Disabled Community Megathread - November 11th, 2024 to November 17th, 2024
Unfortunately I don't have the energy to put together some info for the mega this week, hopefully I can pull together something for next week though. As always, we ask that in order to participate in the weekly megathread, one self-identifies as some form of disabled, which is broadly defined in the community sidebar:
"Disability" is an umbrella term which encompasses physical disabilities, emotional/psychiatric disabilities, neurodivergence, intellectual/developmental disabilities, sensory disabilities, invisible disabilities, and more. You do not have to have an official diagnosis to consider yourself disabled.
Mask up, love one another, and stay alive for one more week.
I have some Nietzsche but it's so low on my list it might as well not be there. I have Thus Spake Zarathustra and maybe some other stuff by him. I'm conflicted on reading him for the same way I am about reading Heidegger since they both have a history with fascism. I do wanna read Being and Time and Heidegger's essay on technology and those are probably first before Nietzsche for sure. But that's all lumped in with my next bout of philosophy. I have this anarchist theory kick I'm on, then revisit Marxist works, then possibly gender and queer theory(not sure what is gonna be in that yet), and I have a neurdivergent block I wanna get to some time in the future so philosophy might be after that? Lol. I need to read more.
I'm sure he'd hate that, which makes it all the better.
Also, this is praxis lol.
For Foucault, I have Disipline and Punish, recommended by a friend. And I grabbed his History of Sexuality vol 1 and 2 because it caught my interest.
i think it's important to read broadly. Reading the opposition's theory isn't a bad thing - it's not like you're going to come out of that ideologically tainted, as long as you are a principled radical and you have your shit in order. Learning about fascism from fascist theory can give you insights into fascist thinking and strategy, especially if read critically.
Zarathustra is hard, especially as the entry point. I'd recommend Genealogy of Morality instead tbh. It depends what you want to get out of reading Niezsche because there are comprehensive reading lists to give you a very rich, start-to-finish tour of Niezsche's thought but I suspect that's not gonna be your angle. I recommend Genealogy because, although it is diving into the deep end, it's not as opaque as Zarathustra imo and it's a good thing to read either before Foucault or after as Foucault was directly influenced by Niezsche and especially his genealogical approach (hence The Birth of the Clinic and Archaeology of Knowledge and The Birth of the Prison and of course The History of Sexuality etc.)
and I have a neurdivergent block
Cool! If you're partial to audiobooks, don't sleep on TankieTube - there's a pretty comprehensive catalogue of audiobooks on there now including a narrow but growing selection of neurodivergent audiobooks. Most are professionally recorded audiobooks with the main exception being high quality amateur stuff from Socialism For All.
The three main audiobook channels to recommend are Neurodivergent Audiobook Library and a split between Communist Broadcasting Service which has an array of uploads but of which the audiobooks are mostly the hard end of theory and the kinda "core" communist stuff whereas Book Broadcasting Channel has stuff that tends to fall outside the "core" audiobooks for communist theory. Blackshirts and Reds? Communist Broadcasting Service. Biographies and works about historical labour struggles or prison uprisings and the like? Book Broadcasting Service. The BBC is more eclectic and broader in scope, so there's stuff of interest to materialists and radicals, with a primary focus on history/anthropology/sociology but also some works of fiction that are of relevance like The Grapes of Wrath etc. Or you could just use the search and see what you can dig up. There's plenty more audiobooks on the way, I've just been derelict in my duties to those channels temporarily.
I went ahead and grabbed Genealogy of Morality and added it to my ereader.
I just made an account on TankieTube. I donno how much I'll use it but I might be starting a temp driving job soon so audiobooks are a great idea. Also saw they had NeuroTribes published and that's on my list lol. Thanks for thu suggestions!
I still donno how I wanna approach Nietzsche but Genology of Morality might be a good precursor to Disipline and Punish.
Gotta second reading disagreeable and wrong works. Dialectics holds there are both positive and negative aspects of all things and you can both know get to know your enemy and sharpen your own outlook (even incorporating small good things from their outlook in your own). It’s important to read critically anyway, because generally agreeable people are wrong from time to time. I enjoyed Red Menace’s coverage of reactionary philosophers but haven’t had the opportunity to learn about Nietzsche from the source. Schopenhauer kinda sucks tho, and I most got bragging rights for saying I slogged through his “magnum opus.”
I think this is a really good take. My next philosophy stretch is probably gonna start with Heidegger, then go to Sartre, de Beauvoir, and Merleau-Ponty, and of course finishing the last 2 books I have by Camus. But I wanna start with Heidegger because, aside from Husserl, and I guess a few other earlier writers, I understand that existentialism really took off with Heidegger and "being", but I also know he was at the least a Nazi apologist, and at most a full on fascist by the time he kicked the bucket. I am really curious about his essay on technology and how well it holds up with the 21st century too.
I think it's fair to read the stuff that the good writers got their ideas from. And, maybe some day when I'm brave, I might even tackle Hegel, or Bakunin. Hell, maybe I will add Bakunin back to my anarchy list after Kropotkin.
