You can call me Betty, or... @ucancallmeal - Tumblr Blog

Mentalhealthceo

Learning to say "no," and set boundaries with your family members, even though it might upset them. Learning the difference between helping your family members and enabling them. Doing things for them because you want to, not because they think you're supposed to, or because it's expected of you, or to keep some tenuous peace. Learning the difference between self-care and selfishness, and learning not to feel guilty about taking care of yourself. Learning that, yes, your family members matter, but so do you. Learning to detach with love. Learning to help your family, without taking on their problems and feelings. Learning to let go when necessary, and let them make their own mistakes and learn their lessons. Learning to let them deal with the consequences of their behavior. Keeping yourself safe, even if that means moving out, or staying with friends for a while. Learning to put your own mask on before helping others with theirs.

Reparenting yourself, and learning to be who you needed when you were younger. Knowing what your limits are, what your family members need, what you need, and what you realistically can and cannot give to your family members. Learning to communicate your needs, wants, and feelings, even if it's not what your family wants to hear. Learning the difference between codependency and love. Learning the difference between people-pleasing and caring. Stepping away from whatever drama triangles pop up in your family. Learning what is and is not within your locus of control, and letting go of what you can't control or change. Learning that you are not responsible for your family members' dysfunctions, addictions, vices, problems, feelings, issues, actions and non-actions, life choices, opinions, happiness, financial habits, relationships, or what the neighbors may or may not think.

where-our-stories-start

This right here is the essence of why I love this show. It's a makeover show, but it's not just about telling people how they should look or eat or live and making them conform to it. The Fab Five really do focus on what the person needs and what is going to work for their life. Tan doesn't tell Joey that he needs to shower every day, because the fact is, Joey's not going to do that. It's not something that feels good to him and it's not practical for his life. Furthermore, telling someone to shower more isn't actually helpful, it just makes them feel shamed.

Instead, Tan gives Joey ways to stay fresher and cooler without needing to shower more often. He's not trying to change Joey's overall behavior, he's trying to give him clothing that suits that behavior. It's not about dressing how he's "supposed to," it's about dressing in a way that works for him and makes him feel better.

Plus, like, when Joey cares more about taking care of himself, he'll probably shower more often on his own anyway. If you can get him to care, the rest will follow.

maculategiraffe

my mom didn't believe in lying to children so when I first asked about santa claus as a small child she was like "oh santa claus is another name for a man named saint nicholas who lived a long time ago. he was a very kind and generous man and he loved giving people presents and he would do things like put presents in people's stockings when they were hung up to dry by the fire, so they would find them and be surprised. so now when we give presents at christmas it's fun to pretend saint nicholas or 'santa claus' brings them. and we hang up stockings by the fire and when we get up in the morning there are presents in them, just like if saint nicholas was still alive to bring them!"

so that thanksgiving one of my uncles said jovially "so mac, are you being good for santa claus?" and little (not quite three year old) mac looked up and raised an eyebrow and said witheringly "he's dead."

and-then-there-were-n0ne

To desire effort from a man, we are taught, is to transgress in several ways. (This is true even if you’ve never had or wanted a romantic relationship with a man.) First, it means acknowledging that there are things you want beyond what he’s already provided — a blow to his self-concept. This is called “expecting him to read your mind,” and we’re often scolded for it; better, we learn, to pretend that whatever he’s willing to give us is what we were after anyway.

Second, and greater, it means acknowledging that there are things you want. For a woman who has learned to make herself physically and emotionally small, to live literally and figuratively on scraps, admitting that you have an appetite is a source of cavernous fear. Women are often on a diet of the body, but we are always on a diet of the heart.

The low-maintenance woman, the ideal woman, has no appetite. This is not to say that she refuses food, sex, romance, emotional effort; to refuse is petulant, which is ironically more demanding. The woman without appetite politely finishes what’s on her plate, and declines seconds. She is satisfied and satisfiable.

The secret to satiation, to satisfaction, was not to meet or even acknowledge your needs, but to curtail them. We learn the same lesson about our emotional hunger: Want less, and you will always have enough.

A man’s appetite can be hearty, but a woman with an appetite is always voracious: her hunger always overreaches, because it is not supposed to exist. If she wants food, she is a glutton. If she wants sex, she is a slut. If she wants emotional care-taking, she is a high-maintenance bitch or, worse, an “attention whore”: an amalgam of sex-hunger and care-hunger, greedy not only to be fucked and paid but, most unforgivably of all, to be noticed.

[…] The attention whore is every low-maintenance woman’s dark mirror: the void of hunger we fear is hiding beneath our calculated restraint. It doesn’t take much to be considered an attention whore; any manifestation of that deeply natural need to be noticed and attended to is enough. You don’t have to be secretly needy to worry. You just have to be secretly human.

[…] When I said “I don’t like romance,” it was the equivalent of a dieter insisting she just doesn’t want dessert. I did want it—I just thought I wasn’t allowed.

People frequently claim that eating disorders, like anything common to adolescent girls, are just “a cry for attention.” As someone who was once an adolescent girl, I suspect they are at least partially the opposite: a cry against hunger and need, an attempt to kick away that profoundly human desire to be paid mind. To shut the door on the void.

