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.*

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Eve Peyser

https://evepeyser.medium.com/the-best-books-i-read-in-2021-are-all-about-weirdos-88ec444b6835?source=post_page-----88ec444b6835-----------------------------------

Dec 10, 2021·6 min read

I might be a professional writer or whatever, but for many years, I have felt deep shame over the fact that I don’t read enough books. It’s not that I hate books or anything. They’re fantastic! It’s just that in this terrible modern world, being able to focus on a book isn’t…

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, 2021·3 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…

[image: the “Thinker” by Rodin outside Philadelphia’s Rodin Museum, Wikimedia; this is essay #351 in the Philosophy as a Way of Life series]

Philosophy, contra popular opinion (even among some philosophers) makes progress. I have written a whole (free!) book (summarized here) about how that works. The basic idea is that philosophy, unlike science, is in the business of discovering, exploring, and refining conceptual landscapes defined by the questions in which philosophers are interested in.

Image by Ulrike Mai from Pixabay

There’s a bucket in my classroom.

It’s bright yellow plastic with a sturdy black lid. It’s large. It looks like any one of the industrial sorts of buckets you might find in the aisles of Home Depot or in the dusty disarray of a construction site. It lives under my desk, just between a box of printer paper and a crate of student portfolios, and it has been there since 2013. It goes mostly unnoticed from day to day. It’s just a bucket, after all.

In my 16-year career as a high school teacher, I have been through more lockdowns than I can count. Neighborhood shootings, nearby police activity, external threats, and rumor-driven caution have all been past prompters for lockdowns to be enacted. The lockdown alarm at my school is awful — which is fitting. It’s a wall-jarring screech that sends students cowering from its racket even before they have a chance to process its meaning. The students crouch down, away from the floor-to-ceiling windows, and all of their fear and their questions collect in a dense cloud above, pressing down on us with invisible force, rendering us wide-eyed and breathless. It feels like choking.

It’s exhausting.

In the past two weeks, there have been multiple incidents of firearms discovered on my school’s campus. None have been brandished or used. We’ve been lucky.

Sometimes (many times) I think about how I would protect my students if there was an active shooter at our school. I think about the fire extinguisher hanging next to the door and how it might be sprayed or heaved at an armed attacker. I think about the weight of the chairs and desks in my room and wonder how quickly we could push and stack to create a barricade from the snarl of metal and plastic. I think of the fact that most students don’t get cell service in my classroom, which would make it difficult for them to make phone calls or send text messages to their loved ones. I think about what I would do in that razor-thin edge of a moment if I found that I was only thing standing between my students and unimaginable harm.

This morning as I was getting ready for work, I looked in the mirror and thought, “Today *could *be the day. Today our luck *could *run out.” I found myself wondering whether this would this be the last thing I ever wear. I found myself wondering — did any of the students or teachers at Oxford High School look in the mirror before heading to school or work and think these very same thoughts?”

Logical folks will tell me that I’m far more likely to die in a car accident or from cancer. They’re right. I know this because I *am “*logical folks” most of the time. But the logical part of my brain is also the part responsible for telling me to wear a seatbelt and obey traffic laws, and to exercise and eat well. The logical part of my brain is the part that wants to plan for the worst because the logical part of my brain knows that unlikely doesn’t mean *impossible. *This fear isn’t consuming me from the inside out; it’s not keeping me from living my life. Still, every time there’s coverage of another shooting, it’s impossible not to wonder if my students will be the next to say, “We never thought it could happen to us.”

The high school where I teach is a loud and cavernous place. Our students are vibrant and resilient and energetic. The hallways echo with student laughter, door slams, rail taps, thundering footfalls, and the occasional curse word. Every so often, a student will think it’s funny to pound heavily on classroom doors as they skitter by on a bathroom break, and entire classes will seize and jerk with a collective gasp, like any and all composure has been sucked from the room. They’re more than just startled. It takes several moments for them to recover from that split-second surge of belief that *it *could be happening to them.

Those yellow buckets appeared in our classrooms in January of 2013. That was eight years ago. That was the month after Adam Lanza murdered 20 children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School.

We were tired then.

