shyams, on 2024-November-07, 21:42, said:
My great-grandparents lived in a rural part of the country of my birth; all their water supply was manually fetched from a nearby well. By the time my granddad had his own wife & kids, he was in a mid-sized city and had water on tap. It still needed to be boiled to make it suitable for drinking, but that was negligible effort vs. his childhood.
It's been 70+ years since everyone in my family has had access had potable water straight from the tap. Nobody alive today remembers having to fetch it, boil it, or store it for their daily use.
The media channels are on the opposite side of this trend. Maybe 60 years ago, you could "drink straight from the tap". However, there is ample evidence that nowadays you are better off going to numerous wells of information, fetching your own, checking it for impurities etc. One has to put in efforts (pretty much every day!) in order to get good, fresh, reliable quality news.
That's my view. However, it honestly doesn't matter to me what news you consume. Your life, your choice.
FYI: It's not twitter or facebook. There are thousands of independent professionals (a few of them are Pulitzer Prize winners) who serve out news to their subscribers. Yes, it costs money to subscribe to some of them and you'd probably need numerous sources and professionals to get the full picture. However, I am in zero doubt that if anyone tried this, within a short time you'd be 10x better informed than anyone in your peer group.
Caution: If we discuss the old days, I am 85!. In my youth we had tap water but the shower was cold water only. I had plenty of experience with well water and outhouses when we visited my grandmother or when we rented a cabin for our extended fishing trips. I learned to drink coffee when I was ten or so, I was spending a week at my uncle's farm up near Brainerd, in iron mining country. The water had enough iron in it to make it almost undrinkable straight from the tap so coffee was the way to go. Not only did I learn to drink coffeee, I also practiced shooting a deer hunting rifle (tough on the shoulder) and I learned that there is a lot of work for ten year olds on a farm. Mathematics is an easier way to earn a living.
As for info, in 1952 I was 13. One night I came home from my Boy Scout meeting to see the tv on with Joe McCarthy explaining that Adlai Stevenson, the Dem candidate running against Ike, was a commie. Me, I had an "I Go Pogo" button in support of a possum that, in the comics of the day, was running for president but if a thirteen year old could actually vote I would have voted for Stevenson. I believe my parents "Liked Ike" but I don't think this was because they thought Stevenson was a commie. Info is not always correct. Got that.