I first went to MB when Alan Kohler’s site (forgot its name) became the paid for “Eureka report”. Then MB went paid, and I was happy to pay at first. Then most zerohedge’s good stuff became paid as “the market ear”. Bloomberg went paid. The ABC went so far left that I can’t even read its headlines without the onset of apoplexy. FT alphaville went paid. The AFR finally shutdown the no javascript hack the other day. Most of substack and medium seems to be paid.
It’s pretty clear that quality commentary is no longer going to be free. That’s probably a good thing for journalism, but it’s bad for many of us. To get all the stuff I want would not be cheap. Each source I’m interested in seems to cost ~$250/yr. I don’t mind paying for one or two, but to get all the ones I want would be expensive. One option would be to form a cooperative. We could agree to each subscribe to some service and write summaries/commentary for one another on some kind of rolling basis.
Something has to change because if we don’t have high enough quality material to talk about this community will cease to be of interest and engagement will evaporate.
Orrite. Here’s something interesting. Here’s Ronald Reagan, of all people, speaking the truth back in the day.
https://www.tiktok.com/@mrproducermedia/video/7363807776440896814
I never in my wildest dreams thought I’d ever find myself agreeing with anything Ronnie ever said, but we live in clown world, so here we are.
@robert2013
Good question, and a very real dilemma. Although I don’t think you are talking about “good quality news”, per se, but are after “good quality analysis”, as you have mentioned mostly financial sources.
On the news front, the answer is easy – that place does not exist. There are no independent news sources out there, and by “independent” I mean sources that tell you facts (and only facts) in straightforward, neutral language.
Most news sources are politicised and have a degree of bias, which shines through the reporting. A simple example is the use of terms like American democracy vs. Chinese one-party system vs. Putin’s dictatorship, instead of just saying government. So, the answer on the news front is to read at least 2 or 3 sources reporting the same event from different points of view and separate the wheat from the chaff. Time consuming and can be tricky, as one will have to read international sources, which raises another dilemma of finding the trustworthy ones. This includes alternative media sources, like Telegram or YouTube.
Getting good quality analysis is an entirely different beast. Every analyst, by definition, is talking his/her own book. The goal here is not just to elicit an emotional response (like news reporting), but to turn this emotional response into cold hard cash for the analyst. Subscribe!
As an old adage goes,
Economic analysts fall into several categories:
Unfortunately, I have not heard of any brilliant economic analyst who would write reports for free. These people got into the game not for the love of it, but to make money. They are unlikely to write analysis unless it is specifically to get a whole bunch of people to commit to an idea and then front-run them. Used to happen back in the olden days, where people would literally snail-mail a check to an address and receive a letter in the mail with a monthly report on the subject in which the analyst was deemed to be an expert. Letters, mate! With actual stamps on them and shit.
Once the internet has been invented by Al Gore (/s), and became the preferred way of delivering data, the number of analysts exploded. The world entered into a new game of monetising their knowledge based on free context. So a lot of analysis was provided for free, and then a “special report” would be available for purchase – MB took this model on. I sort of get the idea behind locked articles, maybe they felt that those articles had a superior effort put into them, and the quality of material and analysis aggregated from other sources was worth the price of subscription, but I personally never saw the value. Once they went full
retardsubscription, the value plummeted.So a number of the financial resources you have mentioned have graduated to full subscription model, specifically because this is the way they distinguish themselves from the “free” crowd. Think of the red velvet rope. Or having identical tomatoes in two boxes, with one box priced at a premium to the others – humans tend to think that they get value by paying more.
Then we get into forming a cooperative. If we all were interested in pooling our grapes and making wine, it’s one thing. Those small cooperatives in the south of France were a shock – wine made from pooled grapes of many small vineyard with costs shared, and sold by the litre, around 1 euro to 1.25 euro, just bring your own bucket to transport it. Getting a cooperative and getting a number of people to agree what are worthwhile subscriptions, who has potentially earlier access to the information, thus front-running other members, you name it. Hell, we are struggling to kick in a couple of dollars to Peachy, except Nemesis, may his name live in infamy.
