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?
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.
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.
Huey Lewis
Consider a site like arstechnica. Just tech news, less depressing crap.
@yogthos@lemmy.ml, obviously.
lol I’m definitely in the news checking to pass the time boat :)
I hope you mean “as well as the news”
my Lemmy feed. Google Scholar sorted by most recent.
The news communities on lemmy. It’s still the news, but sometimes i appreciate the comments.
Comments is where the real work gets done. That’s how reddit used to work before it turned into bot networks spinning narratives for interested parties etc
Eh. Sort of. It’s still a big echo chamber with lots of feel good statements that amount to not much
I get my “education” from Lemmy
Metafilter!
If you want a summary of science events, check out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_in_science.
coupla blogs and lemmy subscribed ordered by top day; once I’m done with it, that’s it, no doomscrolling no more. all news and sports are filtered out, along with memes and similar stupid shit.
if im really craving something, read a book (thanks Anna!), reinstall one of the cheap laptops I got, go for a run/walk/bike ride etc. works most of the time.
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.
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
