4 ms·

I worked around it by moving the focus from online to printed press. Highly recommend. There's very little left online worth reading apart from niche indie webs

I worked around it by moving the focus from online to printed press. Highly recommend. There's very little left online worth reading apart from niche indie websites that simply don't have enough audience to make them worthy of ensittifying.

hyperbolablabla 2y ago
What printed publications do you recommend?
- anovikov 2y ago
  Of course, that's individual, they have to fit one's worldview to be palatable. We are long past the time when a singular "objective truth" existed at all. For me for example, The Economist feels legit.
  - RandomThoughts3 2y ago
    That’s a weird take. A singular "objective truth" never existed. That’s the basis of historiography. Publications can be "palatable" while not fitting one’s "worldview". The goal of reading should be to be challenged. You can find interesting things anchored in many theoretical frameworks and I encourage people to read editorials spanning different political leanings. To answer the original comment, I personally read and enjoy The New Yorker and grab the LRB and the Economist from time to time on top of what I read in my native language.
  - infecto 2y ago
    There has never been an "objective truth". I suspect most people look back and think the news was cleaner when it reality it was not. There are still many publications worthy of a read.
  - dredmorbius 2y ago
    And of course the Economist was literally created to promote free-market ideology: PROSPECTUS of a weekly paper, to be published every Saturday, and to be called THE ECONOMIST, which will contain — First.—ORIGINAL LEADING ARTICLES, in which free-trade principles will be most rigidly applied to all the important questions of the day ... <https://web.archive.org/web/20181105190846/https://www.economist.com/unknown/1843/08/05/prospectus https://web.archive.org/web/20181105190846/https://www.econo...>
    - anovikov 2y ago
      That's what i mean. Read something that aligns with your personal world. TIME feels too left-wing vs my own views, after reading half an issue i usually start feeling irritated. The Economist has same bias as myself so i find stuff there very logical and fitting my world.
      - dredmorbius 2y ago
        Fair enough, though it wasn't clear to me on first read (and still isn't even after reading your clarification) on your initial comment. I'll also note that I find the Economist to be among the better sources I read, and its (broadly-advertised) advocacy isn't as obnoxious as in some other pubs or institutions which come to mind.
- pillefitz 2y ago
  I recently found https://thebaffler.com/ https://thebaffler.com/ after watching an interview with its publisher, Thomas Frank, which resonated with me (left-leaning but anti-woke). I haven't read much of it to evaluate yet, though.
- disposition2 2y ago
  Harpers
- walthamstow 2y ago
  If you live in the UK, Private Eye If you like soccer, The Blizzard
- cageface 2y ago
  New York Review of Books is excellent. https://www.nybooks.com https://www.nybooks.com
WalterBright 2y ago
I'm losing my faith in online documents. There seems to be entirely too much editing of the past to fit shifting narratives, filtered search results, and tweaked AI output. How long will it be before we can't believe any of it? And with books going obsolete, then what?
- keiferski 2y ago
  Personally I’ve started collecting old encyclopedias. Especially ones from the early 20th century or so, before public relations/propaganda really developed into a dominant field.
  - FredPret 2y ago
    Paper encyclopedias are a joy of discovery. It was important to have a set on the shelf so as a kid I had a playing field where I could randomly open one up and find nothing but good content. The internet has slop, distractions, and pernicious falsehoods.
    - Bluestein 2y ago
      We are going "full-circle" back to printing press-discovery days, and then, further backwards, beyond.-
    - mrguyorama 2y ago
      Wikipedia is miles above the 80s encyclopedia collection my family had. There was only a single volume out of about 24, on things like science and mechanisms and STEM in general. The description of how heat pumps work, which included an entire page of diagrams that were straight up nonsensical, was so bad it took me until after college to undo the damage enough to actually understand the physics behind it. If you remember encyclopedias from before computers, 99% of the time you attempted to look something up, you found a singular paragraph, with no sources, barely introducing you to a topic. Even Microsoft Encarta on a bunch of CDs was that barren. Wikipedia has expanded the expected content and coverage of encyclopedias 10x, and has not significantly reduced accuracy despite a supposed "anyone can contribute" model. It's no coincidence in my life that I was constantly starving for knowledge until Wikipedia was created. Not that stumbling down wikipedia rabbit holes for hours on end made me a brilliant person or whatever, but it did give me a love for computing history and enough surface level knowledge to hang out around TheDailyWTF since I was 12, and that led to learning that I liked programming and a career in it that I definitely would not have found without wikipedia.

