#universal basic services

[probablyasocialecologist]

As in a capitalist system, improved efficiency and productivity lead to a rebound in resource use. This rebound comes from the resource gains from productivity being invested into the economy to provide more growth, driving a growth-focused economy. With a society designed around pursuing growth, no country currently uses sustainable levels of energy and resource to meet human needs and well-being sufficiently.  Degrowth seeks to change society’s dependence on economic growth, especially downscaling destructive and excessive productions such as fossil fuels and fast fashion in wealthy nations to reduce energy and resource use. This downscaling will ensure a quicker decarbonisation timeline, stopping an ecological breakdown whilst improving social outcomes. A review of evidence on global consumption and ecological impacts shows that increasing consumption is a key driver of global environmental impact. Even a low-carbon economy with renewable energy, electrification and negative emissions technologies will all require resources such as concrete, metals, and land. Therefore, degrowth advocates argue that it is not enough to just “green” the economy. Wealthy countries must also address affluence and reduce its consumption and overall resource use. Overconsumption also highlights the issue of global inequality, as income is linked to consumption and consumption is the key driver of environmental impacts, suggesting that overconsumption also causes environmental inequality. With growth at the root of the problem, addressing overconsumption with degrowth could reduce energy, and resource use, environmental impacts, and global inequality.

#degrowth #growth #Universal Basic Services

[phroexx]

#abolish landlords #landlords #universal Basic Services #universal housing #landlords are parasites

[krakenartificer]

The choice for or against [economic growth as a primary value] decides whether

unemployment, that is, the effective liberty to work free from wages and/or salary,

shall be viewed as sad and a curse, or as useful and a right.

— Ivan Illich [x] (emphasis mine)

Hot damn, Mr. Illich out here 40 years ago dropping takes from 3024

#Ubi #universal basic income #universal basic services #quote #ivan illich #I’ve only read like 3 pages but I’m already a huge fan #still waiting to find out how this relates to linguistics tho

[seumascowan]

A Socialist Perspective on the Pursuit of Happiness | Aaron Bastani | TED

Re. four universal basic services: healthcare, housing, education, and transport. All boats rise with the tide, mofos. 

#youtube #ted talk #aaron bastani #socialism #demsoc #ubs #universal basic services #ted

[atissi]

if you are 1) currently in a university where your student healthcare covers hormone therapy, and 2) in a good financial, emotional, and social position to start hormone therapy, i would recommend pursuing it. because in my experience, it's a huge pain in the ass to get an endocrinologist once you're on your own

#unless you live near a planned parenthood or another equivalent to that #but in general you might as well take advantage of the mandatory student health insurance while you have it #it's also cheaper than you might expect. my vials cost $40 CAD for 4 months and then the injection materials are like a couple dollars each #for me i got a therapist with the university and asked them to recommend me to one of the uni's doctors #so i got to skip some of the waitlisting process yay #and then even after getting access to hormones i went to the clinic maybe 5 or 6 times because i needed a nurse to help me with injections #all of which was 'free' because it was with the university #now that i'm graduated though i need to find a new endocrinologist and it turns out the process is WAY more complicated on your own 🤡 #of course your mileage may vary depending on how based your school is but it's definitely worth checking imo 🤷 #beepbeep.txt #wanted to say this because i basically didn't use the uni health services until my last year and i was like 'wow #'i'm actually getting so much shit for free right now' #like i was seeing a therapist and a dietician and the endocrinologist and a nurse simultaneously at one point #and i might've missed out on all that if i didn't have someone tell me how easy it was to get help if you ask the right questions #so there's my word of wisdom for anyone who might benefit from it....... #also going to post tips about injections later because i think that would also help people out 👍

[im-smart-i-swear]

Ok so Buddy works in space McDonalds right? Does that mean others have a job somewhere as well?

ill admit that in the comic i used space mcdonalds mostly for comedic effect........ i mean they propably worked at a space fast food restaurant at some point, but it definetely wasnt their only job!

