It’s been a little over a year since the last time I really tried to purge extraneous content from my daily data ingest. Just wanted to give a status update.
Reducing the noise.
After the 2016 election I really had to try to kill off my Facebook feed and my Twitter timeline. I’ve made the mistake of following too many political people on the latter and the former was giving me a little too much shared despair.
I did turn on the “News” app on my iPhone. In general, I like it. The discovery space is pretty good (for example, how in the world had I NOT heard of GeekDad before this?). But for general daily news updates it’s a little overwhelming; I don’t need five different versions of the same story in a row.
Which leads me to the point where at my house we’ve actually gone back to the New York Times daily print edition. It’s nice to be able to flip through it, get a daily does of politics, and then still find myself reading a story about geriatric marathoners. The world is bigger than the front page, but it’s hard to get down any further than that on a regular basis.
I am back on Twitter, kind of. I find that I generally don’t like trying to jot down clever ideas in 140 characters to keep feed going on a regular basis. I do try to use it as a note-taking device when I’m at a conference, but that’s really more fun when there are multiple people live-Tweeting. In general, people don’t need (or care) about what’s going on with the latest in calibration of various X-ray telescopes. Right?
To avoid scope creep, I’ve had to justify each entry into the feed to myself. If I find myself not reading a story from a particular feed at least once a week then I tend to remove it from my list:
News and Politics
The New York Times
Because, reasons…
The Washington Post
Because sometimes you need *more* Washington coverage.
Vox
One of the more rounded political blogs that I’ve found.
Los Angeles Times
Local news and info (though disturbingly I mostly get information about local celebrities selling their houses for megabucks. This may get dropped soon.
Wall Street Journal
Business news and a view into the more conservative echo chamber.
Science and Tech
Apple News keyword feeds for “NASA”, “Space X”
Launch notifications, other random acts of awesomeness.
National Geographic
Great photojournalism is found here.
Ars Technica
Recently making it back into circulation as I have more time to read tech news.
Sports and Lifestyle
Deadspin
Daily dose of snark and sports highlights.
World Soccer Talk
This was one of the highest-rated Apple News football feeds (and yet odd that it’s moniker has been Americanized to WorldSoccerTalk). Less snark than the Deadspin “Screamer” sub-channel, more centered on news and straight reporting.
Geek Dad
Arguably your one-stop shop for the all things even mildly nerdy, from cold brewed coffee press reviews to daily comic strips. It’s like someone rolled Nerdist, Ars, and Fatherly into one ball of awesomeness.
If you’re interested in trying another format for getting the news, having an Audible.com subscription includes a subscription to an audio version of either WSJ or the Times. Not only is it convenient to get the news in a format that’s great for multi-tasking, but I’ve found the ability to skip a story the same way you would skip an audio track is surprisingly cathartic.
I’ve actually started doing this recently. For some reason I never realized that you could skip through the stories likes chapters in an Audible book…makes it so much better. Thanks!!