7 ms·

Ignore the news

84 points by jongold 13y ago

juskrey 13y ago
I think we will have this kind of epiphany on a front page every time someone turns 30.
fallingbadgers 13y ago
I remember laughing at the story about the judge who asked "Who are the Beatles?". Now I find them a very wise person indeed :)
- mgkimsal 13y ago
  link? If he'd said this in 1964, yeah, it might make sense. Otherwise, probably not so much. Ahh: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1340891/Judge-James-Pickles-said-didnt-know-The-Beatles-dies-aged-85.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1340891/Judge-James-... Doesn't say when he said it though.
  - corin_ 13y ago
    One journalist in 2007 wrote "'Who are the Beatles?' is the most famous such question. I'm sure it was never asked. I have spent an inordinate proportion of my journalistic life trying to trace it. I've searched newspaper archives and, over the years, asked literally hundreds of lawyers active during the 60s if they could point to a judge who said those words." http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2007/may/21/uk.law http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2007/may/21/uk.law It seems that if James Pickles did ask that question, it was probably later than that, since he was a judge from 1975 to 1991 (and that Daily Mail obit. says "From the mid-1980s onwards, he became a household name for his colourful opinions and remarks"). Interesting side-notes that his sister was the actress playing the mother of Ross and Monica on Friends, and he seemed to have a rather modern view on drugs: "Cannabis never killed anybody and it's use is widespread. You can’t stop it. The law defeats itself because all the efforts to stop drugs coming in only drives up the prices and then gangsters move in to push the drugs. If they legalised there wouldn't be gangsters and huge profits..."
  - scholia 13y ago
    Judges frequently ask questions to which they know the answers. It's a way of putting facts on the court record, which may be helpful in 100 or even 500 years time.
buster 13y ago
Sounds like a good plan. People nowadays are far too exposed to media everywhere. News is 99% indoctrination or just flat out crap filling the hole between new horror-stories. Social media has even lower quality except for a few select sources. But the signal-to-noise ratio in social networks is low enough that it's only a waste of time (just like TV). Now, that doesn't mean i did what the author did. Respect for that, i'm a little envious of him.
jacquesm 13y ago
I'll settle for an 'ignore medium.com' button.
- workbench 13y ago
  Read so many bad "articles" on medium this month that I'm gonna stop clicking them.
  - yareally 13y ago
    I mostly come to HN for the comments and the articles secondary. Sometimes I want to flag a link bait or potentially bad article, but I decide against it because while the article might be sub-par, the comments that will follow on HN will be much more insightful and interesting.
    - unimpressive 13y ago
      It's too bad I don't know more about how to set up a problem in game theory, or I'd try to evaluate how this logic will eventually impact HN. Because I've seen it used more than once.
- stfu 13y ago
  What's the deal with all the medium.com spam recently? I sometimes feel like they are thinking each morning "with what made up bs headline can we bait HN users today".
  - millerm 13y ago
    Exactly! What is this? The front page is loaded with medium.com.
  - bulatb 13y ago
    The Medium machine is hungry. It must grow.
- rajbot 13y ago
  Here is a userscript that hides medium.com links in FireFox and Chrome: https://github.com/rajbot/remove_medium https://github.com/rajbot/remove_medium
contingencies 13y ago
Never had the habit in the first place.
- joosters 13y ago
  What's worse? Wasting your time by consuming the news, or posting pointless comments on it?
  - contingencies 13y ago
    Sometimes, as a minority, it's important to affirm your presence.
danso 13y ago
As a former newspaper person, I'm inclined to say "But oh, knowing current events is our civic duty"...and it is....but consuming journalism isn't the same as consuming news, and reading a lengthy in depth story about an event that happened last month or last year or even the last decade is likely more helpful than staying abreast of the 24 hour news cycle. This has been said before, but I'd also argue that the constant news cycle is just harmful, period. The most recent manifestation of this for me was the Boston Bombings...it was a terrible event, but not being in Boston, there was literally no benefit I could gain from listening to the minute by minute coverage. But I did it anyway, even checking it late in the night and early in the morning. When that situation was resolved...all those accumulated hours of listening didn't mean a thing. News shouldn't be consumed like a TV series, in which the point is the journey, rather than the conclusion. I think it's better to think of the breaking news phenomenon in psychological terms, rather than content. It's not that you're necessarily obsessed with shootings, bombings, and celeb drug rehab, but that the constant stream of dilemma and reward (when a new turn unfolds) must have a similar effect to other endorphin-releasing habits. And while I'm just throwing pop psychology out there...it is indisputable that the news covers the novel and unlikely, that's why it is "news". Consuming too much of it will distort your reality and perception of what's "normal". After doing cops reporting, I couldn't help but feel extra paranoid when walking certain streets when off the job..."This is where people get shot" is an entirely irrational way to judge a neighborhood, but it won't seem irrational if that's your primary or first acquaintance with the area.
- regal 13y ago
