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Things you notice when you quit the news (2016)

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Re: Things you notice when you quit the news (2016)

#131

Post by deltaonefour »

cpach wrote: post #34
nautilius wrote: post #13

Spoiler: He did not actually quit the news, just watching news on TV as opposed to reading articles. > I’m mostly talking about following TV and internet newscasts here. This post isn’t an indictment of journalism as a whole. There’s a big difference between watching a half hour of CNN’s refugee crisis coverage (not that they cover it anymore) versus spending that time reading a 5,000-word article on the same topic.

Yeah enormous difference. It is indeed a good idea to avoid TV news. My suggestion: Go to a news stand instead and grab a copy of The Economist. One who does that will learn much about the world. About countries one rarely hear about in other media outlets. About advances in science and technology. In my opinion, time spent reading The Economist is not wasted. Well that’s my 2¢ anyway ¯\＿(ツ)＿/¯

My suggestion is don't even bother with the economist. It's news in more pretentious and intelligent packaging. It's honestly better than some other sources for sure, but that isn't the point.

The point isn't to find good sources of news. I think the point is that most news, no matter how good it is, is largely pointless.

I'll pick up the economist if something in it interests me. Otherwise I largely ignore all news.

Re: Things you notice when you quit the news (2016)

#132

Post by wonderwonder »

freedomben wrote: post #109
systemvoltage wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My father tells me - "Why do you care what Andrew Cuomo is doing in New York city?" and it kind of was eye-opening. I really don't. I wish I paid more attention to local news, local politics, and perhaps check-in on international news on a weekly basis. The internet changed all this. When I was growing up, my dad read local newspaper daily. National and international news were briefly covered in the local paper. He'd…

Your dad's broader point is a really good one, but the example of Andrew Cuomo doesn't seem like the best to me depending on when it was said. For a while there Cuomo was being talked about very seriously as the heir apparent to the Democrat presidential nomination. I agree with OP that "civic duty" is a silly reason for watching the news, but when it comes to voting to give people massive amount of power, that reall…

maybe but in the end it turned out Cuomo was not going to be a presidential candidate and what happened to him never really mattered at all. I think this can apply to most news. You think a topic is important because it could be important months down the road. I would bet that 95/100 times what we think is going to be important ends up having no real impact on us at all and we would have been better served paying attention to our hobbies or families or friends.

Re: Things you notice when you quit the news (2016)

#133

Post by kibblesalad »

thescriptkiddie wrote: post #113
xattt wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m waiting for someone to jump in and shit on The Economist. However, I don’t think a person that doesn’t have any sort of social standing to uphold will have anything bad to say.

I'll bite. The Economist is a right-wing publication. The quality of the writing is usually pretty good so it's not a bad choice if you're in to that sort of thing, but it is propaganda.

Clearly you don't have any sort of social standing to uphold and have disqualified yourself from the discussion!

Citations Needed has a decent episode on the publication and its history: https://citationsneeded.libsyn.com/episode-98-the-refined-so...

Re: Things you notice when you quit the news (2016)

#134

Post by Dave_Rosenthal »

einpoklum wrote: post #103
Dave_Rosenthal wrote: post #37

I quit the news roughly 20 years ago and never looked back. The way I explain it to people is that the news is simply a form of entertainment that I don't really enjoy. I'm sure it's been pointed out before, but the news is also a horrible way to actually understand the world around you. What gets discussed is the most novel/stimulating things that happened--if you attempt to fit a model of the world to these data po…

> I quit the news roughly 20 years ago and never looked back Said an avid follower of Hacker News ? :-)

Ha, you totally got me :) In my defense, my comments were meant apply to mainstream world/national news. If you have a specific interest that you want to keep up on, that's a somewhat different set of tradeoffs. But, even then, I prefer places like HN where an upvote/sorting is aligned with a someone thinking the content is useful rather than just making ad money for clicks.

Re: Things you notice when you quit the news (2016)

#135

Post by afterburner »

ctoth wrote: post #118

I've been subscribed to Stratfor[0] for a couple of years now and have generally been pretty pleased. No fuss, no shouting headlines, just reporting of what's happening and a clearly-separated section for analysis and implications. Maybe yall should give it a go. [0]: https://stratfor.com/

I used to read Stratfor, but in the 10 years following the Iraq War, I noticed some glaring blind spots and also a political agenda. I'm not sure I would trust them alone, but if you use them very skeptically for their background history summaries, they might have value.

