Ask HN: How do you get important news faster? Do you care about it?

Late last year, I signed up for a daily delivery of a physical copy of <i>The Financial Times.</i> I rarely read news websites, other than HN and Reddit. Why? Because I wanted to be informed about world events but dislike the always-on nature of online news, and because I have a certain romantic ideal of reading the morning newspaper with a cup of coffee. Unfortunately it doesn&#x27;t arrive in the morning and usually comes around noon.<p>How has it been? Both good and bad. I do like having a physical paper put in the mailbox, as it&#x27;s fun to look forward to a &quot;delivery&quot; every day that is more real than just looking at my phone.<p>On the other hand, I find the FT to be worth reading only about every other issue, largely because there simply isn&#x27;t enough news to report in 24 hours. The opinion and editorial sections make up a decent portion of the paper and largely aren&#x27;t worth reading. But, every other issue or so, there are a few excellent articles absolutely worth the price of admission. And even then, the quality of the &quot;boring&quot; articles is leaps and bounds above what I used to read in the NYT or the Guardian.<p>I&#x27;m not sure if I&#x27;ll be renewing it later this year, as it does feel like I&#x27;m wasting a lot of paper – but only on the days when I don&#x27;t enjoy the articles. I wish they had a twice weekly edition, which would be the perfect interval IMO.

I can&#x27;t think of a news story in the past two decades where a personal response in two hours would have been more beneficial than one in two weeks, based on better info. I&#x27;d like a latency knob on my news that I can set at around 500 hours. But it&#x27;d be nice if there&#x27;s a loophole for hurricane warnings, etc.<p>Well, now I can think of some: weather and traffic reports.

I just don&#x27;t get news at all. Never watch TV. Never read newspapers. Never listen to the radio. Never read news website. Never use social media. I _did_ do all of that, but it has never been useful or actionable in any way so I stopped, for the better. I am confident that the important stuff will eventually reach me.<p>Basically, all I care about is trafic conditions, extreme weather warnings (rare around here), the date of the next bulky trash collection, and information related to my trade.

I try to ignore as much as possible. Almost nothing in the news directly affects me. I&#x27;ll hear about anything important -- people love to talk about news. I have a weather app on my phone, that&#x27;s usually all I need to look at to go about my business.

Social media is the fastest today. Probably even TikTok. It matters for some things - floods, wars. There&#x27;s enough paranoia that advance warning helps; it was useful when we had waves of on and off COVID lockdowns. I like to have a month&#x27;s groceries at home but it&#x27;s bad when every damn person in town is buying months of groceries at once.<p>HN is quite fast too, almost too fast. It&#x27;ll probably be off the front page by the time I&#x27;m awake. But not for political news.

What is an example of important news that I need to hear about same-day, or even same-week?<p>It&#x27;s only when I&#x27;m about to get on a plane that I need to double-check that I&#x27;m not flying somewhere suddenly volatile.

Someone posted this a while back <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.newsminimalist.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.newsminimalist.com&#x2F;</a><p>Otherwise I used to check the news mostly for the dopamine hit or out of boredom but rarely benefit from that. I still do, but I limit it much more and have to say, less is better. I don&#x27;t believe I&#x27;ve missed out on any news that would have made my life better and if it&#x27;s ever something really really important, someone will probably tell me anyway

Two things I read:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;sumi.news&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;sumi.news&#x2F;</a><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Portal:Current_events" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Portal:Current_events</a><p>Just for a quick sweep.<p>Then I open Twitter&#x2F;X and browse to my local news site.<p>This takes at most 5 minutes to skim world (and local) events and catch up.

- The Economist, usually podcasts while getting ready in the morning.<p>- All-in podcast when I feel like being entertained<p>99% of news is generally irrelevant to daily life, maybe once a month something catches my eye and I feel like being more informed about the topic

I used to be a news addict, doom-scrolling through Google News etc. several times a day. After the Trump years, though, I decided to take a break. Basically stopped consuming most news, only occasionally checking the wire services (like apnews.com) maybe a few times a month or less.<p>Yep, the country&#x27;s going to shit still, the Middle East is at war, the world&#x27;s burning up, schoolkids are getting murdered, etc. Same ol&#x27;, same ol&#x27;. Nothing I can do about any of it anyway, so what&#x27;s the point of stressing over it?<p>I don&#x27;t even remember any major events after Covid, and my life seems no better or worse off for it. I also deleted all my social media a few years ago, and that was definitely a HUGE net positive.<p>I don&#x27;t think people in general -- as a barely evolved ape -- really have the mental and emotional capacities to consume ceaseless global catastrophes in real-time. It just seems like a surefire recipe for anxiety and depression. The &quot;media-pharmaceutical complex&quot;, maybe?