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Ask HN: What are your news sources other than HN?

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191–200 of 275 posts

Re: Ask HN: What are your news sources other than HN?

#191
post #156

Quit news. Quit politics. Don't have a "media diet." Make stuff and try to be around people who make stuff instead. To lay a single cobblestone path is to have more virtue than a million hot takes. Most causes are not thought-out enough to advocate, certainly not to scream about. The cobblestone path may outlive you. Politics and news, for all of their rage and sense of urgency, turn with the leaves. If you want to d…

I absolutely cannot believe that the top answer is "ignore the news and spend more time on Twitter". This is "Live, Laugh, Love" levels of pseudo-enlightenment. It is important to know what's happening in the world. It is important to know about decisions being made that affect the country you live in, and it is astonishingly ignorant to assume that politics and media are as bad where I live as you seem to think they…

"This is "Live, Laugh, Love" levels of pseudo-enlightenment."

It's worse than that. What they are advocating is surrounding yourself with a comforting bubble that feeds you a steady dose of pablum that confirms your existing biases. Twitter has been an extraordinary source of ignorance bubbles and has been an extremely negative force on the conveyance of accurate information.

A couple of weeks ago the GP had the top post to a story about the oceans warming, which is remarkably telling given this post. In it they casually dismissed the report of the world's scientists, paraded an ignorant counter-conclusion, and called it a day. This is straight from the AGW-denier playbook and you can see in the GP exactly how such people are made -- "Ignore what your eyes and ears are telling you. Listen to what the tiny subsection of ignorant people are pitching".

Their philosophy is how the world got "pizzagate". Where people like Jordan Peterson have cults.

Re: Ask HN: What are your news sources other than HN?

#193

Quit news. Quit politics. Don't have a "media diet." Make stuff and try to be around people who make stuff instead. To lay a single cobblestone path is to have more virtue than a million hot takes. Most causes are not thought-out enough to advocate, certainly not to scream about. The cobblestone path may outlive you. Politics and news, for all of their rage and sense of urgency, turn with the leaves. If you want to d…

I think that's an extreme position. Instead of that, why not delay all news articles by few days or a week. Anything mostly noise will be gone and any important issue will still be broadcasted few days or weeks later.

Re: Ask HN: What are your news sources other than HN?

#194
post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Conservative Perspective: WSJ, Economist, The Hill, Reason, and National Review

Reason is libertarian, not conservative.

Tangent, but I wish we'd come up with better labels for our viewpoints in the US than "conservative" or "liberal". It's been on my mind a lot lately.

"The Once and Future Liberalism" explores this idea in depth: https://www.the-american-interest.com/2012/01/24/the-once-an...

"Liberal" is maybe the most overloaded word in politics. "classical liberalism", "economic liberalism", "liberal democracy", what the American right means when they say "liberals" - all WAY different.

Re: Ask HN: What are your news sources other than HN?

#196
Local paper: SF Chronicle print edition. It's very good, great local issues coverage, which I wish people would pay more attention to, in general. Voting in California (especially Oakland, where I live) is never easy (42 questions last time!) and I felt like I knew what half of them were in advance, which is no small thing :)

Economist for world news. First-class politics coverage. I always laugh at their briefings. It's like, OK, here we go. "Briefing: Climate change". I wouldn't be surprised if we get "Briefing: World peace". Weighty and substantive.

Stratechery for tech news. It's great. I also read AVC (Fred Wilson's blog), Jason Crawford's new "Roots of Progress" from time to time. Less often I check out Remains of the Day or Wait But Why.

If I'm really feeling ambitious I read foreign affairs. Straight from the US council on foreign relations (CFR). That's the real deal.

I don't pay much attention to US national news. I don't care what nonsense Trump said. I do care intensely about local issues like transit, schools, pensions, and land use (zoning).

Re: Ask HN: What are your news sources other than HN?

#197
post #156

Quit news. Quit politics. Don't have a "media diet." Make stuff and try to be around people who make stuff instead. To lay a single cobblestone path is to have more virtue than a million hot takes. Most causes are not thought-out enough to advocate, certainly not to scream about. The cobblestone path may outlive you. Politics and news, for all of their rage and sense of urgency, turn with the leaves. If you want to d…

I absolutely cannot believe that the top answer is "ignore the news and spend more time on Twitter". This is "Live, Laugh, Love" levels of pseudo-enlightenment. It is important to know what's happening in the world. It is important to know about decisions being made that affect the country you live in, and it is astonishingly ignorant to assume that politics and media are as bad where I live as you seem to think they…

To plan for tomorrow you need to know nothing, to plan for five years you need to know the news, to plan for ten years you need to know politics, to plan for twenty years you need to know history.

