https://surowiecki.medium.com/?source=post_page-----9d2b28177a86-----------------------------------

James Surowiecki

https://surowiecki.medium.com/dont-blame-capitalism-for-the-lack-of-covid-tests-blame-the-fda-9d2b28177a86?source=post_page-----9d2b28177a86-----------------------------------

Dec 31, 2021·4 min read

Fae for Creative Commons

By now, just about everyone recognizes that the shortages and the high prices of rapid at-home antigen tests, which I wrote about yesterday, is a problem. But one common mistake that people are making is to blame those shortages, and especially those high prices, on “capitalism.” If it weren’t for greedy capitalists, the argument implicitly (and explicitly) goes, tests would…

https://doctorow.medium.com/?source=post_page-----2c4520dd2f3a-----------------------------------

Cory Doctorow

https://doctorow.medium.com/happy-public-domain-day-2c4520dd2f3a?source=post_page-----2c4520dd2f3a-----------------------------------

Jan 3·6 min read

On January 1, 2019 something extraordinary happened. For the first time since 1998, the American public domain got bigger.

What happened in 1998? Congress — led by Rep Sonny Bono — extended the copyright on all works by 20 years. Works that had already been in the public domain went back…

https://ryanfan.medium.com/?source=post_page-----1f6329f1f2ff-----------------------------------

Ryan Fan

https://index.medium.com/i-had-perfect-attendance-at-work-and-have-gained-nothing-for-it-1f6329f1f2ff?source=post_page-----1f6329f1f2ff-----------------------------------

Dec 24, 2021·6 min read

Photo: krakenimages/Unsplash

Before yesterday, I had almost perfect attendance at work in my two and a half years of teaching. But I finally called out to get a COVID test after my fiancee tested positive for COVID.

Jessie Waddell

Dec 27, 2021

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5

min read

Image by Nickola_Che on Shutterstock

As I write this article, it’s noon on Monday 27th of December. It’s the eve of my 31st birthday, and I’m exhausted, but my brain won’t stop running miles. I feel grateful this year because I have this outlet. When my brain gets too busy, I can write, process and make sense of the chaos. Before I started writing, it was…

https://barackobama.medium.com/?source=post_page-----c54927e7c7cc-----------------------------------

Barack Obama

https://barackobama.medium.com/my-statement-on-the-passing-of-archbishop-desmond-tutu-c54927e7c7cc?source=post_page-----c54927e7c7cc-----------------------------------

·Dec 26, 2021

Photo by Pete Souza

Archbishop Desmond Tutu was a mentor, a friend, and a moral compass for me and so many others. A universal spirit, Archbishop Tutu was grounded in the struggle for liberation and justice in his own country, but also concerned with injustice everywhere. He never lost his impish sense of humor and willingness to find humanity in his adversaries, and Michelle and I will miss him dearly.

By Scott Dunn

What we do with this holiday is dependent on the choices we make.

https://scottcdunn.medium.com/?source=post_page-----814fbf01eaa8-----------------------------------

ScottCDunn

https://scottcdunn.medium.com/we-create-the-magic-of-christmas-814fbf01eaa8?source=post_page-----814fbf01eaa8-----------------------------------

Dec 24, 2021·4 min read

I can remember Christmas in childhood. My mom got these incandescent Christmas lights that would just randomly blink. I loved how those clear glass lights would blink in a way that I could never predict. They mesmerized me. I also loved the way the lights cast multicolored shadows onto the walls…

https://nicklicata.medium.com/?source=post_page-----c81db7687050-----------------------------------

Nick Licata

https://nicklicata.medium.com/on-the-matter-of-black-lives-c81db7687050?source=post_page-----c81db7687050-----------------------------------

Dec 24, 2021·5 min read

Professor Jelani Cobb, a staff writer for the New Yorker

In the last 12 months, Professor Jelani Cobb, a staff writer for the New Yorker, has authored three groundbreaking books on race in America. The Matter of Black Lives: Writing from The New Yorker, which he co-authored with David Remnick, came out this fall. It collects many of the most thoughtful writers portraying Black life in America over the last century.

