Take breaks.

That’s the neat part. I don’t. I’m depressed as fuck.

I find old Stoic philosophy helpful. If I can't do anything about it, I stay informed but try to be mindful of my limitations. If I can do anything about it, even if not much, if I'm worried about the thing I use that to do what I can.

I try to read an equal amount of theory and history as I do news. Context is everything. When you read about these bastards doing evil deeds, read too about Mussolini hanging from a bridge. I enjoy learning about coups perpetrated by the CIA last century (there’s 70 of them) and all the horrendous fallout it caused so that I can taunt nationalists with facts about the nature of the empire that they’re only just now recognizing.

News is only a part of the process. Theory, praxis, cadre, in equal parts.

You do something, anything, about the shit you disagree with. Usa stops famine support? Fuck you, Unicef is not going to die on my watch. Etc.

I don't consume a lot of content from mainstream news sites, and that helps. Those agencies, like major social media sites, are designed to piss you off and keep your eyes glued to ads.

Most of my news exposure is through Lemmy or Mastodon, through which I can automate the curation of my feed and I don't see things that are going to rile me up as much; and therefore, I only see things that might rile me up when it's my intention to do so.

I gloat at the odd Epstein article but I don't read everything. I don't need to know all that. If you want to keep your sanity in times like these you gotta live in the moment. Enjoy every little thing like it's the first time you're experiencing it. Keep your worries to what you can control. And don't try to control things you can't. It's actually easier to learn this while times are tough.

I have next to zero urge to “keep up with the news.” I’m under no obligation to know what’s going on in the world at all times. If something is important, I’ll hear about it from somewhere anyway - and if I don’t hear about it, it probably wasn’t that important to begin with.

I’d argue the “optimal” amount of news is whatever’s left after you actively take steps to avoid most of it. Unfiltered news consumption in today’s environment is almost certainly way, way too much.

That's my secret Cap.

I've always been insane! 🤪

Define "sane."

By looking at it from a larger perspective. You can always get worked up about things but if you zoom out, you see that most of it is just a temporary trend. Some things trend well, some trend poorly, but these tend to be blips in the span of a lifetime.

Especially when comparing with the past you will see that things really aren't all that bad in general.

There's a lot of it you can just tune out

Not because it doesn't matter, but because it's not actually new.

"oh Israel is still doing its genocide. Yeah, they would, no one is bothering to stop them. Don't give me details. Let me know if something CHANGES"

The "news" cycle has a way of always finding further details on what is actually very old information, and those details serve you, the reader, no purpose other than creating emotional distress.

I use RSS for sports and tech news, and read once per day for couple minutes headlines. For Lemmy and mastodon, I had to block communities and words because too much USA news.

You don’t.

I read news once a week and this is it

50% is recycling old garbage, 30% is things that don’t affect you in any way, 15% is nice to know but it wouldn’t change your life if you didn’t know, 3% is actually newsworthy and affects you, rest is weather.

I realised long ago that the human brain is not capable of handling everything that's happening all around the world, all the time. I'm selective about what media I consume and I make extensive use of blocklists for things that aren't my fight.