I’ve realized that I check the news several times a day but not because I’m curious about what’s happening on the grand scheme of things, but because my brain wants to check something that keeps changing with new, evolving information. It fills a slightly different niche than social media, and I don’t watch sports so I don’t have that to check. Can anyone think of something else that could fill this need? I could read blogs but they just don’t feel current. And the news is making be stress about information I didn’t need to know.
Going for a walk can sometimes scratch that itch. Instead of checking the news of a national or global scale, which you can’t ultimately do a lot about anyway, you’re checking “the news” of your immediate environment with your own eyeballs. It usually doesn’t change a lot, but what else is new?
And if it’s nature that catches your interest, in addition to walking, you could follow a live stream of some animal you may or may not care about.
I got into watching an Osprey hatch her eggs on a stream. Didn’t even know about the birds until I started, but the hook set quickly.
Watched that feed for weeks, checking to see who’s been eating, who’s been pooping, & who’s still sleeping. Pretty satisfying by the time the chicks left the nest.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events
Only very short summaries of what happened, linked to Wikipedia article for more reading.
Is there any chance you’d want to, at least in part, get away from the instant hit of info? It’s possible to train your brain out of that habit if you’d rather be doing something else. No judgment if you’d really rather find something Iike you described.
I’m definitely a news junkie and I used to spend many hours per day on that other Platform because it made for such an effective news-media aggregator. It sounds like your seeking out a replacement for that dopamine hit you used to get from checking the news all of the time. There are plenty of bad alternatives out there as others have already mentioned. Regardless of what you choose to do, I hope you periodically take stock of your own mental health. Personally speaking, this habit has sent me into major depression more than once in my life.
Consider a site like arstechnica. Just tech news, less depressing crap.
I’m a junkie for YouTube maker videos and other forms of creative infotainment. I binge on This Old Tony and Farmcraft101 videos, but I also listen to several podcasts adjacent to my (rather technical) professional sector.
Ugh, and politics. Stresses me out too.
This old tony is the GOAT
This looks like it deserves my time, I will give it a read.
Huey Lewis
I hope you mean “as well as the news”
This may not be the type of answer you are looking for, but personally I check on my friends and family. It helps me somewhat avoid overly browsing Lemmy. I’ll send them a text asking how they are or what’s new.
I tell my brain that this is a local and personalized news source. 🙃
If you want a summary of science events, check out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_in_science.
I like watching well-done cinematic synopses of characters or storylines. Watched only AFTER having seen the series.
Here’s one for Altered Carbon S01. Very BladeRunner, very neo-noir, 80s meets 20s. Here’s one for the Expanse, story focused, 2 movements, so compassion-inducing
Both are by this creator.
Two of my top ten shows right now. I think I’m going to go finish DEVS right now.
I liked Devs. It had a dope concept. That show didn’t get much buzz.
my Lemmy feed. Google Scholar sorted by most recent.
There’s always the weather. I check that plus an app I have for the guages on our local rivers as I am a fly fisherman.
Don’t bother with the 24 rolling news updates. It is much better to watch a video news summary a few days later. A really really good YouTube channel called TLDR news (they have a number of subchannels) that I would highly recommend.
The other thing is to use RSS…never news websites. RSS presents news chronologically. Websites curate to put absolute shit on their front-page so avoid that. If you use an RSS app like Pluma, then it lets you set a blacklist (like I’ve excluded news about Biden, Trump, Covid, vaccines, Israel, Ukraine, Superbowl, football, etc)… It really let’s you exclude what you don’t want to see and improve what shows up in your list.
