Ask HN: How do you read the news without getting depressed?

Don't try to shoulder every single problem in the world.

Atlas isn't merely a mythological figure he's a cautionary tale.

Understand that "news" is a filtered set of "information" packaged for maximum impact in minimum time. For those in the "news business" they are there to get eyeballs, clicks, etc. for profit or world view support motives.

Basically I am noting that all "news" is filtered, edited, and often creatively rewritten. This is to maximize the likelihood of a particular desirable audience segment to interact with it.

So, yeah, I try to ignore pretty much all of it at this point. I skim some breaking news blogs/aggregators to see if anyone has started a war, or if there are disasters anywhere.

But I've learned to take everything "news" I read with a kg or two of salt. Its worse in science, where creative writing distorts actual discussions. The whole "IBM quantum computer went backward in time" bit from a few days ago is a perfect example of how wrong something can go by ignoring the language given to the reporter/PR firm, and replaced with a more creative exciting (in)equivalent paragraph. This is just one of a plethora of examples, but the point is, you generally cannot rely upon information content being accurate in the vast majority of writings.

I am sorry I am so cynical on this, but honestly, you'll feel much better if you stop reading the "news".

Note: scare quotes "" intentional.

From my perspective, news has become far more angry and vicious in the last couple of years. Writers who in the past were more or less kindly and factual (if sometimes a bit goofy) have started putting out really hateful stuff. It's shocking and, yes, depressing.

I moved from general news to specific news a couple of decades ago, mainly because I was in an opportune position to see how the general news just tend to attack something they have really thin knowledge but hold as absolute truth. This was back in the late 90s and even if the more specific news outlets that had the expertise and knowledge to explain and educate, would later come to "fix the holes" it was pretty much pointless since the majority of people would just ignore facts because the story was already told.

News has been angry and vicious for a long time, maybe it's just now starting to hurt everybody due to public exposure by social media, the vicious crews can now attack anybody who has a public surface, and everybody has public surface thanks to social media.

When I was undergraduate student I was spending 2-3 hours a day consuming politics in a wider sense. Of course this included daily news but also longer magazine articles and documentaries. Maybe that's just me but oftentimes when I see how people have much more bad lives than I do, I don't feel so bad anymore.

Oh and daily news is often presented in a very boring way, you don't have that so much with in-depth articles or even books about politics, those are sometimes even written in an ironic way. (Stating the obvious but probably it also makes sense not to read too many right wing sources with an aggressive sentiment - although as a proper democrat one should cross read. Still, reading a little tabloid stuff can be really funny btw.)