okay so after eeneks unexpected family reunion the clones, eenek and zora all decide to stay on znahors ship for the time being(it gets a little cramped but its bearable), and they just kinda start going from place to place after that?? before picking them all up znahor already was doing essentialy that, anyway- he traveled from planet to planet, occasionally helping the locals and then fucking off elsewhere. so thats what they do! they jump from one star system to the next, never staying anywhere for long, trying to not bring any unwanted attention to themselves, and they get by mostly by doing random odd jobs(some more legal than others..) and stuff.

they all(ecept for taka bc hes like 10) get their fair share of shitty jobs, but they dont really have a choice, do they? the war is over, sure, but obviously such a long conflict leaves an impact on the world. the chaos is on one hand a blessing, bc an odd bunch like three galrans and a gaggle of humans dont bring much attention in a sea of refugees, but it also means that sometimes things get messy, and making ends meet is difficult.

out of the clones, buddy has the most experience and knowledge about how alien worlds function, so they often end up with jobs that require communication and frequent interaction with other people- basically what im trying to say is that they work customer service. a lot. they survive it by remembering how infiuriating diplomacy was and telling themselves that hey! at least them fucking something up wont put the fate of the universe into jeopardy this time!! stickbug often works alongside them, but he hates interacting with customers even more that buddy does and tries to avoid this kind of job as much as he can(my man spent too much time trying to please everyone in his childhood and is OVER IT). i mean all of them get a customer service job from time to time but bud is the one whos least terrible at it

im not sure if the others have any preferred jobs tbh, but the idea of soup trying competetive fighting at some point would be interesting to explore i think........

#ask #my funky guys #thanks for asking<33 #also man poor taka. he spent like half of his life without interacting with kids his age........ #hes the most socially awkward ten year old in the universe. meets a kid his age for the first time and has no idea how to act:( #and the worst part is that even when he manages to form a connection w someone #his family leaves the area pretty soon after that and in most cases he loses contact with that person after a while #so yeah.. hes not doing great #i really dont talk about this kid enough........ i love him hes my special little guy #(i say as i make his life even more difficult for some reason) #anyway #for buddy working in cusomer service or doing not-so-legal odd jobs is STILL better than their voltron days #whenever they look back at that period of their life they cant help but physically recoil #helping some random guy in the asscrack of the universe smuggle some shit for a bit of cash #is in their mind 10 times better than their time as the black paladin #basically their way of coping with their situation is to just. slowly convince themself that being w voltron was The Worst Thing Ever #i mean yeah it wasnt GREAT #but they willfuly ignore every good thing that also happened back then to make themself feel better lol #bc there are moments where living on a relatively small space ship with like 8 other people is stressful and kinda sucks sometimes #even if you deeply love and care about 6 of them #the transition from living on a deserted planet in complete isolation from ppl outside of your weird little maybe-family #to being constantly tossed around the whole universe #was a jarring and difficult transiton for everyone #(eeneks weird family drama didnt help) #the first few months were hard for everyone #it got better over time tho #life is unpredictable and people are unpredictable and shit is gonna get messy #but despite it all love still presists.

[bigskydreaming]

I’m ngl, I’m mildly interested in the Lazarus Planet stuff coming up, mostly because I miss being invested in DC comics and also I’ve been very invested in Marvel comics for awhile, and when nature is out of balance to that degree, bad things happen.

Like, I’m not expecting it to be GOOD, per se, but it does look like radical changes across the board (even if temporary), and that’s the kind of shake-up that can rattle loose various ideas or set-ups that intrigue me and get the inspiration engines up and running.

Course, first there’s this whole Batman vs Robin set-up to put everything in place, and I’m aggressively trying to ignore all of that and just wade into the eventual Lazarus Planet stuff armed with wiki summaries, because oh look, all the former Robins have been brainwashed into being evil and trying to kill Bruce because brainwashed Batkids is something new and different and oh well, at least they’re just making this about former Robins and not Bruce’s kids so its not ACTUALLY like Cass and Duke have just been left on the sidelines again right?

Hey, completely unrelated, but who wants to join in on a “Its Been This Many Days Since We Last Fucked With Dick Grayson’s Brain” scoreboard as like a Christmas gift for the DC offices?

