#Mother of Invention

[stromuprisahat]

Decades after man landed on the moon, a myth spread that the reason we had Teflon pans in our kitchens was that NASA had used the material in its spaceships. In actual fact, we had Teflon frying pans in our kitchens years before NASA launched any rockets. It was a Frenchwoman by the name of Colette Grégoire who in 1954 realized that the Teflon used to coat her husband’s fishing gear could also be applied to her frying pans. Her husband became very rich on the idea. The company he founded, Tefal, exists to this day. But it was easy for the world to swallow the myth that the Teflon frying pan was a by-product of the Cold War’s space race. This once again comes down to what we have discussed in this chapter: our assumption that inventions first and foremost emerge from man’s great triumphs. Eventually the odd crumb falls down to woman, who can gratefully fry her pancakes without them sticking. The reality is, of course, much more complicated than that.

Mother of Invention: How Good Ideas Get Ignored in an Economy Built for Men (Katrine Marçal)

[whocookedthelastsupper]

“If an individual female worker was bad at something, it was proof that womankind as a whole should be paid less. Just look - these womenfolk can't do the job like a man!

But now, simultaneously, the exact opposite was being argued: if a female worker was good at something, it was proof that women should be paid less. Whatever her aptitude for the task, it was taken as proof of why she should earn less money. The trick was always to define anything a woman excelled at as a ‘naturally feminine attribute'. She simply couldn't help but have a biological knack for closing the toes of silk stockings, programming computers or looking after the elderly.

It isn't uncommon for society to fall back on this reasoning when it comes to careers in elderly care and childcare. We see women come into these jobs and do them well without a great deal of formal training. So we take that as proof that the jobs are "low skilled' and therefore shouldn't be well remunerated. If, on the other hand, a man is 'naturally good at some-thing, it often becomes an argument for the exact opposite: for why he should be paid well.

In those nineteenth-century hosiery factories, much was said about the male workers' 'skills. The female workers, meanwhile, were described in terms of 'speed' and 'accuracy, and the tasks they excelled at were presented as an extension of their nature. They remained passive objects that merely happened to have quick or accurate fingers. Bodies that all but worked by themselves.

The man, meanwhile, was an active participant in his work in a quite different way. He learned things and became 'skilled'. So it comes as no surprise that economic logic promptly demanded that he also be better paid.”

- Katrine Marçal; Mother of Invention

[forgottenbones]

Inventions hanging out

[alitheia]

Nowadays everyone is a bit of a Scientologist, in the sense that we tend to talk about our brains as “biological computers.” We imagine that we “process information” or “reboot” just like computers do, co-opting terms like “hardware” and “software” and applying them to ourselves. In computing they usually call physical components like the computer processor, screen, graphics card, and motherboard the “hardware,” while the instructions that you then code the machine to follow are the “software.” Similarly, in recent decades we have been encouraged to think of our bodies as a form of hardware and our thoughts as a form of software. Obviously our brains need a body, we think, but only in the same way that a computer program needs a machine or a parasite needs a tree. This has in part led us to now think of intelligence—or humanity, for that matter—as something independent of the body. The body becomes something of a robot that carries our “self” around, a concept we have extrapolated from wildly. Some of the great thinkers of our time, like the physicist Stephen Hawking or cosmologist Max Tegmark, have predicted that in the future we will even be able to “upload” our consciousness to something other than the human body.

This conclusion is drawn from the idea that humans function like computers. If our intelligence and personality are a form of software, it follows that it should be possible to “run” these on a machine other than the body. Humanity’s essence is simply some sort of advanced software trapped in a biological prison. But thanks to technology, in the future it will be possible to swap out the body for something better. Kind of like transferring the content from your old computer onto a new and better version. In doing so, we will be able to escape our bodies and everything they entail by way of frailty, sickness, and finally, death.

… The brain is no digital gadget; its cells are not binary objects that can be turned off and on. There are countless differences between our brains and our computers, the main one being that the brain has a body. It is, in fact, a body—a body that exists in a context, at that. Our brains are interacting with the rest of our body and with our surroundings from the very moment they start to develop inside the womb.

That fact can’t just be abstracted away.

“Mother of Invention: How Good Ideas Get Ignored in an Economy Built for Men” by Katrine Marçal

When you live in some distant future where people are computers instead of carbon based life.

[bloodmaarked]

➳ monthly book round-up: june

read:

mother of invention, katrine marçal. 2*. read 28 may 2023 – 10 june 2023.

spare, prince harry. 5*. read 28 may 2023 – 11 june 2023.

big shot, jeff kinney. 3*. read 11 june 2023 – 14 june 2023.

the hate u give, angie thomas. 4*. read 12 june 2023 - 14 june 2023.

the missing american, kwei quartey. 1*. read 16 june 2023 - 22 june 2023.

the year of the witching, alexis henderson. 4*. read 16 june 2023 - 26 june 2023.

currently reading:

foul lady fortune, chloe gong. started 15 june 2023.

a deadly education, naomi novik. started 26 june 2023.

