TikTok University and other life stuff

[mousme]

Today was only semi-productive. I got the garbage and recycling out the curb when I got home last night, and emptied the dishwasher before going to bed, so that's something. I had intended to get up around 9:00, but slept an extra hour and a half instead, the allure of the snooze button being rather too strong.

I did have some external motivation to get up, however, in the form of a grocery order I placed last night for pick-up. I decided to take all the dogs along with me, since they enjoy a car ride. I had to put Rika in her snowsuit (because she's tiny and gets cold very easily even in the car), and it's honestly pretty hilarious to watch her in it. It's an ungainly pink thing, and she keeps pulling her feet out of the leg holes, gets her legs stuck against her body, and then flings herself around like a pink bowling ball trying to walk. I ended up just scooping her up and carrying her to the car, snowsuit and all, to keep things moving. We first stopped at my Friendly Local Yarn Store for yet another skein of yarn for the Hubris Shawl, because the pattern lied to me about how much yarn I would realistically need, and I keep having to buy more. We were still early for the grocery pick-up time slot, so I took them to a coffee shop with a drive through window and got them puppuccinos, which were met with universal approval (it's just tiny cups of whipped cream). Then it was finally time to pick up the groceries and head home, which was also met with universal approval.

The dogs then all flopped in happy piles on various pieces of furniture, and I unpacked the groceries, had a quick lunch, and had a therapy appointment over Zoom. My therapist is pretty great, and she gave me some insightful pointers on some feelings of frustration I've been struggling with of late about my inability to keep a clean house. I was telling her about how the "just do five minutes a day!" advice doesn't seem to work well with me, because the five minutes' worth of work then gets undone in even less time right after (and not always by me). She have me some tricks for re-framing how I think about it, so that I don't think "Well, it's not worth it because it'll all get undone right away," but rather view it as something useful like getting more steps in during my day, or turning it into a mindfulness exercise, rather than just getting frustrated about things. I'm also going to be working on better emotional regulation during those times when I get frustrated or despondent about how disastrous the house is.

In spite of getting a slightly late start, I still managed to get to work well before the start of my shift, which is good. For a little while last month I was having trouble getting here in that crucial 15-minute window, so I'm glad I'm getting the hang of leaving the house at the right time and planning my time properly for that.

It's Day 2 of not taking anything but the bare minimum of my blood pressure medication and a multivitamin in the morning, and while I'm still tired and very scatterbrained, I'm not sure I'm any worse than usual on any count. I haven't yet started cutting out coffee, but I may start that tomorrow and only have one cup instead of my usual two. My cups are larger than the average cup, I think (12 oz instead of 8 oz), so since I've been drinking two cups a day it's actually closer to 3 cups. So I'll be going down to 1.5 cups first, and then I haven't decided whether I'll just go cold turkey or go down to an 8 oz cup for a few days instead. I quit consuming caffeine back in 2013 or 2014, if memory serves, and stayed off the stuff until 2020 or so, when I decided to give it a go again to see if it would help with the ADHD. I don't know that it has really helped, but I do very much enjoy the taste. Still, if going off the stuff can help with all of the mystery tired and other nonsense, I am more than willing to give it a shot. I think that I will likely have to quit caffeine anyway if I want to pursue treatment with the bariatric clinic, but I will find out for sure tomorrow, when I have my first appointment. I'll probably get into the details of that in tomorrow's entry.

In slightly frustrating news, I forgot my knitting at home even after I went to the trouble of getting another skein of yarn for the Hubris Shawl and even pulled out my swift and ball winder and turned it into a nice, centre-pull ball, all ready for use. Not the end of the world, I can always just work on it tomorrow, but I was really hoping to work on it tonight as well. *sigh*

Anyway, that's the me-centric news. In non-me news, the USA continues its rapid descent into chaos and probably fascism. I can't pretend to understand all of the implications, but the President has signed an Executive Order that, as far as I understand, has effectively put a halt to all federal grants and loans. The wording is to pause all federal assistance "Including, but not limited to" grants related to diversity, foreign aid and "woke gender ideology." There are reports that it could end up halting virtually all federal grant programs, including things like SNAP benefits, and for now a federal judge has temporarily blocked the rule from applying to existing grant programs until next Monday.

