6 ms·

I absolutely cannot believe that the top answer is "ignore the news and spend more time on Twitter". This is "Live, Laugh, Love" levels of pseudo-enlightenment

by ploika 7y ago

I absolutely cannot believe that the top answer is "ignore the news and spend more time on Twitter". This is "Live, Laugh, Love" levels of pseudo-enlightenment. It is important to know what's happening in the world. It is important to know about decisions being made that affect the country you live in, and it is astonishingly ignorant to assume that politics and media are as bad where I live as you seem to think they are where you live.

simonsarris 7y ago
> It is important to know about decisions being made that affect the country you live in. It's mostly not. The vast majority of daily political yammering and scandals has no effect. People mostly use politics as a way to dodge real problems in their life that they could be solving. You see this most clearly with the way people bat about words like "capitalism" into nonsense definitions. Their criticisms are almost always manifestations of personal issues. More generally, people mature when they stop believing politics will solve their problems. It is very sad to see people who spend years hoping their candidate will get into office to reorder the world for them (spoiler, they won't), when they could change how they live today to actually reflect their own values. As for breaking news, etc. If its actually important, it will get to you anyway, I promise. You don't have to spend time on Twitter, but if you're looking for internet places to go like the OP is, you can find things there that you will never find elsewhere. I'm answering his question sincerely. You can make new friends and start new collab projects through places like Twitter and Hacker News. I've done it! You're not gonna get that reading CNN or BBC or whatever. You're probably not going to get any actionable, meaningful information from news sources like those, especially day to day. Twitter is 100% amazing, hugely underrated, and a return to the mode of being that we had pre-1500's, where most knowledge was obtained through dialogue instead of one-way broadcasts, and I will die on that hill.
- ktm5j 7y ago
  Saying that twitter is anything like the sociopolitical dynamics of pre-1500 is just as ludicrous as your other statements. You're acting like hiding in a hole and ignoring the issues around you is the right thing to do.. and trying to sell it like you've discovered this new and better way to live.
  - simonsarris 7y ago
    I disagree. I've written a little about this: https://medium.com/@simon.sarris/are-we-still-thinking-795bd9f4a658 https://medium.com/@simon.sarris/are-we-still-thinking-795bd... In pre-modern times one talked to more people, sometimes in a single day, than one would ever read in one's lifetime. Today it's the opposite: we will always read/see/hear from more sources that we cannot converse with than we will ever speak to. Twitter allows you great opportunity for dialogue again. It's the first social network that's gotten good at this way of interacting. Declining to read news sites and ignoring capital P Politics is not hiding in a hole. Perhaps its having priorities that are too different than the ones you're used to, but if that's the case I hope it gives you pause.
    - Terretta 7y ago
      The rebuttal here isn’t that declining to read news is hiding in a hole, it’s that getting your world-view updates (“news”) by following individuals on Twitter is worse. For instance, it’s been argued that the “low-information” Twitter bubble is partly culpable for Hillary’s loss. Having read your assertions here and your link, it seems your premise is based on a misunderstanding of historical and modern sociology of both conversation and information propagation. You’re focusing on mass media as though it replaced conversation. It’s not at all clear that it did. People still converse verbally as much as they used to, but with today’s mobility patterns the interlocutors they encounter in person both among acquaintances and at random today are more diverse than those they rubbed shoulders with 500 years ago. And each of those can converse with a more diverse group in turn. By sifting through and following a subset of Twitter, you’re (however unintentionally) narrowing your aperture, and you tend to end up consuming bon mots like bonbons rather than engaging in deeper dialog opportunistically or