Ponder.cat RSS Meta

Ed Zitron's blog is so good that it deserves a whole community all to itself:

[email protected]

Go read it.

I removed some spam from Globalnews.ca just now. Thanks for the reports.

These are real stories that are coming from the RSS feed, but that doesn't mean they belong here. Some free news sites just have feeds that include obvious spam. Presumably, they're trying to make money so they can stay in existence, which is fine, but that doesn't mean it needs to pollute these communities and the people subscribed to them

Currently, the blacklist, with some new additions from today's spam, is:

BLACKLIST_REGEXES = [
    r'Shop our top 5 deals of the week',
    r'Amazon deal of the day.*',
    r'Today.s Wordle.*',
    r'Wordle today:.*',
    r'.*NYT Connections.*',
    r'.*[A-Z][A-Z][A-Z][A-Z][A-Z].*[A-Z][A-Z][A-Z][A-Z][A-Z].*[A-Z][A-Z][A-Z][A-Z][A-Z].*',
    r'Daily Deal:.*',
    r'Shop our .*',
    r'.*\(on sale now.*',
    r'.*Big Deal Days.*',
    r'.*Way Day Sale.*',
]

The middle one with the capital letters is to filter out Youtube channels that like to include a lot of all-caps clickbait in their titles. If it goes beyond a certain level, the posts don't get put onto Lemmy.

If you see more spam, or stories that seem like pollution, keep reporting it. I might tell the bot to preemptively remove stories that get spam reports. There have been a couple of people who've tried to report things just because they disagree with them, but almost all the spam reports are legit, so it might make sense to default to that behavior and I can fix it up afterwards if people are reporting things bogusly.

I'll keep you posted. Thanks for the reports.

I don't want to have 100 different communities for slightly different news sources. I've been trying to focus on high-quality news outlets that do their own in depth journalism. I decided to add vox.com to that list:

[email protected]

I highly recommend that, if you like the stories this or one of the other in-depth outlets puts out, you subscribe to them. Ad-supported news is the death of information. There are people who are trying to make good quality information, and it helps the whole civil society function. That's one reason I have the paywall bot. Having an RSS feed on Lemmy that's focused on one and only one paywalled source solves the problem of paywalled sources going into news aggregation communities. There's no possible way you could subscribe to everything on offer in [email protected], but you can subscribe to one or two paywalled services, and subscribe to their Lemmy communities. Win win.

Probably I'm dreaming. Anyway, Vox has a paywall for some stories. Once I realized that, I switched the entire channel to get posted by the paywall bot, even though most of the stories are free, so people don't run into the paywall and send me angry messages. Be aware.

Have fun.

[email protected]

Happy October! You can have some horror or creepy story themed streams:

• Blameitonjorge
• Mr. Ballen
• Fascinating Horror
• Scary Interesting

[email protected]

Enjoy!

News stories about government policy, technology and legal issues, the impact of technological innovation on society, civil liberties and consumer rights.

[email protected]

Enjoy!

New releases are a chance to talk about how a project is developing. I'm happy to make another post in a bigger community to get more feedback, but I wanted to check here first to see if this is something you might want to do @[email protected]

A potential process could be

1. User makes a request in [email protected], and tags the relevant mod
2. If the mod approves, they can tag the admin of this instance to turn the feed on

There are also general communities that this could work for, such as [email protected] or [email protected], but those communities are active and may see this as spam. It may help to crosspost the bot posts to them instead.

Technical:

• This article had some information on creating feeds for GitHub.
• There may be a similar option for the GitHub alternatives.
• F-Droid would be cool, but I don't think that's possible yet

Potential issue: Repos with lots of pre-releases may feel like spam. Relevant issues here and here. Those repos could be skipped.

(sorry if this was already discussed)

!coding_[email protected]

A selection of coding and tech related blogs. If you'd like me to add any, let me know.

Edit: [email protected]

I added feeds for some other good organizations. Give them a follow. Subscribe to them. Give them money so they can survive.

