I think I need a break this weekend.
I so burnt. Sometimes it can trigger my depression or adds to it, depending on the insanity level of the day.
What’s everyone’s routine? What do you do, other than the usual 'nature stuff, (I started walking), to avoid this ‘soap-opera’?
Not required, but I’m personally on an extremely tight budget, so… traveling abroad, though a great example of what I’m looking for, is not feasible to me personally.
Thanks.
I don’t watch broadcast television. I don’t read news websites. I don’t get a newspaper.
I only hear about newsy stuff from here on the Straight Dope and from Cracked, which is a comedy website, which tends to give one-page distilled summaries when it talks about current events. Further I only do this during my work hours, 9-6 M-F while the work isn’t pressing.
The rest of my time is my own. I watch a lot of DVDs, focusing mostly on TV serieses; I ply my silly hobbies; I sometimes work on the fiction series I’m writing. About half my evenings I hang out a friend or with the family I have in town. Basically I take it easy.
My “weekends” are three or four days a week.
On my off days, I’m browsing websites that are mostly news, and then I go over to my debate groups and tell strangers they are wrong (or right. lol).
I hang up these antics around 5pm to read or watch TV.
On the days that I work, I don’t see any other than the headlines on my FB feed. 12 hour shifts doesn’t allow for a lot of free time.
Reddit
Local NPR station during my commute
One of the cable networks has a morning news show that I like. It runs from 7am to 10am in my time zone. My DVR records it. Later, when I watch it, I fast-forward through about 80 percent of it.
I usually ignore the news when we’re on an RV trip, one of which is coming up next week. Three days of silence. 
As I mentioned in another thread, I used to read the Wash Post Express newspaper every morning on the Metro. It covered a wide range of topics, but not in-depth on any topic. Allowed me to see any stories that I might want to research later in the day.
Now I got nothing 
Except for the various threads here that mention a news item.
A lot of people get their news here. You think there’s a “bubble”?
Has anyone heard of The Hill? It’s where I see a lot of news I find interesting but I’m a progressive guy generally.
I’m on Twitter pretty much nonstop during my waking hours. While it’s not all news, I’m pretty likely to catch anything quite quickly. I also have news alerts set up for the Washington Post, The Guardian, BBC News, Sky News, and El País. I should add a Canadian news source as well.
I also read Political Wire, Electoral-Vote, and Politics Today (UK) I gave up on Politico, just too much bad reporting.
The Hill is quite good for short form journalism. It’s a good place to get a quick glimpse of what’s going on and then you can dig deeper if a story interests you.
Damn. ������
I’m not a fan of Politico either.
Edit: Exactly.
I watch the news a couple times a day (BBC, CNN, MSNBC, TYT) and read things like The Economist a couple of times a week for a longer analysis.
Frankly, it’s too much; at the point where I switch off I’ve heard the same story repeated ad nauseum, and the pundits are really scraping the barrel for anything left to argue about.
I know I’ve reached a saturation point when the new information on a story ceases and the media outlets so eager to beat a dead horse stop reporting and go into speculation/commentary mode.
If there’s nothing “new” to report about the impeachment investigation move on to something else. I don’t need to hear Bill Clinton’s take on the subject or what some pundit “thinks” will happen next.
If you want a less biased source of news, BBC news (they have a USA/Canada section) feels more neutral in tone.
The problem with CNN is that it has devolved to clickbait headlines clearly meant to generate outrage about Trump. Yes, the facts indicate that Trump has some significant failings as a president. (even hyper-conservative sources will often admit this) But outrage generation anti-Trump propaganda articles have gotten tiring, especially as (1) his actions don’t affect me most of the time (2) I can’t do anything about it (3) No matter how much outrage is generated, all that really matters is the next election. I don’t think potential Trump re-election voters watch CNN, they all watch Fox News.
And Fox News is just a conservative propaganda outlet. Not only do they openly take conservative views, the other things they often carry are crime stories calibrated to generate outrage. While crime has actually been declining for years, conservative voters see the world as one full of (mostly minority) poor criminals prowling around looking to take their stuff / rape their family members. So they need to be ever vigilant (and ready to shoot with their own guns)
I do not watch TV, or video news, and only hear NPR news on weekly half-hour drives. I avoid FB, Twitter, all the fascistic antisocial media. I’m emailed bulletins from many global news sites and I aggregate Google News. I stop consuming when I’m bored, sickened, or better occupied. I get itchy for updates after a few days offline, wanderling in wilderness, but I never seem to miss much. New atrocities overlay the prior. Doom is inevitable. Pass the popcorn.
For the last 20 years I’ve had a rule – no news on Sunday. That’s expanded to Saturday the past few years. The other days of the week I scroll through headlines on Twitter to get a general sense of what’s going on and some days listen to headlines on NPR, BBC and Reuters on Alexa. I don’t watch TV news or commentary, local or or national. If there’s a headline that I think I should educate myself on, I’ll do so. This all results in limited anxiety.