#livetweet thread of Women who Out Steampunked Steampunk, opening with a note about how diverse the Victorian era is and that women of colour very much existed
Straw poll on interest of the room of soldiers and inventors. Talking about how women were soldiers, that there were lots of reasons to go to war, that lgbtq erasure is real and that some women returned and went on lecture circuit;
others lived in male garb for rest of life after war and that many of them are likely what we would understand as trans.
Also all the nurses and wives going to war. Quick anecdote of soldier's wife grumpy about laundry ruined by canon ball.
Ada Lovelace, quintessential steampunk woman, who saw the potential of things, work with Babbage's difference engine.
Ada as child of Byron and was brought up on maths by her mother, no poetry, to suppress that poetic imagination, but that she brought a mathematical imagination to the table
Women couldn't take out patent in their own name in America and thus there's a lack of documented female inventors. Apocryphal story of how the sewing machine was invented by man's wife in three days in a "ugh, we are poor just sell this"
Clothes wringer was invented by a black woman, the device still persists today, and that feared that white women wouldn't use something invented by a black woman and she sold the patent on
Madam C. J. Walker, civil rights activist and inventor of hair products, first female self made millionaire of America.
Sarah Guppy is super steampunk, as she invented many multi-purpose objects that make eggs and tea etc.

After 1790 American women were allowed to file patents in their own names.
Sarah Guppy's weird exercise bed
Mary Kies is the first to file patent in America. She was important in hat making industry and that hats no longer being imported from France and saved the New England hat industry
Margaret Knight invented the machine that folds paper bags, and we still use it today. And also she invented method for machines to stop when jammed. Which is great for safety.
Audience supplements other amazing stories about Madam C. J. Walker starting bank and also invented very concept franchises.
Addendum: different Walker: washingtonpost.com/news/retropoli…
Quickly onto female scientists, Mary Anning, whose father made cabinets, and the crossover that never was as Jane Austen tried to buy a curiosity cabinet from him but thought it too expensive
Mary Anning collected fossils, first ichthyosaur skeleton and making connections about bezoar being fossilised poop. She sells sea shells by the sea shore is about her. She had many brushes with death, the cliffs crumbling beneath her feet.
The Harvard Computers, hidden figures film and women who worked as computers started very early on; Edward Charles Pickering was lamenting how his male assistants are awful and that his maid could do better
Williamina Fleming was a school teacher and came to be a maid after childbirth, that she was hired in a huff by Pickering. And she went on to discover Horsehead Nebula, etc, and later led Harvard Computers (impolitely called Pickering's Harem)
Shout out to The Glass Universe, and also in fiction Calculating Stars and Fated Sky by Mary Robinette Kowal
Also very quickly mentioning Beatrix Potter was also a naturalist, as well as children's books.

Women did a lot of naturalism, that whilst it did make it a lot easier with having money. But that some of that is framing, of making it accessible to femininity, socially acceptable.
So some women who needed to work, so frame their scientific endeavours and naturalism as feminine. That they frame how their discoveries as "oh I'm looking at my garden, I can see two hundred species..."
Also again we have it with the travellers and they would frame their travels as "oh well I would much much rather stay at home, but the doctor says fresh air so I'm going three month journey"
Very very quick wander into women in medicine, with Florence Nightingale and Mary Seacole, and the women who basically invaded medical school. A transformative time.
Jeanne Villepreux-Power invented the aquarium, self taught, working class, daughter of a shoe maker, that she also designed a famous wedding gown.

Female travellers and explorers; so Sophie Blanchard, regency balloonist
There was a huge hot air balloon craze; with poofy sleeves and trinkets and wallpaper;

She was anxious as a person, her husband was a not very successful balloonist and they think maybe she could fly and would be gimmick. She was as fearless in the air, as timid on ground.
Her husband died falling out of a balloon, they did lots of tricks; her basket was the size of chair; she is apparently tiny; first woman to pilot and fly professionally in a balloon; would sleep in basket
She was politically active and she was also the first woman to die in a balloon accident. She would do pyrotechnic displays and the fireworks set fire to her hydrogen balloon; she successfully landed but was tangled in strings; and after of course big omg women shouldn't pilot
We are about to go into talking about missionaries and travellers, I am having to run to my reading but do google all these amazing women

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More from @jeannette_ng

Sep 27, 2018
For years and years, JKR teased that we would find out why Harry's eyes were green.

