5 ms·

Pro tip from an absolute rando: don’t bother with any source of breaking news. Read a weekly paper that summarises the important stuff. If something is truly p

Pro tip from an absolute rando: don’t bother with any source of breaking news. Read a weekly paper that summarises the important stuff. If something is truly pressing, you’ll hear about it from friends or coworkers.

roywiggins 1y ago
Unfortunately for everyone's brains, this turned out to basically not be true with COVID- only real news fans (or people with expertise in the relevant science, but there are way less of those) were remotely aware that offices probably weren't going to be closed for only two weeks[0]. If you followed the news closely you stocked up on toilet paper when there were runs on it in Hong Kong, before there were runs on it where you were, etc. But if you only got news from the office water-cooler you'd have been none the wiser. This is one of those exceptions that prove the rule though, I think. [0] I had this conversation with people multiple times so it must have been common
- lxgr 1y ago
  If nobody followed the news or social media, there wouldn’t have been runs on toilet paper to begin with, as there never was a shortage to begin with and it was all just mass hysteria.
  - roywiggins 1y ago
    It was never clear to me, but at least part of it was supposedly due to everyone pooping at home using consumer TP instead of at the office, using commercially packaged TP (two-ply, giant rolls for big dispensers). And that sudden shift started to empty shelves. If people had stocked up over a period of time, the empty-shelves situation that produced the fear probably wouldn't have happened. Of course in practice there really was plenty of it to go around, dollar stores seemed to be the most flexible at navigating the supply chain derangement and if you didn't mind buying it by the roll, it was never really hard to find. Also- you don't need to follow the news for there to be a panic, empty shelves will do that all on their own. Everyone deciding to stock up a little on everything was enough to deplete shelves, people walking in after saw empty shelves and stocked up more, etc. I don't think most people were following the "omg supply chain" news, they just saw depleted shelves.
    - wkat4242 1y ago
      I never really understood the importance of it anyway. People were locked in their home so they could just use the shower head if it came to it. Of course a real bidet would be better and cleaner but I don't think they exist in northern America or Northern Europe. It's also common in Asia (at least South East) they can survive without toilet paper :) The Japanese even have entire water jet massage toilets, they do it like a king. Or if you don't want to use water, you could use serviettes, tissues. Even newspaper. That's why I didn't understand the fuss about it. Sure it's annoying if you run out but not the end of the world especially when you're at home where there's always a shower to hand. I don't understand that people were so obsessed with toilet paper. What would be much more important is food, water (in my city the tap water is terrible so I don't drink it), medication etc.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - timr 1y ago
    Yeah, the deep irony of the GP comment is that, had all of these supposedly knowledgable people just read the original report from the WHO (~early 2020), they'd have realized many things about the virus (such as the extremely skewed age distribution of the seriously ill) that would have greatly mitigated the overall panic. It literally took years for the chattering class in medicine to understand basic information that was available at the beginning of the pandemic. COVID was a perfect case study of mass hysteria, and how you can't even trust "the experts" in these situations, because the "experts" you hear from early on are also generally the ones who are the most willing to spout pure speculation for attention. Humans are gonna human, and a background in science doesn't change that fact.
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
    - roywiggins 1y ago
