4 ms·

I subscribe to a handful of positive newsletters to help counteract the barrage of daily negative news. Some of my recommendations: 1) The Guardian's Upside ht

I subscribe to a handful of positive newsletters to help counteract the barrage of daily negative news. Some of my recommendations: 1) The Guardian's Upside https://www.theguardian.com/world/series/the-upside-weekly-report https://www.theguardian.com/world/series/the-upside-weekly-r... 2) Future Crunch https://futurecrunch.substack.com/ https://futurecrunch.substack.com/ 3) Positive News https://www.positive.news/ https://www.positive.news/ 4) The Good Newsletter https://www.goodgoodgood.co/goodnewsletter https://www.goodgoodgood.co/goodnewsletter

freehunter 6y ago
Putting this front and center: the constant outpouring of negative news has and is having a negative impact on my worldview and my mental health. Most of this is due to "news", which is not the same as news. Headlines no one needs to hear about but are only printed because 24 hour media needs a constant flow of content. A big problem I've had in seeking explicitly "positive" news is a lot of it is actually negative "news" just spun in a positive light. Articles like "5 year old cancer patient has successful GoFundMe to pay for chemo". That's not positive (nor is it news), it's just highlighting the societal problem that unexpected medical costs in America can bankrupt entire families unless their case is sympathetic enough to get random people to pay the cost. The other kind of positive news I see often is things that sound great but aren't actually real. Like "New breakthrough battery technology means batteries last for 1000 years" but there's never a follow-up (I guess it would be negative news then) that this "breakthrough" only exists in the lab and can't actually be turned into real batteries. After spending a few months going out of my way to read explicitly positive news, I find it worse than ever. Because a lot of explicitly positive news isn't actually news, and a lot of it isn't actually positive either. Edit - I guess this was just a bummer with no positive, and I apologize for that. What I've ended up doing right now is limiting where I get my news from and dramatically slowing down my news consumption. The reason we commonly think the 70s/80s/90s had such better music than today is because we've already let time filter out the bad music so we only remember the good stuff. I treat news the same, if it's something I need to know I will still hear about it tomorrow or the next day. Seeing "news" happen in real time with BREAKING NEWS slathered across the page makes it seem more important than it actually is. Seeing it as a footnote a few days later often doesn't change the store but changes your perception of that story. And it also filters out the unimportant things that aren't worth talking about because they're not going to be talked about tomorrow or the day after. The news app TheSkimm has actually been helpful, it's not explicitly positive news but it's important news slowed down and explained properly, while everything else is just a headline or not even mentioned at all. Finding a slower news source would be my recommendation rather than filtering yourself to explicitly positive news.
- clairity 6y ago
  maybe this is the secret reason behind the sucess of cat (and dog and any other animal, really) videos--to escape the not-really-positive news for something unequivocally happy and cute and positive.
  - freehunter 6y ago
    I've found I much prefer my downtime be filled with silly nonsense like cats/dogs or videos of people who are incredibly good at something rather than "news" that's actually just outrage in a can.
- tenebrisalietum 6y ago
  The idea of scheduled dissemination for entertainment is going out of fashion with all the streaming options available. This works well because you pay the streamer directly and advertisers aren't part of that. I like this, because the service has to answer to me as a consumer directly. I somewhat think that the idea of scheduled dissemination for news and world events needs should go out of fashion in a similar way, as it would be less "corrupted", but don't think it will for a long time at the very least. The idea of news is not purely about information delivery to most people. People really want opinions about news far less than raw reporting of events. Also people find comfort, meaning, and connection in the ritual of scheduled content. For that emotional need to be fulfilled, they seek content aligned with their social and economic bubbles. It's silly, and as a result I keep my consumption of news to an absolute minimum.
  - freehunter 6y ago
    On the topic of on-demand streaming news, I used to listen to a couple of daily news podcasts. With my new mindset around news consumption, I'm listening to weekly or bi-weekly podcasts instead (and oftentimes not listening to them the day they were released). Even still it's amazing the amount of news content they cover that (if you listen to it the day after it was released) is already "out of date". Things like "Amazon is expected to announce plans to buy AMC theaters" on Thursday and when I listen to it on Friday it's already been announced. Now if only I could just filter HN to only show me tech stories instead of "news".
nikodunk 6y ago
Subscribed to all your suggestions above. I’ve also recently found https://reasonstobecheerful.world https://reasonstobecheerful.world - also excellent and updated regularly.
growlist 6y ago
I'd be extremely careful about trusting anything written in the Grauniad.

