Recommended reading

With the legacy mainstream media now owned and controlled by billionaires, and largely pushing their agenda, alternate sources of information are a necessity.  Here are some I read regularly.  They're far from being the only information sites I look at, but I've found them consistently worthwhile.

Futurism is a good source on "AI", the ElonMuskosphere, and the tech-bro world in general.  Its headlines tend to be rather more sensational than the articles justify, but I've found the articles themselves to be pretty reliable.  Readers may have noticed how often they crop up in my link round-ups -- they provide very good coverage of their chosen topics.

My newest discovery is Jessica Valenti's Abortion Every Day.  It's technically a Substack blog, but its frequent posts (not every single day, but close) are massive round-ups of news related to abortion rights.  It looks to be a very valuable source on this critical personal-freedom issue, and will certainly be among my regular reads going forward.

Les Leopold has a Substack blog, posting about working-class politics.  Leopold is the author of this remarkable book, which just may turn out to be the most important political text of the last few decades.  His posts are more analysis than news, but they cover politics from the viewpoint of the class struggle which is the true great divide of our time, as opposed to the left-vs-right paradigm which increasingly looks like an outdated distraction.

On Iran and the Middle East generally, there are many sources, but I've found Iran International, The Jerusalem Post, and the Jerusalem News Syndicate to be the best.  They stay focused on the region and don't clutter up their reporting with US domestic politics considerations the way US-based news sources tend to do.  They definitely each have a viewpoint, but they are open about doing so, so it can be taken into account in evaluating what they report.  On Ukraine, similarly, there are many sources, but The Kyiv Independent is the one I read most consistently.  It's actually based in Ukraine and keeps its focus firmly on the region.

The forum site Ovarit was a unique source for radical feminist thinking, especially on the issue of trans ideology, and it was a real loss when it shut down.  Recently the new site Vexxed has arisen, almost perfectly replicating Ovarit.  It's not really a news site -- the focus is on discussion, not reporting -- but there have been several news stories I first learned about there, and the discussions are often intelligent and entertaining.

Another good source on trans issues is Capricorn Season.  It's a Tumblr blog, but mostly reposts news stories and Twitter threads, and serves as a useful information aggregator.  Unfortunately it has an interminably-long pinned post (full of disturbing photos) that you have to scroll past on every visit to get to the new stuff.  To me, at least, it's worth it.

One recent loss is WAHF, which posted a round-up of news every week focusing on radical-feminist and trans issues.  Unfortunately it stopped posting these in May, and recently announced that it will not be resuming.  It will be missed.  I always found plenty of worthwhile information there.

Politico and Axios cover US politics pretty well, but many Politico posts are behind some kind of account-required wall, so if you actually want to read one, you have to take the link to the archive site and search on it there.  Mediaite is more accessible and fairly free of ideological clutter.  The UK-based Guardian is proudly non-billionaire-owned and covers global news from a standard-left viewpoint.

(Of course I also read too many blogs to list, but those are largely for entertainment.  Still, some blogs also discuss news items at least occasionally, and can even catch things that most news sites miss, if the story touches on some issue the blogger has a special interest in.)

One site I don't generally give much credence to is Daily Kos.  The place is a cesspit of Israel-bashing (and of moderate-Democrat-bashing), and since any registered user can post there without vetting, the factual accuracy of the posts is mostly unknowable.  Flagrantly-false posts are sometimes retracted, but this is rare.  Any dissent from prog-fringe ideological orthodoxy is ruthlessly denounced on the rare occasions when it appears at all.  The main reason I mention it is the regular "Russian Stuff Blowing Up" posts by user Quaoar, which cover the Ukraine war in detail, usually from sources within the region; it's generally pretty clear how trustworthy the items are.  Other users sometimes post about Ukraine as well, but their efforts tend to be full of sensationalist clickbaity-looking videos which I can't be bothered with.  Very occasionally there is something about US politics which is both interesting and reliable, but these are easy to miss amid the wasteland of hyper-ideological ranting.

I no longer trust anything in The New York Times unless I can independently verify it.  That once-great newspaper has been undermining its own credibility for quite some time, and finally dynamited it completely in May with Nicholas Kristof's deranged dog-rape fantasies.  Likewise, I haven't considered Slate to be a credible news source since it branded the 2021 Wi Spa incident a "hoax" -- a claim which, as far as I know, it has never explicitly retracted.

But really, every story and claim needs to be double-checked unless it includes clear evidence of its own accuracy, particularly if it seems bizarre or improbable -- and it especially, especially needs to be double-checked if it's something I want to believe.  That's where the risk of being fooled by a false or exaggerated claim is greatest.  Every week I see at least a few things I want to include in the link round-ups, but end up leaving out because they seem a bit implausible or "too good to be true" and I can't verify them.  In today's fragmented media landscape, where everyone, however honest, has an agenda, anyone who seeks to be well-informed must take a skeptical, open-minded approach.