  "all those accumulated hours of listening didn't mean a thing." This is exactly it. I had an 8-hour a day office job with about 10 minutes of actual work a day for a couple of years (so a whole heck of a lot of time to kill), and frequently spent hours every day reading the news. One day I asked myself, "What have I learned?" I couldn't come up with anything. After that, I quit reading the news and started reading classics like "The Prince" and "The Brothers Grimm" and "The Grapes of Wrath." Much better use of free time than reading the same rehashed stories of shootings and stabbings and rapes and murders and robberies and earthquakes and bombings and shark attacks over and over again with only slightly different details.
lovskogen 13y ago
I've been doing this for a long while. I don't see any value in the typical "daily news". Instead I read books, or articles from a selection of sites. And of course HN. Daily news is a waste of time.
- kmfrk 13y ago
  Hacker News doesn't fall under "daily news"?
  - lovskogen 13y ago
    Well, some might be daily. But I separate between daily mainstream news and job professional articles. I only read the latter.
  - gurkendoktor 13y ago
    HN could delay each submission by a week or a month and it would be as good or bad as before.
pinaceae 13y ago
and this is how you build the perfect bubble around you. ignore the news is the new oh we don't own a tv. or oh i don't listen to "popular" music.
- figbucket 13y ago
  Everyone already has a bubble around them. The difference is whether you consciously choose to let information/ideas/people/news in or not. Making the conscious choice to filter to your preferrences is important and liberating because it enables you more control over the kind of life you want to live.
  - pinaceae 13y ago
    i question the placement of the filter. by filtering at the source, you will never be exposed to something outside your bubble. the NYT front page (as an example) is great as it covers such a wide array of topics, just browsing over them gives you the chance to learn something new. if your current interests and beliefs act as filters, then how will you ever develop new ones? or, coming down to the core topic of this site, how will you know how your audience/target group/customers tick if you never see the world through their eyes? look at all the nerd-startups solving nerd problems (asana?...) - and how frustrated they all get by the success of tumblr, instagram, etc. good retail CEOs watch fox news and read the ny post (or equivalents) to get a feel for their customers world.
    - figbucket 13y ago
      You're right however part of the freedom comes from choosing where your bubble ends. Consciously choosing where you filter what you allow into your bubble be it NYT front page or fox news etcetera. >if your current interests and beliefs act as filters, then how will you ever develop new ones? This partly comes down to being another personal choice and also consider that many things are linked in a way that enables you to develop new interests and beliefs. One example of this is Wikipedia. Starting from pretty much any point of interest, you can find a great depth of chain linked resources to information you can choose to read and allow influence your interests and beliefs >or, coming down to the core topic of this site, how will you know your audience... ? Best to start by building what you know however I realise that's unrealistic. After that you just accept that you can't filter everything because somethings you want in your bubble have baggage. "Every rose has its thorne" as the saying goes.
rlpb 13y ago
"I tell people that if it's in the news, don't worry about it. The very definition of "news" is "something that hardly ever happens." It's when something isn't in the news, when it's so common that it's no longer news -- car crashes, domestic violence -- that you should start worrying." --Bruce Schneier [http://www.schneier.com/essay-171.html http://www.schneier.com/essay-171.html]
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
johnpowell 13y ago
Well, ignoring the news seems like a bad idea since it makes you totally uninformed. For me I just started reading the news instead of hearing or watching it. CNN spends 72 hours on a tornado when I can learn all I really need in a few hundred words.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- Evgeny 13y ago
  How exactly does being informed about the tornado improve your life, unless you live in the area which may be affected?
jgrahamc 13y ago
There are lots of new ways of filtering and understanding the news emerging so that you don’t have to suffer the constant barrage, and yet still be informed enough to be able to understand. You don't need technology to do that. You can just stay informed by buying a high quality newspaper or news magazine and read that. For example, (personal choices ahead), you could read The Economist once per week. Or, since he appears to be in the UK, you could have a quality daily paper (e.g. Daily Telegraph weekdays and the Observer on Sundays).
- corin_ 13y ago
  On the subject of your personal choices: why the Telegraph/Observer combination, when both papers have more similar sister publications to cover the other days? I would imagine than Daily Telegraph + Sunday Telegraph or Guardian + Observer are much more common combinations.
  - jgrahamc 13y ago
    It brings some semblance of balance given the different politics of the papers and I prefer the Observer's 'weekend' coverage (e.g. things like their coverage of arts, travel, ...) The Telegraph is pretty conservative and the Observer fairly liberal. The two views are interesting. I don't think I could take The Guardian every day. And given that I also have Le Monde as well that's plenty of centre-left stuff.
    - corin_ 13y ago
      Fair enough - I just don't think I've previously come across breaking down like that over the week, most people I know who want multiple points of view do so on a daily basis. Do you read Le Monde because of its language or would you still read it if it were in English?
      - jgrahamc 13y ago
        I speak French and one of the ways I learnt the language was to read Le Monde. When I moved to France I got a subscription and read at least part of it every day. I still read some of it regularly, but I don't get it every day any more. The downside of Le Monde is that it reports pretty deeply about French politics (which is either your thing or it isn't). One other thing about the Telegraph on a daily basis that's important to some people: the crossword.
