<p>I absorb a lot of information and am always on the lookout for neat primary source information. An example is material sent out by MEMRI, the Middle East Media Research Institute. They provide translations of Arabic (and Farsi, meaning Iranian) news sources and public statements. The neat thing is they send out a bunch of emails nearly every day. The stuff tends toward the inflammatory and often lack greater context but there is a mix. As an example of lack of context, they translate a fatwa read out by a Syrian Cleric I don’t know and broadcast on Al-Hiwar TV, which is, btw, an Arabic language station out of London. The fatwa says you shouldn’t honor kill women raped by government soldiers and their militia goons. Even though I have to look up who Karim Rajeh is - a Sunni anti-government cleric, it’s a rather amazing thing to read. Another example is a translated column from Al-Sharq Al-Awsat, a London-based Arabic paper owned by a Saudi royal, about the erosion of women’s rights in the Muslim world. </p>
<p>Thing is it’s difficult to find interesting sources like this. I used to get a variety of press from a magazine called World Press Review. (And IMHO The Economist’s main value is in their blogs and special reports not the weekly articles. The more you know about what those are about, the more you realize they’re lousy.)</p>
<p>I gather stuff from all over. For example, I read Supermarkets Today and can talk at length about EDLP (every day low pricing) strategies and the highest psf generators (mostly flowers, btw, which speaks volumes about markup). Most sources are simply easy to read articles about nothing much. Like most of the material in Cat Fancy. </p>
<p>I don’t expect much in the way of response, but I thought I’d ask. Any special interests that have interesting sources? Odd stuff interests me.</p>
<p>I love anything satirical- satirical novels such as by Sinclair Lewis, but I read the website The Onion closely- plenty of good, funny articles and some that have been taken very seriously by the public.</p>
<p>I regularly get absorbed in random stuff I find on Google books, often by accident. A few months ago, I was playing around with Google n-grams, where you can chart the frequency of a word or phrase over time, and I clicked on an early reference of the word I had graphed. The document turned out to be the parlimentary debates over the propriety of removing the Elgin marbles from Greece to Britain shortly after they had been taken! Truly fascinating! </p>
<p>A very good primary source to dip into randomly are published opinions of state or federal appellate courts. Go to a law library and randomly pull a volume of “F.3d” off the shelf and start reading the opinions. The descriptions of the facts are often fascinating. </p>
<p>The NY public library has collections of 19th century restaurant menus online. </p>
<p>Is this the kind of stuff you have in mind?</p>
<p>This is a pretty cool primary source – the handwritten notes and photographs cataloging all of the objects contained in King Tut’s tomb, as it was being excavated.</p>
<p>Speaking of catalogs, I enjoy reading auction catalogs, often (I admit) with a less-than-wholesome purient interest. For example, the auction catalog from the Madoff’s household belongings was sad and grotesque but strangely interesting nonetheless. The catalog used the same dry, detached detail-oriented tone to describe a lot consisting of a solid gold Rolex watch as one consisting of Mrs. Madoff’s used pantyhose. I think the unifying theme that leads me to enjoy all of these kinds of sources is the lack of hierarchy in the individual entries.</p>
<p>In the old days, there used to be a newsreel before motion pictures. A lot of these are available on Archive. org. The election of FDR, the surrender of Japan, etc.</p>
<p>My older daughter and I founded the “Sophie Chotek Society for Useless Knowledge”. To be eliigible for membership, you need to have known who Sophie Chotek was/is without looking it up. (so don’t; no peeking! ;))</p>
<p>I work at the state library and during my lunch break I go and look at old newspaper stuff. We have a huge genealogical collection. </p>
<p>I read La Nacion and a few other ones to keep up on what’s going on down in Central America. The English news sources down there are not nearly as good as the Spanish ones.</p>