      A million Americans did die of it, the lost QALYs was... a lot. A lot of people died who had more than a decade, actuarially. That's a big deal. But it doesn't matter for what I'm saying: paying too much attention to the news about a weird new virus from China would have clued a person in that something big might be coming, on whatever dimension you care to measure it.
      - lxgr 1y ago
        But would that have been actionable information for the average person? What would you have done differently on the first day, given perfect information? The Covid pandemic lasted much longer than would have been reasonable to prepare for via hoarding of supplies etc. In my view, that was the entire problem: Much of the world overreacted in the short term (hard lockdowns including fining people going for a walk by themselves etc.) and underreacted in the long term (limiting avoidable large indoor gatherings such as most office work, air filters etc.) Many governments did as much as people would tolerate for as long as they could (which meant, for some, doing nothing at all), rather than focusing on doing effective things they could actually keep up as long as required. Hindsight is of course 20/20, but I really hope that’s a lesson many learned from it.
  - yurodivuie 1y ago
    Unfortunately, we do not live in the best of all possible worlds. One must plan for both the actual threat and the response to the perceived threat.
  - platevoltage 1y ago
    I'll never understand why bidets are so niche in the USA especially after there are TP shortages every couple of years. Not to mention how gross cleaning yourself with dry tissue is.
    - wkat4242 1y ago
      Oh yes I was just writing the same. Water is much cleaner yeah. About half the houses here have a bidet. I think many people in countries like the US or northern Europe wouldn't even know what it's for when they see one :)
      - platevoltage 1y ago
        I would put it at 1% here. They are extremely rare. Bidet attachments have become relatively popular here over the past decade though. It's been life changing (or maybe butt changing). It's amazing how pretentious Americans can be while having such a gross habit.
- officeplant 1y ago
  That was pure panic. I live in the gulf coast. Anytime there is a minor chance we are getting hit by a hurricane people panic buy and suddenly there isn't any water on the shelves anymore. You'll see average folks with 20 cases of water being shoved in their massive SUVs for a family of 3.
  - roywiggins 1y ago
    Sure. However, I bought a large pack of toilet paper when I saw headlines about hoarding in HK, before the shelves began to dwindle here, and thus dodged the whole thing. That it was basically panic is neither here nor there: paying too close attention to far-off news did actually pay off in a tiny way.
    - voxadam 1y ago
      Sam Rogers: You are panicking. John Tuld: If you're first out the door, that's not called panicking. —Margin Call (2011)
- bryanlarsen 1y ago
  TP shortages in Hong Kong were rational, based on an expectation of bulk shipping issues. Stocking up in North America based on shortages in Hong Kong was idiotic. If there are shortages of TP in Hong Kong that means there would be a surplus of TP in North America, since North America is where the pulp for most TP is made.
  - roywiggins 1y ago
    Sure, probably. It still helped me dodge the panic that set in a couple weeks later though. Sometimes midwit thought works. I wasn't stocking a Scrooge McDuck room full of the stuff. I think it was when I saw stories of hoarding spread to Australia that I realized that maybe this it was going to have legs, rationally or not.
- dogleash 1y ago
  [flagged]
  - singleshot_ 1y ago
    Please don’t do this here.
  - yua_mikami 1y ago
    Imagine thinking IQ and understanding a cartoon correlates to intelligence or knowledge...
    - roywiggins 1y ago
      it's a copypasta
  - roywiggins 1y ago
    By "exception that proves the rule" I meant that paying too much attention to the news is basically maladaptive, until it occasionally isn't.
atuladhar 1y ago
"The Week" is a great magazine for this purpose.
LostMyLogin 1y ago
Suggestions for some sources to read? I know the Economist, anything else others would recommend?
- Tepix 1y ago
