I have started listening to random American city council meetings lately for white noise. Since they’re all bureaucratic-flavored boredom anyway.

  • ZagorathEnglish
    16·
    9 months ago

    I watch my city council meetings attentively. Local politics has an enormous impact on your day-to-day life and it’s also an area where being informed and engaged is most easily able to actually effect the outcome you want. City councillors are more likely to have their view swayed by a modest letter-writing campaign than your Member of Parliament/Representative.

    For white noise, I often use Age of Empires games. I’ve got Survivalist’s Twitch stream open as I type this, but I couldn’t even tell you if he’s winning or losing at the moment because it’s mostly there as background noise.

    • Lemuria@lemmy.mlOP
      18·
      9 months ago

      Yeah, but the city council meeting I’m listening to is on the other side of the Pacific Ocean (Filipino here), so I couldn’t do anything even if I wanted to. And given the geographical distance, the impact on my day-to-day life is… zero.

      But still, the stories I hear during the meetings are entertaining and they really do help me understand America just that little bit more. Curiosity for the win!

      • ZagorathEnglish
        7·
        9 months ago

        Hahaha yeah fair enough!

        If you’re interested in another country, my city of Brisbane, Australia streams all its council meetings on YouTube, and we certainly have some…interesting debates. (I would certainly not hold it up as a good example of well-functioning democracy…)

        • Lemuria@lemmy.mlOPEnglish
          3·
          9 months ago

          Interesting. It looks quite dull from the thumbnails indeed. At the moment my current source of city council white noise is Spokane, Washington - the stories that people tell during open forum are entertaining and I sometimes hate how an amazing story gets cut off by the 2-minute limit.

            • Lemuria@lemmy.mlOP
              2·
              9 months ago

              Well, Spokane enforces a 2 minute limit. What city do you recommend I listen to if I want to hear longer open forum stories?

              EDIT: Oh wait, I replied from the inbox, nevermind. Fort Scott, Kansas is definitely the place.

                • Lemuria@lemmy.mlOP
                  2·
                  9 months ago

                  So… if I have the money to fly down to Fort Scott do I get to ramble on for 3 hours about how their city council has been such a great source of white noise, generating additional white noise for me in the process that I can use once I return to Manila?