You can easily get lost in the weeds with something as detailed as Stratfor's reports though; sometimes you need to step back 10,000 ft to recalibrate.

Re: Things you notice when you quit the news (2016)

#136

Post by wonderwonder »

damnyankees wrote: post #32
systemvoltage wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My father tells me - "Why do you care what Andrew Cuomo is doing in New York city?" and it kind of was eye-opening. I really don't. I wish I paid more attention to local news, local politics, and perhaps check-in on international news on a weekly basis. The internet changed all this. When I was growing up, my dad read local newspaper daily. National and international news were briefly covered in the local paper. He'd…

> "Why do you care what Andrew Cuomo is doing in New York city?" In and of itself, I don't. Unfortunately, the local politicians toe the party line and ape the Big City / Big State politicians, the Cuomos and the Garcettis of the world. Suppose you could paint it at some level as "know thy enemy" (pardon the abrasiveness of the wording) because those states are something of a test bed for what to expect from the loca…

No post body was provided.

Re: Things you notice when you quit the news (2016)

#137

Post by klft »

jacquesm wrote: post #64
macksd wrote: post #4

I fully agree with this. Scanning Google News or a couple of the more professional international news services like BBC / Al Jazeera / Reuters I still feel pretty well informed (and confident that there's usually nothing of immediate consequence to me) but it doesn't grow into "expert analysis" or impact my feelings much. Here's another thing I noticed: how manipulated / manipulative it is. And not just news and I do…

For me the real eye opener was this bit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WMDPql6rweo

You might like "The Century of the Self" as well:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJ3RzGoQC4s

Re: Things you notice when you quit the news (2016)

#138

Post by s1artibartfast »

freedomben wrote: post #109
systemvoltage wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My father tells me - "Why do you care what Andrew Cuomo is doing in New York city?" and it kind of was eye-opening. I really don't. I wish I paid more attention to local news, local politics, and perhaps check-in on international news on a weekly basis. The internet changed all this. When I was growing up, my dad read local newspaper daily. National and international news were briefly covered in the local paper. He'd…

Your dad's broader point is a really good one, but the example of Andrew Cuomo doesn't seem like the best to me depending on when it was said. For a while there Cuomo was being talked about very seriously as the heir apparent to the Democrat presidential nomination. I agree with OP that "civic duty" is a silly reason for watching the news, but when it comes to voting to give people massive amount of power, that reall…

This falls into a trap of preparing for every possible outcome when you have finite time and attention. If Cuomo runs for president, there will be plenty of time to make an informed opinion then.

The trap set by news is implying that something could possibly impact you when it probably wont.

Re: Things you notice when you quit the news (2016)

#139

Post by joshstrange »

flats wrote: post #83

I strongly agree with this. I would, however, like to call out one TV program here in the U.S. that I think comes much closer to approximating the experience of “reading a 5,000-word article”: PBS NewsHour. It’s great, completely free and available to watch online, and you can even get most of what you need from their podcast alone ( https://www.pbs.org/newshour/feeds/rss/podcasts/segments ). It consists of fairly in…

PBS Newshour is a gem for sure and one of the few sources I trust almost fully. NPR is also high on my list.

Re: Things you notice when you quit the news (2016)

#140

Post by bsedlm »

vorpalhex wrote: post #56
macksd wrote: post #4

I fully agree with this. Scanning Google News or a couple of the more professional international news services like BBC / Al Jazeera / Reuters I still feel pretty well informed (and confident that there's usually nothing of immediate consequence to me) but it doesn't grow into "expert analysis" or impact my feelings much. Here's another thing I noticed: how manipulated / manipulative it is. And not just news and I do…

If being exposed to ads or super stimulating content is unavoidable, then how do you build a defense mechanism against it? Avoidance is good to the extent that you can engage in avoidance but not everything is avoidable. How do you actually build resistance to the stimuli?

quite simply, meditation. But sure there are many types of it, and while putting it like this it seems 'simple' it's also very difficult.

more specifically, it all stems from the practice of self-observing how you react to something "virtually", without getting carried away by it.

Doing this for any stimuli, good, bad, scary, exciting, is what it's all about, that way you can notice yourself getting carried away, and instead of going with it, you observe it pass by you.

But this is a practical discipline, you gotta keep doing it until you get good at it and so on...

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