Some Comments on TV, News and Facebook

This morning I used my TV the way I usually do: in Roku mode. I listened to a couple of podcasts (while exercise-running up and down the hall and rooms) and several foreign language newscasts...followed by some YouTube videos alternating two different foreign languages: my preferred ones are Mandarin Chinese/Vietnamese, French/Spanish, and Russian/German. If I do go to the mainline channels, I tend to go to The Weather Channel and avoid both the cable news and opinion channels and the cozy "good morning" magazine-type shows.  That's because I'm focused on my own agenda and want to avoid the distraction, manipulation and, frankly, the fear and outrage those other shows tend to provoke, whether deliberately or not.  I also tend to steer from Facebook when I can, only checking the notifications section to see if someone has something on it pertaining to me.  I am only active on it because, with a break for a few months in 2021, I have since 2013 been putting links to this blog's usually daily entries on my Facebook page for others to more easily access.  But I am not fan of Facebook per se: it seems more of a popularity site for head-nodders than something that resonates with me on a higher level.  It's also an outlet for propaganda, conspiracy theories, and serves as a magnet for aggressive people who have nothing better to do with their lives than to troll others for simply having differing opinions on provocative subjects.  In 2021 after the Trump-worshipping fascists tried to overthrow the United States government following a free and fair election that turned him out of power, I pretty much left the news...and Facebook as well, only resuming the latter after a small number of my blog readers commented that me linking articles to that site made reading it a lot more convenient for them.  But I like Facebook even less than ever, and it's making posting these articles to it more and more arduous: were it not for this blog, I would rarely go there.  As for the news and the events transpiring now with the wars and presidential election campaigns heating up, I don't need constant, draining exposure to it all in order to know where I stand regarding issues and candidates and make my own responsible civic duty choices when election time comes.  Maybe you're different...well, if that's so, then you should be a happy camper with all this crap out there to fill up your mind and waking moments with...