spontaneously. Before Twitter, its mode of communication was called micro-casting: https://study.com/academy/lesson/microcasting-definition-example-impact.html https://study.com/academy/lesson/microcasting-definition-exa... You’ve drawn a line between TV or radio and Twitter as though it’s conversational, but once you account for the ratio of pub to sub, from followed to followers, you see it’s not the same mode as conversation. On the contrary, you’ve just self-selected your own personalized micro-channel, and are recommending others do the same to the exclusion of thoughtfully curated information from a long evolving school of journalistic practice. At the same time, despite Netflix, Twitter, or Facebook, the art of serious and coherent conversation endures, ideally informed by both individual interests and shared news of significance: https://www.economist.com/special-report/2006/12/19/chattering-classes https://www.economist.com/special-report/2006/12/19/chatteri... From the town crier to the newsprint to today’s subscriptions to Reuters, ProPublica, economist, guardian, wapo, nyt, etc. (see link for independent sources), curated and contextualized news has informed local conversation, national debate, and societal outcomes. https://soapboxie.com/social-issues/A-Real-Need-for-the-Real-News https://soapboxie.com/social-issues/A-Real-Need-for-the-Real... That value is being challenged by advertising driven content mills, which degrades the quality of news, but selecting vetted journalistic sources is not particularly different from selecting which Twitter quipsters to follow. Some sources are tilting at the ad supported windmill, trying to find alternative economic models for journalism: https://blog.joincivil.com/the-value-of-journalism-1c0e6905f780 https://blog.joincivil.com/the-value-of-journalism-1c0e6905f... To quote from that link, “... at the end of the day, we live in the real world. It’s what makes journalism so essential and durable: a free society’s demand to know what’s happening will never cease.“
- ploika 7y ago
  It still sounds like you think I'm experiencing American style politics and media. It's silly to act like tabloid press and opinion pieces by vested interests are the same as dry fact-based reporting on the passage of bills through a parliament. My country has had coalition or minority governments since my parents were children, and we don't have first past the post voting. People here don't have "their candidate" as such either, because we have multi seat constituencies. People increasingly don't even have a political party (of which there are several) that they reliably vote for. I disagree very strongly with the notion that people mature when they effectively give up on politics. That's a dangerous message. People mature (for good or ill) when they put time and effort into making changes to their communities that affect others, whether that's getting a new bus stop, rezoning land, or changing laws or tax rates in some direction. That stuff is always and inevitably political.
- dynamic_sausage 7y ago
  > You're probably not going to get any actionable, meaningful information from news sources like those, especially day to day. Not day to day perhaps, but I did once learn from the news that a certain French airline company had just gone bankrupt. This was about a month before I intended to fly with them, so I had enough time to rebook the tickets, avoiding the stress and additional expenses. Learning about this bankruptcy in time was very helpful, as the company did not care enough to send a warning email to its customers, so if it were not for the breaking news headline, I would have to buy the replacement tickets on a much shorter notice. Skimming through the headlines can pay off in some unexpected ways, and does not take too much time/effort.
endorphone 7y ago
"This is "Live, Laugh, Love" levels of pseudo-enlightenment." It's worse than that. What they are advocating is surrounding yourself with a comforting bubble that feeds you a steady dose of pablum that confirms your existing biases. Twitter has been an extraordinary source of ignorance bubbles and has been an extremely negative force on the conveyance of accurate information. A couple of weeks ago the GP had the top post to a story about the oceans warming, which is remarkably telling given this post. In it they casually dismissed the report of the world's scientists, paraded an ignorant counter-conclusion, and called it a day. This is straight from the AGW-denier playbook and you can see in the GP exactly how such people are made -- "Ignore what your eyes and ears are telling you. Listen to what the tiny subsection of ignorant people are pitching". Their philosophy is how the world got "pizzagate". Where people like Jordan Peterson have cults.
