Feola’s Do It Yourself News Service
Chris Feola
Author, Perfecting Equilibrium: For a brief, shining moment Web1 democratized data. Then Web2 came along and made George Orwell look like an optimist. Now Web3 is Perfecting John Nash’s Information Equilibrium.
Perfecting Equilibrium Volume Two, Issue 38
I read the news today, oh boy
About a lucky man who made the grade
And though the news was rather sad
Well, I just had to laugh
I saw the photograph
The Sunday Reader, April 30, 2023
It’s always good fun to dunk on NPR and the rest of the mass media walking dead, pointing out how they’ve fallen into irrelevance:
Isn’t this self-defeating, though? How can Musk – or California – afford to ignore NPR’s ability to disseminate their stories? How else, for example, can they reach NPR’s 8.8 million Twitter followers?
Well, Elon Musk also has followers: 135.1 million, to be exact.
And that’s the real NPR story. Regardless of whether anyone thinks they are fair or biased, accurate or sloppy, the layoffs and disrespect all have the same basis:
NPR is irrelevant.
After the schadenfreude fades, however, you’re still left with the question of where to get your news. The answer comes from a century ago, before consolidation homogenized the media. In those days, every city had bunches of publications – New York City alone had 15 newspapers in 1900 – and smart folks assembled their own news smorgasbord. Today’s explosion of new-wave news coverage means you should do the same. Here’s mine to get you started; your milage can and will vary.
Websites I read daily:
Law professor Glen Reynolds has been blogging for two decades. The Blogfather’s site is so popular that when he links to smaller sites their servers often crash from the “InstaLanch” of new traffic. Glen is a small L libertarian1 like myself, and curates news from that perspective, generally with a snarky comment, a link and short excerpt, like this:
MILTON FRIEDMAN ISN’T RUNNING THE SHOW ANYMORE: Britons ‘need to accept’ they’re poorer, says Bank of England economist. Chief economist Huw Pill says workers and firms should stop trying to pass on rising costs by hiking prices or demanding better wages.
Ann Althouse is a retired law professor given to cruel neutrality, outrage at men in shorts, and deep dives down rabbit holes chasing misuse of the word “garner” and other grammatical crimes:
Here's the link. It's written by Miranda Devine and begins:
Hunter Biden is believed to be hiding out at the White House while his baby mama goes on the warpath.
If it's true that Hunter Biden is living at the White House to avoid legal consequences in a child support suit, that's important. But we've got the passive voice on top of mere belief — "is believed" — and that's next to meaningless.
Then there's "on the warpath." Ugh! Leave Native Americans out of this.
And then "baby mama." Ugh! It's not cute. It's not cool. It's just asinine and sad.
When you live in the United States of Kayfabe it’s best to learn from the pros:
Recommended by LinkedIn
The most interesting moments of Rampage were Jon Moxley beating up Christoper Daniels in the locker room, Anna Jay bringing the fight to Julia Hart, and a four-man strut.
On a long enough timeline the survival rate for everyone drops to zero
ZeroHedge is a peculiar collection of financial analysis, wild conspiracy theories, some of which prove to be true, crazy gold bug ramblings…what it never is is boring
Nerd news by Nerds for Nerds
My Newsletter Subscriptions
These pop up in my email inbox in a steady stream. Most of these are $5/month when you pay for an annual subscription.
Bari Weiss quit her job at the New York Times two years ago in rather spectacular fashion in a public letter:
The paper of record is, more and more, the record of those living in a distant galaxy, one whose concerns are profoundly removed from the lives of most people.
Weiss soon launched a Substack called Common Sense, which has now grown into The Free Press, a news media company with 10 full-time journalists supported by more than a dozen freelancers. The Free Press has more than a quarter of a million subscribers hailing from all 50 states and more than 30 countries.
Like Weiss, Matt Taibbi started a Substack newsletter that grew into a media company. Taibbi says he admires Hunter Thompson and I.F. Stone. Like Thompson, Taibbi wrote for Rolling Stone magazine for decades. And Taibbi won the 2020 Izzy Award, which is named for Stone.
Freddie claims to be a Marxist. Maybe so. He's a thoughtful writer on politics, culture, blogging and mental illness who likes data. Feola say check him out.
Greenwald is the investigative reporter who broke the Edward Snowden story. He’s a muckraking reporter in the finest tradition, and has won the Pulitzer Prize and the George Polk Award.
It's like a nightly voice mail from rock star poet Patti Smith, catching you up on her day and her thoughts, which are always poetic. Sometimes she sends video from a soundcheck before a concert; sometimes she reads you a new poem; sometimes she reads you Uncle Wiggly. You’ll always be charmed and bemused.
Footnote:
1. Small L libertarians believe in the libertarian philosophy, not the Libertarian Party. In a nutshell, small L libertarians believe government is necessary, and the job of citizens is to constrain it. For example, we believe there should be police, and they shouldn’t be defunded. However, they should be demilitarized, we should do away with qualified immunity, and there should not be laws requiring police to do stuff like arresting people for selling loose cigarettes. Despite what is often said, we’re not anarchists; anarchists believe in doing away with laws and authorities, not limiting them. That would be…anarchy.
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Christopher J Feola founded PrivacyChain, which provides Data as a Service to Web3 projects and restores the value of content. If you liked this post from Perfecting Equilibrium, why not share it?