My collection of clothing references for writing.
Ya know what , I’m adding. Here are more useful references that I use;
746.92 Fashion design of clothing
There should be a joke account called “nsfw photos” in which all of them are stuff like this
That’s a brilliant idea
Did someone call?
The very first post
WAIT I WAS THE REASON THIS BLOG WAS CREATED?????????? I THOUGH IT ALREADY EXISTED AND I JUST CASUALLY CAME TO THE SAME CONCLUSION OMG
Yes, thank you I’ve had so much fun with this blog :)
I can’t believe I shitposted a famous blog into existence 😳😳😳😳 thank YOU!!! it was an honor!
I feel like I’m a part of history, no, lore
You are, I’m pretty sure you made me popular in the first time.
624 Civil engineering
Nobody ever talk to me about the catholics going off with stained glass again because not one window of jesus has ANYTHING on the Nasir al-Mulk Mosque
i absolutely love seeing people’s reactions to the pink mosque 😂
the style is called “orsi” and is unique to iran
and stained glass traces its roots to south west and west asia, developed in ancient times and well before the europeans and the roman empire saw it and said “hey i like that, i’ll be leaving with it”
and while we’re talking about mosques in iran, may i present persian mirror work in a different mosque in the same city?
every time someone tries to talk to me about western churches and architecture and their superiority to that of “third world countries” i have to laugh a little at the ignorance, especially when our mosques look like this
726 Buildings for religious and related purposes
Something I find incredibly cool is that they’ve found neandertal bone tools made from polished rib bones, and they couldn’t figure out what they were for for the life of them.
“Wait you’re still using the exact same fucking thing 50,000 years later???”
“Well, yeah. We’ve tried other things. Metal scratches up and damages the hide. Wood splinters and wears out. Bone lasts forever and gives the best polish. There are new, cheaper plastic ones, but they crack and break after a couple years. A bone polisher is nearly indestructible, and only gets better with age. The more you use a bone polisher the better it works.”
It’s just.
50,000 years. 50,000. And over that huge arc of time, we’ve been quietly using the exact same thing, unchanged, because we simply haven’t found anything better to do the job.
i also like that this is a “ask craftspeople” thing, it reminds me of when art historians were all “the fuck” about someone’s ear “deformity” in a portrait and couldn’t work out what the symbolism was until someone who’d also worked as a piercer was like “uhm, he’s fucked up a piercing there”. interdisciplinary shit also needs to include non-academic approaches because crafts & trades people know shit ok
One of my professors often tells us about a time he, as and Egyptian Archaeologist, came down upon a ring of bricks one brick high. In the middle of a house. He and his fellow researchers could not fpr the life of them figure out what tf it could possibly have been for. Until he decided to as a laborer, who doesnt even speak English, what it was. The guy gestures for my prof to follow him, and shows him the same ring of bricks in a nearby modern house. Said ring is filled with baby chicks, while momma hen is out in the yard having a snack. The chicks can’t get over the single brick, but mom can step right over. Over 2000 years and their still corraling chicks with brick circles. If it aint broke, dont fix it and always ask the locals.
I read something a while back about how pre-columbian Americans had obsidian blades they stored in the rafters of their houses. The archaeologists who discovered them came to the conclusion that the primitive civilizations believed keeping them closer to the sun would keep the blades sharper.
Then a mother looked at their findings and said “yeah, they stored their knives in the rafters to keep them out of reach of the children.”
Omg the ancient child proofing add on tho lol
I remember years ago on a forum (email list, that’s how old) a woman talking about going to a museum, and seeing among the women’s household objects a number of fired clay items referred to as “prayer objects”. (Apparently this sort of labeling is not uncommon when you have something that every house has and appears to be important, but no-one knows what it is.) She found a docent and said, “Excuse me, but I think those are drop spindles.” “Why would you think that, ma’am?” “Because they look just like the ones my husband makes for me. See?” They got all excited, took tons of pictures and video of her spinning with her spindle. When she was back in the area a few years later, they were still on display, but labeled as drop spindles.
So ancient Roman statues have some really weird hairstyles. Archaeologists just couldn’t figure them out. They didn’t have hairspray or modern hair bands, or elastic at all, but some of these things defied gravity better than Marge Simpson’s beehive.
Eventually they decided, wigs. Must be wigs. Or maybe hats. Definitely not real hair.
A hairdresser comes a long, looks at a few and is like, “Yeah, they’re sewn.”
“Don’t be silly!” the archaeologists cry. “How foolish, sewn hair indeed! LOL!”
So she went away and recreated them on real people using a needle and thread and the mystery of Roman hairstyles was solved.
She now works as a hair archaeologist and I believe she has a YouTube channel now where she recreates forgotten hairstyles, using only what they had available at the time.
^^ THE PERSON MENTIONED HERE IS JANET STEPHENS!!
