What are your favorite online news sources?

[dualstow]

http://www.redditedit.com/

There's an interesting story on that page right now:
Drug Dealers in Brazil ban sale of crack, claim it destabilizes communities
http://bigstory.ap.org/article/brazil-d ... -crack-rio

[WiseOne]

I look at http://thebrowser.com/ every day.

Thank you for this pointer!  Never heard of this before, but it's a terrific site.  Very thoughtful stories and a refreshing absence of sensationalism.  And, I'm really enjoying the article on the borders of ancient Rome.

I'd previously stuck with international news such as UK newspapers and the Economist, but there's nothing I'd point to as an excellent source.  As far U.S. mainstream news sources, I don't think they're biased particularly to the left or the right, except for Fox News where the bias is painfully obvious.  I just think they're lazy and half-a**ed.  They just pass along news releases and whatever the soundbite du jour may be, with no intervening thought process or any kind of considered analysis.  Their main function, as I see it, is mass entertainment and providing fodder for the Daily Show.

[Reub]

I believe that almost all of the U.S. news sites are biased way left. Fox is the only one that is fair.

[stone]

The "Jesse cafe amercain" website has a bunch of links every day to current news etc. The collection of links constantly has a very eclectic global mix. I suppose it is a bit like having a news DJ.

[dualstow]

As far U.S. mainstream news sources, I don't think they're biased particularly to the left or the right, except for Fox News where the bias is painfully obvious.  I just think they're lazy and half-a**ed.  They just pass along news releases and whatever the soundbite du jour may be, with no intervening thought process or any kind of considered analysis.  Their main function, as I see it, is mass entertainment and providing fodder for the Daily Show.

I believe that almost all of the U.S. news sites are biased way left. Fox is the only one that is fair.

Biased or not, Rachel Maddow stated that she would rather read an American newspaper than a UK one any day of the week, finding them of much higher quality. (And yes, Maddow is American, so obviously she doesn't have the final word on the topic by any means. Still, she seems like the kind of person who would admit that UK sources were better if she felt that way).
As for me, I love my 'Economist' and I also love my 'New York Times'.

[WiseOne]

As for me, I love my 'Economist' and I also love my 'New York Times'.

Careful about the NY Times.  It has a few very quirky biases, such as being fanatically supportive of Israel.  (Sorry, should have listed this paper along with Fox as among the most biased news outlets.)  Also I haven't particularly appreciated their out and out war on doctors in the opinion pages.  Try the Los Angeles Times instead - it's equal in quality and more even handed.

I like the Economist too - note that it is from the UK!

[dualstow]

WiseOne, I agree. I'm supportive* of Israel and even I think the NYT goes too far. I balance with other papers, including some which are accused of having a conservative bias. No source is perfect. Can't always learn about Qatari or Bahrain protests from Al Jazeera, lol.

Yes, the 'E' is from the UK- my point was that I appreciate both UK and US sources.  :)

*and critical.

As for me, I love my 'Economist' and I also love my 'New York Times'.

Careful about the NY Times.  It has a few very quirky biases, such as being fanatically supportive of Israel.  (Sorry, should have listed this paper along with Fox as among the most biased news outlets.)  Also I haven't particularly appreciated their out and out war on doctors in the opinion pages.  Try the Los Angeles Times instead - it's equal in quality and more even handed.

I like the Economist too - note that it is from the UK!

[WiseOne]

Yes, the 'E' is from the UK- my point was that I appreciate both UK and US sources. 

Sorry dualstow....misread that.

I'm probably a bit more sensitive to pro-Israel biases than most, so I may have overreacted a bit.  My mother's family is Palestinian, originally from Bethlehem.  The family experiences do not match well with official history & viewpoints, which makes the bias even more obvious to me.

[dualstow]

I'm probably a bit more sensitive to pro-Israel biases than most, so I may have overreacted a bit.  My mother's family is Palestinian, originally from Bethlehem.  The family experiences do not match well with official history & viewpoints, which makes the bias even more obvious to me.

You know what's strange? I bought both a New York Times and a WSJ from a chatty checkout woman at my local grocery -- was taking a break from the Internet for the weekend -- and she complained that the NYT, among other things, was "too critical" of Israel. She is Arab-American. I guess there are opinion pieces on both sides, but I was pretty surprised to hear her viewpoint.

[MachineGhost]

Not that I read it, but http://www.DEBKA.com is the Israeli equivalent to Fox and WorldDailyNews, i.e. right wing, NeoCon.  You'll likely read a story there first before it hits mainstream media outlets.

