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⚡🧟‍♀️ MAD DOCTOR IMPOSSIBLE!! 🧟‍♀️⚡

@impossiblephd.bsky.social

5K followers 450 following 8.8K posts

PhD trans girl! She/Her, thing explainer and #TeamRhetoric technical writing scholar who loves explaining trans science! ⚢. Opinions mine. Don't crack eggs. Build nests. Kindness is a hard choice worth making. Stainedglasswoman.substack.com

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⚡🧟‍♀️ MAD DOCTOR IMPOSSIBLE!! 🧟‍♀️⚡ @impossiblephd.bsky.social · Sep 1

Hi! I'm a technical writing professor with specializations in biomedical communication, page design, and trans stuff, and I do Thing Explainers on all that.

This is a thread of some of my bigger pieces, for anyone stumbling across my profile for the first time!

stainedglasswoman.substack.com

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⚡🧟‍♀️ MAD DOCTOR IMPOSSIBLE!! 🧟‍♀️⚡ @impossiblephd.bsky.social · 5h

Gurl you and me both.

Reminds me of a line from that puppygirl paper:

"Trans women believe they cannot win in a cisheteropatriarchal world that punishes them on every axis for simply being human. So, some choose to not."

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⚡🧟‍♀️ MAD DOCTOR IMPOSSIBLE!! 🧟‍♀️⚡ @impossiblephd.bsky.social · 5h

On one of Several Possible Websites Which Likely Have Different Takes On The Same Basic Idea. 🤭

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⚡🧟‍♀️ MAD DOCTOR IMPOSSIBLE!! 🧟‍♀️⚡ @impossiblephd.bsky.social · 6h

Gurl you know where you can look. 🤭

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⚡🧟‍♀️ MAD DOCTOR IMPOSSIBLE!! 🧟‍♀️⚡ @impossiblephd.bsky.social · 6h

Edited to allow quote-posts. Have fun, y'all.

⚡🧟‍♀️ MAD DOCTOR IMPOSSIBLE!! 🧟‍♀️⚡ @impossiblephd.bsky.social · 6h

Something tells me that that story has been written... on one of the websites we don't really talk about publicly. 🤭

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⚡🧟‍♀️ MAD DOCTOR IMPOSSIBLE!! 🧟‍♀️⚡ @impossiblephd.bsky.social · 6h

😇

⚡🧟‍♀️ MAD DOCTOR IMPOSSIBLE!! 🧟‍♀️⚡ @impossiblephd.bsky.social · 6h

*No comment in PhD from before she hatched*

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⚡🧟‍♀️ MAD DOCTOR IMPOSSIBLE!! 🧟‍♀️⚡ @impossiblephd.bsky.social · 6h

Oh, it's not journaling for me. I'm developing a setting for a future D&D campaign setting, so to do it I'm writing a little story in the setting to make myself to build out a buncha details.

⚡🧟‍♀️ MAD DOCTOR IMPOSSIBLE!! 🧟‍♀️⚡ @impossiblephd.bsky.social · 6h

Sefi on Gastronauts:

"I didn't used to be hot, so I had to be smart. Now I'm hot, so I never want to be smart again!"

Fucking. Trans. Culture.

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⚡🧟‍♀️ MAD DOCTOR IMPOSSIBLE!! 🧟‍♀️⚡ @impossiblephd.bsky.social · 6h

Sometimes it's fun to do a little writing side project just for yourself. 😊

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⚡🧟‍♀️ MAD DOCTOR IMPOSSIBLE!! 🧟‍♀️⚡ @impossiblephd.bsky.social · 18h

I SAW THAT!!

I wish she'd named and shamed the textbook, because some publisher is probably gonna be *pissed*. That's a 100% recall and replace.

⚡🧟‍♀️ MAD DOCTOR IMPOSSIBLE!! 🧟‍♀️⚡ @impossiblephd.bsky.social · 20h

I mean, if industrial instructions are AI drafted and they can still spit anything at all after Things Go Wrong, it's definitely not a worst case scenario.

⚡🧟‍♀️ MAD DOCTOR IMPOSSIBLE!! 🧟‍♀️⚡ @impossiblephd.bsky.social · 21h

In honor of spooky month, share a 4 word horror story only someone in your profession would understand

“AI-written industrial instructions"

🌈Dr. Franken Frizzle 🎃 @swilua.bsky.social · 1d

In honor of spooky month, share a 4 word horror story only someone in your profession would understand

“papers in IEEE format”

Capricorn Iscariot @deaconblues1979.bsky.social · 1d

In honor of spooky month, share a 4 word horror story that only someone in your profession would understand.