That yellow bucket opens. The flat lid flips on black plastic hinges, revealing what looks like a donut-shaped seat. Inside the bucket is an assortment of survival necessities that seem more appropriate to the debris-strewn wake of a natural disaster than a brightly lit public school classroom: a tarp, rope, plastic bags, first aid supplies, dehydrated food items, water, and a variety of other worse-case-scenario items. The bucket, one realizes upon further examination, is meant to double as a toilet in an emergency situation. The words LOCKDOWN KIT scream in glossy capital letters across the curved plastic. It’s a clever concept in its multifunctionality, but it seems oddly incongruous in a classroom setting. It’s unsettling.

Then again, this is the USA.

Most of the time I can forget these fears. They rest in the back of my mind, in a listless state of dormancy, and they go unnoticed for extended periods of time. I don’t constantly fret or worry. I do frequently lose myself in the joyous chaos of the typical day, and those sleeping fears allow my thoughts to linger decadently on Shakespeare or Steinbeck or Cisneros or Baldwin.

But every so often as I’m returning to my desk to check an email or edit a student’s grade, I see that yellow bucket.

Then I’m tired all over again.

https://pwross.medium.com/?source=post_page-----db40275a5418-----------------------------------

Pete Ross

https://index.medium.com/entry-level-jobs-are-everything-wrong-with-the-21st-century-db40275a5418?source=post_page-----db40275a5418-----------------------------------

Dec 13, 2021·4 min read

Photo: Adrian Sulyok/Unsplash

As a 41-year-old, I’ve seen the working world make a sizeable transition from when I was a kid to the point we’re at now. When I started working, it was all about “getting your foot in the door” with an entry-level job and working your way up. The pay wasn’t great (it wasn’t…

https://irmamcclaurin.medium.com/?source=post_page-----6275c7ddb3d0-----------------------------------

Irma McClaurin

https://zora.medium.com/ode-to-bell-hooks-6275c7ddb3d0?source=post_page-----6275c7ddb3d0-----------------------------------

Dec 16, 2021·2 min read

Images from bell hooks INSTITUTE, Berea College, bellhooksinstitute.com

sista bell hooks,

to you,

we owe

an enormous debt

that can never really

be repaid

in full.

You fed our minds,

gave us concepts

like Black Feminism

“Granite erratic, Dudmaston” by Richard Webb is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/?ref=openverse&atype=rich

It was the rock that caught my eye. Dappled with lichen and lighted by the afternoon sun, it appeared to be the perfect place for contemplation. A spot where you could sit and write your novel, ponder your place in the universe, and perhaps reach some kind of equilibrium with the planet.

https://evepeyser.medium.com/?source=post_page-----763e1678591b-----------------------------------

Eve Peyser

https://evepeyser.medium.com/how-people-who-kept-their-new-years-resolutions-did-it-763e1678591b?source=post_page-----763e1678591b-----------------------------------

Dec 17, 2021·7 min read

Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash

Time is kinda fake, but the new year nevertheless feels like a clean slate, a moment where you have the opportunity to shed old sins and reinvent yourself anew. For many, this translates to buying a gym membership and vowing to lose 15 pounds. So by March, when you…

I would like to dismiss 2021 as a terrible, no-good, very bad year, a year to be sept away and forgotten as quickly as possible. After all, it was a year that began with the insurrection and was quickly followed by my ALS diagnosis. Dire on both the public and private fronts. Such a year can’t possibly have been anything other than bad. And yet — it was also the year that I not only had a new book published, I also sold two new books (on the same day!) to come out in 2022. More importantly, it was a year in which I connected in a deeply heartfelt way with so many friends, old and new, near and far. So, as is so often the case with not only years, but life experiences in general, 2021 was a mixed bag.

Still, I feel a need for a cleansing ritual as 2021 comes to a close, an acknowledgment that some things must be cleared away to make way for what comes next. I have a friend and a sister both of whom are avid sweepers. They take their brooms to the floor with such determination and ferocity it is almost scary — you would not want to be a crumb in their paths. I would trust both of them to sweep out the toxins of 2021 and prepare a clean slate for us going forward. I’ll let you know if they rent out their services.

When my husband and I moved, sixteen years ago, to the house where we currently live, neighbors eyed us warily then came over to check us out. They were amazingly direct about hoping we were good people, because the residents who preceded us were definitely not. Those people had harassed the African American kid across the street. They had amassed piles of glass-laden junk that they expected Goodwill to cart away. They irked the postwoman, the utility person, the telephone guy. Everyone had a story of malfeasance. They were all relieved this extended family had moved out.