  Le Monde Diplomatique https://mondediplo.com/ https://mondediplo.com/ Available in many languages
  - abbadadda 1y ago
    Any background on funding sources/ongoing sources of revenue/ownership?
    - Chico75 1y ago
      > The publication is 51% owned by Le Monde diplomatique SA, a subsidiary company of Le Monde, from which it remains editorially independent. Le Monde is owned by a French billionaire: https://www.alliancemagazine.org/blog/democracy-in-france-depends-on-restoring-a-free-press/#:~:text=Le%20Monde%20group%2C%20controlled%20by%20Xavier%20Niel https://www.alliancemagazine.org/blog/democracy-in-france-de...
- nindalf 1y ago
  Economist for me. I don't know of any other sources that can reach the same level.
  - newhope1978 1y ago
    of what, bias?
  - andrepd 1y ago
    Well you're missing out and stunting your own worldview if you stick to only one source of information (regardless of which it is).
    - 1y ago
ant6n 1y ago
The problem is, they often assume you already read the news and don’t say what happen just provide the analysis without context. Heck, Spiegel does that with news on the same day. You get some background article without starting with the facts of what happened, as if everybody reads the news every two hours.
- nindalf 1y ago
  This is why I like the Economist. They don't assume the reader has background knowledge.
kps 1y ago
From the television era: Don't watch news channels; important news will be on all the channels.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- 0xbadcafebee 1y ago
  Then you're only getting things important to viewership. Nobody's putting an economically critical trade deal on all the channels, or a genocide in Yemen. But Princess Diana dying, that's gonna get coverage.
  - 6LLvveMx2koXfwn 1y ago
    Especially as she's supposed to have died 28 years ago.
    - JumpCrisscross 1y ago
      > Especially as she's supposed to have died 28 years ago If you don’t watch television news, flipping through the channels can be genuinely surprising. Because if it’s Princess Diana’s birthday, I almost guarantee one of them will be running a retrospective segment.
- stevage 1y ago
  I'm not convinced there is really any important news.
  - throwanem 1y ago
    There's a spectacularly untimely take...
    - stevage 1y ago
      For most of the world, war between two countries in the middle east doesn't really have any direct impact, right? Liek, if I didn't know about it, nothing would change for me.
whiteboardr 1y ago
+1 “news” detox is as important as a healthy or non existent interaction with social media.
lazystar 1y ago
pro tip from an internet addict - r/aviation has a great community of pilots and aviation techs with insightful comments. https://old.reddit.com/r/aviation/comments/1l9hqzp/air_india_flight_171_crash/ https://old.reddit.com/r/aviation/comments/1l9hqzp/air_india...
Thorrez 1y ago
http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/hatethenews http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/hatethenews
tharkun__ 1y ago
Pro tip from another rando: If you hear about it from friends or coworkers, don't assume it's pressing. It might just be sensational and of course they repeat it, just like they'd send on a chain letter/email etc. back in the day. Form your own opinion, based on multiple source plus your own judgement.
- brailsafe 1y ago
  > Form your own opinion, based on multiple source plus your own judgement I think the essence of these statements is less that you should literally listen to whatever distilled amount of world news your coworkers are talking about and take it as fact, but that if it's remotely necessary for you to even be aware of, let alone have an opinion about, it'll present itself somehow in real life. After that, if it qualifies as relevant to your life, then go about searching for more info, but a vast majority of anything you could hear or read about or watch probably doesn't qualify. Government policy, sure, if you need to respond to or act on it somehow. Conflict in the middle east? Sure, if you or someone you know has ties there. But again you'll probably just hear about it because it's directly impactful, or you can monitor specifically for those updates using narrow channels.