nos4A2 13y ago
I completely agree with the sentiment, and I further extended it to aggregators (reddit and HN). However my solution to the problem was quantizing the content into regular planned intervals. For example I use LeechBlock for reddit and HN, which allow me to access it for 1 hour a day, and I read 2-3 good weekly periodicals to keep in touch with non-tech news (economist). This broke my "refresh every 5 minutes to find something new" habit and greatly enhanced self contemplation over what I consume.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
pyvek 13y ago
Aaron's words on the same topic - http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/hatethenews http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/hatethenews
slacka 13y ago
Growing up the muppets came on at the same time as evening news. The muppets always lost. After the news, my parents would answer our questions and then start debating some some relevant topic. As I got older, I'd participate more in this process. As a result, I have an intellectual curiosity for world news and strong critical thinking skills. Something kids today could use more of not less. Also, by choosing to get his news from Twitter over let's say NPR, this idiot is choosing to be misinformed. Of all the hoax or inaccurate stories that I've come across this year, Twitter take the crown followed by news aggregators and email. The only false NPR story I can think of was the TAL retraction of the story on work conditions in Apple factories. According to my twitter last week "NASA disproved global warming"
- icebraining 13y ago
  I have an intellectual curiosity for world news and strong critical thinking skills. And apparently, a penchant for throwing around insults. choosing to get his news from Twitter over let's say NPR https://twitter.com/nprnews https://twitter.com/nprnews Of all the hoax or inaccurate stories that I've come across this year, Twitter take the crown followed by news aggregators and email. Twitter is just an aggregation technology. If you get inaccurate stories, it's due to your own choices of sources.
  - slacka 13y ago
    Cute, except the article stated he was getting them from "people" NOT news outlets. Sorry if my insults offended you, but this article was link bait trash designed to make the misinformed, filter-bubbled, over-protective moms feel better about themselves. I call it how I see it.
    - icebraining 13y ago
      Cute, except the article stated he was getting them from "people" NOT news outlets. "People" (usually) don't create news, they filter them from other sources, such as news outlets. Some republish crap, others distort those news when tweeting them, others mostly just filter the irrelevant and republish the useful. Getting crap is a consequence of your own choices, not of the underlying technology. Sorry if my insults offended you, but this article was link bait trash designed to make the misinformed, filter-bubbled, over-protective moms feel better about themselves. I call it how I see it. http://xkcd.com/386/ http://xkcd.com/386/
bpatrianakos 13y ago
I hope we all start to move past this phase. Is it really worth the energy of starting and maintaining a "news diet" when you already know what's wrong with news? I went through a phase where I thought no news would be good for me. Then I grew out of it. I realized that if a person understands what's wrong with news they're really not the ones who need to abstain. It's everyone who hasn't realized it yet. I read a lot about this "no news/news is bad for you" meme going around the past few years and I have to admit it's getting a little lame. How about just taking the news for what it is and take in what you want and leave the rest. Am I odd in that I don't have any emotional reaction when I hear of a rape, murder, or most other tragedies on the news? I was in Europe during the Oklahoma tornadoes and when I heard about it on the news when I came back I thought "hmm, so this is the new big story for the next week" before falling asleep. It's not that I don't care, but I also kind of don't care.
conanbatt 13y ago
I also dislike reading the news. I picked up this habit 2 months ago and i feel it wastes so much time. However its not 100% waste. At least here in Argentina, what I read on the newspaper have direct consequences on economic decisions in the every-day life. Literally, from going to the super market, to spending with your credit-card to buying illegal currency. On the other hand, Argentina is going through the middle of a political-economical crisis so the news become a very relevant termometer.
mathattack 13y ago
Quoting Taleb (http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Nassim_Nicholas_Taleb http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Nassim_Nicholas_Taleb) "To be completely cured of newspapers, spend a year reading the previous week’s newspapers." Of course this assumes that you're not in the business of knowing what other people know. If it's important being in the zeitgeist than you have to keep track of the drivel. This is one downside of working in Sales. :-)
DanielBMarkham 13y ago
I like all of this except for "Watch satirical shows that poke fun at the news, and get the gist about what’s going on in the process." Absolutely not. All you're doing is trading one form of emotional manipulation for another. I understand what's going on by 1) scanning written commentary. Oddly enough, when the emotional manipulation is out in the open, it has much less effect, and 2) watching CNN's "Reliable Sources", a somewhat unreliable account of the business of news reporting. The meta story -- what editors and reporters decide to cover and why -- gives me the big news stories and the way they were slanted on different outlets. Don't substitute comedy for this 24-hour-news mishmash. Bad. Idea. Comedy is always about biting satire and conformity, many times directed at large groups of people. All you're going to learn is how to fit in with some kind of group the comedian is a member of, and we need a lot less of us vs. them in the world.

