Nagarjuna's Middle Finger | VarnVlog
@varnvlog.bsky.social
1.2K followers 880 following 1.8K posts
Podcaster, poet, educator, former expatriate, angry person, “moralist," Buddhist. Author of Apocalyptics and Liberation. Host Varn Vlog ☸
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varnvlog.bsky.social
Honestly, "The Long Walk" (2025) which is an inferior movie to "One Battle After Another" in a myriad of ways, had more meaningful critiques and understandings of radicalization than "One Battle..."
varnvlog.bsky.social
There are a lot of issues with the movie--it was good, still, but for a PT Anderson movie on a Pynchon novel I shouldn't be tempted to tear holes in it as soon as it is over.
varnvlog.bsky.social
Oh, and the fact that she becomes a very superficial cypher, who we are supposed believe developed past the exoticism, superficially, and betrayal off-screen.
varnvlog.bsky.social
When people complain about magical thinking, given how many of the serious answers to complex social and economic problems fall apart enough for 20-something YouTubers to point it out, we shouldn't be surprised that people turn to magic outright.
varnvlog.bsky.social
I get that P.T. Anderson is invoking the counter-realism of Pynchon's paranoid parsing of the counter-culture of the 60s, but then why contemporarize it? I would have been nearly perfect movie if it had figured out which generation it was critiquing. /4
varnvlog.bsky.social
Mapping out the timeline, it seems like the French 75 concerns were a weird mixture of 68-72 new communist concerns (like Vineland) and concerns from 2016-2018, but it would have been happening during the war on terror. /3
varnvlog.bsky.social
And look, I think the movie is still excellent, and captures a lot of the essence of Vineland while incorporating P.T. Anderson's concerns, but critiquing the millennial left as if they were SLF or the Weathermen seems confused./2
varnvlog.bsky.social
Sometimes contemporizing things doesn't work. "One Battle After Another" is interesting, but it doesn't really work set in the vague aughts to now, even with changing Vineland's focus on Reagan either DEA to something seeming like ICE (although it is not that). Also, the timeline doesn't work./1
Reposted by Nagarjuna's Middle Finger | VarnVlog
moneyontheleft.bsky.social
In this episode of the Superstructure podcast, Scott Ferguson is joined by independent film scholar Jonathan Haynes to discuss Paul Thomas Anderson’s acclaimed new film, One Battle After Another.
One Battle After Another
In this episode of the Superstructure podcast, Scott Ferguson is joined by independent film scholar Jonathan Haynes to discuss Paul Thomas Anderson’s acclaimed new film, One Battle After Another. T…
moneyontheleft.org
varnvlog.bsky.social
The right said Biden might nationalize the national guard to get some Texas violations of federal territory with traps removed and the GOP freaked out, and whined about nationalizing the guard without the approval of the government. Biden backed down.
varnvlog.bsky.social
"The problem with the left is its proximity to bourgeois art," says an academic theorist on a podcast. Sure, but why did all the engineers and the like leave? We didn't start that way. Hyper-voluteerist explanations like that masquerade moralizing as sociology and are neither.
varnvlog.bsky.social
The Nobel Peace Prize has always been a farce since its inception as a means to assuage the guilty conscience of a bourgeois explosives manufacturer.
Reposted by Nagarjuna's Middle Finger | VarnVlog
juddgreenstein.bsky.social
If Marjorie Taylor Greene inadvertently saves democracy it will be like an inverted version of Gollum causing the destruction of the One Ring on Mount Doom
Reposted by Nagarjuna's Middle Finger | VarnVlog
mattseybold.bsky.social
“The logical conclusion of a technofeudal oligarchy combining forces with an authoritarian political movement is compulsory enrollment in the security state’s platform architecture of surveillance, indoctrination, and behavioral modification.”
Against Technofeudal Education
Pillars For Protecting Our "Core Infrastructure" From OpenAI
theamericanvandal.substack.com
varnvlog.bsky.social
Extremely and just noticed this myself