All these takes about how without the family no one would take care of children and the elderly reveal to me that you have no backup plan for when the family fails, as it near constantly does.

All forms of care between all categories of human and non-human should be valued, recognised and resourced equally, according to their needs or ongoing sustainability. This is what we call an ethics of promiscuous care.

rthko:

All these takes about how without the family no one would take care of children and the elderly reveal to me that you have no backup plan for when the family fails, as it near constantly does.

It’s so upsetting to see that failure in action because there are so many parents I know personally who, after going through a divorce or the death of their significant other and forced to raise their children alone, are DROWNING. They’re DESPERATE. Childcare is insanely expensive and so few people in their lives are willing or even able to help them out because of their own situations. And don’t get me started on the single parents of disabled children.

Community is absolutely necessary to prevent this, but so many parents don’t even think about what happens in the worst case scenario, or that they can manage on their own without that support, and then are blindsided when it gets bad.

And what’s extra sad is that a lot of parents don’t even know where to start to form a community if their own families and friends have abandoned them.

Thank you, rugged individualism 🙄

We base this ethics of promiscuous care on AIDS activist theory from the 1980s and 1990s, specifically the essay ‘How to Have Promiscuity in an Epidemic’, by the academic and ACT UP activist, Douglas Crimp.

This essay was a response to the idea, advanced not only in the media but also by gay leaders, that one origin of the AIDS epidemic lay in the sexual promiscuity of gay men. Crimp retorted that what the so-called promiscuity of post-Stonewall sexual cultures actually meant for the epidemic was that gay men ‘multiplied’ ‘experimental’ sexual practices, beyond the penetrative sex that was one of the more common routes of HIV transmission. He writes that some gay leaders ‘insist that our promiscuity will destroy us when in fact it is our promiscuity that will save us’. Here Crimp uses the concept not in the sense of ‘casual’ or ‘indifferent’, but in that of multiplying and experimenting with the ways gay men were intimate with and cared for each other. These experimental intimacies ultimately served as the basis for the safer sex initiatives, developed by groups like ACT UP, that went on to save countless lives.

In the same spirit, we must also care promiscuously. In advocating for promiscuous care, we do not mean caring casually or indifferently. It is neoliberal capitalist care that remains detached, both casual and indifferent, with disastrous consequences. For us, promiscuous care is an ethics that proliferates outwards to redefine caring relations from the most intimate to the most distant. It means caring more and in ways that remain experimental and extensive by current standards. We have relied upon ‘the market’ and ‘the family’ to provide too many of our caring needs for too long. We need to create a more capacious notion of care.

‘Promiscuous’ also means ‘indiscriminate’, and we argue that we must not discriminate when we care. Building on historic formations of ‘alternative’ caregiving practices, we must expand our caring imaginaries further still: anyone can potentially care for, about and with anyone. The caring state, in recognising this, would furnish both carer and cared for with the legal, social and cultural recognition and the resources they need. This, in turn, will enhance our abilities to cultivate an orientation towards the other – whether distant or proximate – that is caring. The question of resources is critical here. Looking at promiscuous care from another angle: if the neoliberal defunding and undermining of care has led to paranoid and chauvinist caring imaginaries – looking after ‘our own’ – adequate resources, time and labour would make people feel secure enough to care for, about and with strangers as much as kin.

Of course, promiscuous care does not mean that we care only fleetingly for strangers or they only care fleetingly for us. It does, however, recognise that care can be carried out by people with a wide range of kinship connections to us.

- The Care Collective, The Care Manifesto

Family abolition is not about throwing vulnerable people out on their own to fend for themselves— which is, by the way, something that many families already do. It is about creating new caring imaginaries where care is a collective endeavor, indiscriminate and well resourced. We already have systems like childcare and healthcare and assisted living and cleaning and cooking and delivery services because the family can’t do it all alone. It’s literally impossible. But as long as these systems are privatized and discriminatory, there will always be a massive burden on families and an even more massive and deadly burden on people whose families can’t or won’t care for them. And the more difficult it is for someone to get the care they need, the more easily exploited they are, both by capitalism and by abusive “caretakers.”

Abolishing the idea that care is solely the responsibility of the family means building a new system around a core idea of care as something that involves all of us. When people say “without the family, no one would take care of the children/elderly/disabled/poor/unhoused/otherwise vulnerable people,” what they really mean is “I can’t imagine caring for them.” Or maybe, “I can’t imagine being cared for.”

