Do you avoid the news? You’re in growing company

251–252 of 252 posts

Re: Do you avoid the news? You’re in growing company

#251

Post by mikhailfranco » Thu, Aug 10, 2023, 7:17 AM UTC

tivert wrote: post #33

avalys wrote: post #4

The single biggest problem with America today is the presentation and consumption of national news, political commentary and public policy as entertainment. The media has figured out that America is the ultimate reality TV show and they present it as such. Cable TV and the internet are to blame for this. I don't know what could be done about it. But we'd be way better off if "the news" was something you could watch f…

> The single biggest problem with America today is the presentation and consumption of national news, political commentary and public policy as entertainment. The media has figured out that America is the ultimate reality TV show and they present it as such. > Cable TV and the internet are to blame for this. I don't know what could be done about it. But we'd be way better off if "the news" was something you could wat…

  "... the human race is divided into two distinct and irreconcilable groups: 
   those that walk into rooms and automatically turn television sets on, 
   and those that walk into rooms and automatically turn them off.
   The trouble is that they end up marrying each other."

The Manchurian Candidate (1962)

Re: Do you avoid the news? You’re in growing company

#252

Post by HocusLocus » Fri, Aug 11, 2023, 11:20 AM UTC

I don't avoid the news, I just avoid news sites unless I am following a specific text link with interest. Every couple of days I run a perl script that loads 15 html pages from 11 sites (the first 5 pages of zerohedge) and they are all aggregation sites so there can be 1500 unique links per page. The script looks at text links only and checks each URL against an already-seen database (currently 56,089 entries) to show me only unique new ones. It sorts the new links by rank as they appear across their respective sources, so if it is near the top of any page it will be near the top on my result page. The already-seen logic casts out recurring links and site navigation and I don't add sources often.

The result page is very simple html that I customize to a larger easy to read font with no visual clutter except the source abbreviations and a bold sequence number. It is presented in a single long scrolling paragraph without whitespace, and I will typically keep the tab open and skim and through it over one or two days. An example of a recent page is here ( https://ia902708.us.archive.org/2/items/news-aggregation-dem... )

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