31–40 of 203 posts
Haven't watched the news in at least 5 years. Actually I haven't watched TV in the last 5 years even. So I don't have ads bombarding me, or fear and propaganda coming in every day. Highly recommended. You have one life. Make sure it counts as a happy one.
How do you stay up to day? Ideally Id like a weekly review or something where I can spend 30min. I recongnise it would be beneficial to give up news, but I need to know a bit about whats going on to be social.
Right and when the secret police come to your door you will be surprised. Wait, you say, when did we get taken over by a dictator? What happened to our democracy? Why is my internet suddenly riddled with NO everywhere? How come my job vanished? Why are my children suddenly forced to eat dirt? Why do I live in a crime infested neighborhood that used to be safe? Why did evil people destroy my environment? Oh yeah, I di…
This is an excellent distinction!
> I remember voting in a bond election in a city of 500,000. Only a few hundred voted. We spent $50M of the people's money because they didn't care. Ignoring News is fine, ignoring what is going on is not.
I'm guilty of not following my own advice here, but anybody who feels utterly overwhelmed and powerless by national/world politics can definitely be involved or at least informed at the local level!
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ditto. I was also surprised how much happier I was when I deleted all the news apps off my phone. I realized that there's really no good reason for most people to get real-time news alerts except to feed an addiction.
I'm confused. How are y'all saying these things on a site called... Hacker.. news?
Right and when the secret police come to your door you will be surprised. Wait, you say, when did we get taken over by a dictator? What happened to our democracy? Why is my internet suddenly riddled with NO everywhere? How come my job vanished? Why are my children suddenly forced to eat dirt? Why do I live in a crime infested neighborhood that used to be safe? Why did evil people destroy my environment? Oh yeah, I di…
Similar in my city (250K people, a few hundred voters on the participatory budget to decide what to spend several million € on). Reaction of many people: "we elect these politicians to make decisions for us for four years and manage the budget, and that's what they should do, why should they ask anyone instead of doing their job?" That, when the participatory budget was about 1% of the total budget, and it was an explicit promise in the platform that was voted in the elections. Sigh.
It's said that "an informed citizenry is the bulwark of democracy", and that's probably why many of us consume so much political news.
However, I feel seeing the news and expressing outrage privately or on social media have become low-effort excuses for not doing things that can actually improve our governments. Outrage does not affect anything except our own peace of mind and health.
As far as I can tell, atleast in my country, only two things lead towards any real change - 1)protests and 2)money. Either I should put in the effort to organize people and protest, or I should spend money trying to influence decision makers. Since I suck at the first and lack in the second, I decided to be apathetic towards everything political.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Love this, but since the book has an anti-Soviet sentiment, I don't think we could generalize this quote. In USSR you would read only what you should and you didn't really have a choice. Freedom of press was something impossible to imagine. I cannot say that everything what we read, or choose to read today is worth reading but there is a good press, which is at times difficult to find, but you will never get to it if…
The irony is that at the limits of capitalism you find the same thing as soviet communism. Worthless news.
I understand the sentiment that news can make you depressed, but reading the news can also spur people to act positively in a multitude of ways.
When a natural disaster strikes and the news is filled with stories of anguish and despair in the aftermath, people donate to charities because of the news reports they've seen.
Imagine if we never read the news because such stories were too depressing?
Imagine if this young student had never seen a harrowing news report about the Syrian war?
What do you guys do if you need a short break from work? Between tasks or if I have finished something mentally demanding, I will often skim some news sites or hacker news. Any recommendation what else to do as a quick break between programming tasks?
Basically: Less news, more books.