https://jessicalexicus.medium.com/?source=post_page-----b5074687e9bf-----------------------------------

Jessica Wildfire

https://index.medium.com/we-were-always-disposable-and-we-cant-ignore-it-anymore-b5074687e9bf?source=post_page-----b5074687e9bf-----------------------------------

Dec 20, 2021·6 min read

Photo: Shi Min Teh/Unsplash

“It’s just a warning.”

That’s what a supervisor told a delivery driver for a certain mega-company run by a guy who models himself after Lex Luther, when tornado sirens started to wail. If she tried to return to the warehouse without dropping off her packages, they’d…

Rosie Alderson, PhD

Dec 22, 2021

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5

min read

Photo by Sandra Seitamaa on Unsplash

A couple of winters ago, I travelled to the ski resort of Levi, in Finland. Nestled in the arctic circle, the landscape is awe-inspiring— great swathes of white, punctuated only by majestic snow-laden trees and small, charming settlements populated with cosy wooden buildings.

https://carvellwallace.medium.com/?source=post_page-----6f8a4de24c91-----------------------------------

Carvell Wallace

https://level.medium.com/christmas-lol-6f8a4de24c91?source=post_page-----6f8a4de24c91-----------------------------------

Dec 22·6 min read

We approach the time of year when we have all been tricked into linking together the buying of things with the genuine expression of love and there seems to be no way out of it. I (barely) survived a giant family fight with one of my teenagers this week — set in motion by me announcing that due to various logistical factors like global pandemic and a vast unnameable existential fatigue, her mother and I have decided not to do a huge many-gifts-per-child…

https://clivethompson.medium.com/?source=post_page-----d64291cea550-----------------------------------

Clive Thompson

https://marker.medium.com/who-was-first-with-a-big-idea-its-often-hard-to-know-d64291cea550?source=post_page-----d64291cea550-----------------------------------

Dec 22·6 min read

Guglielmo Marconi invented radio in the 1890s — but so did Nikola Tesla and several others. (Photo by Nicolas Buffler)

I recently wrote about the history of “pinch and zoom” — and how Apple didn’t really invent it. Apple executives love to claim they did; Steve Jobs even stood on stage and boasted “boy, have we patented it!”

https://kategreentripp.medium.com/?source=post_page-----3a340c067550-----------------------------------

Kate Green Tripp

https://forge.medium.com/when-life-is-slow-go-even-slower-3a340c067550?source=post_page-----3a340c067550-----------------------------------

Dec 13·3 min read

Photo: Artur Łuczka / Unsplash

Last week, my car needed service.

I typically manage such days of privileged inconvenience by dropping my car at the dealer and grabbing a ride home with a friend or taking advantage of Toyota’s free shuttle service. But in these unusual times, when policies and hours of operation change as county health…

One email notification led Carla Barnes to question her whole identity and try to find it again. Barnes expected the email — even looked forward to it — but it delivered an unexpected shock. The email held the results of her at-home DNA test. It revealed her ethnicity, a list of her DNA relatives, and a secret her mother kept from her for her entire life. When she opened her results, she didn’t second guess the accuracy of her ethnicity, but the list of relatives the test identified made her question its validity. As she scrolled through the list of people with whom she shared DNA, she noticed some obvious oversights. The test failed to identify any of her family members from her father’s side as DNA relatives.

Barnes’s experience provided her membership in a growing community — those who experience a non-parental event (NPE). An NPE occurs when a person discovers they are not genetically related to the parent or parents who raised them. The acronym first stood for non-paternity event and some use it to mean not parent expected. Others also often use the term MPE, or misattributed parental event, to refer to these situations. People created these different terms and acronyms to be more inclusive of all situations and to make these discoveries more personal and less scientific.