Several people suggested a saging ceremony was in order, and I, as a lover of ritual, thought *why not. *So we obtained some sage and burned it in a short ceremony in which we said some words about hoping to made the atmosphere of the property more positive and loving. It seems to have worked, as all traces of the former residents’ bad juju seem to have disappeared, and our years here have been happy, including very enjoyable and mutually helpful relationships with our neighbors.

Sweeping and saging are both great rituals to take us over the threshold into 2022. It is, of course, a completely arbitrary crossing, but because we, as human beings, are meaning makers, it doesn’t feel that way, much as we (I) often try to tell ourselves that the celebration of a new year is manufactured. Why do we do this crazy celebrating with drunkenness and resolutions we know we won’t make good on? Because, I think, a new year gives hope a new platform. The things we hope and wish for seem to have a greater likelihood of coming to pass in the shiny new year than they did in the nasty old one.

When I met my now-husband, he had been reading the Tao Te Ching, and he wanted to warn me about the dangers of hope (the hope of being published was then in our sightlines). The Tao Te Ching warns us against the danger and fallacy of hope. “Hope is as hollow as fear,” says the Stephen Mitchell translation. Or, as my husband put it, “Hope is the flip side of despair.” The Tao eschews hope because of its relationship to selfhood which is reputed to be the cause of human suffering. To hope sets us up for disappointment.

After many years of thinking about this, and weighing the pros and cons of hope, I would humbly take issue with this Taoist point of view. I think most human beings need hope to carry on through life’s plentiful challenges. We need to feel that our lives, and the world in general, might improve. Without hope the motivation for doing much, beyond going to work, would quickly dissipate. Why exercise if you don’t hope to improve your health. Why do volunteer work if you don’t hope that someone will benefit. Hope has been a powerful force in the accomplishments of so many great liberation movements. Women and blacks would not have achieved the right to vote were it not for some people with very strong hope. People dared to hope, as Barack Obama knew. We need to hope without getting attached to specific outcomes, but we can’t give up on the entire idea of hope, which is endlessly renewable.

January is named for the Roman god Janus, guardian of doorways and transitions, who is depicted with two faces, one looking forward and one looking back. It’s almost impossible not to do both at this time of year, reflecting back to sweep out the horrors of 2021, and looking ahead with hope for better things in 2022.

As I try to expunge the bad juju of the insurrection and my diagnosis, I am keenly involved in looking ahead with hope and optimism: I’m hoping to be alive and mobile when my books come out in August and September, I’m hoping to get to Denver to see my grandniece after she is born in February, I am hoping to hold onto my manual dexterity for the continued writing of fiction and this blog, I am hoping Congress passes the voting rights bills, I am hoping to continue communicating with as many friends as possible. And finally, I am hoping I can make peace with whatever of these hopes don’t materialize.

I wish you all a smooth transition as you sweep and sage and make the most of hope.

Here’s my annual list of favorite books, music, and movies. Art always sustains and nourishes the soul. But for me, music and storytelling felt especially urgent during this pandemic year — a way to connect even when we were cooped up.

Since these are works I have actually listened to, watched, or read, I’m sure I’ve missed some worthy stuff. So if you have your own recommendations to share, I’ll add them to the stack of books and movies I hope to catch up on over the holidays!

Favorite Books of 2021:

• Matrix — Lauren Groff

• How the Word Is Passed — Clint Smith

• The Final Revival of Opal & Nev — Dawnie Walton

• The Lincoln Highway — Amor Towles

• Invisible Child: Poverty, Survival & Hope in an American City — Andrea Elliott

• Harlem Shuffle — Colson Whitehead

• Cloud Cuckoo Land — Anthony Doerr

• These Precious Days — Ann Patchett

• Crying in H Mart — Michelle Zauner

• Aftershocks — Nadia Owusu

• Crossroads — Jonathan Franzen

• The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois — Honorée Fanonne Jeffers

• Beautiful Country — Qian Julie Wang

And here’s a reminder of books I recommended earlier this year:

• At Night All Blood Is Black — David Diop

• Land of Big Numbers — Te-Ping Chen

• Empire of Pain — Patrick Radden Keefe

• Project Hail Mary — Andy Weir

• When We Cease to Understand the World — Benjamín Labatut

• Under a White Sky: The Nature of the Future — Elizabeth Kolbert

• Things We Lost to the Water — Eric Nguyen

• Leave The World Behind — Rumaan Alam

• Klara and the Sun — Kazuo Ishiguro

• The Sweetness of Water — Nathan Harris

• Intimacies — Katie Kitamura

Favorite Movies of 2021:

• Drive My Car

• Summer of Soul

• West Side Story

• The Power of the Dog

• Pig

• Passing

• The Card Counter

• Judas and the Black Messiah

• The Worst Person in the World

• Old Henry

• The Last Duel

• The Tragedy of Macbeth

• C’mon C’mon

• Quo Vadis, Aida?