Re: Ask HN: What are your news sources other than HN?

#198
post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I absolutely cannot believe that the top answer is "ignore the news and spend more time on Twitter". This is "Live, Laugh, Love" levels of pseudo-enlightenment. It is important to know what's happening in the world. It is important to know about decisions being made that affect the country you live in, and it is astonishingly ignorant to assume that politics and media are as bad where I live as you seem to think they…

> It is important to know about decisions being made that affect the country you live in. It's mostly not. The vast majority of daily political yammering and scandals has no effect. People mostly use politics as a way to dodge real problems in their life that they could be solving. You see this most clearly with the way people bat about words like "capitalism" into nonsense definitions. Their criticisms are almost al…

It still sounds like you think I'm experiencing American style politics and media.

It's silly to act like tabloid press and opinion pieces by vested interests are the same as dry fact-based reporting on the passage of bills through a parliament.

My country has had coalition or minority governments since my parents were children, and we don't have first past the post voting. People here don't have "their candidate" as such either, because we have multi seat constituencies. People increasingly don't even have a political party (of which there are several) that they reliably vote for.

I disagree very strongly with the notion that people mature when they effectively give up on politics. That's a dangerous message. People mature (for good or ill) when they put time and effort into making changes to their communities that affect others, whether that's getting a new bus stop, rezoning land, or changing laws or tax rates in some direction. That stuff is always and inevitably political.

Re: Ask HN: What are your news sources other than HN?

#199

Quit news. Quit politics. Don't have a "media diet." Make stuff and try to be around people who make stuff instead. To lay a single cobblestone path is to have more virtue than a million hot takes. Most causes are not thought-out enough to advocate, certainly not to scream about. The cobblestone path may outlive you. Politics and news, for all of their rage and sense of urgency, turn with the leaves. If you want to d…

I really should have said "Quit political media" instead of "Quit politics", to stave off the usual comments.

Re: Ask HN: What are your news sources other than HN?

#200
post #156

Quit news. Quit politics. Don't have a "media diet." Make stuff and try to be around people who make stuff instead. To lay a single cobblestone path is to have more virtue than a million hot takes. Most causes are not thought-out enough to advocate, certainly not to scream about. The cobblestone path may outlive you. Politics and news, for all of their rage and sense of urgency, turn with the leaves. If you want to d…

I absolutely cannot believe that the top answer is "ignore the news and spend more time on Twitter". This is "Live, Laugh, Love" levels of pseudo-enlightenment. It is important to know what's happening in the world. It is important to know about decisions being made that affect the country you live in, and it is astonishingly ignorant to assume that politics and media are as bad where I live as you seem to think they…

Being informed and aware are valuable goals.

I’m skeptical that the news industry has such significant deviation in outcomes globally, especially while having similar business models.

I’m genuinely curious: is there a particular news source you’ve found that delivers on evaluating global events/decisions, selecting the most relevant/important ones, and explaining them in an educational/useful manner?

The news is in the business of calling attention to things. Whether that attention is informative or useful is not something they take responsibility for.

Watch journalists when they are interviewed, they have a familiar line: they are calling attention to an issue - that’s their job - whether or not it is important is up to the reader.

When I get caught up in the drama of news I use Journalism 101 to remind myself I’m not actually gaining information in exchange for my attention:

A. Is this story about an event that has occurred (or is it speculation or reporting the speculations of others)?

B. Is the coverage establishing what occurred with independently verifiable facts? (Extra points if you can then find those verifications easily).

C. Does it bring context from people who have been directly effected by that event?

D. What did you learn about the nature of that event that you didn’t already know?

When I applied basic journalistic standards to my news consumption, it went down precipitously.

One can arguably be better informed about what is going on in the world and the decisions that are being made by focusing on building.

Builders share what is going on in the world with each other - such as discoveries that can help solve common challenges.

They share decisions that can effect their ability to solve problems - like new regulations and laws.

Chasing some global perspective that we must constantly keep up-to-date on, that’s the fantasy.

Building, as grandparent suggests, is how we engage with the world around us.

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