no news is best news

Remembering that the news makes me feel bad

A few days ago I unsubscribed from two well-written, timely and informative newsletters.

Both focused on covering politics and the news, mostly in terms of how politics often is the news. Both were American-centric, but the U.S. does have a rather lot of influence on the world.

Over the past few days, I found myself starting to read the current edition of each newsletter, then stop. A few times I just straight up deleted them, unread. I thought about how I stopped checking the news on a daily basis and how every time I have checked the news since then, it reinforces what a wise decision that was.

These newsletters were making me feel pretty much the same way as ingesting the news on a daily basis had: bad.

If I want to feel bad, I can just step on the scale. It’s quicker, costs me nothing and fifteen minutes later I’ll have either forgotten about it or rationalized it in some way (“Focus on the long term, not daily fluctuations”). The bad feeling does not linger.

Reading bad or unpleasant news–especially political news–lingers. It burrows into my psyche. I don’t like that. Is it a me problem? Possibly.

But I have an easy me solution–just don’t read that stuff! I can still stay informed without soaking in it, as it were.

And so my email inbox grows slightly slimmer. Now if I can just do the same.

I read the news today oh boy

Just before turning in for the night, I decided to check out the CBC News website (https://www.cbc.ca/news if you’re curious) to answer the question:

What have I missed since I stopped regularly checking the news?

The answer:

Pretty much nothing that would make any kind of difference in my daily (or weekly, monthly or yearly) life.

I’d say that a lot of the stories fall into a giant bucket of, “So what?” It’s just stuff to fill the page. And while not all of it is negative, much of it is. And I just don’t need this in my life anymore. I’ve Marie Kondo’d my way out of my daily news fix and the joy be sparkin’. Well, maybe not joy, but there’s certainly no feeling that I’m missing out on something by skipping out on the news of the day.

I’m rather enjoying this purging and simplification process. What will I toss aside next? Come back at some undetermined date in the future to find out.

Bonus random thought: Medium has a lot of articles on note-taking apps.

All the news that’s fit to ignore

folded newspapers
Note: I have nothing against German newspapers. Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

A short while back I wrote about how I’ve found a new way to check out the news (tl,dr; I check later in the day now, not first thing in the morning, and I’ve unsubscribed to some news-focused newsletters–imagine that, a newsletter focused on news!). Then I received the latest from Adam Mastroianni’s Experimental History, in which he talks about this very thing!

A pretty good rule of thumb is “don’t do things that make you feel terrible unless you have a very good reason.” I feel terrible when I read the news, because all the headlines are things like “Republicans Vote to Reclassify Plastic as a Vegetable“ or “Birder Murderer Murders Thirty-Third Birder” or “Bradley Cooper Calls Holocaust ‘Big Misunderstanding’”. Sure enough: studies show that reading the news makes people feel bad.

While I have multiple reasons for putting more distance between me and the news, the above quote really nails the main point–reading the news just plain makes me feel bad. Good news stories (as in good news, not the quality of the news story itself) are fairly uncommon, so it’s mostly outrage or things gone wrong or people being mean, dumb or evil. Reading these things doesn’t improve my quality of life, and it takes away time I could spend looking at cats, like these:

And so I’ve decided to join Adam and purge news completely from my daily or weekly routines. I am certain I will still hear about stuff, both good and bad, and I am even more certain I won’t spend any time during the day balling my fist and shaking it at the monitor over something I’ve read. We’ll see.

In the meantime, I can heartily recommend Experimental History, which is presented with wit, intelligence and heart or WIH. Hmm, may need to work on that…

Checking out (of the news)

The news these days is generally bad.

To wit:

  • Global warming continues apace and not a whole lot is being down by governments to slow it down sufficiently to give us time to adapt
  • Related to the above, there is a growing sense among some in the public of, “Well, it’s gonna happen, anyway, why sacrifice or make changes now? It’s too late!”
  • Russia invaded Ukraine in February and the conflict has been bloody and filled with atrocities and war crimes on the Russian side. This has had ripple effects on the global economy
  • Speaking of the global economy, the combination of the pandemic and mysterious other things which economic experts often never seem to fully explain, has lead to, among other things:
    • Shortages of various products, everything from certain types of food to electronics
    • Inflation. It’s back, baby!
    • Profiteering thanks to unfettered capitalism allowing companies to raise prices under the cover of “inflation” to make even more profits off of everyone else
  • The pandemic continues, with cases rising in some places and the sixth wave (or second Omicron wave, as some call it) subsiding. The “good” news here is most pandemic restrictions are gone, so people are basically left to fend for themselves in most settings. Also, most people think either the pandemic is over or the worst is behind us, so yay?
  • Mass shootings continue apace (another one today in the U.S. Thoughts and prayers).
  • The slide away from democracy continuing in the U.S., along with what will undoubtedly be fun side effects for Canada
  • TikTok. Yes, just TikTok.

There is good news, too, of course, even if you sometimes have to look for it. Here’s one I found on the CBC News site (from yesterday) about Angela Lansbury receiving a special Tony Award. Lansbury is an absolute delight and still active at 96.

But generally, it is bad. And the bad stuff always gets promoted over the good, for various reasons.

I subscribed to the Next Draft newsletter by Dave Pell. He’s a good writer, covers the stuff you’d expect to be covered, and does it with both observations both witty and cogent. But today as I was reading about the brutal Chinese treatment of the Uyghur minority, 61% (that’s over 42 million people) of Trump voters apparently believing the “great replacement” conspiracy theory, and other maladies of the world, I scrolled down to the bottom of the newsletter and hit the unsubscribe link.

I’m not going to avoid the news, but I am going to keep a tighter control on how and where I view it. Part of that I’ve already started: Checking the news is no longer part of my morning routine. I do it later in the afternoon. I figure if the world suddenly starts to end, I’ll probably find out, anyway.

I feel better already.