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Comment by h2odragon | Hacker News Reader

Far away problems are so much more interesting than those nearby. You needn't really do anything about them, and its much easier to assign your own valuation to anything you do. Your successes can be trumpeted as much as you like and your failures need never be known to anyone but you.

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This is true, there's an inner kibitzer inside all of us who needs material. This is the real source of entertainment that the article mentions. Every section of the paper caters to this: what would you do about the war, would you have given poor people better benefits, would you have slapped Chris Rock, what would you have worn to the awards, would you go out with that guy, how should your team have set up their defense?

The only actionable section is the weather report, you can decide shorts or umbrella.

The piece is utterly right. News in the constantly-coming format is junk food. Almost no context is given, even thought nothing at all makes sense if you just watched the news. What is NATO, what is a central bank? Why are the same teams at the top of the league? All of these things need some basic explanation that is never in the news, but always in any basic long-form piece.

International and national news are often important, but rarely immediate. By not immediate I mean that you can't affect it, it won't affect you and you don't have to do anything about it. Hyperinflation in Zimbabwe? Interesting, but nothing to do with me really. Ship stuck sideways in a canal? That might cause problems at work later and maybe I should get that bike I was planning on now rather than later, but I'll be fine. War between nearby countries that produce oil and food... I better check my emergency stocks are in good shape and that full electric car sounds good right about now? And so on, important and some of them will affect you, but usually with a delay or in a roundabout way.

Local on the other hand. Very immediate, but often not that important, at least outside your local area. Sometimes you can even affect things and if it's something that can affect you and requires action, it might be a matter of hours. Water main breaks, you won't have running water for three days? Fill up buckets, head to the store, right now! But that's a minor inconvenience compared to international news, if they end up affecting you.

Yes! And unlike nearby problems you know you can't really do anything about them. How many people in the US would read a national story about crime or education without knowing who the police chief is of their city, or who is on the school board, or even who is on their city council..

> Far away problems are so much more interesting than those nearby.

However, as the world gets more and more connected, far away problems have a tendency to become nearby problems real fast.

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