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by 878654Tom 1025 days ago
I suggest people who read a lot of news to read up on Rolf Dobelli's book named Stop Reading the news.

I found it an eye-opener and have since blocked all news websites on every device. Currently 3 weeks without a newspaper and I don't feel I am missing a thing.

The best chapters were the ones were he explained with great examples how irrelevant the news was, how news would make you less creative and feel much smaller than you really are.

Now, he also clearly tries to distinguish news and longreads. If your paper is a daily paper than tries to be very generic... you can skip it. If your paper is a medical journal and your profession is a doctor. Keep reading that medical journal.

For all social media... just delete your account and hold out for a week of withdrawal symptoms. You won't miss a thing.
2 comments
lairv 1025 days ago
How is HN different ?

To me HN and Twitter hit that sweet spot of productive procrastination, where I feel like I'm keeping up with the tech world and learning new things, while in reality most of the things I read here aren't valuable and it's just another way to procrastinate

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878654Tom 1025 days ago
HN is very slow in my eyes. The front page stays quite the same and the news is more targeted to technical people.

Is there also gibberisch and pure marketing? Yes. But that will always be on an open-platform.

Reddit was the same at the start but has now become "slower tiktok" where I even get the feeling 80% of the comments are placed by bots, marketeers,... Even my local subreddits became pure thrash.

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theshrike79 1025 days ago
I stopped following the 24 hour news cycle a good decade ago when I noticed it wasn't a positive experience and affected my mental health in a bad way.

I don't need by the minute updates on a natural disaster that doesn't affect my life in any way. Nor do I need to know every celebrity's or politician's daily movements or anything else.

I'm fine getting yesterdays news today as a summary.

Currently I only end up in on a news site if a friend sends me a link to one and the subject is interesting.

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