NPEs can result from a multitude of situations, including adoption, sperm or egg donation, kidnapping, rape, adultery, a mistake during IVF or artificial insemination, and a range of other scenarios. While NPEs themselves are not new, it is becoming increasingly easier to discover them. “This stuff has always existed, but we’re just now on the brink of discovering how frequent this is,” Barnes says. The prevalence of and increased accessibility to at-home DNA testing has led many people to discover their own NPE, and those discoveries and the emotional challenges they create have led to the growth of organizations that seek to support those who experience them. NPE Friends Fellowship, a non-profit that aims to support and raise awareness for NPEs, says that 5% to 10% of people who take an at-home DNA test discover an NPE. NPE Friends Fellowship began in June of 2017 as a Facebook group of people who experienced NPEs supporting each other. The group grew to 20 members after a week and more than 1,000 after a year. The group currently boasts more than 11,000 members and grows every week.

And the growth of the at-home DNA test business helps fuel these experiences and these communities. In a 2020 blog post by Ancestry, then president and CEO Margo Georgiadis said that 30 million people “started a DNA journey” worldwide. 23andMe alone has sold more than 12 million of their DNA test kits since they began in 2006. While these millions of tests likely resulted in a large number of NPE discoveries, most users who decide to spit in a little vial do not seek to discover or verify their biological parents. Another Ancestry blog post outlines some of the main reasons users do decide to take a DNA test including seeking out the specifics of their ethnicity, connecting with distant relatives, and making discoveries about their family trees. DNA test takers also often get their test kit as a gift from a loved one as the biggest DNA test companies run sales around the holiday season. In Barnes’ situation, she hoped that taking a DNA test would help fill in the gaps of the family tree that she started researching and building more than a decade earlier. Rather than being able to see it grow more branches, she instead had to watch half of the roots of her family tree die and disappear.

An NPE discovery can take some people on an emotional journey of rediscovering their identity, but for others, the information is as insignificant as what they ate for breakfast. One NPE, who wishes to remain anonymous due to the fact that much of her extended family is unaware of the situation, took a 23andMe DNA test and discovered a half sibling she never knew about. After repeated attempts to convince her parents to explain the half-sibling she found, her mom called her crying and finally admitted that she was conceived through a sperm donor due to infertility issues with her parents. This new information, though, failed to alter her self-perception. “For me, it almost turned into, rather than being this emotional event, it was kind of just a detective, mystery-solving thing,” she says. She does not feel as though she lost any connection to the man who raised her even with the knowledge that they are not genetically related. “Honestly, I don’t care. This doesn’t, from my perspective, change anything. My dad is still my dad,” she says. “Sure, he didn’t donate genetic material to me, but I think that fatherhood is so much more than that.”

“My dad is still my dad. Sure, he didn’t donate genetic material to me, but I think that fatherhood is so much more than that.”

— Anonymous NPE

For many people who discover their own NPE, they question their own identity, not just the identity of their biological parents. “It’s probably like grief of a parent who loses a kid. It’s probably on that level,” Barnes says. “No one has died, but a part of your reality and your truth of yourself has died when you hear something different.” Those who discover the truth of their ancestry through an at-home DNA test often feel an extra level of hurt than if a loved one had told them. “It adds a betrayal factor on top of the issue in itself,” Barnes says.

An NPE discovery can lead to a person questioning not only who their parents are, but who they are too. | Original photo by Caleb Oquendo

Barnes recalls that the stress and crisis of the situation would wake her up in the middle of the night. Instead of putting her head back down on the pillow, Barnes would instead pick up her phone and start searching the internet for answers to her questions. Googling phrases such as “my dad is not my dad,” “mom had an affair,” and “I don’t know my dad” did not result in any support for Barnes, but she kept trying. Two years after her initial DNA test, she learned the term NPE from a New York Times article. It was then, as the brightness of her phone’s screen shone on her face, that she felt less alone in her experience, and she used the term to find some support and understanding. “I found some communities on Facebook. I found other people who had stories like me, but I had to search for it,” she says. “It took a long time.”

