The Think Tank

"But you'll have more money!" does not completely put this to rest for me. Neither does "Buy care insurance!" Even if I can afford direct personal care, who is going to advocate for me to get it? Who is going to navigate bureaucracy for me when I'm 80?

"If you do have kids, there's no GUARANTEE that they'll take care of you when your old!" That's true, but doesn't solve my problem.

Collectively, childfree and childless people are a huge and growing cohort, and yes, the way things are going, we're looking at trouble down the track. But as with many other messages society doesn't want to hear, disabled people have been making this point for years, because the problems most people only imagine happening to them at an advanced age are with us already.

I say that as a single, childless, middle-aged and multiply disabled person with no siblings, and few relatives I'm either personally or geographically close to - indeed, increasingly few relatives, period. People think, "my partner and I will look after each other," but as someone whose long-term relationship has ended in middle age because of abuse, I have to break the news that you cannot rely on that. I wasn't supposed to die alone (given my health issues, I assumed I'd likely predecease my ex by a significant margin), yet I have to take the possibility seriously when planning for my future.

This is a conversation that is gaining traction lately, not least because plenty of people in their 30s are already doing elder-care (as I was just beginning to at the close of my 30s), since a good many millennials (and in the 40-something cohort, not a few Xennials and younger Gen Xers) have older parents. As a kid I felt unusual among my peers; now I don't. And I'm watching much of that care, as expected, fall to women and AFAB people who are themselves disabled, and who are either single or not living with their partners.

We're a generation straining not between the needs of parents and children, but between parents and our own disabilities. Often, there just is not enough time and energy to accommodate even one of those properly, and often, we haven't been able to work enough, or lucratively enough, to build up financial security for ourselves.

I am luckier than some of my friends in that respect, but I'm still worried by questions like, "If I accept financial support from a parent, am I diminishing a reserve they will need to buy in care when it gets to the point that I can't care for them? And when my needs equal theirs, but I'm on my own, who's going to help me with all the stuff I help my parent with now?"

It's one of the many reasons that supporting a disabled elderly parent (or, as often happens, two of them) in your 30s/40s and beyond for a single disabled person can be unsettling. You're not just constantly worried about this person you love, about if they have everything they need, about how much you can be there for them, and about losing them one day; you're seeing a preview of your own later years, but whether you chose to be childless or not, there is no child in the picture supporting you.

As a disabled person, you've often tangled with the benefits system and the health and social care system and its cruelties multiple times over: on your own behalf, when supporting newly disabled friends, and now for your parent, who (hopefully, but sometimes not at all) once supported you through that process.

And yes, all of this is going through the minds of a lot of your disabled friends who don't have partners or children, but do have ageing parents.

(And “excuse me” or “pardon me” doesn’t cut it. you still have to open with bonjour)

[and I can’t speak for New England but coming from Chicago and then moving Out West where the culture is VERY influenced by the South and DETERMINED to think of themselves as small town folk… I HATE when I have to make small talk before ordering food??? Like, if it’s a coffee shop that’s pretty much empty I’ll chit chat for a few seconds, but I’m still not going to make inane conversation about the weather unless the weather is extreme.

This guy I knew in college worked with the campus d/Deaf/HoH group and told a story about the dinner they had to welcome everyone in. They were trying to tell this little old lady what one of the dishes was, something casserole I forget what kind, and she was getting really flustered. Finally they figured out they were speaking to her in ASL and she was from South Africa. The ASL sign for whatever it was (spinach maybe?) in South African Sign means sex. They were offering this little old lady a sex casserole.

There’s an Italian toast ‘chin chin’, mimicking the sound of the glasses clinking together. It becomes hilarious when Japanese folks are around since in Japanese chin means penis.

As for the South, I will bet you anything that how we have conversations at the register stemmed from the homestead days when a farmer would come in to town maybe once a month and this would be the only time they’d get to talk to someone they didn’t live with. I like talking with customers! If I can get them to smile then it’s a victory and I have a better day for it. It only becomes emotional labor if they’re an outright ass or are sexually harassing me. But in the big crammed city of New York it makes sense to take the get your shit and get out approach, people have a subway to catch. Out here I had to drive myself anyway since it’s fifteen minutes to the edge of town from where I live, so what does it matter if I spend an extra minute at the register?

It’s important to be aware of the differences and ultimately there’s a degree of ‘when in Rome’ that has to happen. Someone who moves from Greece to the US is going to be startled by the amount of thumbs up but ultimately they’re going to have to adjust. Someone from the US is probably going to be shocked that telling someone they did a good job was taken as an insult and they similarly are going to have to adjust. Mom’s a damn Yankee transplant and said it was weird moving to the South and having cashiers younger than her daughter call her dear, but that’s just what we do. Sweetheart, darling, honey, sugar, they don’t have overtly romantic/sexual connotations here. As long as there’s not a leer attached to it if a guy calls me ‘sugar’ when I’m at work it doesn’t parse as a flirt because it’s not one, it parses the same as if he called me ‘miss’. But when a busload of Californians came through it took me three people to realize that ‘baby’ was not flirting, it was just California. NOTHING is universal.

This is the biggest place I’ve ever worked so it took some getting used to, like any skill, but even being socially awkward it’s easy to tell what scripts to follow. Test the waters, if they don’t respond then okay this is a move them through kind of person, be quick and efficient and to the point, feel good when they smile at ‘last question I promise, do you want your receipt’. If they do then pull out the five small talk scripts, get a smile, feel good when they laugh at the cat small talk script.

