Pretty Heady Stuff

Ava Val believes in comedy as a source of joy, site of community and weapon against cynicism

Ava Val is a John Candy Award-winning comedian/musician/actress from Toronto. Her honest and insightful-yet-silly and spontaneous account of her transgender journey has turned heads across North America, earning her repeat appearances at renowned festivals including Just For Laughs, JFL Toronto and Vancouver, Off-JFL/Zoofest, and the Winnipeg, Halifax, and Arctic Comedy Festivals, among others. Val's talents also earned her a writing role on the 30th season of This Hour Has 22 Minutes, a spot on season four of Roast Battle Canada, and an indelible appearance on Canada’s Got Talent. She is the first trans person to achieve several of these credits. In addition to her numerous taped standup performances for CBC Gem, CraveTV, CTV, and CBC Radio’s Laugh Out Loud, she also has a new standup comedy special “So Brave” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gKN_4pBKGt8 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gKN_4pBKGt8]), hosts the podcast “PodGis”, and was a lead cast member in season 3 of OutTV’s Drag Heals. In this conversation, we discuss what makes comedy such a potent form of resistance to hatred, how it exposes and embarrasses the ignorance of the far right, and why transphobia is closeminded, normative bullshit rooted in an effort to safeguard a violently narrow notion of what constitutes being "at peace" with oneself.

Wim Carton dissects the gore, gaslighting and chaotic consequences of fossil capitalism

Wim Carton is Associate Professor of Sustainability Science at Lund University, Sweden. He's the author of over 20 academic articles and book chapters on climate politics. His work has appeared in top journals such as Nature Climate Change, WIRES Climate Change and Antipode. His book with Andreas Malm, The Long Heat: Climate Action When It's Too Late, is a study of the science and politics of geoengineering, carbon capture and "muscular" climate adaptation. The book offers what Wim calls an "event ethnography" of the people and organizations adopting tactics to fix the climate crisis, and the ways they end up fixing the status quo of climate breakdown through capitalist accumulation firmly in place. Carton and Malm learned in their research that functionaries are "very aware of the flaws and the problems" with their approach, but can't or won't abandon the assumption that the "solutions they've always believed in" will succeed, despite so much evidence that markets, private capital and the pursuit of profit are leading us into the slow violence of escalating disaster. One of the core problems is technological optimism, or the dangerous persistence of a mechanistic worldview when it comes to the way the world works. Regardless of how necessary it will be to build resilience as we hurtle into the long heat, faith in climate adaptation is strengthening as the resolve for addressing the drivers of climate change weakens. We can't allow adaptation to "substitute for dealing with the real problem." In this moment, too, we see the emergence of technologies like carbon capture and storage or geoengineering replacing and displacing the push for mitigation. Carton talks about the dark side of these technologies as forms of "reputation management" that enable further investment in fossil fuel infrastructure. The planet doesn't care if we ignore its limits. If we create an entirely new climate, we are playing with fire. Allowing the ruling classes to "look away from the suffering that is being rained down, literally, on people in Gaza, Iran and much of the Global South" will only deepen the coldness that characterizes our current age. In opposition, we need a revolutionary alternative that holds power to account, to rage against the deadly incrementalism that defers action and renders the future unlivable. In Wim's words, crises always expose "cracks in the system," and right now, in the context of an imperial war sowing chaos in the site of some of the most rapacious fossil fuel extraction, the "obvious solution is to go full-on renewable and reduce dependence" on this toxic sludge. #juststopoil #endfossilfuels #phaseout #fossilphaseout #ccus #geoengineering #climateadaptation #technologicaloptimism #technology #capitalism #endtimes #climatebreakdown #fossilcapital #climateaction #thelongheat ⁨

Jeff Diamanti tracks the shockwaves disrupting the global economy as war rages on in Iran

