Punk Rock Tips

My summer sewing and circular fashion project.

We all have so much clothing, and we don't wear half of it, but sometimes there is a reason for this, annoying qualities to our clothes that deters us from wearing them, because we don't have the mental or physical energy to fix it, but this is my project to solve this for myself and my family over the summer, for FREE (we are reducing clothing waste, not wasting our money ☺️ ) . And to make it fun, and organised, I'm structuring it like a hospital.

If you would like this formatted in a PowerPoint, whether to make it more structured, ease of access, better accessibility features, so you can share it with someone (I don't expect this to happen, but I would be SO excited) , let me know, because I can go into more detail, include example images, links to wear to learn skills or tips to adapt the skills for mobility issues etc. I actually enjoy making PowerPoints when it doesn't glitch, so it is no bother.

STEP 1: TRIAGE

Going through your wardrobe and checking each piece of clothing for anything that annoys you, whether it's damage, something causing a sensory ick, an accessibility issue (small buttons my beloathed) or if it just doesn't work as that type of item. Depending on what you want to fix about it, you can triage it into different hospital Departments (piles or tote bags so that you can do sessions where you get in the groove doing the same repair/ treatment each time) or Transfer the patients you cannot care for (given to the appropriate person or responsibly disposed of)

Step 2 - Admissions

Your clothes have been sorted into the departments below during triage. Each department has a treatment and that is how you repair your clothes. Everyone has different clothes and different needs, so pick and choose what departments your hospital will have.

Departments

Sutures clinic - sewing up rips and holes

Suture removal - unpicking or cutting off embroidered labels

Skin grafts - receives a patch

Stem cell lab - darning or sashiko. I've never tried these, but it you do these, you are automatically cool.

Wound debridement - de-bobbling /removing pills / hair. Using the surgical tools of a bobble machine, sellotape, and if you're fancy, lint rollers and knit combs (you can do it perfectly fine with the €2 machine in your chaos drawer, it's more versatile and you can use it on weaves aswell as knits)

Hydration therapy - giving items a soak in the sink or a basin to remove build up. This might be why your socks are coming out of the wash all itchy and kind of stiff, even if they went in fine. (If it smells soapy, your washing machine isn't draining and it's building up in your clothes).

Organ recipient - improved with materials from organ donation (see transfers) eg those viral appliqué tomato jeans, but with your own waste because this is a no spending project and the aim is to reduce textile waste.

Orthopedic surgery - adding any hardware, such as zips or grommets any stabilisation (zip ties, or round pencils are good for corset boning if you want to prolong the life of that impulse buy, awkward fast fashion corset you regret buying 3 years ago)

Cosmetic surgery - embroidery. If you don't wear something because it is boring, make it fun, add some butterflies or flowers, or whatever brings you joy. The world needs more joy and creativity and that old jacket can be your canvas

Amputation - hemming /taking in clothes . No tripping over your trousers or having clothes be uncomfortably big.

Prosthetic clinic - adding lace or matching/contrasting fabric to add fabric to make your clothes fit you. This way as the world gets to have more of your beautiful self, you get to have more beautiful clothes 🥰 And adding a lace panel to adapt your too tight trousers to flares is gorgeous!!!

Physio therapy - blocking your knitwear and maybe your newest project too (whooo🎉🎉🎉 Accomplishment.

Pain clinic - use materials from organ donation to replace parts of clothes that are sensory nightmares (you could take a long sleeve comfy t-shirt and sew the collar and cuffs of your or a child in your life's uniform shirt onto the t-shirt if the shirt is overstimulating and the evidence can be covered by a uniform jumper

Occupation therapy - Adapting clothes for accessibility eg. replacing buttons. Buttons are cute, but can be hard to use if your hands aren't too cooperative, so bigger size buttons, different shape buttons, wider button holes etc might be helpful. Or switching to magnet closures/ zelcro or zips if buttons aren't worth it. Our clothes should suit are bodies and should bring us joy, not frustration.

Step 3 - Discharge

Once you finish a department, those clothes can be discharged return home to your wardrobe. But if you can't find a way to change the clothes into something wearable, you will transfer them. This is your responsible declutter.

