What level of news do you need and not need?

I subscribe to The Economist which I think curates things at the weekly period well.

I have roughly 5 blogs I check every day.

I rely on my YOShInOn RSS reader for news on a wide range of topics, with the caveat that it isn't particular fast. For news about science and technology it doesn't matter if it is delayed two weeks, but it is a problem for sports where you don't run to look at an article about what happened in week 6 of the NFL after week 7 goes down.

I am lucky that Ithaca has several weekly papers, both print and web-based, that make up for the fact that our "paper of record" is a zombie. It used to be when a local election happened I would buy an Ithaca Journal the next day to see the results, but now the head office updates that paper around 3pm in the afternoon the next day. Our board of elections usually posts the results around 8pm the night of the election and all the 'alternative' papers run articles on it right away -- the Ithaca Journal used to send reporters to public meetings but no more, no wonder there is a movement to defund it by taking public notices out of it.

Different people have wide variations in what they consider the 'big picture' to entail in the first place. My suggestion is to name either 2 or 3 non-fiction books or 2 or 3 specialty blogs you've considered valuable to the 'big picture' and then ask your preferred LLM that, if you like those, which big picture news sources you'd most prefer. Is Matt Levine's writing up your angle, or Lawfare, or something alternative like Naked Capitalism?

You probably don't need very much news at all. I like learning interesting second-order effects of current events, but they aren't necessary for my life. Here's a few I found interesting lately:

Gen-Z doesn't go to parties anymore because they are on screens all day and/or have social anxiety

Photoshop tutorial business is cratering because people aren't interested in learning how to manipulate photos when they can just create one via text

Japanese guy called do-nothing-guy gets paid to go to restaurants with pretty women in Japan because apparently they can't get a date or are too shy or something terrible is happening with the social fabric in Japan idk what

Its interesting to think about automating the news, you'd need a news feed from every courthouse, twitter feed, sports arena, press release -- run them through various processes, identify trendlines, etc. no small task

I much prefer reading in-depth articles, books, or podcasts about the general drivers of today's news. As opposed to the specific news item of the day.

Like I'm learning about Curtis Yarvin, whose neo-monarchical thinking is behind Project 2025. And it helps me understand what's going on as he is linked to Vance, etc.

LLMs help you think about news in an interesting way. News is just filling your context at all times. If you remove certain things from the context window, the LLM literally can't think about it. For example, if you don't want the LLM to think about war, remove it from the context. When it comes to news, most people are operating with a very curated mental context. They don't even think about certain things. To get the right picture from news, you'd need to be willing to hold a lot of context in your head, which means you have to consume any and all news from everywhere whether you like it or not. History enthusiasts already know this and actively try to fill their context with as much history as possible too.

In other words, don't try to curate your mental context if you want the truth.

Totally resonate with this. I’ve felt the same frustration — especially when trying to make informed decisions as a citizen or entrepreneur. Most news feels reactive, not reflective.

I’ve been exploring ways to simplify decision-making in other domains (like personal finance), and I think the same principles apply:

Context matters — trends > isolated events

Follow-through matters — what happened after the headline?

Signal over noise — monthly summaries or curated dashboards could help

Curious if anyone here has tried building or using tools that track long-term civic or legal outcomes. Would love to see something like a “public impact tracker” that connects headlines to actual changes.

Wow, good idea!

Maybe news should be like a wiki.