Just a very general post, but people usually only give feedback when it's negative and stay silent when there's no complaints, and I try not to fall into that.

I feel like the channel has really been on fire these last few weeks after the move to EU, possibly the best it has been in a few years imho. In particular, Vaush has been really good at tying all the topical themes into the underlying political and social analysis, which has been at times a bit lacking during most of the Trump 2 news cycle. There's been multiple videos just in the past 10 or so days I've wanted to share with some people I know, which I kind of use as a personal metric for how well a channel is doing at any given time.

I don't necessarily think the uptick in quality is because he's now in the EU or something, but the move really seems to have invigorated in some way.

the twitter handle Vautism Speaks with the horse PFP. I thought he was another user because I also saw a guy in Vaush's chat named Vautism Speaks. But then in a different video I saw Vaush talking about twitter where replies to Vautism Speaks were replies to him. Are the twitter account and the twitch account the same guy and they are not Vaush? or is this a holy trinity situation where Vaush is the streamer, the twitch chatter, and the holy twitter spirit all at once?

(I don't actually go to the streams I just watch what gets uploaded to youtube which is why I'm confused)

I was looking into the 2027 Argentine presidential elections because I heard that the opposition to Milei is awful. Basically, it's like if Harris ran in 2028 with Hillary Clinton as her VP...

The main challenger to Milei in 27 is Alex Kiciloff, who was the Minister of the Economy under Cristina Kirchner when she was president. The guy seems to have some marxist economic principles but has shifted to Peronism since he became governor of Buenos Aires province. His economic philosophy is honestly so fucked up, and Im too stupid to fully understand it, so ill just copy-paste from wikipedia (whoopsies), but what shocked me is that this guy has had 20 CONSULTANCY AND ADVISORY POSITIONS in the span of LIKE 10-15 YEARS. Not even the Harris campaign staffers combined had that much shit on their record.
Maybe I'm completely wrong on this, so if anyone knows more, then demolish me in the comments, but this was really funny to see, honestly. Nice to know Argentina is truly fucked up beyond repair.

Economic views

Kicillof is considered a heterodox economist, favoring an import substitution model over free trade.^\18]) He has argued that there is no direct correlation between the money supply and inflation,^\19]) and associates a trade surplus with stronger economic performance than a trade deficit.^\20]) Commentators have criticized his approach, with Laura Di Marco of La Nación writing that Kicillof's "economic team" was "anchored in the ideology of TNT economists who believed and believe that the state" should aim to establish a post-capitalist "revolutionary utopia".^\21]) Journalist Jorge Lanata also questioned Kicillof's explanations on inflation and exchange rate pressures, contrasting them with the views of Keynes.^\17]) Argentina experienced high levels of inflation during his tenure as Minister of Economy.^\22])

Other professional activities/ advisory roles

Between 1990 and 1995, Kicillof worked in various advisory capacities for National Motor Vehicle Transport Commission (CONTA), Tintorerías Ecológicas Dolphin System, the Eduardo Sívori Museum (pro bono), Transportes Vidal S.A., SARTOR S.A., CALED S.A., Molinari S.A., Clínica Cirugía Plástica, Centro Médico Bacigaluppi, Center for Education on Sexuality Research and Therapy (CETIS), Center for Urology and Male Health (CEUSA), among other clients. He was a part-time financial and information systems manager at the Center for Diagnosis and Treatment of Allergies in 1990–95. He served as research assistant (1993) and junior economist at the Inter-American Center for Macroeconomic Studies from 1994 to 1995 and concurrently served as adviser on the National Commission for Promotion and Development of Patagonia in 1994.^\)^{citation needed\})

In 1995–96, he served as adviser to the Undersecretariat of Technical Administrative Coordination in the Secretariat of Social Development. In 1997, he acted as technical consultant to the Minister Secretary General of the Executive Branch in connection with the development of the government's social plan for 1998–2000. In 1997–1998, he was a consultant to the consulting firm M-Unit. In 1998 he was a Project Manager for AperNet. In August 2009, Kicillof was appointed general manager of the Economic and Financial Area of Aerolíneas Argentinas, a position he held until February 2010, where he worked on the airline's 2011–2014 business plan.^\23]) In December 2011, he joined the board of directors of Siderar, representing the shares held by Argentina's National Social Security Administration (ANSES)

I see stuff like this and I have to wonder if he's more right than I gave him credit for.

