Founded in 2005 as a simple multi-author blog (Wayback Machine copy), ThinkProgress has grown into one of the more popular progressive news sites, with an estimated reach of 1.8M monthly uniques per Quantcast. Behind it is a powerful NGO with strong ties to some prominent players in US politics.

Organizational Structure, Funding

You may have never heard of the Center for American Progress, but it’s one of the most well-funded political nonprofits in the US, with over $45M in revenue in 2014. It was founded by none other than John Podesta, chair of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign and victim of a phishing attack of likely Russian origin on his email account.

CAP’s funding comes from foundations, corporations, individual major donors, and small donations. Its “Supporters” page provides a breakdown, and says that “corporate funding comprises less than 6 percent of the budget, and foreign government funding comprises only 2 percent.” Big foundation funders include the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Sandler Foundation, and George Soros’ Open Society Foundations.

CAP has a sister organization, the Action Fund. Unlike CAP, it is organized under the 501c4 section of the US tax code which permits political lobbying, but means that donations are not tax-deductible. It is a smaller organization, with about $8.5M revenue in 2015, the single largest chunk of which comes from CAP itself. The organizations also share the same CEO, Neera Tanden.

The Action Fund is the organization behind ThinkProgress, which is said to be fully editorially independent. Founder and editor Judd Legum left ThinkProgress in 2007 to join Hillary Clinton’s presidential bid as research director and then returned to his role, which is an example of the revolving door from CAP to the US Democratic establishment.

In 2015, Legum received total compensation of $199K from the organization, which is comparable to other nonprofit publications like Mother Jones.

Transparency

The ThinkProgress website is one of the worst we have reviewed in terms of disclosing organizational internals. The About page mentions its parent organization without even linking to it. There, with some luck, you may find the list of supporters; beyond that, the only reporting I was able to find on the organization’s work was a 10th Anniversary Report (and only with Google).

Considering the combined revenue of the two organizations, this is a remarkably poor level of transparency; much smaller organizations like Truthout manage to report regularly about their own work (reports) and make these reports easy to find.

Positioning, Bias

ThinkProgress describes itself as dedicated to “providing our readers with rigorous reporting and analysis from a progressive perspective”. Beyond that positioning statement, does it have bias toward specific politicians or policies?

Using the 2016 election as a yardstick, political connections notwithstanding, I did not find evidence of bias in favor of one of the Democratic candidates (Bernie Sanders or Hillary Clinton) in the coverage itself. Privately, the Wikileaks disclosures show that ThinkProgress editor Judd Legum did sometimes casually forward items of interest that could be used against Sanders (emails that include Legum and Sanders).

One exchange in particular caught the attention of right-wing critics. It was a heads-up by Legum that Faiz Shakir, a former ThinkProgress staffer, had started doing some work for the Bernie campaign. CEO Neera Tanden (Legum’s boss) reacted in a manner that can only be described as vitriolic.

It would be unfair to infer too much about ThinkProgress itself from these leaked private exchanges. They only serve to underscore the strong personal connections of some of its key players to the Clinton campaign. Now that the campaign is lost, it remains to be seen how these same players act in the changed political environment.

I would describe ThinkProgress editorially as left-of-center, which in the age of Trumpism makes them a useful source of adversarial journalism. Its content selection reflects a progressive perspective that is relatively free of reflection and squarely directed at the political right. In pursuing this agenda, the site sometimes overstates/sensationalizes slightly, but not as much as clickbait sites like Occupy Democrats do; more on this below.

Stories do appear to go through internal fact-checking (though the editors fell for a fake news site in 2014).

The site also engages in independent fundraising from readers, e.g., for its recently launched Trump Investigative Fund.

Content Examples

Consistent with its origins as a blog, ThinkProgress does not distinguish between news, analysis, or commentary. Some of its reports are in-depth investigative journalism that would be right at home on sites like ProPublica (e.g., its report on the growth of the sanctuary city movement since Trump’s election).

