Women are the ones who tend to do needlework in society. I have never seen any man pick up a counted cross stitch. Please show me one if you have a picture. Let's look at why and take a trip back in time.
Courtesy of Fabric Alchemist
Let's step back, back to the time when women ran the house and men went off to war or worked. In the movie Brave, we see Merida rip through a tapestry (months of work) in seconds. Her mother is horrified, then livid. Take another look at the tapestry and think of how much work went into it. In that period of time (14th century Scotland-ish) you couldn't just get a pre-mapped kit and buy the thread. No, sir! You had to make the thread yourself, design it all yourself, and sit for hours doing this. Only women would have the time to do this because men were busy doing other things. War, fighting bears, and many other activities were a bit more important than decorating the castle with tapestries. Yet, when we see castles we admire the tapestries. This is what the queen was making and it was a picture of her family. Only she would have the extra time to do this type of art. This is where we dive into further historical context as to why Herrshners sells more sewing to women than men.
Women's Education
Gender roles have prevailed in the art of needlework, which involves crafts like embroidery, knitting, and crochet. Men are not targeted with ads for this art. Why? Years of teaching women sewing and domestic arts and teaching men to find work and pay the bills. Look at Joann's and tell me how many men you find in the needlework section or the entire store. Count them. I'll wait. The point is that it isn't common among men to be taught to sew. Unless you are a cosplayer or have broken the mold you are likely not a man who can sew. My husband is an obvious exception and loves to sew. You don't see it every day, but it can happen and I love it.
Courtesy of Pinterest A Sewing Sampler
Women have been educated in domestic arts throughout time. While life has changed, it somewhat hasn't. Herrshners can probably tell you that women are the ones ordering or men are buying for women. Domestic arts include sewing, housekeeping, and cooking. Women, as most of us know, have been confined to domestic spheres for many time periods. This is no longer true, yet most crafting stores appeal primarily to women, which is infinitely fascinating. Men, on the other hand, are targeted by hardware stores (most of which learn to appeal to women in the plant section). Gender roles don't just go away after years of use.
Being schooled in household arts meant that women were often excluded from public sphere topics. Cooking and caring for a home was par for the course when you weren't supposed to be in the workforce doing hard labor. Women were stuck in the domestic sphere, with the notable exception of wartime. Even then they had a house to run. Women who had less money sewed to keep their clothes together and richer women sewed for fun (embroidery or "ornamentals"). All classes sewed, but for different reasons. In some schools, men learned to sew (in co-ed situations) along with women. Sewing was considered good labor for women and was needed to maintain clothing and make a living as a seamstress (if you needed to). It was practical at that time to know how to sew (and it still is, frankly). The samplers you see young girls doing are practice for basic stitches. If you need an example, watch Little Women (2019) and pause when the camera focuses on Beth's needlework on her wall.
Courtesy of Pinterest - Women at Howard University
The arts are attributed to women for many reasons, one being that the education system split how boys were raised and girls were raised in two. The arts were sent in the female direction because it made them into more marriage material. Post-revolutionary parents liked that and dance was also added. This is why dance in some forms is considered more feminine. Women, in this way, also became hostesses and found some voice in political times over tea parties and salons. Some were educated at home, like the March family. Needlework boomed in women's education and decorative needlework was approved by parents. There were whole schools devoted to it, catered to women specifically. When Amy in Little Women says she'll be an ornament to society, she is referring to the "ornamental" arts that made women marriage material. (This also included painting, but that is rather co-ed by now.) As education was reformed these were not taught as much, but we still associate those arts, like dance and embroidery, with women. In fact, most arts -visual and performance- were taught to women during their schooling if they were at a girls' school. The level of schooling depended on income, however. Later on, women were hired into textile industries that used sewing machines because of all the education on sewing they received.
Across Classes
The elite, like in Bridgerton, did it to pass time. The lower class used it for either income or to maintain their clothing for the longest possible use. They may even make their own. The incredible thing about sewing is that most women of both classes knew how to do it. Whether it was for practical or time-passing reasons, women passed it on to other women for generations. At this moment, I can tell you with confidence that women and serious cosplayers do the most sewing in the world. My man made me a purse and will be making me another purse sometime soon. He can use a sewing machine better than I can, and I am happy to let him do that.
Another angle to the arts being taught to primarily women is that women were taught to express emotion. What does this have to do with ornamental art? Lots, because men were taught primarily logic, which means they were taught less expression of emotion. The two balance each other out, like puzzle pieces clicking together. The gender box that each sex was put into survives to this day. This greatly explains why Joann's workers and clients are mostly women (and only a few men). Once the expectation was set that women did the sewing and artistic touches, our society ran with it. Crafts are taught to children and women, for the most part, even today.