I think this community will be just fine. We are actually pretty good at posting on a variety of topics. The issue becomes severe when people just post their commentary in the current thread that has nothing to do with the subject of discussion. And if stagmal bites another local, or if a dog hits him with a stick, or if Brit has another martini, stick a fork in the conversation.
As to sites, Zerohedge is still ok, as most of the content is free. They are on the path of trying to monetise, but are also careful with not turning away the commentariat, as that’s where most of the value sits, just takes longer to sift through. To give credit where credit is due, the commentary on ZH is usually applicable to the subject of the article. But it is US-centric.
Fat Tail Daily has interesting stuff that is relevant to Australia. Actually, this is the love child of Daily Reckoning Australia. These guys have not yet graduated to a full paid subscription mode and have a variety of authors. No discussion though, but topics of interest can be discussed here, for example. Be prepared to be offered “special reports” or “subscriptions” if I recall the Daily Reckoning (still very active in USA) business model.
Or you can do Crikey and filter out the bias.
Truth is, Australian economy is small, so the money is not here to be made. So we have to eke out existence on nutritionally poor information soup.
Welcome aboard Hugh pavlova
You lost me.
The long and many posts on EmBee from Hugh Pavlovic.
Nah, not enough links about NZ.
Ah, thanks. Pavletich. Oh well, guess I’ll stick with 3 word slogans.
too many for attention retention of home modernus
Don’t buy now!
The Yimbys just keep winning and winning.
https://youtu.be/XwShi9hWdhU?si=ieYGhKRMvWenNarW
They are adored by ABC News. Never seen an Ess Aye Pee member on ABC.
Doesn’t seem to cut through even on Twitter.
https://twitter.com/SydneyYIMBY/status/1785625826039611406
They ain’t winning shit. They are just sucking cock in the hopes of payment down the line.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-05-02/men-feeling-uncomfortable-australia-domestic-violence/103794380
puke
blob:https://www.ezfka.com/2f40d7f7-e4ff-4c6b-9363-f288e52bb93d
Yep, Brett is def just one of us guys.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/brett-worthington/4725564
The AFL is having a minute’s silence before their match for all the women who marry meatheads and get bashed.
This is a blatant psyop.
Average salary $400k. Must be alright being top meatheads. At least you can afford to ply a bitch and buy a house.
dont forget all the sponsorships
https://www.seattletimes.com/business/whistleblower-josh-dean-of-boeing-supplier-spirit-aerosystems-has-died/
Died from conscience
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-05-03/josh-baker-worcestershire-england-cricketer-dies-aged-20/103801054
All these elite sportsperson deaths; must be all that exercise huh?
Seems like Hillary Clinton must have a connection to Boeing then
I kinda wonder if this isn’t just another way in which our Aussie Productivity has dramatically decreased . Simple things (like providing news) that, in the past, we could do for ourselves are no longer possible (viable)
Take for instance Music Festivals.
https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/another-sydney-music-festival-calls-it-quits-blaming-529-percent-increase-in-costs-20240501-p5fo7g.html
Why would a music festival require the sort of Police presence (30 to 1 ratio) suggested in this article. I mean WHY?
Is this ratio for the benefit of the music festival goers, the organizers, the bands or (dare I say it) the Police themselves?
In much the same vein, we have absure legal costs (like Brucey boy defimation) associated with running a news paper. why? why do we accept this?
This all goes to the core of our real-world Productivity, what can we make for $X. When the product we can deliver for this $X cost, fails to bring in more than $X revenue, than why are we even bothering to make the product/service. Lets just close it all down and become another NDIS service provider, the
worldAustralia seems to be perpared to pay for an infinite supply of NDIS services, but not much else….Command economy. You can’t have youngins wasting their youths going to festivals when they need to be paying off propadee. Instead of paying for pingas and festivals they will learn to pay Ikea and banks.
I don’t even understand this word ‘productivity’ when we live in a command economy.
