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What makes the colors in Soviet postcards so beautiful?

I don't know about you, but I love the colors in professional Soviet photography from the 70s and 80s, like the ones you find in old postcards. I don't know what causes it, but they look cozy to me, making any district look like home. I wish I could achieve colors like that in my own film photography.

These are a couple of old photos of Lazdynai, the residential district my next video will cover, which won the Lenin prize in 1974.

POLL: What interests you about Soviet urban development?

The most popular video topic in my last poll was the one on Lazdynai, the most praised residential district in all of the USSR in the 70s. I've been reading a lot on the topic in preparation for writing the script, and there's a lot of material that can be covered. So I wanted to ask: what aspects of this topic were you most curious about? Multiple choice is allowed!

The people have spoken...

I was surprised to see that the winning topic for my next video was about Soviet urban development (the district of Lazdynai), given than in an earlier poll, architecture was the least popular topic. A close second was the St. Louis Commune, so those are the two topics I have started researching for. Just got this book in the mail!

What should my next video be about?

IT'S POLL TIME. Let me know which topic you're most excited about. Multiple choice is enabled!

1) There’s an Italian movie about Friedrich Nietzsche called Beyond Good and Evil (1977) that I’d like to talk about simply because of how bizarre it is. This would be more of a fun video, less theoretical and more biographical. The movie portrays Nietzsche as being a lot more sexually active than he probably was in real life, and also as a closeted gay man, which I could use as ...

Which of these topics are you most interested in?

After a long period of demotivation and creative block, I'm getting back into a variety of readings with a view to writing a new video. I know most of you are looking forward to my new videos regardless of the topic, but I wanted to check which of these topics there's generally more interest in:

1) Film photography is one of my own hobbies, and I recently started reading Roland Barthes' Camera Lucida (after reading Susan Sontag's On Photography last year). That alongs...

This Patreon exclusive is now on YouTube

The Schiller essay cited in the video can be found in the anthology Classical and Romantic German Aesthetics, edited by J. M. Bernstein, which I uploaded to our Google Drive:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1Er7ltWp-Qsmw0fPYpqsxLSHQZPWzbuZn?usp=drive_link

Enjoy!

The YouTube channel is back

There were some safety concerns that had led me to temporarily privatize all my videos, but the immediate threat has passed now, and so I'm happy to announce my channel is back up!

If any video you're looking for is still missing from the channel, you should be able to find it on our Google Drive:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/15VDYX52798MVDljHU99tDIFA...

New video: Architecture & Schiller on Beauty

Like I promised, here's another short-form video! For now this is a Patreon-exclusive but I will be releasing it on YouTube eventually. Kind of a niche topic - Friedrich Schiller's analysis of beauty as freedom of appearance applied to a specific architectural phenomenon. I hope you enjoy!

My soviet architecture photography

I recently did some black & white photos of soviet architecture in my original hometown (used Rollei Retro 400S which is my favorite b&w film + a basic old point-and-shoot camera). I'm quite happy with how some of them turned out. If you'd like to use any of these for anything, I can send you the full-size .TIFF files.

Have a good weekend!

Temporary change

Hi, hope you are well. I wanted to let my patrons know that I will be privatizing all my YouTube videos for now. I can't talk about the reasons behind this, but it IS temporary, so don't worry. I will make them available later this year. I also will still be coming out with another short-form video as planned.

Meanwhile, you can still find my video files on our Google Drive: 2025-04-30 02:00:13 +0000 UTC View Post

Scatman thumbnail variations

Although the first thumbnail proved to be the most successful one, I was too proud of the other two not to share em. Feel free to use them for something if you want. Long Live Scatman.

Scatman John – A Marxist Analysis

It's out! This is something that's been on my mind for a decade.

In the near future I'll be putting out another short video. See you then. Thank you!

A couple of short videos coming soon

Recent political events have had a pretty negative effect on my mental state, and I've had trouble concentrating on research and writing, but I am currently working on two shorter videos (about 6-7 minutes each), one of which will come out on April 1st. See you then!

Here's my book

Repeater Books has been taken over by a venture capitalist with investments in Israel who has suppressed pro-Palestine sentiments, and I don't want purchases of my book to support that piece of shit, so I'm attaching a full free copy of my book, How to Philosophize With a Hammer and Sickle. It'll be our secret. Enjoy!

Which of these topics sound most interesting?

I'm often choosing what to read based on how likely I think it is to make for interesting video material, but there's also always too much to choose from. These are not yet specific video ideas, just a couple of topics I've looked into recently, and I wanna do a poll so as to decide which of them I should do more reading on:

Does anyone here watch Any Austin?

Kind of an unusual question, but Any Austin has recently become one of my favorite gaming YouTubers, to the point where I'm considering making a philosophy video on some of his content. I just love the way he uses video games in ways completely unintended by the developers, and how he approaches video games as aesthetic phenomena, focusing on aspects of them that are supposed to be unimportant or external to the gameplay. Wondering if anyone else here has watched his videos, and if you'd be i...

My 10 Favorite Books I've Read in 2024

The video is out, hope you discover something new to read from it!

I've uploaded all the titles mentioned in the video on our Google Drive: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1rasWDAFyI4t1EOSePbeLc0LbMKf10rHN?usp=sharing 

Enjoy!

Does anyone care about Lithuania?

Lately, my main reading interest in my free time has been about 20th century Lithuanian history, especially the early Lithuanian communist movement. It's a topic that can be difficult to research because so much material is either Soviet state propaganda that omits a lot of details, or rabid nationalist anti-communism.

It would be nice to turn this personal interest into video material, but I don't know if enough people are interested in Lithuanian history from a left-wing perspective t...

Game recommendation: Dread Delusion

Dread Delusion is a relatively little known indie game that was one of my favorite games I played last year, and I wanted to recommend it as I think it deserves to be more well-known. It's a choice-heavy fantasy RPG with retro-style graphics. Like Disco Elysium, it has extensive worldbuilding that includes its own history, locations, cultures, political factions, and even physical laws.

One of the central factions of the game is the Apostatic Union, which I chose to play as a supporter ...

List of my 10 favorite books I read in 2024

Happy new year, everyone! I'm currently working on my annual top 10 video of my favorite books I read last year, and I wanted to publish the list to my patrons in advance.

Here it is, in no particular order:

Ghassan Kanafani - Men in the Sun and Other Palestinian Stories
Karl Marx - Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844
John Berger - Ways of Seeing
Henri Bergson - Laughter
Harry Cleaver - Reading Capital Politicall...