No news is good news
thomasjbevan.substack.com
No news is good news
1–10 of 160 posts
Re: No news is good news
#2I have:
- Deleted facebook
- Unfollowed any news accounts and use Ublock to block suggested content on Twitter
- Unsubscribed from any news subreddits
- Of course never check news sites
And honestly feel better overall and less stressed. Sure you can claim being apathetic/ignorant towards global current events makes me a bad person, but I do not care. To me, no human is designed to handle as much information input as we experience today.
Re: No news is good news
#3I'll come out of my shell a few times a week and won't understand what's going on. News sites just tell me the last 18 hours' worth of updates... So... I either disengage entirely and can't carry on a conversation or I stay engaged and worry about events I cannot affect.
I'd like a "I haven't checked the news in [7] days and some guy at work mentioned [Ukraine talking to the UN], what's that all about?" website.
I guess it'd be 7 days worth of news synopses for the topic.
[7 days ago this city fell, Joe said stern words about it, and the Sauds started selling oil in Yuan because it didn't want China to get all its oil from Russia.]
[6 days ago that city was retaken, and everyone was surprised.]
[5 days ago Joe said more stern words but had no effect.]
etc.
Re: No news is good news
#4I'll come out of my shell a few times a week and won't understand what's going on. News sites just tell me the last 18 hours' worth of updates... So... I either disengage entirely and can't carry on a conversation or I stay engaged and worry about events I cannot affect. I'd like a "I haven't checked the news in [7] days and some guy at work mentioned [Ukraine talking to the UN], what's that all about?" website. I gu…
Can just read the Economist weekly. Their articles are very brief but well written summaries.
Re: No news is good news
#5Far away problems are so much more interesting than those nearby. You needn't really do anything about them, and its much easier to assign your own valuation to anything you do. Your successes can be trumpeted as much as you like and your failures need never be known to anyone but you.
Re: No news is good news
#6I have: - Deleted facebook - Unfollowed any news accounts and use Ublock to block suggested content on Twitter - Unsubscribed from any news subreddits - Of course never check news sites And honestly feel better overall and less stressed. Sure you can claim being apathetic/ignorant towards global current events makes me a bad person, but I do not care. To me, no human is designed to handle as much information input as…
100% agree. I think the 24hr news cycle is a huge contributor to negative mental health.
When we travelled to the in-laws over the most recent holidays, the news was always on, and always talked about and my wife and I both commented afterwards it felt like an oppressive blanket of stress was laid over everything while we were there.
Re: No news is good news
#7I'll come out of my shell a few times a week and won't understand what's going on. News sites just tell me the last 18 hours' worth of updates... So... I either disengage entirely and can't carry on a conversation or I stay engaged and worry about events I cannot affect. I'd like a "I haven't checked the news in [7] days and some guy at work mentioned [Ukraine talking to the UN], what's that all about?" website. I gu…
I've actually found that Improve the News [1] is good for something like that. It has sliders to let you select what kind of new you are looking for with one of the sliders which controls "shelf life" ranging from short to long and "recency" from evergreen to recent. Not exactly what you are looking for, but I've found it can serve a similar purpose.
Re: No news is good news
#8> News makes you scared of highly dramatic and highly unlikely events (plane crashes, shark attacks, terrorism etc) while also being oblivious to insidious and creeping risks that are low-key and hard to make dramatic and visual (say antibiotic resistance or indeed chronic stress caused by being in a news-induced perpetual state of physiological arousal).
This is perhaps one of the most important points in this post that's buried pretty deep in the article.
The author here is not advocating for "head-in-the-sand" avoidance of reality.
Often when I see real, systemic issues brought up on HN or elsewhere: climate, the overshoot of industrial society, resource depletion etc. These concerns are often dismissed as "the media just wants you anxious!". But, by and large, the real scary pieces of information about these topics are not published by major media.
The media wants you anxious, but not so concerned that you seriously question our mainstream mode of life. You should worry about nuclear war with Russia, but not about the war for natural gas that's really going on. You should be anxious about climate change, but only enough to make you recycle, not so much that you question the economic system that is fundamentally unstable.
Re: No news is good news
#9Yeah, well, no. You can't really function in society these days without following 'The News' to at least some extent.
That doesn't mean you should buy into the '24h News Cycle' or the 'Extremism-inducing-filter-bubble', though. Myself, I don't pay any attention to 'The News', except as delivered on paper once-a-week via The Economist(1), and daily via their 'The World in Brief' email.
So, this morning, I learned that 'At one point an actor slapped a comedian, sending the internet into a frenzy' -- which is, like, all I needed to know, right?
Footnotes: (1) Yes, which is a relatively right-wing, centrist if you will, publication. I love it, especially disagreeing with it...
Re: No news is good news
#10I have: - Deleted facebook - Unfollowed any news accounts and use Ublock to block suggested content on Twitter - Unsubscribed from any news subreddits - Of course never check news sites And honestly feel better overall and less stressed. Sure you can claim being apathetic/ignorant towards global current events makes me a bad person, but I do not care. To me, no human is designed to handle as much information input as…
> And honestly feel better overall and less stressed. Sure you can claim being apathetic/ignorant towards global current events makes me a bad person, but I do not care.
I would not say so. But, I would expect you to NOT be outspoken and confident when someone else starts to speak about stuff related to current issues. And I would expect you to check yourself especially when it seems like the other person is saying something you intuitively disagree with, because chance that they are simply better informed is high.
It is quite possible you do it, I don't want to imply that. But, I have met quite a few people who don't follow news (proudly) but then are full of opinions about issues they don't follow.