Transfers

Clothes we are getting rid of, but doing so ✨responsibly ✨, because it is not our fault that we can't wear them anymore, whether due to weight changes ( which are morally neutral, do not hurt yourself by trying to fit into jeans that don't fit you), clothes not being accessible (eg. I need loose trousers to fit over my braces, so leggings don't work anymore) or you just know that you are never going to willingly wear that, it is your job to make sure the clothes that you bought do not end up in landfill.

Organ donation - used for scraps, patches or given a new life in a crafty project

Outpatient care - Good quality item, but not for you. Donated to a shelter (every day practical clothing, especially if it's warm), charity shop (something interesting that someone might buy, that could raise a few euros for a good cause) , or gifted to someone you think will like it (be conscious of size and style and sensory needs, don't give a frilly pink polyester size 6 dress to the autistic plus sized goth, etc)

Palliative care - being demoted to a hair dying t-shirt, designated clothes for messy tasks because you don't mind getting more stains on them, or pyjamas/ hobbit day clothes.

like actually i don't think its that big of mystery. there's mysterious elements, because we don't have all the details, but its not like we have no clue what she said on the subject.. i think it has just historically made a lot of cishet people extremely uncomfortable that jeanne la pucelle went to her death refusing to ever admit fault for saying God told her to wear men's clothing for the sake of being a virgin waging war in men's clothing. i think it historically made a lot of people uncomfortable that at her trial they told her "Deuteronomy says crossdressing is a sin" and jeanne's response was "I know what God told me and I do not believe I have done anything wrong." but that is a problem for people because you can't have her sainthood and her admirable (to a Catholic) devotion to God without her devotion to her genderqueerness in God's name.

1. The court holds Google responsible for statements made by its AI, considering them Google's statements (search engines have limited liability for results in their engine as they're the words of other sites/companies/people), meaning when their AI lies/hallucinates they're liable for the defamation/harm resulting from those statements.

2. Google's defense that customers are generally aware of the lack of reliability and are responsible for fact checking was dismissed. As the court pointed out, that would "significantly diminish" AI Search's stated purpose and it can't be distinguished from Google's business practices/statements as a search tool.

3. Studies have found about 91% of Google's everyday AI responses are accurate, leaving millions of searches per HOUR with potential liability for falsehoods. 56% of correct responses weren't supported by the sources the AI listed. Both of which mean Google is now liable for a LOT more AI "errors."

4. Google was held liable for 80% of court costs in this case and this precedent is expected to reverberate around the world. This is a massive shift from the 3rd-party search provider role Google has previously played and it comes right as they've tied ALL searches to their AI search.

Golp: a roundel purpure.

Roundels are circles in heraldry. They are named according to their color, which also has its own lingo. Let’s meet them!

Bezant: roundel or (gold) 🟡

Plate: roundel argent (silver) ⚪️

Torteau: roundel gules (red) 🔴

Pomme: roundel vert (green) 🟢

Hurt: roundel azure (blue) 🔵

Golp: roundel purpure (purple) 🟣

Pellet: roundel sable (black) ⚫️

shockingly, you have to fucking read thing you’re accusing of ai to figure out whether it’s ai or not. no, the use of em dashes (—) are not a giveaway for ai use; no, the phrasing “it’s not x, it’s y” is not a giveaway for ai use. oftentimes the biggest giveaway in fiction/creative-focused ai writing is the emptiness behind each word, metaphor, figurative speech, etc.

one of the hallmarks of great fiction or any form of creative writing is generally the voice an author brings to the text. think about your best friend telling you a story about their day over facetime or while you're hanging out or even on a discord call idfk. the story could be the driest, boring story you've ever fucking heard about someone's worklife, but it's the way your friend tells it to you that keeps you hooked and engaged: what was about some bitchass customer ordering the stupidest coffee order becomes this odyssey-like adventure because ur friend, endearingly, can't stfu! they're using such animated language, they're playing with pauses and pacing, they're bringing out this voice that is so uniquely theirs that the world from their eyes simply is a different color than you'll ever get to experience—and that's what makes it so interesting. a 5-minute interaction becomes a 2-hour conversation simply because your friend can tell a story.

