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Comment by nindalf | Hacker News Reader

Pro tip from an absolute rando: don’t bother with any source of breaking news. Read a weekly paper that summarises the important stuff.

If something is truly pressing, you’ll hear about it from friends or coworkers.

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From the television era: Don't watch news channels; important news will be on all the channels.

I'm not convinced there is really any important news.

There's a spectacularly untimely take...

For most of the world, war between two countries in the middle east doesn't really have any direct impact, right? Liek, if I didn't know about it, nothing would change for me.

I suppose I don't know. Does your economy use much oil?

Let's say the price of petrol goes up for me. Does it matter if I know why?

I feel like it can matter a lot to be able to make a reasonably reliable prediction about whether it's likely to go up or down tomorrow and by about how much, and thus whether and when to act on the potential need to ensure some sort of access to supply.

For me, that largely entails just not doing anything. I do own a car but rarely use it since my neighborhood is very walkable, and the tank is usually close to full. Even my lawn tools are electric. But if I relied on gasoline for a commute (for instance) then being able to make good guesses about getting hold of it is advantageous, in a way that is fungible and easily shared.

At that point you may as well day trade oil futures. Its at least easier than trying to time when to fill your gas tank based on geopolitics.

You say that as though they were two semiotically distinguishable activities. Futures trading is wholesale and what we talked about is retail, but they are the same general line of business and if you think no one would ever do it to try to avoid waiting all day for an empty pump, then check out how the 70s oil shock and supply crisis - the last time anyone ever dared "sanction" the U. S. and A. - played out here domestically.

If it is supply you are actually concerned about you buy a couple jerry cans that you keep full. Watching geopolitics to try to time anything still makes no sense.

Then you're only getting things important to viewership. Nobody's putting an economically critical trade deal on all the channels, or a genocide in Yemen. But Princess Diana dying, that's gonna get coverage.

Especially as she's supposed to have died 28 years ago.

> Especially as she's supposed to have died 28 years ago

If you don’t watch television news, flipping through the channels can be genuinely surprising. Because if it’s Princess Diana’s birthday, I almost guarantee one of them will be running a retrospective segment.

Suggestions for some sources to read? I know the Economist, anything else others would recommend?

I really like the Economist as a source of weekly news.

Somehow I’ve ended up primarily reading their daily recap in the app. They already have a full article on this crash. That usually means it’ll be in the magazine next week.

The Economist?

I just unsubscribed from the digital edition. A neoliberal and globalization bias in overall tone.

They've always been upfront about their bias, in no way are they trying to hide it.

Way back when I was in college 20 years ago they ran a very funny article poking fun at all the PhD's doing "deconstruction" on The Economist. Like super post-modernist fluff. I could tell the writer had a great time responding to it.

Their punchline: "so there you have it - a newspaper to make you feel good about tomorrow by promoting capitalism today!"

Haha, that's so funny.

Agree, The Economist knows who they are and they're very happy to throw some acidic British humor into their writing for fun.

I have gave up on E. once they supported GWB over Gore. I can barely understand over the top devotion to neoliberalism and deregulation. But the shortcomings of GWB were sticking out in the campaign, so closing the eyes and singing "la la liberalism" was way too much for me.

Le Monde Diplomatique

https://mondediplo.com/

Available in many languages

Any background on funding sources/ongoing sources of revenue/ownership?

> The publication is 51% owned by Le Monde diplomatique SA, a subsidiary company of Le Monde, from which it remains editorially independent.

Le Monde is owned by a French billionaire: https://www.alliancemagazine.org/blog/democracy-in-france-de...

Economist for me. I don't know of any other sources that can reach the same level.

I had been a Economist subscriber for almost 20 years. But then gradually I realized that their reporting on some issues are extremely biased and they conveniently skip reporting some facts to match their intended narrative and lead the reader to distorted conclusions. So I would assume they would be doing the same with other topics as well. I did not renew my subscription.

Did you pick up something else?

Could you give some examples?

The situation in Iraq and Afghanistan as it was beginning... they took an entirely "Might Makes Right" position, facts be damned.

Well you're missing out and stunting your own worldview if you stick to only one source of information (regardless of which it is).

What do you read? I’m an economist reader too for weekly news.

Would love other sources, but it’s hard to find anything with similar depth and a similar lack of sensational-ization found in most news.

Edit: Oh, and global reach. The economist covers earth in almost equal detail for every region. Not quite equal of course, but darn close compared to most outlets.

I think WSJ is a good complement to the Economist. They have good, unsensationalized coverage of the facts. I ignore their opinion columns as they don't seem very serious.

This was mostly true 20 years ago. This has not been the case for many years at this point. WSJ is now the print version of Fox News.

That hasn't been my experience at all outside the opinion section, which is precisely what you described.

