candidlyautistic:

tobiaswritings:

candidlyautistic:

(or, An Autism Story By J. Murray with editing by Samantha Hack)

Imagine that you’re a sparrow, living in a family of sparrows in a town of sparrows in a world of sparrows.

But you’re kind of a shitty sparrow. Kind of the worst sparrow, actually.

You can’t fly. You’ve been to doctors who have prescribed medicine to help with flying. But you still can’t. You try every day, and every day you fail and this thing which all the other sparrows tell you is critical.

For a while, you stop trying. Failing every day just wore you down and you couldn’t do it anymore, so you stopped trying to fly. It was nice in some ways, but you felt guilty because you weren’t raised to give up. It made a rift with your family. Flying is an important activity that sparrow families do together. Isn’t your family important to you? Don’t they deserve for you to at least make the effort?

So since it’s nothing medically wrong with you, you go to a therapist, who diagnoses you with a phobia of flying. You work on overcoming your fear. You’re lucky, your family is very accepting of mental illness (other sparrows are not so lucky, and it hurts your heart to think about that). They appreciate and admire how hard you’re working. They try to include you, so instead of getting together and flying, sometimes they get together and all sit in their nests. That sort of sucks too, but it’s a definite improvement.

You continue to try, and fail, to fly. You try harder. You try as hard as you can. Sometimes you can’t even make yourself flap your wings, it’s just such pointless bullshit and you feel like you’ll never succeed. Sometimes you go up on a chair and jump off and flap real hard and go splat anyway.

Sometimes mean birds make fun of you because you’re a terrible screw-up.

For 26 years, this is what your life is.

One day, almost out of nowhere, as an afterthought, an aside, something barely worth mentioning because it is so obvious, a doctor says, “by the way, you’re a penguin.”

Holy shit. You’re not a failure. You’re a penguin. You’re not lazy or stupid or weak. You don’t have messed up values. You’re a penguin. You have always been a penguin.

There’s nothing wrong with you, you’re a beautiful penguin. The most perfect penguin. But it’s just a fact, penguins can’t fly.

Now when you’re with you’re sparrow friends and they’re all sitting in nests, you sit in a bucket of ice. Mostly you bring your own. Some bird restaurants are really accommodating and will bring you a bucket of ice to sit in. Sometimes mean birds give you shit about your bucket, but it doesn’t hurt as much as it did before, because you know you’re a penguin and you’re just exactly what a penguin is meant to be.

You give yourself permission to stop trying to fly. Not failing all the time improves your mood and overall function. You finally feel confident declining when invited to flying outings. You don’t waste the energy feeling guilty about it.

You love your family of sparrows, but you also find a whole community of penguins to love too. Things you thought were just you, like preferring fish to bird seed, things you thought you were totally alone in and wrong for, are common and accepted. Some are even admired. Your new penguin friends think your flippers and chubby penguin belly are lovely. You bond over how and when you discovered you loved swimming.

Knowing you’re a penguin means knowing where you fit in a world you never felt like you fit into. It means all the things penguins can’t do, it’s not a personal failing when you can’t do them. You’re not supposed to be able to. You can do other things instead. Sparrows are actually quite poor swimmers. You feel good about the things you excel at.

This is why I think labels are important. This is why I think “we’re all birds, let’s focus on our similarities instead of our differences” is harmful. This is how my autism diagnosis was like breathing, after holding my breath for 26 years.

---

Sparrows and Penguins by J. Murray (edited by Samantha Hack) is licensed under a

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License

Based on a work at sparrowsandpenguins.com.

Just as a note, I claim no rights to the original idea of my poem only to the fact that I wrote this following poem.


Now that I know I’m a penguin
What does that mean?
It means I have some needs
Needs that sparrows can’t understand
Thrills that sparrows can’t understand
But that is fine
The rush of water under my wings
Is a thrill like no other
The taste of fish is so pleasing
Waddling as I walk is so pleasant
After years of trying to be a sparrow
After years of suffering at the hands of others
I can finally fly
Not through air but through water
I may not be who I thought I would be
But I am finally free

This is so great!

“It’s important to honour your commitments, but it’s also important to honour yourself. Finding the balance between these two things can take many years, but it’s worth it.”

- KSC

the-fibre-stuff:

moiraecrochet:

synebluetoo:

costumersupportdept:

butts-for-days:

dollsahoy:

isnerdy:

rolypolywardrobe:

systlin:

darkersolstice:

max-vandenburg:

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.

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.

This is amazing!

give-soup-please:

we need to talk about the fact that for many of the posters in season one, they are literally on opposite sides and/or have a dividing line between them

and now they’re literally crossed over in some way for the season 2 posters

THEY’RE LITERALLY ON THEIR OWN SIDE NOW, PEOPLE!

