alexseanchai - Tumblr blog

[alexseanchai]

(it takes years to unlearn being afraid)

[alexseanchai]

I am looking neither respectfully nor disrespectfully. I gaze without recognition of your form, and without understanding.

[alexseanchai]

Anok Yai by Mario Sorrenti for i-D Magazine Summer 2023

[alexseanchai]

ok so i've got a question and it's not a gotcha i just don't have an answer and i'm hoping someone does

i believe in restoration justice and prison abolition and that all cops are bastards and the current system is corrupt and biased and our society criminalizes homelessness without giving people homes and is incentivized to target poor people and racial minorities because of the use of prison slave labor in america and how that's bullshit

how do hate crimes and bigotry fit in? how do we protect people who are attacked for our identities? how do we stop people whose motivation to crime isn't economic but based in bigoted hatred and prejudice?

I don't think police are the answer I don't think they're doing a great job and I don't particularly want to see them deployed against protesters, whether I believe any particular protest is peaceful or not.

but i don't know what the answer is and the problem is real and dangerous and immediate

[alexseanchai]

With the delay, but art for the bing #3 is here! @liveloveyoibang

The wonderful fic Such a Sky and Such a Sun by  constantblur

[alexseanchai]

I love how the incantation for the magic is literally just 🖕

My new YouTube video: A DM’s Guide to Ranged Combat is now live! Please go give it a watch!

If you’re a DM looking for a way to challenge your overspecced crossbow player, or just generally make mixed-range combat more interesting and enjoyable, it’s full of helpful tips and visualisations. Plus, supporting these long videos really helps keep my channel alive and funds more future content!

[alexseanchai]

they should invent a doesn't kill you that actually makes you stronger

[alexseanchai]

Some of my old favourites

[alexseanchai]

I'm always thinking about in-universe xmen discourse. Due to it already being leftist infighting for superheroes. Every so often a character is retconned to not be a mutant anymore & do you think in-universe people like, argue about it. With genetic testing getting more accurate and accessible than it has been historically a lot of people are turning out to not actually have the x gene. So is there like an inclus/exclus thing about if you have to have the x gene specifically or if we should count anyone with natural born superpowers. But nitpicking semantics like "umm, 'genetic mutation' includes human disabled people" "but most people discover their powers as a teenager, how can you know if you were born with it if you're not tested" and so on

[alexseanchai]

Seeing a post that you know a mutual will like and reblogging it to add enrichment to their dash like giving a tiger in a zoo a cardboard box

[alexseanchai]

Today I am thinking about weaving.

I can knit and crochet, but those crafts didn't exist in Roman times. Any historically accurate Roman cloth must be woven. So when a little potholder loom jumped into my shopping basket for 50 cents, it felt like a sign I should learn.

One potholder that was 50% yarn and 50% weird gaps later, I looked up a tutorial, and realized why the damn thing was 50 cents. I needed a better, more adaptable loom. And, because I am a cheapskate and slightly loony, I decided to make one instead of buying it.

So, how does this thing work?

First, you string the warp threads up and down, around the pegs. Here, I made a zigzag shape. Then, you use a needle or shuttle to weave more yarn over and under the warp, horizontally, back and forth. This produces woven fabric.

Some looms weave from the top, some from the bottom. This Greek urn shows two weavers working from the top. The left weaver uses a rod to compact the woven fabric upward, keeping it even and sturdy. The right weaver is passing an oval-shaped shuttle through the warp threads to form another row.

Most Roman looms would have looked like this, with the finished cloth at the top. Unlike my looms, these are warp-weighted. That means you keep the warp yarns taut by hanging weights at the bottom, rather than through a bottom row of pegs.

Warp-weighted looms also have a big advantage over my little potholder loom: you can easily create multiple sheds.

A "shed" is a temporary gap between lifted strands and non-lifted strands. Instead of having to go over and under each strand individually, you raise the entire shed, then pull the shuttle or needle straight through. This saves lots of time! Then, to weave the next row, you close the shed, lift up a different set of threads to create a new shed, and send the shuttle/needle through the other direction.

On a warp-weighted loom, the sheds are opened by loops called heddles (H), which are attached to a heddle rod (G). When the rod is down, shed (1) is open (middle diagram). When you pull the rod up, shed (1) closes and shed (2) opens instead (right diagram). Most warp-weighted looms also have a pair of forks you can rest the heddle rod on, to free your hands.

Here, there are three heddle rods and sets of forks, the heddles are white, and the warp thread is red. This gives you four different sheds, and the potential to weave very complex patterns indeed. Not bad for a device invented over 6500 years ago!

I liked the multiple heddle-rod design so much, I tried incorporating it into my DIY loom, too. I've tested both yarn and paperclips as heddles:

I actually got both sheds and heddle-rods working, too. Which is pretty cool for a lap loom - every other lap loom I found only has one shed, so you have to go over-under the individual threads on alternate rows.* More time-consuming. However, the sheds here are narrow, and I'll need a smaller and smoother shuttle to pass through them smoothly. This wouldn't be an issue on a warp-weighted loom, where the warp hangs freely downward, and can move more flexibly with the heddles.

Anyway. I may get a "real" loom at some point, but I wanted to build one first, and I think it gave me more appreciation for just how resourceful ancient weavers were. They created technology, clothing, and artwork out of very basic materials, and civilization depended on these skills.

Now, I need to go finish the...whatever the hell it will be. Big thanks to Wikipedia and to the lovely Youtubers who make this craft easier to learn. I think it'll be a lot of fun.

(*Edit - found out a rotating heddle bar can make two sheds on a lap loom! Exciting!!)

[alexseanchai]

an important principle of fandom (and life, actually) is that if you want more of Less Popular Thing, it is good to create positive spaces and events for it. however, if you use those spaces to take cracks at the More Popular Thing which you perceive as stealing oxygen from your Less Popular Thing, you do not increase the audience for Less Popular Thing. you decrease it, because you irk people who like both Things. and depending on the relative popularity, there are quite possibly more people who like both Things than people who only like Less Popular Thing. (not to mention - you kill your chances of recruiting people who like More Popular Thing but are neutral on or haven’t considered Less Popular Thing.) 

you’re not campaigning for votes (where There Can Be Only One), you’re marketing for a share of people’s attention. don’t be petty. be effective. 

[alexseanchai]

actually, I think spiders georg should be counted. just because he's the best at what he does doesn't mean we need to discredit him. he's part of the statistic too

[alexseanchai]

medieval backstreet boys: you are… my friar

[alexseanchai]

Wishing all undiagnosed/partially diagnosed people a very doctors listening to you and providing you with more testing than a blood draw and even possibly providing treatment 2024