84 points by jongold 13y ago

I think we will have this kind of epiphany on a front page every time someone turns 30.

I remember laughing at the story about the judge who asked "Who are the Beatles?". Now I find them a very wise person indeed :)

mgkimsal 13y ago
link? If he'd said this in 1964, yeah, it might make sense. Otherwise, probably not so much. Ahh: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1340891/Judge-James-Pickles-said-didnt-know-The-Beatles-dies-aged-85.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1340891/Judge-James-... Doesn't say when he said it though.
- corin_ 13y ago
  One journalist in 2007 wrote "'Who are the Beatles?' is the most famous such question. I'm sure it was never asked. I have spent an inordinate proportion of my journalistic life trying to trace it. I've searched newspaper archives and, over the years, asked literally hundreds of lawyers active during the 60s if they could point to a judge who said those words." http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2007/may/21/uk.law http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2007/may/21/uk.law It seems that if James Pickles did ask that question, it was probably later than that, since he was a judge from 1975 to 1991 (and that Daily Mail obit. says "From the mid-1980s onwards, he became a household name for his colourful opinions and remarks"). Interesting side-notes that his sister was the actress playing the mother of Ross and Monica on Friends, and he seemed to have a rather modern view on drugs: "Cannabis never killed anybody and it's use is widespread. You can’t stop it. The law defeats itself because all the efforts to stop drugs coming in only drives up the prices and then gangsters move in to push the drugs. If they legalised there wouldn't be gangsters and huge profits..."
- scholia 13y ago
  Judges frequently ask questions to which they know the answers. It's a way of putting facts on the court record, which may be helpful in 100 or even 500 years time.

buster 13y ago

Sounds like a good plan. People nowadays are far too exposed to media everywhere. News is 99% indoctrination or just flat out crap filling the hole between new horror-stories. Social media has even lower quality except for a few select sources. But the signal-to-noise ratio in social networks is low enough that it's only a waste of time (just like TV). Now, that doesn't mean i did what the author did. Respect for that, i'm a little envious of him.

