> How are they supposed to wrangle corporate power, when that is exactly where their power comes from?
I chuckled at this since Trump himself and entire squad of people he has surrounded himself with are the literal definition of "elites" and "corporate power."
Corporate power funds both of them, but Trump offered a better deal (no law to restrict them).
So democrats find themselves abandoned and powerless at the most important time to have power -- the ability to do something when someone does something you don't like and says "what are you going to do about it?"
The worst part is how much this parallels 1930's German history.
> I don't know why there is this general vibe amongst technologists that they are somehow far superior in their thought process compared to the general populace. I have heard the words peasant class come up quite often in the tech circles. Why is this ? Aren't you part of the general populace ?
I think the HN crowd (and technologists) are generally better informed on the economy and the nuances on economic growth, inflation, stock market etc. and that's probably the point OP is making. Dont get me wrong, a lot of technologists did vote for Trump.
There will always be dumb shit in every kind of spending. Heck, my family and kids spend on dumb shit. I bet half of the Amazon orders going to people's places is dumb shit. Can there be cuts in spending and expenses of the government, the answer will always be yes but treating the federal government like a startup is the next level of dumb shit. Its specially being done by people who have no knowledge of government systems work. A lot of people and systems depend on smooth functioning of federal government. I guess fuck around and find out.
Or rather, fuck around and others will find out. I'm not denying some of USAID spending may have been "dumb shit", but some of it was also very important. But you don't have to take my word for it, how about the words of a former UK prime minister: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/feb/07/donald...
And, while the billions of dollars the US has spent per year on foreign aid until now sound impressive, if you compare the per capita amount with other rich countries, it's actually not that impressive (and these numbers include all foreign aid, not just USAID): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_foreign_aid#/med...
It’s not even good for the USA, long term. In today's The Rest is Politics, Rory Stewart highlighted that when the UK removed DFID and dropped its commitment to spending 0.7% of GDP on aid down to 0.5%, we went from being able to put in £100m to development projects to being able to commit £5m. He was, at an independent charity, able to put up £25m in comparison.
What kind of soft power can a nation wield when you’re being outspent 5-to-1 by a charity now?
> Get subscription of high value newspaper or magazine. Professionals work there, so you will get real facts, worthy opinions and less emotions.
I struggle with this. It's incredibly challenging to find reliable, unbiased news sources these days, especially with the perceived slant of many major outlets. It's discouraging when even subscriptions to reputable publications like the NYT and WSJ leave you feeling like you're not getting the full story. It's also concerning when editorial content undermines the perceived objectivity of the news reporting, specially with WSJ. So what are people reading?
I’ve been sticking to the weekly edition of The Economist for years to stay informed while escaping the news cycle. The US coverage is remarkably good. The weekly cadence mean I’m often a week behind the news, but to me that’s a feature. The editorial pieces (those expressing “the opinion of the newspaper”) are kept separate as “Leaders” and I read them last, if it all; I usually read each issue back-to-front following a tip from HN years ago.
For US-interested people, I’d also like to recommend Checks and Balance, a podcast by some of The Economist’s US reporters.
I years ago read The Economist, and found a characterization of "Fleet Street cocktail party" useful for anticipating distributions of expertise and dysfunction across topics.
I've not read it regularly, but some suggest the Financial Times.[1][2]
The NYT... sigh. "All the foreign bureaus have closed" (geographic and topical; so superficial, confused, and pre-framed); and "correctness is a local property attained by wordsmithing" - an apparent belief that bad reporting can be "fixed" by local tweaks, so sentences in isolation aren't utterly wrong, even if most readers without overriding expertise will still be left badly misled. After all, it's "news" not analysis. My daily reminder that "Journalism hasn't yet had the 'we suck at this' epiphany which sets up a field's many-decade struggle towards high reliability organization" - we know what a safety/reliability culture looks like, and journalism very isn't it.
The Economist is not exactly a neutral source of information, and is very much pro-big business, which has caused it to take horrible positions on many important issues throughout its long history, such as overthrowing democratic governments, supporting dictatorships, etc.
I’d say it’s pro economic development. Like they express concerns around the decline of anti-trust enforcement.
I’m sure it’s true that they used to advocate dictators, but in the 30 years of reading it as my primary news source, they’ve always seemed to me to be very consistently on the side of liberalism (in the older sense of the word) and very concerned about democracy
Focus on outlets that prioritize reporting. You can't find a "neutral" outlet -- all human beings have biases, and that gets magnified once we're talking about collective human endeavors such as newspapers, magazines, etc. But we can at least avoid solipsism ("the view that the self is the only reality") by grounding ourselves in outside, shared reality. That's what reporting is -- actually being at a place in real life, talking to actual people involved. Sure, the transmission of those observations will inevitably be shaped by the human reporter's own biases, but you're still getting access to shared reality. Even if the opinions aren't ones you share, you can at least see what they're based on and so have some ability to make your own evaluation on if the implicit conclusions the reporter is drawing match up with the base facts they are sharing.