roywiggins 1y ago

Unfortunately for everyone's brains, this turned out to basically not be true with COVID- only real news fans (or people with expertise in the relevant science, but there are way less of those) were remotely aware that offices probably weren't going to be closed for only two weeks[0]. If you followed the news closely you stocked up on toilet paper when there were runs on it in Hong Kong, before there were runs on it where you were, etc. But if you only got news from the office water-cooler you'd have been none the wiser. This is one of those exceptions that prove the rule though, I think. [0] I had this conversation with people multiple times so it must have been common

lxgr 1y ago
If nobody followed the news or social media, there wouldn’t have been runs on toilet paper to begin with, as there never was a shortage to begin with and it was all just mass hysteria.
- roywiggins 1y ago
  It was never clear to me, but at least part of it was supposedly due to everyone pooping at home using consumer TP instead of at the office, using commercially packaged TP (two-ply, giant rolls for big dispensers). And that sudden shift started to empty shelves. If people had stocked up over a period of time, the empty-shelves situation that produced the fear probably wouldn't have happened. Of course in practice there really was plenty of it to go around, dollar stores seemed to be the most flexible at navigating the supply chain derangement and if you didn't mind buying it by the roll, it was never really hard to find. Also- you don't need to follow the news for there to be a panic, empty shelves will do that all on their own. Everyone deciding to stock up a little on everything was enough to deplete shelves, people walking in after saw empty shelves and stocked up more, etc. I don't think most people were following the "omg supply chain" news, they just saw depleted shelves.
  - wkat4242 1y ago
    I never really understood the importance of it anyway. People were locked in their home so they could just use the shower head if it came to it. Of course a real bidet would be better and cleaner but I don't think they exist in northern America or Northern Europe. It's also common in Asia (at least South East) they can survive without toilet paper :) The Japanese even have entire water jet massage toilets, they do it like a king. Or if you don't want to use water, you could use serviettes, tissues. Even newspaper. That's why I didn't understand the fuss about it. Sure it's annoying if you run out but not the end of the world especially when you're at home where there's always a shower to hand. I don't understand that people were so obsessed with toilet paper. What would be much more important is food, water (in my city the tap water is terrible so I don't drink it), medication etc.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- timr 1y ago
  Yeah, the deep irony of the GP comment is that, had all of these supposedly knowledgable people just read the original report from the WHO (~early 2020), they'd have realized many things about the virus (such as the extremely skewed age distribution of the seriously ill) that would have greatly mitigated the overall panic. It literally took years for the chattering class in medicine to understand basic information that was available at the beginning of the pandemic. COVID was a perfect case study of mass hysteria, and how you can't even trust "the experts" in these situations, because the "experts" you hear from early on are also generally the ones who are the most willing to spout pure speculation for attention. Humans are gonna human, and a background in science doesn't change that fact.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - roywiggins 1y ago
    A million Americans did die of it, the lost QALYs was... a lot. A lot of people died who had more than a decade, actuarially. That's a big deal. But it doesn't matter for what I'm saying: paying too much attention to the news about a weird new virus from China would have clued a person in that something big might be coming, on whatever dimension you care to measure it.
    - lxgr 1y ago
      But would that have been actionable information for the average person? What would you have done differently on the first day, given perfect information? The Covid pandemic lasted much longer than would have been reasonable to prepare for via hoarding of supplies etc. In my view, that was the entire problem: Much of the world overreacted in the short term (hard lockdowns including fining people going for a walk by themselves etc.) and underreacted in the long term (limiting avoidable large indoor gatherings such as most office work, air filters etc.) Many governments did as much as people would tolerate for as long as they could (which meant, for some, doing nothing at all), rather than focusing on doing effective things they could actually keep up as long as required. Hindsight is of course 20/20, but I really hope that’s a lesson many learned from it.
- yurodivuie 1y ago
  Unfortunately, we do not live in the best of all possible worlds. One must plan for both the actual threat and the response to the perceived threat.
- platevoltage 1y ago
  I'll never understand why bidets are so niche in the USA especially after there are TP shortages every couple of years. Not to mention how gross cleaning yourself with dry tissue is.
  - wkat4242 1y ago
    Oh yes I was just writing the same. Water is much cleaner yeah. About half the houses here have a bidet. I think many people in countries like the US or northern Europe wouldn't even know what it's for when they see one :)
    - platevoltage 1y ago
      I would put it at 1% here. They are extremely rare. Bidet attachments have become relatively popular here over the past decade though. It's been life changing (or maybe butt changing). It's amazing how pretentious Americans can be while having such a gross habit.
officeplant 1y ago
That was pure panic. I live in the gulf coast. Anytime there is a minor chance we are getting hit by a hurricane people panic buy and suddenly there isn't any water on the shelves anymore. You'll see average folks with 20 cases of water being shoved in their massive SUVs for a family of 3.
- roywiggins 1y ago
  Sure. However, I bought a large pack of toilet paper when I saw headlines about hoarding in HK, before the shelves began to dwindle here, and thus dodged the whole thing. That it was basically panic is neither here nor there: paying too close attention to far-off news did actually pay off in a tiny way.
  - voxadam 1y ago
    Sam Rogers: You are panicking. John Tuld: If you're first out the door, that's not called panicking. —Margin Call (2011)
bryanlarsen 1y ago
TP shortages in Hong Kong were rational, based on an expectation of bulk shipping issues. Stocking up in North America based on shortages in Hong Kong was idiotic. If there are shortages of TP in Hong Kong that means there would be a surplus of TP in North America, since North America is where the pulp for most TP is made.
- roywiggins 1y ago
  Sure, probably. It still helped me dodge the panic that set in a couple weeks later though. Sometimes midwit thought works. I wasn't stocking a Scrooge McDuck room full of the stuff. I think it was when I saw stories of hoarding spread to Australia that I realized that maybe this it was going to have legs, rationally or not.
dogleash 1y ago
[flagged]
- singleshot_ 1y ago
  Please don’t do this here.
- yua_mikami 1y ago
  Imagine thinking IQ and understanding a cartoon correlates to intelligence or knowledge...
  - roywiggins 1y ago
    it's a copypasta
- roywiggins 1y ago
  By "exception that proves the rule" I meant that paying too much attention to the news is basically maladaptive, until it occasionally isn't.

atuladhar 1y ago

"The Week" is a great magazine for this purpose.