Here’s her YouTube channel with the recreated hair-styles
And the research she did got published in the Journal of Roman Studies (which is a big deal in the Classics world) “even though” she doesn’t have at least a Masters degree in the field.
[To give reference to the gate keeping in this field, she was, I think, only the second or so person without a PhD to be published in the history of the Journal]
But that’s the point, she knew hair and she knew her craft so well that when scholars had ridiculous theories and scoffed at her own, she went ahead and experimented and proved her theories right.
392 Customs of life cycle and domestic life
Anonymous asked:
*Grabs your other hand* yes
lemonlurkrr answered:
holy shit
Oh sorry my bad
:0
FUCK
this has legendary post energy radiating off of it
The tumblr massacre circa 2021
I’m so happy people on Tumblr in 2021 can still make posts with the same energy as Tumblr posts from 2013-2016.
302 Social interaction
Local fire department with the severe weather analogy we can all understand
551.5 Meteorology
Source: https://ddc.typepad.com/025431/2010/08/extreme-weather-and-more.html
anyway since pride month is coming up and my local barnes and nobey has once again decided to only put young adult books in their corporate mandated rainbow display, y'all want some queer reading recs that aren't YA?
alright gang here we go, one queer-ass book for every day of pride month, plus a lot of bonus recs by extension because most of these authors have written more than one book. remember to buy from bookshop dot org or directly support a local indie by ordering through them 🖤
- Queer: A Graphic History (Meg-John Barker) - want a primer on queer theory but don't have the time and money to, you know, take a semester long class on queer theory? might I introduce you to this graphic novel written by nonbinary psychologist Meg-John Barker, who's written several other nonfiction books on gender and sexuality that I can't recommend enough.
- The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (Becky Chambers) - warm and fuzzy slice of life sci-fi, with lots of cool aliens and travelling between planets. a very queer-friendly universe with lots of exploration of gender and sexuality, plus a cute side romance between a human lady and a kickass lizard woman. all three sequels are hugely recommended, as are Chambers' novellas.
- How to Find a Princess (Alyssa Cole) - a Black f/f retelling of Anastasia, featuring a reluctant long-lost princess falling for the investigator tasked with tracking her down and bringing her back to the royal life. I'm told it includes such beloved tropes as fake marriage and only one bed!
- In the Vanishers' Palace (Aliette de Bodard) - gorgeous f/f Beauty and the Beast novella, told as a post-apocalyptic story that seamlessly blends science fiction with Vietnamese mythology. a dragon takes a young woman away from her village, intending to have the young woman serve as a tutor for her two young children, and - wait for it - romance ensues.
- Black Water Sister (Zen Cho) - a closeted Malaysian lesbian is haunted by her deceased grandmother, a medium who served a mysterious entity called Black Water Sister. grandma has unfinished business with a Shady Corporation, and her granddaughter is going to help her get retribution whether she likes it or not.
- This Is How You Lose the Time War (Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone) - a novel that will make you YEARN. following the letters exchanged between assassins Red and Blue, agents on opposite sides of a conflict that stretches across multiple timelines. the two women start as rivals, but become something more to each other very quickly, with absolutely zero chill.
- The Death of Vivek Oji (Akwaeke Emezi) - warning up front: as the title suggests, this will not have a happy ending. but the novel offers a touching account of a Nigerian family struggling to make sense of an adult child whose gender and sexual expression baffle them, and the impact of that child's death on the entire community.
- Alice Isn't Dead (Joseph Fink) - adapted from the podcast of the same name, this novel follows a Black lesbian trucker with bigtime anxiety as she hits the highways of America to search for Alice, her missing wife. along the way she's going to discover a lot of creepiness, and some skin-crawling conspiracies.
- River of Teeth (Sarah Gailey) - absolutely buckwild romp of a novella following an alternate history heist crew of hippopotamus riders, including their bisexual leader and his nonbinary Black demolitions expert love interest.
- A Dowry of Blood (S.T. Gibson) - admittedly I haven't read this book yet and don't know a TON about it, but what I DO know is that it's a spin on Dracula that makes the infamous brides a polycule, which is simply fantastic if you ask me.
- The Case of the Mysterious Letter (Alexis Hall) - a Sherlock Holmes pastiche following the adventures of one Dr. John Wyndham, a gay trans doctor, and Shaharazad Haas, a freewheeling pansexual sorceress. takes place in a universe full of magic, eldritch horror, and luridly entertaining oddities.
- Hunger (Roxane Gay) - not a lighthearted rec, but a truly stirring one. Gay recounts her life as the queer daughter of Haitian immigrants, and how her relationship with food and bodyweight was forever changed by a childhood sexual assault. highly recommended reading for anyone looking to increase their understanding of the violence of fatphobia.