DASHBOARD UNFUCKER V1.0

as 90% of desktop users have probably found out, today @staff released an update that for some insane reason COMPLETELY remodels the dashboard to replicate twitter's. this is of course in the wake of numerous other thoroughly hated changes and a continued refusal to fix any of the site's actual problems, half of which stem directly from site management.

HOWEVER, thanks to the power of jQuery, i was able to throw together a userscript that remodels the dashboard back to its original look almost perfectly.

here is my dashboard right now, with the script active:

and here is the old dashboard in separate tab container that hasn't received the update:

it's hardly perfect; i had trouble making it force reload to the fixed layout when switching between other pages and the dashboard, and it currently only fixes just the dashboard. it's also completely untested on browsers other than firefox, and chances are it looks a bit screwy on ultrawide monitors. but for now at least, it's a good fix.

the unfucker is a tampermonkey userscript. all you have to do to use it is install the tampermonkey extension, hit "create new script", and replace the default code on the page with the script (link here) and save it.

oh my gd these two films came out on the same day? should tell everyone? should we throw a party? should we invite gender essensialism

should we invite insensitive jokes about some of the largest massacres in human history that effects people to this day

sure you have "neurospicy accomodations" (stim toys and slime) at your support group meeting but are masks required. is it wheelchair accessible? is the lighting harsh or flickering? is there a place to go if you're upset or overstimulated? is there a clear schedule? does anyone in the group speak sign language? could a nonverbal person participate? are there multiple options for activities? is there music? is it loud? is there food? how many options are there? are there common allergens in it? are they clearly labelled? are there flashing lights? can you attend virtually? are hallways and pathways clear? are there accessible bathrooms? do they have a sharps box? do they have space for someone to transfer from a wheelchair to a toilet? do they have space for a caregiver or support worker? are there enough places to sit down? is there enough space for everyone to be without crowding? can people opt-out of planned activities? et cetera...

The most horrifying aspect of parents saying “my kid could do that” about art is that they never ever ever mean “wow my kid is good enough to be in a museum” and they always always always mean “I want to disrespect you so much I’ll do it by implying that this thing is just as worthless as the things my child makes with their hands” and right in front of them too. Your kids can hear you u know, and the things they make with their hands are the least worthless and most precious aspects of human life I’ll kill u

Listen my three year old child handed me a picture of a “weird bug” they had drawn this morning, and the explanation about the intention for it was as deep a journey into the universe as I could ask for. I instantly wanted to send it to everybody, not even to show it off, but just to explain things a bit. Look at this way of looking at the world, before one is taught differently; before one is shaped forcibly. Look at the purity and clarity of intention (something that my favourite artists and makers strive for, and which is what I am most attracted to: clarity of intention. The ability to communicate from brain to brain across the gulf of time, death, language, background, common ground. Knowing where you’re going! Knowing what you want to achieve - and doing it! The form does not matter!)

(Also, horrible things with legs. I’ll always give them attention too.)

(This was also a horrible thing with legs.)

So much of what we search for is here, all along. So much of what we chase after is already in this bug. The child scribbles it, hands it to the baby, who obediently folds it up and puts it in their mouth; the child answers a few questions, then runs off to get sticky; you are left holding the wonder, going: somewhere in here is something we are missing, something we’ve lost track of, and I could spend quite a lot of time trying to pin it down (anthropologically, psychologically, poetically, in a very special episode of a children’s cartoon, in a degree, as an instagram account)

What the hell else is art for, if not to send you on a little journey. If an artist can do that with a scribble then you should give them your attention. You should show other people, explain it a bit. Keep it forever as evidence of something - maybe a building, a collection that makes sense. You could call it a life or even a museum.

Show us the bug!!! Or describe it at least. I want to see it so bad.

- I love it! What is it?

- this is a weird silly bug. It’s weird!

- I love the smile.

- Yes, he’s very silly.

- I love the legs. So many!

- Yes; I drewed them like that.

- What does he do?

- He’s a present for the baby. He is a tummy bug (EDITOR’S NOTE: gastrovirus) and he loves sick (Ed: vomit) HAHAHAHAHA.

- Oh wow.

- HE LOVES TO EAT THE SICK! HAHAHA

- Oh wow. Did … did you know we use the word “bug” for two things - we can use it to mean a little animals, like a woodlouse, that lives outside? But also, when we say tummy bug, we mean a germ - the little tiny things we can’t see - they’re different. Which one is he?

