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anarcho_pirate wrote

Local NPR station. It's certainly not leftist, but it's pretty good for current events. That's the only thing I can think of. As for conservative books, Dostoevsky was a conservative, but his works are not unpalatable like modern conservative "authors". I think he was a great author regardless.

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An_Old_Big_Tree wrote

I watch Last Week Tonight with John Oliver - it's funny and smart enough to make up for the liberalism generally.

I also read local news from wherever, and try to avoid the terrible comment sections.

I hear a lot of shitty stuff from people in the world. That said, whenever I'm thinking about writing a zine for a general audience, a part of that process involves getting to know what kind of weird stuff they think.

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ziq wrote

Does King of the Hill count?

I don't really see much difference between liberal-liberals and conservative-liberals other than minor lifestyle choices tho.

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libre_dev wrote

I follow Garrison's and Branco's political comics, just for how bizarre their worldview is, and for them sometimes having relevant criticism relating to Democrat hypocrisy. I also keep tabs on my local nazis' corporate surveillance media accounts and blogs. Oh, and my local boorj parties' blogs

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drh1138 wrote

I like to watch anti-communist propaganda movies from the 50's and 60's, like "If Footmen Tire You, What Will Horses Do?"

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MrPotatoeHead wrote

I believe that everyone should see both sides of a coin. I occasionally look at RT, and watch Foxnews, CNBC, MSNBC, 60 minutes, PBS, BBC, CBS and NBC news, and CNN. I like Fareed Zakaria. I think Zakaria is the most even tempered and fair person in media.

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indi wrote

Ditto. My dad and I turn on the 24/7 cable news and just let it run in the background most every day, and we try to watch a different one each day. Never tried RT, CNBC, PBS, or CBS, but I make that up with a bunch of Canadian channels: CBC, CTV, GlobalNews, (formerly CHCH, too).

As Canadians, we find Fox hilarious. The blatant bias compared to, like, literally everything else out there is impossible to miss. My dad used to love Glenn Beck and his insane chalkboard. Another thing we comment on frequently is that virtually every single ad on the American channels is for some sort of medication.

I generally don't consider any of those to be sources I trust for news - I have online alternatives (like Raddle!) that I prefer. But it's very interesting not only to see how Americans see themselves, but also how they report on Canadian stories. And of course, the way Canadian mainstream media reports news is almost always... interesting.

Also, while I listen to easily a dozen lefty or technically-neutral-but-commited-to-reality-and-thus-leftish-by-default podcasts, I do deliberately include at least one very much right-wing podcast. But I'm not going to name it because I don't want to give it air. It's specialized in any case, so if you're in those circles you almost certainly know of it already, and if you're not you won't miss it.

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AudibleAnarchist wrote

Local financial magazines mostly. They are generally non-partisan when it comes to local politics so it's the most accurate news source available. It helps that my uni has the current issues available in the lobby so I don't ever have to pay for it :P

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myndrbyndr wrote

I consume news from a wide variety of sources, depending on the topic. I've found that looking at each story from a variety of perspectives and sources gives me a more complete, objective understanding, and helps me remain dispassionate when evaluating credibility.

Mylo

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robottroymacclure wrote

sam harris often has conservative guests on his podcast. still good listening

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Pop wrote

Sam harris is a piece of shit though

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robottroymacclure wrote

idk about that but Moral landscape was a great book. if i had one book in me that good i would die happy.

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Pop wrote

afaik people who get off on scientism like him have no place writing about morality

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quadrungle wrote

Because he's a classical liberal?

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Jessica wrote

I'd say it's because he promotes "scientific racism" in a dishonest way. He frames it as forbidden knowledge because the discussion of genetics, IQ, and race, is often shut down. He thinks it's because it's taboo, but the real reason is that it is impossible to meaningfully discuss it without its racist implications and historical context. Ezra Klein's reply piece was brilliant.

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robottroymacclure wrote

for what its worth, Ezra klein is scheduled to be the next guest on Sam Harris' podcast so tune in if your interested in this topic.

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quadrungle wrote

I'd agree that Sam frames it as taboo and that Sam takes a clear anti-taboo stance intellectually. In that same sense, Sam opposes laws against Holocaust Denial. But that doesn't mean he's supportive in the slightest of any Holocaust Denial.

Sam has clearly screwed up on many occasions in failing to adequately present the historical context for intellectual topics. I know Sam himself is aware of Rapoport's Rules (per Dan Dennett) that emphasize expressing others' views so well that the others say "yes, I couldn't have said it better". Sam knows conceptually about that idea, but he's done a bad job of it in many cases.

Still, I don't think Sam promotes, supports, or anything like that for "scientific racism". I think he's just failing to take all the necessary steps to avoid that interpretation from others when he wades into controversial subjects.