Fearing hunger, fearing the loss of control that tips hunger into voraciousness, means fearing asking for anything: nourishment, attention, kindness, consideration, respect. Love, of course, and the manifestations of love. It means being so unwilling to seem “high-maintenance” that we pretend we do not need to be maintained. And eventually, it means losing the ability to recognize what it takes to maintain a self, a heart, a life.

[…] Women talk ourselves into needing less, because we’re not supposed to want more—or because we know we won’t get more, and we don’t want to feel unsatisfied. We reduce our needs for food, for space, for respect, for help, for love and affection, for being noticed, according to what we think we’re allowed to have. Sometimes we tell ourselves that we can live without it, even that we don’t want it. But it’s not that we don’t want more. It’s that we don’t want to be seen asking for it. And when it comes to romance, women always, always need to ask.

There’s a YouTube video I’m fond of that shows a baby named Madison being given cake for the first time. The maniacal shine in her eyes when she first tastes chocolate icing is transcendent, a combination of “where has this been all my life” and “how dare you keep this from me?” Jaw still dropped in shock, she slowly tips the cake up towards her face and plunges in mouth-first. Periodically, as she comes up for air, she shoots the camera a look that is almost anguished. Can you believe this exists? her face says. Why can’t I get it all in my mouth at once?

This video makes me laugh uproariously, but it’s that throat-full-of-needles laugh that, on a more hormonal day, might be a sob. The raw, unashamed carnality of this baby going to town on a cake is like a glimpse into a better, hungrier world. This may be one of the last times Madison is allowed to express that kind of appetite, that kind of greed. She’s still young enough for it to be cute.

This is Madison’s first birthday. By the time she’s 10, there’s an 80 percent chance she’ll have been on a diet. By high school, she’s likely to have shied away from expressing public opinions; she’ll speak up less in class, bite back objections and frustrations, shrug more, stay silent, look at the ground. She’ll worry about seeming “good”—which means not too pushy, not too demanding, not too loud. (Only bitches want better. Only sluts want more.) Boys will treat her shoddily, and she will find ways to shrink herself into the cracks they leave for her. She will learn to assert less, to demand less, to desire less. She won’t grab for anything with both hands; she won’t tip anything towards her face and plunge in. And that transcendent anguish, that stark gluttony … well, at least we’ll have it caught on video.

What would it take to feel safe being voracious? What would it take to realize that your desires are not monstrous, but human?

Imagine being Madison, grown up but undimmed. Imagine being the woman who is unabashed about needing food to survive and pleasure to be fulfilled and care to be happy. Imagine prying open the Pandora’s box where you hide your voraciousness, and letting it consume indiscriminately, and realizing that the world is not destroyed. Imagine saddling up the seven-headed beast of your hunger and riding it to Babylon.

- Jess Zimmerman, Hunger Makes Me

funnytwittertweets

toxicyurienthusiast

love wins actually

gallusrostromegalus

This works as an answer to the metaphorical problem because the key is for the hedgehogs and prcupines to be a bit flexible about how they position themselves and keep thier spines pointed in such a fashion to minimize poking, just like how in human relationships you have to be a bit flexible and concious of your position relative to others, and to manage your sharp bits to minimize the harm you do to others.

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).

dduane

Now this is a thread and a half.

unitedforpeace

hairsolongthatitlooklikeweave

theoriginalblackbarbie

Forever Reblog 👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾 RIP

datyellanubian

dickensign

daughterofscotland

See the source for the whole comic, it’s brilliant.

the-future-now-deactivated20170

The Giphy library now includes over 2,000 American Sign Language GIFs

GIF emporium Giphy expanded its library on Thursday to include more than 2,000 words and phrases in American Sign Language.

The company collaborated with educational series Sign With Robert to slice clips from their 30-episode video series featuring Robert DeMayo and add written text.

The goals, Mashable reported, are to empower the deaf community and help hearing people learn ASL. Read more (2/16/17 3:33 PM)

follow @the-future-now

babyanimalgifs

MY HEART

grantgustins

20th anniversary buffy birthweek meme: day five. ↳ [1/3] themes: feminism.

onlinecounsellingcollege

Depression is like having an abusive relationship with yourself.

Unknown (via onlinecounsellingcollege)

bidyke

[Image: Dark purple background with messy white ‘scratches’. Text below.]

My favorite definition for bisexuality so far is the one popularized by (the wonderful) bisexual activist Robyn Ochs. Ochs says, “I call myself bisexual because I acknowledge that I have in myself the potential to be attracted—romantically and/or sexually—to people of more than one sex, and/or gender, not necessarily at the same time, not necessarily in the same way, and not necessarily to the same degree.”

This is by far the broadest and most enabling definition of bisexuality that I’ve found to date. Its strength is in the way it enables anyone who wants to identify as bisexual to do so. (In other words, it reassures people.) In a world in which bisexuality is usually very narrowly defined, many people who experience bisexual desire, and want to identify as bi, often feel afraid to start (or keep) identifying as such, as they feel as though they “don’t qualify.” The role that an enabling definition for bisexuality can fulfill to counter these feelings of internalized biphobia is invaluable—and I feel that Ochs’s definition does just that. It reassures people that they are “allowed” to identify as bisexual if they wish to do so.

Shiri Eisner, Bi: Notes for a Bisexual Revolution