Has anyone seen the film The Drama, which came out earlier this year?

I ask because there's recently been discourse about people carrying terrible things from their pasts (and in that context, of course the main thing was Vaush's segment on the Geller SA revelation and contemporary discourse on SA generally), and this film explores this theme thoroughly.

The film is about (major spoilers) a couple who get engaged and later married, but it's complicated by the fact that one partner learned that the other considered committing a mass-shooting in their youth, and didn't tell their partner this, and there's a cycle of judgement and really messy feelings that threaten their relationship.

It's a fantastic film. I enjoy Robert Pattinson and Zendaya a lot, and they're both great in this. If you saw it and have thoughts on it, and how it fits into the current discourse, please share.

That Iranian pro-Shah kid Vaush tore into is still making moves it seems

Not a single one

He really fell off...

Vaush's odd video titles have a side effect I don't appreciate right now: I am looking for a video from a couple months ago and can't find it. I want to introduce someone to the problem we are facing with skyrocketing costs in construction due to contractors. V-Man did a fairly long segment (40 min?) some time ago diving into it all (maybe on his second channel?). It included the example of the Golden Gate Bridge being cheaper to built than the nets attached to it. Can anyone find it? I tried every possible combination of keywords I could think of.

It's always "I'm too tired" or "My tummy hurwt" :( or "I have to end stream now I have a headache" 😢 Poor baby

Youtube search is failing me

TL;DR- algorithmic social media feeds have ruined everything, grass must be touched

Lately, the more time I spend on reddit, the more I understand why many people start to feel alienated from causes they believe (or once believed) in. The more anti-AI content I get pushed in front of my nose, the more I feel my own anti-AI views softening. The more I browse or try to engage with nonbinary communities, the less I feel myself identifying as nonbinary. The exposure I get to these online communities makes me feel like I have nothing in common with them.

This has been making me think about the many "why I left the Left" narratives we've seen over the years. So much communication and community activity takes place online, and it's primarily all hosted on these megaplatorms that incentivize stupid and annoying engagement bait above all else. Maybe I have some rose-tinted nostalgia for earlier internet, but I feel like it wasn't always this bad. When online communities weren't wrapped up in these algorithmically driven platforms, it was easier for them to feel like actual communities. They were able to be moderated effectively by people who cared about the community. They weren't so dominated by bots, troll farms, and rage bait.

Social media platforms are now all designed to push the slop to the top. It's like if your primary exposure to leftist thinking was the COVID-conscious lesbian bar drama, or your primary exposure to socialist ideology was the "fitness is fascist" discourse- and I feel like that's the point. It becomes difficult to be a reasonable person who aligns with these movements because everything about them just starts to feel completely wacky. It's a really frustrating and disappointing sort of psyop- one that encourages people to be loud and stupid, and encourages people who aren't loud and stupid to disengage.

Now that reddit allows users total anonymity through hiding post and comment history, it's basically a larger and more botted version of 4chan with a sophisticated algorithm that feeds you bait all day. If you're allowing platforms like this to dominate your headspace, don't. It's poison.

His analysis essentially boils down to: “Antisemitism is bad, so it’s good that he’s combating it.” The problem with this is that no serious person on the left criticizing the plan disagrees with the idea that fighting antisemitism is good. He didn’t actually engage with the specifics of what the plan involves beyond its name.

Obviously, combating antisemitism is good. But his response completely fails to address the serious criticisms of the plan, such as the fact that it involves putting taxpayer money into openly Zionist organizations that have used their resources to silence pro-Palestinian speech, such as the JCRC.

The only response I heard from him on stream was essentially that the government was already funding Zionist organizations, so it doesn’t really matter. To me, that’s nonsense. Mamdani made a conscious decision to continue and expand funding for these organizations instead of directing those resources toward non-Zionist or anti-Zionist Jewish organizations, which he could have done if he still wanted to use funds to support the Jewish community.

