What would be a good sense making apparatus for the 21st century?

Question

Which medium or source of information is the most crucial for you to make sense of current events and the world around you? I feel that the NY Times, CNN, and similar institutions are a shell of their formal selves, simultaneously destroyed by themselves and Trump. So what is the solution going forward? Everyone is talking about echo chambers distorting the views of people on the other side, but no one can talk about the echo chamber they live in.

paulz_ · Accepted Answer

It's remarkably difficult and I wish there were better resources. I also wish news wasn't so driven by clicks and engagement.
I use 3 primary ones.
https://www.reuters.com/ I find it to a pretty accurate and neutral. Covers most news of the day. I think the AP is a good option for this too but personally prefer Reuters.
http://www.spectrym.news/ This one I discovered about a year ago and really like it. It's an aggregator for lots of different news sites. It groups stories by subject and labels how partisan the outlet is. With it I find I catch some of the political news I might sometimes miss with Reuters and also get a better idea of what kind of news stories people on both extremes of the political spectrum are consuming. I find I can understand their perspectives a lot better when I see the way that it's being reported by their news source of choice.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events This one I added really recently and it has been great! Really boring, clear, and neutral information. I find that it covers most of the news of the day and sums it up as briefly as possible. I've considered making this my only news source but haven't pulled the trigger on that yet.
It's a frustrating problem. I wish there were better ways to stay informed without reading stuff that feels like it's designed to make me as mad as possible so I forward the article and drive ad revenue.

Jugurtha · Answer

For any reader of this: if you understood apparatus in the scientific sense, there is a book titled "Building Scientific Apparatus" by Moore and Davis.

afarrell · Answer

This depends upon what you prioritize.If your goal is to make sense of the whole world, I would recommend you first:1. Attempt to upload a 1 Terabyte attachment to gmail.2. Attempt to purchase a 1:1 scale paper map of your home country.3. Make peace with the laws of thermodynamics and information theory.4. Read some of the writings of Henry David Thoreau and Mark Manson.5. Among the stories you think are worthy of someone's attention, choose which ones you are willing to remain ignorant of.