[kieckerjan]

A corollary of this idea that also the bad stuff that you read leaves a trace, and not necessarily a good trace. To continue the food metaphor: like junk food there is junk reading and while it may satisfy some need it is all informational empty calories and transfats. Which brings up a subject I pondered many times: to go on an information diet. Any thoughts on that would be appreciated.

[7222aafdcf68cfe]

In this context, I often refer to the essay by Rolf Dobelli, titled Avoid News: Towards a Healthy News Diet.

It can be found on the Internet Archive: https://web.archive.org/web/20130117104220/http://dobelli.co...

[kieckerjan]

Actually Dobelli was the one who got me thinking about this. I tend to agree with him, although eschewing all news is a bit too extreme to my taste. I tried scaling back my intake by switching from a daily paper to a weekly paper, but one has to have tremendous discipline to avoid the news of the day on the internet. Especially if the internet is your job, like it is for me.

[7222aafdcf68cfe]

I 100% concur, it's not easy.

I block / filter most of the news sites I might wander to mindlessly with uBlock, and even filter out DOM elements that have certain keywords.

I also found https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events to be a good alternative for daily news without the nonsense.

[DavidPiper]

Chiming in as someone who's been doing this. Haven't watched a TV news program since 2020.

The only thing in 4 years that I "missed" (which it turns out actually means "was delayed in finding out about to a degree that other people actively comment on it") was the recent escalations in the middle-east.

And even that I was only about 24 hours behind.

You really miss nothing, particularly with the amount of passive news we ingest via social media. (I also have a fairly minimal social media diet.)

[hi41]

Can you provide a link to the weekly paper please

[scyzoryk_xyz]

I applied the same thing to my media dieting - I have made a conscious effort to sort of curate and eliminate certain pages and news sources.

This orange site I have mixed feelings about though.

[fikama]

Could you share? What are the media outlets that passed positively your elimination? And you are still using them?

[eviks]

Since the "good" stuff can also leave a bad trace, and there is nothing to measure (remember, it's there even if you don't remember it), how would you approach the diet composition?

[Painsawman123]

one of the most popular things in modern society,'modern music' (whatever that means)is not different from 'junk food'.. 'Modern music' is to your brain what junk food is to your body! Modern music with its repetitive beats optimized to give you a brief 'dopamine' have a similar effect on your brain as junk food does on your body!! in the same way that junk food provides a quick burst of pleasure but lacks nutritional value, modern music offers instant gratification through repetitive beats and catchy melodies while offering little to no informational value to the brain . .... "junk food", "short videos", "porn" and "modern music" these things are all designed to give you a brief dopamine rush ;)

[freilanzer]

Meditation would probably help a lot with that diet. Not just reduce your informational intake, but also live mindfully.

[socksy]

I guess one start might be to avoid the comments section on HN ;)