jacquesm 13y ago

I'll settle for an 'ignore medium.com' button.

workbench 13y ago
Read so many bad "articles" on medium this month that I'm gonna stop clicking them.
- yareally 13y ago
  I mostly come to HN for the comments and the articles secondary. Sometimes I want to flag a link bait or potentially bad article, but I decide against it because while the article might be sub-par, the comments that will follow on HN will be much more insightful and interesting.
  - unimpressive 13y ago
    It's too bad I don't know more about how to set up a problem in game theory, or I'd try to evaluate how this logic will eventually impact HN. Because I've seen it used more than once.
stfu 13y ago
What's the deal with all the medium.com spam recently? I sometimes feel like they are thinking each morning "with what made up bs headline can we bait HN users today".
- millerm 13y ago
  Exactly! What is this? The front page is loaded with medium.com.
- bulatb 13y ago
  The Medium machine is hungry. It must grow.
rajbot 13y ago
Here is a userscript that hides medium.com links in FireFox and Chrome: https://github.com/rajbot/remove_medium https://github.com/rajbot/remove_medium

contingencies 13y ago

Never had the habit in the first place.

joosters 13y ago
What's worse? Wasting your time by consuming the news, or posting pointless comments on it?
- contingencies 13y ago
  Sometimes, as a minority, it's important to affirm your presence.

danso 13y ago

As a former newspaper person, I'm inclined to say "But oh, knowing current events is our civic duty"...and it is....but consuming journalism isn't the same as consuming news, and reading a lengthy in depth story about an event that happened last month or last year or even the last decade is likely more helpful than staying abreast of the 24 hour news cycle. This has been said before, but I'd also argue that the constant news cycle is just harmful, period. The most recent manifestation of this for me was the Boston Bombings...it was a terrible event, but not being in Boston, there was literally no benefit I could gain from listening to the minute by minute coverage. But I did it anyway, even checking it late in the night and early in the morning. When that situation was resolved...all those accumulated hours of listening didn't mean a thing. News shouldn't be consumed like a TV series, in which the point is the journey, rather than the conclusion. I think it's better to think of the breaking news phenomenon in psychological terms, rather than content. It's not that you're necessarily obsessed with shootings, bombings, and celeb drug rehab, but that the constant stream of dilemma and reward (when a new turn unfolds) must have a similar effect to other endorphin-releasing habits. And while I'm just throwing pop psychology out there...it is indisputable that the news covers the novel and unlikely, that's why it is "news". Consuming too much of it will distort your reality and perception of what's "normal". After doing cops reporting, I couldn't help but feel extra paranoid when walking certain streets when off the job..."This is where people get shot" is an entirely irrational way to judge a neighborhood, but it won't seem irrational if that's your primary or first acquaintance with the area.

regal 13y ago
"all those accumulated hours of listening didn't mean a thing." This is exactly it. I had an 8-hour a day office job with about 10 minutes of actual work a day for a couple of years (so a whole heck of a lot of time to kill), and frequently spent hours every day reading the news. One day I asked myself, "What have I learned?" I couldn't come up with anything. After that, I quit reading the news and started reading classics like "The Prince" and "The Brothers Grimm" and "The Grapes of Wrath." Much better use of free time than reading the same rehashed stories of shootings and stabbings and rapes and murders and robberies and earthquakes and bombings and shark attacks over and over again with only slightly different details.

lovskogen 13y ago

I've been doing this for a long while. I don't see any value in the typical "daily news". Instead I read books, or articles from a selection of sites. And of course HN. Daily news is a waste of time.

kmfrk 13y ago
Hacker News doesn't fall under "daily news"?
- lovskogen 13y ago
  Well, some might be daily. But I separate between daily mainstream news and job professional articles. I only read the latter.
- gurkendoktor 13y ago
  HN could delay each submission by a week or a month and it would be as good or bad as before.

pinaceae 13y ago

and this is how you build the perfect bubble around you. ignore the news is the new oh we don't own a tv. or oh i don't listen to "popular" music.

