If your prime source for news is the boob tube, prepare to be not only misinformed but bored out of your skull. Under the pretext of imparting late-breaking news, you will have to put up with endless repetition—to such an extent that you will be unsure that this is an entirely new mass shooting or the same old one that everyone is deploring. Those bodies in the streets in the Ukraine—are they new, or the same old bodies? I mean, how can you tell?

This is particularly a problem when there is a BIG STORY, such as the Ukraine War, the January 6 Insurrection, the New York subway shooting, or Donald J. Trump’s latest con.

I am going to propose something radical to prevent you from not only wasting your time but getting so tense that you can’t sleep. It consists of one word: WAIT.

Avoid being tied to the 24/7 news circle jerk from the corporations that run the major news channels. WAIT and READ when the news becomes available in newspapers, or, even better, weekly or biweekly or monthly periodicals. The best news stories I ever read were typically in The New Yorker or The New York Review of Books. By the time the story reaches the print media, some of the dross that takes up so much time is shaken out and you are able to better understand what is happening.

Avoid getting your news from YouTube, FaceBook, or most other Internet sources. There, the news is more frequently coated with a thick, indigestible layer of opinion like a fried chicken leg that is all breading. You want to understand what is happening, not what some Internet influencer wants you to think. Avoid getting stuck in some Internet news bubble. You’re here to learn, not to get force-fed by someone who has an axe to grind.