Thursday, March 10, 2022

Why the far-left and far-right can’t resist Putin

Paint your picture by means of the lights. Lights define texture and color —  shadows define form.

— Howard Pyle, born in 1853



Police drop charges against Friendlyjordies producer Kristo Langker


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Before he was booted off the ABC’s Q+A by host Stan Grant in a dramatic television moment, Sasha Gillies-Lekakis made history as the first student from the University of Melbourne to undertake an exchange program in communist Cuba.

Gillies-Lekakis has written glowingly about his experience on the Caribbean island, saying the one-party state had long been “misrepresented and misunderstood around the world”.

In a subsequent piece for socialist magazine the Monthly Review, Gillies-Lekakis showered praise on Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua’s left-wing governments for their responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. His conclusion: “socialism is far more effective than capitalism in reducing both the human and economic costs of the COVID-19 crisis”.

In his controversial Q&A question on Thursday defending the Russian viewpoint on Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, Gillies-Lekakis described himself as a member of the “the Russian community here in Australia”.

 Why the far-left and far-right can’t resist Putin




Heroic Secret Service Agent Dives In Front Of Biden As Reporter Tries To Ask A QuestionBabylon Bee 



  1. What are the main contributions that philosophers have made to Internet studies? — Catarina Dutilh Novaes (VU Amsterdam) starts a list and gets some help from the crowd
  2. “If a being is conscious at all, what it is like to be that being involves an organisation toward staying alive” — Gary Francione (Rutgers) on what this means for the moral treatment of animals
  3. Paste text into “Only The Questions,” and the result will be an “x-ray” of it that shows you… only the questions — Clive Thompson describes why he made this tool, and provides some examples and a link so you can try it yourself
  4. The Future Fund wants to support organizations and individuals whose work will make the future go well — and is funding projects in artificial intelligence, values and reflective processes, and epistemic institutions, altruism, and other areas philosophers might contribute to
  5. “Eros commits crimes of passion because, first and foremost, it commits crimes of thought. It attacks the heart by way of the mind. Eros is an intellectual monster” — Agnes Callard (Chicago) had a terrible romance. What can be learned from it?
  6. “We are often poorly positioned to make sound judgments about whether someone is virtue signaling… the epistemically virtuous… thing to do is to avoid making such judgments” — Mark Satta (Wayne State) & A.K. Flowerree (Texas Tech) on intellectual humility and public discourse
  7. “My grandfather… was summoned to appear before the House Un-American Activities Committee in the winter of 1958” — Benjamin Mitchell-Yellin (Sam Houston State Univ.) on the lessons his grandfather’s ordeal holds for today’s disputes over teaching about racism
  1. The Medieval Problem of Universals by Gyula Klima.
  2. Ernst Cassirer by Michael Friedman.
  3. Gregory of Rimini by Christopher Schabel and Charles Girard.
  4. Alonzo Church by Harry Deutsch and Oliver Marshall.
  5. William Crathorn by Aurélien Robert.
  6. Liberalism by Shane D. Courtland, Gerald Gaus, and David Schmidtz.
  7. Quantum-Bayesian and Pragmatist Views of Quantum Theory by Richard Healey.
  8. Certainty by Baron Reed.
  9. Paraconsistent Logic by Graham Priest, Koji Tanaka, and Zach Weber.

IEP    

  1. Nietzsche’s Ethics by Claire Elizabeth Kirwin.   

NDPR     ∅ 

1000-Word Philosophy     ∅        

Project Vox     ∅           

Recent Philosophy Book Reviews in Non-Academic Media     

  1. Metaphysical Animals: How Four Women Brought Philosophy Back to Life by Clare Mac Cumhaill and Rachael Wiseman is reviewed by Kathryn Hughes at The Daily Mail.

Compiled by Michael Glawson

BONUS: Smart panpsychism