Financial Times, Foreign Policy,* War on the Rocks,* Google alerts on particular things. Been thinking idly about getting New Scientist.
*Not exactly news.
ProPublica, the Washington Post, the Guardian. Twitter/Bluesky's NYCSouthpaw. Lawdork.
Economist, Le Monde, Respekt, AP news site and also Reuters , individual journos on twitter, will eventually switch to bluesky, maybe next month. Spiegel International (that is, English Spiegel) when there's Germany-touching European stuff.
I have Bluesky codes if anyone wants one.
6: Moby, I think I'm ready to dive in. Email is linked. Also open to any advice on getting started, who to follow...
1 and 2 are me, too. I'm not trying very hard, though.
The problem with Reddit is you can easily buy used hiking equipment. While reuse is better than new, there's no getting around the fact that I have more backpacks than I need.
Five framed, at least four unframed. Plus I use a messenger bag in regular life.
You can also get used hiking gear and news at Backpacking Light. But Backpacking Light is of no use in keeping track of Republican efforts to publish pictures of the penises of Joe Biden's relations.
Osmosis. Here, Reddit, the Netflix "because you watched" section... And when I say I get my news from Reddit, I'm often not even reading the articles, just the comments. Sometimes I feel bad about this, but when Cassandane asks me about some bit of news by way of making conversation, I'll almost always already have the essentials, so I guess it could be worse.
I still maintain a subscription to my local paper, and share my wife's Washington Post subscription. She often reads the news in the morning and we'll discuss before she heads off to work.
Since she's made biking a part of her identity, we've been watching a lot more bike reviews, but also street design and city planning channels, which align with my own light interests in those topics. We can be crotchety old people complaining about city priorities together!
Mostly I think following the news is not important or healthy. I too get it mostly by osmosis, though we do have a WaPo subscription and I do look at their front page every couple days.
I've partly replaced following the news by following chess and soccer news, mostly through reddit (via which I also get local news and some Scottish news, but not a lot of normal US political news).
The main reason I feel bad about my lack of news-media-consuming isn't because I'm unprepared to do my civic duty or whatever. No, it's because I used to be a reporter, and liked it. It was the most rewarding job I've ever had in every way except financially, and it hasn't got any more rewarding since then. I'm why the industry I liked is dying!
I now subscribe to the Washington Post, LA Times, TPM, and most recently the Sacramento Bee for political and legislative news. I tried the SF Chronicle but it was too expensive for too sparse material and often low quality.
So I'm not dependent on social media, except in terms of dopamine.
I mean, I subscribe to the Washington Post and TPM too. It's important to keep journalism a thing.
I subscribe to my local paper, the NYT, and TPM. I don't actually read NYT articles very often so maybe I should discontinue that one.
In fairness, Cassandane subscribes to The Week, Rolling Stone, and the WaPo. If I read what she got, the net effect on the industry would be the same.
I'd be grateful for a bluesky code if they're still around, will link my email below.
To answer the question, I lurk here, and still read twitter (though I have never posted; watching it go down the tubes is motivating the request above). I click over to NYT and WaPo from time to time, and read Slate sometimes, though mostly for advice columns. Defector gets me most of my sports news.
For general science, I like Quanta, subsidized by the Simons foundation, and sometimes MIT technology review, though their editors lean to breathless enthusiasm. Eric Topol's substack has been good on COVID-related stuff, but he covers a bunch of other medical topics as well. I give to Propublica, despite their lab leak coverage fiasco.
WaPo recently kicked me off my cheap Amazon subscription, and I am still punishing them for their ways.
Amazon has unaccountably given me another 30-day subscription after I canceled a while back. I'm taking the opportunity to watch The Peripheral, which is quite well done so far.
Moby or Barry, I would like a code if you have any left.
I read local news on the LAT, and have a WaPo subscription but don't read it every day.
I sent an invite. So far as I can tell, they've replaced every invite I've sent today with a new one.
Minivet: I like CalMatters too. I presume you've already seen that. I don't read it often 'cause it isn't local for me, but the Oaklandside articles I read about providing water to people experiencing homelessness were the most detailed and technical I've seen anywhere.
I am starting to like a couple compiled newsletters, one from my local public radio and one from some reporter guy. They seem to have a breadth of stuff that interests me (local/CA news). Besides that, my city subreddit.
The SFPL makes available a code that grants you 3 days of access to the NYT and can be reused indefinitely, so that's the main traditional news outlet I consume lately. Which I guess makes me Basic but I don't have time to care these days.