[Reub]

I wonder about the phrase "fanatical support of Israel".

Funny, I've never heard the phrase "fanatical support of Great Britain". Or "fanatical support of Australia".
Or France. Or South Korea. Or Poland. Or Japan. Or Haiti.

[stone]

Reub, the USA very wisely did not leap in to aid the UK during the Falklands war. I guess any US media that had suggested that the US should would quite rightly have been accused of fanatical support for the UK

[dualstow]

kottke.org and boingboing.net are great for the new and strange.
Very interesting content every day.

[Reub]

But we did leap in to help the U.K. in another war. Didn't we?

[MachineGhost]

I wonder about the phrase "fanatical support of Israel".

Funny, I've never heard the phrase "fanatical support of Great Britain". Or "fanatical support of Australia".
Or France. Or South Korea. Or Poland. Or Japan. Or Haiti.

Its probably because we're all blood-stained with the illegal occupation of Palestine known as Israel.   The bigger a lie, the more people need to believe in it fanatically as if doing so would absolve themselves of the guilt complex.

[stone]

Machine Ghost, what in your opinion would be the "proper" policy towards Israel/Palestine? To me it is a desperately hard issue. I do think history is relevant. The UK, USA, Canada etc did make it nigh on impossible for would-be-refugees trying to escape the holocaust (£20000 visa cost to the UK in 1939- not much help if you have had everything confiscated by the Nazis). The Allies expressly refused to bomb to railway tracks to Auschwitz despite petitions begging for that to be done etc etc. Against that background it is easy to understand how Israel developed a hard nosed attitude. Of course its the Palestinians who suffer and they have absolutely nothing to do with the holocust.

Might it help ease things a little if as many countries as possible (eg EU, USA, Saudi, Egypt, Canada, Russia, anyone else) signed up to allowing imigration of any Palestinian of Israeli citizen. That might take some pressure off. Ugandan Asians were "unjustly" expelled from Uganda and lost everything and yet they went on to do very well in the UK (the UK gave them all citizenship).
I've actually heard almost exactly the opposite suggestion -that it would help if countries didn't allow joint citizenship between Israel and the UK/USA /Russia etc. The argument was that people have a less pragmatic and less reasonable approach to trying to make peace if they know they have a bolt hole to go to if they push things to far and it all blows up.
It is a desperately hard issue.

[MachineGhost]

Machine Ghost, what in your opinion would be the "proper" policy towards Israel/Palestine? To me it is a desperately hard issue. I do think history is relevant. The UK, USA, Canada etc did make it nigh on impossible for would-be-refugees trying to escape the holocaust (£20000 visa cost to the UK in 1939- not much help if you have had everything confiscated by the Nazis). The Allies expressly refused to bomb to railway tracks to Auschwitz despite petitions begging for that to be done etc etc. Against that background it is easy to understand how Israel developed a hard nosed attitude. Of course its the Palestinians who suffer and they have absolutely nothing to do with the holocust.

Might it help ease things a little if as many countries as possible (eg EU, USA, Saudi, Egypt, Canada, Russia, anyone else) signed up to allowing imigration of any Palestinian of Israeli citizen. That might take some pressure off. Ugandan Asians were "unjustly" expelled from Uganda and lost everything and yet they went on to do very well in the UK (the UK gave them all citizenship).
I've actually heard almost exactly the opposite suggestion -that it would help if countries didn't allow joint citizenship between Israel and the UK/USA /Russia etc. The argument was that people have a less pragmatic and less reasonable approach to trying to make peace if they know they have a bolt hole to go to if they push things to far and it all blows up.
It is a desperately hard issue.

It seems to me to only be a "hard issue" akin to those upholding slavery who were scared to face the consequences of their actions.  The Palestinians got fucked just as the Jews did.  We all need to accept that, bring both into council and go for a two-state solution.  There needs to be a healthy respect given to both sides as human beings.  If both sides are willing to swallow their pride and fear, then a compromise can be reached.  It's not that difficult in concept, but people rather conflate and obsess over the endless B.S. in their minds than actually deal with creating a peaceful and prosperous reality.  At some point, the path of least resistance from the endless violence and oppression (and Americanization of the world upping living standards) will force the issue upon everyone.  Already, there hundreds of thousands of Palestinians that are Israeli citizens.  Its not like terrorism is particular to any ethnicity or nationality.  It'll always be a crime.

