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I would imagine many people here who watch Youtube are already familiar with Folding Ideas, at least from his video about NFTs. He is imo the best video essayist by a wide mile.
Then there's Jenny Nicholson, her videos are hit or miss in the sense that I really don't care about most topics she talks about, but I find even those videos engaging and when she does talk about an interesting topic it's an all-timer for me.
I like Scaredy Cats. It's Thought Slime's other channel focused mostly on horror movies, from the high art ones to the cheesy, B horror ones. In fact, I'd probably say there's more of the latter than the former.
They try to keep is non-political, but every now and then anti-capitalist themes slip in to their movie reviews, which I'm just fine with.
My spouses YouTube channel was very good and popular until she retired 
LGR and Angela Collier. I hardly use youtube except to watch jerma vods
3Blue1Brown
The current goat of youtube math education. I don't know what he is like on some of his streams (because I don't care about those). However, his mainline videos really helped me understand a lot of math concepts.
Agree. Some smaller also good ones:
Thomas Kern Really good at making some advanced/less mainstream topics accessible, careful to build up lots of necessary background and thoroughly explain details, so a bit like 3B1B except 0 fancy animations and slightly more rigorous. Covers a variety of topics but with a focus on automata and theory of computation.
Sheafification of G The opposite of Thomas Kern, designed for people with extreme ADHD. No slowing down, very little explanation, borderline silliness, you learn by osmosis. Half of the videos are him trying to incept category theory into your head. I still haven't learned category theory, but I'm old and my brain is starting to calcify, I did learn some stuff though and it's always entertaining.
Going to sheaffication of G sometimes feels like I'm getting whatever the opposite of education is lol.
Indeed, but if I could somehow revert to infant level neuroplasticity while retaining all my current knowledge it would be super useful
Farya Faraji! He got really popular with his video on Orientalist music vs actual Middle Eastern music: https://youtu.be/LR511iAedYU
Really funny, clever, passionate, dedicated to his craft (the intersection of music and anthropology). I almost never like video essays but his are actually good and actually engaging. His music is great too and i love just he includes detailed descriptions about them.
Man's channel deserves more love.
at the beginning of all his presentations.I sense a theme here (no shade)
Lol, yeah...they all basically check some or all of these boxes for me:
I barely even play games these days, but I did a lot as a kid so I think that's why it's a comfy substrate for me. And since romhacking/game decompilation checks all of those boxes, I can't get enough of it. None of my friends are remotely into this stuff, so to the internet I must go!
I play stormworks and no one I know does. I had a friend play with me for a bit, but tapped out once we started touching LUA and PIDs.
I'd never even heard of that game before but it looks super interesting! I know a bit about digital logic, but it looks like it goes well beyond the basics, and on top of that you've got the scripting you mentioned plus practically an entire CAD program to build whatever your heart desires and then plop that into the game world.
It's kinda funny, because it's basically the opposite of what I just described. One of the things I like about reverse engineering is that I don't have to actually build or design anything directly, since the program/device is already finished—it's more detective work, and if you do have to make any tools they're usually for a narrowly tailored purpose. And the best part is, there's actually a "correct answer" when it comes to describing or replicating the original functionality. But if you enjoy the freedom and expressive capability found in something like Stormworks, I imagine you could sink thousands of hours into it!
I get very easily overwhelmed with planning and creating things, so I tend to prefer either baby-brained games like platformers and shooters or puzzle games where the end goal is very clear. But I totally empathize with enjoying a multiplayer game that none of your friends are into—for me that game is Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes, which I don't think I've ever gotten past a single play session with anybody. If I weren't so paranoid about talking to strangers on the internet, I'd try to find a Hexbear to play with. Still thinking about if I can find a solution I'd be comfortable with where I could use a voice changer and a private (non-Discord) voice chat provider. Is finding people to play with online something you've looked into at all?
I've thought about it a couple of times but have decided I'm too cagey for actually playing with online randos.
I do chat on the game discord, but not in voice.
There are some correct answers in stormworks, but it's very free form and the non-building part of the game is not particularly good.
I'm amazed it's not been mentioned here yet - Luna oi! is a very cool socialist Vietnamese channel. Her videos are both fun and informative, and good for getting a non-western take on so many things.
Random Indian guy with one upload that explains the solution to a very specific problem I'm having with some software. Thank you my nameless friends.
They're a dying breed! Everyone is switching to AI voice-overs for explanations and I say that's a damn shame. Bring back the heavily accented English, it's draining all the magic and charm from my preferred method of solving tech issues. What a sad state, this world.
