[RD] What are your highest quality recurring sources of information?

[Truthy]

Basically, I want a thread where OTers can share some of their favorite and most interesting sources of information. Regular publications, posts, or a series from some source is mainly what I have in mind. The information could be pretty much be anything, like news, science research, music, history, movies, or general interesting ideas.

I'd love it if you could provide some sort of summary of what makes the source good, as well as a comment on its shortcomings if you can think of any.

I'll start by sharing a few that I like and maybe this will provide a feel for what I had in mind when making this thread

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Partially Examined Life - this is a philosophy podcast I listened to while commuting over the summer. As the intro to every podcast states, they're mostly former philosophy grad students who dropped out and now work in various industries, but remain very knowledgeable about philosophy. Some of their shortcomings might be that they don't know much about history and haven't spent much time discussing women or POC (which they've defended on various grounds and that's fine with me).

Lawfare - their contributors provide cogent opinions and they have people like Bruce Schneier writing for them.

Slate Star Codex - he's been linked to various times around here and rightfully so because he's really smart. A recurring theme of his is to try to filter out the noise of the culture wars. He's sometimes wrong or a little zany, but acknowledges when he is and tries to improve.

3Blue1Brown - this guy makes extraordinarily good math videos on youtube. His linear algebra series is amazing.

 

[Tahuti]

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Also, sources lists on wikipedia usually have some good links to scientific papers and also provide inspiration for new books to read, which in turn contain information.

 

[Samson]

Al Jazeera Is the only place I hear about most news, so much [EDIT: most wars] is missed by the bbc.

 

[Mouthwash]

Geopolitical Futures and Stratfor are the only sources of news I respect whatsoever.

Scott Alexander does consistently make very good observations but he goes completely off the rails when discussing "real-world" stuff (geopolitics, society, etc). Trust him if he critiques media sensationalism or the latest intellectual fad, but not if he talks about foreign policy. For God's sake, a five-year old could point out the fallacies he commits here.

 

[PhroX]

CivFanatics OT forum

 

[Sascha77]

I try to keep myself from cruising around in an information bubble, so I usually try to check publications from all over the political spectrum.

Meaning, while I read the NY Times, CNN or mediamatters, I also check foxnews.com from time to time, just to see what's going on in their world.


Plus Slate.com (if only for their brilliant "Trumpcast" podcast), Politico, Politifact.

Other than that, mostly international publications/websites: BBC, Der Spiegel, Frankfurter Allgemeine, Die Zeit, etc.

Having a direct comparison between European and US mainstream-media can be pretty disheartening at times. US mainstream publications seem to have forgotten the difference between reporting and commentary, meaning they'll go out of their way to not be seen as "partisan" or "biased", even if being "biased" would only mean pointing out things that every decent human being would find appalling (racism, misogyny, plain old lies). It seems that in the US, this part of journalism has been handed over to comedy-shows like The Daily Show, Full Frontal or Last Week Tonight.

It's pretty clear that the US is well past the golden age of journalism of the 1970s/Watergate-era which is pretty frightening to me. IMO, you can't overstate the importance of serious journalism in a democracy. I wonder if something like Watergate would even be uncovered/reported on in the current environment of corporate media. Probably not, and if it were, it wouldn't have as big of an impact as it did back in the 1970s.

S.

 

[Hygro]

The greatest is Alone, but alas he has not posted in two years. Fortunately, he teaches you his frame and thus going back to his works proves worthwhile.

 

[Hygro]

For God's sake, a five-year old could point out the fallacies he commits here.

I am not a five year old, what are the fallacies?

 

[tetley]

Firsthand sources. When my friends and acquaintances post on Facebook, "I am here, where it is actually happening", I look to that first. So if he's in France, where a terrorist hits, I hear their account.

Then, I will look to the media and compare with what my friend is saying. If the two don't add up, I cast doubt on that media source from there on out. Not just for that particular event--but from then on to the next time when I get to compare accounts.

 

[Mouthwash]

I am not a five year old, what are the fallacies?

Here's an example: he says "Sweden wins in five categories, Singapore in four, Hong Kong in two, and Macau in one. This is not exactly a resounding victory for the Reaction." Singapore is the reactionary country and the rest are all non-reactionary, so he's literally giving liberalism three chances against reaction's one. His backtracking doesn't excuse that, and every other argument he makes fails at the most basic level of reasoning.

 

[Hygro]

Every other argument fails at the most basic level? Tell me more.

 

[Recon Rover]

PZ Myers and his blog Pharyngula at http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/ is my favourite biology blog.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

I get morning and evening newsfeeds from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC)'s website. Some major stories are listed, and from there I can browse whatever other articles, radio shows, newsclips, photo galleries, or opinion articles I want to read.

Some of these are open to comments, although the "moderation" there is incompetent at best.

 

[Zelig]

#1 priority is no advertisements. I pay for content when possible, block ads otherwise, and do not under any circumstances consume media where neither is possible.

Best recurring sources are Ars Technica (news), AnandTech (tech), Daring Fireball (Apple/tech-focused blog), Michael Geist's blog (IP Law)

Organize all my news with Feedly, I never visit actual websites.

Mainstream media is mostly rubbish, anything worthwhile will show up on either Ars or Daring Fireball.

Youtube is mostly rubbish, nearly anything of informational value would be better in a properly edited podcast.

I read lots of books, but they're not really recurring. Listen to lots of podcasts, but have found that information quality is roughly inversely proportional to how recurring they are.

Lawfare - their contributors provide cogent opinions and they have people like Bruce Schneier writing for them.

I like Schneier, will have to check out.

There are several publications I follow because they've got specific writers I like, but don't like the publication enough otherwise to recommend them.

 

[Kyriakos]

Not that infowars was ever an actual source of info, but now it seems to be little more than a trolling site
I think that Alex killed his gravy train by getting on the Trump wagon.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

Youtube is mostly rubbish, nearly anything of informational value would be better in a properly edited podcast.

It's been useful for catching up on old Rick Mercer rants. Since his rants are always based on current news, I consider it a valid source to mention in this thread. One of his best ones ever was the one where he basically told university students that if they wanted the government to take them seriously and address things like tuition, housing, jobs, etc., they should get out and vote - because politicians pay more attention to the people who do vote than they do to the people who don't vote.

It's also cathartic to be able to post the kinds of comments that I can't post on cbc.ca without seeing that obnoxious pink "content disabled." slapped on my post. And no, I'm not talking about profanity or slurs or anything else like that. I've been pinked just for typing "Margaret Atwood" or "The Handmaid's Tale".

 

[JollyRoger]

SCOTUSblog

 

[Zelig]

It's been useful for catching up on old Rick Mercer rants.

Which would be better in podcast format.

Saves bandwidth, available via open rss format, easy to listen to on any device, avoids the mess of advertisement/tracking that youtube serves.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

Which would be better in podcast format.

Saves bandwidth, available via open rss format, easy to listen to on any device, avoids the mess of advertisement/tracking that youtube serves.

I don't own any "devices" other than my computer, and I never see ads on YouTube. Ghostery takes care of the tracking issues.

And as I said, I can post comments there that I'd never get past the censors on CBC.ca.

 

[Zelig]

Whether you see ads or not isn't particularly relevant, the point is that it's advertisement-funded media, that exists with the goal of selling more ads.

I can assure you, Ghostery is not effective at taking care of tracking issues. If you're actually interested in doing that, my recommendation is to whitelist cookies from first-party safe domains and to block any others (Cookie Controller for Firefox, WebKit/Blink can do it natively) uBlock Origin an medium mode or higher: https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Blocking-mode:-medium-mode