I'm pretty happy with how signing off X fka Twitter a year ago has metered my news consumption. I'm dabbling in Threads and have been amused to see journos in recent weeks whinge about how it doesn't yet enable them to mainline current events chatter as effectively. I mean, the impulse to seek unvetted new information nonstop is not exactly unfamiliar to me, but at least I have the self-awareness to realize it is a profoundly unhealthy one?
Oh yeah, I wasn't including Calmatters or Berkeley/Oaklandside as they are free. But yes, I go there.
Also rtumble.com, a traditional aggregator for the State Capitol set. (Vintage artisanally hand-stretched HTML. Lobbyist banner ads, etc.)
You still in Sac, at the same email, and accepting visitors? I'll need to schlep the brood up there in late November and could use some added stops.
If anyone still needs an invite, I just realized I have some.
I also have too many hats. I feel really silly in a hat, so I don't wear them. But I need to keep the sun off my face, so I buy a hat that I think I'll wear.
peep, I'll take one. Thank you!
What does it mean to get your news from Reddit? That's a foreign land.
I pay for the WaPo and The Athletic. Recently cancelled the New Yorker and The Atlantic.
Also pay for TPM.
Scan the AP and local news sites. Scan HackerNews for interesting articles and, rarely, good comment threads.
Pay for a bunch of Substacks, mostly to support them, but some I read regularly.
Last Night, In Basketball, by Jared Dubin
Popular Information, by Judd Legum
The Watch, by Radley Balko
Big, by Matt Stoller
The Pragmatic Engineer, by Gergely Orosz
I'd love a pointer to a smart, left-ish political or cultural publication.
Online subscriptions to Washington Post, NYT, Radley Balko's blog, Anne Helen Petersen's blog, The New Yorker, my current town's terrible newspaper, my hometown's terrible newspaper, NY Mag and The Cut, and the occasional 'zine (I feel personally responsible for supporting even deeply mediocre journalism, especially local news). I think I also subscribe to Ms.
I read large swaths of the Post and the Times every day, listen to NPR almost every day, and read the others more sporadically. I read The Guardian and The 19th* on occasion.
42.1: It means you learn about handjobs in theaters before everyone else except the ushers.
Nice, I'm interested in that. But I don't think you mean r/handjobs. So where do you go?
I also still pay for Newsblur, but I have fewer and fewer news sources on it, apart from the ever-prolific LGM. I still get webcomics thence.
Like teo, I subscribe to my local paper, the NYT, and TPM. But my local paper happens to be the Washington Post.
I read the NYT a lot more than the Post, but the Post's Carolyn Hax is the best advice columnist ever, and Judith Martin is the second best.
OT: My doctor finally ordered me a Cologuard after two years of me not scheduling a colonoscopy.
In the end I rather liked my colonoscopy. The drugs they gave me led me to wake up with a profound sense of equanimity unlike any I had felt in decades. It was a startling revelation of what it must be like to live without stress and worry.
I asked him if I could just have the fun drugs anyway.
Thanks for the code, Moby. You're giving away hats, too, now?
I may have read things out of order.
I have too many hats, but I'm keeping them. I have a bunch of baseball caps, an orange cap to cast +3 protection from deer hunters, a fedora that was supposed to look Canadian but really looks Jewish, two straw hats for summer, a Tilley summer hat, two winter hats with ear flaps, a couple of watch caps, and a REI hiking hat.
The Canadian fedora has ear flaps too, but the fold up so you can look like you aren't on your way to a bar Friday at Sunset.
I online subscribe to the San Jose Mercury News, LA Times, TPM, and The Guardian and check their front pages almost daily but only read thoroughly if I'm checking my RSS reader. The front pages don't really represent enough of what's in the daily flow of news, but I often don't feel like I have time or inclination to go that far.
I subscribe to the print version of High Country News, but I just started. That also gives me online access but I wanted a print magazine.
For podcasts, the closest to a news one I listen to is Our Body Politic, which is weekly. It covers news events, but it's more analysis and interviews than news reporting. I've tried more straight news podcasts but they're too frequent and my podcast listening is sporadic. I'll go through huge numbers of episode on long drives, usually listing at 1.5x speed or faster. I also can't stand news on the radio, so a podcast has to be sufficiently different than radio for me to stick with it.
I get some news from here and social media. I have an account on sfba.social where I've shaped most of my following to be California and west-US focused. There are a few reporters there from outlets like the LA Times, High Country News, some smaller places like Alameda Post, and I follow other people who link to news, some of whom are freelance journalists or writers. I've consciously tried to keep the volume of posts I see fairly low, so I don't follow a huge number of people.