Pretty much all the tech knowledge I have was taught to me by random Indian you tubers and I am forever grateful to them for it.
same with designing very specific things in blender or adobe illustrator!
Crime Pays, Botany Doesn't for sweary, amusing, but very informative stuff about nature and plants in particular. Always with lots of working class solidarity.
EVNautilus for submarine shenanigans and cool footage of rarely seen marine life, especially cute octopus.
LUXE37 hasn't uploaded in almost a decade but they made cool Japanese car chase movies with stop-motion, toy cars, and amazingly detailed models.
OgmiosZen does relaxed, zen-like commentary over his dashcam footage of having to drive around London for his job. Often amusing. The channel has grown a lot and now he's narrating other driving videos which I don't like as much.
People Make Games isn't specifically leftist or anything, but it's the only place I've found putting out actual investigative journalism into things like workers rights, bad industry practices, exploitative outsourcing to the 'developing world' and more in the video game industry. They also do some fun videos on more niche or elaborate non-video-game gaming like elaborate LARPs or tournaments of competitive Microsoft Excel Spreadsheet solving.
The Craft Beer Channel makes interesting videos and documentary series about beer - from ingredients growing to breweries to pubs - with lots of focus on history and the current actual people behind beer production.
YouSuckAtCooking makes slightly amusing little recipe videos with some willfully silly editing jokes, but without any pretension. Good for basic recipes, done in the most basic kitchen with very available ingredients. Also includes little songs and pets at the end of each video.
Ancient Americas is a really good channel that covers pre Columbian cultures in the Americas
F.D Signifier is really cool but not exactly a hidden gem by now. He kind of blew up huh
I dont really care much for comdey on youtube but I do like "Man Carrying Thing". Skits that are usually just like a minute or so.
Cathode Ray Dude- mentioned elsewhere as well, generally cool dude
Tech Tangents - haven’t seen mentioned, another old tech guy that stays in his lane politically and makes cool content
Technology Connections - my favorite “well technically” nerd
VWestlife - a gem of youtube, untarnished by advertisers or thr algorithm
Dr. Angela Collier - Smart Science Dr who makes cool commie adjacent videos
Ethoslab - my one parasocial relationship is this reclusive canadian minecrafter who uploads once a month and I mostly catch on other peoples server streams
Robot Cantina - old dude that’s making diesel electric batter vehicles out of his garage for cheap, really cool electrical and mechanical engineering going on with just one dude, fabrication as well.
Technology Connections. I know nothing about that guy, but being able to watch someone with terrible hair talk about washing machines for an hour basically justifies the existence of YouTube imho
i quite like Lily Simpson, she does analysis of trans episodes of shows mostly
fair warning, most of the shows she talks about are transphobic
I’m sorry to keep NL-posting but there’s a reason he’s like the only youtuber/streamer with emotes on here. He’s simply the GOAT of being a nice well-rounded person who is also actually funny.
a people's history of rome, that sort of stuff. i get the feeling they're marxists keeping it on the down-low, but who knows. - https://www.youtube.com/@tribunateSPQR
Either they're Marxists or PhD level trained historians. The field pretty much agrees that the base premises of historical materialism are the right tools for analysis.
A similar internet person who does much more overt commie ancient history analysis is Patrick Wyman, and his Tides of History podcast.
At 4:55 in their Roman Afterlives video, it really sounds like they make a Marx reference. "a way to interpret the world in various ways, their point however is to help us change it" vs “The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it."
she visits interesting houses - https://www.youtube.com/@kirstendirksen
Big fan of her. Some videos are rich people wankery, but a lot of them are forward-thinking examples of ecologically sound housing and/or cool community building projects.
yeah, not all of them are hits but eg the one about the italian immigrant guy who excavated a series of caves and underground courtyards in the desert? or the two videos about houses built inside greenhouses? hell yeah
I really enjoy Exurb1a
CW SA
that person is a r*pist (and will likely never face any justice unfortunately ): )
Oh what the fuck
Grimbeard, Warlockracy and justbackgroundnoise for filthy G&ming content. The first two drop 1 per month and the last is about 1 weekly. Gaming content on youtube is a wasteland of either terrible politics or zoomer attention span, but these three are good on both of those from my experience.
Sellsword Arts for HEMA and sword content and blumineck for archery (and nothing else 
) mostly shorts based, some 20 min vids infrequently.
Nicole Coenen for woodcutting (and definitely nothing else 
) shorts that soothe the soul mostly.
Warlockcracy just made a video walking through a non-existent Fallout mod that is only in his head and it was pretty much the same as any of his other videos for real mods lol. Good stuff.
god but i actually want that mod what doesnt exist 