tl;dr - Heather Cox Richardson!

My original mini-essay (heh):

It hasn't 100% worked for me, but it's been progress for me to:

- turn on grayscale - don't use any social media - turn off all recommendations for the two indulgences I do have (YouTube, Reddit)

The no recommendations has been especially helpful because I only have my subscription feed, and I can curate that.

As far as news goes - Economist is a good one imo. Weekly news is a fast enough cadence that also filters out noise and nonsense from the knee-jerk, instant reaction news cycles. I've also found the New Yorker to be pretty great, since their pieces are so long that they're usually about events that happened weeks to months ago.

But +1 to others' comments: maybe you don't need to know everything, either. Reading books about history, even recent history, has been a great way for me to fulfill my need to understand our society.

Despite all that I've typed above, if you really want to get regular news consumption, I highly highly recommend Heather Cox Richardson. She distills the daily news and often adds historical context.