antman 7y ago
To plan for tomorrow you need to know nothing, to plan for five years you need to know the news, to plan for ten years you need to know politics, to plan for twenty years you need to know history.
- HSO 7y ago
  I love this, it resonates so much with what I think and do. Is it a quote or your own creation? If the former, can you share the source (DDG seems to fail me); if the latter, I'll attribute it to "antman" or who?
  - antman 7y ago
    It's mine, you can share it without any attribution if you like
sirspacey 7y ago
Being informed and aware are valuable goals. I’m skeptical that the news industry has such significant deviation in outcomes globally, especially while having similar business models. I’m genuinely curious: is there a particular news source you’ve found that delivers on evaluating global events/decisions, selecting the most relevant/important ones, and explaining them in an educational/useful manner? The news is in the business of calling attention to things. Whether that attention is informative or useful is not something they take responsibility for. Watch journalists when they are interviewed, they have a familiar line: they are calling attention to an issue - that’s their job - whether or not it is important is up to the reader. When I get caught up in the drama of news I use Journalism 101 to remind myself I’m not actually gaining information in exchange for my attention: A. Is this story about an event that has occurred (or is it speculation or reporting the speculations of others)? B. Is the coverage establishing what occurred with independently verifiable facts? (Extra points if you can then find those verifications easily). C. Does it bring context from people who have been directly effected by that event? D. What did you learn about the nature of that event that you didn’t already know? When I applied basic journalistic standards to my news consumption, it went down precipitously. One can arguably be better informed about what is going on in the world and the decisions that are being made by focusing on building. Builders share what is going on in the world with each other - such as discoveries that can help solve common challenges. They share decisions that can effect their ability to solve problems - like new regulations and laws. Chasing some global perspective that we must constantly keep up-to-date on, that’s the fantasy. Building, as grandparent suggests, is how we engage with the world around us.
- ploika 7y ago
  This isn't meant as an ad hominem attack but a general moan about moans about the media: not enough people distinguish between news reporting and opinion and analysis pieces. RTE, The Irish Times, The Guardian, The Economist, The Financial Times have fairly good, fairly trustworthy reporting on a wide range of topics. All have their strengths and weaknesses, to be sure, and the selection in an of itself shows my own biases and worldview to an extent. I generally don't want to read through a newspaper and agree with everything in it, because then either the content has been dull to the point of tedium, or I've just created an echo chamber for myself where I learn nothing new and I'm not challenged enough about the downsides of whatever opinion I hold. The Economist has some of the best reporting I've seen on Central Asia, for example, but I often disagree with the more libertarian editorial lines they take on many issues. I'm not nearly as left wing as the Guardian, but they do great work highlighting social injustices that I might otherwise ignore if I'm mainly reading business news.
wtvanhest 7y ago
news has become less than useless. The majority of news is designed to illicit outrage rather than inform. Look at any major news org or even comedy org and the entire set of content is designed to get people to be infuriated. No thanks.
peatmoss 7y ago
Yeah, I assumed the Twitter part was a joke. I can’t imagine a better way to feel horrible than Twitter. It’s definitely a platform for generating heat and very little light. As for the news, I can understand the notion of a diet. I try and catch at least some of the PBS Newshour each day. It’s the closest thing I’ve found to unsensational, non-editorialized, old-fashioned reporting. If I’m pressed for time, I catch the news summary. Truthfully, I consume a bit more reporting than just that, but when I start feeling overwhelmed, the PBS Newshour is my diet.
