By Henry Moon Pie
I started getting my news online twenty-five years ago in the wake of Bush v. Gore after getting tired of yelling at the TV screen. My first regular online news was the aptly named BushSucks.com, a daily link compilation that covered all of the myriad ways in which W. really did suck. That site led me to Eschaton (where Lambert hung out) and Kos’s “more and better D’s,” Scoop-powered Dailykos.com. Both digital locales offered something that BushSucks.com did not: comments.
Before long, Kos even offered users the “opportunity” to create their own content on the technically cool Scoop platform where one could get their daily dopamine dose by hitting the Rec List if you knew the DK audience well enough.
If you want to make sure Naked Capitalism’s hardware and software continues to accomodate the paces that the writers, commenters and readers put it through, now would be a good time to donate. The Tip Jar beckons.
When the Great Recession hit, my list of news sources broadened to include Calculated Risk and, through the tireless efforts of Daily Kos user bobswern to bring the sanity of Naked Capitalism to Daily Kos through his diaries that quoted Yves’s articles at length, I came to Naked Capitalism.
The shift from Daily Kos to Naked Capitalism was a gradual one, driven by a growing recognition that there was no more a way to change Daily Kos into more than a DNC mouthpiece than there was to change the DNC itself. Naked Capitalism had to win me over gradually, because there was a predominance of finance in those days, and that was not a major interest of mine.
As time went on though, I began to realize the amazing breadth and depth of what was covered in Links and the Water Cooler. It became clearer and clearer that Naked Capitalism had a reader-centered goal: nurturing a reader toward being well-informed and suitably equipped for critical thinking. While Daily Kos, on a mission from God the DNC, did its best to eliminate independent thinking and independent tiinkers from the site, Naked Capitalism demanded an increasingly rare ability to consume, digest and critique very diverse perspectives, at least among the commenters. Readers were likely to have their opinions and beliefs challenged rather than verified to the point of petrification at Daily Kos.
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When you came to Naked Capitalism each morning, you just might learn something new, and come out with your understanding of the world or even yourself altered. My list of life-changing things begins with Lambert’s writing about permaculture buttressed by members of the Commentariat with their own experience and expertise. It was an exercise of open source education that was the dream of those who saw what good the Internet might do. At Naked Capitalism, it’s just part of the standard bennies.
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You might also just learn something lifesaving. I was focused on the holidays and the Chief’s first trip to the Super Bowl in 50 years, but there were these unnerving stories about old men who smoked dropping dead on the street in China. Then there were the freezer trucks in Northern Italy (be careful out there, Reality Czar). Thus began NC in its lifesaving role as a truthseeker and truthteller about Covid. I changed my habits, stayed out of crowds and tight spaces, and missed the first wave here in Cleveland. I also learned the truth about the non-sterilizing nature of the vaccines here, so when the Biden administration listened to the scientists-the political scientists, that is – and declared Covid over, I knew better, and attended scores of hospital appointments wearing a KN-95, The last thing I needed was Covid, and the information I got as a Naked Capitalism reader made me safer, and put the Naked Capitalism staff at risk because it bucked government disinformation.
If you appeciate the way Naked Capitalism puts the welfare of its readers over what’s popular or crowd-pleasing, now is a good time to donate. The Tip Jar beckons.
I could go on for pages (“oh no, here he goes”) about the things I’ve learned at NC from the stories and the threads, but I’m going to close it out here.
You think it’s truly just and right that the readers of a reader-supporting site should return the favor for a reader-supported site, it’s a good time to donate to Naked Capitalism. The Tip Jar beckons.