- Wow, No Thank You (Samantha Irby) - full disclosure, Irby is one of my personal favorite essayists of all time, but it's well deserved - the bitch is funny. in her third and most recent collection, Irby mines the humor in moving from Chicago to live in a small city (the same city as me, incidentally) with her new wife and two step-children, plus the highs and lows of working on a show like Shrill.
- Everyone on the Moon is Essential Personnel (Julian K. Jarboe) - a collection of extremely queer, cyberpunky short stories, heavy on the critique of capitalism. you might know them from this tweet; now support their fiction!
- How We Fight For Our Lives (Saeed Jones) - poetic memoir, focused on being a gay Black boy growing up in the south, growing up and moving away from home, complicated maternal relationships, grappling with masculinity.
- The House in the Cerulean Sea (T.J. Klune) - the softest m/m romance you ever will see! a nebbish social worker for magical creatures is sent to inspect an unusual orphanage whose occupants include a slime monster and the literal baby antichrist, and inevitable ends up falling for their passionate caregiver. you will cry, reader.
- Phoenix Extravagant (Yoon Ha Lee) - a nonbinary artist just trying to mind their own business gets hired to paint magic symbols on enormous dragon mechas, which seems like a pretty sick gig - until they realize they're now complicit in supporting an imperialist war machine. uh oh...
- In The Dream House (Carmen Maria Machado) - difficult but absolutely riveting memoir recounting the author's harrowing relationship with an abusive girlfriend. also check out her collection of creepy short stories, Her Body and Other Parties.
- Winter's Orbit (Everina Maxwell) - m/m space opera romance, including: political intrigue! murder! arranged marriage! begrudgingly working together with your new spouse to solve a murder so that you don't take the blame for it! and... MORE!
- One Last Stop (Casey McQuiston) - new release alert! a young woman moves to New York, develops a crush on a hot lesbian on the subway, and then finds out that lesbian is actually a displaced time traveler from the 70s. hot damn!
- She Who Became the Sun (Shelley Parker-Chan) - a historical fantasy retelling the founding of the Ming Dynasty, following an ambitious child who enrolls in a monastery to pass as a male monk. sounds like your typical Mulan-style "cis girl pretending to be a boy," but Parker-Chan says the protagonist doesn't strictly identity as female and that they consider her to be genderqueer.
- Feed (Tommy Pico) - epic poetry (the whole book is one long poem bro it never ends) by a Kumeyaay writer, with a focus on reconnecting with lost culture through shared meals and food so evocative that it made me learn to cook.
- Witchmark (C.L. Polk) - you guys, this one has everything! a gay man on the run from his influential family, a hot love interest who needs him to help solve a dramatic murder, exploration of magic-based social inequality, critiques of imperialist war, and chase scenes that take place on bikes. the sequels, Stormsong and Starsoul, are equally queer and lean even more heavily into themes of radical social reform.
- Sorrowland (Rivers Solomon) - a young queer Black woman escapes from an isolated cult and tries to live a peaceful life in the woods with her twin children - only to discover she's developing some pretty fucked up superpowers.
- The Jasmine Throne (Tasha Suri) - you might have seen me mention this one as part of my Hot Book Summer, since it's an upcoming June release! do you like epic fantasy, f/f romance, and princesses working together with secret priestesses to topple empires? oh BOY, then do I have a book for you!
- Fierce Femmes and Notorious Liars: A Dangerous Trans Girl's Confabulous Memoir (Kai Cheng Thom) - modern fairy tale about a teenage martial arts prodigy who runs away from home, joins a vigilante street gang to protect trans sex workers (!!!), and finds herself™ along the way.
- Space Opera (Catherynne M. Valente) - okay, so you know Eurovision? great, now take Eurovision and put it in space and if Earth loses our whole planet is going to get blown up, and our only hope is a washed up queer singer from a punk band that hasn't been cool for years. good luck!
- Dear America: Notes From an Undocumented Citizen (Jose Antonio Vargas) - an excellent memoir from gay journalist and immigration rights activist! Vargas recounts coming to America from the Philippines as a young child, growing up unaware that he had entered the United States without documentation, and the community that helped him in the uphill struggle to live a visible public life as a writer.
- The Chosen and the Beautiful (Nghi Vo) - remember Jordan Baker from The Great Gatsby, and how she was definitely a lesbian? Vo says not only is Jordan queer, she's also an Asian-American adopted into a wealthy white family and she has magic powers.
- The Collected Schizophrenias (Esmé Weijun Wang) - a truly stirring memoir, written by the first-generation bisexual daughter of Taiwanese immigrants. Wang writes with gut-wrenching beauty about her diagnosis, the way her family endeavored to keep their history with mental health problems under wraps, and her struggles through higher education and institutionalizations.
alright fuck it, 20 more! happy pride!
- Common Bonds (edited by Claudie Arsenault, C.T. Callahan, B.R. Sanders, and RoAnna Sylver) - an upcoming anthology of stories centering aromantics.