Whenever a conflict goes on for too long, you can be assured there are vested interests in maintaining the status quo for purposes of power and profit.  In this case, I blame the war hawk NeoCons and the war hawk terrorists (oops, I meant "freedom fighters").  They will simply not know what to do with themselves with their security blanket rendered irrelevant.  Fear of the unknown is a great motivator to continue what has always been done, whether or not it is actually productive.  Resolving this conflict would also help nullfiy the influence of the Iranian mullahs and let the younger generation get their democratic reforms.  Continual relevance is what keeps war hawks in power and they are not passive about that.

I might come across as impatient on this issue and in ways I am.  But I suspect it's a luxury of living in the relative safe and stabe West where I've had the opportunity to extensively grow my thinking skills and help push humanity in a post-modern direction.  I'm not struggling for food and to avoid being shot everyday!  It is no more realistic to expect the Palestinians to help themselves anymore than it is to expect those in Chicago's South Side.  There's a point where expecting individualism and self-responsibility as a savior simply stops working.

[stone]

Machine Ghost, I guess the Israel/Palestine situation is very much like the Northern Ireland situation or Bosnia or Rwanda etc. Whenever you have sectarian divisions between peoples who both claim that a given land belongs exclusively to them you get the same kind of mess.
Where would you set the borders for your two state solution? Would Palestine be an incredibly densely populated city state like Singapore? Would you expel lots of settlers from the West Bank? What about water rights?

[stone]

Reub, in your opinion what would be the optimal way to deal with the issue? Should the Palestinians just man up and accept that they are destined to tough it out in refugee camps for eternity?

[MediumTex]

The Israel/Palstinian topic has been one we have struggled with at times here.

Can we get back to news sources or maybe get off topic in some other direction?

[dualstow]

From The Smithsonian: Why Fire Makes Us Human
Some of you may remember the 2010 book mentioned in the essay.

[doodle]

I believe that almost all of the U.S. news sites are biased way left. Fox is the only one that is fair.

You're kidding, right?

By the way, Im exhausted with this right and left crap! If you would only take the time to understand your human flaws and biases you could see through this nonsense.

Unfortunately this Men's health article is the best one I can find at the moment: http://www.menshealth.com/health/angry-men

"Get a bunch of guys together in an art museum and tell half of them, 'Oh, you like Kandinsky,' and the other half, 'You like Klee,' and 10 minutes later, you'll have a fight going. It doesn't matter that none of them ever heard of Kandinsky or Klee. Forming coalitions is an intrinsic part of male psychology."

McDermott explains that once the battle lines have been drawn and the anger ignites, group members become increasingly convinced of their own side's rectitude—and the other side's moral bankruptcy. The more emotionally charged the topic—think gun control or abortion—the more difficult it becomes to see any value in the other side's perspective.

This blindness, it turns out, is no fluke.

"We all think we are right," says University of Virginia psychologist Jonathan Haidt, Ph.D., a researcher on the evolutionary psychology of morality. "Our righteous minds are designed by evolution to unite us into teams, divide us against other teams, and blind us to the truth."

[Libertarian666]

I get the daily digest from The Daily Capitalist.  I guess it's probably not a "news source", but has a lot of posts and commentary on various topics from an Austrian perspective.

When I go there, I get a message saying that they are out of business:

'I have decided to shut the Daily Capitalist down and this is our last post. I have been publishing this blog for 5 years and, as they say, it’s fun until it isn’t. Think of a blog like a newspaper where readers expect new content every day. That takes quite a bit of time and it has squeezed a lot of things out of my life. Now it’s time to get them back. While readership is good and there is lots to say, I need to move on.'

[hoost]

I get the daily digest from The Daily Capitalist.  I guess it's probably not a "news source", but has a lot of posts and commentary on various topics from an Austrian perspective.

When I go there, I get a message saying that they are out of business:

'I have decided to shut the Daily Capitalist down and this is our last post. I have been publishing this blog for 5 years and, as they say, it’s fun until it isn’t. Think of a blog like a newspaper where readers expect new content every day. That takes quite a bit of time and it has squeezed a lot of things out of my life. Now it’s time to get them back. While readership is good and there is lots to say, I need to move on.'

Yes, unfortunately he shut it down a while back.  It was good while it lasted.

[dualstow]

* Opting out at Google: http://techcrunch.com/2013/10/12/opt-out-google-ads/

*  Schneier on security: https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/ ... _gaps.html

* The Reincarnation Machine (metal shredder):  http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/ ... on-machine