This is nowhere near optimal.
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.
I trust my brain to collect facts and raise them to my attention when they're important. "Current affairs" describes a class of fact that I don't think is being adequately collected.
The Wikipedia current events page is a very good example of what I'm looking for.
If it's worth saying, but not worth its own post (even in Discussion), then it goes here.
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