J.P.

Many of these channels are super famous, so I’m probably not discovering those to anyone, but anyway. Here are some of my favorites, in alphabetical order:

• AsapSCIENCE (he/him both of them) - Science education. They also have a podcast called Sidenote that supplements their channel, in which they have longer conversations around the topics of their videos or other topics, and you get to enjoy their personalities.

• Carlos Maza (he/him) - Former Vox journalist, now turned independent. He makes amazing leftist video essays.

• Contrapoints (she/her) - Video essays, often around online conversation topics and debates.

• Faline San (any pronouns, but prefers he/him) - I just stumbled upon him a few days ago, and I have binged most videos on his channel. Hilarious storytelling of mostly mundane things. Great for lighthearted content.

• Freya Holmér (she/her) - Game developement, often complicated stuff that goes way over my head, but her “Math for Game Devs” videos are a must watch for any aspiring game developer. She breaks down really complicated stuff and makes it incredibly easy to understand and apply into your games. She also streams on twitch sometimes.

• JaidenAnimations (she/her) - Comedy animated videos, mostly around gaming or personal life storytelling. Also streams on twitch.

• JustWrite (he/him) - Video essays about movies, and sometimes other media.

• münecat (she/her) - More video-essays around leftist topics. Also makes music on twitch.

• Shonalika (they/them) - Can you guess it? Yes! More video-essays! (and some music).

I’m no economist, but I’m pretty sure what we have now is 100% capitalism. It’s exactly how many people predicted capitalism would look like if given enough time.

Many years ago, a libertarian classmate asked me how I think the world would look like if corporations were unregulated. I told him (again, without being an economist) that corporations would probably become the new countries, that they would own everything like monarchs used to, as a few corporations monopolized everything. (I still find his answer funny: “And wouldn’t that be better?”. I just told him “Of course not!” thinking “WTF?”).

My point is that this idea that the current system is “worse than capitalism” and “capitalism is dead”, stems from some kind of idealization of what capitalism is supposed to be like, and not from the realities that many people have been pointing out throughout the XX and XXI centuries about how capitalism works and what its end-goal is. This is exactly what capitalism looks like. “Technofeudalism” seems like yet another way of not addressing the issue, like when people say “the problem is not capitalism! it’s crony capitalism!”. As if there is some form of capitalism that has ever put people over money.

Also:

It might look like a market, but Varoufakis says it’s anything but. Jeff (Bezos, the owner of Amazon) doesn’t produce capital, he argues. He charges rent. Which isn’t capitalism, it’s feudalism.

Again, I’m no economist, so someone correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m pretty sure the capitalists (i.e. the owners of the means of production) have never produced capital. The workers do. The capitalist have always taken the profits of their worker’s labour in exchange for using those means of production. You could call that “charging rent”.

There is nothing new about what’s going on right now, except on the superficial level, the specific tech that’s being used to achieve the monopolistic goals of any corporation. Given enough time, the inevitable concentration of power that capitalism leads to, will always look like feudalism.

I really enjoyed this article. It’s very validating to see that other people see the same issues as I do with pseudoscience, especially when spouted by reputable scientists.

The field of psychology, in particular, still feels riddled with pseudoscience everywhere you look (probably due to being so young compared to other fields), which has already severely undermined its reputation in the eyes of many people I’ve talked to.

I didn’t know about IIT specifically, but I’ve definitely heard way too much quackery around the concept of consciousness. To me, the first issue that I find around this topic is the lack of an operational definition. There seems to be no agreement about what are we looking for exactly. If we are going to look for this human-made construct called consciousness, first we need a clear definition that allows us to measure it, and separate what is conciousness from what isn’t. Once we have that definition, we can search for consciousness, and after that, then we can start making theories about how it emerges.

Hello everyone! I’m JP, still undecided on pronouns (any for now). I tend to be a lurker even IRL (I’m the quiet person who just likes to be there), but I’d like to start participating more in the spaces I enjoy and maybe find some sense of community.

Lately I’ve grown tired of my hobbies, and I’ve been looking for new ones. Growing up I read a lot, I used to draw and write, I played a lot of videogames, and I practiced martial arts (Karate and Judo). Later in my teens I learned to play guitar and bass, some friends got me into anime and manga (although I don’t watch or read many anymore), and like most people, I’ve enjoyed many movies and TV shows.

Recently I learned how to code (just the basics in Java, I still don’t know how to build a full web/mobile app), I started learning gamedev in Godot (I did the basic tutorials for 2D and 3D games), and now I’m trying to learn 3D modeling in Blender, but I’m pretty slow and inconsistent. I also spend a lot of time online learning about social issues, probably to the detriment of my mental health.

Other hobbies I’d like to try in the future include cooking (I suck at it, but I’d like to get good); sewing, knitting and crocheting; painting, and I’d like to get into reading and writing again at some point. I’d also like to learn how to make music, since I only know how to learn songs, but not how to write, record or produce one. My favourite music falls into the “alt-rock/indie-rock” umbrella, and lately I’ve also been discovering post-rock, which I love.

Nice to meet you all! So far, Beehaw seems like a really nice place to be(e).