TBF, you can access the full (text) content of The Atlantic by merely disabling javascript. It's a quality publication, with quality writing. I'm inclined to think that its tech team are also quality people ... and I'd love to think that they are happy to allow free and open access to them that have the nous to enable or disable scripts.
The secret is to bang the rocks together, guys! :-)
Not sure whether this will "keep the brain working", but it definitely tied some knots in mine: The Space Trilogy [1], by C.S. Lewis, blends sci-fi with spirituality and classic mythology. The books should probably be read in sequence, as they follow the adventures of the same main character, but Lewis's almost fractal writing style in wildly trippy sections in the first two (which bear hallmarks from the New Testament's Revelations), exhausted me. The last book in the trilogy is worth reading in isolation; it deals with problematic uses of science (eugenics etc), government capture, media manipulation/propaganda, and also human psychology/power relationships etc. It also has its mystic/mythological stuff (Merlin of Arthurian legend is a character in the book), but what gave me cold chills was the creeping dystopian takeover of societal norms that certainly finds echoes in our modern world.
I have been getting occasional paywalls from the BBC asking to pay to read articles. Clearing cookies does remove the paywall for a while so I think it's some sort of A/B test they're running.
That was Churchill's view, as he said during a speech in the House of Commons in 1947:
"Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time . . ."
What a great round-up; comprehensive but concise. Nice that quotes from a Cory Doctorow video, embedded in the piece, have been quoted with the relevant timestamps.
> “If I am inventing God, or stopping people from inventing God, then I am very important.”
NC as a whole is priceless, and underrated. I’ve been a reader since their excellent coverage of the GFC decades ago. (Writing that sentence is a little painful, yikes. Decades?)
Yves regularly eviscerates lazy or blatantly slanted commenters, regardless of politics, which keeps the comments in decent shape. She also doesn’t ban or harass well-behaved opposing commenters, welcoming debate, which is the opposite of most other spaces. A relic of better times.
How about municipal councils looking around at any remaining "mainstream media" local outlets and committing to post relevant notices/updates on their websites?
This is something I wanted to push while working on newsroom CMS projects: giving direct input access to the CMS from external bodies - police, fire, ambulance etc. Posts could be vetted/edited by newsrooms, as with any externally filed copy, but turnaround would be a matter of half-a-minute or so. Either that or enable direct publishing permissions to said authorities.
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