- Oh this is a ninvisible bug.

- A germ?

(Image: a furry bug with lots of legs, wide staring eyes, and a slightly deranged grin from eye to eye.)

- He’s the BUG that makes you sick. That’s why he has so many legs. (Ed: here I thought this was possibly influenced by the educational book they have called “see inside germs,” depicting various microorganisms with flagella and mycelium and so on.) when it’s time to be sick, he uses his legs to tickle the back of your throat to make you be sick. And then he! eats! the! sick! HAHAHA

- (Ed: at this point I helplessly let go of my attempt to teach germ theory in the face of such superior theology) oh … wow.

- He lives inside you all the time but doesn’t tickle you all the time because it isn’t always time to be sick. He’s ninvisible. He’s not an outside bug. He’s the tummy bug. that’s why him make you be sick to come up to your throat and eat the sick. See, the baby loves that bug.

- does the baby… like germs?

- he is NOT a GERM!!

LATER

- what made you choose to draw a tummy bug, to give to the baby?

- The crying was annoying to me.

- Um…. I mean, why did you draw the bug?

- I choose a bug because they’re my favourite to draw to give to the baby to help them calm down. because the crying is annoying to me.

- What makes you choose to draw a bug?

- The baby loves bugs.

- How do you know that?

- The baby always calms down and stops crying when I’m give them my bugs.

- Oh, I see.

- I’m also best at drawing bugs.

- How are you so good?

- I’m just know.

LATER

- I see that you have cut the paper?

- Yes! I’m snipped him out carefully with the white (Ed: child-safe baby’s nail cutting) scissors.

- are you happy with it?

- Yes, I’m really pleased that I m draw him all by myself. He’s all wiggly biggly. I drewed him to be wiggly and biggly.

END

Some things that interested me: the way that the knowledge you put into them is synthesized and recreated: the very Greek-philosophy-of-medicine idea of the Tummy Bug as large soft benign prawn that triggers vomiting by tickling you. We are all fascinated by AI right now, the way it spits our own things back at us; here is a juvenile human intelligence, which does the same thing, but less predictably. The way the artist is already self-proclaiming their awareness of the audience: using the baby’s nail scissors, which are Allowed Blades, and stating in advance that they did so carefully, therefore dodging the expected reflexive criticism of “please don’t use scissors without me!” Or the tiresome parental “WHERE DID YOU GET SCISSORS?” The gentle reproach that the baby, fussing mildly for five minutes while I prepared breakfast, was so ANNOYING that the poor toddler had to create an art piece to meet this unmet need.

But also: a piece of work with thoughtfulness and attention given to medium, execution, and topic. Did it do its job? Yes. Did it communicate? Yes. Did it provoke reactions? Multiple ones. Was there intentionality? Yes. Was an emotion captured? Surely. Was the mark-making technically skilled and the result admirable? Of course. What about mastery? Mastery of some topics is clearly shown here. There was a clear trajectory from the artist’s brain to the audience’s, with evidence showing that the bridge was good.

And do you know that it is good? Yes, it is good. How do you know? I’m just do.

Often you have to re-enter education to get this much to grips with art, so it’s just cool to me. What we are seeking is so often found.

being neutral about other peoples kinks is necessary by the way. when consenting adults are doing things between consenting adults, and you prioritize your discomfort over their autonomy and right to exist safely in a space without having their private interests excavated and recontextualized to make them out to be predators, that says way more about your willingness to place yourself in the position of moral authority than it does about them and you deputizing yourself on the basis of nothing but vibes and your personal traumas makes you very dangerous politically.

Old Kannada story collected by AK Ramanujan in A Flowering Tree

Of Power and Time, Mary Oliver— from Upstream

“Oh, you know, you realize that grief is perhaps the last and final translation of love. And I think, you know, this is the last act of loving someone. And you realize that it will never end. You get to do this, to translate this last act of love for the rest of your life. And so, you know, it's– really, her absence is felt every day.

“And ever since I lost her, I felt that my life has been lived in only two days, if that makes any sense. You know, there's the today, where she is not here, and then the vast and endless yesterday where she was, even though it's been three years since. How many months and days? But I only see it in — with one demarcation. Two days — today without my mother, and yesterday, when she was alive. That's all I see. That's how I see my life now.”

-Ocean Vuong, NPR