Courtesy of The Baltimore Sun
Is this good or bad?
Gender biases are breaking as life continues on, as most who pay any attention to our world will notice. The fact that sewing is considered the realm of women is not bad or good, but instead neutral. It can easily shift if men start swarming craft stores for kicks. It'd be the same as women spending more time in hardware stores. As our society continually shifts the roles of men and women change. It just is. It may not be in the future, but currently more women do sewing arts than men, minus a few cosplayers here and there.
I provided more sources on sewing and women below that I may not have used. Peruse the sources at your leisure, if you like.
I stumbled upon a line of thought that might help others, particularly those familiar with video games, understand introverted behavior! Let's talk about it.
Courtesy of shirt.woot.com
Introverted souls have trouble at times, and sometimes with those that don't understand how they recharge and why they need space. What I have discovered is a comparison to video game content. Hear me out on this one. This may make it easier to explain introverted nature to your friends who need an illustration to get it. Just as long as they are gamers.
The Introvert Zones
The concept of an introvert zone is foreign to some individuals. This does not mean that they are awful people. It simply means they don't understand your comfortable silence. If you take this concept and connect it to the video game concept of a relaxation chamber or safe zone/ healing temple in Legend of Zelda it becomes relatable. A healing zone or recharging station is a perfect illustration of an introvert zone.
Courtesy of Zelda Dungeon
An ocean temple is an even better example of how it functions in real life. For instance, the ocean temple drains you just by standing in it. In this case, it could be compared to a social situation where you are surrounded by people. The difference is that the purple zones (your introvert zone) that preserve your life force can be destroyed by those that pop up and stand in them without your consent. When you explain it like this, some humans may understand why you need to have your zone.
The enemies in this social battlefield are the loud, the shallow in conversation, the ignorant, and the needy. The loud shatter your zone. Shallow conversation wastes your life force. The ignorant break your zone unknowingly by being either loud, shallow, or needy. The needy demand your energy and help when you think they could easily do it themselves (which means those who need actual help may also drain energy, but not as much). They all have swords that shatter your safe zones in the ocean temple and make you lose social energy faster. Anyone who has played Phantom Hourglass understands that this temple is already hard to beat.
Social Energy
Videogame status bars would be super helpful if they happened for introverts when they spent social energy. I have three colors that could explain to others our stages of losing energy. Green can represent when we are totally cool to hang out. Yellow is when we are proceeding to social situations with caution. Red is when we need to go home and stay there until we are recharged. If people could see the bar above our heads it'd be fantastic, but let me give you real-life guidelines instead.
Green is when you can be fooled into thinking we are extroverted. We're having the time of our life while we're chilling with friends. We are not proceeding with any caution and are freely jumping into social situations. This is when we are in our element with friends that give us energy back, thus charging us as much as we charge them.
Courtesy of Introvert Dear
Yellow is when we start to lose enthusiasm for social contact. We choose who we interact with carefully and what we do with caution. We know that we need energy for later. We avoid the people who don't understand our need for space. We conserve like a laptop that needs to be plugged in but isn't yet dead. So, when you see us start to get quieter and interact less, be aware that our battery is running low.
Red is when some people get hostile and irritable. We get annoyed when people remain in our space when we have nothing left. Some introverts get mean in this red status and others keep it together and crash at home, but we all share the social exhaustion that makes us want to be King Arthur from Monty Python. We want to scream "shut up" at people in this stage of social energy. If you see we have nothing left and are annoyed at those who come up to us expecting a conversation, help us rather than let someone annoy us into hostility. That is what friends should do for introvert-kind. You'll find your introverted friends will hang around you more if you do so.
Again, if someone could see our social energy status bar our lives would be so much easier, but that isn't reality. Consider this illustration when interacting with introverted people.
This, too, has enemies attached to it. This also involves healers. Healers give off energy and we seek them out in all stages of our status bar. Enemies are just the opposite. They leach energy by being too close, too loud, too shallow, completely ignorant of our energy levels, and sometimes completely obnoxious (when everyone else also gets annoyed). Healers give us our energy back and help us last through the ocean temple while we travel with them. Enemies drain us of life force/energy faster and kill our social battery swiftly.
