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Those are true points, but I'll make some counterpoints.

1. I've found the news to be the worst way to get information about covid. My state health department website and other sites like it have given me much better details.

2. Yeah, I need to know if there are things that might block my route when driving. Google Maps does a better job of that than any local news that I've seen.

3. Plenty of people drive Volkswagens and are perfectly happy with them. They didn't let the news tell them how awful they were for this practice. For that matter, they didn't let the news tell them how awful Musk is or how wonderful some other execs in the industry are either. And you know what? They are just fine for that.

Most of your other points don't seem to have much to do with the news being talked about. I don't think the article was telling you not to check the weather.

> feel free to carry on and go book your vacation to the Ukraine, drive a Volkswagen, work for facebook...

These could all be researched at the time of purchase though. There's nothing in the daily news about VW or Ukraine that can't be learned more efficiently by doing some research just before purchasing a vehicle or vacation.

There's nothing wrong with keeping tabs on the latest headlines, I personally do so and am fine with it, but there's nothing essential about it either. A person who never reads the news will still find out about something like Covid from a hundred other sources in short order.

The post lists several other things along with those examples that I think DO make it essential:

> use too much water during a drought season, have your garden furniture blow through your windows when that storm rolls in, have a BBQ during a high-risk fire season

If you’re going to check if there’s a drought every time you use water - congratulations, you’re reading the news!

dat username tho

I am very skeptical of the effectiveness of combating something like a drought by hoping most adults read about it on the news and individually decide to take appropriate actions. These sorts of cases need to be handled at the government and utility level.

I live in a drought stricken region and everybody here is well aware of it, regardless of their news habits, because they learn about it from many other sources.

As one example, the water district regularly sends out fliers telling people there is a drought, making suggestions on how to conserve water, adding restrictions on water use, and more. These messages are far more ubiqutous and effective than current news articles.

I agree with your assessment.

To completely quit news is not a good idea, unless you want to live under a rock, metaphorically speaking.

Fact of the matter is, day-to-day events affect each one of us who live in a modern society. You don't want to be the guy who has no mask and 0 preparation for a pandemic when it hits. You don't want to be the guy who keeps buying/using a product when there's news circulating that it could be unsafe.

The author mentioned reading a 5000-word report, which is great if you're into that sort of things. But the mass majority of people have jobs to work, kids to take of, important things to do. They don't have time to spend hours every day reading deep into all the issues going on in the world.

Most people just want to stay up to date with the latest events, so they can plan their lives better.

Of course you can get addicted to news and let it negatively affect you. But the alternative of having no idea what's going on in the world until it's on your doorstep is not a good idea either.

A balance is good. Stuff like limiting yourself to spending 15 minutes in the morning during breakfast quickly going over important news, and making a commitment to not waste more time reading news for the rest of the day.

This is how the media and media addicted people convince you that you absolutely need to keep tuning into the madness. You can hear 99% of the news that will actually affect your life simply through interacting with friends and doing activities.

> You don't want to be the guy who has no mask and 0 preparation for a pandemic when it hits.

So you should read the news, which right up until it hits is telling you that worrying about it is hysterical and maybe a little bit racist?

At the risk of sounding a bit hyperbolic, it's also important for citizens living under a representative form of government to monitor the government for encroachment on liberties. The news is how this happens.

Not sure why any of this news absolutely has to come from TV in an entertainment mashup in it's delivery.

It doesn't. You can read a newspaper and get that exact info without the doomsaying that comes with TV.

As someone who doesn’t really follow the news… what’s wrong with VW?

this is a false dichotomy. I'm the textbook "i do not watch the news person" and when things like Covid happen you cannot just ignore them.

Not only that, but there are many things where paradoxically I'm better informed than people "watching the news". You see, there is being informed and there is actually spending your mental resources on problems you don't have or you have 0 say in them.

to debunk some of the things you brought up: - you don't decide to go to Ukraine and you book your vacation without at any point learning about this (you will learn about this from the booking agency, you will learn about this at the airport, you will learn about this from people around you). The odds of you landing in Ukraine are 0 unless you really want to go there.

