Submitted 8 months ago by nikoo@sh.itjust.works to nostupidquestions@lemmy.world
If possible at all, of course.
For me it’s just the knowledge that I have around 100 total years on this planet and a limited amount of reach in terms of geography, relationships, etc.
I can’t swing an election by myself, but with me and millions of my closest friends we can. But only if we all pull together. It’s like a paradox but not quite.
This too shall pass. I take comfort that the pendulum of politics has always swung back and forth. This moment of insanity should swing back to rebuilding, and progressive changes.
When I was in college, we had “the midnight scream”. During finals, entire dorms would open their windows at midnight and just scream. It was very effective at venting frustration, allowing us all to refocus on studying. Perhaps that’s what’s happening now: we’re all just screaming in frustration.
Get into taking news slowly. Maybe set one day in the week for you to catch up on what happened a bit. And resist the urge to go checking for news constantly. Getting news from social media make it seem like a lot is going on all the time, but its mostly a lot of noise and many rehashings of the same “news” (especially if you get them through memes in social networks). Getting news on sunday is cool because you let matters cool down a bit and people have had the time to express what has happened better.
Insert Invincible ‘you don’t’ meme here
But seriously, you can’t. You either choose to be ignorant of 99.99% of the world or to be ignorant of 99.9% of the world and live in a perpetual scramble to absorb all the disparate information. Most news isn’t worth knowing in and of itself, only serving as data to construct deeper understanding, so unless you are going to actually connect the dots, it’s a better use of your time to let the world act as a filter and only pay attention to what hangs around long enough to get through to you.
Scan headlines but only read what affects me. These days we hear about all the awful things that happen around the word but our ability to do something about them is still the same as a hundred years ago
This is crazy, but i read the news on paper. I have a couple of subscriptions to magazines with good reporting, but you could also hit up your library to read for free. For one thing, print journalism is a lot more in-depth and balanced than the outrage-mill crap i find online.
On Lemmy i read headlines only in case something happens that i stay current, but i rarely read a whole article. This contains my news consumption to a small portion of my day.
Plus, Trump says 64 stupid lthings a week. I read all 64 in 1 hour each week and get it over with, instead of poisoning myself with it several times a day.
news - disinformation bureau. might read headlines. can’t watch national news with daily disasters
Reading the Revelation to St John
I block news from all social media. Then I chose 2 news networks I thought had decent reporting and wasn’t too bias. Every morning I read news from the 2 sources and that is ALL the news I consume for that day. That’s it.
Step 1: remove all news feeds from your life.
Step 2: live your life. Be happy. Have fun.
Step 3: if anything worth knowing actually happens, it will filter in through your social networks.
I remind myself that news media have a vested interest in keeping me outraged and on the edge of my seat, addicted to consuming their every update.
There are definitely things worth getting outraged over. But on top of that we have an outrage industry harvesting our attention and fear for ad dollars.
So I remind myself not to spiral down the doomclick drain. If something is THAT important I’m going to hear about it. I don’t need to be checking a news app daily.
On top of this I do what I can to support change. We donate to Ukraine and Gaza relief efforts. We vote. We make our political views known to those around us to support right action in them as well (not talking about politics is what Trumpers want - they want cover for their fascist hate and violence - I make damn sure that everyone I know is aware that there’s no room for that shit in my life).
Conserve your strength. Do everything material that you can, and don’t spend yourself past that point.
But that first part is important: DO EVERYTHING YOU CAN.
Don’t watch mainstream media and get some of your news from independent sources, like Ken Klippenstein. I get most of my news from AP News and then from the Politics section in Lemmy.
I block most news sources and get the jist of events via memes.
I’m not sure you can. I think boundary setting is important and also contributing to causes you care about. It’s the difference between things you can control and things you can’t, and letting go of the things you can’t control.
My news comes mainly from Lemmy, Wikipedia, sometimes Wikinews, maybe other people, and short daily podcasts. The fun radio podcasts are currently on break (though they’re less ‘news’, more current topics made funny), but I sometimes also listen to a short daily news podcast.
Lemmy is by far the worst source, because 'Murican-centrism. So much US spam. If I could easily filter out the US off Lemmy, I’d do it in a jiffy. I’d even be willing to cut off English entirely. Or leave Lemmy, touch grass. The latter seems to be the most likely option, from what I know of Lemmy.
With Wikipedia, and Wikinews, I append a relevant language code to the url, like xx.wikipedia.org, and get stuff in my language, less 'Murican. I sometimes do that in other languages I know (including English).
Podcasts are relevant by location and/or language, depending on the podcast (they sometimes bring up US stuff, but that’s far less annoying than Lemmy’s spam, and sometimes actually relevant (for the news one, at least))
A ridiculous amount of copeing mechanisms and my supportive close family and friends where we keep eachother sane. Growing up in all this bullshit, you get used tovit somewhat.
Alcohol
That’s my secret Cap.
I’ve always been insane! 🤪
Sanity is over-rated, now if yall dont mind. Im going to spend the rest of my day swimming in a lake that thinks its a gin+tonic.
Are those who are well adjusted to a unjust world really the sane ones?
You do something, anything, about the shit you disagree with. Usa stops famine support? Fuck you, Unicef is not going to die on my watch. Etc.
I have a large broken chest freezer I climb into, I shut the lid and scream
So thats how ice cream is made!
I bought a camper van that is useful to focus on when I need a break. Lots of projects to work on and then actual trips.
I’ve figured that I can either be informed or happy. Not both.
I use RSS for sports and tech news, and read once per day for couple minutes headlines. For Lemmy and mastodon, I had to block communities and words because too much USA news.
I mostly don’t do either.
I find old Stoic philosophy helpful. If I can’t do anything about it, I stay informed but try to be mindful of my limitations. If I can do anything about it, even if not much, if I’m worried about the thing I use that to do what I can.
It’s a balancing act. You have to learn how to gauge when you’re getting overly-stressed/depressed by news consumption and stop doing it. Limit yourself to engaging with it in short bursts, so you can keep up with the general knowledge of what’s happening, while not getting bogged down in the details.
I remove almost everything that is considered breaking current events. Someone is going to do something stupid to someone else. Disasters are going to happen. Wars are being fought (IMHO WW3 had already begun and everyone is trying to stay out of it like the US did in WW2) just that everyone is avoiding it. I have watched a local to me longlines station have a lot of new activity and a person is living there in a travel trailer but two years ago it was basically defunct. www.youtube.com/watch?v=QfHyy-4W5X0 is an example of a different one but gives an idea of the use.
All this crap happens and there is nothing I can do about it nor does it help my daily life. I get a little bit of local news directly from their site and everything else is related to tech or science. I also block Javascript on the browser I use for news feeds, it prevents headlines from other crap being shoved into articles I choose to read on many sites and if breaks a site I just remove it from my feed.
I’m also doing a lot of repairs on a 100 year old house while I live in it, trying to work towards teaching people who have dealt with childhood trauma and others with PTSD how to SCUBA dive for free, and doing my best to stay sane with everything that has happened in my life.
Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de 7 months ago
what do you really need to be up to date with these days? you’re gonna find out about really major changes anyways, just focus on the local things that you have even the slightest chance of maybe potentially slightly influencing.
shit’s fucked, shit sucks, we all know that, we don’t need to constantly remind ourselves that shit’s fucked, instead just do whatever you can to make the world a better place. And that starts with making sure you’re as mentally healthy as possible, which does not include making yourself feel awful.