- The Natural Mother of the Child: A Memoir of Nonbinary Parenthood (Krys Malcolm Belc) - it's exactly what it sounds like, babey! a recent memoir by a nonbinary individual about the experience of carrying out a pregnancy and giving birth to a child.
- ¡Hola Papi! How to Come Out in a Walmart Parking Lot and Other Life Lessons (John Paul Brammer) - if you aren't already reading John Paul Brammer's hilarious, heartfelt, and self-proclaimed "deranged" advice column, checking out this freshly published collection is a great place to start.
- Ace: What Asexuality Reveals About Desire, Society, and the Meaning of Sex (Angela Chen) - one of my favorite pieces of recent queer nonfiction, following the writer's acceptance of her own asexuality as she navigates the stereotypes and stigma that plague the ace community.
- Finna (Nino Cipri) - a buckwild novella about a pair of coworkers who a.) just broke up and b.) have to go on an adventure to find a lost customer in an interdimensional furniture store.
- The Unbroken (C.L. Clark) - if the first list didn't include enough anti-empire queer fiction for you, here's another one in which a princess and female soldier forge a fragile alliance while working opposite sides of society to end a war.
- Gender Euphoria: Stories of Joy from Trans, Nonbinary and Intersex Writers (edited Laura Kate Dale) - compiled by trans lesbian and video game journalist Laura Kate Dale, enjoy this collection of euphoric stories from folks all over the gender spectrum.
- Hunger Pangs (Joy Demorra) - more queer vampires, folks! in this one, a dashing captain is assigned to an island full of vampires and finds himself with some Feelings about, and I quote, "the local vampire dandy lord." a nice touch is that you can choose to purchase the book with or without sex scenes included!
- The Traitor Baru Cormorant (Seth Dickinson) - more anti-empire fic, following a queer girl with a prodigious gift for numbers seeking to destroy the empire that colonized her homeland and killed one of her fathers from the inside out, by burying herself among its highest-ranking officials.
- Bingo Love (Tee Franklin) - SUPER cute comic series about an elderly interracial lesbian couple, tracking their relationship through decades :)
- Star Eater (Kerstin Hall) - okay so we have (checks notes) a lesbian taking out an order of cannibal nuns? cool!
- Burning Roses (S.L. Huang) - a fairytale reimagining that throws Little Red Riding Hood and Hou Yi, a legendary Chinese archer, together as a pair of crotchety, aging queer women who have to come together to slay the monsters ravaging their country.
- The Thirty Names of Night (Zeyn Joukhadar) - a contemporary novel about a closeted young trans man from a Syrian American family trying to solve the mystery of his mother's death, and what is has to do with the journal of a mysterious woman who painted rare birds.
- No Man of Woman Born (Rewoven Tales) (Ana Mardoll) - I'm just gonna quote the blurb directly from the author's website, because it slaps ass: "a collection of seven fantasy stories in which transgender and nonbinary characters subvert and fulfill gendered prophecies."
- Luisa: Now and Then (Carole Maurel and Mariko Tamaki) - a graphic novel in which 32 year old struggling photographer Luisa encounters her 15 year old self and struggles to deal with her past, while also grappling with her attraction to a female neighbor.
- Skye Falling (Mia McKenzie) - a middle aged queer woman who's spent her life going it alone is contacted by the 12 year old child who was born from an egg she donated in her 20s, kicking off a complicated contemporary story about family.
- Little Fish (Casey Plett) - a trans woman discovers that her grandfather - a dead and deeply conservative Mennonite - may have also been transgender, and goes looking for the pieces of his life while she and her own friends grapple with addiction, sex work, and mental illness.
- Glitter + Ashes: Queer Tales of a World that Wouldn't Die (edited by Dave Ring) - an anthology from Neon Hemlock, focused on tales of queer folk surviving various ends of the world against all odds. features C.L. Clark, who's also included on this very list, and countless other incredible talents.
- Jonny Appleseed (Joshua Whitehead) - a two-spirit sex worker and self-described "glitter princess" is called back home for his stepfather's funeral, and spends a whirlwind week navigating how to walk the line between his life in the big city and the reservation.
- The Black Tides of Heaven (Neon Yang) - okay let's have one more regime-toppling story: the queer man with a dictatorial mother and a highly praised twin sister begins to pull away from his family's rule, and finds himself torn between them and a growing rebelling.
oh look, here are a load more recommendations from Fantasy Hive with hardly any overlap with titles already on this list:
fantasy isn't really your thing? no worries, here's an even longer list from the Rumpus with everything from contemporary fiction to poetry to memoirs.
hold up, did you want romance? BookPage has your new queer romance recs right here.
I haven't read How to Find a Princess but I have read other Alyssa Cole books and she's an incredible writer! I have read Winter's Orbit and it's AMAZING!
