Seems earnest. The test I use is, "would I share this with people who I know disagree with me politically, and would it improve how we related to one another?"

Seems earnest. The test I use is, "would I share this with people who I know disagree with me politically, and would it improve how we related to one another?" The result is a fast filter and a lot of finding original'ish data sources to share. I think when the internet closed distances (real and mimetic, in the Girardian sense) it created a cultural power vacuum into which everyone in the world is now rushing. The idea of preserving truth and specifically, the power of the institutions that formerly mediated it, is a kind of nostalgic sentiment of people trying to hold on to the vestiges of a culture that has been disintermediated and overrun. In this sense, the media is a failed state. The other filter is I am careful of adding new words to my vocabulary, because neologisms mean less and less, and are increasingly just shibboleths for group identity among people for whom discourse is just another struggle for power. Nice toolkit, but it's rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. I have cut out news that takes itself too seriously to recognize that it has lost the plot.