The main section feels pretty anti Trump, actually. Not by choice but reality has an anti Trump bias ;)

They are also quite good at labeling their opinion sections clearly, which I think a lot of other papers aren't doing. Their news section is basically Reuter's.

WSJ is nearly tabloid quality. If you have self respect, read the FT; if you just want weekend reading, read the FT Weekend (it comes with the FT Weekend too, which is excellent long form journalism but not “news” per se).

That's just another Murdoch rag, I wouldn't wipe my arse with it. Better no news than his news. You aren't getting any sort of counterpoint you are getting whatever supports his world view.

As they said, you can skip the opinion columns.

You think the opinion pages are the only place he pushes his agenda? The very stories they report are selected to further the narrative he wants. That's why apologies and retractions are always tiny.

With all due respect, have you read it regularly?

In my experience, WSJ just reports what happened and who said what in a very dry way.

My impression is that their news section provides a very anti Republican party view. Note that this is my impression, not the paper's stance. They don't really take any, apart from the opinion section, which I ignore. The opinion section has a massive pro republican bent.

> Lying by omission

I'll admit, I might have a blind spot here because I'm only reading 2 newspapers. That being said, I'm not sure of any stories reported by the other news outlets which were ignored/downplayed by WSJ.

> apologies and retractions

Happen when they happen. I remember a few per month. But since they're so dry, there's very little scope for major corrections. If they say, "this guy said that", there's very little to correct there. Occasionally, they mis-paraphrase someone and have to correct their report. Most sound like honest mistakes to me.

EDIT:

> You aren't getting any sort of counterpoint you are getting whatever supports his world view.

Fair enough, but you mostly don't get any points to counter in the first place. Only plain dry facts. I go to the Economist for opinions and counter opinions. (*side note, the Economist should publish more counter opinions IMO)

https://newlinesmag.com/ has been a favorite of mine lately if you wanna give that a try, it's got global coverage and there's always something interesting to read

of what, bias?

Christian Science Monitor, Mother Jones.

I also read the Economist. Other than that, Wall Street Journal is quite good at purely factual, unopinionated coverage. Note that their Opinion section is heavily biased towards the American right, but I mostly ignore it. It's clearly labeled as Opinion.

Between the Economist and WSJ, I get a good overview of opinions and facts.

I really enjoy the Monocle "Globalist" podcast which is well-produced, of global range, and a welcome departure from the npr/kqed bubble I was immersed in.

It comes out daily.

Tangle

https://www.readtangle.com/

https://legiblenews.com

reuters

Pro tip from another rando: If you hear about it from friends or coworkers, don't assume it's pressing.

It might just be sensational and of course they repeat it, just like they'd send on a chain letter/email etc. back in the day.

Form your own opinion, based on multiple source plus your own judgement.

> Form your own opinion, based on multiple source plus your own judgement

I think the essence of these statements is less that you should literally listen to whatever distilled amount of world news your coworkers are talking about and take it as fact, but that if it's remotely necessary for you to even be aware of, let alone have an opinion about, it'll present itself somehow in real life. After that, if it qualifies as relevant to your life, then go about searching for more info, but a vast majority of anything you could hear or read about or watch probably doesn't qualify.

Government policy, sure, if you need to respond to or act on it somehow. Conflict in the middle east? Sure, if you or someone you know has ties there. But again you'll probably just hear about it because it's directly impactful, or you can monitor specifically for those updates using narrow channels.

"The Week" is a great magazine for this purpose.

pro tip from an internet addict - r/aviation has a great community of pilots and aviation techs with insightful comments.

https://old.reddit.com/r/aviation/comments/1l9hqzp/air_india...

The problem is, they often assume you already read the news and don’t say what happen just provide the analysis without context.

Heck, Spiegel does that with news on the same day. You get some background article without starting with the facts of what happened, as if everybody reads the news every two hours.

This is why I like the Economist. They don't assume the reader has background knowledge.

http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/hatethenews

“news” detox is as important as a healthy or non existent interaction with social media.

Unfortunately for everyone's brains, this turned out to basically not be true with COVID- only real news fans (or people with expertise in the relevant science, but there are way less of those) were remotely aware that offices probably weren't going to be closed for only two weeks[0]. If you followed the news closely you stocked up on toilet paper when there were runs on it in Hong Kong, before there were runs on it where you were, etc. But if you only got news from the office water-cooler you'd have been none the wiser.

This is one of those exceptions that prove the rule though, I think.

[0] I had this conversation with people multiple times so it must have been common

If nobody followed the news or social media, there wouldn’t have been runs on toilet paper to begin with, as there never was a shortage to begin with and it was all just mass hysteria.