- if you drive a a VW you may not be in a position to stop driving it. Choosing your car based on a scandal screams privilege. You may choose to pick your next car based on it, but again: you will learn about this no matter way. Other car manufacturers will tell you, people around you will tell you about how crappy VW is when you bring it up (are you going to buy it solo without talking with anyone?).

- work for Facebook: it's cool to hate Facebook and I have personally stopped using it eons ago. But not suspecting that some of the things that they are doing aren't exactly heavenly and ending up working there? again, the odds are zero

- use to much water? how can you be in a drought season and not see the drought. Also: everyone likes capitalism until the fish from the lake is depleted. If you can afford to use the water and pay for it, why not? The pricing should be tiered in such a way that there is a strong incentive against you using the water - we should not expect people to just do the right thing. this rarely work s without economic incentives.

- BBQ in during fire season? I think there are legal and economic things in place that should prevent this. - using condoms? really? really? you're gonna put the equal sign between the news and basic sex ed. really?

> The odds of you landing in Ukraine are 0 unless you really want to go there.

Oh yeah, you'll definitely find out eventually, but timing matters. This whole debacle started a fair amount of time before Putin gave the order to invade and most travelers book holidays further in advance. In that time, you could have cancelled and rescheduled your commitments around this news, but instead you'll spend most of that time clueless.

> how can you be in a drought season and not see the drought

Uh, are you saying that if I live in a nice little house or apartment unit in a Californian city, I can just see the drought by looking outside? Perhaps if you live near farmland, but the effects of drought have never been noticeable to me in the urban jungle. Even if they are, how the govt responds to drought is not obvious. It's not always just a tiered pricing change. California, as just one example, will apply restrictions on when and how you use sprinklers.

> BBQ in during fire season? I think there are legal and economic things in place that should prevent this

...like what? By the time there are legal consequences, isn't it too late?

I agree with your central thesis that you shouldn't spend time worrying about problems that you don't have, but making that distinction isn't straightforward and your stated counterpoints are muddled themselves.

so, at one point I planned a trip to New York and a hurricane made an appearance in the area. Had to cancel everything (you could not fly in there) and we actually got automatic refunds on anything. If this can happen with New York and a hurricane it can definitely happen with Ukraine and a war. What does spending all that time clueless mean? I'm sorry but I just don't buy it.

>Uh, are you saying that if I live in a nice little house or apartment unit in a Californian city

My point was that if there is a drought and we need to save water this will be highly visible. The water company will tell you, the bill you pay should be higher, etc

> By the time there are legal consequences, isn't it too late? nope. breaking the law always involves a reward and a risk. The risk/punishment is not properly calibrated for the consequences but there is no reason why it shouldn't be.

Spending all that time clueless means that you're wasting time you could have spent reacting to the situation. It's not just about refunds, if you blocked out four weeks for a doomed vacation, then knowing that the vacation is doomed in advance will give you time to prepare an alternate itinerary for those four weeks rather than finding out perhaps a few days beforehand.

> The water company will tell you, the bill you pay should be higher, etc

My water usage varies across months, I am hardly unique in saying that I don't keep a close tab on the water price breakdown. Many people auto-pay their electronic bills and don't check in very often until something goes very wrong (like the water gets shut off). These are the kinds of important items that show up very prominently in local headlines though.

> breaking the law always involves a reward and a risk.

That's not what I'm saying. By the time you realize that you're actually breaking the law, you're already being punished. Suppose there's a law that punishes BBQs during fire season. If I'm not aware of this BBQ law in advance (eg. via the news), by the time I'm fined or arrested for unknowingly hosting a big BBQ, it's too late for me to figure out that it's illegal.

As others have said, there are other ways to obtain this information but news feeds will highlight noteworthy issues. Do you repeatedly poll the health dept website for the latest guidance? That's one way to keep up to date on Covid restrictions, but generally it's even more inconvenient to poll everything that matters.

it's a tradeoff between time wasted to react to the situation and time wasted to keep yourself informed. Based on my own experience the time you need to adapt to the situation is a fraction from the time you spend watching the news.