Honestly, I’m less interested in the continuity and change and details and more in knowledge that is useful, largely for understanding the views of others and how to persuade them. That and the plain accumulation of knowledge by virtue of interest. I’m comfortable with my present knowledge of anarchism and existentialism, as my general grasp of anarchism is solid enough and the classics don’t seem too relevant to understanding the views of most contemporary anarchists, and those I’ve read already have settled my views on the meaning of life for now. The jargony side of phenomenology has yet to call to me, but it may one day. Heidegger is a bit higher priority from what I’ve heard in secondary sources being compelling. Hegel’s definitely on my metaphorical list because I’m always down for more dialectical materialism (my literal list contains hundreds of books I’ve accepted I’ll never read). We’ll see when Buddhism tires me out. Currently have like thirty books in open tabs and I can’t read em all this time around.
Hell yeah. Study of the history of ideas is such a powerful tool for agitation and education. Imo it's vastly underrated for this purpose.
I might be starting a temp driving job soon so audiobooks are a great idea
Congrats! I hope it goes well for you. I'm not really publicising it, though I'm not trying to hide the fact either, but those are the channels that I'm running. I wanted to help turn TankieTube from being just a Youtube mirror site to a bit more of resource and a destination site so I threw my efforts behind it when it launched. (A certain Tanuki probably loathes me for straining the server and heaping piles onto the data storage network though.)
Idk if you caught the recent discussions on here about using the US election shitshow as a perfect agitation opportunity but comrade Cowbee has been crushing it and he has been developing a De-Libbify Yourself reading list (not the official name btw lol) that includes a lot of the audiobooks that have been uploaded to those channels that he's been using to lure people to the left, so it appears that the system works.
Upcoming uploads to the Neurodivergent Audiobook Library are:
Different, Not Less by Chloe Hayden
It Didn't Start With You by Mark Wolynn
Healing The Shame That Binds You by John Bradshaw
The Electricity of Every Living Thing by Katherine May
Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving by Pete Walker
No Bad Parts by Richard C. Schwartz
The Body Keeps The Score by Bessel van der Kolk (not a huge fan of this one personally but it's wildly popular so you gotta give the people what they want)
Transcending Trauma by Frank G Anderson
Life of the Mind Interrupted: Essays on Mental Health and Disability by Katie Rose Guest Pryal
The Happiness Industry by William Davies (probably going to go into the BBC and not the Neurodivergent Audiobook Library but it's potentially of interest anyway)
So there's the preview of the tasks I've been putting off for that channel. At the moment there isn't a groundswell of demand or interest in the ND Audiobook Library currently, not that I've done much to publicise or promote it but I'm okay with that because it allows me to work on other priorities. If it really kicks off I'll devote more energy towards that library at that point but for the moment I'm quite happy to just add a little bit here and there as I remember to.
If there are particular audiobooks that you know are available on Audible or similar websites that you want to see uploaded to the ND Audiobook Library or if there any on that list that you'd like to see appearing in the library let me know and I can make them a priority. Honestly us neuroatypicals gotta lift our piracy game though - we aren't doing a great job of distributing ripped neurodivergent audiobooks via piracy sites nearly as much as we could be doing. I intend on signing up for Audible or some other soul-sucking audiobook site to rip some of the audiobooks that aren't available on piracy sites at some point, although that's low on my priority list because of costs and because, clearly, I'm not suffering under a shortage of pending uploads to TankieTube at the present.
But yeah, hit me up if there's anything you would like to request and I'll see what I can make happen.
I definitely caught Cowbee's reading list post lol. And also see his comments sprinkled throughout Lemmy. They are very much appreciated. It's also awesome that you are taking up the mantel on TankieTube with worthwhile ND material. I didn't catch whether you have Unmasking Autism on there but I am sure Mr. Price wouldn't mind. I suspect he may a comrade and also even promotes pirating his stuff if you can't afford it. I'm always gonna shill that book because it helped me a lot right after I got my diagnosis.
I'm not familiar with whether TankieTube has a mobile app and I'd need that for driving, but if I come up with some I can send you ideas.
And also see his comments sprinkled throughout Lemmy. They are very much appreciated.
He's a powerful poster amongst the group of the most powerful posters in all of the Lemmyverse.
It's also awesome that you are taking up the mantel on TankieTube with worthwhile ND material.
I'm sure you've seen me spamming up the neurodiverse comm recently with that little project I launched. One comrade was very impressed with the design of it and I told them that it was mostly just me wanting something in the world and realising that it doesn't exist so I just went ahead and made it. I didn't think about it at the time but that's the same motivation for creating the Neurodivergent Audiobook Library - there isn't anything else out there on the internet like this that I'm aware of so I just started making it.
I didn't catch whether you have Unmasking Autism on there but I am sure Mr. Price wouldn't mind.
Hell yeah I do. It was such a pain having to constantly reupload this audiobook to Catbox back when the Unmasking Audiobook reading group was happening. I'm extremely grateful to TankieTube for how much opportunity this offers the community.
I'm not familiar with whether TankieTube has a mobile app and I'd need that for driving
Say no more, comrade. Gotcha covered (for android, at least) right here.
I got GrayJay up and running on my phone now! I've really enjoyed the conversation today too. Unfortunately I've done run out of spoons and I"m also getting hella sick with a stomach bug. I just wanted to say again, thanks for all of this. I will check back tomorrow but I'm gonna hop off and go pass out I think. Thanks!
It's always a pleasure chatting with you. Rest up, I hope you feel better soon!