Hacker News Reader

Welcome back! You might find these better uses of your news time.

* The Conversation - https://theconversation.com/us

* Wikipedia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events

If you find yourself reading too much this can help too

* LeechBlock - https://www.proginosko.com/leechblock

Thanks :)

My favorite is Delayed Gratification : A print magazine that writes about events after the fact. Deep dives into a few topics and great infographics

"The world’s first Slow Journalism magazine.

A beautiful quarterly publication which revisits the events of the last three months to offer in-depth, independent journalism in an increasingly frantic world."

https://www.slow-journalism.com/

This is a great find! Just what I have been looking for. Thank you.

I do this manually - after a big event, I don't read the news articles about it since I know much will be wrong. If I still remember it 6 months later, I read the Wikipedia article about it. If I don't remember, well maybe it's not that important to me.

is there a sample of the magazine somewhere? not gonna sign up before I know if its any good…

Thanks these look really interesting.

A fair perspective. It's also possible that your isolation from media has let you return to see what was wrong with that media all along. Possibly you were simply blind to how bad it was before, or just used to it.

I concur that it is worse than it was, but I would say 10-30% worse not "completely different."

It would be nice if there was a little less hate generally.

As someone who hasn't been in prison but has done a good job of not letting media outlets getting to me (since I just block a lot of them through my pihole), he's spot on. I've had people on a discord server whom I was friends with basically oust me simply because I had some marginally more conservative views than them. My experiences were invalid because they did not align with their worldviews. That is the media today with social media platforms amplified in that regard as well.

I'm not sure I follow how some former friends booting you out of a Discord server relates to the media. Are you giving that as an example of people so immersed in a left-wing media culture that they can't handle differing opinions? That's certainly something I've seen more and more of on both ends of the political spectrum. I do think there are more moderates on the left than the right, but in both cases the extremes do seem to be hostile to nuance.

Man the first time I surfed the web it was crazy information overload. I had to nope out and walk away.

I think I just feel let down by people the number of people I looked up to being publically hateful. People that are too smart to think that it is ok. I just don't understand how they got there.

If you don’t mind when did enter prison? Basically what time period are you comparing against?

Come to think of it have you considered writing an article about this? You have a very unique perspective since most people experienced it as it happed (proverbial frog in the boiling pot).

I bet a number of outlets might be interested in publishing it, or you could DIY on Medium or Substack or something.

Yeah no. Already have a heavy load and my life is already F'd enough, I can't be putting any more rocks into my load by amplifying attention on me in any way thanks. Plus a guy six months out still has a lot of mental issues, not back to being human yet :) A year living in a space smaller than an elevator with another person, a bunk bed, and desk with no out time because COVID doesn't help. On the plus side when you read the same magazine cover to cover 50 or so times you get a different take on it and feel expert enough to spout nonsense about it :)

I understand. Thanks for what you posted above.

Aye, I nearly did a stint in prison but had a great lawyer. Wish you success adapting back to this crazy society.

I appreciate your anecdote about reading the same magazine over and over. Really is true you can become a connoisseur about anything! I'm glad you have a good humor about it. https://xkcd.com/915/

I wish you the best of luck!

I'm glad that HN has been able to provide you with some resources. It's really nice to see the more wholesome side of HN, and I'm actually going to have to bookmark some of these to check out later.

Entered in 2017 and got back to "the World" six months ago.

Pretty sure things were just as shitty in 2017

Seems like OP would disagree with you strongly and had a rather intense reaction to the state of media in 2022. Do you have anything to offer a counter opinion?

Not the poster, but I concur that things weren't all that different in 2017. I would say that OP's reaction is caused by selectively remembering the state of the world. Living in the environment where mass media is ubiquitous, you don't quite realize just how bad things are or the negative effects it has on people. You only become aware of that after being removed from it for a period of time (e.g. being in prison) and then getting reintroduced to it.

As a counterpoint, most living in a given system rarely notice even significant changes when they happen gradually over months and years. Being removed from a place cuts you off from being a part of that, when you return all the changes will hit you at once full force. But someone who never left will just shrug their shoulders and go "haven't you heard?". It can't seem so strange to them because they've been conditioned into it, it's become normal.

I hear similar stories from people who move abroad and return, I wouldn't simply dismiss them.

