

Ask HN: What to read? - pandatigox

Hello all. I&#x27;ve recently taken up an urge to read more on world affairs. Apart from the usual newspapers ({The} New York{er} Times, for example), what are some good sites to subscribe to?<p>Thank you very much
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mseebach
The Economist has very high quality content and has the additional benefit of
being a weekly newspaper.

Be very aware of the lie that something important happens every day, as
perpetuated by the "always-on" news industry, and the related trend to
breathlessly consume news blow-by-blow as it happens. Unless you're in a
position to make tactical decisions on the basis of this information, it's
basically empty calories, only giving off the feeling of being well informed.

I've caught myself seeing the flurry of "breaking news" on Facebook,
occasionally reading one or two of the articles, closing the tab and looking
forward to reading the post-dust-settles big picture coverage in the next
Economist.

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seanccox
What's your goal (knowledge, broader perspective, informed opinion)? I ask,
because as someone who works in media, I tend to avoid reading about world
affairs... It's just too general for my taste, and my brain ultimately ends up
feeling mushy from the overdose of infotainment.

Don't get me wrong, I read constantly, but I imposed a strategy and hard
limits, because I realized I wasn't retaining information in a meaningful way
(a lot of the information I was absorbing was fluff). With a blog roll, the
NYTimes, or even the Economist as your guide, you can spend hours skimming
from a financial disaster in Argentina, an airline crash in Malaysia, military
exercises near the Ukrainian border, and a populist Islamist uprising in
Syria, and never come away with anything meaningful except the vaguest notion
that those things are happening... somewhere. In point of fact, many of the
people paid to write on those topics don't know what they're talking about, so
you'd probably just be wasting your time.

I changed up my strategy and you might find it useful. Pick a region and do a
combination of things to learn about it: read local online publications in the
major cities, read some of the local literary figures, dabble with the
language(s), pick up a broad history and follow that with exploration of
specific topics (a coup, a revolution, a period of cultural revival), learn
about the geography (and how that affects the history), then go there. Finding
a local's blog is also a good way to get insights.

~~~
pandatigox
Thank you for your advice. I do agree that an overdose of global info would
saturate and eventually turn one off from reading the news at all.

Say if I was to read up on the Middle East, what books/articles would you
recommend?

Thank you

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garysvpa
Thousands of world newspapers at your fingertips.

[http://www.onlinenewspapers.com/](http://www.onlinenewspapers.com/)

[http://www.world-newspapers.com/world-news.html](http://www.world-
newspapers.com/world-news.html)

[http://www.theguardian.com/world/series/world-news-
guide](http://www.theguardian.com/world/series/world-news-guide)

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onuryavuz
I use [http://getprismatic.com/](http://getprismatic.com/) to find something
to read. It basically crawls the articles on your social feeds (Facebook and
Twitter) and combines them with your interests, and then creates your
personalised feed of articles.

In your case, you can start with
[http://getprismatic.com/topic/International+Relations](http://getprismatic.com/topic/International+Relations)
and check the resources of the articles to find good sites to subscribe to.

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Ragu
I just suggest you to read and learn at
[http://courseeplus.com](http://courseeplus.com) It has lot of courses and
materials to learn everything. Its free to signup. You can sign in and take
your course and then share. This is a social learning platform.

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Gustomaximus
I try to read a mix under the view 'there's is always two sides to a story'.
While these might be under the usual newspapers, the three sites I like are;

www.theguardian.com

www.aljazeera.com (international version)

www.bbc.com

~~~
pandatigox
Though I'm primarily left wingist, I do appreciate what the "other side" has
to say. What right wing sites would you recommend? (your list is mostly left
wing :P)

~~~
Gustomaximus
I thought the BBC was fairly center? Guardian strays left and AlJazeera was
it's own thing. More a liberal middle eastern view. Maybe that says more about
me than their position.

But you're correct this list is thin on the right for full coverage. I used to
read 'The Australian' but now actively avoid Murdoch press in protest of his
shameless politicising so this removes a bunch of mainstream options. I'd be
interested if people had any non-Murdoch suggestions myself.

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rohunati
Try [http://www.project-syndicate.org/](http://www.project-syndicate.org/)

probably the world's best op-ed source.

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mooreds
I enjoy Michael Pettis' blog: mpettis.com. His focus is on economics and China
primarily, but he does write about Europe occasionally.

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dccoolgai
I would add Financial Times to that list of "usual newspapers". Subreddits can
be useful, too.

~~~
chatmasta
I subscribed to FT in feedly but have never been able to view their content
because of a paywall. Normally I would consider paying it, but IIRC it's a
pretty expensive subscription compared to other paywalls.