An example article that shows reasonable depth, while also not presenting any perspective that disagrees with its analysis: “Trump poised to violate Constitution his first day in office, George W. Bush’s ethics lawyer says”. See this NYT piece for a somewhat more balanced assessment of the same situation. This is a case where citing only a single perspective serves to slightly sensationalize reporting.

Similarly, when 46 US Attorneys were fired by the Department of Justice, ThinkProgress focused on framing the action as part of a larger purge narrative, not spelling out that Bill Clinton fired all 93 attorneys in 1993 (see the Vox reporting). This is an example of using a fairly ordinary political event as a “hook” to support a larger narrative.

As an example for overstating, one article calls the war in Yemen a “climate-driven war”. While the article itself makes good arguments, that summary overstates the role of climate change (compare this analysis by International Policy Digest).

Sometimes the site does use clickbait tactics. The headline “SCOTUS nominee Neil Gorsuch faces extraordinary sexism allegation from former student” uses ambiguous language which could describe a wide range of behaviors in order to sensationalize Gorsuch’s alleged comments about maternity leave.

Worse, these comments are disputed by several other students (see NPR coverage, or National Review for the right-wing perspective). This isn’t mentioned in the article, and ThinkProgress kept tweeting the piece at least until March 24, when other media had already reported the dispute.

Design, Licensing

ThinkProgress design in 2005, 2011 and 2017 (old screenshots courtesy of archive.org).

The ThinkProgress website is a branded version of Medium, with all the associated advantages and disadvantages (e.g., it works poorly without JavaScript, but looks nice on mobile and has decent built-in social features such as commenting, notifications and following).

Content is under conventional copyright, with permission to re-use granted on a case-by-case basis.

The Verdict

While I would not put it in the same journalistic category as publications like Mother Jones or The Intercept, I do recommend following ThinkProgress on Twitter or by other means as a source of progressive advocacy journalism. At its best, ThinkProgress provides valuable in-depth investigative reporting.

The complex influence web behind CAP and the parent organization of ThinkProgress raises questions about how autonomously it can operate, but one shouldn’t overstate the case. The organization it is not dependent on a single funder and relies on public support, as well. Perhaps ThinkProgress would better served being a truly independent organizational entity, which would also enable tax-deductible donations.

The rating is 3.5 stars, rounded down. Points off for a slight tendency toward sensationalizing (primarily through framing and selective reporting) and a lack of transparency.

(Updated in March 2017 with new information and to be more consistent with our review methodology.)

I didn’t think Ridley Scott had another great movie in him, but he proved me wrong. The Martian turned out to be visually powerful, well-paced and well-acted, and will likely be remembered as one of the best sci-fi movies of this decade.

Matt Damon does a great job with a challenging lead role, conveying both the desperation and witty resourcefulness that define Mark Watney. Among the support cast, Kate Mara shines and lets us experience the emotional journey of one of Watney’s fellow crew members.

The movie lacked suspense in its last third, which in my view is because part of the story arc from the book has been omitted in favor of greater focus on the supporting characters. A bolder choice might have been to go the opposite route: to focus almost completely on Watney’s isolation.

We’re left with a movie that conveys optimism in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds, and enthusiasm for scientific exploration, while being highly entertaining. If you haven’t seen it yet, I recommend it.

Project Syndicate is an international non-profit organisation which provides exclusive, original op-eds by experts on a range of current affairs such as geopolitics, economics, and development. Laudably, PS disseminates its articles for free or at a discount to poorer news sources all over the world, which it is able to do thanks to donations, and the subscriptions of more moneyed news organisations. The organisation’s unique model protects against sensationalism and ensures the high quality of its content.

There’s a rickety table in a shop that no one’s put much effort into making welcoming, if you feel like being depressed while you eat. The food itself is edible and cheap, so Ka Lok is at least acceptable for budget sushi takeaway.

From the maker of the superb roguelike Pixel Dungeon, Frostfire is a simple and satisfying match-3 style puzzle game based on a hexagonal grid. As you would expect from developer Oleg Dolya (watabou), the design is elegant and simple. The music is a very nice complement to the gameplay and visual design. It’s a worthwhile time-waster, fun for children and adults.