[moonsnqil]

if i was kevin day id be more annoying actually

[pop-art-sixties-seventies]

Frank Zappa, Mothers of Invention, BB King, 1968

[toniodarling]

no wayyyy Enki jumpscare on the Perverts cover

[undergroundrockpress]

The Joshua Light Show / the Mothers Of Invention at the Fillmore Auditorium (San Francisco) in 1967.

[stromuprisahat]

When a man produces an abstract piece in oils on canvas, it is called art. When a woman produces an identical piece in textiles it is called craftwork. As a result, one is sold for $86 million at a New York auction house. The other is used as a tablecloth in a summer cottage.

Mother of Invention: How Good Ideas Get Ignored in an Economy Built for Men (Katrine Marçal)

[whocookedthelastsupper]

“The way we currently describe the history of technology not only excludes women in a primary sense, it also means that our definition of technology has constantly shifted to exclude what women have done. When men knitted stockings it was a respected, technical job; when women did so it was needlework. When women churned butter it was a simple servant's task; when men did so it was a technical operation. When women programmed computers it was considered something anyone could do, but when men did so it suddenly required a very specific type of nerd brain that in all its great genius could neither shower its associated body nor be bothered to show some basic social skills.”

- Katrine Marçal, Mother of Invention

[litcest]

Next time someone tries to shame you for writing that incest AU, remember that the Medievals wrote many incest AU for their favourites saints.

From Judas Iscariot, to Pope Gregorius, to Saint Albans and Saint Andreas of Crete, a favourite pastime for writers seemed to be to create fake biographies for these religious figures who had lived centuries earlier, and include salacious details, such as unwittingly marrying their mothers before embarking in a journey in search for penitence.

[wonder-worker]

Wild how we know that Elizabeth Woodville was officially appointed to royal councils in her own right during her husband’s reign and fortified the Tower of London in preparation of a siege while 8-months pregnant and had forces gathering at Westminster “in the queen’s name” in 1483 – only for NONE of these things to be even included, let alone explored, in the vast majority of scholarship and historical novels involving her.

[mndvx]

[bloodmaarked]

mother of invention, katrine marçal

released 2021

read: 28 may 2023 – 10 june 2023

i initially added this book to my reading list because i heard the author speak for 'the trouble club' as part of the promo for this book - it was an interesting talk as far as i can remember, and she made her points eloquently. (also, highly recommend 'the trouble club' if you're in london and love to hear brilliant women talk about their books and so much more!) at least, she was eloquent enough to convince me to read the book and see what she had to say. unfortunately, mother of invention was a pretty jumbled mess that i had to push myself to finish.

it's a book that takes a feminist look at technological developments throughout human history and looks into the future. interesting in premise, but i had two main problems with this. the first is that the book felt like it meandered all over the place - several times i found myself trying to pick apart what the chapter was themed on and asking myself, "wait, why is she talking about this again?" it could've done with way more editing and a more streamlined approach, as i found myself engaged in shorter sections that could've been published as a short article.

the second issue was that there were many, many moments where it felt like the point was just 'women good, men bad', and this line of thinking was backed up with... not evidence, but just the author's personal thoughts, i guess? i was lost when she made claims such as climate change is happening because we see nature as feminine and therefore feel we can abuse it like we do women. like, do you have a source for this or is this just how you feel? a lot of the writing felt very biased and, i felt, took credibility from her whole argument.

the book wasn't awful but overall i wouldn't go out of my way to recommend this. a little disappointing.

rating: ⭐️⭐️

[meirimerens]

the pathologic Kin is largely fictionalized with a created language that takes from multiple sources to be its own, a cosmogony & spirituality that does not correlate to the faiths (mostly Tengrist & Buddhist) practiced by the peoples it takes inspirations from, has customs, mores and roles invented for the purposes of the game, and even just a style of dress that does not resemble any of these peoples', but it is fascinating looking into specifically to me the sigils and see where they come from... watch this:

P2 Layers glyphs take from the mongolian script:

while the in-game words for Blood, Bones and Nerves are mongolian directly, it is interesting to note that their glyphs do not have a phonetic affiliation to the words (ex. the "Yas" layer of Bones having for glyph the equivalent of the letter F, the "Medrel" layer of Nerves having a glyph the equivalent of the letter È,...)

the leatherworks on the Kayura models', with their uses of angles and extending lines, remind me of the Phags Pa Script (used for Tibetan, Mongolian, Chineses, Uyghur language, and others)

some of the sigils also look either in part or fully inspired by Phags Pa script letters...

some look closer to the mongolian or vagindra (buryat) script

looking at the Herb Brides & their concept art, we can see bodypainting that looks like vertical buryat or mongolian script (oh hi (crossed out: Mark) Phags Pa script):

shaped and reshaped...