so when you're reading some fic about idk bruce wayne dicking you down or whatever, what's keeping you there, besides the smut content, is the way the smut is written. does the writing leave room for you to get immersed? are you engaged with the story being told? does it fucking make sense? obv in a smutty bruce wayne fic, you're not going to see phrasing like "it's not x, but y" (could you imagine.."it wasn't his hand, but his dick" how erotic!), but the potential use of ai would come in through flattened language that doesn't make much sense given the narrative being told. although, given most llms today (maybe other than c.ai? idk how that one works tbh), you probably won't be able to get explicit smut generated off of fucking chatgpt or claude but to give another example—this time, fluff—you'll have to discern whether the fluffy 'jason-todd-taking-u-on-a-bike-ride' fic makes any fucking sense when you read it. yes, it has em dashes, but does it also have emotion? are you walking away from that fic feeling moved in any particular way? are you smiling like an idiot because the writer described holding onto jason todd's waist at a stoplight as if it was a fucking washboard or an omnichord where your fingers got lost in the melodic touch? yes, thinking of someone's waist and abdominal muscles as a fucking musical instrument is odd, but does it make sense within the realm of the paragraph? if it comes out of nowhere, sure! but if the writer turns that around and goes on a brief ramble about how loving jason todd is a musical feeling of some sort, it's not all that odd at the end of the day, is it? essentially, you have to (a) read and (b) use your brain.

ergo, instead of seeing an em dash and yelling "witch!" maybe ask yourself, as you read:

does this fic have the same vibe or linguistic voice as the others, or is that changing every fic?

does the figurative language used make any sense given the context of the story?

do the metaphors make sense or is it just straight bullshit?

does this read like a corporation tried to think about what i'd like as a consumer, rather than a reader?

does the language here feel very much like the writer is trying to sell me an idea, rather than tell me a story?

an important thing to note: the unfortunate reality is that within a year or two, ai will be almost indistinguishable from human-created writing. it’s the shittiest reality-check you’re gonna have to reckon with today, tomorrow, next month, next year, etc. but it’s here, it’s fucking up our creative spaces, it’s fucking up the land we live on, it’s fucking up our clean water supplies—it’s fucking up the very fabric of reality as we know it, accelerating us into zones of contention, hostility, and violence. in short, it’s the neocolonial frontier, the playground imperialism is stretching its grimy hands across and fucking us left, right, up, down, sideways, and on entirely new dimensional fields of existence we haven’t even fully realized yet. and while i can spend the rest of this already long ass ramble talking about just how exactly ai/llms are functioning as such, that’s an essay for another day; im mostly just here trying to tell yall to get a fucking grip and actually be intentional with how you interact and engage etc.

piggybacking off that: another thing to acknowledge is that not everyone is a good writer; it's a harsh truth, but as a critic i have every right to say this given the slop of our contemporary publishing landscape (and genuinely, there are better writers on tumblr than there are on bookstore shelves today). but with that being said, many current young and emerging writers are unfortunately trained in a world where ai is beginning to be accepted and used as a publishing standard. not going to unpack this idea to its fullest here, but there's a generation of emerging writers that learned how to write like shit from a lexicon of tiktok regurgitation and empty and meaningless youtube video essays. we can't blame them either, this is just the reality of our linguistic landscape developed on social media (hence why the generation after you will have a meme-language you won't be able to understand). so, yes, we're going to see writers who do write weirdly similar to ai, or carry this corporate-like language full of funky ass metaphors that make no sense and shit like "fostering a vibrant community" whatever tf that means

ultimately though, the more you read, the more you'll develop taste, and that's what'll help you determine if something is ai or not. that's the only thing that'll save you in a world so devastatingly polarizing in antagonizing the layman and pacifying us into stillness (which is the exact word i would use to describe ai writing actually!). in knowing yourself and, by extension, knowing what you like, you can build out a language that carries meaning, life, intention, and therefore cultivate a unique worldview just with this ever-moving language you collected. but u have to use ur fucking brain and know when to turn away from something: the world is going to feed you slop and the only weapon you have to defend yourself is being able to look at it and say "well, that was shit!" and move on.

also uh oh am I using ai because i dared to write this with an em dash that’s been a staple to grammar and punctuation across multiple languages for centuries, with literal fucking evidence tracing its uses back to 15th century printing presses, and possibly earlier but im no early modernist/medievalist??? guess I should just kms!!!!!