Everyone hates them for some reason, but then again I don't know anyone who uses them the way they were designed to be used. From economics to biology or mathematics or political science, they're a great way to develop frameworks for thinking about entire bodies of knowledge. People spend years of their lives creating them, and I can consume this knowledge for only 50-200$? Sign me up any time.
also some subreddits, like this one https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/ - especially the weekly digests.
https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html - 'astronomy picture of the day' this one has lots of links to wikipedia, fun to follow them.
http://wikiroulette.co/ - random wikipedia page, sometimes interesting to click on the links.
and of course the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page the featured articls, etc.
youtube channels like this one
Lots of 'casual' content there but I'm not sure if this was what you meant precisely.
Economist is a rare source in that each time they have an article about a topic I know I have fairly good grap of, they generally offer a fairly _correct_(!) popular summary of the issues. This is why I have a fairly high trust of those articles where the subject matter is less familiar.
Anyways, in addition to reading blogs that get promoted here HN.
I watch a lot instructional / educational videos on YouTube.
Been enjoying, for example, learning Excel from this person: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJtUOos_MwJa_Ewii-R3cJA
I've also been enjoying channels like number numberphile and/or computerphile as well.
The biggest obstacle to acquiring new knowledge is getting past the "I have no clue what this means" on your own. This helps to get you through it and not to give up.
For a lot of other topics around general knowledge it can be very interesting to browse the various levels of 'Vital articles' on Wikipedia (ie, there are 11 Level 1 Vital articles, around 45K Level 5 Vital articles and around 1K Level 3 Vital articles). I like browsing the Level 3 Vital articles https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Vital_articles when I'm looking for something to read.
- New York Times (in-depth news). - Financial Times (business news). - Library for new books about interesting topics. Currently, I am reading "The Future of Money: How the Digital Revolution Is Transforming Currencies and Finance", which I borrowed from the local library. - Medium and bunch of newsletters about specific topics.
It’s not perfect but it gives me a decent idea of what I might like to read next.
I live in the Bay Area and subscribe to the Mercury News. I enjoy reading through the ‘e-edition’ on my iPad every morning (though you _could_ still get a physical copy if you’d appreciate the ability to disconnect for 1/2 an hour)
I know I’ll get the important national and international news (so less need for doomscrolling to satisfy my FOMO), learn what’s going on in city and state politics (which I see _very_ little of online), and get a bit of pop culture and local entertainment events.
I often learn things I value that I’d never ‘seek out’ online, and would likely never make it past my social media filter bubble.
I find the news to be too event-oriented.
I use RSS to keep up to date with some tech fields.
>YouTube channels:
Forgotten Weapons (world-class firearms history)
The Tim Traveller (general European infrastructure et al history)
Project Farm (one-man Consumer Reports-esque testing)
MedCram (excellent in-depth scientific but accessible medical information)
Tasting History with Max Miller (culinary history)
Two Minute Papers (covers recent scientific papers; rather tech-related but I see no other coverage of most of the stuff he touches on)
U.S. Department of State (the press briefings are immensely insightful and not a circus like the White House equivalents)
>Other:
Standard Ebooks (if its in the public domain and somebody bothered to professionally process it, it's probably worth reading!)
Father Stephen de Young's The Whole Counsel of God Biblical lectures (In my opinion, easily the best English-language dissection of the Bible ever written or recorded. Presented from an Orthodox perspective but frankly immensely useful for anyone interested in the Bible generally.) (Also, not to be confused with his related but separate blog of the same name.)
Drudge Report (obviously a hard right bias, but nevertheless more insightful than most mainstream publications, plus the formatting is such that you can digest a day's news in 30 seconds from skimming around the page)
Middle East Eye (a rare seemingly independent middle east media outlet. Broadly left-wing bias.)