“No one has died, but a part of your reality and your truth of yourself has died when you hear something different.”

— Carla Barnes

Jodi Klugman-Rabb also discovered her NPE situation through an at-home DNA test. But the shock and realization of what the results meant took longer than Barnes’ immediate shock. In fact, the chaos of life, including having young children and a career, kept her from truly understanding the reality presented in her genetic report. Two years after taking the DNA test, while on vacation in Mexico and reading a book poolside, Klugman-Rabb relaxed enough to process her results. The test revealed that she was 50% Scottish and not 50% German like she was expecting. She used this information to deduce that she was not genetically related to the man she believed was her father. This revelation made her rethink who she was. “It destabilizes your sense of identity and creates an identity crisis,” Klugman-Rabb says.

With improved and accessible DNA technology, more and more people are discovering their own NPE and being left to deal with an identity crisis. In the past few years, various support efforts emerged to help NPEs deal with the turmoil that a discovery causes. One of these efforts is the non-profit organization NPE Friends Fellowship. The organization began in 2017 as a Facebook group that was created by NPEs and for NPEs. As it became more in demand, the group expanded to a non-profit organization in 2018. In addition to the original Facebook group, the organization also holds a yearly conference for those in the NPE community to meet each other, works with researchers to get more data about NPEs, and provides grants to help people financially afford to travel to see their newfound biological family. The organization hopes that their efforts will help raise awareness for NPEs and provide them and their affected loved ones with support. “It’s a multi-sided coin. The NPE is at the nucleus of what we do, they’re at the heart, they’re at the core, but we know there’s a ripple effect. So, our long term goals are to make sure that we provide resources and support to that entire ripple,” Rebekah Drumsta, Director of Public Relations at NPE Friends Fellowship, says.

“It destabilizes your sense of identity and creates an identity crisis.” — Jodi Klugman-Rabb

In addition to organizations, individuals are also dedicated to working to help and support NPEs through dealing with their discoveries. After discovering their own NPEs, both Barnes and Klugman-Rabb decided to combine their experiences with their careers to help others in situations similar to their own. Barnes, a licensed professional counselor, specializes in working with NPEs. Prior to her own discovery, Barnes worked as a school counselor, but she decided to open up her own practice in Schertz, TX so that she could provide others in her area with the help and support missing for her when she first took her DNA test.

In fact, like Barnes and Klugman-Rabb, many of those who build communities or create resources to help people who experience NPEs do so to address the lack of awareness, information, and support they experienced after a DNA test revealed a secret in their family tree. Klugman-Rabb, a licensed marriage and family therapist, works with NPEs to help them deal with their discovery and its effects. She also works with parents of NPEs prior to a discovery to help them figure out the best way to tell their child the truth. “The anger is going to be there one way or the other. The hurt and confusion is going to be there regardless, but there’s a way to mitigate it so that it’s understandable,” Klugman-Rabb says. “You just have to give an MPE time to work through the feelings to get to that point where they understand it, and that happens with counseling and the ability to talk about it openly with people in their lives.”

In an effort to educate more non-NPE mental health professionals on the appropriate ways of supporting clients working through an NPE discovery, Klugman-Rabb created a curriculum called Parental Identity Discovery. Through webinars, she uses the curriculum to train mental health professionals all over the country on the topic of NPEs so that there are more resources available for NPEs that are equipped to properly help them. She feels that many education and training programs fail to adequately teach mental health professionals how to properly support someone going through an NPE discovery. By combining her experiences and her expertise, she believes her program will prepare professionals to effectively assist those who discover NPEs in the future. “For most people, they just don’t put it together that it’s an identity issue,” Klugman-Rabb says. “So then I decided, well, I have so much of the clinical background already in place, this makes sense that I put together a curriculum to help other people go through this as well.” She also hosts a podcast called “Sex, Lies & The Truth” with Christina Bryan Fitzgibbons, a genetic and family investigator. In the podcast, they interview real people going through a variety of DNA revelations. Klugman-Rabb hopes that between her curriculum and her podcast that she is able to make going through an NPE discovery a little bit easier for others. She says, “It helps to have a safe place to talk about what you’re going through when you’re scared.”