Anyway, my only real takeaway on this is not only are Dick, Jason, Tim, Steph and Damian all united in being evil and targeting Bruce, they’ve also all been armed with heavy-duty mystical weapons like the Sword of Sin and Cloak of Cagliostro and lol its like wait at what point do you have to take a look at how you hype up the Batkids’ own skills and danger-levels and be like, umm, Bruce really should NOT be coming out of this event alive but okay.

#im just saying they've been hyping up Dick as Bruce's ultimate contingency plan for HIMSELF and showcasing how effective Jason was at #bamboozling Bruce when he first returned as the Red Hood years ago and Tim's been characterized as My Contingency Plans Have Contingency #Plans for decades now and like basically all these kids have their own stories meant to cement them as ridiculously hyper-competent and #skilled across the board so when you keep being like but put them all together and they'll still never actually be on Bruce's level #just...near enough to be a threat to him just not an insurmountable one.... #its like....you do get that it makes all your hype of them in every other comic just read as lip service you know? #if you forever keep their dad as the ceiling their own competency and skill/threat level is capped at..... #guess what? you're actually sacrificing the opportunities for continued growth for like six different characters all for the sake of one #character who doesn't even actually NEED to be upheld as eternally unbeatable and the ultimate capstone of all skill ingenuity and #competency in the DC universe....because being eternally upheld at that tier of Peak Untouchability is also kinda the very thing #that MAKES him so damn unrelatable to a lot of readers and what frustrates them about his role in many stories #not to mention his relative dynamic with most other characters around him - friends family and teammates alike #BUT I DIGRESS

[prettyboysdontlookatexplosions]

just remembered the college i dropped out of (1) did not allow undergrads to take incompletes including if the reason you were taking an incomplete was going on medical leave for professionally diagnosed mental illness (2) had a max extension policy on final papers including for people who needed extension because they were going on medical leave for professionally diagnosed mental illness of something like three fucking weeks? and (3) had the policy that if you were unable to sit for the exam of a class such as if for example you were several states away because your mom had come to take you home when you went on medical leave for professionally diagnosed mental illness, you had to come back and take the final six months later

#or just get an F i guess #which honestly i should have done for the one class i had a final in where this applied #since i got an F anyway #because i had not spent my first 6 months of medical leave for professionally diagnosed mental illness reviewing introductory statistics #anyway. this policy came back to me out of the ether all of a sudden and i am really struck anew by like. Literally Why #like the needless callousness of it is like #literally you are looking at a 19 year old who has been deemed Medically Too Sad To Go To Class #and you're saying #okay you don't have to go to class anymore. but three weeks should be enough time to pull it together for a term paper right? #also have fun taking the fucking greyhound for 5 hours one way in december #because you are spending your medical leave for professionally diagnosed mental illness time at home. in a different fucking state. #the handbook also said that if you got sick during an exam #you would go to university health services and basically wait in solitary confinement #and finish the exam as soon as you were better #starting from however much time you had left when you left the exam

[tomas-mas-menzo]

You know we talk about how the speed of communication has been used to increase the amount of time employers and institutions can demand from their employees, but do you notice that the reverse is never true? More and more automated help services are hiding or outright removing the ability to call someone and get help and instead force you to email about it, which despite being electronic and sending much faster than physical mail... Gets responded at about the same rate.

Essentially when they who hold the power want you, they can get a hold of you at any moment and you're usually just expected to comply with the intrusion on your time. But when you need critical assistance or just need to outright demand what you're owed, they're suddenly unavailable and you need to calmly write your grievances in an email that they will respond to in 7 to 10 business days. Unless of course it got lost amongst all the spam they receive everyday and surely you understand.