Jeff Diamanti is Associate Professor of Philosophy and Cultural Analysis at the University of Amsterdam and Professor of Global History of Sustainable Development at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. For over a decade he has researched and written on logistical cartographies, energy infrastructure, and political ecology. Diamanti and I discuss the reverberations in the global economy caused by Iran's shutting down of a crucial chokepoint in the arteries of fossil capitalism: the Strait of Hormuz. Jeff has seen this vital space of maritime passage with his own eyes, having visited it during a research trip alongside colleagues who were interested in the energy infrastructures that are becoming visible in this time of crisis.One of the things we focus on is the emergence of different kinds of literacy in these emergencies -- how we become more aware of the ways we're yoked to oil by an economy built around overproduction and profit, or the ways that our food is a commodity predicated on the endless supply of fossil fuel feedstocks. What those literacies look like and can translate into politically is an open question, though, as Diamanti points out, because it hinges on the simultaneous emergence of different networks of care that have largely atrophied as a result of neoliberal atomization.As war halts the flow of commodities through a key chokepoint, we can see how the disproportionate impacts are felt most acutely by the global poor. And this is why Jeff stresses that we shouldn't presume that those in power had no plan, or that they were simply unhinged in making the strategic decision to bomb thousands of sites in Iran. There is an unreasonable rationale that justifies, from their fascistic worldview, the intervention in the Middle East. Chaos is benefiting the ruling elite in settler colonial societies that have long sought to exploit destabilization and disruption. The pain this causes is precisely the point.Cynicism about secular stagnation and the termination shock of this cycle of accumulation coming to a violent close is an easy and understandable response. Against that reasonable despair, Diamanti offers anger, pointed criticism and a global perspective that sees chokepoints as important places where fossil capitalism can be contested. #iranwar #trumpwar #uswar #israel #middleeast #imposedwar #warofchoice #china #russia #oman #iran #energycrisis #capitalism #colonialism #oilshock #supplychain #straitofhormuz

C. Thi Nguyen troubles the way the art of play and agency in games is co-opted & commodified

Publisher bio and book description: C. Thi Nguyen is associate professor of philosophy at the University of Utah, and a specialist in the philosophy of games, the philosophy of technology, and the theory of value. A former food writer for the Los Angeles Times, Nguyen is active in public philosophy, writing for The New York Times, The Washington Post, New Statesman, and elsewhere. One of the leading experts on the philosophy of games and the philosophy of data, Nguyen takes us deep into the heart of games, and into the depths of bureaucracy, to see how scoring systems shape our desires. Games are the most important art form of our era. They embody the spirit of free play. They show us the subtle beauty of action everywhere in life in video games, sports, and boardgames—but also cooking, gardening, fly-fishing, and running. They remind us that it isn’t always about outcomes, but about how glorious it feels to be doing the thing. And the scoring systems help get us there, by giving us new goals to try on. Scoring systems are also at the center of our corporations and bureaucracies—in the form of metrics and rankings. They tell us exactly how to measure our success. They encourage us to outsource our values to an external authority. And they push on us to value simple, countable things. Metrics don’t capture what really matters; they only capture what’s easy to measure. The price of that clarity is our independence. https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/authors/2288505/c-thi-nguyen/

Shora Esmailian refuses to abandon hope for freedom and self-determination in Iran

Shora Esmailian is a journalist, author and lecturer based in Sweden. Her latest book is entitled Gaza: Att Spranga Ett Getto (2024). She is also the co-author, with Andreas Malm, of Iran on the Brink: Rising Workers and Threats of War (2007, Pluto Press) and Explosive Power in Iran: Workers’ Fight and War Threat (2005).In the wake of the United States and Israel illegally attacking Iran and sparking a regional conflagration that is dragging the world deeper into ecocidal warfare, Esmailian describes a liberatory alternative. From her position in the Iranian diaspora and her perspective as a journalist and social critic, Shora opens up a conversation about the irreducible complexity of the struggle. In Iran, there are groups on the left that occupy a diverse array of anti-imperialist positions; should they converge in the aftermath of this bombing campaign, they might emerge as a force that can reclaim the country from both the repression of the Islamic Republic and the violence of Western regimes who continue to seek control over the region.Esmailian makes it clear, too, that Israel is committed to destroying Iran because it sees it as the last remaining force that can counter the normalization of its settler colonial occupation of Palestine. The "Axis of Resistance," as it is known, may not be a purely liberatory force, in the sense that Iran's Islamic Republic, in fact, has its own imperialist ambitions, but it remains the primary barrier to Israel's military domination. Shora also shares the important insight that, while the Islamic Republic has come to the defense of Palestine to a limited extent--courting the ire of Tel Aviv in the process--it never fully committed to halting the genocidal campaign of annihilation that continues in Gaza and spreads now into the West Bank. If there is hope now, it is for a grassroots democratic movement to rise up in defiance of imperialism and defect from oligarchic control and state repression.#FreeIran [https://www.youtube.com/hashtag/freeiran] #WomanLifeFreedom [https://www.youtube.com/hashtag/womanlifefreedom] #Geopolitics [https://www.youtube.com/hashtag/geopolitics] #USMilitary [https://www.youtube.com/hashtag/usmilitary] #GulfRegion [https://www.youtube.com/hashtag/gulfregion] #USIranConflict [https://www.youtube.com/hashtag/usiranconflict] #IranIsraelWar [https://www.youtube.com/hashtag/iranisraelwar] #MiddleEastConflict [https://www.youtube.com/hashtag/middleeastconflict] #IranIsraelConflict [https://www.youtube.com/hashtag/iranisraelconflict] #MiddleEastCrisis [https://www.youtube.com/hashtag/middleeastcrisis]