- craigjb 7y ago
  I actually have to disagree. I think it really depends on who you follow. For a long time I didn't use twitter at all, but I've recently become active. The hardware hacker community (think Hackaday types) on Twitter is pretty awesome and a lot of fun to follow. Stuff like the below comes through all the time, and the discussions with people making things are great. https://twitter.com/MrRobotBadge/status/1212038632246251520 https://twitter.com/MrRobotBadge/status/1212038632246251520 https://twitter.com/johndmcmaster/status/1211923709910376449 https://twitter.com/johndmcmaster/status/1211923709910376449 https://twitter.com/mifune/status/1168604582748073986 https://twitter.com/mifune/status/1168604582748073986
david927 7y ago
> It is important to know what's happening in the world. The dose makes the poison. If it's important, you'll hear about it. 99% of what you think of as important you will have forgotten in ten years. Look at old newspapers, old news magazines and it will give you a healthy dose of perspective. I disagree with the Twitter part but the rest is great advice. You can fill your life with consuming (even if it feels important, like today's news) or you can fill your life with creating. The choice is yours.
seattle_spring 7y ago
It's important to know what's happening in the world. It's not important to project what you know (or what you think you know) on blast via social media. I think that's where the unhealthy obsession people have with politics has been coming from lately.
- kohtatsu 7y ago
  Can I have your twitter handle?
cerberusss 7y ago
> It is important to know what's happening in the world What made you think so? Don't get me wrong, I don't disagree per sé. But I find it harder and harder to find reasons.
- sangnoir 7y ago
  For me, what happens in the world affects how I direct my (short & long term) investments. The sentiment on recession probability has led me to tweak my long-term investments, and the trade war news has impacted several day-trading actions (it's a hobby).
demachina 7y ago
Twitter can be fine, it can be priceless. The problem with Twitter: Their client is bad and they mostly killed off good third party clients. I build my own client to solve this, most people can't or wont. I want a client that prioritizes the things I follow and read the most (i.e. everyday), @newsyc50 or @newycombinator, @zerohedge, @arstechnica, @techmeme, @pkedrosky. @kdnuggets, @reuters, @variety, @politico. @zerohedge is the controversial one of the bunch. My client shows counters on unread messages for each so I know when new tweets are available and they are one click away. Next I surface trends from the larger body of follows I'm interested in but don't have time to read. I process everything through spaCy and use its increasingly very good entity recognition to find the trending topics in my feed, much better than Twitter's BS trending. When something is tweeted from 5 or 6 places its a trend I may be interested in. I can adjust this threshold up and down. I lookup each entity in a local Wikipedia database so if its someone or something famous its one click to read about them in depth. If there is no match its probably someone or something new to the Internet which is also interesting to know. You need a critical mass of follows for this to work, like several thousand. It is a chore to find several thousand interesting people and organizations to follow. Most people aren't going to do this work which is why most people hate Twitter. Following that many is also noisy so you need a client that prioritizes for signal. Don't read replies to a tweet unless its really interesting, there are a few interesting replies but they are usually pointless, noisy and/or toxic. Filter out replies by people you follow most of the time. Most of the time. though not always, these replies are noisy and uninteresting. I have a smooth scrolling feed I just look at to see what everyone is talking about. It was a bit of of a pain to implement when they killed off the stream API, though I replaced it by polling the feed just below rate limit. I poll everyone I follow if the client has been off for a while to fill the holes in my timeline.