Am I adding all of these books to my TBR? possibly... (Hunger Pangs is already on it I love Joy)
306.76 Sexual orientation, transgender identity, intersexuality
Source: https://ddc.typepad.com/025431/2018/11/updates-for-lgbt-community-and-transgender-people.html
“I always remember having this fight with a random dude who claimed that ‘straight white men’ were the only true innovators. His prime example for this was the computer… the computer… THE COMPUTER!!! THE COM-PU-TER!!!
Alan Turing - Gay man and ‘father of computing’ Wren operating Bombe - The code cracking computers of the 2nd world war were entirely run by women Katherine Johnson - African American NASA mathematician and ‘Human computer’ Ada Lovelace - arguably the 1st computer programmer”
Also Margaret Hamilton - NASA computer scientist who put the first man on the moon - an as-yet-unmatched feet of software engineering, here pictured beside the full source of that computer programme. #myhero
Grace Hopper - the woman that coined the term “bug”
Grace Hopper did more than coin the term “bug”. She invented the first program linker in the early 1950s, for the UNIVAC I. A program linker translates instructions from one language to another (for example, numerical codes that represent instructions translated to machine code that computers can read), which is the very foundation of how computer’s operate independently. she also pulled a steve rogers and tried to enlist in the military a bunch of times and was denied. then, an exception was made for her when she joined the navy reserves, and she ended up serving for over 40 years (half of which was active duty). she retired from the navy Rear Admiral Grace Hopper. she was born in NYC in 1906. Grace Hopper was a fucking badass.
also computing was typically a job for women (many of whom were black women that made incredible contributions) back in the day, so it’s absolutely fucking wild that straight white men think they are the foundation of computer innovation. men PUSHED women out and took the credit.
Reblogging to do what the failed education system never did.
let’s not forget the incredible women who made it possible for india to go to mars!
THIS IS EVERYTHING THANK YOU SO MUCH MANGO FOR ADDING INDIA
005 Computer programming, programs and data
To give my two cents on U.S.American eurovision (statesvision?) or to live on in blissful silence and harmony with the tumblr discourse blogs….
This is my first time hearing of this and I’m going to pretend I didn’t
Good luck!!
Better yet, consume content about it exclusively through Eurovusion blogs!!
“Americans will never understand pitting neighboring countries of different cultures against each other on stage” have you ever had the pleasure of putting a new yorker and new jerseyan in the same room
Ok I just want to preface that most my sadness at the hot takes on this event are when arguments against it are based in the belief that all of the regions of the US are too similar to have “representative” or fun performances. Please leave your favorite american cultural phenomena or state rivalry below
Results are still pouring in but here’s what I’ve gathered from the tags:
In addition:
Me, a Michigander:
Alaska:
Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Virginia
this post means nothing to me but i can replace all of these with european countries so i support the general feeling
I’d love that
Florida
iowa, illinois, indiana, ohio, kentucky, wisonson, missouri, and minnesota looking at each other:
is this what it’s like living in the states?
what the FUCK is happening???
i feel every single one of these in my soul
Once again proving that the United States is actually 50 (or so if you want to include territories) countries in a trench coat trying to pass itself off as a single country.
973 United States
Miniature Binding Challenge
~~ A 2017 Instagram Adventure ~~
So my good friend, ((Stopan)) and I wanted to challenge ourselves with a miniature book challenge. By the time we got around to organising it, we decided that it was a good idea to open it up to all the binders of Instagram (and binders on other platforms - Everyone was welcome).
The challenge was to run from November 15 to December 15 2017 and the turnout was amazing. I’m glad so many people had fun with the challenge, and it looks like people had to get a little bit out of their comfort zones.
With the rules being that you needed 100+ pages AND have the book be under 30mm on its longest side, I had do some research.
This is the paper I ended up choosing. Canson branded “Bank Layout” paper. It was still decently strong at 45gsm and thin enough to have the 100+ pages.
So I went overboard and cut enough for 9 books. By Accident.
I couldn’t saw the holes like I normally would, and decided on making a miniature cradle instead. It worked perfectly.
I also couldn’t use the thread I normally used - it was too thick. So I untwisted it and separated the strands. Thickness comparison in the second pic.
The problem with thin thread is that it snaps easily. I had to learn how to tie two ends of the thread together with 2 pairs of tweezers. Strips of Bookcloth worked great as tapes.
The amount of pages there is 220. That is right. I more than doubled the required number of pages because good ideas run in my family apparently.
And I did end up sewing all nine books. I tried a couple of different threads - silk, cotton, etc. But the linen still ended up being the most stable to use at such a small size. Silk was the worst.
I found a free-to-use Marbled paper pattern on the internet and modified it so it was all rainbow coloured (and small).
