There’s so much so-called “news”, but most of it is just noise. In this situation, it seems easiest to either A) get consumed by it, trying to follow everything and reading every “he said what?”-piece posted or B) become more or less apathetic and avoid news altogether.
To be able to make proper choices and help move things in the right direction, B) is not an option, as you need to understand current events to at least a minimal level, but A) leaves you just as clueless, overflowing with useless information, with a heavily worn-down ability to be source critical, not remembering where you read any given “fact”.
So how do you keep up to date with current events? Have you found a good way? Am I mistaken in my above assessment?
I aim for B. I can’t seem to avoid it though so i stick to a set of sites mostly. i have a folder of bookmarked pages that i check every day or three by using ‘open all in new tabs’, labelled ‘news and junk’. it contains slashdot, hackernews, phoronix, techdirt, lemmy and reddit. my reddit is subscribed only to a very small set of local subs, because reddit is trash but i can’t get my entire hometown to move to lemmy. also in that folder are a group of local websites, for the library, parks department, a couple local event lists, a local computer group, a local linux users group, a furry events calendar and local amateur radio stuff.
one things i really wish existed is an extension that detects and blocks any site leading to garbage about the current US president, who i despise and want to ignore, despite ignoring it being to my detriment most likely. that vile man needs to go away.
additionally, i have a collection of hundreds of map sites bookmarked, with a folder containing a set i check with about the same regularity as my news sites. ventusky.com for weather, adsb.fi for tracking aircraft (i live by a major air force base in the US, directly under the main landing flight path, so i hear and see large planes flying under 1000 feet a lot), the noaa space weather dashboard page for space weather enthusiasts to see if aurora might be visible and for amateur radio solar radiation interference likelihood, timeanddate.com to check for astronomical events like eclipses, communitycrimemap.com to see reported crime going on near me, https://redskyready.com/auxcomm-usa-dashboard/ for a variety of maps to see if anything stands out like fires or earthquakes and also to check amateur radio stuff, and finally https://rsoe-edis.org/eventMap to see worldwide disasters that might be important to know about.
my system doesn’t keep me perfectly up to date but it covers what i think i need to know and comes from sources i trust well enough (although not entirely, like with communitycrimemap which is lexisnexus and the news sites are mostly aggregators with dubious links at times)
Thanks for a detailed account of your system!
I think that man (and the team around him) is a perfect example of someone who exploits this barrage of “information” to their advantage, and does that very well. I remember how nice the relative silence some months into Biden’s presidency (after the insurrection stopped being a constant headliner in the news cycle). This is one of the reasons I desperately want to find a way to keep on top of things, because it feels like the overall events matter if I can only cut through the noise and understand the big picture. I live in Europe, and current events leads to a lot of uncertainty for the region that I think is better to understand and be prepared for, rather than ignorant of.
This is an interesting source I have not really explored myself (aside from weather and occasionally a flight map). I need to investigate what kinds of local maps could be beneficial to have bookmarked. The event map is already bookmarked now!