#shut up zordon #I'm just angry right now because I tried to order my transcript #the order was denied because I apparently chose the wrong option #BUT NONE OF THE OPTIONS AVAILABLE WAS THE EXACT THING I NEEDED #AND EVEN THOUGH THE ORDER WAS CANCELLED I WAD STILL CHARGED #i followed their stupid little instructions and called my schools registrar #which by the way they were apparently too busy that I had to be put on hold #its summer session right now HOW is the registrar's office receiving a massive influx of calls #anyways they told me to just wait a week to be refunded before transferring me to someone who could help more #they transferred me to a non existent number #and then I checked when exactly the order had been cancelled and #it's been more than a week already #its almost 2 weeks #and the website I ordered from doesn't have a staff support number listed anywhere #so I had to just do a basic service request #I got the email telling me the report had been filed and to check the faq about refunds #all the info was talking about whether you're entitled to a refund or not and what happens to the institution if you get one #BISH WHO IS CONCERNED ABOUT THE UNIVERSITY GETTING ITS CUT IN THE CASE OF A REFUND #BOOHOO THE INSTITUTION THAT CHARGED ME THOUSANDS FOR A PIECE OF PAPER WON'T GET $20 #idgaf give me my money back and give it to me now #I'm not even in financial straits ATM and can afford to not have my money back right away #can you imagine how screwed I would be if I needed the money right now #screw corporations screw institutions screw capitalism

[roseplendunce]

Romanic Relationship Headcanon Questions

29. Does your muse enjoy giving/receiving grand gestures of love?

It would depend on the gesture. If he’s the one giving, then Black would probably be more likely to be more ‘quiet’ with his approach (AKA an act of service or thoughtful gift as opposed to doing something loud or spontaneous like throwing a surprise party for his hypothetical partner, holding a boombox outside of his partner’s window/room and trying to serenade them or an impromptu road trip, etc.)

In terms of receiving, I think he would probably appreciate a more ‘heartfelt’/meaningful gift, “word(s) of affirmation” or “act of service” from his theoretical partner than some over-the-top, grand gesture of love.

21. Does your muse fall for someone quickly, or does it take a bit to win their heart?

It takes a while in order for someone to win his heart. There are ways to theoretically speed up this process, but they require actually sitting down and getting to know the guy on a deeper level than what’s known about him on the surface.

9. How physically affectionate is your muse with their partner?

Black tends to be pretty “quiet” with how he shows affection with his hypothetical partner, so if you’re going into the relationship expecting him to smother you with hugs and kisses, for example, then you’re probably going to be disappointed. But if silently enjoying each other’s company without feeling the need to fill the silence with meaningless chatter/other such noise or physically be near each other all the time, soft and tender embraces and/or thoughtful gifts/acts of service are more up your alley, then you’ll probably find the relationship to be rather enjoyable.

#Monochromatic Enigmas (Anonymous) #✨🌹✨ Headcanon ✨🌹✨ #Basically: If the thought of a mentally disturbed Kai wanting to soft reset the universe/certain Races unsettles you- #-then you're likely to run into some trouble during your relationship with Black #Same thing if you're looking for a 'loud' relationship with Black - It isn't going to work #Black's 'giving' Love Language is Quality Time- #-followed by Acts of Service- Gift Giving and then Physical Affection

[probablyasocialecologist]

Guaranteed public services and employment would also take the wind out of the sails of right-wing politics. Right-wing narratives play on people’s fears of economic insecurity—and the pervasive sense of competition for scarce jobs and resources that people experience under capitalism—to whip up hate toward immigrants and other minoritized groups in order to obtain support for reactionary political agendas. (This is a core component of Donald Trump’s politics, to name the most obvious example.) Universal public services and a job guarantee would not only help abolish people’s economic fears, it would also provide a mechanism for rapidly integrating all people—including immigrants—as active and equal participants in building a better society. Here too, this approach has strong benefits over basic income. One can imagine how the right would try to cast any proposed UBI as a “handout,” and accuse recipients of being a “drain” on society (a claim that basic income proponents have soundly rejected). But with a job guarantee—where people’s contributions to the betterment of the collective are clear for all to see—such claims would be impossible to sustain. Attempts to demonize immigrants and divide the working classes would fall flat, and new possibilities for working-class politics would emerge.