CAN WE TALK ABOUT THIS?

vexheart:

vexheart:

the rain knows all my secrets

b-r-o-w-n-o:

spotlessmy-deactivated20210523:

this was a great read. “Laziness Does Not Exist” by Devon Price

nickyandmikey:

i love when english subtitles are like [speaking foreign language] thank you that’s so helpful

intj-confessions:

bitchesgetriches:

mixingpumpkins:

unfriendlyblackwitch:

anarchapella:

Please fucking lie to your employer. Like they don’t need to know your mental health issues or what drugs you do. Ffs

its not lying if its to employers or cops

and look up ur rights on what they can and cannot ask u many places ban asking about ur record and transportation status and things like that resources will also tell u how they reword sketchy questions so ur prepared

Hey. Take it from a former HR person… this goes double right now.

I just spent some time putting in some job applications myself (not for HR, lol) and got about 15 interviews. And idk if it’s because of COVID uncertainty or if places just don’t fucking care anymore because they know people are desperate for work, but the amount of straight up illegal shit my interviewers asked me was appalling.

(That’s not even counting the questions that were technically legal but clearly fishing for information they’re not legally allowed to ask.)

A tame example? Two questions into a phone interview, the guy on the other end of the line asked: “How old are you?”

I said “Excuse me?” - giving him a chance to rethink that.

He didn’t. “How old are you?”

“Sir, you are not allowed to ask me that question.”

“Well, I want to know. I’m asking.”

“And you’re legally not allowed to ask me that. I’m not required to tell you my age.”

At that point, I guess he managed to remember an old HR bulletin or something (I hope to god he wasn’t actually HR himself), and he said, “Well, I need to know if you’re over the age of 18.” (Which is what he should have asked in the first place… or not, since that was in the application that he could have read.)

“Yes. I’m over the age of 18.” 

And we moved on. Two questions later, he tried another illegal question. I called him on it again and ended the interview, citing that a workplace with such a clear disregard for the law, especially upon first contact with a potential employee, was not going to be a good fit. (They offered me the job anyway, lol. I didn’t send a thank-you or a response.)

At a different interview, the majority of questions were “fishing” questions - just looking for that info they’re not actually allowed to ask. (This person was also either not really HR or an HR person who was exceptionally bad at their job.)

I could tell they were getting frustrated when I dodged answering the personal stuff, and they actually got extremely upset when I mentioned later in the interview (re: less relevant work experience) I had worked in HR. They were super flustered for the remainder of our time, and I watched them skip over questions on their sheet they had clearly planned on asking. They KNEW they were being sketchy and were counting on me not knowing anything about HR - or my rights - and so they got upset when I did.

These were super tame examples. I’m begging you, if you’re job searching right now, PLEASE know your rights. Please know what interviewers are allowed to ask.

Please don’t volunteer information or elaborate more than you’re required to about personal things. Save your words (and everyone’s time) by elaborating why you’re good for the position/what you can do.

I may create a resource list on this shit later but PLEASE PLEASE KNOW THIS STUFF BEFORE YOU TALK TO AN EMPLOYER. This goes for anywhere you’re interviewing as well as your current employer. This also goes for HR. HR may be the person you go to when shitty stuff happens, but that doesn’t mean they’re your friend (or competent).

They don’t need to know your age (beyond 16+, 18+, or 21+, depending on the job). They don’t need to know your medical history. (For the love of god, do NOT answer the “have you been diagnosed with depression?” question.) They don’t need to know if you have kids or whatever. They don’t need to know a LOT of those things that may appear on an application, including your veteran status, whether you’re on/have been on unemployment, etc. They’re not entitled to know specifics about your transportation (unless you’re using that transportation for the job, like Uber/delivery drivers). Look this up for your state/the job’s state.

Beware questions like “What year did you graduate?” if you’re like me and don’t put dates on your resume (I just put amount of time spent at employers, not dates of employment). They’re fishing for your age. It’s “Oh, you know, 100 years ago,” if you feel comfortable making a joke, or “About [generic number, like 5 or 10] years ago” if not.

Also beware things like the “What do you do in your free time?” question, even if you already work there. This is not a friendly getting-to-know-you question. This is a basis for judgement. Not up to an invisible standard? They’re going to be biased against you for pay raises, promotions, etc. Mention kids/lots of family/social engagements? That’s a tick against you for not being the kind of person who lives to work (yes, it’s gross and stupid). Mention lots of solitary things? Cool, that’s their mental note to ask more from you because you’re “not doing anything anyway.” By all means, be friendly with your coworkers/talk about shared interests if you want, but it is none of your boss’s business, and be aware what could get back to them. 

Don’t. Tell. Employers. Shit.

We wrote up a handy list of those illegal questions here:

10 Questions You Should Never Be Asked in a Job Interview 

Hopefully people already know this by now, but I saw way too often back when I worked in retail. Don’t add your coworkers or boss on social media. Yes, your coworkers too. You don’t want to accidentally say something to them or have them see a post and mention it to your boss. I’ve seen it happen.