other
There are so many reasons to buy a used product. It is cheaper (I try not to pay more than a third of the original price), more ecological (no new resources are needed) and it provides a product with a narrative.
Over the years I have bought plenty of second-hand items and I have never had a bad experience with any them, providing of course that you do your homework beforehand and that you use your common sense.
I have come to rely on these sites so much that when I am in the market for something, checking these sites has become my second nature.
checking these sites has become my second nature
The Correspondent is an online platform for unbreaking news, committed to collaborative, constructive, ad-free journalism. Together with their members, they want to change what news is about, how it's made and how it's funded.
A year ago I became a member of this platform and I have not regretted it once since.
Its purpose is not to bring you the daily news but to daily help you to understand the news. To do this they work with correspondents, experts in a certain field who closely follow a specific topic relevant to today's day and age. I, for instance, follow correspondents that report on numeracy (the numbers behind our lives), on popular culture, on climate change and better politics.
I traded ignorance for bliss
Since I stopped following mainstream news some years ago I was left with a hole which The Correspondent has aptly and satisfactorily filled. Thanks to this initiative I have traded random facts for meaningful insights and ignorance for bliss.
Evgeny Morozov is a blogger, publicist, tech-critic and author but above all, the White Russian is a public intellectual who shares his genius with the world.
If you subscribe to his weekly newsletter you get access to a curated list of articles, videos and podcasts that you yourself would never find in a million years. 'Read less but better' is Morozov's motto.
Therefore, he created an algorithm that scans all of the web's content based on a list of sixty topics that are relevant to understand the world and its challenges today. The output is a list of quality material that the web, using conventional algorithms based on popularity and advertisements, does not want you to find.
It has helped me to unlock information that should never have been locked in the first place.
If you feel that the best-of list is a bit much, you can also subscribe to a list of bespoke syllabi: The Cosmopolitan (on global affairs), The Activist (on social justice), The Intellectual (on arts & ideas), The Progressive (on the political economy of global capitalism), The Machinist (on technology).
For those that still feel a bit lost The Syllabus has introduced the notion of Cyberflâneurs, interesting people who are invited to play with the Syllabus' infrastructure and choose their own favorite pieces. Since its launch people as diverse as Brian Eno, Hito Steyerl, Adam Tooze, Rana Foroohar, Samuel Moyn, Rem Koolhaas, Paul Mason, and Shehla Rashid have participated.
What is true for The Correspondent also applies to The Syllabus. It grants me access to sources I did not know existed and it has helped me to unlock information that should never have been locked in the first place.