“when the time came, she would be ready” ooooh Raven what are you doing?! 👀

there are so many theories and machinations happening.

I had to read this immediately after the first boo, it’s been so good so far!

I’m not talking problematic, I’m talking PETTY. Like, “I know it’s stupid, but I’m dying on this hill anyway,” level of petty. I’ll go first…

Typically I’m all for an author getting their bag for their intellectual property. But in this case, I won’t read 'The Witcher' series, and it’s because the author pretty much dissed gaming as an art form, then got the Polish government involved to force CD Projekt Red (game devs of The Witcher series) to renegotiate his contract because he chose to sell his IP in the gaming sector for an immediate payout over taking a royalties check. He didn’t believe the game series would come to anything, didn’t believe that gaming was a serious art form, then cried when he noticed how much money the devs made (as well as the exposure it created for his book series) and threatened litigation for $16 million.

So I refuse to read his books or watch the show. In fact, I think it’s kinda hilarious that the Netflix writers don’t respect his material in the same way he didn’t respect gaming. I consider it karmic payback.

You can find out the full scope if you look up YongYea on YouTube. The videos span from 5-6 years ago. And yeah… that’s my Petty Betty book moment. What's yours?

The afterword has a story about how mathematician Daina Taimina figured out how to model hyperbolic space using crochet, and I can't help but to think about the really unfortunate recent SciShow controversy on their video called "Physicists Don't Understand Why Knitting Works." In this video, which has since been taken down, beloved internet figure Hank Green explains how silly women have been doing their silly knitting for centuries, not knowing really how any of it works until physicists came along and explained that they were actually doing ✨math✨.

The implication was that fiber arts was not really valuable until it was recorded and explained by (male) scientists, who then use it to do non-silly non-woman things like ✨physics✨ and ✨science✨. The message was basically "can you believe this dumb grandma hobby can actually be useful and cool?" This dismissiveness is part of a long history of the devaluation women-dominated skillsets and was rightfully called out by the knitting community. Women have always known the value of their skilled labor. Knitting and crochet patterns are highly mathematical in nature, and the loom was essentially a primitive computer.

The fact that Daina Taimina's colleagues did not see the solution in crochet themselves is indicative of a huge blind spot created by a generalized disdain of all things women-oriented. As the author puts it, "When we exclude half of humanity from the production of knowledge, we lose out on potentially transformative insights." It makes me wonder, what kinds of innovation could we have had in the world if women weren't invisible?