#universal basic income #universal basic services #jason hickel

[phroexx]

#twitter #universal basic services #universal housing #boomers #they understand nothing

[aurianneor]

Housing

Why is housing so expensive, whether to buy or rent? Why are people forced to pay when "the right to housing is a human right." With limited financial means, it's hard to find affordable, good-quality housing. (https://www.humanrights.ch/fr/nouvelles/droit-humain-logement)

In the cities, prices have skyrocketed. They have become inaccessible to part of the population. And the countryside is emptying out because there are no public services or means of subsistence (no jobs). (Map of average prices per m² per municipality for house and apartment sales in 2020: https://www.data.gouv.fr/fr/reuses/carte-des-prix-moyens-au-m2-par-commune-des-ventes-de-maisons-et-dappartements-en-2020/) Yet property owners and sellers don't produce wealth. They collect it from others. Employers have to raise wages to keep up with housing costs. In order to pay, employees have to cut back on other expenses , even though they are the ones producing the wealth. The number of meals served at the "restos du coeur" is exploding, as are requests for social housing.

The state's response is to pay ever more to build housing, and governments all over the world are defiscalising housing production to implore homeowners to build more. These owners are the ones who pay the lowest taxes. Real estate is the goose that lays the golden egg for property owners, and a financial drain on the rest of us, who pay twice. What's more, as people are forced to live further and further away from their place of work, this creates fatigue and pollution, as well as additional costs due to fuel prices. And in exchange, people are living in housing that is in poor condition, too small and built of concrete with no soundproofing. These buildings are rapidly falling into disrepair and they pollute. They're not built for the well-being of living, but to maximize profits.

In the same way as in the food sector, we need to stop subsidizing local residents so that they can then pay the subsidies directly to the owners. That's like giving public money to landlords! We need to control prices to house people. In the 70s, in the West, people paid off their homes in 10 years. We also need to restore efficient public services throughout the country: roads, hospitals, police, swimming pools, schools and so on. Last but not least, there must be farmers in the countryside. Before the Second World War, 40% of the population worked on farms. We need to stop using machines and chemicals to compensate for labor that could be used in the fields. We need fair purchase prices for farmers using organic permaculture. In all industrialized countries, farmers employ illegal immigrants under very poor conditions in order to cope.

We need a universal basic income. Today, without work there is no sustenance and no dignity. We have regulations that create "bullshit jobs", as David Graeber puts it (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit_Jobs). People are forced to live in the city. Instead, we need people in the countryside to create healthy food, which is also a human right (https://www.humanrights.ch/fr/pfi/fondamentaux/en-bref/couverture-minimum-vital/droit-a-lalimentation/). In wartime, when the men were soldiers, the country ran on the labor of women and the elderly. With robotization, there's even less need for manpower. (In Praise of Idleness - Bertrand Russell: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_Praise_of_Idleness_and_Other_Essays). We need to redistribute wealth instead of concentrating it in the hands of the richest.

Le combat d’une lanceuse d’alerte contre les dérives de la défiscalisation locative - Le Monde: https://www.lemonde.fr/police-justice/article/2019/02/12/le-combat-d-une-lanceuse-d-alerte-contre-les-derives-de-la-defiscalisation-locative_5422456_1653578.html

Crise du logement - Le Devoir: https://www.ledevoir.com/crise-du-logement

POINT DE VUE. « L’avenir des villes dépend de plus en plus de l’avenir des campagnes »- Ouest France: https://www.ouest-france.fr/reflexion/point-de-vue/point-de-vue-lavenir-des-villes-depend-de-plus-en-plus-de-lavenir-des-campagnes-5f7cff50-7d93-11ee-9e40-5131acac1bc0

--------------------------------------------------------------------

4-day workweek: https://www.aurianneor.org/4-day-workweek-2/

Le goût et la santé: https://www.aurianneor.org/le-gout-et-la-sante-savoir-lire-les-etiquettes/

“It doesn’t make sense to hire smart people and then tell them what to do; we hire smart people so they can tell us what to do”: https://www.aurianneor.org/it-doesnt-make-sense-to-hire-smart-people-and/

