#like obviously not using podcasts as sources lol but I find listening to these topics helps with my thinking

[communistkenobi]

does anyone have listening recommendations for like contemporary coverage of the far-right in north america. kind of like Knowledge Fight/Qanon Anonymous but less online-irony-jokey style and more informative. Or at least more theoretically grounded

[thesophistiicate]

https://www.tumblr.com/thesophistiicate/762548455778467840/maybe-an-unpopular-opinion-but-despite-my-passion?source=share

can you advise us with some of this books? ❤️

i'm planning on doing some master lists on different topics soon. i'm going to go 'back to basics' myself and brush up on literature, philosophy, and explore more essayists myself. i feel a bit insecure about my lists, i'm usually very private about my reading as i hate to invite judgement and i generally feel people these days are so weird about books and reading lol 😳

but here's what i'm going to do:

late 19th + 20th century literature was always my favourite so i'm going back to writers like: émile zola, virginia woolf, evelyn waugh, gabriel garcía márequez, erich maria remarque, f scott fitzgerald, ernest hemingway, gustave flaubert, edith wharton, sylvia plath, james baldwin, george orwell, anaïs nin etc etc... many more i'm forgetting. a limited and imperfect list but is based on what i already own just to start with. i do want to get to grips with more modern writers but i find it so hard to navigate what is actually good vs social media hype.

philosophy: i'm listening to the podcast 'the (partially) examined life' from the beginning, decent for casual philosophy beginners (their refusal to touch on faith is so annoying but otherwise it's ok). i want to find another more academic one too though. i'm revisiting the basics: aristotle (plato, socrates), rousseau, machiavelli, descartes, hobbes, simone de beauvoir, sartre, marx etc... i'm forgetting so many but you get the picture.

essayists: i'm just diving more into this realm. i read a lot of essays that are articles but i'm looking to books and collected works to study it better. joan didion obviously. again many of the same literature writers: woolf, baldwin, bell hooks. zadie smith, rebecca solnit...

i honestly think following your own train of interest is great. what do you care a lot about, then find classics on that theme. i've always found it difficult to stick to lists or read out of a sense of obligation. personally i find authors like zola and wharton very approachable and resonant to the modern reader (often exploring womanhood, desire, consumption etc - i feel most of you would be into that), if you wanted somewhere to start.

[langblr-polish]

Comprehensible Input

So recently I had a look at the language learning community on YouTube. Admittedly it was kind of a bad idea and I'm glad I've managed to stay away from it until now, lol. Anyway, the big talk of the town seems to be comprehensible input this, comprehensible input that, and comprehensible input is the best method, studies show its better than this, that, and the other thing.

The funny thing is, there's hardly any talk of HOW to implement comprehensible input and information about how tends to be skewed toward those who are trying to break through the B1-B2 plateau.

So, from what I can gather, comprehensible input generally means you want to understand 98% (though some say as low as 95%) of the foreign language content you are consuming (reading, listening, watching).

Now the part that I find extremely hilarious is that for a language learner in the beginning stages, the best source of comprehensible input is obviously going to be a textbook (at least in my opinion). Which is funny because for all the polyglots talking about comprehensible input and how it's better than the standard methods of language learning (e.g. in a classroom using a textbook), it never seems to come up that you can't just start with native content -- that's not going to be comprehensible.

So let me give you an example for Polish specifically of how textbooks are comprehensible input. Let's say you just started learning Polish and you're using the Krok po Kroku books and website. You do the first couple of lessons and you can greet others and give basic information about yourself. In the textbooks there is dialog with audio (listening) and maybe some short paragraphs (reading). As the lesson introduces the vocabulary, it is being introduced at a comprehensible level. Mind you Krok po Kroku is only in Polish, but if you go to the website you can highlight a word with your mouse and the definition will pop up, or you can look up unknown words in a dictionary of your choice. Additionally, the Krok po Kroku series has Czytaj Krok po Kroku which is a series of books with short stories.

Now, this particular series of books becomes more story driven as you get further into the textbook and gain more vocabulary. So the series centers around a handful of characters who have arrived in Poland and are learning Polish. So at first you’re listening to and reading dialogs about them doing basic things, then as you get further in you get more story-based texts and dialogues where the characters go on a trip, or are at the store trying to figure out what the salesperson means, or getting a gift for a birthday party where the characters are bit more conversational or funny things are said or happen. And for some of the more abstract vocabulary, you might have a dialog or a paragraph where they say a new vocabulary word in the context of what’s going on, and then in the next line they more or less explain what the word means through the use of circumlocution (talking around the word). And then of course the actual short story books have actual short stories in them. So this is all pretty comprehensible and it’s at your level, similar to a graded reader, but at a considerably lower level than most graded readers start at with vocabulary that is specifically constrained to the topic of that lesson as well as vocabulary from previous lessons. Whereas, graded readers are at a designated level, but the vocabulary is not constrained to the that of your textbook of choice.