The book guts were trimmed and rounded. I then attached some inner covers (which are scraps of laminate (Laminex / Melamine / whatever you want to call it) and moved onto doing the headbands. I didn’t want to shirk this step. I wanted to do it in as accurate a manner as I normally would. Surprisingly this step was easier than expected.
There we go, tiny endbads! I ended up using silk for this, as it was the thinnest thread I had in the house. Also, the surprising material I found for the core was none other than a bristle from a broom! Worked perfectly well.
Some more little strips of bookcloth worked as linings for the spine.
A tiny hollow was measured up and glued on.
Next was the creation of the spine. I did my usual glue on -> fold over -> glue -> fold -> etc as I would do on larger books. My only regret at this stage is that I didn’t use thinner material for the spine. I could only get a few folds before it started getting too thick.
This is the finished book before false raised bands and leather go on. A thin (0.7mm) cardboard outer cover was glued on and the spine trimmed down to size.
For the false raised bands I cut a thin strip (probably 1mm) of 1mm thick leather.
I then put a bevel on the inside (tapering out towards each end of the false band). I always taper the false raised bands before i put them on, and I always take material away from the side which will be contacting with the spine:
It gives a much more natural curve when glued on.
Next I cut a section of kangaroo leather from some scraps I have lying around.
I pared it as thin as I could manage.
I then dyed it with some “light brown” dye.
And then added some spots and splatters for aesthetics.
As always, I worked on the spine first. The leather was wetted and some work was required to get it to form over the tiny false bands, but I got it done.
The covers were glued down and the corners were then trimmed.
Doing the turn-ins was understandably difficult. I couldn’t use my normal tools so I resorted to using needles as poking devices.
I was dying to try some more tooling, so I attempted to do a silver border on the covers.
Bonus pic of the marbled end pages. I think they fit in nicely.
And I guess that is that!
The book ended up being 220 pages and 28mm tall!
As I write this it is only the 12th of December, so there is still time for books to get finished :)
Thank you so much for reading. I had a huge amount of fun making this tiny book and I hope you had as much fun reading about it.
I love doing little challenges like this, as it really does require me to get out of my comfort zone and try new things and problem solve.
There will be more challenges in the future - Most likely posted on Instagram. So yeah, Please consider checking out my instagram page and following. There are a lot more work in progress pictures posted there, so you can have a good idea of what I’m working on.
Thanks again and goodnight <3
If you would like to help support me in my bookbinding ways, please consider buying me a coffee through Ko-fi. It only costs $3 and all donations will end up going towards purchasing more tools and materials. The link is below.
Instagram : https://www.instagram.com/buildingbooks/
Etsy Store: https://www.etsy.com/au/shop/BuildingBooks
Help support me by Shouting me a Coffee: https://ko-fi.com/buildingbooks
095 Books notable for bindings
Quick reminder that if you can’t afford anything from the etsy store, you can still support the ink and paper costs of the daily requests and my everyday work through the ko-fi!
~*~*~*toss a coin to your calligrapher~*~*~
How’s your experience with Etsy, anyways? I’ve heard it really shafts people who try to sell things on it, and personally if I were to buy from you I’d toss money directly into Kofi or PayPal or whatever.
I just really hate Etsy’s predatory practices
honestly that’s fair, but I tend to get away with paying the base minimum because I haven’t enabled ANY of their marketing software. Like. at all. No pushes to get to the top of the search results, no ads, minimal tagging. All I pay is the transaction and listing fees, which is honestly not a huge drop in the bucket considering I’m basically using them as my POS/Inventory system and nothing else
I do all my marketing via social media and direct links to listings so they can’t even get at the google search revenue. I’ve priced everything low but I’ve diversified the margins on merch so different categories of merch have different roles to play.
From their point of view it’s the equivalent of me going “hmm this house’s sink leaks, guess I won’t use the plumbing at all!” and then I make it work. But the only reason I can get away with this is because of the sheer ridiculous volume of free content I put out on here to gain me a following that I can give direct links to.
After all if I had to suffer thru the soul-crushing experience of business school the least I could do is learn how to sail through predatory waters with my pirate skiff intact
381 Commerce (Trade)
Unrealistic polymath genius: has six PhDs.
Realistic polymath genius: just has the one set of degrees, but their bachelor’s, their master’s, and their doctorate are each in a different field, and they’d be happy to explain – at great length – how the three relate to one another.
@cellarspider It’s you.
OKAY SO
My undergraduate degree was in Medieval Studies.
My professional masters degree was in Bioinformatics.
My current PhD studies are in Mammalian Genetics, emphasizing the overall physical structure of the genome.
The PhD and masters are fairly easy to relate to each other: Bioinformatics is a field that develops software and computational methods for examining and understanding biological data. Modern genetics often relies on people with these skills–while many labs can still focus intently on the workings of a single gene, if you want to understand how that gene interacts with the world, you can start generating a lot of data. A LOT. More than it would ever be feasible to process manually.
