Getting Political

No, no, this is not a post about which way I learn or which color I would paint my front door. It is getting political in a different sort of way, but I do have to say it was a bit scary how intense the protests can get here in New York and riot blockades are no small thing.  Back to the point – I am trying to do a better job on my 101 in 1001 list and two things are very close: 

82. Become more knowledgeable about US Politics
83. Read the newspaper (or NYT.com) every day for one month 

I have to be honest, by the time I have snooze twice and checked my alerts on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and WhatsAp! there is literally not another moment to spare – I must get out of bed and get going. This does not help in my goal to read the paper more and downloading the morning’s addition to my phone has almost killed my entire data plan. But fear not, I have found a solution. 

I now rely on USA Today’s daily newsletter of the top stories from the past 24-hours. Every day in the early afternoon I get an email called “Most Popular stories from January 16“, with the date varying per day.  It highlights the most important stories from a combination of politics, sports, “people”, weather, life, money/market, travel, tech, and opinion. 

Some days it will be almost all world news like the Paris terror attacks and other days a ton of weather stories (remember those storms in Buffalo?).  I like that it is not a set template with one story per category but that it goes by what is popular in the news that day.  No, it is not all positive but the news is not all sunshine and rainbows and I like to know what is going on the world; the good, the bad, and the ugly.  Honestly, there is nothing worse than being at a work event or a friend’s party when people are talking about a big story and you have never heard of the topic, even in passing.   Thank goodness this has not happened lately (yay for these newsletters!). For example, here is a truly varied assortment of stories from the past two weeks: 

It weighs the stories based on popularity so some days there can be four political and other days three separate stories about things going on in the NFL. There is a headline and short blurb about each story and I can click for more, truth be told, I only click on one or two a day but at least I have an idea! This digest is very, very helpful and I can say I have read it every day for the past six weeks. And because of that triumph I am going to cross both of these off my list! #winning,  If you think this USA Today Daily News Email you can sign up for this free here!