I've been liking AllSides. They aggregate news from all parts of the spectrum, so you get stuff ranging from Jacobin / Daily Beast all the way to Fox News / Breitbart (I'm not commenting on the truthfulness of or recommending any of these sources, just using them as an example of how wide ranging the sources being pulled from are)
For each headline, they pick a left, center, and right source and show that headline. They also show various headlines either side misses along with which side of the media is covering it. And other stuff, but mostly I just care about the news.
It helps with avoiding echochambers. One side's doomerism usually ends up being what another side's cheering. Given the current political climate that's been especially helpful to my stress levels.
Don't have a specific advise, but generally I don't consume nor trust news articles about given country, from given country. So I read about my central European homeland from neighboring news, or BBC/Guardian for example.
Its more difficult with US since every fart affects rest of the world, sometimes massively, but some sort of averaging in my mind does it for me. Or at least I think it does, what is truly objective is a goal worthy of maybe academic discussions, I don't think individual can easily even get to it and realize 'this is it'.
There is no such thing as an unbiased new source. Rpoerting only articles with pure fact there is still selection bias in what topics are covered and what facts are presented. Giving equal coverage across articles and within results in both sides reporting which can seriously tilt the article.
Choose reputable sources and read with an understanding of the corespondent's perspective as well as the publication's. Diversify your choices to not isolate yourself.
Almost every story has sides. Multiple at a time. Depending on people and their cultural background involved or observing. Ask one people about a story, and might say completely different things than another. This is just the nature of humanity, nothing novelty was said here.
Choose something where they at least try.
My long time favorite is The Economist. They have writers there committed to a certain kind of message, true, like everywhere, putting on a glass supporting their preconceptions, yet the overall tone is somewhat analytical, at least trying to look behind and around, trying to use multiple viewpoints. If they miss some, you might add yours pretty easily (on your own or from other sources), and so you will be empowered by better vintage point at the matter than without their help. That's much more than nothing, at least compared to the vast majority (I believe).
I am sure there are even better alternatives where the being emotional first and professionally outraged all the time is frowned upon too. Definitely avoid bbc.co.uk despite their facade of being in depth and balanced. They actually say nothing more than repetition of the events mixed with lots of emotions nowadays, even their selection of topics are outrage oriented.
So many once great media outlets were bought by billionaires and now all have the same editorial slant. It's extremely frustrating. In there modern world where would Woodward and Bernstein work? Propublica? Even where there is a will to do that kind of work the funding is even harder to secure. The reporters have to pick and choose their stories.
I don't think there's a single source of news that is going to satisfy a need for full context. I read both for balance, and add The Economist to the mix for even more context.
They aggregate stories and report on who's reporting on the story and how, detailing bias and factuality. They do international stories and probably also stories in your local area (in the US, perhaps less likely elsewhere).
Frankly I find the NYT fine. Does it have its deficiencies? Sure. But journalists are but human and subject to their biases. Much better to listen to an NYT journalist than some hysterical X poster. WSJ and NYT have recently had social media outrage aimed against them and I think that's the point: the very folks who are most emotional about the media are angry that NYT isn't as emotional as they are.
Yeah I agree with this. Local news sources work as a good filter, only bringing national stories that have a local effect, plus you get more local news, plus your subscription goes to a news room of probably no more than a few dozen people who live in the same area as you depending on what city or state you're in.
What do you mean by an “unbiased news source? What dimension does it not have a bias against?
If you are talking about political ideologies, reality has a well-known liberal bias. So you have to choose one or the other.
There was a comment recently about how Gemini won’t tell you some Chili recipe from Obama because that might see political. So Google seems to be heading towards politically neutral direction. Contrast that with many years ago when a Google image search would bring up Trump’s image when you searched for “idiot”.
"He's one of the most honest and truthful people in the world, and has been for years."
You know what this is simply getting to idiotic now. Why are comments this daft and childish allowed here now? I know it's a "way of speaking" among certain trolling Trump/Musk supporters but it's so unfathomably shameless and idolising i'm not sure what's going on exactly.
If people like you are over 20 years old, then wow. "He's the most honest person in the world", literally come on now even if you believe in his way of doing things.
It's dripping with so much sarcasm I'm afraid my warranty will be voided for water damage. It even mentions his self driving promises to drive the point home...
I think that might be an implicit goal here. With antics around H1B, birthright citizenship, general worsening sentiment against "people who dont look white" and "experts bad, podcasters good" its probably worth while for researchers, scientists and professors to start looking elsewhere outside of the US.
There's no clear evidence that Elon Musk's approach to Twitter will lead to a profitable platform. In fact, there are concerns that he might replicate some of the issues seen on Twitter, such as inconsistent content moderation, arbitrary bans, and problems with bots and scams, which could alienate users and advertisers. Unlike a platform governed by established policies, decision-making under Musk could be unpredictable and based on his personal whims.
I chuckled at this since Trump himself and entire squad of people he has surrounded himself with are the literal definition of "elites" and "corporate power."