So, having a background in bioinformatics allows me to focus my work not on single genes, but on how the physical structures formed by DNA affects how genes are used. There’s 3 billion letters of DNA in the human or mouse genome, with thousands of genes, with thousands of mutations my project has cataloged, and tens of thousands of structural components to analyze along side them. If you were to randomly test each and every one of those three types of data against each other to blindly search for interactions, I calculated you’d have to run 371 trillion comparisons. My job started by trying to figure out how the fuck to pare that down to something manageable with the computing power I have, and I’m hopefully about to publish something damn cool on what I found in the process.
So, that’s genetics and bioinformatics. Sure, those fit together logically.
Medieval Studies, tho
That’s where things get interesting. The professors at my university were very careful to teach you about the idea of the “historical lens”. When you read an old text or look at a painting, you’re viewing the subject matter through the lens of your own experiences and presuppositions about the world, and about the time period you’re studying. The person who wrote that text or painted that painting had their own lens, shaped by very different circumstances. Their natural focus is not going to align with your own, and you have to be aware of that. When you start forming ideas about your object of study, you have to ask yourself, “am I seeing what the creator of this piece intended to convey, or am I making assumptions based off of what I want to see?”
In essence, the core of what was taught in that Medieval Studies program was how to think about your own thinking.
And that is so fucking important for good science. “Am I drawing logical conclusions that are supported by the data, or am I just seeing this because I want to see it? Is there some test I can do to check if I’m wrong?”
It’s not easy. Sometimes it can be really uncomfortable, in fact. But it leads to more and better results in the long run, because those moments of self-reflection help uncover possibilities that you missed before.
…And that’s without getting into the seminar paper I wrote on the medieval understanding and treatment of head trauma, as a case study in the medieval period’s contributions to the development of science and technology. Because that was also a thing.
Hello, I’d like everyone to meet one of the most interesting people I know, also Spider please tell everyone about the Medieval Head Trauma paper because it’s fascinating and hilarious.
oh my gosh coming from gallus that’s saying something, I’m flattered
OKAY SO ABOUT THE MEDIEVAL HEAD TRAUMA
This post contains Thor’s migraines, Arthurian knights spinning in circles, and the medicinal use of egg whites on your brain. CW for mentions of medical gore and aggressive head bonks, obvs. Also, this is the result of undergraduate research, and should not be considered comprehensive. If you know more, throw it at me. If you have a correction, I will happily take it! And if you can remember the title of that one book I found once in my university library called something like “Head Trauma in World Myths and Legends”, TELL ME. I can’t fucking find the thing, but I swear it exists.
Also heck my life, Tumblr ate the first attempt at this post. Always write your long drafts on a more stable platform, guys
So. Depending on where and when you lived in western medieval Europe, you might have a very different relationship with the constellation of injuries falling under the category of head trauma. These injuries were either mysterious and beyond the realm of healing, a weird side effect of people not dying so often, or a comprehensible problem that sometimes could be treated by medical and surgical intervention.
A great example of head trauma as mysterious scourge comes from Norse mythology. To cruelly TL;DR a surprisingly hilarious little myth, Thor’s giant-smacking escapades result in a piece of flint getting stuck in his skull. Neither he, nor Sif, nor a witch they call up can remove it. The witch almost manages it, but Thor distracts her at a critical moment, so her magic fails. The myth ends with a moral to the audience: don’t throw your flint tools around, or you’ll give Thor a migraine. Yes, really.
(personal side note- somebody must be throwing hella flint around today, fuck)
In this story, head trauma is just something you have to live with. Magic might be able to help you, but it failed even Thor, so don’t expect better results yourself. And we do have skulls throughout European history that show evidence of lots of people living for years with untreated skull fractures, though with a higher risk of premature death. (One source here, from Denmark, which mixes in some early modern skeletons as well.)
Now, that myth fits the time and place it originated, which is true of stories in general. But one thing you can do in comparative literary analysis is look at the variations between tellings of common stories. And one great mine for this is Arthurian legend. King Arthur and His Circle Bros were popular subjects throughout the British Isles and France for centuries, which one can use to analyze the values, morals and world views of their storytellers.
And also, what happened when you got bonked on the head. See, each storyteller might have their own first-hand experiences with battle, or they’d have patrons who they wanted to flatter or entertain by incorporating Based-On-A-Shocking-True-Story details into the stories, or they were just paying attention to other storytellers at the time and seeing which action tropes were popular.
So, the early Arthurian treatment of head trauma can be summed up in three words: bonk means death.
But after the late 12th century (which admittedly is where we get a lot of our stories from), head trauma starts to become survivable. And sometimes, it’s weird.
Men’s brains swim like water, and they might fall off their horses. If they’re not mounted, they might run around in circles and then fall down. What changed?