https://ellisbrooks.medium.com/?source=post_page-----47229311dcf8-----------------------------------

Ellis Brooks

https://onezero.medium.com/nfts-are-critical-for-the-future-of-art-47229311dcf8?source=post_page-----47229311dcf8-----------------------------------

Dec 17·15 min read

Julie Blackmon, Homegrown Food (2012). Pigment print available at Edelman Gallery. Also minted as an NFT and listed at Quantum.

Multiple things can be true at once, even when they appear to be contradictory. Granite, for example, can be both solid and ethereal. Hold a chunk of it in the palm of your hand and it’s clearly a…

https://kellyeden.medium.com/?source=post_page-----2898974e945a-----------------------------------

Kelly Eden

https://kellyeden.medium.com/when-the-world-feels-dark-and-beautiful-in-the-same-moment-2898974e945a?source=post_page-----2898974e945a-----------------------------------

Dec 17·3 min read

Image by Comfreak from Pixabay

I’m sure you’ve experienced those strange moments when you feel like your heart is pulled in opposite directions. There are so many experiences with this double-sided quality, where we feel two emotions at once.

We did do a few small things. My main effort was to make a wreath; we didn’t have any pines at the old farmhouse property, so we wandered a nearby state forest to cut some inconspicuous branches. I tied them to a wreath form, wrapped it with a velvet bow, and put it on our front door. We didn’t do gifts for each other, and only bought a few for close family. We saw people separately, for short visits, a few days before Christmas. Christmas Day we spent alone. I was still reeling from my first miscarriage and we struggled to find something on television that wasn’t a celebration of kids or family. I think we gave up, and went to bed early.

This year I realize how much I missed all of it — even the things I used to gripe about, like waiting in line at a crowded co-op to buy apples or staying up until midnight to bake pies. We do things for holidays that take more effort and time than we’d normally consider reasonable — elaborate meals, decorations that get unpacked and hung for only a few weeks, gifts painstakingly wrapped and ribbon-ed. I’ve come to realize that we do it because we secretly love these things, but we need an excuse to do them. We need a holiday to inspire us to make the effort that special things require.

This year I am doing more. While there aren’t any big gatherings in our future, I’ve revived some of the old traditions. I bought and mailed cards — more than I’ve ever sent before. We got presents for each other. I ordered a gingerbread house kit in the mail. And, for the first time, we got a tree.

We’ve never had a tree before, not even a fake one. We tried once years ago with a little potted one, but our then-spry cats refused to leave it alone and we had to lock it away in a guest bedroom.

This year we walked across the brook and into a meadow with a hacksaw, and worked together to cut a fresh tree from our property. It’s a sizable pine — taller than me, and wide with dense branches. We dragged it back up through the big field and put it in the flatbed. “Do you think the animals will mess with it?” I said. “Maybe,” Cody said. “But let’s try anyway.”

So the tree sits in the living room now. Miraculously, the animals leave it alone. Our ornaments are still all in storage, but I did buy lights. I went traditional and got candy colored ones — like we had on the tree when I was a kid. The other night I walked Gracie down by the lake and looked up to see them glowing through our living room windows. It looked like any other year, at Christmas.

I dropped most of my cards in the mail last week, and a few more this week. Coming back from the mailbox the other day, I spied a large box at the end of the driveway. “Are you expecting anything?” I asked — we’re careful not to ruin the surprise of presents ordered by mail.

“My parents said they were sending something,” Cody said. “But it’s not a Christmas present. They said we should open it now.”

