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[1] https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/089bc1a2fe684405a67d67f...

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There are solid news sources, but they're hard to find and differ by the subject.

For example, war maps are hard to find. Al Jazeera publishes maps of what's been hit in the Middle East, which makes sense because their readers are on the receiving end. understandingwar.com contributes to an interactive war map.[1] (The site says to view it with Firefox; Chrome has bugs on mobile.)

ops.group, which is for people operating aircraft internationally, has a frequently updated map of where to avoid and what the problems are.[2] They have a GPS spoofing map. A sizable chunk of Eurasia is currently unsafe for aviation. "For flights between Europe and Asia, the normal Gulf corridor is effectively unavailable. Overflying traffic is rerouting either north via the Caucasus-Afghanistan, or south via Egypt-Saudi-Oman." Nobody wants to overfly Afghanistan. Almost no ATC, no radar, and an emergency diversion to Kabul means dealing with the Taliban. "For most operators, landing at an Afghan airport would be akin to ditching in oceanic airspace."

You have to dig that hard to find out what's going on. Neither the mainstream media nor the podcasters and influencers go that far.

[2] https://ops.group/blog/middle-east-airspace-current-operatio...

by thesumofall4 hours ago|

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And with that dismantle the fourth power which is nothing without an audience? Just let the powerful do whatever they want to do?

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There's some drawbacks to the news, certainly, but I can't imagine not being aware or interested in what's happening around the world. Surely it's better to follow AP and Reuters and tune the rest.

by modeless5 hours ago|

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Agreed, watching national or world news is useless. If you want to know what is likely to happen instead of what someone wants you to think will happen, we now have prediction markets. Whenever I see a headline I'm curious about, now instead of reading the article I just go to a prediction market and check the probabilities.

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Prediction markets miss all the experts, whether academic or laypeople wonks, who simply don't care to have a financial stake in the decision. I can't imagine how it'd be representative. In any case, the people weighing in are getting their information from somewhere and it's not thin air. How can you understand an issue without knowing motivations/vested interests from all sides, history leading up, etc?

by modeless3 hours ago|

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If I have a specific interest in a topic I can do extensive research over many hours and come to my own conclusions. But for the vast majority of news headlines I see, including almost all "national" or "world" news, I don't have the time to do hours of research. In this case, reading or one or three news articles is far more likely to give me a biased and ultimately incorrect take than looking at a prediction market, which takes all the available information and condenses it into one number that matters.

by sefrost4 hours ago|

https://polymarket.com/accuracy

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Polymarket publishes accuracy statistics

by littlexsparkee4 hours ago|

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Thanks - I wish it could be drilled into by category, i.e. what are the stats for categories of import (filter out sports, crypto, etc). My worry is the average could appear rosier if the share of trivial events are high.

by slg4 hours ago|

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I don't know if it's just getting older or some deeper change in society, but more and more the reading of how my peers view the world depresses me. Even beyond the specific issues with prediction markets, there is a whole lot more to understanding our world than merely knowing the rough odds of possible outcomes.

by tigerlily5 hours ago|

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How else are young people supposed to cultivate their own cynicism though?

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That, and being prepared - either let macro phenomena like recession, AI, etc wallop you in the face or be able to spot it in the distance and adapt.

by lotsofpulp5 hours ago|

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The "news" warns people about impending recessions every single day. You can open up the Stocks app right now and there will be multiple conflicting "articles" on the SP500 having reached its top or bottom.

Other than news about mortgage rates dropping and trends in payrates for various careers, I see almost nothing actionable in the news for 99% of people.

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The benefit of media literacy is being able to tell apart issues of import vs false alarms. That career ladders could be changing due to AI; food and oil could spike / be unavailable due to Hormuz so stock up ahead of time; financial risks of BNPL, meme stocks, and crypto; and potential recession due to hiring patterns, AI bubble, private credit - those are not actionable?

by lotsofpulp1 hours ago|

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I would separate out current events from "breaking news", the latter of which I think is pretty useless for 99% of people living in a developed and safe country.

Trends are important to learn about, but the regular person would be well advised to prepare for emergencies in advance of the emergency.

Most of the stuff you listed is probably covered under general financial education like not going into debt for frivolous purchases or not gambling on investments you know nothing about.

Inclement weather is probably the most pressing thing to know about, but again, you should probably be prepared at home anyway so you're not affected by people clearing out the grocery stores.

I'm looking at nytimes.com right now, and it's pretty much all meaningless in terms of what I am going to do today, tomorrow, next week, or next month. It's entertainment at best, which is fine, if you can mentally handle it. But if it's getting you down, then I see no negative consequence from skipping most of it. Obviously, come time to vote, it's important to be informed, but day to day, spending one's brain cycles thinking about stuff that will not affect them and they will not be able to affect does not seem like a good use of time.

by techgnosis4 hours ago|