Grist

Grist is a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to highlighting climate solutions and uncovering environmental injustices. Since 1999, we have used the power of journalism to engage the public about the perils of the most existential threat we face. Now that three-quarters of Americans recognize that climate change is happening, we’ve shifted our focus to show that a just and sustainable future is within reach.

[email protected]

Mother Jones

Mother Jones is a nonprofit, reader-supported newsroom founded in 1976 that reaches millions of people each month across our website, social media, videos, newsletter, and print magazine. Mother Jones is produced by the Center for Investigative Reporting, which also produces Reveal, the weekly investigative radio show and podcast.

Our newsroom investigates the big stories that may be ignored or overlooked by other news outlets, including about democracy and voting rights, racial justice, reproductive rights, and food and agriculture.

[email protected]

The Marshall Project

The Marshall Project is a nonpartisan, nonprofit news organization that seeks to create and sustain a sense of national urgency about the U.S. criminal justice system. We have an impact on the system through journalism, rendering it more fair, effective, transparent and humane.

[email protected]

I made some communities that are fed from batches of YouTube streamer RSS feeds:

• [email protected]
• [email protected]
• [email protected]
• [email protected]

I left them open for anyone to post videos that aren't in the RSS feeds. Since they're not flooded with content like some of the others, and not specific to one feed only, that seems like it should be fine. I'll also add or remove streams if anyone decides they have preferences about what streams should go into each category.

I'm not sure how this will work. To be honest, it's just me testing an idea. I probably will open up the RSS bot soon to people giving the bot RSS URLs and the bot creating communities for them, so maybe these should be one community per channel, with people signing themselves up instead of me curating a list of channels. I want to try this way first, though.

As always, let me know what you think.

Another RSS feed of high quality journalism.

"When the founders of The Atlantic gathered in Boston in the spring of 1857, they wanted to create a magazine that would be indispensable for the kind of reader who was deeply engaged with the most consequential issues of the day. The men and women who created this magazine had an overarching, prophetic vision—they were fierce opponents of slavery—but they were also moved to overcome what they saw as the limits of partisanship, believing that the free exchange of ideas across ideological lines was crucial to the great American experiment. Their goal was to publish the most urgent essays, the most vital literature; they wanted to pursue truth and disrupt consensus without regard for party or clique."

Subscribe: [email protected]

"To expose abuses of power and betrayals of the public trust by government, business, and other institutions, using the moral force of investigative journalism to spur reform through the sustained spotlighting of wrongdoing."

What could be better than that?

Subscribe: [email protected]

I'm trying to add news sources that aren't just a big bunch of different sites that all repackage the AP newswire. FP seems like serious global news.

Subscribe: [email protected]

NOVA

NOVA is the most popular primetime science series on American television, demystifying the scientific and technological concepts that shape and define our lives, our planet, and our universe. The PBS series is also one of the most widely distributed science programs in the world, and is a multimedia, multiplatform brand reaching more than 55 million Americans every year on TV and across digital platforms. NOVA’s important and inspiring stories of human ingenuity, exploration, and the quest for knowledge are regularly recognized with the industry’s most prestigious awards.

RSS Feed community: [email protected]

E&E News

Founded 25 years ago, E&E News dives into the ever-evolving landscape of energy and the environment to keep professionals informed, empowered, and a step ahead with original, compelling, and non-partisan journalism.

RSS Feed Community: [email protected]

Inside Climate News

Founded in 2007, Inside Climate News is a Pulitzer Prize-winning, nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that provides essential reporting and analysis on climate change, energy and the environment, for the public and for decision makers. We serve as watchdogs of government, industry and advocacy groups and hold them accountable for their policies and actions.

We have earned national recognition for our work and many of the most prestigious awards in journalism, including the Pulitzer. Already one of the largest dedicated environmental newsrooms in the country, ICN, through its local reporting networks, is committed to training the next generation of journalists, and to strengthening the practice of environmental and justice journalism.

RSS Feed community: [email protected]

I've added two new nature communities to the RSS feed communities:

Nature.com - [email protected] - Fine peer-reviewed research in all fields of science and technology

Mongabay - [email protected] - News and inspiration from nature's frontline