“I once calculated that I did about one thousand hours of work in the three years I was at Oxford-an average of an hour a day. I am not proud of this lack of work. I’m just describing my attitude at the time, shared by most of my fellow students”: https://www.aurianneor.org/i-once-calculated-that-i-did-about-one-thousand/

Basic Income is possible: https://www.aurianneor.org/basic-income-is-possible-the-instrument-of/

I moved out: https://www.aurianneor.org/i-moved-out/

Stop the all-concrete approach: https://www.aurianneor.org/stop-the-all-concrete-approach/

Fair trade and organic farming: https://www.aurianneor.org/fair-trade-and-organic-farming/

Ecoterrorism: https://www.aurianneor.org/ecoterrorism/

How can we win back trust?: https://www.aurianneor.org/how-can-we-win-back-trust/

Freedom and coexistence: https://www.aurianneor.org/freedom-and-coexistence/

Humiliated by the Republic: https://www.aurianneor.org/humiliated-by-the-republic/

Restricting personal wealth: https://www.aurianneor.org/restricting-personal-wealth/

Cut out the middleman: https://www.aurianneor.org/cut-out-the-middleman/

Organic mass production has no future: https://www.aurianneor.org/organic-mass-production-has-no-future/

Isolation phonique: https://www.aurianneor.org/isolation-phonique-le-silence-est-dor-et-comme/

Rob the poor to feed the rich: https://www.aurianneor.org/rob-the-poor-to-feed-the-rich/

Le logement: https://www.aurianneor.org/le-logement/

#aurianneor #city #countryside #debt #farmer #housing #inequalities #landlord #permaculture #price #public money #public services #real estate #real food #redistribution #rent #universal basic income #wealth

[glitterdisposition]

LADIES i have had the most productive day i am GLOWING

#woke up at 5 bc i was so anxious #basically im studying online through a university a few hours away #and im waitlisted for one of the courses i need for my diploma #BUT i JUST found out YESTERDAY that they offer the same course at my local community college #and that TODAY is the last day to register for classes #so i applied last night #and went in IMMEDIATELY when they opened at 8:30 this morning to plead my case #i was like #waiting at the gates #G wanted to take me but a) that felt babysitty and patronizing #and b) i was too nervous i couldn’t wait so i just walked over at like 8am #ANYWAYS the girl who greeted me in my bosses BEST FRIENDS wife and they come into my restaurant all the time #i explained everything to her and she BYPASSED THE WAIT PERIOD #ACCEPTED ME ON THE SPOT #AND GOT ME INTO MY CLASS #then G met me on the campus and showed me around #and then he drove me to service BC so i could get my ID renewed #and then we went for breakfast #and then he came back to mine and we had the best sex of my life to the new morality album (lol) #and it’s only noon and now i get to crawl back into bed and watch tv before my shift starts #im so wired though i might get up and get a head start on some homework #AHHH #she’s going places she’s winning she’s thriving

[gender-trash]

I would be very interested in hearing the museum design rant

by popular demand: Guy That Took One (1) Museum Studies Class Focused On Science Museums Rants About Art Museums. thank u for coming please have a seat

so. background. the concept of the "science museum" grew out of 1) the wunderkammer (cabinet of curiosities), also known as "hey check out all this weird cool shit i have", and 2) academic collections of natural history specimens (usually taxidermied) -- pre-photography these were super important for biological research (see also). early science museums usually grew out of university collections or bequests of some guy's Weird Shit Collection or both, and were focused on utility to researchers rather than educational value to the layperson (picture a room just, full of taxidermy birds with little labels on them and not a lot of curation outside that). eventually i guess they figured they could make more on admission by aiming for a mass audience? or maybe it was the cultural influence of all the world's fairs and shit (many of which also caused science museums to exist), which were aimed at a mass audience. or maybe it was because the research function became much more divorced from the museum function over time. i dunno. ANYWAY, science and technology museums nowadays have basically zero research function; the exhibits are designed more or less solely for educating the layperson (and very frequently the layperson is assumed to be a child, which does honestly irritate me, as an adult who likes to go to science museums). the collections are still there in case someone does need some DNA from one of the preserved bird skins, but items from the collections that are exhibited typically exist in service of the exhibit's conceptual message, rather than the other way around.

