iokheaira

[iokheaira]

All the little angels rise up, rise up, All the little angels rise up high! How do they rise up, rise up, rise up, How do they rise up, rise up high?

[iokheaira]

Slight nitpick: you can do CERTAIN TYPES of fade/gradient in embroidery with specialty gradient dyed thread and/or optical mixing of 2-3 colours (thread painting/silk shading, or blended stitches in cross stitch). These typically don't have the same candy-gloss unreal filter as AI generated images do, though.

Also, in that cute hedgehog embroidery, the real version uses a standard number of strands, I think 2 (it's very well done too so it's sad the person is disappointed), but some modern embroiderers use the undivided thread with 6 strands, which is much thicker and would look closer to the AI image. You can even add padding, either base stitches or cut pieces of felt, under the surface stitches for a more 3D look (see also: stumpwork). A bigger problem is the unreal bright shine, which you might replicate with silk or viscose but then only in a very specific light... (And very long curved satin stitches without visible couching, but the hedgehog doesn't have those.)

I know of one example where the embroiderer spun the thread (2 ply merino/silk blend, about as much as you'd need for a mid-sized lace shawl) out of gradient-dyed fibre, resulting in very long colour progressions that you can't get in standard DMC/Anchor gradient (ombré) embroidery thread. (You could also dye commercial laceweight yarn to get that effect, but you'd need to adjust the lengths of thread you use to avoid fraying - the advantage of handspun is that you can add twist to make the thread more durable.) Oh, and what did she make with that thread? A Long Dog full size sampler!

The sampler in question:

https://www.instagram.com/p/DAOCx-lI38O/?img_index=1&igsh=azA3ZTV6OHBvYmhm

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by vampy (@fibresbyvampy)

What I'm saying is that expert-level work can create things AI can only dream of! The problem is that newbies who haven't been exposed to craft IRL and are only trying to learn via YouTube or Tiktok and get kits on Etsy or Temu can't easily judge what's easy and what requires mastery and/or inventing a new technique or specialty materials or equipment. What I hear about AI generated guidebooks is even worse - so beginners, look for old books and videos and learn about the craft before going on an Etsy shopping spree. If possible, meet real people or go look at real objects in resl life, whether at home, in a craft store, museum or county fair!

One pro tip, though: if the photo of the finished item looks like someone took it with their off hand in terrible lighting and there's a cat or a bag of Doritos or a pyjama leg or reflections of the glass museum/exhibition case holding the item in the image, it's probably real. (Fancy photo might mean the person used a filter or is a great photographer - or it might be AI. That's where you start looking for inconsistencies or implausible sections and whether the maker has explained the process in any way.)

Hey, if you do crafts (especially things like crochet, knitting, embroidery, etc), make sure to look up how to identify when a listing is AI generated. You do NOT want to waste money on an incredible looking kit or pattern that is physically impossible to make, especially if you're on sites like etsy hoping to support an actual artist.

[iokheaira]

As a pro translator to and from Finnish (a fairly small, non-Indo-European language) who occasionally deals with AI, or machine translation, let me expand a bit: first, some things aren't worth the cost of money and time of being translated by a human person, even a rank n00b, so before they didn't get translated at all.

Second, the "new jobs" are often proofreading machine translation, commonly called post-editing. This ranges from genuinely helping translators deal with masses of text and making reasonable money, to causing a giant headache for shit pay.

IMO translation really shows the strengths and failure points of large language models (LLM) commonly known as "AI"; to wit, they're really, really good at predicting the most likely outcome based on known data, with occasional randomness that sometimes produces a genuinely great solution, and they're absolute crap at maintaining a consistent terminology and cohesion within a text, they can't know specialised terminology if it hasn't been scraped, and they just cannot deal with cross-references to other documents (because they often treat them as text strings, so instead of copying the translated name of an EU Directive or its common abbreviated name, available online in all of the languages of the Member States, the machine makes up a new translation which may or may not lead the reader to the correct document...)

The worst part is when the machine is good enough to sound confident but keeps generating errors in meaning or references or consistency, because then you need to read things through more carefully than when proofreading the work of a competent human, so that in the absolute worst case you spend as much time checking as you would've spent on translating from scratch - for half the pay. In the absolute best case? You can do a quick read-through, make a few corrections and you're done.

Note that specially-built translation engines can be made to work with glossaries and specific references, but 1. those only make sense for things that already generate massive amounts of text, like the EU, and 2. they're harder to retrofit to generic translators like DeepL at least without specialised translation software, which is another beast entirely.