figbucket 13y ago
Everyone already has a bubble around them. The difference is whether you consciously choose to let information/ideas/people/news in or not. Making the conscious choice to filter to your preferrences is important and liberating because it enables you more control over the kind of life you want to live.
- pinaceae 13y ago
  i question the placement of the filter. by filtering at the source, you will never be exposed to something outside your bubble. the NYT front page (as an example) is great as it covers such a wide array of topics, just browsing over them gives you the chance to learn something new. if your current interests and beliefs act as filters, then how will you ever develop new ones? or, coming down to the core topic of this site, how will you know how your audience/target group/customers tick if you never see the world through their eyes? look at all the nerd-startups solving nerd problems (asana?...) - and how frustrated they all get by the success of tumblr, instagram, etc. good retail CEOs watch fox news and read the ny post (or equivalents) to get a feel for their customers world.
  - figbucket 13y ago
    You're right however part of the freedom comes from choosing where your bubble ends. Consciously choosing where you filter what you allow into your bubble be it NYT front page or fox news etcetera. >if your current interests and beliefs act as filters, then how will you ever develop new ones? This partly comes down to being another personal choice and also consider that many things are linked in a way that enables you to develop new interests and beliefs. One example of this is Wikipedia. Starting from pretty much any point of interest, you can find a great depth of chain linked resources to information you can choose to read and allow influence your interests and beliefs >or, coming down to the core topic of this site, how will you know your audience... ? Best to start by building what you know however I realise that's unrealistic. After that you just accept that you can't filter everything because somethings you want in your bubble have baggage. "Every rose has its thorne" as the saying goes.

rlpb 13y ago

"I tell people that if it's in the news, don't worry about it. The very definition of "news" is "something that hardly ever happens." It's when something isn't in the news, when it's so common that it's no longer news -- car crashes, domestic violence -- that you should start worrying." --Bruce Schneier [http://www.schneier.com/essay-171.html http://www.schneier.com/essay-171.html]

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]

johnpowell 13y ago

Well, ignoring the news seems like a bad idea since it makes you totally uninformed. For me I just started reading the news instead of hearing or watching it. CNN spends 72 hours on a tornado when I can learn all I really need in a few hundred words.

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
Evgeny 13y ago
How exactly does being informed about the tornado improve your life, unless you live in the area which may be affected?

jgrahamc 13y ago

There are lots of new ways of filtering and understanding the news emerging so that you don’t have to suffer the constant barrage, and yet still be informed enough to be able to understand. You don't need technology to do that. You can just stay informed by buying a high quality newspaper or news magazine and read that. For example, (personal choices ahead), you could read The Economist once per week. Or, since he appears to be in the UK, you could have a quality daily paper (e.g. Daily Telegraph weekdays and the Observer on Sundays).

corin_ 13y ago
On the subject of your personal choices: why the Telegraph/Observer combination, when both papers have more similar sister publications to cover the other days? I would imagine than Daily Telegraph + Sunday Telegraph or Guardian + Observer are much more common combinations.
- jgrahamc 13y ago
  It brings some semblance of balance given the different politics of the papers and I prefer the Observer's 'weekend' coverage (e.g. things like their coverage of arts, travel, ...) The Telegraph is pretty conservative and the Observer fairly liberal. The two views are interesting. I don't think I could take The Guardian every day. And given that I also have Le Monde as well that's plenty of centre-left stuff.
  - corin_ 13y ago
    Fair enough - I just don't think I've previously come across breaking down like that over the week, most people I know who want multiple points of view do so on a daily basis. Do you read Le Monde because of its language or would you still read it if it were in English?
    - jgrahamc 13y ago
      I speak French and one of the ways I learnt the language was to read Le Monde. When I moved to France I got a subscription and read at least part of it every day. I still read some of it regularly, but I don't get it every day any more. The downside of Le Monde is that it reports pretty deeply about French politics (which is either your thing or it isn't). One other thing about the Telegraph on a daily basis that's important to some people: the crossword.