Inside were two boxes of dozens of Christmas ornaments, from their own collection. “They’re for our tree. So we can decorate it this year.”

So now our tree sits in the living room, glowing with its colorful fairy lights, flush with borrowed ornaments from so many past Christmases. I turn the lights on every day in the morning, and off at night. As I work at my desk throughout the day, I look over at it, this unmistakable symbol of winter, of Christmas, of the end of the year.

It was a special gift, made that way through thought, and care, and effort. Like all the best holiday traditions.

Image; Twitter

The YouTube channel *Kurzgesagt *[kurts·guh·zaakt] — In a Nutshell advertises itself as a science-based educational platform. It has over 17 million subscribers, and each one of its videos averages millions of views. It's one of the most-watched science channels globally, and it covers every topic, from the origins of consciousness, to how to create solar engines. CEO Philipp Dettmer claims that the channel's goal is "to spark curiosity….to inspire people to do very, real research for themselves." This aim is undeniably a good thing. We should encourage people to learn more about our world.

It should also be noted that the quality of these videos is beyond superb. Each one involves a narrator breaking down complex topics as cutesy animated ducks act as our visuals (seriously, I love these ducks). I have found their videos to be an excellent place to start for certain topics. The research underpinning them is far more in-depth than your average YouTube video — something that should be applauded.

However, there is a philosophy underpinning most of these videos that's more than simply "the scientific method." While they claim to be science-driven about the positions they have taken, the Kurzgesagt company that makes these videos has a worldview that fosters market-based, arguably "neoliberal" solutions when it comes to tackling humanity's biggest problems.

They are not "objective" — if such a thing is even possible — when it comes to the presentation of the stories they tell, and that is something viewers should be mindful of when they watch these videos.

When we talk about science, it's very easy to devolve into a "well, that just what the data says" kind of argument. This position is where proponents try to divorce the philosophical assumptions baked into how people interpret the data from a particular source, and we see that sort of reasoning happening here with *Kurzgesagt videos *as well. As the narrator in the video Can You Trust Kurzgesagt Videos? says of the company's process when forming opinions:

“When we express an opinion, we market it as such. That’s not saying that we don't draw conclusions from the research. Homeopathy does not work and meat is really bad for the planet. Climate change is real but organic food is not a good way of solving it. If the facts clearly support a conclusion its OK to present it as such.”

The problem with this assertion is that the use and study of science is never objective, especially when new information conflicts with well-established worldviews. Facts can retrospectively turn out to be very subjective. One infamous example is scientist Charles Darwin's position on sex. Darwin argued that evolution made man "superior" to women (he was an incel before it was cool, you guys). None of his arguments were particularly compelling, even given the information presented at the time, but his ideology warped his reading of the data to reinforce existing biases. In this case, that only Chads could get laid.

No one is immune from this type of distortion. Our ideologies always affect how we see the world, including Kurzgesagt, which uses its platform to often reinforce the current political and philosophical consensus (i.e., the promotion of "neoliberalism" or the belief in free-market capitalism, deregulation, and reduction in government spending.). This stance leads to overwhelmingly technocratic and market-oriented positions, often excluding all dissident opinions out of hand as unrealistic (if they are mentioned at all).

For example, in their video Overpopulation & Africa, the narrator describes how promoting education, better healthcare, and contraception will reduce poverty. The video asserts a direct link between "overpopulation" (a term as nebulous as my dating life) and poverty. This theory is a popular, albeit highly controversial position; we don't have time to go into depth here.

In short, focusing on "overpopulation" is a framing that ignores the impact of those populations' economic systems. Maybe it's not the population itself that's the problem, but how those societies distribute resources. And, you know, maybe how they have been taken advantage of by other societies (cough, cough imperialism) to obtain said resources is also a problem. For those curious about learning more about the problem with the "overpopulation" framing, I recommend reading Martin Empson and Ian Rappel's essay on the topic for more details on why this position might not be so straightforward.

