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.
If you want a summary of science events, check out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_in_science.
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
my Lemmy feed. Google Scholar sorted by most recent.
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.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events
Only very short summaries of what happened, linked to Wikipedia article for more reading.
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.
I hope you mean “as well as the news”
How about deep diving? It’s not easy and consistent with one app, but it’s pretty satisfying to be the one figuring stuff out.
Or local city planning. Future plans on what to build and where. Doesn’t update as frequently, but it’s something to circle back to on occasion, or you might want to get involved and go to a meeting.
Some people like to listen to police scanners, or alternatively there is usually someone with a social media account who posts just the most important or funniest transmissions from the city/county/whatever
Or you could get an idle game app that you occasionally need to pop into to collect money and upgrade.
Start day trading?
Hardware News: Louis Rossmann, GamersNexus
Other News: Lemmy (very heavily curated), Mastodon (rarely)
US Pol, Israel/Palestine, Ukraine/Russia: Blocked
Consider a site like arstechnica. Just tech news, less depressing crap.
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.
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 think a lot of the meme content here is bots as well.
But since most users don’t post anything, it’s better than the alternative.
We do have bots are they are labeled and I haven’t seen bot nets driving narrative… Yet.
Also engagement quality is way better. Even when disagree with comments, they feel like real people with their own opinions.
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.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Huey Lewis
Inoreader for android. It’s just a news links aggregator that you opt in various topics or networks and get fed a plethora of headlines and links to the articles. Sometimes they’ll even grab a paragraph or two from the article. I started using that at the same time I hopped on Lemmy.