Why Explaining This Is Hard
Courtesy of rogerogreen.com
The problem with introverted behavior being explained is that extroverts have always lived in a world tailored to them. We are fish out of water when we are not recharged. Look at your school systems, your work activities, your job, and what the outside world expects from you. Extroverts thrive in social situations. Trying to explain your introverted nature to someone who clearly has never experienced your troubles is challenging.
Some people who are emotionally intelligent get it right away. The people who are highly extroverted (but no less intelligent - everyone has intelligence) sometimes have some trouble seeing the perspective of someone who needs alone time more often. That is a truth that we introverts face. I hope this can help you explain introversion to others. We need to try to speak our reality to our friends so they can support us.
If you've played Portal 1 and 2 you may be wondering whether GLaDOS is possible, or if you can truly put your mind into a computer. Today we discuss the possibilities.
Courtesy of uvlist.net
Both Marvel and Portal have shown a brain in a computer. Many sci-fi movies have portrayed an AI (artificial intelligence) going wrong.
I have to warn you before you get too far into this post that this is loaded with Portal 1, 2, and 3 spoilers. If you want a spoiler-free gaming experience for either one you should stop reading now and come back after you've finished the games. I have to give background information to go into everything. Thank you for understanding and go on reading at your own risk.
For those who are still reading
If you are still here, welcome! We need to talk about some important plot points in the game before going into all the evidence proving it or disproving it. I will primarily try to see whether you can put your brain into a computer and whether AI can go so horribly wrong (cough cough, GLaDOS, cough cough) it is deadly. Portal is a game where you literally have to kill the AI while surviving test chambers that you can potentially die in. Also, Aperture Science is extremely unethical for many obvious reasons and illegal in several ways. No other humans remain. This is proven when we look at the evidence of the ruins around us and the fact no one has leaked anything to the outside world (a dead giveaway that no one is alive to tell the tale). The AI has taken over the facility by Portal 2.
First, we'll look at whether Aperture Science could have even been created. After that, we'll talk about whether Cave Johnson or Caroline could have put their brains in computer storage. After that, we'll discuss Glados and Wheatley (Portal 2). Shall we dive in?
Aperture Science
Like I said, it is highly illegal to do the experiments and tests on humans that Aperture does. The game dialogue mentions Cave Johnson offering test subjects 60 dollars - 120 if you let them dismember and put you back together - for volunteering yourself. Clearly, he is aiming at the homeless who don't have anyone that cares whether they survive. He even reflects this when he offhand mentions that the waiting room is probably more comfortable than the park benches the test subjects were found on. Not ethical at all. Not nearly enough payment for scientific testing. Probably because he couldn't do it on employees anymore and was running out of money.
What are they testing? Portals and portal guns. Assuming they can create the gun, can portals happen? Yes, but not the way the game creates it. The laws of physics probably aren't going to work that way. It needs interaction with the gravitational field to avoid violating the conservation of energy, according to some comment strings on science that I found. Click here for details. It might also require nuclear power energy to make the gun work. The portals might be possible, yet they'd be bending physics and be extremely dangerous to use. You may be able to bend it. Yet, you can't break physics. As for creating the gun, well, good luck doing that. Science says no and has no support whatsoever for a real portal gun. You can make one look real with editing, but no, you can't have one. Technically Aperture science has already been debunked in one paragraph. Sorry, folks.
The next question to answer is how Aperture Science even got permission to do any studies at all using humans. Seriously, either they lied through their teeth to get funding, didn't ask anyone, or they had an unethical person sending funds their way. Or Cave Johnson was rich to begin with and did all this on the down-low. We see that the lab is all underground, so the next logical question is whether you can hide a lab that is so extensive underground. Game creators can create whatever they want, but real building requires permits and other lovely paperwork that would make someone defund this lab or destroy it. Someone would ask questions while he bought the supplies to make everything function on its own. Fortunately, for Cave Johnson, this isn't a problem because he bought a salt mine no one cared about, thus no cared what he did with it.
The answer to the question above is that it would probably not fly today for Aperture Science (except after an apocalypse), but what does go is a real underground facility studying geological material. It goes a mile underground and has funding from universities (which obviously check in on it). It has gotten awards. It is called Berkeley Lab. It is nothing close to Aperture Science. We are talking about geology, not portals. It is underground because they need to access rock for the geological experiments they do there. Notice that no one is using test subjects and AI. They are observed on all levels. Aperture had no one to answer to, thus it may be that Cave Johnson was rich and didn't need help. Which was actually the case. No one asked what he did with his salt mine.