I don’t know. I guess I just find it funny how this little section of the language learning community is ready to do away with textbooks so easily, but to me it seems like they stumbled upon the buzz word “comprehensible input” at a time on their language learning journeys, where native content (shows, podcasts, YouTubers, etc.) was comprehensible to them. But to implement “comprehensible input” as the language learning method from day one, you need that textbook, unless you are learning a popular language that has many online resources for comprehensible, story-based input without the use of a textbook. For example, there seems to be channels for Spanish, French, and German that are geared toward the use of comprehensible, story-based input to teach the language only in the foreign language, with no or minimal English. And I feel like for people who are just starting to learn a language and are scouring the internet for the best way to do so, are likely a considerable portion of the viewership on these channels touting comprehensible input, but have no ideas where to start with comprehensible input. So I thought I’d give my two cents on the matter.

[communistkenobi]

Hey Nick, I was wondering if you had any reading recommendations for ppl looking to get more into political/leftist theory? Ik you've posted a lot about The Authoritarian Personality and I agree with your insights and posts abt it and I'm considering picking that up! But I also wanted to know if you have any other recs besides that? Anyways, thanks so much, and give Muffin a pet for me! :^)

I would recommend reading historical non fiction written from leftist perspectives. I often find that to be A) a more approachable start if you’re not super familiar/comfortable with the more dense and abstract theoretical texts, and B) very instructive in what the actual value of leftist political thought is, how it’s been built and shaped throughout history, and the core contradictions that exist within class relationships. Reading about the Haitian Revolution is a great start, either Black Jacobins or Avengers of the New World (I’ve only read the latter but I’ve heard Black Jacobins is the better of the two so I recommend that one, Avengers was a bit dry). Cesaire’s Discourse on Colonialism essay is also fantastic, I find him to be very insightful (and funny) without speaking in the more dry academic tones you’d find in a lot of other theory. + I think it’s foundational in describing what colonialism “is”, not just as a historical process but as a historical force itself

I would also recommend David Harvey’s work, he’s a very influential marxist geographer and has written a lot about how neoliberalism is expressed in the built environment/urban contexts (+ I think neoliberalism is one of those concepts that’s extremely valuable to understand because it’s the dominant expression of capitalism, and knowing exactly what it is and what it does will be very useful in helping you understand a lot of what’s happening today economically). He also wrote what I believe is a fairly famous book called A Companion to Marx’s Capital, though I haven’t read that one. Everything I’ve read of Marx’s work has been fairly impenetrable, so (echoing advice I hear often) I would recommend secondary sources that either commentate or criticise his stuff. Which is extremely easy to find because everyone is responding to Marx lol

OH also Transgender Marxism is a self explanatory collection of essays on the topic of transness and marxism. I’ve read a couple of the essays in there that I’ve been impressed with, particularly Seizing the Means: Towards a Trans Epistemology and ‘Why Are We Like This?’: The Primacy of Transsexuality.

I can provide you the list of books I’ve bought and intend to read after I’m finished The Authoritarian Personality but haven’t gotten around to yet. A lot of the stuff ive read are journal articles / books that are written specifically to be taught in universities so they aren’t necessarily good to recommend because they can be hard to find/expensive/annoying to read. Although if you do want some recommendations in that vein I’d be happy to share a list + any PDFs I have on hand

Anyway this is what I want to read after I’m finished auth personality:

A People’s History of the United States (I almost always see this on “so you want to start reading leftist theory” lists)

The Jakarta Method (a book about the United State’s anti communist foreign policy during the Cold War. I hear the subject matter is pretty horrifying but very illuminating)

Are Prisons Obsolete? By Angela Davis

I also listen to podcasts about theory by other grad students but idk if that’s what you’re looking for. If you are I recommend Liv Agar and What’s Left of Philosophy. Obviously this has a lower bar on quality and fact checking but I find them enjoyable. Also if you’re into podcasts Blowback is really good (covers the Iraq War and Cuban Revolution).

Sorry this is a bit scatterbrained but I hope that helps lmao. If that’s not helpful I can take a look at some of the shit I have downloaded on my computer. Mutuals can also chime in if they have book/essay recommendations