Also... the gig economy has been present in the translation industry since at least the 2000s, or from what I've heard, maybe 1990s; most of it is outsourcing. You either learn to be a business or don't make a living wage. Entry level has always been full of random people who get a decent grade in high school or study literature in university and think: how hard can it be? And then end up reinventing the wheel. (I did an MA in translation studies and have found it useful, though I already started working after the BA like many others.)

Uhhhh... where was I?

Right! Go ahead and use Google Translate or DeepL to understand what a foreign website etc. is talking about, or turn on the automatically generated and machine translated subtitles on YouTube. No human would be paid to translate those anyway, so why not use the service? Just keep in mind that they are based on probability calculations, and nobody has checked that the text makes sense and uses accurate specialist terminology, or tried their best to make it understandable to you (because ultimately, the translator's job is communication).

Eta: though the impact of AI on the next generation of translation students will be interesting. Any teacher worth their salt will hammer the need for a sanity check through their skulls, but will the political climate mean that funding for translation studies will dry up because "we have AI for that"? And what about the random people who enter the field with zero clue because it sounds easy, if they've grown up blindly trusting that ChatGPT doesn't lie? Now that will be interesting.

Eta2: important to note, I'm a technical translator, not a translator of literature, and also opinions on machine translation vary wildly in the field! Personally I think some texts are more suitable for machine translation than others, and it's not always the ones you'd expect that are a problem. Well, anyone would probably excpect poems being an issue - and translating those is more co-creation than anything anyway.

Alt text is so incredibly useful when it comes to speakers of other languages. I follow a bunch of fiber artists from different parts of the world, Ukrainian fashion designers and Chinese antique garment collectors and Iranian university professors of textile art history. There are discussions happening in different languages, and resources like books and scholarship, simply not available in the English or French I know.

And a lot of them never even use the Latin alphabet a lot of the time! So sometimes I can photograph a book page or screencap an Instagram story and get my phone's OCR to give me text to paste into Google Translate, and I can sometimes use a Cyrillic keyboard to type out what I'm seeing, but but as soon as something is antiquated or handwritten or viewed at an angle, my goose is cooked. I can't even get the original phrase to try to translate at all.

Unless there's alt text. Because alt text gives me exactly the data I need in the exact right format to take to a dictionary and get the gist of what's going on.

It makes me reconsider how my own content is accessible or inaccessible not just to blind or visually-impaired people, but people who aren't perfectly fluent in English. Because I and a lot of my friends are native English speakers who usually only speak 1-2 languages total, I'm prey to assuming that everyone in my intended audience is like us. That of course everybody can easily process English text, whether it's printed or written in cursive or using some antique calligraphic hand. And of course, that's not true. Now when I look at my analytics for my business's rare medieval name, I occasionally see translation site traffic where people in Farsi or Ukrainian or Chinese have translated me in return.

The curb-cut effect is a wonderful thing, I think. The primary reason I've used alt text is a good one, and it also turns out that it's really useful for a lot of other people too.

[iokheaira]

Do you have a gender? Do you like to rotate various shapes in your head (OR NOT)? Do you have 10-15 free minutes? Then you may be interested in...

...participating in my final!!! I'm re-examining several studies from the 70s and 80s that claimed a link between hormones and the way our brains process spatial data. The survey includes a brief questionnaire about your gender and any experiences with HRT (due to the whole looking at studies about hormones thing), as well as a series of multiple-choice questions meant to assess spatial processing. It takes about 10-15 minutes total.

For the purposes of actually doing a vaguely reliable scientific study or at least getting a good grade for looking like i'm doing one, I'm hoping to get as many responses as possible, so even if you can't/don't want to take this please reblog it! It's completely anonymous and any questions you don't want to answer can be skipped. Thank you for your time :]

[iokheaira]

All the little angels rise up, rise up, All the little angels rise up high! How do they rise up, rise up, rise up, How do they rise up, rise up high?

[iokheaira]

Miles Vorkosigan (in the Vorkosiverse books) has a horse named Fat Ninny. I think he's mostly described in the novella 'the Mountains of Mourning' but he shows up in a couple of later books too

Vorkosigan horse Ninny

Rating: ƱƱƱƱƱ (perfect)

in the absence of a picture of this beautiful horse i make do with this description from the knowledge repository online

this horse sounds like a most excellent animal and it is clear that the author has the appropriate amount of love and respect for the humble horse. all good books should feature a horse like this

[iokheaira]

Reblogging to delight fellow horse nerds! (I would've gotten such a kick out of this as a kid, back then we had just a few books and they didn't even know all the genetics. OP, there are so many new studies and more coming!)

horses have been my ASD special interest since i was a little kid. i've mostly been harassed and bullied out of not talking about it in public, but this is a fun tool you guys might like.

show me the cute horses you make?

