the adventures of jenn I(n) R(eal) L(ife)

[ID:

The virus responsible for the Spanish flu set the stage for a wave of Parkinson’s disease decades later. People born during that pandemic had a threefold increased risk of later developing Parkinson’s.

The Epstein-Barr virus, once called the kissing disease, can lead to cancer, diabetes or multiple sclerosis decades later. An innocent flu-like infection can later erupt into a debilitating condition known as myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome. And so on.

“The idea that a virus that produces acute infections can also cause chronic disease is not new. We just ignored it for 100 years,” said Al-Aly.

End ID]

Why So Quiet about Long Covid?

staying warm during the holidays 🍵☁️☁️

Geometric Animations / 240130

Oh Gawain <3

This came to me in a vision and I had to draw it or I would explode. I honestly don't have an explanation enjoy

Happy New Year!!

Starting off 2024 with a dragon and some bunnies.

More about the project:

Credit for the tik tok:

publishing companies will be like ~ooh this is a hardcover oooh it's so durable that will be $35~ and then you see the actual book and it's like. "perfect"-bound with endbands glued on crooked and a completely plain paper cover under the dust jacket. my dudes this shit is a mass market paperback with delusions of grandeur

now THIS is a hardcover

what does this mean

i can explain in more detail with pictures when i get home from work, but executive summary:

both trade paperbacks and mass market paperbacks are usually constructed via perfect binding, where you take a stack of loose-leaf sheets and dunk the spine edge in, basically, hot-melt glue (low-temp thermoplastic with a little flexibility to it). stick a cover on the outside of that bad bitch and you're done. very easy and cheap to manufacture, but not durable; not only does the soft cover provide no protection, pages can fall out individually if the glue fails for whatever reason. (i don't have a picture handy but just grab any mass market paperback off your bookshelf and look at the spine)

typically, or perhaps traditionally, when binding a hardcover ("case-bound") book you assemble the sheets into signatures, which are sewn to each other to form a text block, like so:

(well, admittedly, using both linen tape and french link stitch is sort of the belt-and-suspenders of textblock construction. in my defense though look at the fucking size of this tome) but the point is that even before you've gotten around to gluing anything, the textblock hangs together and functions as a book, albeit an unusually wobbly one -- so if the cover completely falls off or something, the rest of the book still hangs together.

the other method of construction i see on many mass-manufacture hardcovers and some trade paperbacks is that they've folded the signatures and sewn them individually (one at a time, not to each other) -- this is easy to do on a specialized sewing machine -- and *then* potted the spine in glue, like you do for perfect binding. this is less liable to lose pages if you fuck up the spine, because instead of each page being glued in individually, they're sewn together into signatures which provide more glue surface area apiece. (i can post a picture when i get home...)

uhh oh yeah endbands. endbands are the little decorative bits that get glued onto the textblock before it gets cased in -- this is in itself sort of a cheapo mass-manufacture imitation of more traditional sewn endbands, which actually provide some structural stability; modern glued-on endbands are really just decorative. here's a picture of a sewn endband on an example book from the bookbinding museum in sf (left), and a different textblock with endbands glued on (right). (the latter also has mull glued onto it, which is like... starched cheesecloth, kind of? you can use kozo paper here too; it also helps stabilize the spine for extra durability)

anyway on mass-manufacture hardcovers i often see really half-assed endbands that are glued on crooked or slightly undersized or something and i'm like "are you even TRYING" (they are not)

and also usually on recently manufactured books the entire case (the "hard cover" of a case-bound hardcover) is covered in paper, including the hinges, which is a terrible decision because the hinges are the part of the book that MOST needs the durability, being The Primary Moving Part. at least fucking cover the spine and hinges in bookcloth i beg. please. for me

sorry loser you lost me at this

get a real programming language dork.

