I came across a site about Chinese tech and video gaming and found it very Buzzfeed-y with its headlines and writing. It made me wonder what are the websites that curate a standard of thoughtful articles, essays, discussion, etc. and aren't part of the American internet scene.

I don't care what language it's in, what it's about, what country specifically it's centered on, if it's community-centric or not. If you have a suggestion, let's hear it.

Edit: An example I have is The Blizzard. It's really a subscription-model digital magazine (about soccer) but you can read various articles online.

What is your preferred source for music? Streaming, CD, vinyl, web dl, something else?

My preferred source is web flac usually from bandcamp but I sometimes buy cds and copy them to my computer. I currently don't have a vinyl player so stuff that was only released on vinyl I have to find someone else who has copied it.

I tried streaming for a while but didn't like it. There was a bunch of older stuff missing and I kept getting told things were not available in my country as well as some songs only having a shitty remaster available.

From this Tildes post https://tildes.net/~music/7vc/anyone_still_listening_to_music_with_files_instead_of_streaming

I started thinking. To me, curating my own collections so that I can experience them only makes common sense. And I also journal on what I read, watch, and listen to. I've known a few hoarders in my life, who enlarge their homes to house tons of material things that they'll never use and can't throw away.

In my own case, I'm slowly winnowing down the hundred or so CD's, books, and movies I own just because they take up space and I don't want my kids having to have a massive garage sale when I die. And I really like that I can have a whole library basically on an old phone that holds an SDHC card.

So is obsession/compulsion with digital media the same as physical hoarding? Is it just as harmful? And how do I class the tons of emails, mostly work, that I don't bother to throw away because it's just too time consuming? The same thing goes for family and self snapped photos. To me they're in a different category altogether.

Am I the biggest, most hypocritical minimalist ever? Is there such a thing as non-material materialism? What are your justifications for or against streaming vs. accumulating?

Some of you may have heard that Google+ will be shutting down in August, 2019. Though much criticised (including by me), the site offered some compelling dynamics, and I've reflected a lot on those.

I'm involved in the effort to find new homes for Plussers and Communities, which has become something of an excuse to explore and redefine what "online" and "social" media are ("PlexodusWiki").

Part of this involves some frankly embarrassing attempts to try to define what social media is, and what its properties are (both topics reflected heavily in the recent-changes section of the wiki above).

Tildes is ... among the potential target sites (there are a few Plussers, some of whom I really appreciated knowing and hearing from there), here, though the site dynamics make discovering and following them hard. This site is evolving its own culture and dynamics, parts of which I'm becoming aware of.

I've been online for well over 30 years, and discovered my first online communities via Unix talk, email, FTP, and Usenet, as well as (no kidding) a computerised university library catalogue system. Unsurprisingly: if you provide a way, especially for bright and precocious minds to interact with one another, they will. I've watched several evolutions of Internet and Web, now increasing App-based platforms. There are differences, but also similarities and patterns emerging. Lessons from previous eras of television, radio, telephony, telegraphy, print, writing, oral traditions, and more, can be applied.

I've got far more questions than answers and thought I'd put a few out here:

• What does online or social media mean to you? Is it all user-generated content platforms? Web only? Apps? Email or chat? Wikis? GitHub, GitLab, and StackExchange?

• Is social networking as exemplified by Facebook or Twitter net good or bad? Why? If bad, how might you fix it? Or is it time to simply retreat?

• What properties or characteristics would you use to specify, define, or distinguish social or online media?

• What emergent properties -- site dynamics, if you will -- are positive or negative? What are those based on?

• What are the positive and negative aspects of scale?

• What risks would you consider in self-hosting either your own or a group's online presence?

• What is/was the best online community experience you've had? What characterised it? How did it form? How did it fail (if it did)?

• What elements would comprise your ideal online experience?

• What would you nuke from orbit, after takeoff, just to be sure?

• Are you or your group seeking new options or platforms? What process / considerations do you have?

I could keep going and will regret not adding other questions, but this is a good start. Feel free to suggest other dimensions, though some focus on what I've prompted with would be appreciated.

I almost posted this in ~news but wasn't really sure so feel free to move the post if I got it wrong.

The new jobs report is out:
https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm

I consistently feel like the media just runs with the unemployment rate and ignores the other very important numbers. I think that the economy isn't really "booming" for ordinary Americans and I think that the numbers in the job report that aren't widely talked about are eye-opening.

These numbers used to be talked about a LOT more immediately after the 2008 recessions and during the OWS protests.

To be clear, I'm happy the stock market is up but I don't think it's "trickling" down all that much.

Some examples:

Long-term unemployed are not finding work:

The number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks or more) was little changed at 1.4 million over the month; these individuals accounted for 22.9 percent of the unemployed. (See table A-12.)

There are ~4.5 million people who are working part-time who want to work full time, and that number is rapidly growing with ~250,000 added since last quarter:

The number of persons employed part time for economic reasons (sometimes referred to as involuntary part-time workers) increased by 263,000 to 4.6 million in September. These individuals, who would have preferred full-time employment, were working part time because their hours had been reduced or they were unable to find full-time jobs. (See table A-8.)

More than 1.5 million American's gave up looking for work:

In September, 1.6 million persons were marginally attached to the labor force, essentially unchanged from a year earlier. (Data are not seasonally adjusted.) These individuals were not in the labor force, wanted and were available for work, and had looked for a job sometime in the prior 12 months. They were not counted as unemployed because they had not searched for work in the 4 weeks preceding the survey. (See table A-16.)

I just watched an interesting This Week in Startups interview with the CEO of a nascent but successful new "news" organization from the Netherlands called De Correspondent. They are launching a new US-based company called The Correspondent, which has some high profile supporters. This list includes Nate Silver, William Julius Wilson, Rosanne Cash, and some others.

Their business model allows them to attract high-quality journalists by optimizing for journalistic integrity and independence. They have around 60,000 members paying around $70 per year in the Netherlands. They do no advertising business and are a for-profit corp with a dividend cap of 5% to make themselves unattractive to VC-type investors. The CEO claims they "ignore the news," meaning that they try to avoid the sound-bite quips that can be very distracting. They do not report on individual's scandals, instead focusing on systemic issues.

Journalists are required to share their stories with the members as they are developing. Stories are not guarded secrets while in development unlike traditional news organizations. This allows members to contribute to the stories via a form of curated crowdsourcing. For example, they reached out to members when doing a story on Shell, and found a few members who had access to the company which led to discovery of Shell's own internal Inconvenient Truth type video which was made in 1991.

The CEO also mentioned that he always includes a developer or designer in story discussions so that the latest investigation and presentation tools can be used on a story from day one.

Please take a look at the links and let me know what you think of this model, and its chances in the US market. I am pretty excited for anyone trying anything new in this space. What do you think? Would you pay for something like this?

^{Edit: I'm not sure if there is a better ~group for this topic, please move it if there is. Also, formatting, phrasing, and clarity.}

Here is a direct link to the CEO's Medium account with more information.