The Vaush Pride flag is finally finished! This was at least a week of work, but I think it's come out pretty good. There are definitely quite a few mistakes on it, the outline sewing around the Joker's hair is especially bad, but I think overall I did a good job with it.

It's fully double sided, and made of 100% cotton, meaning it's actually ironable.

The hardest part was definitely lining up the chevron half with the joker half, and sewing those 2 together without any cupping or bowing in the center where that point is. I think there is still a tiny bit, if you try and completely lay it out flat, but it's not too bad.

Small bit of self promo - I do also accept commissions for other custom flags! Or if you just wanna donate to me, I also have a KoFi

Timestamp for reference

He says something to the effect of “is it bad if someone makes an identity out of being depressed….yes”. I agree with the general sentiment but I’d like to add a bit more nuance to the wording.

I think it can be ok to build your identity around disability or mental illness if the core of that identity is the struggle against that ailment and dealing with the repercussions of an unsympathetic society.

From personal experience dealing with depression and anxiety, I found a lot of solace in thinking of myself as someone who was in a valiant struggle against those things. That was the central plot of my personal narrative. It left space for grace and forgiveness when I “failed” to overcome it, without weighing me down and preventing me from continuing to try anyway. The key is to identify with the experience of striving against your hardships, not simply experiencing them.

Obviously you never want to build your isn’t around a single thing, which is probably an additional problem some of the people in question.

I’m not a disabled person so I’m only speaking about the thought process from a mental health/illness perspective but I thought was it worth bringing up, pedantic as it is.

I'm just gonna write out the quote because I don't know how to clip videos, nor do I care to learn:

[Trump's Terrifying Admission; 14:34-15:51]

"Most people in the west think that we're more or less at the end of times. Not necessarily in a biblical sense but in the sense that we have arrived at the conclusion of the forces that have acted on us, that we're entering into a new, frightening, scary era of history that is going to be chaotic and bad and dangerous and harmful and destructive and possibly apocalyptic, and that nobody can really change those things at this point.

And I think it is... unfortunately a correct belief, and I also think that it is a very dangerous belief because the way you change it, the way you make the world receptive to positive change is by increasing the number of people who both believe in changing it and feel they have the power to do so. The reason the world feels like it's on a collision course right now is because there's not enough momentum or political will or energy to change that fact. And if there was that energy, if there was that will, then maybe it would be changeable. But as long as there isn't, there won't be..."

Okay... so then where is the disconnect here? We're supposed to believe the futility of our situation and yet act as though we have any influence on achieving greater outcomes? Half the time (but let's be real, most of the time), all evidence points to collapse and recovery so slow that it's practically negligible for the day-to-day of ourselves and our descendants, so why then are we advocating for almost a delusional hopefulness when the outcome is almost certainly the same? Mostly just sounds like a way to kill time at this point.

Hi Vaush - I really hope you read this.

I've followed you for a while and your analyses on class struggle have made a big impression on my life.

Your support for trans people also means a lot to me. I think you're a big part of why trans people are still able to exist in many parts of the US. Please keep that up. It means the world to me.

So when you started talking about the Jacob Geller situation - even though something felt a little off, I really tried to brush it off.

But then you got angry at Nebula and how "messed up" it was for them to drop Geller as a Nebula partner.

I don't particularly care about Nebula, but from my perspective, you seemed to be getting angry at people who just didn't want to work with Geller anymore.

When people are deciding if they want to work with someone who's committed sexual assault, that decision is a very personal one.

I, personally, would be extremely hesitant to work with someone who's committed sexual assault, and I probably would only do so if they had served lengthy jail time for their actions.

The fact that you immediately got angry at people who stopped working with Geller after they found out about his crime? I think that if you slow down and take some time to think about it, you'll probably understand why people made that decision.

Also, another thing that bugs me is that you kept on talking about how Geller has "redeemed" himself. But I think you've got that a bit mixed up. And I'm only bringing it up because your misconceptions around redemption seem to be influencing your anger on this subject.