freehunter 6y ago

Putting this front and center: the constant outpouring of negative news has and is having a negative impact on my worldview and my mental health. Most of this is due to "news", which is not the same as news. Headlines no one needs to hear about but are only printed because 24 hour media needs a constant flow of content. A big problem I've had in seeking explicitly "positive" news is a lot of it is actually negative "news" just spun in a positive light. Articles like "5 year old cancer patient has successful GoFundMe to pay for chemo". That's not positive (nor is it news), it's just highlighting the societal problem that unexpected medical costs in America can bankrupt entire families unless their case is sympathetic enough to get random people to pay the cost. The other kind of positive news I see often is things that sound great but aren't actually real. Like "New breakthrough battery technology means batteries last for 1000 years" but there's never a follow-up (I guess it would be negative news then) that this "breakthrough" only exists in the lab and can't actually be turned into real batteries. After spending a few months going out of my way to read explicitly positive news, I find it worse than ever. Because a lot of explicitly positive news isn't actually news, and a lot of it isn't actually positive either. Edit - I guess this was just a bummer with no positive, and I apologize for that. What I've ended up doing right now is limiting where I get my news from and dramatically slowing down my news consumption. The reason we commonly think the 70s/80s/90s had such better music than today is because we've already let time filter out the bad music so we only remember the good stuff. I treat news the same, if it's something I need to know I will still hear about it tomorrow or the next day. Seeing "news" happen in real time with BREAKING NEWS slathered across the page makes it seem more important than it actually is. Seeing it as a footnote a few days later often doesn't change the store but changes your perception of that story. And it also filters out the unimportant things that aren't worth talking about because they're not going to be talked about tomorrow or the day after. The news app TheSkimm has actually been helpful, it's not explicitly positive news but it's important news slowed down and explained properly, while everything else is just a headline or not even mentioned at all. Finding a slower news source would be my recommendation rather than filtering yourself to explicitly positive news.

clairity 6y ago
maybe this is the secret reason behind the sucess of cat (and dog and any other animal, really) videos--to escape the not-really-positive news for something unequivocally happy and cute and positive.
- freehunter 6y ago
  I've found I much prefer my downtime be filled with silly nonsense like cats/dogs or videos of people who are incredibly good at something rather than "news" that's actually just outrage in a can.
tenebrisalietum 6y ago
The idea of scheduled dissemination for entertainment is going out of fashion with all the streaming options available. This works well because you pay the streamer directly and advertisers aren't part of that. I like this, because the service has to answer to me as a consumer directly. I somewhat think that the idea of scheduled dissemination for news and world events needs should go out of fashion in a similar way, as it would be less "corrupted", but don't think it will for a long time at the very least. The idea of news is not purely about information delivery to most people. People really want opinions about news far less than raw reporting of events. Also people find comfort, meaning, and connection in the ritual of scheduled content. For that emotional need to be fulfilled, they seek content aligned with their social and economic bubbles. It's silly, and as a result I keep my consumption of news to an absolute minimum.
- freehunter 6y ago
  On the topic of on-demand streaming news, I used to listen to a couple of daily news podcasts. With my new mindset around news consumption, I'm listening to weekly or bi-weekly podcasts instead (and oftentimes not listening to them the day they were released). Even still it's amazing the amount of news content they cover that (if you listen to it the day after it was released) is already "out of date". Things like "Amazon is expected to announce plans to buy AMC theaters" on Thursday and when I listen to it on Friday it's already been announced. Now if only I could just filter HN to only show me tech stories instead of "news".

nikodunk 6y ago

Subscribed to all your suggestions above. I’ve also recently found https://reasonstobecheerful.world https://reasonstobecheerful.world - also excellent and updated regularly.

growlist 6y ago

I'd be extremely careful about trusting anything written in the Grauniad.