by ploika 7y ago

simonsarris 7y ago

> It is important to know about decisions being made that affect the country you live in. It's mostly not. The vast majority of daily political yammering and scandals has no effect. People mostly use politics as a way to dodge real problems in their life that they could be solving. You see this most clearly with the way people bat about words like "capitalism" into nonsense definitions. Their criticisms are almost always manifestations of personal issues. More generally, people mature when they stop believing politics will solve their problems. It is very sad to see people who spend years hoping their candidate will get into office to reorder the world for them (spoiler, they won't), when they could change how they live today to actually reflect their own values. As for breaking news, etc. If its actually important, it will get to you anyway, I promise. You don't have to spend time on Twitter, but if you're looking for internet places to go like the OP is, you can find things there that you will never find elsewhere. I'm answering his question sincerely. You can make new friends and start new collab projects through places like Twitter and Hacker News. I've done it! You're not gonna get that reading CNN or BBC or whatever. You're probably not going to get any actionable, meaningful information from news sources like those, especially day to day. Twitter is 100% amazing, hugely underrated, and a return to the mode of being that we had pre-1500's, where most knowledge was obtained through dialogue instead of one-way broadcasts, and I will die on that hill.

ktm5j 7y ago
Saying that twitter is anything like the sociopolitical dynamics of pre-1500 is just as ludicrous as your other statements. You're acting like hiding in a hole and ignoring the issues around you is the right thing to do.. and trying to sell it like you've discovered this new and better way to live.
- simonsarris 7y ago
  I disagree. I've written a little about this: https://medium.com/@simon.sarris/are-we-still-thinking-795bd9f4a658 https://medium.com/@simon.sarris/are-we-still-thinking-795bd... In pre-modern times one talked to more people, sometimes in a single day, than one would ever read in one's lifetime. Today it's the opposite: we will always read/see/hear from more sources that we cannot converse with than we will ever speak to. Twitter allows you great opportunity for dialogue again. It's the first social network that's gotten good at this way of interacting. Declining to read news sites and ignoring capital P Politics is not hiding in a hole. Perhaps its having priorities that are too different than the ones you're used to, but if that's the case I hope it gives you pause.
  - Terretta 7y ago
    The rebuttal here isn’t that declining to read news is hiding in a hole, it’s that getting your world-view updates (“news”) by following individuals on Twitter is worse. For instance, it’s been argued that the “low-information” Twitter bubble is partly culpable for Hillary’s loss. Having read your assertions here and your link, it seems your premise is based on a misunderstanding of historical and modern sociology of both conversation and information propagation. You’re focusing on mass media as though it replaced conversation. It’s not at all clear that it did. People still converse verbally as much as they used to, but with today’s mobility patterns the interlocutors they encounter in person both among acquaintances and at random today are more diverse than those they rubbed shoulders with 500 years ago. And each of those can converse with a more diverse group in turn. By sifting through and following a subset of Twitter, you’re (however unintentionally) narrowing your aperture, and you tend to end up consuming bon mots like bonbons rather than engaging in deeper dialog opportunistically or spontaneously. Before Twitter, its mode of communication was called micro-casting: https://study.com/academy/lesson/microcasting-definition-example-impact.html https://study.com/academy/lesson/microcasting-definition-exa... You’ve drawn a line between TV or radio and Twitter as though it’s conversational, but once you account for the ratio of pub to sub, from followed to followers, you see it’s not the same mode as conversation. On the contrary, you’ve just self-selected your own personalized micro-channel, and are recommending others do the same to the exclusion of thoughtfully curated information from a long evolving school of journalistic practice. At the same time, despite Netflix, Twitter, or Facebook, the art of serious and coherent conversation endures, ideally informed by both individual interests and shared news of significance: https://www.economist.com/special-report/2006/12/19/chattering-classes https://www.economist.com/special-report/2006/12/19/chatteri... From the town crier to the newsprint to today’s subscriptions to Reuters, ProPublica, economist, guardian, wapo, nyt, etc. (see link for independent sources), curated and contextualized news has informed local conversation, national debate, and societal outcomes. https://soapboxie.com/social-issues/A-Real-Need-for-the-Real-News https://soapboxie.com/social-issues/A-Real-Need-for-the-Real... That value is being challenged by advertising driven content mills, which degrades the quality of news, but selecting vetted journalistic sources is not particularly different from selecting which Twitter quipsters to follow. Some sources are tilting at the ad supported windmill, trying to find alternative economic models for journalism: https://blog.joincivil.com/the-value-of-journalism-1c0e6905f780 https://blog.joincivil.com/the-value-of-journalism-1c0e6905f... To quote from that link, “... at the end of the day, we live in the real world. It’s what makes journalism so essential and durable: a free society’s demand to know what’s happening will never cease.“
ploika 7y ago
It still sounds like you think I'm experiencing American style politics and media. It's silly to act like tabloid press and opinion pieces by vested interests are the same as dry fact-based reporting on the passage of bills through a parliament. My country has had coalition or minority governments since my parents were children, and we don't have first past the post voting. People here don't have "their candidate" as such either, because we have multi seat constituencies. People increasingly don't even have a political party (of which there are several) that they reliably vote for. I disagree very strongly with the notion that people mature when they effectively give up on politics. That's a dangerous message. People mature (for good or ill) when they put time and effort into making changes to their communities that affect others, whether that's getting a new bus stop, rezoning land, or changing laws or tax rates in some direction. That stuff is always and inevitably political.
dynamic_sausage 7y ago
> You're probably not going to get any actionable, meaningful information from news sources like those, especially day to day. Not day to day perhaps, but I did once learn from the news that a certain French airline company had just gone bankrupt. This was about a month before I intended to fly with them, so I had enough time to rebook the tickets, avoiding the stress and additional expenses. Learning about this bankruptcy in time was very helpful, as the company did not care enough to send a warning email to its customers, so if it were not for the breaking news headline, I would have to buy the replacement tickets on a much shorter notice. Skimming through the headlines can pay off in some unexpected ways, and does not take too much time/effort.

