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> I don't need to shell out anything. I can find perfectly good content from people that care for free, and I myself write perfectly good content for people tha
by Slansitartop 9y ago
> I don't need to shell out anything. I can find perfectly good content from people that care for free, and I myself write perfectly good content for people that are interested in the topic and provide it for free.
What kind of content is this, exactly?
I think you're missing the forest by focusing on a few unique trees. I agree, you're likely to find far better free stuff about tinkering around with microcontrollers (for instance) that are written by hobbyists than you will from paid publications. Taken all together, though, that kind of stuff is ultimately very limited and misses whole universes of valuable areas. For instance: news reporting, history books, etc. require a breadth of attention and effort to create that just isn't possible with a day job. If you want to "improve your mind, to improve your awareness and understanding of the world" you can't hyper-focus on hobbies.
- marnett 9y agoI think the internet-model just isn't created for in-depth, thought provoking, long form articles. I am lucky enough to live in a major city, but I consume thought provoking, free content by having a library card. Of the publications where I found thought provoking, long form articles, they are almost always a non-profit. The internet ad-based business model for content simply forbids huge ROI for real content; I totally support more-and-more non-profit content creators whose charter is quality content. If you are interested in non-hobby, free long form writing, I always recommend Aeon[1]! For non-free, I recommend Lapham's Quarterly[2]. https://aeon.co/ https://aeon.co/ https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/ https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/
- Slansitartop 9y agoI agree, for the most part. One thing though, I won't call aeon "free," exactly. They take donations and I would encourage people to donate if they like it, even as a one-off. I think an idea that underlies the OP's maxim "Enjoy content. Not too much. Mostly paid," is the economics of paid content is clearer and more pro-consumer. I think that's true whether the payment actually gates the content or not.
- njarboe 9y agoI would say "Mostly not ad supported". It would be great if Google let one search for content on only sites that don't have ads. Of course that would never happen, but duck duck go could give it a try.
- Retric 9y agoYou can find a huge range of History books written by amateurs. Separating the wheat from the chaff is not always easy, but you also need a filtering method for paid works as they also have vast quantities of junk. In terms of written content I have more or less given up on books specifically because I find free content to be far more diverse. Read a few thousand science fiction books for example and they really all blend together with minimal originality.
- cousin_it 9y agoWikipedia, Project Gutenberg, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Cosma Shalizi's notebooks.
- rdiddly 9y agoStackOverflow
- numismatex 9y agoQuora, and in the past Google Answers
- majos 9y agoMuch of Wikipedia (and the others) relies indirectly on the people whose careers (not hobbies) revolve around creating the content that Wikipedia cites. Same for most of Project Gutenberg. There are exceptions, but I do think, say, dedicated long-term investigative journalism is something worth paying for, since it's not always easy to do as anything other than a "main" grind.
- numismatex 9y agoStart with Khan Academy. Then look into research, scientific papers, art, original series -- some eventually go commercial to make a living but there is an insane amount of free content out there, including games, music, movies and books to boot.