Re:Ask HN: Is it just me? why is “news” so addictive?
by war1025 on Friday July 24, 2020 @11:28AM
(#23940628)
> Read a book.
Non-fiction books have driven my world opinions more than any other source (besides I suppose lived experience).
One sad thing about the past few months is I no longer find time to read. My wife does ebooks, but I just can't get into them.
On the plus side, I'm getting a lot of projects done around that house.
2 ways that I've found some refuge in the chaos that is the hyper-modern world:
1) More news. Flood your brain. Find all the news sources you can in your chosen language. Most big-time newspapers have an English-language resource. Look at those. Once, I put the online English version of the top 100 newspapers in the world (by circulation and if they had an English version) in my morning readings. I'd have to open them all at once and then go through each of the 100 tabs and skim them and close each one. You get really good skimming the world's news that way and really seeing what is important internationally: US politics, cyclones/hurricanes/weather, sports, etc.
2) Read a book. Books tend to draw you in much better than the news. At least the better-ish books. Though it's not as easy as chewing the candy that is Twitter, the 'classics' are a great jumping in point. Struggling to read and grok a few pages of Dante's Inferno does become preferable after a time. Lists of classic literature abound and nearly any of them are top-notch.