"Mixed inclusion ratio trust"

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⚡🧟‍♀️ MAD DOCTOR IMPOSSIBLE!! 🧟‍♀️⚡ @impossiblephd.bsky.social · 1d

I did one of my doctoral seminars at the Newberry library, where I learned a lot of this. They made us handle the old books as we learned, because they have so many that they need help with handling them regularly.

⚡🧟‍♀️ MAD DOCTOR IMPOSSIBLE!! 🧟‍♀️⚡ @impossiblephd.bsky.social · 1d

I don't know offhand. That one really isn't my area.

⚡🧟‍♀️ MAD DOCTOR IMPOSSIBLE!! 🧟‍♀️⚡ @impossiblephd.bsky.social · 1d

Also, fun fact:

Its essential that leather parchment be handled--touched--barehanded from time to time, because the oils from our hands moisturizes the pages and keep them from drying and cracking.

It is SPOOKY to be asked to leaf through a 600-year-old prayer book barehanded, let me tell you.

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⚡🧟‍♀️ MAD DOCTOR IMPOSSIBLE!! 🧟‍♀️⚡ @impossiblephd.bsky.social · 1d

I'm honestly unsure why the two materials shared a name.

Anyway, reed parchment was flexible and cheap, but didn't last long. Given the costs involved in producing these books, leather parchment was *always* the material of choice.

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⚡🧟‍♀️ MAD DOCTOR IMPOSSIBLE!! 🧟‍♀️⚡ @impossiblephd.bsky.social · 1d

That's actually a good question!!

There are two types of material generally referred to as parchment. Leather parchment, like you see here, was unsurpassed in its durability. Reed parchment, originally invented by the Egyptians, was what was used for parchment scrolls.

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⚡🧟‍♀️ MAD DOCTOR IMPOSSIBLE!! 🧟‍♀️⚡ @impossiblephd.bsky.social · 1d

Gladly!

⚡🧟‍♀️ MAD DOCTOR IMPOSSIBLE!! 🧟‍♀️⚡ @impossiblephd.bsky.social · 1d

Yepppp. And while lapis is relatively common, it's a deep earth crystal, and the world didn't develop the mining technology to go dig em up until the last couple hundred years.

That one mine supplied a world of illumination, and its why there is almost zero lapis jewelry from the era.

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⚡🧟‍♀️ MAD DOCTOR IMPOSSIBLE!! 🧟‍♀️⚡ @impossiblephd.bsky.social · 1d

The only time you see illumination like this is in religious manuscripts. Nobody else could even possibly afford them. And regardless of the fact that I never share the spirituality of those who crafted these volumes, I'm always blown away by just how amazing the products of their faith were.

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⚡🧟‍♀️ MAD DOCTOR IMPOSSIBLE!! 🧟‍♀️⚡ @impossiblephd.bsky.social · 1d

Manuscripts like this were often worth more than the temples and cathedrals that housed them. Often, those structures were built *specifically* to house volumes like these.

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⚡🧟‍♀️ MAD DOCTOR IMPOSSIBLE!! 🧟‍♀️⚡ @impossiblephd.bsky.social · 1d

The blue for that ink was made with gemstones which were, at the time, rarer and more valuable than sapphires or rubies. Only kings, queens, and emperors could afford it.

That's why it's called royal blue.

So all that gold?

*That's the cheapest part of the art you see on this page*.

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⚡🧟‍♀️ MAD DOCTOR IMPOSSIBLE!! 🧟‍♀️⚡ @impossiblephd.bsky.social · 1d

That particular shade of blue could only be made in one way: by crushing lapis lazuli into a fine powder and dissolving it in a medium, usually oil. During the period of time that this manuscript was made, there was one--ONE--active lapis mine on the face of the Earth.

Just one.

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⚡🧟‍♀️ MAD DOCTOR IMPOSSIBLE!! 🧟‍♀️⚡ @impossiblephd.bsky.social · 1d

And now we turn to the illumination itself. The gold is the obviously valuable part, and the use of it to display the suras in negative space is astonishing and beautiful.

But y'all.

Y'all take rich, royal blue for granted.

Ever wonder why it's *royal* blue?

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