And it always struck me as a strange that was never a Revelation, beyond their significance to Snape. Which is, at best a Doylian reason and not a Watsonian one.
Doylian: As pertaining to Doyle, the author. The metatextual reason for something being the way it is.

Watsonian: As pertaining to Watson, the narrator. This is all your in-universe stuff.
Example:
Harry goes back to the Dursleys every year for the summer holidays.

Watsonian: the magic that protects him requires that he nominally be living with blood relatives.

Doylian: less knowable but probably narrative structure & generating sympathy for Harry.
Read 26 tweets
Sep 4, 2018
Almond milk is milk.

I'm surprised how angry I am about this, but the claim that almond milk is some sort of new invention that is tricking the unsuspecting public is just wrong.

A thread where I rant about medieval uses of almond milk.

vox.com/2018/8/31/1776…
It's been called almond milk for hundreds of years. And been around for just as long as an alternative to animal milk.

It's first mentioned in a 13thC cookbook in Iraq. It's also used throughout Middle Ages in Europe.
Before pasteurisation and refrigeration, animal milk would go off very quickly and thus often seen as suspect.

Widespread fasting in the medieval world (Lent, as well as other fast days) meant that people (esp. rich people) often wanted an alternative to animal milk.
Read 17 tweets
Aug 22, 2018
There's also a lot to be said about how so many of the "mysteries" of the house are simply conveniences and comforts for an old woman.

Not strange, not weird, just not built for ableds.
The narrow passages, the low ceiling, the ramps and shallow steps, the elevator, the multiple fireplaces (warmth helps with arthritis): all of this paints a portrait of an old woman who was eccentric and very into architecture, but above all, she built for herself and no one else
It's notable that the Winchester Mystery House experience basically opened within five months of Sarah Winchester's death, shortly after the house was deemed worthless and sold off (for a still tidy sum) to an entrepreneur who ran THEME PARKS.
Read 29 tweets
Jun 14, 2018
My problem with how many use the monomyth is this: it confuses what is common in stories with what gives a story meaning.

The MONOMEAL: a thread where I contrive food analogy to explain what I mean
It is possible to look at the vast array of meals out there and say they all broadly fit into the framework of Carbohydrate, One Meat, Two Veg.

This may be a useful observation to someone analysing meals across cultures looking for commonalities.
And yes we do need to contort some dishes considerably to work, including the ubiquitous Burger and Fries (fries are a vegetable? or do we ignore the bun?). And well, vegetarians and vegans just get a meat substitute, obviously. Etc.
Read 19 tweets
Jun 10, 2018
Let's talk KILL YOUR DARLINGS and other such self-censoring self-limiting rules about writing.

This is gonna be a thread.
The majority of writing advice out there is predicated in the idea of Story over Prose, much of are guidelines to write relatively minimalistic (but not too minimalistic) text that will be a transparent window to the story and characters.

This isn't itself a bad thing.
But very little of it explicitly acknowledges that that is the sort of prose it is advocating.

NO ADVERBS!
TAKE OUT YOUR FILTER WORDS!
PASSIVE VOICE IS BAD!
MORE ACTION VERBS!
SHOW DON'T TELL!
Read 22 tweets
Jun 2, 2018
A thread of non representative anecdotes about being #bilingual (I speak Cantonese, Mandarin and English):

- slang based on literal translations of words ("that guy so inch") or phrases
I occasionally forget which language has which idiom (because some exist in both Chinese and English) so I end up in a conversation of explaining why I just called someone's muscles a really cute mouse 🐁
My body language and accent literally (if sometimes subtly) change when I swap languages. Cantonese-speaking Jeannette has a brasher stance. Mandarin-speaking Jeannette is more polite.
Read 23 tweets

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