Where Do You Go For It?
We all know that the internet is drowning in disinformation, the establishment press often seems to have given up, and social media has become a swamp. So who do you trust these days?
Talking Points Memo still seems to be running strong. ProPublica has been turning out some outstanding investigative journalism. Fresh Air out of Philadelphia’s public radio station is still doing some great interviews. Who else can you recommend?
Other Sources of Info?
Deadsplinter’s breakaway writers at Defector are still going strong, with some really good (not always sticking to) sports writing. They also offer some really interesting commentary on culture, politics and science. They’re paywalled, but it’s worth considering a subscription.
I also found myself signing up for The Autopian, which is run by Jalopnik’s breakaway writers. I’m not a car person, but I enjoy reading about all of the weird and interesting motor vehicles out there.
Consumer Reports is still chugging along, and I think they do a solid job of independent reviews of products. I feel a lot more comfortable checking them before a serious purchase.
As far as cooking, Serious Eats still seems like the gold standard. They do a lot of extensive testing of recipes, and when they talk about why they do something, they have good reasons. Likewise for baking, King Arthur does a great job for similar reasons. I think it’s a sign of the downfall of Google that search results which show them tend to be buried under a lot of garbage sites.
What Else Do You Trust?
Are there other interesting and reliable places you go for information? For instance, there’s a beer history blog called Shut Up About Barclay Perkins which I regularly read. I find SBNation to be wildly inconsistent, but some of its team blogs are actually good sources of information.
What about you? Any gardening sites, sewing blogs, or news sites you trust? Anyone you follow on Youtube or Substack that you think has consistently good information on health, science, or movie criticism?
Knowledge is power, we’re all short on good sources, so if you have places you like, share them with your friends here!
https://yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com/ Medical news, good insights. They’re also on the tiktoks etc.
That looks good. It’s striking to me how many epidemiologists are good communicators, and one of the big frustrations during and after Covid is how little editors and reporters outside of health beats ever bothered to engage with them.
Also my backyard – because the birbs and insects make me happy (fireflies, butterflies, etc). And the veggies and landscaping give me happiness.
Seriously it’s fucking amazing what it does for my brain. I spent an hour pruning a giant swath of lima beans and picking a big bowl of them today and it rewired my stress for a good chunk of the afternoon.
How are the fresh limas? I bought them once at the farmers market but they’d already gone starchy. Or I may have cooked them badly.
Oh fuck they’re so good. I boil them for about 30-40 minutes and then finish in a saute pan with some veggies cooked in olive oil and spices. They’re soft starchy, like a kidney bean and a yukon gold potato had a love child.
I’ll have to give them another go. I have dried navy beans simmering now to make a fake cassoulet, so I’m on board with pots of beans.
Yum! I love a good fake cassoulet. I have never used any sort of duck confit or heavy meat in mine, mainly because I want to taste the beans and veggies. Maybe some chopped bacon or a sausage if anything.
I really like this Jacques Pepin video of what he calls “bastardized” cassoulet where he tosses a hot dog into the mix.
He was basically trolling purists and daring them to match their credentials with his and telling them to relax.
I love him so much!
For the food gardeners of Deadsplinter – what are some good books or websites for food gardening? I’ve been rewilding my yard but for wildlife not to sustain the family – so I can tell you a lot about Georgia native plants but I know nothing about lima beans or growing spinach. I did manage to grow some tomatoes during covid but that’s the extent of my victory garden experience.
Also, I listen to Make Me Smart and Marketplace with Kai Ryssdal for all things economy. He seems to have a handle on things going on.
Ryssdal is thoughtful in a way I wish more journalists were. When he’s covering the conventional wisdom he regularly seems to be willing to take a step back and ask basic questions like “Is this really true? Is there any more to the story?”
I can tell you what strategies have been really helpful for me:
1. Start with your state’s gardening extension. They’re usually associated with a big state university. Here’s Georgia’s – https://extension.uga.edu/topic-areas/lawn-garden-landscapes.html The extension is basically the ag research your state’s universities does about things like which varieties of veggies do well in your state.
2. If you want to grow anything from seed, pick a southern company to buy from. It’s just a leg up on knowing it’s varieties adapted closer to your climate. https://www.walterreeves.com/landscaping/seed-companies-southern/ for reference. I ordered from Southern Exposure seed exchange (they’re in Virginia) St Louis is pretty close climate-wise to the upper parts of the Southeast.
3. Growing most things from seed can easily be fucked up. The only thing I have success from seeds are beans and squashes (until the pests killed them all). No shame in buying vegetable starts. My peppers, tomatoes, and green beans all come from Lowe’s every year.