If no one knew anything but what they did you could get away with a lot. If war has taught us anything, it has taught us that signing a paper saying "I die of treason if I leak information" is effective. The same can go for a science facility. Bury the illegal experiments and testing deep enough and you could get away with it, sadly. Maybe you couldn't get away with it forever, but I'd bet you could do it for a short time. Unless, of course, everyone died. Then all the secrets would die with the scientists and their test subjects, and only papers would remain. This is the only possible part of this storyline. Subjects and scientists all died because GLaDOS went rogue.
According to the fandom wiki, it started as a shower curtain company. It turns out that selling shower curtains to the military made Cave Johnson rich. Apparently, he tried to create deadly shower curtains and send them as a nasty gift to the Navy (who didn't want his shower curtains) and then got exposed to mercury. He then realized he was dying and created a plan to make Aperture Science last forever. The first two projects to make it last forever just failed miserably, but portal science bloomed, thus we get to GLaDOS being created to beat Black Mesa's technology as they studied portals. The company started as one thing and became another. Also, Cave Johnson needed no extra funding and dodged a lot of questions that should have been asked. He had truly terrible ideas.
The sad truth of unethical experiments is that they did happen. Asylums did lobotomies. A woman let test subjects do anything to her to see what they would do if no consequences would happen during that hour. We know that people have dropped drugs in someone's drinks for military testing. There is even an urban legend of a game that caused LSD-like symptoms and disappeared three weeks after it appeared. Is it possible that someone made a rat maze and put a human in it to see if they'd solve it? Maybe. I doubt I'll ever find the evidence online unless I hit the dark web (I'll pass on that). I just know that science has not always been ethical.
A brain stored in a computer
Now we get to the ludicrous part. Uploading your brain into a computer might be possible, but there are complications that mean it may not be 'you' precisely. It wouldn't be to the level of GLaDOS. Science doesn't know what would happen. Scanning your brain potentially means invasive surgery because mapping it with a simple scanning device is not possible. We are too complicated. Computers may never be fast enough to actually scan your brain and understand it all.
Cave Johnson and Caroline Courtesy of chteuchteu.com
Assuming you managed to find the technology to do this, could you live a full life after your brain had technically died? Not unless you are in virtual reality. Your senses would never be the same. You wouldn't have a human body. You'd have half the life that you did before. Would it be worth it? Probably not. I'd probably just go meet my creator instead. You could also be deleted by someone. Oops, you died like Caroline (Portal 2).
The reality is that this isn't possible - yet. I actually hope it is never possible, mostly because of the ethics of the concept itself. God offers us Heaven, but we have to die on Earth first, so it makes no sense to me that uploading yourself to live forever is good. I'll take Heaven rather than live forever and have half the life I did before. Also, if our brains are as complicated as science claims, it is likely impossible to live forever like Caroline or Cave Johnson (Portal 3) - and Cave begged to be killed! Keep that in mind.
GLaDOS and Wheatley
GLaDOS is the system that runs the testing facility. Upon being activated, she became independent and sent neurotoxins all through the building on "bring your daughter to work day", resulting in a lot of death and a morality core being put into her. Wheatley comes along in Portal 2 and leads Chell right into where GLaDOS was defeated, thus reactivating her when Chell pushes a button. Wheatley eventually replaces GLaDOS and creates a whole different monster, where Glados has to help you defeat Wheatley so she can be back in her robotic body. The real question is this; are independent AIs possible?
I don't want GLaDOS to be doable in real life. Why? There are countless reasons. One, she is lethal. Two, she went rogue and killed so many test subjects and scientists it isn't even funny. Rumor has it that she has stuffed test subjects in companion cubes. Rattman survived by hiding in walls for a long time. She's terrible. End of comment.
Wheatley is just stupid. GLaDOS calls him a moron multiple times. He fails to maintain the building in a way that keeps it from self-destructing. Forced between choosing two evils, you as a player have to put GLaDOS back in her body. After this, she deletes the backed-up mind of Caroline (the only good part of GLaDOS) and lets you leave the facility. I don't want Wheatley to be a reality either because he killed multiple test subjects to get to GLaDOS and take her place. He also tries to kill Chell.
We need to ask the obvious question; can AI go rogue? It depends on the algorithm. If it is made too complicated it is possible. You have to be able to understand the code or it could choose to do destructive things. Some people want regulation on AI to make sure rogue doesn't happen and are convinced they are more dangerous than countries we are at war with. Others say that it isn't human intelligence, so at worst it breaks and the system attached breaks with it - if you don't overpower it.