[iokheaira]

In honour of disability pride month, we made a disability Pride Knight! Stay proud! ⚔️🌈

[iokheaira]

This is a fun party trick!

I personally don't find it super useful for making lots of yarn because it interrupts the flow, but the OP likes it for just that reason :D And it is useful if you need a length of finished yarn quick.

(For spindles, I'd personally rather wind an n-stranded plying ball, where n=the number of strands I want to ply, and then do the palm roll and toss manoeuvre to add Danger and Excitement, or thigh roll for less excitement. For chain plying, you can also pre-chain the yarn when you're winding it on the plying ball (finger crochet!!!), so you don't need to worry about yarn management and you can just add twist, although if you're like OP this may not be a positive thing for you so choose accordingly ;) ).

ALSO, in my highly personal and extremely opinionated opinion (YMMV), I think this works a lot better on a top whorl but that's because I LOATHE AND DETEST metal hooks on low whorls. Anyway, for this purpose a hook is easier for yarn management than the half hitch I'd use on a low whorl, therefore, top whorl.

If you want to do this but only have a hookless low whorl, it *is* possible, just a bit fiddlier to arrange the loop with the half hitch so you can open it back up for the next chain.

(The reason I hate hooks on low whorls is because it gets in the way of flicking the low whorl with your fingers at the top of the shaft, unlike a half hitch or two, which can feel fiddly in the beginning, but you learn to do and undo them without even thinking about it once you've been spinning long enough. A thigh roll is always an option if you do have a spindle with a hook (low or high whorl) or finger dexterity issues.)

(Also also, the term chain plying is preferable because not only is it descriptive, the Diné mostly do "regular" plying and only use this type of plying for very specific purposes (IIRC as cord in certain structural parts of rug weaving), and the word "Navajo" is actually what a neighbouring tribe told Spaniards they were called. While the meaning (from Tewa-Puebloan "nava hu", or "the place of large planted fields") isn't offensive as such unlike some common names of other Indigenous peoples, and the name "Navajo" has been retained officially so as not to lose the brand recognition (so to speak), it's still not the name of the people in their own language. Additionally, chain plying is also done in other parts of the world; it's not exclusive to the Diné.)

[Tutorial] How to spin and chain-ply on your drop-spindle at the same time

I've seen this technique at the Lower Saxony spinning group meet-up in June and @disgruntled-lifeform has asked about it, so here is a tutorial. I'm not comfortable with having videos of me taken and no one to take the video anyway so I hope photos are enough...

Little diclaimer: I have only seen someone else doing this so I just pass this knowlegde on. I don't know where it originates. Also: I assume you already know how to spin a single and know the basics of chain- or Navajo-plying

It's really an intreresting technique. You spin and chain-ply in one go, no endless spinning and after that endless plying, which is very practical if you (like me) are no fan of endless spindle plying. Or if you only own one spindle for whatever reason - everyone knows spindles are gregarious animals and keeping only one is not appropriate XP

You need:

A drop spindle of your choice with a leader (Maybe one a little bigger than mine, since the yarn we wind on the spindle is a three-ply, which means it is thrice as thick as your usual single.

Fibres of your choice you want to spin

It's important that your leader has a loop at the end to pull your single through.

Step 1: Spin your single as you always do. *spinspinspin* You want to do that standing up as you need the single to be quite long:

Step 2: Then butterfly the single up on your thumb and forefinger to avoid tangling:

Step 3: Pull the single through the loop of your leader and unwind it from your fingers. At the beginning it's easier to sit down for this step until you get used to the finger movements. It's difficult to pull the single through the loop while holding the spindle in your hand and we don't want any broken fingers!

Step 4: Pull the single all the way through until just a little bit below the beginning of your unspun fibres:

Step 5: Then you just ply the loop together in the opposite direction from the direction you spun the single - just as most of you will do anyways while plying. The spindle wants to turn in the opposite direction by itself anyway. Make sure the new loop at the end stays open!

Step 6: Wind the plied thread on your spindle. Then secure it well on your spindle's hook. Take Care Of The Loop. It Must Stay Accessible for the next section of spun singles.