Probably more people will drift away from mastodon to that blusky app since a number appear to have already done so. I'm expecting I'll create an account there at some point if it looks like a viable business with enough value to counter what seems to me to be a high risk of going to same way twitter went. I was drifting away from twitter before 2022 so I haven't been looking to recreate the pre-Musk experience.
I got door-knocked by the RFK Jr. people today. They wanted me to be mad at the DNC. And sure, fuck the DNC, but its weird when people talk about the DNC the way Ron Paul used to talk about the Fed.
That reminds me, I got an appointment for my 2023 Covid vaccine. The spoons weren't sticking anymore.
I thought maybe the covid wave around here had come and gone but I just found out about another guy I know with covid so maybe not gone.
I told my doctor I was going to wait to get the vaccine until I would have peak immunity at Christmas and he said "no, now." Since he compromised on pooping in a box, I made the appointment.
One of these days I'm going to poop in the box. It just lurks there, not six feet away, mocking me for my procrastination.
Mine isn't going to arrive for 5 to 7 business days, so I'm going to have to hold it in for a while.
I had a colonoscopy and endoscopy at the same appointment. It wasn't great but also was better than separate visits. I noticed the effects of the endoscopy for a few days but that was also combined with some of the symptoms that led to the endoscopy being ordered in the first place, so I was going to be uncomfortable either way.
This music video of Little Red Corvette, at about the 1:50 mark. Prince does a little bit of Michael Jackson, just to show he can, and then goes back to being Prince.
I've had an endoscopy. I can't find the picture they took of my stomach now.
This was the review of my colonoscopy that I put on Facebook because I have no shame.
------
I underwent that most undignified rite of passage of one's 50s today. Not that anybody asked for colonoscopy observations (as opposed to colonoscopy observation; one assumes a devoted niche audience out there on this vast and varied internet), but I was the one with a camera up the butt so no complaining.
First, "the procedure isn't bad, but the prep is awful." Nah, the prep was nothing. I'm used to guzzling enormous quantities of weird-tasting liquids (shout out to the mad chemists at Monster Energy Co.) and forgoing food for extended periods in favor of nicotine and Pokémon so that was easy enough, especially when you're still allowed to eat all the Jello you can hold (aside: I hold formidable amounts of Jello).
But of course, what people complained about was less the emptiness than the emptying, right? Well, I spent *years* of my life eating coffee and cigarettes for breakfast and Hardee's for lunch. A day of diarrhea is child's play. Pure muscle memory. Don't even have to concentrate. These boots were made for walking.
Accordingly, my "bowel prep was exemplary." Laydeez. So I'm on the stretcher in the robe with the IV in my arm and the nurse says "I'm going to start the anesthetic" and I think "oh hey that is indeed the floaty and awesome feeling I remember" and then "oh hey that is definitely a finger going in my butt but not really in a bad way and wait am I dreaming" and then I was in recovery. Came to not feeling the least bit groggy or impaired which was, of course, the biggest disappointment of all. I have an employer gold plan, Duke Med. Make my designated driver earn it already.
Kinda weird, all in all, but easier than expected or feared. Now hopefully everybody will leave me alone about it for a few years.
First, "the procedure isn't bad, but the prep is awful." Nah, the prep was nothing.
That's how I felt. I've had a few bouts of sickness that were a lot worse than the prep, not least because I also had fevers during those times.
I'm firmly in "the procedure isn't bad, but the prep is awful" camp. Sure, it wasn't as bad as being massively sick with a fever on top of it all? I just didn't enjoy camping out in the bathroom and having my sleep being interrupted. And I thought I'd be more resilient about not having real food, but it turns out I was a whiny, crabby baby.
I just hope the box isn't hard to seal.
Done with twitter. Someone I know tagged me with a link yesterday which I thought was a science-related screenshot of an LLM output, but it was actually a link to the LLM site, which are blocked at our company. I clicked on it to see what I thought was the image and it tried to take me to the website, so it ended up generating a security warning notification from our IT department to my manager. Fuck Elon.
I have invites. Ask at the linked email.
Also for those who celebrate/are on Bluesky, they have an Edward Gorey feed.
Every once in a while you are reminded Twitter could slap. (Link to a Twitter image library I think so not sure if you need an account or not.)
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/F8RfLIkWwAAC43y?format=jpg&name=large
77: eh, it might be a photoshop.