hyperbolablabla 2y ago

What printed publications do you recommend?

anovikov 2y ago
Of course, that's individual, they have to fit one's worldview to be palatable. We are long past the time when a singular "objective truth" existed at all. For me for example, The Economist feels legit.
- RandomThoughts3 2y ago
  That’s a weird take. A singular "objective truth" never existed. That’s the basis of historiography. Publications can be "palatable" while not fitting one’s "worldview". The goal of reading should be to be challenged. You can find interesting things anchored in many theoretical frameworks and I encourage people to read editorials spanning different political leanings. To answer the original comment, I personally read and enjoy The New Yorker and grab the LRB and the Economist from time to time on top of what I read in my native language.
- infecto 2y ago
  There has never been an "objective truth". I suspect most people look back and think the news was cleaner when it reality it was not. There are still many publications worthy of a read.
- dredmorbius 2y ago
  And of course the Economist was literally created to promote free-market ideology: PROSPECTUS of a weekly paper, to be published every Saturday, and to be called THE ECONOMIST, which will contain — First.—ORIGINAL LEADING ARTICLES, in which free-trade principles will be most rigidly applied to all the important questions of the day ... <https://web.archive.org/web/20181105190846/https://www.economist.com/unknown/1843/08/05/prospectus https://web.archive.org/web/20181105190846/https://www.econo...>
  - anovikov 2y ago
    That's what i mean. Read something that aligns with your personal world. TIME feels too left-wing vs my own views, after reading half an issue i usually start feeling irritated. The Economist has same bias as myself so i find stuff there very logical and fitting my world.
    - dredmorbius 2y ago
      Fair enough, though it wasn't clear to me on first read (and still isn't even after reading your clarification) on your initial comment. I'll also note that I find the Economist to be among the better sources I read, and its (broadly-advertised) advocacy isn't as obnoxious as in some other pubs or institutions which come to mind.
pillefitz 2y ago
I recently found https://thebaffler.com/ https://thebaffler.com/ after watching an interview with its publisher, Thomas Frank, which resonated with me (left-leaning but anti-woke). I haven't read much of it to evaluate yet, though.
disposition2 2y ago
Harpers
walthamstow 2y ago
If you live in the UK, Private Eye If you like soccer, The Blizzard
cageface 2y ago
New York Review of Books is excellent. https://www.nybooks.com https://www.nybooks.com

WalterBright 2y ago

I'm losing my faith in online documents. There seems to be entirely too much editing of the past to fit shifting narratives, filtered search results, and tweaked AI output. How long will it be before we can't believe any of it? And with books going obsolete, then what?

keiferski 2y ago
Personally I’ve started collecting old encyclopedias. Especially ones from the early 20th century or so, before public relations/propaganda really developed into a dominant field.
- FredPret 2y ago
  Paper encyclopedias are a joy of discovery. It was important to have a set on the shelf so as a kid I had a playing field where I could randomly open one up and find nothing but good content. The internet has slop, distractions, and pernicious falsehoods.
  - Bluestein 2y ago
    We are going "full-circle" back to printing press-discovery days, and then, further backwards, beyond.-
  - mrguyorama 2y ago
    Wikipedia is miles above the 80s encyclopedia collection my family had. There was only a single volume out of about 24, on things like science and mechanisms and STEM in general. The description of how heat pumps work, which included an entire page of diagrams that were straight up nonsensical, was so bad it took me until after college to undo the damage enough to actually understand the physics behind it. If you remember encyclopedias from before computers, 99% of the time you attempted to look something up, you found a singular paragraph, with no sources, barely introducing you to a topic. Even Microsoft Encarta on a bunch of CDs was that barren. Wikipedia has expanded the expected content and coverage of encyclopedias 10x, and has not significantly reduced accuracy despite a supposed "anyone can contribute" model. It's no coincidence in my life that I was constantly starving for knowledge until Wikipedia was created. Not that stumbling down wikipedia rabbit holes for hours on end made me a brilliant person or whatever, but it did give me a love for computing history and enough surface level knowledge to hang out around TheDailyWTF since I was 12, and that led to learning that I liked programming and a career in it that I definitely would not have found without wikipedia.