Cable news has always been terrible during my periods of awareness. The pattern of always breaking news filled with outrage. The term outrage porn was coined in 2009. It's been obvious to me for a very long time that it's garbage and not worthy watching.

2017 is a small step backwards. Most mainstream forums are pretty shit at any point in time.

Maybe sites like Twitter were, but it wasn't EVERYTHING like it is now. There just wasn't so much hateful speaking. There wasn't so much tribalization, otherization. Sure Reddit sucked but it wasn't hateful. Now it seems everything is full of unnecessary snide comments about whomever is perceived as the out group or other tribe with no self awareness of the ugliness of the comments. Educated conservative university professors I once admired, supposedly compassionate liberal entertainers I once enjoyed have all been infected by ugliness. Even music making websites with zero politics in the discussion just full of hate for no reason. Everything is just gross. It seems no one sees each other as human anymore. You know you are missing something when Liberals are hating a pot smoking, Bernie Sanders voter because he has pot smoking Art Bell type discussions with people and Conservatives are adopting him as one of their own. It's just pure tribal at that point. Seriously, WTF world is this?

I think it's strange and sad that I should find the society I've returned to more full of anger and hate and with less compassion than prison.

Agreed...The Joe Rogan thing is crazy (assuming this is what you're talking about).

He gets lumped in with Conservatives because EVERYONE must be lumped in to the left or the right these days.

You can't be in the middle anymore.

Yeah that one I really really confuses me.

Joe has not stood still since 2017 either, he profits off the outrage just a much as any other media company that makes money from viewers or listeners.

His podcasts used (going back a bit before 2017) to be chill conversations ranging from interesting to bonkers depending on the guest. He is consumed by politics now unfortunately, and it just gets tiresome.

Joe Rogan is very well paid to have his opinions. I do wonder who is paying him though; it can’t just be Spotify.

I actually distinctly remember that the internet started to deteriorate rapidly the year Trump got elected because he completely took over social media and the news cycle. He was the topic in all comment sections, even when you watched a video on completely unrelated topics, or read a technical subreddits. It was crazy. At the end of his election, Trump was banned from social media, and I feel like there is some fresh air now in the internet. There's still some lingering stench for sure, but I think you were actually "lucky" to miss the worst of it all.

I built https://legiblenews.com for this very reason. Once per day at 6p PST it grabs the latest headlines from Wikipedia and displays them in a minimal format that does not induce anxiety. My fav part is that it judiciously links to Wikipedia articles so you can actually learn about the areas where things are happening.

You can find the backstory at https://legiblenews.com/about

What really happened, I think, is that journalism stopped paying, so more and more of what's there became tied to career ideologues. Increasingly "the news" is just a summary of what blue checkmark Twitter accounts said yesterday. And it's easy to lie when you're only speaking to your own followers.

As well, there's an unresolved demographic shift from an aged Boomer generation towards Millennials. Unresolved in the sense that assets haven't changed ownership, infrastructure hasn't been revised, and political leadership has done the bare minimum to keep up. So everyone now looks towards politics(or maybe tech) for a piece of the pie, unrest events have risen, and yet political disengagement is also high.

I got on the cryptocurrency train years back, as somewhat of an exit to the madness. It has treated me alright, though it's also a faith.

This is an interesting perspective. I feel like a frog in a pot of boiling water, the discourse in my life is just getting gradually worse and most of the media is happy to gaslight people into thinking...Well, anything that gets a click. I'd be interested to hear any more of your perspective.

Regardless of news media, I really want to wish you the best of, well, success more than luck. I do some prisoner-related activism (although it's for political prisoners), and that's enough to relate at least somewhat to the "I felt like I walked out into an alien civilization" sense that many people have.

... and don't spend too much time on HN :-P

Check https://synchro.net. You can access thru BBS's (telnet/SSH) or NNTP too, and you'll have night convos at FIDOnet and DOVEnet, both tech and non tech.

I find AllSides to be a good way to get a recap across the spectrum of opinion, without someone trying to force an opinion of their own.

https://www.allsides.com

It's pretty rare that I'll downvote someone and also respond to them.

I agree with your general thrust, in general but I think you gave up too soon and have too harsh of a take or at least got too unlucky about the sources that you take in.

There are good news sources out there. Go listen to 3 or 4 of The Economist's podacasts or to Left Right and Center. There are real journalists out there. The landscape is worse, yes. But it isn't worse everywhere and where it is better it is truly better.