endorphone 7y ago

"This is "Live, Laugh, Love" levels of pseudo-enlightenment." It's worse than that. What they are advocating is surrounding yourself with a comforting bubble that feeds you a steady dose of pablum that confirms your existing biases. Twitter has been an extraordinary source of ignorance bubbles and has been an extremely negative force on the conveyance of accurate information. A couple of weeks ago the GP had the top post to a story about the oceans warming, which is remarkably telling given this post. In it they casually dismissed the report of the world's scientists, paraded an ignorant counter-conclusion, and called it a day. This is straight from the AGW-denier playbook and you can see in the GP exactly how such people are made -- "Ignore what your eyes and ears are telling you. Listen to what the tiny subsection of ignorant people are pitching". Their philosophy is how the world got "pizzagate". Where people like Jordan Peterson have cults.

antman 7y ago

To plan for tomorrow you need to know nothing, to plan for five years you need to know the news, to plan for ten years you need to know politics, to plan for twenty years you need to know history.

HSO 7y ago
I love this, it resonates so much with what I think and do. Is it a quote or your own creation? If the former, can you share the source (DDG seems to fail me); if the latter, I'll attribute it to "antman" or who?
- antman 7y ago
  It's mine, you can share it without any attribution if you like

sirspacey 7y ago

Being informed and aware are valuable goals. I’m skeptical that the news industry has such significant deviation in outcomes globally, especially while having similar business models. I’m genuinely curious: is there a particular news source you’ve found that delivers on evaluating global events/decisions, selecting the most relevant/important ones, and explaining them in an educational/useful manner? The news is in the business of calling attention to things. Whether that attention is informative or useful is not something they take responsibility for. Watch journalists when they are interviewed, they have a familiar line: they are calling attention to an issue - that’s their job - whether or not it is important is up to the reader. When I get caught up in the drama of news I use Journalism 101 to remind myself I’m not actually gaining information in exchange for my attention: A. Is this story about an event that has occurred (or is it speculation or reporting the speculations of others)? B. Is the coverage establishing what occurred with independently verifiable facts? (Extra points if you can then find those verifications easily). C. Does it bring context from people who have been directly effected by that event? D. What did you learn about the nature of that event that you didn’t already know? When I applied basic journalistic standards to my news consumption, it went down precipitously. One can arguably be better informed about what is going on in the world and the decisions that are being made by focusing on building. Builders share what is going on in the world with each other - such as discoveries that can help solve common challenges. They share decisions that can effect their ability to solve problems - like new regulations and laws. Chasing some global perspective that we must constantly keep up-to-date on, that’s the fantasy. Building, as grandparent suggests, is how we engage with the world around us.

ploika 7y ago
This isn't meant as an ad hominem attack but a general moan about moans about the media: not enough people distinguish between news reporting and opinion and analysis pieces. RTE, The Irish Times, The Guardian, The Economist, The Financial Times have fairly good, fairly trustworthy reporting on a wide range of topics. All have their strengths and weaknesses, to be sure, and the selection in an of itself shows my own biases and worldview to an extent. I generally don't want to read through a newspaper and agree with everything in it, because then either the content has been dull to the point of tedium, or I've just created an echo chamber for myself where I learn nothing new and I'm not challenged enough about the downsides of whatever opinion I hold. The Economist has some of the best reporting I've seen on Central Asia, for example, but I often disagree with the more libertarian editorial lines they take on many issues. I'm not nearly as left wing as the Guardian, but they do great work highlighting social injustices that I might otherwise ignore if I'm mainly reading business news.

wtvanhest 7y ago

news has become less than useless. The majority of news is designed to illicit outrage rather than inform. Look at any major news org or even comedy org and the entire set of content is designed to get people to be infuriated. No thanks.