What's noticeable here is how Kurzgesagt describes this reduction in population. The most prominent example given in the video is about the population decline in Bangladesh, which is described as being in service to economic productivity rather than to reduce human suffering:

“This also changed [Bangladesh’s] demographics and the economy. Before, many children were born but died before they got to contribute to society. As fewer kids die and fewer kids are born, things change. Kids get an education and turn into productive adults. The government was able to shift some of their resources from lowering child mortality to boosting the economy.”

The ingrained assumption in this example is that increased economic production in a capitalist economy is a natural good we all should be striving for. The problem presented here is not that children died — although I'm sure they would agree child mortality is awful — but that they died before becoming workers, preventing productivity from "trickling down" to the rest of society. The video touts how Bangladesh is expected to move from being one of the "least developed countries" to "developing" as the successful endpoint of this strategy.

Now you may agree with that as a goal, but the point here is that it's more about pushing towards a particular ideological outcome than about being objective scientifically. Poverty is not like the study of physics: its solution and even its definition are hotly debated by different economic schools (something this video ignores completely).

Some other examples in Kurzgesagt’s repertoire are far more explicit about their support of neoliberalism. In the video What do Alien Civilizations Look Like? The Kardashev Scale, the narrator goes in length explaining how traits that allow humans to be successful in our current economic system are "natural." They then speculate, with some caveats, about how these traits will most likely be shared by any advanced alien civilization as well, saying:

“We know that humans are curious, competitive, greedy for resources, and expansionist. The more of these qualities our ancestors had the more successful they were in the civilization building game. Being one with nature is nice but its not the path to irrigation systems or gunpowder or cities. So its reasonable to assume that aliens able to take over their home planet also have these qualities.”

This perspective is not in any way scientific. The anthropological and biological data about humans being inherently greedy and expansionist are inconclusive. There have been a diversity of different social structures throughout human history. We have no idea if all of these structures would lead to our present reality, and short of running a simulation of all human civilization and going through all the variables, finding out is impossible. Those sorts of experiments are well beyond our capabilities at the moment (that is unless Elon Musk has some projects he hasn't let us know about yet).

Here, Kurzgesagt is working backward. They are starting with the assumption that humans are inherently greedy and expansionist, using contemporary, western civilization as a template, and then advancing that spurious claim to talk about how all sentient life in the universe will behave this way as well. These assumptions, of course, reinforce current models of colonialism, imperialism, and neoliberalism, making them appear natural and commonsense.

This logic not only ends up creating videos that uphold the values of neoliberalism but serves as the mouthpiece of the very powerful as well.

A video Kurzgesagt released recently called Can YOU Fix Climate Change? talks about many of the problems and issues they perceive with the climate change discourse. This video has many good points, such as how the idea of a carbon footprint is conservative marketing, but things get very wishy-washy when we come to the Solutions section. They quickly dismiss any solution outside of capitalism, saying:

“Some argue that a move away from capitalism is the only solution to this mess. Others insist that markets should be freer without any interventions like subsidies. And some suggest that we need what’s referred to as ‘degrowth’ and to cut back as a species overall. But the truth is, at least as of now, no political system is doing an impressive job of becoming truly sustainable and none have really done so in the past.”

This dismissal doesn't make much sense since we only have one major economic system right now. It is not a serious attempt to weigh the merits of different approaches but rather is meant to segue the video to more traditional, neoliberal solutions. Despite claiming that you cannot make an individual difference tackling this systemic issue, the video ends by saying: "So this is basically what you can do. Vote at the ballot, and vote with your wallet." The video further argues that more affluent viewers should spend their money on emerging technologies like electric cars and solar panels. It's using the rhetoric of more radical movements while advocating for very conservative policy proposals.

