mrcancelled wrote: Sat Jul 03, 2021 4:49 pmIs there a good place to start with Hegel, would you say?

I'm only acquainted with the Phenomenology of Spirit. There are two English translations, a newer by A.V. Miller and an older by James Baillie. The latter is to me more readable and renders key terms in more sensible ways (begriff as "concept" rather than "notion"), but the former is more widely used. Using both in conjunction works well.

Prof Gregory B Sadler on youtube has a series where he goes through the book paragraph by paragraph and watching the whole thing would probably take years, but they're a good assistance.

brephophagist wrote: Mon Jun 28, 2021 7:01 pm Wikipedia definition here, but saving you a click: a group of folks who post video essays on YouTube that critique media or internet phenomena from a leftist perspective, usually in longer-form video essays.

A hit list of relatively-recent videos:
- hbomberguy (Harry Brewis) on the origins of vaccine hesitancy
- Lindsay Ellis on the Omegaverse copyright lawsuits
- Folding Ideas (Dan Olson) on Flat Earthers
- Philosophy Tube (Abigail Thorn) on Jordan Peterson
- Contrapoints (Natalie Wynn) on Justice


I get watching a long-ass YouTube video is something that a lot of folks just will not go for, period, and some of these folks post things that are feature-length.
I really enjoy most of them, so NC from me.
WF: most of them could stand a little editing.

I wanted to wait until I watched all 5 of those videos so that I could give a fair vote.

CRAP, with Folding Ideas/Dan Olson being a definite NOT CRAP. His Flat Earthers video got me watching the rest of his stuff.

But watching the other four videos was a chore, because the interesting and informative content is strewn among ... I'm trying to think of a polite way to put it and failing. Let's just say there's too much dross.

So Dan Olson ("Folding Ideas") just dropped a 2 hour, 18 minute documentary, titled The Problem with NFTs:



I'm only 17 minutes in so far, but people on the Buttcoin subreddit who saw it a day early on Patreon are vouching for its quality (and I can say that so far, it's quite well-made).

New Folding Ideas video out:



I'm only seven minutes in, and it's 75 minutes long. But it's great so far. Dan Olson's script and production values are, as always, solid and the content is engrossing.

One thought that occurs to me on this kind of content is sure, there's a preach to the choir element on any deep dive political piece with an agenda. However I'd say my views on any topic range from radical to centrist. Quality analysis tends to move the needle in my understanding and rhetoric. Sure it's all towards the left, but I've absorbed equal quantities of valid criticism on progressive hypocrisy and the impotence of reform based approaches. A quality argument can register.

mrcancelled wrote: Sat Jul 03, 2021 4:49 pm

kokorodoko wrote: Tue Jun 29, 2021 6:43 am

mrcancelled wrote: Mon Jun 28, 2021 7:17 pmsomeone like me who is terrified of actually reading any of Hegel's books.

Don't get discouraged! The difficulty many people have with Hegel, if I would guess, is that (1) he is moving away from the fixity of concepts and instead trying to articulate thought in continuous motion, as well as trying to conceive of a proposition and its opposite as belonging to the same reality (when you state what something is, you at the same time state what it is not, thus the "is-not" will remain even when the "is" is decided, and therefore cannot be wholly rejected, since it forms a part of this), therefore there will be no definite boundaries and no final conclusion, and (2) he is speaking very abstractly of things that one might not expect to be spoken of like that, e.g. talking about subjectivity as a universal principle (never as belonging to some particular person).

Some of this is of course a consequence of being used to e.g. speaking of things of in terms of fixed concepts, expecting to arrive at a final, summarizing conclusion etc., so YMMV depending on your disposition. As for the writing itself I actually think it is quite evocative and flowing. Should you decide to attempt it I would suggest to just keep reading and not try to understand it. Some sort picture will likely emerge even if you don't grasp every passage.

Really I wish people would spend a little less time talking about how difficult this or that writer is, because so much of that is just trying to talk oneself out of doing the work. And evidently it does more to intimidate newcomers. Anyway.

Thanks for this, this is all good to know! Yeah I don't know what it is about Hegel in particular that's kept me apprehensive, in my experience the writers/works that people go on about being difficult are never quite as bad as I end up convincing myself they will be. Is there a good place to start with Hegel, would you say?

It's been 25 years but my Hegel class was Phenomenology of Spirit and Elements of the Philosophy of Right, and the secondary text Hegel's Dialectic of Desire and Recognition. YMMV.

brephophagist wrote: Tue Jun 29, 2021 11:44 pm Her damning critique of "My Octopus Friend" here.

I hated that fucking movie so much. Just fucking hated it. It is a really creepy movie and that guy is a creep. Like children in bondage in the basement creepy.

That octopus guy is so fucked in the head, and octopuses are not that fucking smart.

That chick is right on the money.

Ummm. Cheers for good intent, and apparent success. Even when preaching to the choir there's room for the choir to run over shared ideas for entertainment and refinement. Good job not ceding the platform to right wing goblins. Likewise for covering ideas for youngins who don't get to learn stuff in school or oldens who didn't either.

But personally, not much of it is for me. I prefer more dry material like interviews with authors or lectures. I'm very glad that these creative types get to express themselves so thoroughly, but I don't have time for the theatric stuff. I'm sure some of the more podcasty stuff overlaps, and I'm sure I've enjoyed some of it. Especially the history stuff. I'm glad lefty ideas are more accessible, and I've been able to wrest some structure and concepts from this trend on political matters where I was previously more instinctual.

I don't have any background in political philosophy, so I'm keen to pick up things here or there, but when videos get into other aspects of philosophy I squirm. Spending nearly two decades studying philosophy makes it hard to be critical. I also hate how so much philosophy is either dismissed as ivory tower, angels on pinheads junk or abused to forward rightwing essentialism. I like that Ben Burgis guy, but even then I wish he'd engage a wider range of serious philosophy. I graduated from the same MA program as him (years later) and know a little about his PhD program so I kinda understand his range is in more hardcore abstract analytic topics with a little social and political philosophy. Yet, there's a lot of really interesting philosophy of science, for example, that is less armchair and very relevant to political realities. While philosophy gets a bad rap, there's been a lot more socially engaged work out there in all sorts of areas.

New Folding Ideas video. It's more interesting and wide-reaching than the title might suggest. With Nathan Landel and Dan Olson.

brephophagist wrote: Tue Jun 29, 2021 11:44 pm:Maggie Mae Fish, who's done some amusing dissection of Zack Snyder and also Kirk Cameron's Christian propaganda movies. Her damning critique of "My Octopus Friend" here.

Belatedly, thanks for the tip. My favourite is her comparison of “Lost Highway” and “The Shining”; I like both films a great deal, but her invective against the latter convinced me.

I’m popping in here to cautiously recommend Tim Rogers’ “Action Button” channel. While his focus is on videogames and their intersection with (mainly his) life, he shares a lot in common with some of the other creators mentioned here, with HBomberguy popping into his latest for an interstitial advert. Rogers won’t be for most, I expect - mini-series-length reviews of video games full of autobiographical digressions on digressions are a hard sell, and he is not afraid to soak up time with repetition and obscure detail, but I like him a lot, and find him insightful. I have also picked up quite a lot of nice music and other stuff based on his rambles. Start anywhere, though his immense Cyberpunk 2077 review is perhaps the most dizzying of his videos.