Not just any old Recommendation

I promised a recommendation on Thursday, and on Friday I had to stay busy at work and then drive four hours to Canmore. Well damn it, the public demand responsibility and I'm going to deliver.

I should keep it brief though, so I thought I'd shout out the one news source I think is particularly sharp, The Economist. By and large I don't care where I get my news, they're all just cannibalizing stories from one another now anyway, my only rule is to read some of those identical stories on Canada from CTV, because if it's just CBC you'll lose some pointless argument to a teenager for being a communist, and nobody wants that. (Still getting over some frustrating chats as a young man, apparently).

The Economist is a bit of a tough recommendation for a few reasons. First of all, the exact reason that I like it - its historic commitment to European liberalism, commonly taking principled stands on matters I care about, confirming my biases on everything from immigration to education to housing policy - is not going to be for everyone. In a continent where politics have been divided differently, people wedded to a progressive cause might disagree with the magazine's take on Jeremy Corbyn, and might be outraged when it highlighted the diverging studies on wealth inequality. Canadian conservatives would be outraged by any number of "liberal" issues they champion, from every social cause, to immigration, to supporting remain in the UK.

The second reason it might be tough to recommend The Economist is because it's under a paywall. I think it's important to support the News we receive these days, and so I bought a subscription (just online, I found the paper versions made great fire starting material). If you don't want to start with that, though, I suggest listening to their daily podcast "The Intelligence". Obviously there are a million daily news podcasts, and you can't listen to all of them, or even two of them, but here's my favourite, so just take it as a recommendation.

The last reason I feel odd about recommending this magazine is because there's a certain virtue signalling that comes with reading it. Where people read news says a lot about us these days ("CBC? You're a crazy lefty." "FOX? WFT?" "Buzzfeed? Good for you, most people don't read the news when their twelve."). The Economist is way of saying you're high-brow in the new class system we're forming. People like to show they're worldly and different by referencing it in the right circles, at least I've noticed it a few times and I read an articles somewhere else claiming as much. That's all fine, because it has a reputation for a reason and it's still pumping out interesting articles that are begging to be cited, but it is one reason to doubt my motives.

Want one recommendation, here's an article I mentioned: https://www.economist.com/briefing/2019/11/28/economists-are-rethinking-the-numbers-on-inequality

...Because you have nothing to do but read the internet all day.