Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Things you notice when you quit the news (2016)

raptitude.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

671–680 of 741 posts

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

#671

Post by padraic7a »

tsimionescu wrote: post #609
kelp wrote: post #553

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think there is objective agreement that the Economists views are right-wing neoliberal capitalist. AllSides rates them as "Leans left": https://www.allsides.com/news-source/economist They've endorsed Democrats for US President since 2004. Ad Fontes also rates them slightly left leaning: https://adfontesmedia.com/the-economist-bias-and-reliability...

As in an old joke that rings true to anyone living outside the US, in US politics you have, on the one hand, an extreme right-wing party, far to the right of anything in other countries; and on the other hand, you have the Republican party. It's absolutely true that on cultural issues (particularly rights of minorities), the Democratic party and even the Economist is actually left or even far left compared to many wo…

Or as the other joke goes;

America is a one party system - the War Party. It's just that as per typical American extravagance they've got two of them.

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

#672

Post by q_andrew »

JacobThreeThree wrote: post #309
q_andrew wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are some good sites with RSS feeds? I was sad to see that Reuters doesn't have it.

I use this for Reuters: https://news.google.com/rss/search?q=when:12h+allinurl:reute...

Thanks!

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

#674

Post by DSMan195276 »

ethbr0 wrote: post #665
DSMan195276 wrote: post #564

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your only criteria for concern is "existentially concluding" then I'd say you need to recalibrate your barometer. The biggest problem with this approach is that you'll likely only recognize such an event after it is already impossible to stop. We ended up getting very close to throwing out the past election results, wouldn't that be such an event? Or do you think it doesn't qualify because we managed to stopped it…

> We ended up getting very close to throwing out the past election results We disagree on this. From what I've read, there was amateurish pontificating on throwing out election results, mostly by sub-Presidential aides or advisors. And most critically, rejected by almost everyone in a position of authority to legally do so. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe the most serious legal action taken to deny the results…

The President of the United States claimed the election was fraudulent and directed the Vice President to throw out electoral votes and hand him the Presidency. Fake elector certificates were signed. The President called up state officials telling them to "find more votes", and refused to start the transfer of power. Election officials were threatened. The President's supporters attacked the Capital and (for a few hours) stopped the votes from being counted. That list doesn't even cover everything, how is that not a serious attempt? What exactly would they need to do for you to be concerned beyond them actually being successful in overturning the election?

Again, your barometer for concern is way too far off. The issue is that such attempts only needs to work one time for the game to be over. If you're always unconcerned about attempts being made because they failed then eventually one will be successful and you won't be able to do anything about it.

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

#675

Post by refurb »

onethought wrote: post #599
dnissley wrote: post #565

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you clarify what you mean without using the words right, left, or neoliberal? All of which are extremely vague.

Not the OP but, Right: conservative. Policy designed to preserve corporate interests and wealthy elite. Often masquerading as “looking after the middle class” - when really at best they get some trickle down benefits. Selfishly You should be right leaning if you are a significant owner of capital or have a very high chance of that (they will convince you that everyone has this chance). Left: Progressive (in that it l…

This seems to the world view of the Democratic Party as described by the Democratic Party.

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

#676

Post by falafelite »

qiskit wrote: post #382
yojo wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> I'm a firm believer in quality over quantity when it comes to news When it comes to news, I'm of the opinion that one should strive for diversity of opinion rather than quality. As you noted, all media has a bias so you should see what everyone's biases are. You will never get truth from any single media outfit so cast a wide net. > What worked well for me was getting a print subscription to the Economist. Why woul…

I agree that diversity of opinion is important! I made https://www.nabu.news for that exact reason. If I'm reading a NYTimes article and curious about what other sources might say, I just click on the Nabu browser extension to see what, for example, Fox News is saying about the same thing. Find it helpful for getting out of my echo chamber.

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

#677

Post by refurb »

ahthat wrote: post #625
drenvuk wrote: post #533

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Atlantic. The New Yorker. The Economist. These are neutral to left facing. In a feeble effort to avoid being put in a different bubble, does anyone have something that an educated republican/conservative would read?

Anything by The Hoover Institution Really great, conservative, and academic stuff. Highly regarded by many. Excellent publications, and whole video series on YouTube are free to watch

Agree there. Econlib podcasts by Russ Robert of the Hoover Institute are fantastic. He has a range of guests on, seeks to understand opposing views and it’s more of an academic discussion.

His podcasts about the 2008 financial crisis were fantastic.

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

#678

Post by falafelite »

timq wrote: post #354
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…

In 2016 Google News was great because with a 5 minutes glance you coudl hved all the necessary news. However this strategy doesn't work anymore thanks to Google News trying to be smart by adapting news to your browsing history. I haven't been able to find a good alternative to the old Google News. I tried subscribing to one or many newspapers, but they all have too many useless articles inbetween valuable news such t…

What did you like about the "old Google News"? A good number of comments here seem to have a similar sentiment, so I'm genuinely curious. Was it simply the aggregation without personalization?

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

#679

Post by refurb »

james-redwood wrote: post #144
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…

I would have also recommended the Economist until I experienced a Gell-Mann amnesiac effect [1] with regards to an article they wrote about South Africa, a country where I lived much of my life in, in which they so horrifically butchered the coverage I simply canceled my subscription for fear of how inaccurate everything else might have been. [1]: https://www.epsilontheory.com/gell-mann-amnesia/

Having seen what the Canadian media writes about US politics I’m not surprised.

I’ve come to the conclusion if you really want to under the nuances of a current affair, you simply won’t get it from the news. You’ll get the super simplified, “tie it in a nice bow”, “here are the bad guys and here are the good guys view”.

They simply don’t have the time or resources for more than that.

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

#680

Post by falafelite »

knodi123 wrote: post #512
yojo wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Google News has gotten increasingly annoying though, forcing me harder toward the "personalized" results oh brother, you aren't kidding. I want top news of the day, but all I get is a hundred clickbait versions of two or three things I clicked on once a couple weeks ago.

https://www.nabu.news/latest has the top news of the day with absolutely no personalized results, if you're looking for alternatives!
Post reply on HN