121–130 of 203 posts
> Out of the 10,000 news stories you may have read in the last 12 months, did even one allow you to make a better decision about a serious matter in your life, Yes, there was an article on HN a couple weeks ago. Pork treated with nitrates increases the chance of colon cancer as much as smoking increases the chance of lung cancer (but pork treated with salt is ok).
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I feel like the signal to noise ratio has suffered in recent weeks because of the mainstream media attack on tech companies
We've been in breaking news hell ever since Trump was elected and because eleventy billion scandals are being found.
Look, I think this is great and all, but I'm pretty skeptical of this chant, "If the news bothers you so much because of what you're reading, just stop reading. It's not like you can change it." Obviously, events that already happened can't be changed. But a lot of what upsets people so much is about legal interpretation and political policy. These things are changeable, and direct (and/or collective) action can chan…
I found this article really unconvincing. It lashes out at random things like the number of hyperlinks in an article, and has completely unsubstantiated claims like the following: "Most news consumers – even if they used to be avid book readers – have lost the ability to absorb lengthy articles or books. After four, five pages they get tired, their concentration vanishes, they become restless. It's not because they g…
The alternative - sticking one's head in the sand - is selfish. In the short run it can make you happier and give you the ability to focus on your personal affairs, but in the long run it makes you more and more isolated and contributes to the degradation of the social fabric.
You don't have to remain immersed in breaking news for hours and hours, but even 15-20 minutes browsing headlines and skimming through select articles can go a long way towards what I call "civic awareness".
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How do you stay up to day? Ideally Id like a weekly review or something where I can spend 30min. I recongnise it would be beneficial to give up news, but I need to know a bit about whats going on to be social.
" but I need to know a bit about whats going on to be social. " I've found that I don't, nearly as much as I would have thought. If people really want to talk about a current event, you can usually get a lot of mileage out of asking them to explain what's going on. "oh yeah? I didn't hear about that, what happened?" people like getting to be the expert, they usually don't care about our hot take nearly as much as we…
I know people in my family whose eyes are glued to news all the time and it’s kind of sad. Blowing all that attention on stuff that ultimately does not affect you.
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I'm in a similar boat. I felt very over whelmed and addicted to social media and news in general in college. I've got rid of all my social media other than twitter and linkedin which I use for work. Facebook I only use for messenger. I check reddit once or twice a day but rarely do I scroll past the first page. My overall mental health is much better. I feel a little bit of sadness when I see friends who HAVE to chec…
It's hard to get rid of it though. I suffer from this, when I get up the first thing I do is open reddit. I am actually thinking about blocking the entire site in the host file, on pc as well as android...
The problem is that some news is relevant. One of my friends has given up reading or watching any kind of news altogether. At first this seems impressive but when I asked him about how far his house was from the wildfire, he was like "Umm - what wildfire?". He was oblivious to the fact that country's biggest wildfire was just three miles away from his house. He is a very smart and successful guy and it really jolted…
Giving up political news didn't make me happier, but it certainly reduced that niggling feeling that everything is headed towards doom. It's said that "an informed citizenry is the bulwark of democracy", and that's probably why many of us consume so much political news. However, I feel seeing the news and expressing outrage privately or on social media have become low-effort excuses for not doing things that can actu…
Every new day is the greatest day in the history of human civilization. One wouldn't think that though looking at any MSM homepage.
I found this article really unconvincing. It lashes out at random things like the number of hyperlinks in an article, and has completely unsubstantiated claims like the following: "Most news consumers – even if they used to be avid book readers – have lost the ability to absorb lengthy articles or books. After four, five pages they get tired, their concentration vanishes, they become restless. It's not because they g…
If you need to be watching/reading the news more than about once a month, in order to know what way to vote, I would be curious as to why. Once a month (that is, a tiny fraction of the normal amount) is more than sufficient to learn all that you can learn from that source of information. There are way better methods for becoming an informed citizen, than the news.
What do you think would be a better way to become an informed citizen than watching the news?