81–90 of 378 posts
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In 2019, Be careful about what kind of news you uncritically believe. The punishment to those who ignore due skepticism, is being governed by those who will manipulate.
Too true... I can't stand Trump on a personal level... but he's right about one thing. There's a lot of manipulation and outright falsities in news, and almost no research or fact checking in the twitter sphere.
I remember when Jon Stewart said years ago that the 24-hour news cycle is really designed for 9/11; for anything less than a catastrophic event like that, they have to manufacture problems. I think the worst offenders of this are Fox News, but it's not like CNN or MSNBC are blameless. Spending days talking about the latest typo on in the president's tweet ends up with a bizarre view of reality; even if you're not wat…
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/iraq...
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This sort of cynic pessimism is getting out of hand... By most any measure, today's western democracies are the best place, and time in history, to be alive: life expectancy, crime, food availability, mobility. This is also true of education and "being informed", although those are harder to measure. But literacy rates, high school and advanced degree proliferation, books being published, and of course internet acces…
None of what you wrote addressed the point of the comment you were responding to, which is that it's hard get people to be informed about the news if they just don't care. I'm not arguing that what you said is inherently wrong, it just doesn't have anything to do with the question at hand. The OP wrote that, "You can send the best art / math / business professor to a school, but if the students are not interested in…
That data shows only modest changes since 1940, and no discernible decline in the last decade or so. If anything, turnout was lower in the 80s and 90s, slightly higher in the 60s.
I have a theory that news occurs with a far lower frequency than people think, far lower than even when people try to account for their knowledge of the 24 hr. news cycle. In my theory, most of what counts for news, is either a story update (737 Max stories), or not news (say Trump "news"). My hypothetical news organization would strive to identify the unifying element of a given news item, and then keep one article…
I gave up Reddit for Lent, and I've been shocked how little news actually happens in a day. I compulsively check Apple News (I know, baby steps), but without all of the Reddit commentary, wise cracks, trolling, and mutually reinforcing outrage, it all just seems very repetitive.
"Yep, Barr still hasn't released the Mueller report."
"No, the House still doesn't have Trump's tax returns."
"Candidate X is too progressive/too moderate/too male/too old/too young to be the Democratic nominee, even though it's still almost a year before any Democrats can vote on them."
"Still no trade agreement with China."
"Trump makes hyperbolic claims about an action he might take, but doesn't actually take any action."
That seems to be the daily news summary every day for the past few weeks.
I stopped reading the news about a year ago. I felt like my emotions were being manipulated by a sharply-honed system built precisely to invoke outrage and draw you in to read more and more of it. I've been able to direct my focus and energy to much more productive tasks since I disconnected. Of course I entirely missed that whole Supreme Court thing until after it was over, and I have no idea what people around me a…
Did the same thing about 4 years ago and haven’t looked back. I find though that a lot of people are actually offended by it since I have no clue what thing they and everyone else is outraged about. I get accused of not caring, being disengaged, blah blah blah. It’s difficult to explain to people who are still deep in outrage mode, so I mostly avoid taking about it. My life is so much better since cutting out the new…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Did the same thing about 4 years ago and haven’t looked back. I find though that a lot of people are actually offended by it since I have no clue what thing they and everyone else is outraged about. I get accused of not caring, being disengaged, blah blah blah. It’s difficult to explain to people who are still deep in outrage mode, so I mostly avoid taking about it. My life is so much better since cutting out the new…
Honest question, how do you turn off your empathy for the suffering of your fellow countrymen? Which is what ignoring their plight would require (at least, it would for me).