Favorite Music of 2021:​​

• The Only Heartbreaker — Mitski

• I Don’t Live Here Anymore — The War On Drugs ft. Lucius

• Tala Tannam — Mdou Moctar

• Magnolia Blues — Adia Victoria

• Witchoo — Durand Jones & The Indications & Aaron Frazer

• Formwela 10 — Esperanza Spalding

• Gold Chains — Genesis Owusu

• Broken Horses — Brandi Carlile

• Woman — Little Simz ft. Cleo Sol

• Pepas — Farruko

• Go Down Deh — Spice ft. Sean Paul & Shaggy

• Freedom — Jon Batiste

• It’s Way with Me — Wye Oak

• Nobody- Nas ft. Ms. Lauryn Hill

• Nightflyer — Allison Russell

• Montero (Call Me By Your Name) — Lil Nas X

• Patria y Vida — Yotuel, Gente de Zona, Descemer Bueno, Maykel Osorbo, el Funky

• Notice — Tammy Lakkis

• Armash — Teddy Afro

• Write a List of Things To Look Forward To -Courtney Barnett

• Volví — Aventura & Bad Bunny

• Headshots (4r Da Locals) — Isaiah Rashad

• Boomerang — Yebba

• In My Blood — MO3 & Morray

• Ya — YEИDRY

• Rumors — Lizzo ft. Cardi B

• Walking at a Downtown Pace — Parquet Courts

And here’s a reminder of the songs I had on my summer playlist:

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ScottCDunn

https://medium.com/creators-hub/id-like-to-be-free-of-it-now-85498e3e5b25?source=post_page-----85498e3e5b25-----------------------------------

Dec 16·5 min read

Photo: Matthieu Spohn/Getty Images

Addictions are usually addictions to consumption. I’m no stranger to addiction. I’ve tried pot, booze, people, sex, food, caffeine, histrionics, TV, and news scrolling. I’ve tasted many things to alter my mood and every one of them came up empty. In the end, it’s still up to me to be happy. No matter how I try to alter my…

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.

https://justinel999.medium.com/?source=post_page-----7d0ed68e4926-----------------------------------

Justine L

https://index.medium.com/oh-please-can-2022-be-the-year-we-have-less-meetings-7d0ed68e4926?source=post_page-----7d0ed68e4926-----------------------------------

Dec 15·4 min read

Photo: Chris Montgomery/Unsplash

I’m pretty sure that I’ve attended more meetings in the last twenty months than in the thirty or so years of my pre-2020 working life.

Strides in workplace technology have been a pandemic success story, enabling many people to continue their employment and…

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.*

https://scottcdunn.medium.com/?source=post_page-----85498e3e5b25-----------------------------------

ScottCDunn

https://medium.com/creators-hub/id-like-to-be-free-of-it-now-85498e3e5b25?source=post_page-----85498e3e5b25-----------------------------------

Dec 16·5 min read

Photo: Matthieu Spohn/Getty Images

Addictions are usually addictions to consumption. I’m no stranger to addiction. I’ve tried pot, booze, people, sex, food, caffeine, histrionics, TV, and news scrolling. I’ve tasted many things to alter my mood and every one of them came up empty. In the end, it’s still up to me to be happy. No matter how I try to alter my…

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.

https://justinel999.medium.com/?source=post_page-----7d0ed68e4926-----------------------------------

Justine L

https://index.medium.com/oh-please-can-2022-be-the-year-we-have-less-meetings-7d0ed68e4926?source=post_page-----7d0ed68e4926-----------------------------------

Dec 15·4 min read

Photo: Chris Montgomery/Unsplash

I’m pretty sure that I’ve attended more meetings in the last twenty months than in the thirty or so years of my pre-2020 working life.

Strides in workplace technology have been a pandemic success story, enabling many people to continue their employment and…