The bonk protectors changed! the heaume or great helm style was developed, which is more likely to stay on and protect the head from any angle, though it’s vulnerable to transferring the force of downward blows into the head, neck and shoulders. With more people surviving blows to the head, that means more concussions and traumatic brain injury, and that’s reflected in the stories.
But what about medical textbooks? Well, it probably won’t surprise many to know that western European medical manuals sucked SO MUCH ASS for centuries. The reason why is a rant for another time (and I CAN AND I WILL RANT ABOUT IT), but there was light at the end of the tunnel.
While Western Europe lost almost all Greek medical scholarship and condensed the Latin texts down to near-gibberish, the Eastern Roman Empire had preserved those texts, and the Islamic world had expanded greatly upon that scholarship with their own research and experimentation. During the Islamic Golden Age, traders from Italy brought some Greek and Arabic texts back from the Muslim world, and translations were made into Latin. This gave Italian academics access to a more vibrant and systemic tradition of medical science.
Enter Rogerius, AKA Rogerius Salernitanus, AKA Roger Frugard, AKA Roger Frugardi, AKA Roggerio Frugardo, AKA Rüdiger Frutgard and AKA Roggerio dei Frugardi
(jfc dude), a surgeon from Salerno (unknown-1195). While surgery would
remain a low status profession for centuries, Rogerius produced a
well-organized and clearly written surgical manual, the Practica Chirurgiae. This book, I want to stress, is not flawless, especially when it comes to pharmaceuticals. Digging into the German Commission E Monographs
(started in the 1970s, which systematized scientifically proven effects
of traditional herbal medicines), Rogerius’ poultices for wounds do fuck-all for healing, but would probably be fantastic for an upset stomach if you ate them.
HOWEVER, the surgical contents of the manual show that either he was working with fantastic written texts at the University of Salerno, and probably had some good first-hand experience with treating head trauma.
The text provides some practical information on diagnosing the kinds of head injuries a surgeon could actually treat–while concussion was still something you’d just have to deal with, a bonk on the head can have lots of other bad effects. You can develop a build-up of fluid within the skull (cerebral edema), or skull fracture that can press pieces of bone down onto the brain. Or you could have tears in the scalp, or worse, the protective layer of tissue around the brain itself (the dura mater).
Rogerius lists ways to diagnose edema and closed skull fractures (where the scalp isn’t broken but the skull is). He describes surgical techniques that are still the basis of many in use today, for incisions and suturing of the scalp, removal of bone fragments and foreign objects, and relieving pressure on the brain from edema. Yes, that last one involves trepanning, AKA drilling a hole in the skull, and yes, it can actually be life-saving in this particular case.
And there’s one bit he talks about which I find outrageously cool. See, wound healing has always been one of the biggest problems in medicine, and it was an absolute matter of life and death before the advent of sterile medical technique. Sure, you might be able to clean a wound with some alcohol-based mixture, but that would be disastrous for wounds that pierce through the skull. This probably goes without saying, but pouring alcohol on your brain is very, very bad.
So, what the fuck do you do when you have a patient with a gnarly head wound that exposes the dura mater, or the brain itself? Water isn’t clean, alcohol is potentially deadly. How do you wash the wound clean?
Get an egg.
Fresh eggs straight from the chicken are sterile capsules that protect the developing embryo. They’re full of liquid-y stuff you can use as a wash! BUT. Rogerius specifically lists egg whites for cleaning head injuries, not yolks. I don’t have any scholarship on why, beyond some interviews with a doctor in my family, but our best guess was that the cholesterol in the yolks could be harmful to the brain and dura mater. But the egg whites by themselves? They’re almost pure protein, including some anti-microbial factors that help defend the embryo in case germs sneak in.
Overall, it’s a brilliant solution to a thorny aspect of wound care, in a time before germ theory, and centuries before Europe would collectively remember you need to sterilize your medical tools. Fucking! Fresh egg whites! It’s fantastic.
So that’s the tl;dr on medieval
understanding and treatment of head trauma. A mixture of mystery,
medieval pop culture, and medical science. This is the kind of practical history that I found most engaging to study–not lists of kings, not court politics, not wars, but a small, strange little corner of medical history that tells you more about the life and times of people through the ages.
And that’s what a lot of modern historical research is actually like! Find a tiny little subject that sparks joy catches your interest, and dive in. I ended up jumping over entirely to biological sciences in my post-grad research, but I don’t regret a minute of my undergrad. History in all its crumbly little details is awesome.
It’s the medieval head injury paper! Summarized beautifully for those of us that don’t have the concentration to wade through original sources!
But yeah, it really clear how the skillset of “look at the data to see what it says, not what you hope it says” is extremely applicable across art, history, science and math and that’s why every real genius I’ve met is interested in a wide variety of topics- the thing you’re actually interested in is the act of learning.
This is… absolutely wonderful.
378 Higher education (Tertiary education)