Congratulations you have your first section of chain plied yarn on your drop spindle.

Then you repeat the whole thing again and again: Spin a long piece of single - pull it through loop - ply - wind on spindle - secure the new loop at the end on your hook and then go on spinning.

It needs a bit of practise. The lady who showed us the technique said she had been afraid of breaking her fingers when she started learning this technique. But if you have spun and plied on your drop spindle before it should not be too difficult to master. Concentrate on what you are doing and learn how to manage thread and spindle. And if you really sit down for pulling the single through the loop you also get a little training for your legs by costantly getting up and sitting down again ^-~ And when you are comfortable with the whole thing you can also do it while walking around. I, too need more practise until I'm that far.

[iokheaira]

Current spinning (it'll be 2 ply yarn plied with extra high twist for Andean weaving), Andean backstrap weaving homework (traditional pattern variation, no charts allowed 😎) and 2nd sock for scale. Uhhhh... that's not all of them but it's what I should be working on.

Thread crochet is fun (well. IME there's always ripping and redoing involved but that's universal) and I wish I had one underway because it's getting warmer and wool is miserable during a heatwave.

thank you for answering the poll but now i wanna see everybody's projects 🥺

i personally am learning thread crochet! i had to rip back two or three times but today i think i'll be ready to start the edging

(i'd be madder but my technique improved every time i swore and ripped out)

[iokheaira]

So the politeness thing in general is a whole other can of worms, but.

Thing is.

Conservatives like to *pretend* they are nice, polite, decent persons. If they're churchy, at least some varieties may still subscribe to the Little Women type 19th century politeness where you aren't supposed to speak ill of others or make fun or be rude, because that's not how a good Christian should behave.

And the OTHER thing is that accosting people in public toilets, calling them by wrong name or gender, pointing at people you think dress "funny", touching people's hair without being invited or asking someone about their sex organs?

Unspeakably, horrifically Rude.

So when you call them on it, they don't have a defence. They're in the wrong *by their own rules*, and sometimes pointing that out works.

Of course, it's not an universal fix, but that's because the other person is acting like a fucking dipshit who never learned their goddamn manners.

I know it feels like an understatement but you sometimes make more progress by pointing out that conservatives are fucking rude. going out of your way to call someone the wrong name because you don't like them? rude. childish. this isn't fucking kindergarten, Carl. she said her name is Jennifer. Everybody knows her as Jennifer. You are the one making things confusing. Grow up.

"misgendering is violence": invites discourse over the TraNs DeBatE, puts people on the defensive, opens you up to accusations of liberal snowflakery, comes off as a hypothetical thought exercise

"Who the fuck is Jason? I don't know a Jason. Oh her? You mean Jen? You mean fucking Jen? That's Jen, dipshit." : crystal clear. you're making shit more difficult for everyone because you're a rude manchild.

[iokheaira]

All the little angels rise up, rise up, All the little angels rise up high! How do they rise up, rise up, rise up, How do they rise up, rise up high?

[iokheaira]

Hey, there are *two* self-inserts in that thing and the other one is the main bad guy, because he can do all the nasty things to the poor, pretty male sub that Claire, as a Good Girl, can't, except that one time when she literally role-played the bad guy. For Reasons.

Eh, at least it's more clearly marked as a fantasy than 50 Shades 🤣

(And the scenery is beautiful. Although I don't want to misrepresent things - in the books, the sex scene ratio is at about 90s bodice ripper level, and there's a lot of rape/menace/revenge fantasy going on too, so anyone looking for the elusive Domme romance will be disappointed. Once again.)

Hi!

What do you think of the Outlander series?

Have a great day!

It is definitely book and tv series. That is for sure. I'm not a huge fan, protagonist is a cringe self-insert and the whole thing comes across as pretty fetishising. Tune into @theayesphere on Sundays and you can ask @thebibliosphere how she feels about it. She absolutely *adores* Outlander and could excitedly talk about it for hours.

[iokheaira]

I can't believe it. They passed the new trans law in Finland, allowing adult trans people to change their legal gender without having to provide lengthy documentation from doctors. It passed. I am so fucking happy. I know people who've been waiting for years to get their gender recognized by a doctor to get treatments. I can't believe it. Really can't.

We won❤️

[iokheaira]

small reminder to remember to report the bots as spam before you block them. staff knows of the issue and they seem to be trying to do something about it

[iokheaira]

[iokheaira]

No comic today, celebrating independence day!