I also didn't find out until this evening. I don't watch TV (only prerecorded series/movies), don't use Twitter at all, and I only really read tech news sites during the day. I don't even have a live TV subscription anymore. Most of it is just so commercial and crap and I was sick of paying for it. :) I have zero interest in sports. And I never do podcasts nor YouTube.

I generally just don't care enough about what happens in the world anymore, though this particular quake is really terrible of course. But there's nothing I can do about it.

Just once a day or so I might check the local newspaper website, for things that might affect me. Which is where I heard about it because something this big will make the front page even there.

But generally I don't miss the world news at all, I don't feel FOMO or less informed. I'm not a boring person either IMO, I just like being active in tech and the creative (maker) community, with things I can actually influence. I'm very interested in people I meet. It's more about taking control of information.

I do the same with instant messaging. I can be quite active but only on my terms. All my group chats are muted, and all but the most important people too. I'll see your messages eventually but when it suits me. If it was urgent you'd have called anyway.

It's good to know about this band assignment though as I'm also a HAM operator. But I don't use the 10m band that this frequency is on anyway.

There's a certain calm that comes from closing the news sites and social networking feeds, and just checking everything as a digest at the end of the work day.

Staying informed is good, but there are relatively small number of things that need a reaction in real-time. Eventual consistency is sufficient, and frees cognitive cycles for things I have immediate influence over.

No need to be amazed. I have had a busy day, I don't use Twitter much anymore, and I haven't checked any news sites today. Anyway there were no comments and I just wanted to add context for anyone who missed it (like me).

Germany has a huge number of people who are either from Turkey or have relatives in Turkey and yet the media coverage of this was surprisingly low-key considering the number of casualties and that it's an ongoing crisis. It was hard to miss if you actually checked news sources but the sheer number of casualties and missing persons is easy to overlook from how it is being reported on.

I was deep into a hyper fixation hole at work today and crawled out of it only to hear about this tragedy. It felt pretty weird...