I just stumbled upon this awesome post showing a way to keep pinback buttons from falling off of your backpack/purse/etc. using safety pins.
However, it reminded me of another method that I’ve used since high school, and continue to use to this day: Rubber earring backs.
You know…these things:
I had originally bought a package of them to keep my nose stud from falling out while I slept (it was the “screw” type), but then after losing a button off of my high school backpack, I stumbled upon an even better use for them.
If you place them on the pinback of the button, just ahead of where it closes, the pins can’t slip off.
It doesn’t matter what size or shape the button is. Also, I happened to find one that wasn’t closed when I went to take pictures:
The earring back basically acts as a rubber stopper. They’re made specifically to NOT slide off in order to keep earrings in place, so they work just as well keeping buttons in place, even if the buttons aren’t closed.
Considering the backpack that I had in high school…
…I can tell you with complete certainty that rubber earring backs are, bar none, THE best method of making sure you never lose another button ever again. Also, they’re cheaper than safety pins (which can also pop open, thus allowing the button to slide off) and you won’t have to poke extra holes in whatever you’re putting buttons on.
Or hell, combine the rubber earring backs WITH the safety pins! Your buttons will be COMPLETELY UNLOSE-ABLE!
“Authors can’t use it in fantasy fiction, eh? We’ll see about that…”
–Terry Pratchett, probably
Try to implement anything but a conservative’s sixth grade education level of medieval or Victorian times and you will butt into this. all. the. time.
There was a literaly fad in the 1890′s for nipple rings for all genders(and NO, it was NOT under the mistaken belief that it would help breastfeeding–there’s LOTS of doctors’ writing at the time telling people to STOP and that they thought it would ruin the breast’s ability to breastfeed well, etc). It was straight up because the Victorians were freaks, okay Imagine trying to make a Victorian character with nipple rings. IMAGINE THE ACCUSATIONS OF GROSS HISTORICAL INACCURACY
people just really, REALLY have entrenched ideas of what people in the past were like
tell them the vikings were clean, had a complex democratic legal system, respected women, had freeform rap battles, and had child support payments? theyd call you a liar
tell them that chopsticks became popular in china during the bronze age because street food vendors were all the rage and they wanted to have disposable eating utensils? theyll say youre making that up
tell them native americans had a trade network stretching from canada to peru and built sacred mounds bigger then the pyramids of giza? you are some SJW twisting facts
ancient egypt had circular saws, debt cards, and eye surgery? are you high?
our misconception of medieval peasants being illiterate and living in poverty in one room mud huts being their own creation as part of a century long tax aversion scam? you stole that from the game of thrones reject bin
iron age india had stone telescopes, air conditioning, and the number 0 along with all ‘arabic’ numbers including algebra and calculus? i understand some of those words.
romans had accurate maps detailing vacation travel times along with a star rating for hotels along the way, fast food restaurants, swiss army knives, black soldiers in brittany, traded with china, and that soldiers wrote thank-you notes when their parents sent them underwear in the mail? but they thought the earth was flat!
ancient bronze age mesopotamia had pedantic complaints sent to merchants about crappy goods, comedic performances, and transgender/nobinary representation? what are you smoking?
ancient air conditioning involved creating dwellings w architecture that encouraged air flow by creating negative pressure areas with openings, sorta like how in some houses certain rooms’ doors will get pushed shut by air moving around bc of the pressure difference, especially if a window is open. they identified and exacerbated that til they could create a pleasant little breeze usually moving from the floor upward. it’s cool as shit
A Pennsylvania museum has solved the mystery of a Renaissance portrait in an investigation that spans hundreds of years, layers of paint and the murdered daughter of an Italian duke.
Among the works featured in the Carnegie Museum’s exhibit Faked, Forgotten, Found is a portrait of Isabella de’Medici, the spirited favorite daughter of Cosimo de’Medici, the first Grand Duke of Florence, whose face hadn’t seen the light of day in almost 200 years.
Isabella Medici’s strong nose, steely stare and high forehead plucked of hair, as was the fashion in 1570, was hidden beneath layers of paint applied by a Victorian artist to render the work more saleable to a 19th century buyer.
The result was a pretty, bland face with rosy cheeks and gently smiling lips that Louise Lippincott, curator of fine arts at the museum, thought was a possible fake.
Before deciding to deaccession the work, Lippincott brought the painting, which was purportedly of Eleanor of Toledo, a famed beauty and the mother of Isabella de’Medici, to the Pittsburgh museum’s conservator Ellen Baxter to confirm her suspicions.
Baxter was immediately intrigued. The woman’s clothing was spot-on, with its high lace collar and richly patterned bodice, but her face was all wrong, ‘like a Victorian cookie tin box lid,’ Baxter told Carnegie Magazine.
After finding the stamp of Francis Needham on the back of the work, Baxter did some research and found that Needham worked in National Portrait Gallery in London in the mid-1800s transferring paintings from wood panels to canvas mounts.
Paintings on canvas usually have large cracks, but the ones on the Eleanor of Toledo portrait were much smaller than would be expected.
Baxter devised a theory that the work had been transferred from a wood panel onto canvas and then repainted so that the woman’s face was more pleasing to the Victorian art-buyer, some 300 years after it had been painted.
Christ men have been Photoshopping women to make us more “pleasing” since for-fucking-ever.
Also, Isabella de’Medici is nice looking, but also has that look in her eye of all Medicis: “I haven’t yet decided whether I’m going to kick your ass, buy you and everything you own, or have sex with you. Perhaps all three.”
The Chaos Bitches 