Maybe you’re right, it’s just possible that Australia has morphed into a command economy, but we just forgot to tell our economists.
Think about our most critical problem, housing, as a command economy.
We’ve already maxed out on the supply-side “invisible-hand” incentives to build, and build and build some more. But all to no avail, our builders are going broke constructing average houses with $1M plus price tags.
How is this possible? Why is this possible?
Don’t look to conventional economics for an answer because the economic incentive to build is already maxed out, so why don’t we have greater supply?
Maybe the real answer is that our command economy is deliberately preventing our laissez faire economy from properly functioning. Maybe we’re just a command economy pretending to be a free-market economy..
Makes more sense than any other explanation!
I’ve said this before about Aussie property. It’s the furthest thing from a free market as you can possibly get.
And its becoming so big and bloated now that it’s impacting the degree to which other parts of the economy can operate with any semblance of efficiency.
Paging stagmal another $135k place up for grabs mate
48 Wainwright Street, Whyalla Stuart, SA 5608 https://www.realestate.com.au/property-house-sa-whyalla+stuart-144905548
So I am currently chill banging in New Delhi in a place called cyber city. It is a planned city and I was shocked to see how cutting edge everything is here. It is like the silicon valley of Delhi.
Everyone is pleasant; I’m renting a hotel room for about $150 a week and it is not a shithole by any means.
It will be getting to a point soon where the immigrants are going to realise that the quality of life in Australia is not much better than back home. Our infrastructure is getting so crush loaded there won’t be any difference soon, maybe the air quality will be a little better.
On topic despite the fact I used to work there, Reuters is pretty good and reasonably unbiased, insofar as that is actually possible.
But you only get a few good free articles per day and their Australian content is lacking.
My membership to MB has lapsed again, and this time I’m not in a great hurry to renew.
I’ve become fairly enamored with Michael West of late – he does far less commentary, but imho much more worthwhile genuine investigative journalism…. plus unlike DLS he isn’t cowed by the Zionist lobby in terms of pretending that they’re not a problem.
IMHO these Zionist cunts are among the worst things in Australia and anyone who stands up to them immediately gets brownie points from me, even if he is a bit of a lefty
MW will be getting my subscription donation/allocation this year.
Nothing wrong with being a traditional pre mid 2000s lefty, which I tend to see him more as. It’s the identity politics lefties of the past 15-20 years that are out of control, and are highly toxic.
If anyone wants a laugh. Definitely some valid points, but I’m pretty sure this chick doesn’t have a boyfriend or a husband.
“Masculinity. Emasculation. And The Confrontation With Feminine Wisdom and Power…..
It took me until my late 30s to realize that many men don’t want to be with a woman who has more spiritual power, wisdom and intelligence than them.
I LOVE POWERFUL SPIRITUAL ORACLE PRIESTESS WITCH WOMEN.
Like- I FUCKING LOVE THEM.
I think they are the COOLEST. I want to be around them all the time.
Hilariously, I assumed in love and romance that men would then love this Oracle portal vessel thing in me too.
This is not so.
Many men want a Junior. A woman who looks up to them. Who is slightly less smart, less powerful, less mature, less spiritually activated etc than they are.
This often gets projected onto the gross material level in the form of the man being more financially wealthy and established in his career. But it plays out in the subtle, energetic, spiritual realm too.
I don’t blame men for this and it’s actually not a complaint. I’m just talking about it and talking about what it’s like to navigate as a potent, intelligent and wise as fuck woman.
This need for the male to be “big” and woman to be small is also a fetish for many women. And some will make themselves smaller to try to fit that design. It’s all just patriarchal romance stuff….
Masculine= Dominant
Feminine= Submissive
Masculine=Big
Feminine= Small
Masculine= Leader
Feminine= Follower
and covertly hidden there is
Masculine=Adult
Feminine= Child
Let me clarify something for those of you who got snagged on my assertion that I’m more powerful and wiser, deeper, smarter than some men….
Because you believe in viewing everyone from a lens of equality without hierarchy.