meanwhile at art museums they kind of haven't moved on from the "here is my pile of weird shit" paradigm, except it's "here is my pile of Fine Art". as far as i can tell, the thing that curators (and donors!) care about above all is The Collection. what artists are represented in The Collection? rich fucks derive personal prestige from donating their shit to The Collection. in big art museums usually something like 3-5% of the collection is ever on exhibit -- and sometimes they rotate stuff from the vault in and out, but let's be real, only a fraction of an art museum's square footage is temporary exhibits. they're not going to take the scream off display when it's like the only reason anyone who's not a giant nerd ever visits the norwegian national museum of art. most of the stuff in the vault just sits in the vault forever. like -- art museum curators, my dudes, do you think the general public gives a SINGLE FUCK what's in The Collection that isn't on display? no!! but i guarantee you it will never occur, ever, to an art museum curator that they could print-to-scale high-res images of artworks that are NOT in The Collection in order to contextualize the art in an exhibit, because items that are not in The Collection functionally do not exist to them. (and of course there's the deaccessioning discourse -- tumblr collectively has some level of awareness that repatriation is A Whole Kettle of Worms but even just garden-variety selling off parts of The Collection is a huge hairy fucking deal. check out deaccessioning and its discontents; it's a banger read if you're into This Kind Of Thing.)

with the contents of The Collection foregrounded like this, what you wind up with is art museum exhibits where the exhibit's message is kind of downstream of what shit you've got in the collection. often the message is just "here is some art from [century] [location]", or, if someone felt like doing a little exhibit design one fine morning, "here is some art from [century] [location] which is interesting for [reason]". the displays are SOOOOO bad by science museum standards -- if you're lucky you get a little explanatory placard in tiny font relating the art to an art movement or to its historical context or to the artist's career. if you're unlucky you get artist name, date, and medium. fucker most of the people who visit your museum know Jack Shit about art history why are you doing them dirty like this

(if you don't get it you're just not Cultured enough. fuck you, we're the art museum!)

i think i've talked about this before on this blog but the best-exhibited art exhibit i've ever been to was actually at the boston museum of science, in this traveling leonardo da vinci exhibit where they'd done a bunch of historical reconstructions of inventions out of his notebooks, and that was the main Thing, but also they had a whole little exhibit devoted to the mona lisa. obviously they didn't even have the real fucking mona lisa, but they went into a lot of detail on like -- here's some X-ray and UV photos of it, and here's how art experts interpret them. here's a (photo of a) contemporary study of the finished painting, which we've cleaned the yellowed varnish off of, so you can see what the colors looked like before the varnish yellowed. here's why we can't clean the varnish off the actual painting (da vinci used multiple varnish layers and thinned paints to translucency with varnish to create the illusion of depth, which means we now can't remove the yellowed varnish without stripping paint).

even if you don't go into that level of depth about every painting (and how could you? there absolutely wouldn't be space), you could at least talk a little about, like, pigment availability -- pigment availability is an INCREDIBLY useful lens for looking at historical paintings and, unbelievably, never once have i seen an art museum exhibit discuss it (and i've been to a lot of art museums). you know how medieval european religious paintings often have funky skin tones? THEY HADN'T INVENTED CADMIUM PIGMENTS YET. for red pigments you had like... red ochre (a muted earth-based pigment, like all ochres and umbers), vermilion (ESPENSIVE), alizarin crimson (aka madder -- this is one of my favorite reds, but it's cool-toned and NOT good for mixing most skintones), carmine/cochineal (ALSO ESPENSIVE, and purple-ish so you wouldn't want to use it for skintones anyway), red lead/minium (cheaper than vermilion), indian red/various other iron oxide reds, and apparently fucking realgar? sure. whatever. what the hell was i talking about.