If you’re going to play a puzzle game in this genre, you may as well make it this one — pay what you want to an indie developer, and enjoy a pure game with no ads.

Currently it’s $1.99 on Google Play, $0.99 on iOS, or pay what you want direct from watabou for Android, Windows or Mac.

Asami’s Durbanville is a sushi and Asian restaurant, which offers a wider range of sushi than other establishments in Cape Town. Takeaways are promptly prepared, and the stylish setting, reminiscent of authentic Japanese sushi bars, is great for a night out. The food isn’t amazing but it is probably the best sushi you will find in the Northern Suburbs.

Democracy Now! is one of the best-known progressive news sources in the United States. It has been around since 1996 and is distributed online as well as through broadcast television and radio. It is identified strongly with co-founder, principal host and executive producer Amy Goodman, an investigative journalist known for courageous confrontations with powerful economic and political forces. Most recently, Amy Goodman was in the news because an arrest warrant was issued against her in connection with her reporting on the Dakota Access Pipeline. The case was quickly dismissed but helped bring further attention to the protests.

The organization running the show is a non-profit, though it does not appear to publish an Annual Report (none is listed on the website, and an email request has so far not been answered). Its revenue for 2014 was $6,674,958, so the lack of transparency about impact, strategy and spending is a bit unusual for an organization of this size. Indeed, Charity Navigator rates it at two stars for accountability and transparency, due to the lack of audited financials or information about its board of directors.

The primary content the organization produces is a Monday-to-Friday one hour broadcast (in English, with some content translated to Spanish) that typically consists of news and interviews. With a progressive lens, the show gives more attention to issues that typically only get second-tier coverage in mainstream media, such as international efforts to combat climate change, or left-wing social movement activism. This is done in a dry and muted “just the facts” tone.

The show is always smart, sometimes tedious (interview guests are hit or miss; breaks with music or monotonic monologue are not for everyone), sometimes engaging (like when it tackles challenging conversations, such as discussions about third party candidates).

An example of clever journalism, even if one disagrees with it: during the 2016 election, Democracy Now! staged a reenactment of one of the US presidential television debates, giving third party candidate Jill Stein (who was not permitted to participate) the opportunity to answer the same questions the main candidates were asked. (The libertarian candidate was also invited, but could not make it.)

The overall curation of topics is quite remarkable, and the emphasis on stories not receiving attention by major media makes Democracy Now! a good addition to any news and information mix, if the video/audio format works for you. There is textual content on the site, but much of it is transcripts or very short blurbs.

Personally, I prefer to read the news, as do young people who have grown up with the web. But the Democracy Now! broadcast reaches audiences who may not be deft navigators of the web, and therefore is an important part of the US political media landscape.

The online version of the show does offer links to different segments and transcripts so you don’t have to watch to or listen to the whole show. But of course content that is native to the web offers many other possibilities that are underutilized in a TV/radio show transported to the web – conversation and participation, interactive data and charts, cross-referencing, embedded videos, tweets and other content, and so forth. This also gives Democracy Now! a disadvantage in social media that rely on content that’s optimized for being shared.

The Verdict

Democracy Now! is a fine example of viewer-supported journalism. It is constrained by its format and perhaps to an extent by its ambition. It is a brainy daily roundup that appeals to people who already self-identify as progressive, but is unlikely to convince people who are not. Many will background the broadcast to other activities rather than intently listening for an hour (a podcast version is available).

The lack of organizational transparency is disappointing for a non-profit, though not surprising for an organization that’s clearly monomaniacally focused on its mission. In spite of those reservations, Democracy Now! deserves four stars for its tireless dedication to quality journalism and to the pursuit of major stories and topics that are neglected elsewhere. Even if you don’t identify with the (by US standards) far left political lens of the broadcast, including frequent spotlighting of third party candidates, it enriches our perspective on the world in ways other sources rarely do.

David Mitchell loves to write books that challenge him as a writer, and writing historical fiction about a Dutch trading post in the bay of Nagasaki certainly qualifies – especially without writing in Dutch or Japanese, while still trying to maintain an air of authenticity in the language and dialect.

