Open thread, September 15-21, 2014

gjm

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If it's worth saying, but not worth its own post (even in Discussion), then it goes here.

Notes for future OT posters:

1. Please add the 'open_thread' tag.

2. Check if there is an active Open Thread before posting a new one. (Immediately before; refresh the list-of-threads page before posting.)

3. Open Threads should be posted in Discussion, and not Main.

4. Open Threads should start on Monday, and end on Sunday.

I don't have any sensible way of learning about current affairs. I don't consume broadcast or print news. Most news stories reach me through social media, blogs, word of mouth or personal research, and I will independently follow up on the ones I think are worthy of interest. This is nowhere near optimal. It means I will probably find out about innovations in robotic bees before I find out about natural disasters or significant events in world politics.

Regular news outlets seem to be messy, noisy attention traps, rather than the austere factual repositories I wish them to be. Quite importantly, there seems to be a lot of stuff in the news that isn't actually news. I'm pretty sure smart people with different values will converge on what a lot of this stuff is.

Has this problem been solved already? I'm willing to put in time/effort/money for minimalist, noise-free, sensibly-prioritised news digest that I care about.

ETA: Although I haven't replied to all these responses individually, they seem very useful and I will be following them up. Thanks!

This is nowhere near optimal. It means I will probably find out about innovations in robotic bees before I find out about natural disasters or significant events in world politics.

Meh. Sufficiently big natural disasters or political events find a way onto my Facebook feed anyway.

Once in a while when I'm bored I check out the Android app of my country's wire service (I think the American equivalent would be the Associated Press) and/or the box in the top right of the English Wikipedia's home page. But it's a rare week that I spend more than half an hour seeking out news deliberately.

1Emile12y

In what way? Do you wish you spent more time following current affairs? I don't follow them, but don't see any problem with it - if anything, I occasionally have to resist the urge of looking up what's going on in the world, which I put in the same mental bucket as the urge to look at the top entries of /r/funny. I don't think in ten years time having read one more news item on the Gaza Strip will change my life more than having seen one more picture of a cat stuck in a bowl. (I do however sometimes go more into a binge of "reading up on something and trying to understand it", but I rely more on Wikipedia than on news for that; "breaking news" tends to repeat the same points over and over again, and doesn't put much focus on the big picture) I used to read the wikipedia current events page, which I found a nice summary of what's going on without going into too many details.

-2Azathoth12312y

I get my news from instapundit.

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