peatmoss 7y ago

Yeah, I assumed the Twitter part was a joke. I can’t imagine a better way to feel horrible than Twitter. It’s definitely a platform for generating heat and very little light. As for the news, I can understand the notion of a diet. I try and catch at least some of the PBS Newshour each day. It’s the closest thing I’ve found to unsensational, non-editorialized, old-fashioned reporting. If I’m pressed for time, I catch the news summary. Truthfully, I consume a bit more reporting than just that, but when I start feeling overwhelmed, the PBS Newshour is my diet.

craigjb 7y ago
I actually have to disagree. I think it really depends on who you follow. For a long time I didn't use twitter at all, but I've recently become active. The hardware hacker community (think Hackaday types) on Twitter is pretty awesome and a lot of fun to follow. Stuff like the below comes through all the time, and the discussions with people making things are great. https://twitter.com/MrRobotBadge/status/1212038632246251520 https://twitter.com/MrRobotBadge/status/1212038632246251520 https://twitter.com/johndmcmaster/status/1211923709910376449 https://twitter.com/johndmcmaster/status/1211923709910376449 https://twitter.com/mifune/status/1168604582748073986 https://twitter.com/mifune/status/1168604582748073986

david927 7y ago

> It is important to know what's happening in the world. The dose makes the poison. If it's important, you'll hear about it. 99% of what you think of as important you will have forgotten in ten years. Look at old newspapers, old news magazines and it will give you a healthy dose of perspective. I disagree with the Twitter part but the rest is great advice. You can fill your life with consuming (even if it feels important, like today's news) or you can fill your life with creating. The choice is yours.

seattle_spring 7y ago

It's important to know what's happening in the world. It's not important to project what you know (or what you think you know) on blast via social media. I think that's where the unhealthy obsession people have with politics has been coming from lately.

kohtatsu 7y ago
Can I have your twitter handle?

cerberusss 7y ago

> It is important to know what's happening in the world What made you think so? Don't get me wrong, I don't disagree per sé. But I find it harder and harder to find reasons.

sangnoir 7y ago
For me, what happens in the world affects how I direct my (short & long term) investments. The sentiment on recession probability has led me to tweak my long-term investments, and the trade war news has impacted several day-trading actions (it's a hobby).

demachina 7y ago

Twitter can be fine, it can be priceless. The problem with Twitter: Their client is bad and they mostly killed off good third party clients. I build my own client to solve this, most people can't or wont. I want a client that prioritizes the things I follow and read the most (i.e. everyday), @newsyc50 or @newycombinator, @zerohedge, @arstechnica, @techmeme, @pkedrosky. @kdnuggets, @reuters, @variety, @politico. @zerohedge is the controversial one of the bunch. My client shows counters on unread messages for each so I know when new tweets are available and they are one click away. Next I surface trends from the larger body of follows I'm interested in but don't have time to read. I process everything through spaCy and use its increasingly very good entity recognition to find the trending topics in my feed, much better than Twitter's BS trending. When something is tweeted from 5 or 6 places its a trend I may be interested in. I can adjust this threshold up and down. I lookup each entity in a local Wikipedia database so if its someone or something famous its one click to read about them in depth. If there is no match its probably someone or something new to the Internet which is also interesting to know. You need a critical mass of follows for this to work, like several thousand. It is a chore to find several thousand interesting people and organizations to follow. Most people aren't going to do this work which is why most people hate Twitter. Following that many is also noisy so you need a client that prioritizes for signal. Don't read replies to a tweet unless its really interesting, there are a few interesting replies but they are usually pointless, noisy and/or toxic. Filter out replies by people you follow most of the time. Most of the time. though not always, these replies are noisy and uninteresting. I have a smooth scrolling feed I just look at to see what everyone is talking about. It was a bit of of a pain to implement when they killed off the stream API, though I replaced it by polling the feed just below rate limit. I poll everyone I follow if the client has been off for a while to fill the holes in my timeline.