A good example is that he seems to be truly concerned about humanizing everyone and opposing the injustice of civilian deaths in military conflicts. But for whatever reason, Sam keeps using the term "collatoral damage" and then pissing off others because of that, and he doesn't express a real understanding of why others object to that term. Sam wants to keep using the term and just make it clear that he agrees completely with the awfulness of the reality it refers to. Why stick to the term? My guess is that Sam just lacks a certain level of patience and sympathy with the significance of the power of political language. Sam wants to talk about ideas and science and such and even politics, but just naively wishes the historic connotations and implications of language wouldn't get in the way (but of course they always will, so we'd better just deal with the language issues).

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Pop wrote

I'm pretty sure there's a laundry list of reasons to dislike him

a lot of those new atheists are/were colonialist misogynist islamophobic warmongering pricks though

pretty sure you'd get good info looking around ddg for it

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quadrungle wrote (edited )

I was curious about the justification for the simple assertion above, specifically.

I have some critiques of Sam, but he seems to me to have more issues where he sometimes lacks understanding rather than situations where he's actually supportive of any of those things you just mentioned.

Sam seems to downplay colonialism only because he's trying to emphasize his concerns about religion, but he doesn't seem to otherwise in any way support colonialism. He seems not at all misogynist. The Islam issue is more complex, but Sam's clearly focused on the religion and is not like many people who have racism tied into it. I don't know about warmongering, but Sam seems naively willing to accept the claims of good intentions from capitalists and such when not really justified (I saw Sam saying, effectively, that he'll accept the word of people like Bill Clinton or George W. Bush when they say they are motivated by aiming to help people and stop injustice etc., and in that area Sam seems more like a stooge, but he's not actively parroting the warmonger lines).

Meta-addendum: How can one tell the difference between some reactionary who is crafty enough to couch their language versus a good-intentioned person inadvertently using the same language? E.g. white-nationalists who criticize "globalism" to hide their racism versus others who also criticize "globalism" for other reasons unaware that the term can be a dog-whistle for the nationalists… I actually don't know. But since both cases definitely exist, I feel the need to give benefit-of-the-doubt and assume people to be the latter (well-intentioned and unaware of the significance of their language) until I see evidence otherwise.

P.S. EDIT: I only way later even realized that it was notable that you mentioned ddg for searching. Initially, that was so unremarkable to me. But then I remembered how that's not the norm. DDG isn't perfect but geeze, yeah, I don't remember the last time I Googled anything (years ago).

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Pop wrote

I don't really care what people's intentions are, it's how they affect the world and what they enable that is important to me

in the case of sam harris, i'm not sure but I think that more than enough has been written about him and his ilk to toss them in a dungheap

old atheism was always (somewhat) better, and it didn't stink of imperialist white guy careerists who pretty much only have science as their monolens through which they view everything

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quadrungle wrote (edited )

I think tossing people by group and association in dungheaps is intellectual laziness. Sam doesn't even emphasize identifying as an atheist, he's just critical of fundamentalist religion.

Sam is definitely of the science-lens focus of everything, but I'm not convinced that's necessarily bad, it's just often done badly.

Incidentally, the not-caring-about-intentions is explicitly a different opinion. Sam thinks intentions matter deeply, and it's an explicit point of difference and contention between him and various other people. So on that point, you're not just carelessly prejudging, you've got a clear intellectual difference.

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Pop wrote

I think I'm mostly lasily trying to mention arguments that I think already exist against him more than anything else

I don't have much of a dog in the fight since I think it's a mostly boring fight, but it's enough for me to comment on

did you look at any of the stuff I posted about them today, btw?

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quadrungle wrote (edited )

I guess don't tend to feel respectful toward saying that someone is a piece of shit if you don't actually have much knowledge or opinion and are just repeating hearsay. I mean, there's lots of shitty people out there, but I'm not going to go around asserting that status for anyone in particular unless I feel I actually have enough understanding to make that conclusion. In general, I think we need orders of magnitude more assumptions-of-good-faith in our discourse and less tolerance for parroting groupthink. So, with that in mind, I'm not assuming you disagree with that until I hear otherwise. We all may just say specious quick things here and there. I don't live up to ideals of healthy discourse all the time myself.

What "stuff you posted about them today" are you referring to?

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gen3 wrote

Cody Wilson

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boringskip wrote

Yeah, often, in my RSS reader. I have a journalism degree, I figure I should do something with it

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Qibble wrote (edited )

I'll watch segments of msm on youtube. That is as close as i get to main stream media. This seems like the least painful way of hearing what they're talking/lying about.

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glitter_v0id wrote

Pretty much just NPR... occasionally some of the late-night comedy/news because some sweet Donald mocking is fun.

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