Dark Academia for STEM people.

Thrifting a lab coat and embroidering it with your initials and a little insignia, whose significance is known to you and your lab partner only

Watching The Theory of Everything and The Imitation Game and Hidden Figures and basically every movie about historical scientists and mathematicians you can find

Decorating your desk with old slide rules and vintage lab equipment. Your prize possession is a set of vintage lenses you found at a thrift store

Wanting an articulated human skeleton far, far too much

Getting a set of (brand new, NOT thrifted, be safe ppl) beakers to drink from, and putting them directly onto your stovetop to boil water for tea or coffee, because borosilicate glass can survive anything.

Secretly relating far too much to Henry Jekyll and Victor Frankenstein, because you too want to do a gay little science experiment that challenges god.

Thunderstorms and late nights in the lab, the light of the Bunsen burner glistening off of your flasks and scribbled chalkboard equations

Papering your walls with vintage scientific diagrams; even if you know that our understanding of the world has evolved since they were made, looking back at scientific history is amazing

Writing code late at night and feeling, in some metaphysical way, as though Ada Lovelace herself is with you in spirit

Being far, FAR too obsessed with the concept of emergent ai sentience and how it has the potential to be Frankenstein irl

Looking through a telescope on clear nights, whispering the names of the constellations and stars, painting a star chart on your ceiling in a burst of creative inspiration

Collecting and mounting samples from everywhere you can think of to pore over in an antique microscope

Bringing a field journal wherever you go, learning how to draw and label botanical samples, preserving plants and flowers for study later

Dreaming of what undiscovered mysteries lie in the deepest depths of the sea, feeling the thrill of discovery whenever you learn about a new species and one day hoping to discover one yourself

Just. Romanticise STEM.

[theinsects]

fuck you, my child is completely fine!

your child romanticises the idea of running far away and completely changing their personality, looks & soul as a way of coping with having no control over their life & being generally dissatisfied with who they have become

[stars-hide-your-fires]

Who has a ‘morbid longing for the picturesque at all costs’? Couldn’t be me, a person who started a dark academia blog.

[saintmachina]

In 2021 I will not be Richard-Papening myself over mysterious and sexy snobs I will BECOME the mysterious and sexy snob

[stars-hide-your-fires]

all I want is for someone to be incredibly, obnoxiously pretentious at me about the classics so that I can judge them for being so elitist but secretly be swept up and captivated by their passion

[stars-hide-your-fires]

Why do I have to fall in love with teas which aren’t available in my area?

[trinitysbooks]

I am full of poetry now. Rot and poetry. Rotten poetry. 

- Ernest Hemingway, The Snows of Kilimanjaro

(not my pictures)

[stars-hide-your-fires]

Julian Morrow is just Lord Henry if Lord Henry were somehow more of a coward, change my mind

[abernathyvalois]

we all think we’re camilla macaulay when we’re really judy poovey

[stars-hide-your-fires]

I can’t help but wonder what The Secret History would have been like to read had I not immediately lost all respect for Julian Morrow as soon as it was mentioned that he had a drawer full of Montblancs. (bc... come on that’s about the tackiest thing I’ve ever heard of)

[stars-hide-your-fires]

The Secret History AKA the experience of starting a book for the Æsthetic (TM) and slowly falling in deep appreciation with Judy Poovey

[stickandthorn]

I would love to make a film adaptation of The Secret History that starts really aesthetic, with beautiful shots and dramatic lighting, mood music and wonderful sets. But after the murder of bunny and after their lives start to go down hill it slowly becomes less and less beautiful and much harsher, much more realistic and graphic and ugly, until it ends up extremely simple, no grand angles or romantic lighting, just the horror of what’s happening and what they’ve done. The costumes and makeup would also go from eccentric and beautiful (perfect makeup, suites that are far too neat and shoes too clean, perfect hair, aesthetic™️ dark circles) to how they actually look (unshaven, bad skin from constantly drinking and smoking and doing drugs, fancy clothes that need to see the hot side of an iron, hair that desperately needs brushing, etc). This would happen to bunny sooner though, in line with the whole arc leading to his death. The only person who might not get this treatment is Camila since I feel she was romanticized the entire time and always a version altered through Richard’s Male Gaze™️, never truly known. Hell, she might get even more romanticized, idk. and yes, it would look both excruciatingly 80s and weirdly Victorian. Anyways I put too much though into this, Goodnight. 

((((((And yes Judy Poovey would look absolutely ROCKIN at all times)))))

[stars-hide-your-fires]

My favourite used bookstore is opening again and I am hyped. Really want to read The Brothers Karamazov this winter, because winter is Dostoyevsky season apparently, but I refuse to buy it new when I might find a lovely old edition for a third of the price.