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Things You Notice When You Quit the News

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Re: Things You Notice When You Quit the News

#431

Post by graycat »

DonaldFoss wrote: post #391
graycat wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> gossip for just a handful of drivers. They are using the technique of formula fiction , that is, what the ancient Greeks discovered as a sure-fire way to get and hold the attention of an audience. So, in that formula, there is a protagonist the audience comes to identify with , that is, care about. Then the protagonist has a problem. Through various highly in doubt and improbable victories, from skill, guts, determ…

Mad props for the _ Ein Heldenleben_ reference. Richard Strauss was a genius, following in the footsteps and improving on Wagner. Side note: I'm continuously amazed at the breadth of knowledge and reference on HN. Is it perfect? No. It is, however, frequently a breath of fresh air. It reminds me that polymaths still abound, and fondly reminiscent of the old /.

> Richard Strauss was a genius, following in the footsteps and improving on Wagner.

Yup.

For some more good Richard Strauss, there is

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AuS337uc-4Y

with the scene of the presentation of the rose from his opera Der Rosenkavalier (rose carrier) where the two women are Anne Sophie von Otter (Octavian) and Barbara Bonney (Sophie). So, in the story Octavian is dressed as a man and is delivering the rose to Sophie, the one dressed as a woman. Super nice singing by the female voices with a super nice duet. Bonney is cute as a kitten.

Re: Things You Notice When You Quit the News

#432

Post by qubitcoder »

zmb_ wrote: post #228
eigenvector wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My favourite example of this is the Economist news magazine. The Economist reports on a much larger range of country and topics than the typical magazine or newspaper. Many of its readers like it for that exact reason: it gives them information on stories they won't normally find in their local or national news sources and they want to be informed about, say, hydroelectric developments in the Congo. The problem is th…

My experience is the opposite. And I'm definitely not blind to the Gell-Mann Amnesia, I notice it on Wikipedia all the time. I've noticed that in The Economist the articles about my field of technology, work, and my small home country, have been accurate to the point that I suspect they have had experts in the field involved in creating them. That gives me confidence in the articles about issues I'm not intimately fa…

I'd like to echo this sentiment. In fact, this is the exact reason that I happily pay for The Economist. Even when reporting on topics with which I'm quite familiar, The Economist nails it in terms of accuracy.

For instance, recently there was a writeup on quantum computing in which they made a somewhat hyperbolic claim regarding D-Wave. This gave me pause; however, the point was clarified in subsequent paragraphs, thus restoring my confidence in their analysis.

Much like the parent poster, I too have dropped many of my daily news sources, but not The Economist. I've yet to find a publication which matches it in terms of coverage and accuracy--not to mention their exceptionally high-quality audio recordings of each edition (perfect for commuting!).

Re: Things You Notice When You Quit the News

#433

Post by talmand »

krrrh wrote: post #396
talmand wrote: post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was an undefined talking point that has spread farther and faster than it was likely intended. I suspect it will disappear soon as the stupidity of it starts to affect the major news agencies and social media.

It referred to a real and serious phenomena, but now the phrase has been muddied by political rhetoric. It's still a problem, and it's different enough from the old clickbait sensationalism and conspiracy theory chain emails that it deserves its own name. https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/for-the-new-yellow-j... https://medium.com/@ev/i-found-it-interesting-that-when-i-we...

Nah, for the most part what some are calling "fake news" is still the old-fashioned clickbait.

I can remember several scandals over the years from the big news agencies that would be considered "fake news" by today's standards. They range from just being wrong to outright fraud. This is nothing new, this crap existed before there were websites. It's just that people simply choose not to remember to continue their desire to have something whine about.

It is also an old tactic by people wishing to discredit those that disagree with their agenda, whether it is political or economic.

Re: Things You Notice When You Quit the News

#434

Post by ArlenBales »

gbog wrote: post #40

I found out that having no news at all is not so good, because you don't want friends and colleagues to believe you're living in a cave. But you only need the two three important headlines in the week, and I get these from Wikipedia home page. Also, if you are concerned by a topic, say war in Syria, just get your meat from Wikipedia article, it's not perfect but it beats all other info sources by very far.

Most Wikipedia "In the news" articles are war or disaster related. Not very relevant for most people, and also quite depressing if you digested it day after day. If your goal is to reduce news to prevent distraction, Wikipedia probably works against this.

Better is to just exclusively use Hacker News as your news source. Important political or disaster related news shows up on the front page of HN when it happens (big earthquakes, presidential election winnings), otherwise more localized stuff is hidden. The news that does make the front page here is mostly relevant to technology, which is what most here care about.

I read Hacker News and local town news for news. Good enough and I miss nothing important.

Re: Things You Notice When You Quit the News

#435

Post by GFischer »

eli_gottlieb wrote: post #49
themckman wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't just sign up to be a resident in another country. You have to be invited. I know its fun to say "Screw this! I'm moving to Canada", but it doesn't work like that.

Not to ruin my own chances, but New Zealand is apparently quite welcoming to a high-skilled professional. I mean, yes, you then have to live in a boringly peaceful country on the other side of the world from anything exciting. But right now, that means you're on the other side of the world from anything "exciting".

