I have nothing in Bitcoin at the minute, and that is the way it will stay for awhile.  We are at a stale mate and i agree with vinny lingham that the price is gonna tank, the market will punish us for no consensus.

It depends if you want to avoid the mainstream media just get your sources on the USA from other countries where objective reporting still exists.

Nhk Newsline from Japan, the BBC at times in the UK they are far more bias to Brexit , CTV or CBC from Canada, RT is pretty honest despite all the US fear mongering about it being the Kremlins shouting point from Russia, Al Jazeera from the Qatar,Dubai or CCTV from China to name a few.

The point is as long as it's not from the USA it probably is ok to watch news related to that country through it and not feel like being hit by endless propaganda waves.
Just be careful not to do the safe-space logic where everyone lives in filter bubbles that is a scarier thought than 1984 and the thought police, it would be the self-created thought police.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filter_bubble

If any other country does not follow bitcoin which I know its impossible, those two countries are definitely keen on finding out what will happen or happening in the crypto world with bitcoin taking the lead role and that is why some exchange sites and gambling sites specifically banned users from these two countries from patronising their services.

I can attest (though not for so long a time as that) this does work. Technology use nowadays (which is mostly entertainment or convenience) is mostly habitual. Unconditioning those habits, or replacing them, is healthy. And a note on privacy from state actors. Even if you could hear all the voices in the room, it would be hard to separate a single voice and hear it clearly through the cacophony. That's the current state of affairs with government surveillance. You are psuedo anon, like bitcoin, because it's hard to single out one person with all the noise. When you listen to all the Facebook posts, from the LOL cats to the fight clips, eventually, you tune out everything that isn't "I am a crazy head and intend to do harm to myself, or others".

So, just be aware you are always on record, if you use an electronic medium of communication. It doesn't diminish you, which is the most important thing. But it does give you some considerations.

But when they tune in, you are quite fucked.

you'd spend your whole time answering incredibly dumb questions from people who don't understand anything, then you'd get stabbed and robbed by someone who does. it could be a fun experiment until then.

there was a physical store in london that sold bitcoin for a while. it seemed to be a short lived thing.

But it works. At least for me...  
And I'm very modern I think.
I have to do this twice a year, in summer and in the winter.

My tip for you.

Make three weeks of holidays with cycling, hiking, running but without a phone, tablet, notebooek, internet, tv ...

You'll see, it will work. And after that you have a different behavior

Going ahead and doing all this just so you won't be exposed to fake news narratives and so on is really just a waste of time. You have to know as a person what to weed out and what you know is true with real evidence backing it, this is why I am always one to ask for sources and such when people post in this sub section of the forum.

I go through a good amount of news sources which include CNN, Fox, NY Post, Reddit (Couple sub reddits that are both Liberal and Conservative in nature, one even outright supports Donald Trump) You have to be able to know what is real and what is fake, it's tough but it really teaches you what point of view and bias can do to a certain topic / article.


Don't do this, just watch all the sources and decide yourself what is exaggerated, outright fake, true and so on. Everyone has a bias so just going on a certain couple of sites will just confirm your own views and you never want that. You want to see what other people feel and see about a topic.

I question whether instant payments are mission critical issues and whether they deserve high priority status.

If it is true that people deliberately spam bitcoin transactions with low transfer fees to sabotage legitimate bitcoin transactions.

It could naturally follow that these forums are spammed by people who exaggerate the importance of instant payments to give us the false notion that instant payments are a critical issue in need of attention.

To some degree bitcoin's transaction speed could be a factor of its security features the same way encrypted wifi connections are generally slower the more secure they are.

If that is true, there could be some social engineering at work in terms of people investing a good deal of time and effort into exaggerating the need for instant bitcoin transactions, possibly to push for bitcoin's security features being relaxed in order to suit some agenda.

It makes zero difference to me if bitcoin transactions are instant or take time to confirm.

I wouldn't be surprised if the vast majority of bitcoin users were indifferent to the time it takes for btc to confirm transactions.

First of all you need to remove yourself from Facebook, Facebook has set itself up as a very powerful propaganda  & social engineering tool, I recommend everyone stays away from it. Most of the political fear mongering and propaganda is showered upon the masses via social media.
Stay away from Google, together Facebook and Google know more about you than your wife does, Google will feed you information that confirms with your bias, making it incredibly difficult for you to receive unbiased data.
Thrid, experience the world for yourself, it sounds silly but people have been plugged into these propaganda channels for a decade and it has completely destroyed their intelligence, personality and humanity, they can no longer think logically for themselves.
Do these things before you are completely and totally enslaved by the technocrats, you haven't seen nothing yet.
If you think the Rothschilds are bad wait until Zuckerberg, Musk & Brin have total control over you.