My beliefs around hierarchy are that it is sometimes an organic arising within nature. It’s a feature of life.
Dogmatic, rigid hierarchy in the form of a set of externally imposed RULES is nonsense. And quite harmful. A core feature of dominator culture.
But there are also natural differences and hierarchies that organically arise.
We are not all equally wise, deep, creatively gifted, strong etc.
We are all different. I have no issue noticing those differences, and also submitting to the lead of another in an area where they clearly have more power and mastery than me.
So anyways- because I LOVE powerful women. Like LOVE THEM WANT TO THROW FLOWERS AT THEIR FEET KINDA LOVE….
Women who embody the priestess, the sorceress the crone the witch the Oracle the Dakini….
All the powerful feminine archetypes….
I ASSUMED that men LOVE these archetypes too….
lol
Meaning I assumed that this was one of my most attractive features I was bringing to a relationship.
Trust me I’m aware I bring my baggage of bullshit and difficulty too. But we all have our self aspects that are shiny and attractive and appealing to a potential mate and we all try to lead with them when we can.
So anyhow….
it wasn’t until my late 30s that I realized I was leading with all this deep ancient feminine power and wisdom that flows through me like a mega volt of Shakti eros crazy deep intelligence….
Cuz I find it attractive in women I was like yeah. This is attractive to you too right???
Well, for most men it IS extremely attractive AT FIRST.
They are HUNGRY for the ancient one. HUNGRY to be close to HER.
So they are magnetized into the siren quality of this deep ancient feminine power…
Then, their patriarchal conditioning comes up.
They start to feel how they are small, in comparison.
They start to feel how they aren’t quite as quick, deep and intelligent.
They don’t pack as much spiritual potency.
And then all kinds of weird things happen in their reaction to it.
And I’ve watched many men after me choose relationships with JUNIOR type women.
Maiden sweet innocent types who look up to their intelligence and power.
It’s funny that it took me so long to see this pattern. It was a massive blind spot. I was blinded by the depth of my own love for the archetypal wisdom vessel of THE MYSTICAL POWERFUL FEMININE.
It takes a very special and unique kind of man to enjoy a deep and powerful woman in close intimacy.
Whose depth, wisdom and power may surpass his own.
And let me be clear- I’m not talking about some oooo chop off his head like Kali and expose him to his bullshit or heal and transform him or something (a common meme)
I just mean the simple fact of what it feels like in a mans body when he’s falling in love and eros with a woman who is deeper, wiser and more spiritually potent and connected to deeper intelligence than him.
A woman who is more powerful than him.
Just that difference is enough to turn some shit on its head.
Part of the appeal of polarity teachings is that it offers women a promise of love by teaching them how to fit themselves into a JUNIOR role with men. Which most men do want. So I have no doubt it does produce more success in romance.
And I’ll be honest…. I’ve seen this so many times….
Couples where the woman is obviously making herself smaller to role play patriarchal romance junior to the big strong leader man.
I know you know what I mean.
I can see right through them.
She’s pretending to look up to his superior intelligence, wisdom and power.
And it’s just a lie.
She’s the one with the Shakti, the life force, the depth, the power. And she plays small and pretends he’s the big force in the duo.
The thing is, for some of us women, it’s just not an option to do that. We are too devoted to something else. Even if we try we cannot sustain that lie.
We are just made differently.
One day I’d like to offer a class about this phenomena. And particularly how men can, if they so desire, walk through this ring of fire.
It is initiatory because it burns away the patriarchal constructs of “masculinity” as a state of superior strength and dominance.
The false masculine of dominator culture.
It has you confront the lie of “emasculation” and…. emerge as a true expression of the initiated masculine and true power.
It’s the ancient fertility Goddess ways.
Her consort had to descend into the Underworld and be initiated by Her superior power.
His resurrection was “king consciousness”.
Sounds a whole lot sexier and more fun than women making themselves small to play patriarchal dress up or choosing a woman who is the junior to your senior.
but maybe thats just me