I looked very hard at moving to New Zealand. Auckland sounds AWESOME, but what really scared me is San Francisco-like property costs and a really, really high cost of living.

Everything else was highly positive.

Re: Things You Notice When You Quit the News

#436

Post by losteric »

cyberferret wrote: post #101
cyberferret wrote: post #70

I haven't had a TV in the house for nearly 8 years now, and don't miss it at all. The biggest problem to me, seems to be the 24 hour news cycle for things like wars, elections and the like. I was visiting friends during a couple of major air accidents in the past couple of years (The MH370 and MH17 incidents in particular), and was astounded at the propensity for news stations on ALL channels to fill every minute of…

In an extension to what I wrote above, I used to follow my local newspaper on Facebook a couple of years ago, just in order to keep in touch with local events seeing as I don't have a TV. I noticed their feed back then starting to change from a simple and useful dissemination of their newspaper articles, into a conduit for posting tabloid style or inflammatory/unverified web links and popular memes. I questioned them…

My theory is that profit destroys many news channels from the inside out.

The channel start with the best intentions of conveying legitimate unbiased news to inquisitive educated audiences... but eventually the supply of news seekers gets depleted, while investors and advertisers demand more. The channel is "forced" to keep expanding so they start catering to people that don't seek out news... steadily devolving into click-bait infotainment articles.

Low-brow content alienates the original news seekers, and they leave for cleaner sources of information... but by now the channel's legitimate reputation is lost. They must double down on the infotainment market to keep turning a profit.

Eventually that gets saturated too, so the channel abandons their original (expensive) legitimate news reporting and continue chasing low-brow audiences, competing against all the other devolved spam-news sites. If their name held enough trust, they might chase profitable corporate/political puff-pieces ("fake news" aka lies).

It feels like an awful game-theory scenario.

Re: Things You Notice When You Quit the News

#437

Post by graycat »

DonaldFoss wrote: post #382
graycat wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> frightening Well, it's sad. But, in part, you can relax: The "fake news" is just a current meme and will go away in at most a few weeks. You can hear so much about such a meme because the news organizations form herds, gang up, pile on.

Tribal instincts, competing for scarce resources?

Maybe you were responding to "form herds, gang up, pile on". My explanation for why they do that: For a newsie, if some of the bigger guns in the MSM are saying that some candidate is a dirty rat, then it is both safe and easy for all the other newsies in the MSM to do the same. Just one newsie calling dirty rat likely won't have enough credibility to get much traction, but, if all the MSM newsies are saying dirty rat, then they all get credibility, not just for a claim of dirty rat but maybe also even for little green men from Mars. More generally, gangs offer to their members some safety of numbers, and people in gangs are more willing to throw stones.

A friend of mine who remembers NYC some decades ago explains that the NYT wrote the stories and the rest of the MSM, especially the TV evening news, just went along -- easy, "no real work about it".

Yes, no doubt much the same applied to tribes. If everyone joins in, then can bring down an elephant, mastodon, bison, reindeer or some such, no one member of the tribe is at much risk of injury, and everyone in the tribe eats that day. If some guy in the tribe just wants to sleep through the effort, then maybe the rest of the tribe won't let him eat!

Re: Things You Notice When You Quit the News

#438

Post by rm_-rf_slash »

friedman23 wrote: post #411
tao_oat wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think The Economist is pretty open about their liberal slant (Adam Smith liberal, not US politics liberal).

I would think that a publication called 'The Economist' would be Adam Smith free market liberals.

Essentially it is, with caveats. The Economist was originally a publication set up to protest the Corn Laws and their distortion of the marketplace. The stance has shifted over the years but the tone is often inline with the founding idea that people and businesses should be left up to their own devices unless there is an excellent reason to intervene.

Re: Things You Notice When You Quit the News

#439

Post by ZenoArrow »

ashark wrote: post #398
ZenoArrow wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>"Teenage boys, your life is so much easier now: Have that climax music queued up ready to go at a single button click at just the right time with her on the living room sofa. Trust me: Richard Strauss understood her much better than you do!" While I appreciate your commentary on the music of Strauss, I disliked this particular comment. Is encouraging emotional manipulation really what we want for the younger generat…

If mood-setting music is unacceptable emotional manipulation, we'd better all stop interacting with one another to avoid the great crimes we're all (apparently) constantly committing, because that's about as benign as it gets.

Not really.

There's nothing wrong with sharing music with others, what matters is the intent. Sharing music to enjoy together, great. Sharing music you may not enjoy just to get your rocks off, not exactly the best thing in the world.

Re: Things You Notice When You Quit the News

#440

Post by ZenoArrow »

Chris2048 wrote: post #311
ZenoArrow wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>"Teenage boys, your life is so much easier now: Have that climax music queued up ready to go at a single button click at just the right time with her on the living room sofa. Trust me: Richard Strauss understood her much better than you do!" While I appreciate your commentary on the music of Strauss, I disliked this particular comment. Is encouraging emotional manipulation really what we want for the younger generat…

Anytime a woman puts makeup on her face, or a man takes a date to a nice restaurant - isn't this manipulation of the same type?

Only if the enjoyment is one-sided.
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