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.