291–300 of 741 posts
A lot of what I read makes me read Wikipedia, for verification and context.
News are not just the latest events, they also remind people about the current state of world's history, and invites people to learn some actual facts.
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Strong disagree with the idea that watching or reading mainstream news is informative. I don't think it's unfair at all to label mainstream news (US) as propaganda. Have you ever compared the home pages of major mainstream media companies? It's as if they are reporting on a completely different country. It begs the question of whether it is better to be uninformed or misinformed. Consuming mainstream media in the US…
How would you have found out about the Texas power outages last year or the rising Opioid epidemic if it were not for news (unless you lived in Texas or knew someone addicted to Oxy)? Or any other event from your city all the way to your federal government? You can dismiss all news as being misinformation, but even the shadiest outlets report some semblance of facts. It's the cause of the news that's often up for deb…
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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…
That is a good method, another is actually studying the methods of advertising. The methods they have now are not much better than what they had 50 years ago. The only big differences are volume, intrusiveness, and rate. All of those have increased tremendously in the past few years. But learn about anchoring, A/B choice, timed choice, and so on. Helps quite a bit. So being conscious that most forms of video media ar…
> The methods they have now are not much better than what they had 50 years ago.
The methods are much, much more refined and quite a bit better. You are being sold to and you may not realize it. Everything you interact with on social media (including reddit) has a good chance of being part of an advertising funnel. Even reviews and unboxings are usually advertisements.
One of the best new tactics is ragebait - when someone talks about how bad/evil something is. This is almost always a lead up to a covert sales pitch.
Marketing is everywhere and it has gotten much, much better in the last 50 years.
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I prefer an RSS reader with a personally curated list of news outlets.
This is exclusively how I consume the news. In fact, a good 50% of my feeds are 'World News' feeds from other countries. it's the best way to see alternate points of view I think, and then as a moderately intelligent[1] adult, I can form my own opinion on the current state of affairs. --- [1] I'm not allowed to call myself 'smart' on HN, I got told off for it on a previous comment ;)
So much to unpack here. For starters, being informed makes for more interesting conversations with others. It means that you get to reflect on what you stand for, and grow as an individual with an opinion. News is also the gateway for deeper information. If you stick to just the news, that's one thing, but if you then go deeper into the topic (what is the relationship between Ukraine and Russia?) then you get invalua…
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…
I'm a firm believer in quality over quantity when it comes to news. Google News has gotten increasingly annoying though, forcing me harder toward the "personalized" results, the kind of filter bubble I'm intentionally trying to avoid. What worked well for me was getting a print subscription to the Economist. They definitely have a bias (particularly in their editorials), but it's mostly of the "free trade" variety, w…
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)＿/¯
Best I can do - if particularly interested in a current event and there's no video footage - is sample wide range of news sources and see if there's any common strand of truth between the lies.
But more often than not, I don't care anymore.
The world was also smaller back then. With eight billion people, you can't track everything of importance on the world stage anymore. You need to pick and choose.
As someone who just stepped back into pop culture after being in prison for years (so might as well been on the moon) my first shock was just how horrible it all is now. There is no news worth watching. Cable news is just a pile of filth excremented by a Labrador Retriever that solely eats baby diapers. I thought I will watch Bloomberg since if real money is involved it can't be too manipulative. Nope, wrong. The int…