nos4A2 13y ago

I completely agree with the sentiment, and I further extended it to aggregators (reddit and HN). However my solution to the problem was quantizing the content into regular planned intervals. For example I use LeechBlock for reddit and HN, which allow me to access it for 1 hour a day, and I read 2-3 good weekly periodicals to keep in touch with non-tech news (economist). This broke my "refresh every 5 minutes to find something new" habit and greatly enhanced self contemplation over what I consume.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

pyvek 13y ago

Aaron's words on the same topic - http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/hatethenews http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/hatethenews

slacka 13y ago

Growing up the muppets came on at the same time as evening news. The muppets always lost. After the news, my parents would answer our questions and then start debating some some relevant topic. As I got older, I'd participate more in this process. As a result, I have an intellectual curiosity for world news and strong critical thinking skills. Something kids today could use more of not less. Also, by choosing to get his news from Twitter over let's say NPR, this idiot is choosing to be misinformed. Of all the hoax or inaccurate stories that I've come across this year, Twitter take the crown followed by news aggregators and email. The only false NPR story I can think of was the TAL retraction of the story on work conditions in Apple factories. According to my twitter last week "NASA disproved global warming"

icebraining 13y ago
I have an intellectual curiosity for world news and strong critical thinking skills. And apparently, a penchant for throwing around insults. choosing to get his news from Twitter over let's say NPR https://twitter.com/nprnews https://twitter.com/nprnews Of all the hoax or inaccurate stories that I've come across this year, Twitter take the crown followed by news aggregators and email. Twitter is just an aggregation technology. If you get inaccurate stories, it's due to your own choices of sources.
- slacka 13y ago
  Cute, except the article stated he was getting them from "people" NOT news outlets. Sorry if my insults offended you, but this article was link bait trash designed to make the misinformed, filter-bubbled, over-protective moms feel better about themselves. I call it how I see it.
  - icebraining 13y ago
    Cute, except the article stated he was getting them from "people" NOT news outlets. "People" (usually) don't create news, they filter them from other sources, such as news outlets. Some republish crap, others distort those news when tweeting them, others mostly just filter the irrelevant and republish the useful. Getting crap is a consequence of your own choices, not of the underlying technology. Sorry if my insults offended you, but this article was link bait trash designed to make the misinformed, filter-bubbled, over-protective moms feel better about themselves. I call it how I see it. http://xkcd.com/386/ http://xkcd.com/386/

bpatrianakos 13y ago

I hope we all start to move past this phase. Is it really worth the energy of starting and maintaining a "news diet" when you already know what's wrong with news? I went through a phase where I thought no news would be good for me. Then I grew out of it. I realized that if a person understands what's wrong with news they're really not the ones who need to abstain. It's everyone who hasn't realized it yet. I read a lot about this "no news/news is bad for you" meme going around the past few years and I have to admit it's getting a little lame. How about just taking the news for what it is and take in what you want and leave the rest. Am I odd in that I don't have any emotional reaction when I hear of a rape, murder, or most other tragedies on the news? I was in Europe during the Oklahoma tornadoes and when I heard about it on the news when I came back I thought "hmm, so this is the new big story for the next week" before falling asleep. It's not that I don't care, but I also kind of don't care.

conanbatt 13y ago

I also dislike reading the news. I picked up this habit 2 months ago and i feel it wastes so much time. However its not 100% waste. At least here in Argentina, what I read on the newspaper have direct consequences on economic decisions in the every-day life. Literally, from going to the super market, to spending with your credit-card to buying illegal currency. On the other hand, Argentina is going through the middle of a political-economical crisis so the news become a very relevant termometer.

mathattack 13y ago

Quoting Taleb (http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Nassim_Nicholas_Taleb http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Nassim_Nicholas_Taleb) "To be completely cured of newspapers, spend a year reading the previous week’s newspapers." Of course this assumes that you're not in the business of knowing what other people know. If it's important being in the zeitgeist than you have to keep track of the drivel. This is one downside of working in Sales. :-)

DanielBMarkham 13y ago

I like all of this except for "Watch satirical shows that poke fun at the news, and get the gist about what’s going on in the process." Absolutely not. All you're doing is trading one form of emotional manipulation for another. I understand what's going on by 1) scanning written commentary. Oddly enough, when the emotional manipulation is out in the open, it has much less effect, and 2) watching CNN's "Reliable Sources", a somewhat unreliable account of the business of news reporting. The meta story -- what editors and reporters decide to cover and why -- gives me the big news stories and the way they were slanted on different outlets. Don't substitute comedy for this 24-hour-news mishmash. Bad. Idea. Comedy is always about biting satire and conformity, many times directed at large groups of people. All you're going to learn is how to fit in with some kind of group the comedian is a member of, and we need a lot less of us vs. them in the world.