thats why im using it as a clamp and not as a book :p

@just-evo-now i am back home! where my books live!! so i can take pictures of the bindings :D

a couple of perfect-bound paperbacks:

the benefit of perfect binding, such as it is, is that all the pages can be aligned with each other and the spine is nice and square. (the other benefit is that it is cheap.) but if you're folding pages into signatures you're always gonna get some creep where the inner pages of the signature extend a little bit further towards the fore-edge [edge opposite the spine] than the outer pages do; you can either leave it like that for a deckled edge or trim it off for a neater finished look. (personally i am not a huge fan of deckled edges but Madame La Guillotine can only handle so much book, you know)

a paperback and a hardcover with the signatures-potted-in-glue style (i wish i knew what it was called):

i quite like the green endband on this hardcover! matches the cover nicely, is an appropriate size, aligned well, etc. (in addition to gluing them on crooked, the other common Endband Sin is to make them too damn short and it looks ridiculous)

the cloth-bound hardcover from the first image in this post, pub date 1978:

as you can see, it has much more flexibility than the potted-in-glue style (which can bend a little bit, but cracks if you open it too far), because the signatures are sewn to each other, with some kind of mystery green paper glued over them for stability (and, deeper in the spine, brown... something. fabric?? some of my other vintage books seem to use thin brown canvas...). no endband, but honestly it doesn't really need one.

and! here is a 1945 pocket handbook for engineers (you know, with useful integrals and trig tables and unit conversions and stuff in it) in norwegian, which was falling apart when i got it (i picked it up on the cheap with the intention of hopefully fixing it someday):

the cover is nonfunctional and the stabilizing paper on the spine has gotten so crumbly as to be useless (i got about halfway through peeling it off), but the textblock itself is in pretty good condition, because the signatures are sewn securely to each other -- if you squint you can kinda tell they used kettle stitches on the ends and chain stitches in the middle and i thiiink the chain stitches are where the loose loops on the top came from. anyway, i can pretty much finish peeling off the old crumbly paper stuff and glue on some new kozo paper (and ensure the loose loops are tucked safely away/glued down) and this bad bitch will be ready for a new cover!

I am really going to have to start paying attention to book binding going forward.

(via @trans-cuchulainn )

a grilled cheese is never terrible but sometimes you eat one that is so gorgeous you start believing in life a little all over again

Asdfghjkl it happened again

It has been 0 days

Not only has it been 0 days, it has been 3 days in a row

[image description: a screenshot of tags by tumblr user uwuplasmiusuwu that say the following: “#disabled humor #autistic culture #thank you whoever liked this so that I could find the post again #MY PHONE ETIQUETTE IS FLAWLESS #IM SO SMOOTH I DONT GOT FRICTION #WHY AM I FAILING THE TURRING TEST?!?!” /end ID]

Adding the tags from the last post in light of how many times I heard this on Friday, because I lost count

🎶There’s moooore🎶

So, as of last update, shenanigans have happened at least twice daily on average. I have decided that, if you’re gonna call my autistic ass out, you can listen to me wheeze while I crack up. That brings us to today’s overtime special:

After that, we both laughed so hard they hung up accidentally. 😂

This is wonderful. If more unknown people called me and I answered them I’d probably be trying to replicate this.

It. Keeps. Happening.

I have no choice but to break down in helpless laughter as I try to reassure people, “I’m not at all offended, this is just the [3rd to 14th] time today someone’s told me that.”

Someone give me the money to buy a decent mic and I’ll do the damn voice acting. 🤣

This used to happen to me all the time when my job involved phone work! I also once read the part of a voicemail machine in a script writing class, and everyone was very impressed how I got the timing right on the “you have one new message” bits.

Right? All it is is pattern recognition, and we already have to have scripts for everything anyway! 🤣

You know, I haven’t updated this post in ages, but I am still surprising folks all the time. Here are some recent highlights:

See, you're probably sticking too close to a generic script, with not enough memorable details to stick out as an individual. Try introducing yourself with your entire full name (unusual middle names would be a big plus here, perhaps with some non-standard apostrophes thrown in for effect) and a detailed description of your hair and eye color to help people picture you in their minds (again, unexpected similes and word choices are what you're going for). You might want to add some humanizing details of your daily life as well, like a brief anecdote about an interaction with some students at your school that'll help you get across your taste in music and general subculture. That way, you'll turn any phone call into an immortal memory.

I want you to know that 1.) you are the first person to pull this and 2.) I need it framed on my wall.

@theshitpostcalligrapher I think this might peak your interest

when you drink all the wine in the house and then you have. :( no wine in the house

me when i excuse myself during a dinner party to sneak outside and milk more cabernet sauvignon from the Creature

had food poisoning when i posted this

Well if you'd pasteurized the Cabernet Sauvignon you milked from the creature maybe you wouldn't have gotten food poisoning from it.

oh suddenly everyone's an expert on the Creature i milk