4. Do you ever go to local farmers markets? Look at what looks shitty there still and just avoid those plants. For example – people in my region can’t grow carrots or garlic worth shit. It’s not worth trying from me if the pros can’t even do it.
I’m not in the south, but when I’ve overlapped I find
https://www.southernliving.com/garden
to be a solid source.
Thanks for all of this – it’s amazing. I’ll check all of it out. My little hyper local farmers market is pathetic but I can venture to other areas.
Unless it’s a snooty farmers market, the other thing that might help as a frame of reference is that less expenisve veggies and fruits tend to be things that are either easier to grow or have a relatively high yield.
@Lymond, my favorites (and some of the ones on my own bookshelf!) are;
This one is SOLID for starting seeds.
https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/from-seed-to-bloom-how-to-grow-over-500-annuals-perennials–herbs_eileen-powell/328016/#idiq=19075411&edition=3759115
Stalking the Wild Asparagus by Euell Gibbons–his bookshelf were great, and it was his stuff, along with picking ditch-asparagus as a child that got me into foraging & plant identification
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euell_Gibbons
Square Foot Gardening is great! I don’t realllly do it according to the way the book does, but I *do* try to plant pretty intensively when I garden, to use my space well:
https://squarefootgardening.org/
Carrots love Tomatoes (Seed Savers is AWESOME, in case you don’t already know them–so I’m sharing that particular link!😉)
https://shop.seedsavers.org/carrots-love-tomatoes
And TONS of what I know, I learned from reading the old issues of Mother Earth News & Rodale’s Organic Garening, back when I flunked out of college the first time & had to take a year off college. The library in the nearest “Big Town” had nearly every back issue–because *somehow*, they’d subscribed since almost the beginning of each magazine.
Mother & OG have SO much really great info on honestly *everything* to do with Gardening, fruit growing, homesteading, & DIY stuff, that they’re always fun to read back issues of.
Semi-related, the Foxfire books are an incredible treasure-trove of information on practically *everything*, and I’d recommend them anytime, too!
https://www.foxfire.org/shop/category/books/
Lastly, I’d see if–like Brighter mentioned, your local Extension Service–al Land Grant Universities have them, they *usually* publish books or pamphlets, too.
All the Minnesota Horticultural Society books I’ve ever gotten–and the Gardening ones from the Minnesota Historical Society, too–are really great, because they’re *specific* to the conditions & soil types we have here.
I’d recommend *whatever* similar state-gardening publishers you have there, to find *your* good locally-focused ones!😉💖
(Edited to take out the redundancy when I moved a sentence!)
I also have this one, and poked around a bit when I got it, but haven’t read all of it yet–it’s pretty Minnesota specific, but it’s solid.
https://shop.mnhs.org/products/food-will-win-war
@Miluly – thank you so much – this is amazing info.
https://thosenerdygirls.org/
But, but look at all of thos PhDs. How can we trust them?
Seriously, though, when they can put together a coherent explainer of Mycoplasma Pneumoniae there’s a good reason to accept them as a source.
I only side eye the fact that they are not a racially diverse group.
I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s partly a function of the field having high barriers of entry.
Here?
Too many things bumming me out lately. If I had to take it all in then I’d be drunk and wallowing in misery.
Instead of letting it overwhelm me like it did sometimes in the past, I just keep moving one step at a time.
This week I didn’t plan on anything except waiting for mom to go. Except I realized that I needed to visit a lot of building supply stores to order stuff for their house (reno city) next week and I needed to visit suppliers which is what I did for two days after work. It cost me sleep and some Red Bull but I did it.
Plus dealing with the paperwork, and calling the funeral home to prep everything when the time comes.
I decided I wasn’t going to do what I did when Nortel imploded which was wallow in misery and be broken psychologically. The universe continues without you.
It’s hard though knowing what is potentially coming down the pipe and that people are going to suffer, but moping like Achillies isn’t going to help either.
My wife is friends with someone in the funeral business, and while there are always some bad people in any field, overall the people who work there want to honor your wishes as much as possible. Definitely talk to them as you think through what you think is right. It’s hard, but they’re (mostly) good people.
@Bryanlsplinter
Sorry to hear about your pancreatitis. I’m just catching up with the news around here.
My friend had that problem too dealing with medical staff who thought he was an alcoholic (he was definitely a drinker, but not a problem drinker as far as I know) Also know from my own experience with addicts is addicts lie a lot (not you or your fault) so that’s where a lot of skepticism comes from but that doesn’t make things any easier for you. I do know that when the tests came back, his docs and the staff who saw my friend regularly were a lot less judgey (although he was always irritated with the emergency/admissions staff because they didn’t know him.)