oh yeah -- anyway, i'd kill for an art exhibit that's just, like, one or two oil paintings from each century for six centuries, with sample palettes of the pigments they used. but no! if an art museum curator has to put in any level of effort beyond writing up a little placard and maybe a room-level text block, they'll literally keel over and die. dude, every piece of art was made in a material context for a social purpose! it's completely deranged to divorce it from its material context and only mention the social purpose insofar as it matters to art history the field. for god's sake half the time the placard doesn't even tell you if the thing was a commission or not. there's a lot to be said about edo period woodblock prints and mass culture driven by the growing merchant class! the met has a fuckton of edo period prints; they could get a hell of an exhibit out of that!

or, tying back to an earlier thread -- the detroit institute of arts has got a solid like eight picasso paintings. when i went, they were kind of just... hanging out in a room. fuck it, let's make this an exhibit! picasso's an artist who pretty famously had Periods, right? why don't you group the paintings by period, and if you've only got one or two (or even zero!) from a particular period, pad it out with some decent life-size prints so i can compare them and get a better sense for the overarching similarities? and then arrange them all in a timeline, with little summaries of what each Period was ~about~? that'd teach me a hell of a lot more about picasso -- but you'd have to admit you don't have Every Cool Painting Ever in The Collection, which is illegalé.

also thinking about the mit museum temporary exhibit i saw briefly (sorry, i was only there for like 10 minutes because i arrived early for a meeting and didn't get a chance to go through it super thoroughly) of a bunch of ship technical drawings from the Hart nautical collection. if you handed this shit to an art museum curator they'd just stick it on the wall and tell you to stand around and look at it until you Understood. so anyway the mit museum had this enormous room-sized diorama of various hull shapes and how they sat in the water and their benefits and drawbacks, placed below the relevant technical drawings.

tbh i think the main problem is that art museum people and science museum people are completely different sets of people, trained in completely different curatorial traditions. it would not occur to an art museum curator to do anything like this because they're probably from the ~art world~ -- maybe they have experience working at an art gallery, or working as an art buyer for a rich collector, neither of which is in any way pedagogical. nobody thinks an exhibit of historical clothing should work like a clothing store but it's fine when it's art, i guess?

also the experience of going to an art museum is pretty user-hostile, i have to say. there's never enough benches, and if you want a backrest, fuck you. fuck you if going up stairs is painful; use our shitty elevator in the corner that we begrudgingly have for wheelchair accessibility, if you can find it. fuck you if you can't see very well, and need to be closer to the art. fuck you if you need to hydrate or eat food regularly; go to our stupid little overpriced cafeteria, and fuck you if we don't actually sell any food you can eat. (obviously you don't want someone accidentally spilling a smoothie on the art, but there's no reason you couldn't provide little Safe For Eating Rooms where people could just duck in and monch a protein bar, except that then you couldn't sell them a $30 salad at the cafe.) fuck you if you're overwhelmed by noise in echoing rooms with hard surfaces and a lot of people in them. fuck you if you are TOO SHORT and so our overhead illumination generates BRIGHT REFLECTIONS ON THE SHINY VARNISH. we're the art museum! we don't give a shit!!!

#so anyway i love going to art museums-- #the trashcan speaks #long post

[tothearx]

so i'm not saying my mutuals should make blackout club verses for their muses, but --

#▫▯□ it's always funny in sillydelphia. — ooc. #YOU SHOULD TOTALLY DO IT #i need more tbc mutuals #if you don't know what it is - it's an indie game you can get on steam #the premise is basically sorta similar to stranger things except #there's these in universe gods called 'the voices' and one of these voices has brainwashed an entire small town into a cult called CHORUS #in an isolated part of the US (mountain range in virginia - internet and cell service has been cut off) #all / most of the adults sleep walk at night and you play as these young teenagers who sneak out at night and #try to disrupt things and gather evidence to send it out to the outside world and get help #because once you reach a certain age you become susceptible to being brainwashed too #there's also lore videos / wiki pages you can read up on if interested #the game aesthetic is also just really pretty! and it functions kinda similar to dbd. you play in teams of four #if you like horror / mystery games give it a looksie