It’s also important to note that claiming your culture’s way of doing polite right is a fantastic way to fall into some really bigoted nonsense. In Puerto Rico the personal bubble is much smaller than in the US proper, like RIGHT at your elbow close. I had a cashier who was super uncomfortable because our steward was getting in her personal space constantly and he was pissed off because he was trying to HELP her with moving orders why is she mad at him? Once I sat them down and explained the difference they both had this aw shit moment because from their own standpoints they were being polite and from the others’ standpoints they were being rude. After that they were fine, when he got a little too close she’d say ‘whoa man my bubble’ and he’d laugh and shake is head and step back.

And this is actually true; there are scientific articles comparing the cultural contexts for communication! It’s really neat.

So in (most parts of) America, we equate indirectness with politeness. “Excuse me, would it be possible for you to perhaps pass me that salt, if you don’t mind?” The more roundabout you are, the more we consider that a signal of social courtesy.

In Poland, not only is indirectness viewed as rudely wasting the listener’s time, but directness is viewed as communicating intimacy and friendliness. “Give me the salt.”

Saying “hi” can actually be seen as somewhat rude unless it is a response to another person’s greeting. It’s better to say “Good morning/afternoon/evening” or “hello” since it is less brusque. The “hi” is more to get someone’s attention.

In rural midwest, people try to be as unobtrusive (and often apologetic) as possible and are especially attentive to guests. Implying you are not being paid attention to can be the rude.

This includes not making people feel they have to provide conversation. People from the midwest in general, but especially rural areas, tend to be chatterers and over-share.

And also you know. It’s funny to watch people not from the midwest try to imitate midwesteners. Because a lot of it is about not saying anything at all while still speaking a lot. There’s nothing more cutting than a midwestener who just says “bye” to a guest who is leaving.

People used to comment on fanfiction.

People used to comment on fanart.

People used to comment on OCs.

I hate "content" culture.

I hate "consuming content" and scrolling immediately to the next thing.

People used to be excited about the art that other people created.

People used to want to share that excitement with creators.

I spent countless hours reading and rereading tags full of love people left under my art. All the people i could gift a laugh to or even inspire with something I made mean more to me then you could ever know.

It's what makes me proud of my art!

Meanwhile in Scotland…

India

Sudan

China (traditional)

Nigeria

Indonesia

Mongolia

Ghana

Ethiopia

Poland

Romania

Russia (1)

Russia (2)

Norway

japan 

japan the hard core traditional wedding costume

Turkey

Hungary

Navajo

maori (new zealand)

Fiji

Tonga

India

India-Pakistan

South Africa

Thailand

Japan

Georgia

…

[by Geoff Manaugh]

a drywall knife

In one of the most interesting moments in his memoir, [jewelry thief Bill Mason] sees that architecture can be made to do what he wants it to do; it’s like watching a character in Star Wars learn to use the Force.

In a lengthy scene at a hotel in Cleveland that Mason would ultimately hit more than once in his career, he explains that his intended prize was locked inside a room whose door was too closely guarded for him to slip through. Then he realizes the obvious: he has been thinking the way the hotel wanted him to think—the way the architects had hoped he would behave—looking for doors and hallways when he could  simply carve a new route where he wanted it. The ensuing realization delights him. “Elated at the idea that I could cut my own door right where I needed one,” he writes, Mason simply breaks into the hotel suite adjacent to the main office. There, he flings open the closet, pushes aside the hangers, and cuts his way from one room into the other using a drywall knife. In no time at all, he has cut his “own door” through to the manager’s office, where he takes whatever he wants—departing right back through the very “door” he himself made. It is architectural surgery, pure and simple.

Later, Mason actually mocks the idea that a person would remain reliant on doors, making fun of anyone who thinks burglars, in particular, would respect the limitations of architecture. “Surely if someone were to rob the place,” he writes in all italics, barbed with sarcasm, “they’d come in as respectable people would, through the door provided for the purpose. Maybe that explains why people will have four heavy-duty locks on a solid oak door that’s right next to a glass window.” People seem to think they should lock-pick or kick their way through solid doors rather than just take a ten-dollar drywall knife and carve whole new hallways into the world. Those people are mere slaves to  architecture, spatial captives in a world someone else has designed for them.

Something about this is almost unsettlingly brilliant, as if it is nonburglars who have been misusing the built environment this whole time; as if it is nonburglars who have been unwilling to question the world’s most basic spatial assumptions, too scared to think past the tyranny of architecture’s long-held behavioral expectations.

To use architect Rem Koolhaas’s phrase, we have been voluntary prisoners of architecture all along, willingly coerced and browbeaten by its code of spatial conduct, accepting walls as walls and going only where the corridors lead us. Because doors are often the sturdiest and most fortified parts of the wall in front of you, they are a distraction and a trap. By comparison, the wall itself is often more like tissue paper, just drywall and some two-by-fours, without a lock or a chain in sight. Like clouds, apartment walls are mostly air; seen through a burglar’s eyes, they aren’t even there. Cut a hole through one and you’re in the next room in seconds.

Therefore, BEHOLD THE SEED CREATIONS!

Goldblum..... in seeds!

Our Flag Means Death!!

Little three dimensional Grogu!

GOOTS

Okay, those were just my favorites this year. These are the winners:

THE DETAIL. In person it literally looked like a pixelated screen. So cool!

I understand that people are trying to create safe spaces, but as the number of comments that I get on my fics dwindles with each passing year, knowing these spaces exist where my fics are being discussed, places that I am excluded from, makes me want to write fic LESS

I mean I guess who cares, right, because if I stop writing, there's 10,000 other people that will continue...but if you participate in a fic "book club" server and you say nice things there about a fic you loved, maybe copy and paste that into a comment on AO3?