LostMyLogin 1y ago

Suggestions for some sources to read? I know the Economist, anything else others would recommend?

Tepix 1y ago
Le Monde Diplomatique https://mondediplo.com/ https://mondediplo.com/ Available in many languages
- abbadadda 1y ago
  Any background on funding sources/ongoing sources of revenue/ownership?
  - Chico75 1y ago
    > The publication is 51% owned by Le Monde diplomatique SA, a subsidiary company of Le Monde, from which it remains editorially independent. Le Monde is owned by a French billionaire: https://www.alliancemagazine.org/blog/democracy-in-france-depends-on-restoring-a-free-press/#:~:text=Le%20Monde%20group%2C%20controlled%20by%20Xavier%20Niel https://www.alliancemagazine.org/blog/democracy-in-france-de...
nindalf 1y ago
Economist for me. I don't know of any other sources that can reach the same level.
- newhope1978 1y ago
  of what, bias?
- andrepd 1y ago
  Well you're missing out and stunting your own worldview if you stick to only one source of information (regardless of which it is).
  - 1y ago

ant6n 1y ago

The problem is, they often assume you already read the news and don’t say what happen just provide the analysis without context. Heck, Spiegel does that with news on the same day. You get some background article without starting with the facts of what happened, as if everybody reads the news every two hours.

nindalf 1y ago
This is why I like the Economist. They don't assume the reader has background knowledge.

kps 1y ago

From the television era: Don't watch news channels; important news will be on all the channels.

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
0xbadcafebee 1y ago
Then you're only getting things important to viewership. Nobody's putting an economically critical trade deal on all the channels, or a genocide in Yemen. But Princess Diana dying, that's gonna get coverage.
- 6LLvveMx2koXfwn 1y ago
  Especially as she's supposed to have died 28 years ago.
  - JumpCrisscross 1y ago
    > Especially as she's supposed to have died 28 years ago If you don’t watch television news, flipping through the channels can be genuinely surprising. Because if it’s Princess Diana’s birthday, I almost guarantee one of them will be running a retrospective segment.
stevage 1y ago
I'm not convinced there is really any important news.
- throwanem 1y ago
  There's a spectacularly untimely take...
  - stevage 1y ago
    For most of the world, war between two countries in the middle east doesn't really have any direct impact, right? Liek, if I didn't know about it, nothing would change for me.

whiteboardr 1y ago

+1 “news” detox is as important as a healthy or non existent interaction with social media.

lazystar 1y ago

pro tip from an internet addict - r/aviation has a great community of pilots and aviation techs with insightful comments. https://old.reddit.com/r/aviation/comments/1l9hqzp/air_india_flight_171_crash/ https://old.reddit.com/r/aviation/comments/1l9hqzp/air_india...

Thorrez 1y ago

http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/hatethenews http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/hatethenews

tharkun__ 1y ago

Pro tip from another rando: If you hear about it from friends or coworkers, don't assume it's pressing. It might just be sensational and of course they repeat it, just like they'd send on a chain letter/email etc. back in the day. Form your own opinion, based on multiple source plus your own judgement.

brailsafe 1y ago
> Form your own opinion, based on multiple source plus your own judgement I think the essence of these statements is less that you should literally listen to whatever distilled amount of world news your coworkers are talking about and take it as fact, but that if it's remotely necessary for you to even be aware of, let alone have an opinion about, it'll present itself somehow in real life. After that, if it qualifies as relevant to your life, then go about searching for more info, but a vast majority of anything you could hear or read about or watch probably doesn't qualify. Government policy, sure, if you need to respond to or act on it somehow. Conflict in the middle east? Sure, if you or someone you know has ties there. But again you'll probably just hear about it because it's directly impactful, or you can monitor specifically for those updates using narrow channels.