Unfortunately, we do not live in the best of all possible worlds. One must plan for both the actual threat and the response to the perceived threat.

It was never clear to me, but at least part of it was supposedly due to everyone pooping at home using consumer TP instead of at the office, using commercially packaged TP (two-ply, giant rolls for big dispensers). And that sudden shift started to empty shelves. If people had stocked up over a period of time, the empty-shelves situation that produced the fear probably wouldn't have happened.

Of course in practice there really was plenty of it to go around, dollar stores seemed to be the most flexible at navigating the supply chain derangement and if you didn't mind buying it by the roll, it was never really hard to find.

Also- you don't need to follow the news for there to be a panic, empty shelves will do that all on their own. Everyone deciding to stock up a little on everything was enough to deplete shelves, people walking in after saw empty shelves and stocked up more, etc. I don't think most people were following the "omg supply chain" news, they just saw depleted shelves.

I never really understood the importance of it anyway. People were locked in their home so they could just use the shower head if it came to it. Of course a real bidet would be better and cleaner but I don't think they exist in northern America or Northern Europe.

It's also common in Asia (at least South East) they can survive without toilet paper :) The Japanese even have entire water jet massage toilets, they do it like a king.

Or if you don't want to use water, you could use serviettes, tissues. Even newspaper.

That's why I didn't understand the fuss about it. Sure it's annoying if you run out but not the end of the world especially when you're at home where there's always a shower to hand. I don't understand that people were so obsessed with toilet paper.

What would be much more important is food, water (in my city the tap water is terrible so I don't drink it), medication etc.

I'll never understand why bidets are so niche in the USA especially after there are TP shortages every couple of years.

Not to mention how gross cleaning yourself with dry tissue is.

Oh yes I was just writing the same. Water is much cleaner yeah. About half the houses here have a bidet.

I think many people in countries like the US or northern Europe wouldn't even know what it's for when they see one :)

I would put it at 1% here. They are extremely rare. Bidet attachments have become relatively popular here over the past decade though. It's been life changing (or maybe butt changing). It's amazing how pretentious Americans can be while having such a gross habit.

Yeah, the deep irony of the GP comment is that, had all of these supposedly knowledgable people just read the original report from the WHO (~early 2020), they'd have realized many things about the virus (such as the extremely skewed age distribution of the seriously ill) that would have greatly mitigated the overall panic. It literally took years for the chattering class in medicine to understand basic information that was available at the beginning of the pandemic.

COVID was a perfect case study of mass hysteria, and how you can't even trust "the experts" in these situations, because the "experts" you hear from early on are also generally the ones who are the most willing to spout pure speculation for attention. Humans are gonna human, and a background in science doesn't change that fact.

A million Americans did die of it, the lost QALYs was... a lot. A lot of people died who had more than a decade, actuarially. That's a big deal.

But it doesn't matter for what I'm saying: paying too much attention to the news about a weird new virus from China would have clued a person in that something big might be coming, on whatever dimension you care to measure it.

But would that have been actionable information for the average person? What would you have done differently on the first day, given perfect information?

The Covid pandemic lasted much longer than would have been reasonable to prepare for via hoarding of supplies etc.

In my view, that was the entire problem: Much of the world overreacted in the short term (hard lockdowns including fining people going for a walk by themselves etc.) and underreacted in the long term (limiting avoidable large indoor gatherings such as most office work, air filters etc.)

Many governments did as much as people would tolerate for as long as they could (which meant, for some, doing nothing at all), rather than focusing on doing effective things they could actually keep up as long as required.

Hindsight is of course 20/20, but I really hope that’s a lesson many learned from it.

That was pure panic. I live in the gulf coast. Anytime there is a minor chance we are getting hit by a hurricane people panic buy and suddenly there isn't any water on the shelves anymore. You'll see average folks with 20 cases of water being shoved in their massive SUVs for a family of 3.

Sure. However, I bought a large pack of toilet paper when I saw headlines about hoarding in HK, before the shelves began to dwindle here, and thus dodged the whole thing. That it was basically panic is neither here nor there: paying too close attention to far-off news did actually pay off in a tiny way.

Sam Rogers: You are panicking.

John Tuld: If you're first out the door, that's not called panicking.

—Margin Call (2011)

TP shortages in Hong Kong were rational, based on an expectation of bulk shipping issues. Stocking up in North America based on shortages in Hong Kong was idiotic. If there are shortages of TP in Hong Kong that means there would be a surplus of TP in North America, since North America is where the pulp for most TP is made.

Sure, probably. It still helped me dodge the panic that set in a couple weeks later though. Sometimes midwit thought works. I wasn't stocking a Scrooge McDuck room full of the stuff. I think it was when I saw stories of hoarding spread to Australia that I realized that maybe this it was going to have legs, rationally or not.

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