My interests: Journalism, Politics, International Relations.
1 - The New Yorker is the best magazine in the English-speaking world. They employ very good writers. If you like deep insightful long stories, try to get it.
2 - Without The Guardian, British democracy is utterly fucked. The Brits just don’t know it. Most UK papers are owned by shady characters such as Jonathan Harmsworth. The Brits even have a paper (The Independent) owned by a Russian mobster (Evgueni Lebedev). The Guardian’s non-profit structure gives it more freedom that most UK papers. They often investigate stories the rest of the UK press just won’t touch: Paradise Papers, Panama Papers, Cameron’s tax evasion, etc…
3 - The two best newspapers in France are Le Monde and Mediapart, hands down. Mediapart is a non-profit. Le Monde journalists have special rights and can’t be removed by shareholders. These 2 newspapers are more independent than the rest of the french press.
4 - The Financial Times is the favorite newspaper of elites worldwide. CEOs. Billionaires. Millionaires. Presidents. Prime Ministers. Everyone reads it. And honestly, it’s very solid. The information is always extremely reliable. The FT is also the most expensive newspaper on the planet. But they sometimes publish free stories.
5 - The editorial section of the Wall Street Journal is directly controlled by Billionaire Rupert Murdoch. The WSJ is the jewel of his global media empire. Fox News and the New York Post are for influencing the masses. WSJ editorials actually allow him to have influence over US high income readers.
6 - If you read WSJ editorials, Rupert Murdoch’s ideas are very simple. Labor unions must be crushed. Corporate concentration is good. Netanyahu is a brave man. US military spending is good. Unions should be restricted by tough laws. Environmental rules are bad. Slash taxes on large corporations. Of course, he doesn’t write it openly. But this what virtually most of the WSJ editorial content boils down to.
7 - Many talented reporters work for the Wall Street Journal and end up deeply ashamed of it. It feels like prostitution. Many would much rather work for The Financial Times, New York Times or ProPublica. Rupert Murdoch employs great reporters at the Wall Street Journal simply because he needs them to acquire credibility in order to influence readers through his WSJ editorials.
8 - The best coverage of Silicon Valley is an online newspaper called The Information. If you want to know what Meta or Microsoft are really up to, read The Information. Most of their readers are wealthy investors and tech executives who seek exclusive information.
9 - When it comes to television and radio, public media (PBS, BBC, NPR, CBC) is often more professional, more serious, than corporate media. PBS or CBC make outstanding documentaries. Stuff US/Canadian private networks just wouldn’t make.
10 - Generally speaking, journalism that you pay for is better than journalism you don’t pay for. This is a general rule, not a law of physics. There are exceptions. The Daily Mail has subscribers. It’s largely non-sense. I wouldn’t trust anything written in it. ProPublica is free. They do quality investigations.
11 - AIPAC is powerful. But there is limit to their power. There was an intense AIPAC campaign to stop the President Obama from signing a nuclear agreement with Iran. He defeated them .
12 - Most Trump tweets aren’t written by Donald Trump. They are written by a dude named Dan Scavino. He is behind 90% of his tweets. Most americans have no clue who Dan Scavino is. They wouldn’t know him if they met him in the supermarket.
13 - Having a lot of resources is a curse. Countries that have natural ressources (Iran, Algeria, Nigeria, Russia) tend to be highly corrupt and exploited by a small elite. It’s simple. The elite can take control of the oil fields, the gas fields, the mines. Just sell ressources. Shoot protesters. No need to invest in anything else. It’s much better to live a country with limited resources (Taiwan, Japan, Switzerland). Lack of resources force the elites to invest in science and education. The most unlucky country in Africa is Congo. It’s full of diamonds, forests, oil, gas, lithium, cobalt, rare earth. So Congo has suffered horribly because of that. In fact, it’s still being looted.
14 - If you want to transform an authoritarian regime into a democracy from within, the number 1 tool you need are powerful labor unions. Powerful unions can basically go on a general solidarity strike and shut down an entire economy.
15 - Everything Barack Obama predicted would happen if the US didn’t sign the nuclear agreement with Iran actually happened. Trump left the agreement. Iran started enriching nuclear fuel. Then a major war happened.
16 - Many Middle Easterners are very tribal. Most Israelis see themselves as Jewish first, Israeli second. Syrian druzes think of themselves as Druze first, Syrian second. Many lebanese Shias see themselves as Shia first, Lebanese a distant second. And so on. Their loyalty often lies more to their tribe than to the State they actually live in.
17 - Imperialism was bad. But imperialism didn’t actually cause instability in the Middle East. The most stable period was actually Ottoman Imperialism. For 5 centuries there was commerce and peace. Then, there was the British/French empire. Apart from some episodes of violence, it was stable. But when imperialism ended, it was basically a mess. Jews vs Arabs. Christians vs Sunnis. Arabs vs Persians. Jews vs Shias. Arabs vs Kurds. Alawis vs Sunnis. To this day, many of them have this tribal mindset.
18 - Saying “we don’t speak with terrorists” is completely dumb. Many terrorist organizations later became peaceful. Many terrorist leaders later became statesmen. It’s wrong to say “We can’t make any peace with those who hands are stained with blood”. Get out of here with that non-sense. If you truly want peace, seeking only decent leaders means you aren’t going to find anyone at all. Criminals make peace. This isn’t Scandinavia.
What are things you know because of your personal interests that most people have no idea about ?
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I’d say that for anyone wanting to understand the archetypes, the underlying-Patterns, the “skeleton” underlying games they NEED to hit Architect of Games yt-channel, too.