Unsurprisingly, the sponsor of this video is billionaire Bill Gates's blog Gates Notes, which just so happens to be advertising a book on the front page called How To Avoid A Climate Disaster. And whaddya know? The book advertises many of the same solutions proposed in this video:

“Although we have a number of cost-competitive low-carbon solutions today, we still don’t have all the technologies we need to get to zero emissions globally…[the solution] is [for the government] to invest in R&D when the private sector won’t because it can’t see how it will make a profit. Once it becomes clear how a company can make money, the private sector takes over.”

Here, Gates argues for technocratic, market-based solutions to climate change, ultimately advocating for more investment and innovation. His approach is divorced from any political or economic reforms that would challenge the status quo. Instead, he asks for the governments of the world to simply tweak the market so it can work better — an attitude that aligns very closely with the one that seems to underpin all of Kurzgesagt's content.

In fact, the similarities with Gates don't end here. Gates is an avid supporter of the channel. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation provided a $570,000 grant to the company in 2015, which led to the creation of at least seven videos (one of them being the Overpopulation & Africa video we already mentioned). These videos are rooted in the same philosophical foundation we see prevalent throughout Kurzgesagt's discography. To be clear, CEO Philipp Dettmer and his compatriots are probably not in cahoots with Bill Gates, scheming on ways to enhance this billionaire's chosen narrative. It's more than likely that they share a similar philosophical foundation, which creates a positive feedback loop where they are rewarded for advancing views palatable to the very powerful.

Gates isn't bankrolling other YouTube educators such as PhilosophyTube, and that's because the latter's aesthetic is far more critical of the wealthy as a class. I have seen no BreadTube creators getting a hundred thousand dollar grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.* *We cannot pretend that this is simply about advancing the public's literacy with complex topics. The ideology they are advancing matters too, a reality that is reflected in how *Kurzgesagt is *funded.

While Kurzgesagt has a Patreon that partially funds their production, they not only get grants from the likes of the *Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation but *have also opened up an agency that creates video projects for the likes of Audi, NeverThink, and BitDefender. This content sounds educational, but it largely serves as ads for various products such as cars and security systems. Kurzgesagt has a material interest in producing content that doesn't offend these interests. So that limits the types of criticism they can levy — as their climate change video's hesitancy to explore solutions outside the market and voting aptly demonstrates.

Yes, the creators of Kurzgesagt probably aren't going to advance those solutions anyway because of their ideology, but the material conditions around them also reinforce it. This feedback loop leads to the creation of content distorted by our society's current biases (whether those biases are admitted to or not).

Educational content is tricky in our modern information ecosystem because it is often understood as being intrinsically good. We reward creators such as the VlogBrothers and Mike Rugnetta, who demystify topics so that everyday people can understand them. However, the ideology underpinning how that information is explained and demystified is equally important to the information itself.

As a more extreme example, PragerU is a conservative education channel on YouTube that attempts to explain political and economic subjects ranging from the Antebellum South to Climate Change. Their conservative ideology, however, often warps how they present that information. Much of the videos they put out there are wildly inaccurate, as the YouTuber Shaun frequently demonstrates.

Kurzgesagt is not as bad as PragerU — not even close (please don't at me in the comments). They have the genuine desire to demystify science, which is a good goal everyone should be able to stand behind. We need more scientific literacy, and I want to stress that I don't want readers to walk away with the message that *Kurzgesagt *is no better than other conservative "educators" out there. I bring this example up to highlight that your political philosophy impacts how you break down and simplify information. It's never as simple as presenting the facts — your ideology can sometimes make the facts.

In a nutshell,* Kurzgesagt *has several biases that they have not accounted for regarding economics and politics, which leads to them prioritizing technocratic, market-based solutions and framings over everything else. This perspective doesn't make them awful, but it does mean that they have noticeable blindspots we should keep in mind when watching their content.

P.S.* — In the improbable chance that someone from the Kurzgesagt team has read this essay, know that I still think your videos are pretty cool, and I would love to discuss these issues further with you.*