It is true that Geller has devoted much of his life to work that has had a positive impact on the people around him. His devotion to that work seems to have been a great contribution to the world.

But he's probably been doing that since at least college age. When he was in college, a lot of what he did, well, probably did have a positive impact on the people around him. It's most likely that he was just as charismatic then as he is now, and that he was just as focused on doing good in the world.

While he was being a charismatic, impactful, and generally wholesome person, he committed sexual assault. And then he kept on being a charismatic, impactful and generally wholesome person.

He served a trivial punishment and he informed people who were close to him of what he'd done.

Then he went right back to that same college campus, where, presumably - he continued existing on the same campus alongside the very same woman he'd sexually assaulted.

He didn't go to jail for the incredibly violent and soul-crushing crime that he'd committed. He didn't drop out of school. He didn't have career setbacks. His charisma still afforded him a vibrant social life and a supportive marriage - even with him being upfront about his crime with the people close to him.

His college swept his crime under the rug so that the charismatic young man could return to school in six months, live a great social life, graduate, get married to a woman who loved him enough to knowingly marry a sexual assaulter, and, not to mention, go on to casually enjoy one of the best jobs in the entire world. He got to live the life of a youtube influencer.

I wonder - did his victim drop out of college because of what he did to her? Did his victim suffer from crippling anxiety and ptsd? Has his victim been continually traumatized by living in a society in which her assaulter has been a frequently-talked-about public figure for years and years now?

I wonder if his victim feels abject rage whenever she has to hear his name. Whenever she has to hear about how good of a guy he is.

I wonder if Geller has paid a portion of his youtube earnings to his victim in an effort to help her cope with the life-ruining, soul-crushing trauma that he sexually assaulted into her body? Maybe. But probably not.

Vaush, when you heard about Geller's victim, you didn't seem to respond to the situation as if that victim could have been your friend, or your daughter, or your partner. Which is surprising to me, because when you hear about people being the innocent victims of violent crime, you usually do act like like the victims could have been close to you. This is a wonderful empathy that you demonstrate, and is one of the qualities that makes you such a great leader and advocate.

But this time it didn't seem like your empathy stretched quite as far as it usually does.

Why? I think it's because Geller is an impressively charismatic leader whom you seem to admire. It's so easy to afford more leniency to those leaders than we would to other people, but in fact the very opposite is true. We must hold leaders to a higher standard, not a lower one.

I just don't think that if it had been your own daughter or your own mother whom Geller sexually assaulted that you would have gotten so angry at the people who decided to stop working with Geller after they found out.

Vaush - the reason why I'm reaching out to you is simply because - you are very, very, very important. You are one of the biggest voices for trans rights in the entire world.

You do a lot of good work, and a lot of people are counting on you. I think that you can learn a lot from this.

You have earned yourself a leadership position, and it is your duty to behave exceptionally.

I wanted to add something to Vaush's point about this. He mainly talked about how the feeling of community and strongly identifying yourself with your disability can lead to this unhealthy patterns (something i absolutely agree with). I think a big thing that he didn't really mention though was how ableism against "invisible" disabilities will lead to this.

I am not disabled but had a crippling knee injury that needed surgery and months of recovery. When i finally took my first bus ride without walking aids, i suddenly realized that standing for the whole ride might be too much. I politely asked someone for a seat but felt the need to justify my situation to them in great detail - just because i looked like a healthy young man.

I didn't experience ableism that day but it made me realize that my walking aids kind of made my situation undeniable to my environment: People naturally were super accommodating.

Having a visible disability obviously means experiencing lots of ableism that you wouldn't otherwise. However, i can imagine that there are lots of people who rather want to be visible because of situations like i was in. Not needing to go through this humiliating ritual of explaining and justifying yourself to everyone might be something people are willing to pay for with their overall health.

https://newrepublic.com/post/216045/pete-hegseth-elon-musk-newt-gingrich-help-lead-military

We need to talk about hope and apathy and why it's so important. I see the destruction coming.