Assuming it could go rogue, the danger you are in depends on how much power it was given in the first place. If your little vacuum robot goes rogue you can literally kill it with a few blows of a hammer. Glados and Wheatley, on the other hand, were given complete control of a facility. Oops. Yeah, let's not overpower our AI if going rogue is possible. In real life, however, I doubt that anyone would be willing to build Glados....oh, wait, someone made Alexa turn into an animatronic Glados.
The only way Glados can work is if we fully understood the brain and could map it fully (Which means you die in the process, so Caroline probably died to become Glados. Not great.). The video above explains it better than I ever could, so click that and watch it for more information in better detail (and in English and not science-ese). Below is the Alexa that got turned into Glados. It clearly can't kill you in this animatronic version. But please don't attempt anything past the animatronic version or we all might die as a society.
Conclusions
While the lab itself is only possible within the apocalyptic universe of the game (given that people would start asking questions when he bought moon dust), the lab testing itself (minus the portals within the game and the gun itself) could potentially happen. Again, you couldn't test portals, but you could make a human run a rat maze, then kill off the subjects and scientists to hide the experiments. As for GLaDOS and mapping the mind to upload it, we aren't there yet. We may be at some point in time. I sure hope we never make it that far because we may destroy ourselves if we do. Just for kicks, let me leave the game theory on the companion cube down here for you to watch.
When you play mystery games there are common objects that are picked up by players. What are some of these objects? That's today's agenda.
Courtesy of Old-games.com
There are many categories. One is everyday tools, another is mystery-solving tools. A third category could possibly be evidence/weaponry. We'll start with common, across-the-board objects in most games of the mystery/horror variety (because they overlap).
The basic idea of today's topic is just to look at what objects commonly appear in mystery genre video games. Horror and mystery are one fine line away, so they may cross over, particularly in weaponry and puzzle-solving aspects. For instance, Ghost of Thornton Hall is an example of such crossover (even if extremely light in the horror aspect).
Everyday Tools
Ladders, screwdrivers, oil to make things move, boards to cover holes, pocket knives, crowbars, shovels, lanterns, and many basic household tools are in many games as you are required to fix holes and do tasks. This means that what I just listed could be in any mystery game you encounter.
Courtesy of questtime.net
Why is this? Because everyday tasks are sometimes required to find hidden passages, get across the room to a door, or just because the plot has chores and tasks built into it that use common objects. We see them every day and know what they do.
Common objects in life end up in games all the time. How often do we use ladders, screwdrivers, and shovels? It makes total sense that what we use often gets portrayed in our gaming experiences. This includes food.
Mystery Solving Tools
This category includes tools that sleuths commonly use. In this category, we have flashlights, magnifying glasses, books, journals and notebooks, keys, fingerprint kits, recorders of varying types, pens and pencils, cameras, newspapers, and metal gears. The items listed are either part of puzzles, outline what puzzle needs to be solved, can be used to take notes, or allow the detective to see or hear something more clearly.
This is a no-brainer and you can find sleuth kits in a lot of places. Books are often used to solve puzzles and tell you how to work a machine or play the piano. Gears are usually going to be part of a box. The point is that no mystery is complete without puzzles with pieces, background information (books, newspapers), and ways to forensically solve the crime. It pays to plan like a boy scout when you are coming up against crime.
Weaponry and Evidence
The crossover of horror and mystery comes more here than anywhere else. Murder mysteries need a weapon. knives, guns, rope, lead pipes, candlesticks, scarves, and poisons all go here. The game Clue generally encompasses all the weaponry that is common to both of these genres. Some might get a bit creative within horror games, but still, we're looking at mostly knives, guns, water, and blunt objects.
Courtesy of speed-new.com
Evidence is anything that can be used to prove guilt or show something happened. Watches, clothing, blood, handkerchiefs, ripped fabric from clothing, photos, videos, witnesses, disturbed items, footprints... The most common ones you see are footprints, torn fabric, witnesses, blood, and photos from what I listed, but this is a broad category. Horror games will have all this in more gruesome detail.
This last category is quite large and many games can use this to show evidence of what happened before or after an event. Horror games use a lot of visual evidence in rooms where horrible things occurred. Games meant for adults who like horror expect you to put the dots together yourself and may not have books to explain it. Or they do and you find a diary to explain more details. It depends on the age they expect to reach, which is what it comes down to when it comes to helping the audience put two and two together. Adults don't need Nancy to say obvious evidence, but younger kids might. Portal won't tell you a thing unless you look around at the lab.
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