A week without news

What happened when I decided to heavily curtail my media consumption

I’d gotten sick and tired of the news — and even more weary of the distortions and reverberations of news and pseudo-news that skittered around the social media universe like ripples from a thousand stones thrown simultaneously into a sludgy pond. Stories and rumors of Haitian immigrants eating cats and dogs, the backlash to Taylor Swift’s announced support for Kamala Harris, the hate and vitriol spewing forth on cable news and X, which Elon Musk, despite his supposed commitment to making the platform a space for free speech, has turned into a raging hate machine — all of it was taking its toll on my soul and psyche.

So I decided to heavily curtail my consumption of news and news-related information. I could go without news for a week, I thought to myself. It wouldn’t be easy for an info-junkie like me, but I would do my best.

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Windows on the World

This morning, on the twenty-third anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, I reflected on my one and only visit to Windows on the World, the restaurant located at the top of the North Tower of the World Trade Center in New York City. Both towers of the WTC, as we now know, collapsed after the planes crashed into them on that terrible day.

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