People not interested in understanding how such things work wouldn’t care about what he’s giving us, but … he cuts right through appearances, to get-into the underlying level…
https://www.youtube.com/@ArchitectofGames/videos
AND understanding what kind of gamers there are, you then need to understand what Nick Yee discovered:
The 2nd video, then the 1st, here:
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Nick+Yee+gamer+motivations+gdc
AND understanding the 14 GENRES is required, too…
https://www.kobo.com/us/en/search?query=John+Truby&fclanguages=en
( anybody who disses that book needs their head examined: there may be 2 fundamental mistakes in it,
1 being the root of humor, which is surprising-violation-of-expectations, and NOT “the drop”, which is a UK & US specific thing ( other put-down cultures, too )…
Hofstadter’s “Godel Escher Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid” explained that humor is simply a strange loop, ie a moebius-strip, where one walks around in a “circle”, but now one’s upside-down for some reason?!?
So, Hofstadter got MUCH deeper than Truby, on that point…
& the other being that the archetype-of-village is the Tribal Mother Village, and not the US’s Wild West village.
Other than those 2 cockups, though, his meanings are profound.
Each of the genres is human-unconscious-mind working at understanding, through imprinting, 1 kind of meaning.
Horror is unconscious-mind trying to get its handle on death.
Action is unconscious-mind trying to get its handle on “morality? morality’s irrelevant: ACTION decides everything.”, ie it’s trying to find its place between inertia & action…
Detective is unconscious-mind trying to convince itself completely-enough that intellect can conquer everything.
etc…
It’s stupendously important understanding, that book…
Anybody wanting to make either a story or story-game, they’d better understand BOTH Truby’s books, & Coyne’s “The Story Grid”, too!
( The Story Grid is THE book on editing. )
Yagoda’s book on Voice is important for people doing writing…
Weissman’s book “Presenting to Win” is absolutely crucial for anybody wanting to understand the fundamental-archetypes of presenting-information, & in stories, it can make-or-break one’s writing, too…
say one has a character who has to fail-to-communicate something, to make the story work right…
Well, if you don’t know th archetypes-of-presenting-information, then you’re likely to botch that, aren’t you?
But if you do know, then just pick from the archetypes which one suits the work, & impliment it!
There’s writing software in Linux called Manuskript or something like that, which is wonderful for helping one write structured stuff, simply because it sets the overall-structure 1st, then you are more filling it in…
not suited to all things, but sometimes it greases-the-wheels sooo good…
a good mind-mapper for always-on-one idea-capture is important, for anybody who is committed to publishing their work, later…
: p
Oh, & this insight was from when I was watching an AoG video, a few years ago?
There’s a game ( I’m not a gamer, at all: don’t feel any point in it ) called, iirc, Rainworld, where there are many creatures in this world one has got living in…
you go 'round exploring in this world…
the creatures have their own lives, so behaviors evolve, while you are playing, & local-ecologies can change while you are away
THAT is object-oriented programming.
Functional doesn’t work that way.
Emergent-complexity is something that OOP produces ( which is why it can be the enemy of managing-complexity ), & pure-functional-programming eradicates.
( I’m differentiating between Class-Hierarchy-Oriented-Programming, like Java, vs everything-is-an-object type programming, like Ruby/Crystal: the book on Object Oriented Programming in Ruby helped me understand the category-difference, though I never finished reading it.
CHOP is brittle, whereas true-OOP isn’t, the same way. )
So, each of those creatures had their own state, their interactions had their-own histories, etc…
That’s OOP.
Choose the tool that’s right for that job, see?
Character-engines need to be OOP!
: )
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( a litle context for people who see that I’ve jumped-in, in-depth, in multiple domains, in this post:
I’m autistic, retired-for-many-years, & fighting-off 3 waves ( in different decades ) of MASSIVE brain-injury, through thinking & forcing-healing … where the medical-profession ordered me to just drug myself into an acceptable psychiatric-zombie, on major-tranquilizers ( like Thorazine/Chlorpromazine ), & wait until I died.
I dig-into EVERYthing I care to understand, & am not satisfied until it makes sense to me, at the grass-roots level I want.
So, yeah: lots of stuff about competent-programming, philosophy sociology, speaker-building, science, space, religions, fluid-dynamics, engineering, functional-design, safety, management-processes, leadership, ALL kinds of stuff!
You get FAR when you spend a 1/2-century studying, while others are socializing, you know?
White medicine told me that me healing was just, itself, my psychiatric-delusion: “healing isn’t possible”, for the literal-brain-decimation I’d experienced as the 2nd wave of brain-injury…
I spent multiple-years much-of-the-time catatonic ( intermittently ), so I’ve been a human-rutabaga ( eyes-open, drooling, nobody-home, fighting-with-all-my-strength-to-EXIST-in-my-brain-for-hours ).
The reason I got better is because I finally decided that they were contradicting evidence-based-medicine, which they were, & set-about engineering healing into me.
I’ve had multiple-comments deleted from this site for “medical misinformation” when I describe the DOABLE EXPERIMENT that people with autism can do, to prove the mitigation that Walsh published, years ago, actually works, … so I’ll not bother trying again:
“evidence-based” medicine means authority-based medicine, as I linked-to with this: https://www.edge.org/response-detail/25433 … & Lemmy.World stands absolutely behind authority-based-medicine-that-calls-itself-evidence-based-medicine, I’ve learned.
That article became a chapter in one of John Brockman’s books, btw, so it isn’t “just” a web-page: it’s properly published, in a book, which you can see here: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/this-idea-must-die
Anyways, digging into a subject to “sufficient” depth has very different meaning for students-seeking-passing-grade, than it does for an autistic who wants to understand & command a domain’s meanings/knowledge-functions.
Anyways, as I’ve stated on another of my comments, in this post: feel free to block me, site-wide, so you never see any “pollution” of mine, ever again, when logged-in, here.
: )
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