Ask HN: Why isn't Japan's asteroid rover landing the top story in the US?
That was a monumentous achievement for mankind, all but glossed over in my news feeds.
https://www.space.com/41957-japan-amazing-asteroid-photos-hayabusa2-rovers.html
https://www.space.com/41957-japan-amazing-asteroid-photos-hayabusa2-rovers.html
48 comments
[ 4.7 ms ] story [ 122 ms ] thread"News" is harmful because out of billions of things going on every day it has to pick out just a few and those few things have to have enough coherence that somebody who watches CNN at 5:25 has a similar experience to someone who tunes in at 7:10 later on.
Communities have shared truths and falsehoods. Here in the US I think many people are following the Kavanaugh supreme court nomination. If you reload Google News every hour you will probably see nothing new, but some bombshell seems to drop every 1.5 days or so.
It is not irrational that people care about it, but the way in which people are irrational is particularly irrational.
For instance Kavanaugh could just withdraw him nomination and the Republicans have a long list of other conservative judges that could do that job but no they can't stand losing at all so they will wind up losing something bigger all while warning the Democrats that they risk looking like crazy fools who are out of touch with the American people.
And you know that gets people right back in it and keeps the ratings high and you'd better believe all those anchors on CNN got a bonus at the end of 2018 because if it bleeds it leads.
Can you tear it down for everybody? Good luck.
Can you protect yourself? You can.
No they couldn't, the Democrats would try to delay any vote to after mid terms. Kavanaugh was announced July 9th for example (of course if the Republicans win again, it wouldn't matter).
Worse, you'd be setting a precedent that you don't need any evidence to take down a supreme court judge nomination, which would of course carry over to politicians as well.
You mean like refusing to even have a confirmation hearing at all? We're already there.
and
"On October 20, 1973, Solicitor General Bork was instrumental in the 'Saturday Night Massacre' when President Richard Nixon ordered the firing of Watergate Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox following Cox's request for tapes of his Oval Office conversations. Nixon initially ordered U.S. Attorney General Elliot Richardson to fire Cox. Richardson resigned rather than carry out the order. Richardson's top deputy, Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus also considered the order "fundamentally wrong"[15] and resigned, making Bork acting attorney general. When Nixon reiterated his order, Bork complied and fired Cox."
from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Bork. Bork got a hearing. He just was unable to get approved - by a wide margin - because of his disgraceful conduct during Watergate.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merrick_Garland_Supreme_Court_...
https://www.vox.com/2018/8/30/17797770/chuck-schumer-trump-j...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/powerpost/schumer-plays-long-...
Some people are clean, some people aren't.
Some people thought Bork got blindsided is his nomination fight but he made partisan decisions in the Watergate era that limited his career.
It's quite unfortunate that there's now such a strong profit motive in pushing controversial and divisive topics. The internet was supposed to be the great uniter. Unforeseen consequences, as always.
That is not trash at all.
The Buddha says that "enticing speech" is a sin and the primary difference between low brash trash and high brow trash is the size of the market.
I think if you want to be transhuman in 2018, other than swimming with fins, you should be hacking your attention.
I spent 4 years without looking at the mass media regularly and I then I got more normal and I can point the fallacies in my younger self's argument and find that there is something good in television, video games, etc.
Facebook on the other hand turned into something like cigarette smoking in less than ten years.
So if you want to get better than normal results consider your own attention and innovations that help people pay attention differently: anti-Facebook could be the basis of many a business.
@Tango: I think you're right about the inability of most consumers of US media to form intelligent opinions and discussion about such abstract events. However, I would charge the media to convey the importance of such events. On the other hand, sadly, long gone are the days of consumption of in depth aggregated (the best & richest) media and also the personal investments of time people used to make consuming such rich content. Here are the days of real housewives of 'blank' (feel free to subsitute housewives for politicians). We can [must] do better.
> https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/two-takes-depression...
Are you saying US news isn't myopic?
I was even more disappointed in the coverage of the Falcon Heavy. Most news outlets gave it little more than basic coverage, even though it was one of the most significant achievement in space in decades. And that landing footage of multiple rockets separating and autonomously landing, simultaneously, is something that can give anybody goose bumps. And that was a US achievement, which goes against the hypothesis of 'because it was Japanese' many are stating in this thread.
It's pretty sad. We are currently living through what will undoubtedly be seen as one of the most important times in the history of our very species as we develop the technology and ships that will one day go from being just rockets to outright space ships. And you could ask the average person what they know about it, and it would be next to nothing. Yet ask that same person about whether somebody might have drunkenly groped somebody else 35 years ago, and they'll have all the details and dirt. I suppose when it comes to clicks, gropes beat hopes.
You conflated 'news' with 'for-profit news agencies'
A really great article I always recommend on these topics is Robert Kaiser's "The Bad News About the News." [1] Kaiser was a 50 year veteran of the Washington Post working as both editor and reporter. He retired briefly after Bezos bought the paper. It's a great article that gives an insider perspective on the rise and fall of traditional media, and how they reacted and failed to react to the internet in time.
[1] - http://csweb.brookings.edu/content/research/essays/2014/bad-...
If you compare it to a Tesla launch. One clear moment defined in time, various completely superfluous but amazing details for the stories. Most importantly: high quality photogenic imagery! All leading to a giant one day peak of excitement which does take the frontpages.
It is amazingly cool though.
I wonder if it's these values that simply led to Japan letting the story take a natual course rather than wasting funds to pumping up a PR campaign. If so, I wish Japan all the best in being the first to tap into the virtually limitless space mining resources. They deserve it.
I would love for Hayabusa to get more attention, but the problem isn't that it's being drowned out by nothing. It's being drowned out by stories that will have real and long-lasting effects on people's everyday lives.
Venera venus missions was a far more important achievement for mankind