https://cbsaustin.com/news/local/texas-oklahoma-ranked-among...
It turns out that it is wholly based on a corporate PR puff piece by Wallethub, with a very pseudoscientific and manipulative use of statistics to reach its conclusions. The arbitrary weight assigned to the entire category of physical and property crimes was 15%. Bullying incident count was weighted as more important than drug overdoses. And when factoring in Covid, they weighted based on vaccination rates - not actual local hospitalizations/deaths.
There must always be a "most safe" and "least safe" state (by a given measure) - but if the spread between them is insignificant then that's not particularly important information. Even less so when the headline qualifies with "ranks among" so they're not even the actual least safe.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1109011/coronavirus-covi...
Also, the methodology gave murders per Capita double weight and vaccine percentages double weight. Both are numbers bound between 0 and 1, and both have a significant impact on population safety.
So no, I'd much rather talk about why someone would make those weightings and what the correct ratings should be using a statistical analysis mixed with some judgements of how safe I feel in the face of those statistics.
> Nothing at all. It distracts me from my family, friends, work, and myself.
> I have no interesting insights or original thoughts about it, and if I did,
> absolutely no one would care. So why read it?
Do you vote or participate in politics in any way or do events in the news directly affect your life? One reason it's rational to read the news: If you don't read the news, then you're at risk of lacking important contextual knowledge about society and social norms. It's pragmatic to keep track of these conversations to avoid embarrassment and to not behave in ways that might offend others. I find it useful to be aware of contentious issues on which I might have a side or a stake.
> If you don't read the news, then you're at risk of lacking important contextual knowledge about society and social norms.
Unfortunately there's very little news that doesn't have an agenda. So I'm not getting the news. I'm getting someone's opinions with various facts spun in a way so as to try to get me to vote one way or another. Is that a better way to be informed on how to vote?
I guess it's up to the individual to choose what they prefer.
"To be, or not to be ...: Whether 'tis nobler ... to sleep No more ... [or] in the mind to suffer The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune"
I.e.: if you want to participate, then some degree of effort is involved.
And I already gave up the game of trying not to offend people. I say what I think, and if it happens that I offend someone, I'll consider it when it happens and apologize or ignore it, depending on if it makes sense to me.
It’s been at least a decade since news has been a reflection of social norms (I’m in Canada). It feels more and more disconnected and like they’re either pushing agendas or simply filling airtime so they can serve the right amount of ads.
Most of it is a spectacle and my actions and point of view are entirely irrelevant to it. Frankly, I don’t believe a lot of the news is even rooted in reality. To have a point of view on it, or to have feelings about it, would be to lend legitimacy to something I sincerely believe is part of a bizarre, performative, ephemeral blob of social invention. I don’t mean to sound absurd or like a conspiracy theorist at all; I really can’t see how much of what’s in the media is remotely objective or connected to any kind of shared reality that is practical and sane.
As far as being embarrassed, I find I can get by with simply listening to people and letting them get their ideas across. They like to express themselves and I’m content to listen. I typically won’t be embarrassed because no one really cares what I think or what I think I know, too. No one asks unless I say something in the first place.
I think we’re encouraged to believe it’s some other way, but if you keep to yourself you’ll find very quickly that indeed, almost no one cares. Even here on hacker news, the vast majority of readers don’t care about what I wrote. It’s irrelevant to them, and that’s okay. It’s probably a good thing.
The only people in my tiny corner of all of this who have any remote concerns about me are right here, near me, in my life. The rest is mostly a spectacle. If it can effect me, the chances that I can effect it in any meaningful way are infinitely tiny.
I do vote, too, but again… I’m not convinced it means what people think it means, or that it leads to things I hope it will. On the other hand, by working on local concerns I can actually make a difference. The changes we can make like restoring a watershed to improve wildlife diversity, reduce erosion, improve runoff capacity, and so on can be a real model for improving these features of other municipalities. That can matter many times more than a vote for the leader of my country; it can lead to real data that people turn to improve the places they live in. It seems totally uninteresting and pointless compared to the notion of democracy and national governance, but from my point of view, it’s far more pragmatic and connected to reality.
I agree with you overall. I want to be aware of contentious issues on which I might have a side or a stake too. I think the difference between us is only that I think the scope of these issues is extremely small; there’s very little I come across in my day where it truly matters at all what I believe, and any stake I may have is almost exclusively relevant to me alone.
At least in my area there is a surprising large number of things the city council can do to improve (or not improve) the everyday lives of me and my loved one.
I love that those decisions are usually very accessible in that they don't concern themselves with big sweeping legal frameworks and fundamental political ideologies.
Even without being a council member it feels nice to ride on a bike lane that you helped to bring to live.
You don't "win" everytime of course but you tend to learn a lot about how other political factions think on a local level.
I could do better. I followed the Ukraine-Russia war for a while, and although I wasn’t glued to it, I put too much focus on it.
There is literally nothing that happens when I know what’s going on there. Nothing at all. It distracts me from my family, friends, work, and myself. I have no interesting insights or original thoughts about it, and if I did, absolutely no one would care. So why read it?
I think it’s worth getting a sense of where things are every quarter or so? Over time I feel myself moving further towards that kind of pattern, and I spend far more time interested in my little corner of the world. I read relatively more local reporting and look at what’s happening with my municipality, the mayoral and council proceedings, try to find out what’s changing with local problems, etc. But even that isn’t a requirement.
I’m getting involved with a 50 year plan to help restore a watershed. Things like this seem infinitely more important and worthwhile than the news.