The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet succeeds, for the most part, in transporting the reader, and if you like where Mitchell is taking you, you’ll enjoy the ride. Occasionally, he overdoes it with prose that seems written mostly to amuse himself (“A smoke-dried Dane makes a Finn’s cock of a tangled vang”) or that is just a bit too experimental.

The central plot in Autumns borrows heavily from Mitchell’s own work – a group of women are drugged, enslaved, exploited, and lied to about their eventual fate. This also happened to the fabricants in Cloud Atlas, and Somni-451’s rescue included similar plot twists.

In Autumns, Orito uncovers part of the evil plot, but not the entirety of it (that is left to the male characters); like Somni-451 in Cloud Atlas, she seems to represent an ideal of both innocence and wisdom.

Towards the end of the novel, a whole new cast of characters, the crew of the HMS Phoebus, is introduced. We only get a brief glimpse into their motivations, and learning about the captain’s gout or the rivalry between the lieutenants seems like a distraction from the fate of the protagonists.

Mitchell couldn’t resist the temptation to weave a highly fictionalized version of this interesting historical incident into the novel - but I would much rather have spent more time with Orito, revealing perhaps more of her humanity rather than a less interesting and more stereotypical transition from victimhood to sainthood.

AssaultCube is a first-person shooter game for PCs (GNU/Linux, Windows and macOS) that is free software, with the caveat that some media assets are nonfree. Apart from that, the game is a lot a fun. It seems to mimick the good old days of Counter Strike when it was just a Half-Life mod, and that’s great! It’s one of the few libre, realistic FPS games out there.

At first you dabble a bit to actually hit players online. The fast pace does not make it easy for newcomers to shoot straight, but if you stay with it for a while, your skills will improve in quite a satisfactory way, which I suppose can be said about most things.

Sure, you may shake your head at characters falling from great heights and remaining with full health (not that realistic, eh?), or the lack of good graphics and animations such as you’d find in AAA games, but considering this one is gratis, runs everywhere and entertains you for hours, it’s well worth a shot.

Incognito ties some interesting studies and anecdotes about human cognition together with opinions and hypotheses that are at times cringeworthy. The most problematic part of the book is Eagleman’s set of proposed reforms for the criminal justice system, which range from prefrontal cortex training for offenders to the suggestion that teenagers might be deserving of harsher physical punishment because their brains are still malleable. Here, Eagleman is guilty of the same simplistic, reductionist thinking that he later reminds us not to apply when dealing with high complexity systems.

Leaving aside all the other issues with his proposals, two points. First, any form of criminal justice impacts not only the population of offenders. Deterrent effects on would-be offenders, perception of fair treatment, and even impact on society as a whole need to be considered (as an extreme example of the latter, we can all imagine that a society that administers public crucifixions is shaped by that practice, irrespective of its impact as a deterrent).

Second, our sense of right and wrong is deeply informed by everything that happens around us: what our parents tell us, what our peers tell us, what the media tell us, and what’s actually going on. Would we recommend applying Eagleman’s “prefrontal cortex training” to a child soldier in an environment where violence is normalized? Of course not: we would argue that our priority should be to take the child out of a bad environment, and to address the root causes. Then we should also be careful to understand the micro-environments that exist within society, due to a history of racial and gender inequality, failed drug policies, and poverty.

Now, imagine an approach like the one Eagleman proposes being applied to, for example, the school-to-prison pipeline that exists in the United States and predominantly impacts children of African-American background. Will those teenagers be helped by harsher punishment because their brains still have the neuroplasticity to learn? Of course not – that will only further reinforce broken trust, and normalize “might makes right” as the standard of social behavior.

Where Eagleman writes about societal issues, he is out of his depth, and his suggestions come across as naive at best and dangerous at worst. That doesn’t render the whole book ineffective. He is a persuasive writer, the science is interesting, and some of his conceptual vocabulary (“team of rivals”, “alien/zombie systems”) is very well-chosen to bring his points across. Overall, the book is a light read, and those who have ventured into the depths of neuropsychology even a little bit will find much of it to be familiar.