4chan (quite frankly, while there is a lot of noise, there's also signal buried in there that simply isn't possible with other mediums. For example, the photography board's current film thread: https://boards.4channel.org/p/thread/3971021 )
Science, current affairs, history, films, literature that was written in the last 300 years or so, geography pertaining to the history, current affairs, news, etc.
Read lots of trivia, do trivia quizzes, etc. Lots of general knowledge looks like trivia, but the trivia part of it is what binds lots of those little bits of general knowledge together, making one one connected edifice.
For some insight, go to YouTube and look a James Burke's "Connections" series. He used to have a monthly 'Connections' column in the Scientific American magazine too.
They're organized in levels, with the 10 most general articles (e.g. Human, Language, Life, Mathematics, Philosophy) on level 1 and then sort of branching out, level 2 consisting of 100 articles (e.g. Civilization, Literature, Logic, Psychology, Arithmetic) and so on.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Vital_articles/Level...
For local and world news I often glance at the homepage of a local media site hln.be. It is very clickbaity and low-quality but they usually are first when it comes to breaking stories. I use it as a news barometer to see if something is going on or not.
When some topic interests me I tend to go on DDG/Wikipedia rabbit holes and I often buy non-fiction books on topics of sustained interest.
> I miss reading broader content, like self improvement, professional development, history, culture, etc.
Plenty of that here, IMO. At least more than I have time to devote to reading it.
This stuff, at its heart, imo, is very meta -- as in, how the world actually works.
He often refers to what he considers to be good books -- there are lists online -- not sure if they are accurate or not -- but those books often drill down on various more specific topics, like "the investment theory of politics".
If you're American, you will probably end up super depressed for a couple weeks.
But I feel like understanding how the world works is a kind of foundation for everything else.
Science and biology and all that is important and even more fundamental, but Chomsky stuff attacks all of your core assumptions even about those things.
Like, I read his opinion on how he was shitting all over gpt-3 or something -- not for the reasons you might think. That happens to be a nerdy topic that might show up here on HN, but of course crosses over into ai, and language / thought / human nature stuff.
So if you've ever had an aha or whoa-type moment -- while reading or being in a new situation, like your first trip overseas, there tends to be a lot of that.
So it's not always new info, but new and more accurate ways to understand what you already knew -- or thought you already knew.
I pay particular attention to books that are reviewed in these and other publications. If a book is well-reviewed and seems interesting, I'll buy it and read it.
Otherwise, I'll pick a topic of interest and buy a short introduction: OUP's Very Short Introductions to X [0] are quite good, although as with all summaries, it's worth keeping mind that it's the view of one academic. I'll read the introductory text and then use its bibiography to find my way to other books. Bibliographies are very useful.
[0]: https://global.oup.com/academic/content/series/v/very-short-...
2. Pocket : https://getpocket.com/explore
3. Reddit
4. Serious websites & books on specific matters i.e. I like to read on Philosophy, so I read websites & books on that (such as plato.stanford)
[1] https://marginalrevolution.com/
[2] https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2018/12/de...
And I follow my own advice (https://antipaucity.com/2012/12/10/finding-your-niche/#.Ybit...): "grab the first book [or magazine] in the history section that starts with an “A” in the title – then go for “B”, “C”, etc. Then do it from some other section of the shelves – maybe relationships, scifi, teen, romance, home improvement, etc"
Also blogs of Bruce Schneier and Brian Krebs. I don't always read everything, but I do read some, and even just the titles are interesting.
And I echo what others have said about RSS feeds in general.
Washington Post
Wikipedia
The Guardian
Talking Points Memo
The New Yorker
The Atlantic
Hacker News
NPR
BBC
History, biography, public intellectuals such as David Graeber or Chomsky
Library of America
whatever comes up when I google for stuff I don't know about
I still read the Guardian regularly, and glance at headlines on the Washington Post, but I've cancelled my subscriptions to those for now.
I pay for Medium but mainly read tech-related content ... I keep looking for substantial articles on other subjects, but a lot of it reads like long form Twitter.
Harper’s
Audible