I've seen unsubstantiated reports of increased ICE raids, and the Medicaid portal was shut down, cutting off access to healthcare to millions of Americans. France has been making military noises about sending troops to Greenland in case the USA makes good on Trump's threat to take it over (he keeps insisting that Greenland is needed to ensure the USA's national security and has refused to "rule out" using military force to acquire it, which is bananas to even think about). The Danish Prime Minister has said she doesn't believe there is a military threat to Greenland or Denmark, but she's received a lot of support from other European nations, and several countries are now allocating money to defense spending in the Arctic region.

California's Secretary of State is apparently threatening secession, which is a whole new kettle of fish that I didn't even know was a possibility. I think it probably ranks in the same area of likelihood as Québec or Alberta seceding from Canada (i.e. not very likely but still the source of political instability).

The administration has also fired the CDC liaison with the WHO and have cancelled virtually all global health funding, including PEPFAR, the President's Emergency Plan For AIDS relief, which provides HIV/AIDS medications for over 20.6 million people and is estimated to have saved 26 million people since it was created and implemented under George W. Bush in 2003 (so they can't even say they're dismantling something created by Democrats).

The Doomsday clock has moved to 89 seconds to midnight. This is the closest it's been to midnight in its entire 78 year history.


In more positive non-me news, I have come across something really fun on TikTok, and I wanted to talk about it here as a reminder for my future self that not everything is terrible.

First, some background, because future!me is unlikely to remember everything that's happening now (there is so much!): The USA has enacted a "ban" on the app which briefly went into effect on January 17-18 when the app "went dark" for American users. Then it was, ahem, "miraculously saved" and came back with a message kissing the new President's backside, and US users were allowed back on, at least for the next 90 days or so, when the actual deadline has been set. I have no idea what the plan is for that deadline, or if there even is a plan, but for now TikTok is still mostly accessible to its US users except for those who deleted the app before January 17th--the app no longer appears in the app store, from what I've been able to understand.

A lot of things have happened on TikTok since then, and I won't get into all of it, or we'll be here all night. I will note quickly that when America "went dark," the rest of the world suddenly found each other and realized that TikTok had been pushing American content to us above everything else, and that we'd all gotten used to frenetic-paced, highly polished videos from American influencers and the like. Suddenly our feeds, aka the "For You Page" or FYP, were filled with tranquil videos of orange cats from Norway, people playing in the snow in Sweden, people cooking in Kenya, people sharing the quiet, simple moments in their everyday lives. There were no flashy videos, there was no loud music, there were no filters on the videos to make the people look better, and there was no anger, no crying, no distress. We all realized simultaneously that we'd been watching the USA go through a collective trauma, and that we were being subjected to secondary trauma as a result. This is a phenomenon common in dispatchers and emergency responders, wherein watching other people undergo trauma causes a kind of trauma of its own. It was a hell of a revelation. Also, all of the bot farms disappeared, and all the users reported that they were no longer getting harassed in their comments or DMs, and that all the death and rape threats had stopped, and that they started up again when the USA came back online. Like it or not, it was ALL coming from the USA (whether from real users or programmed bot farms), and that is pretty telling.

However, I wanted to talk about a positive aspect of the American users coming back to TikTok.

What I wanted to highlight here is that in the past week a whole bunch of black university professors, women especially (and some men) all organically joined a movement that's now being called either TikTok University or Hillman University, and are offering free courses online. It all started with a university professor called Dr. Barlow (whose first name I don't know although I did look for it, I promise!) who started posting her Intro to African American Studies materials for her own students and found herself going viral, so she expanded her materials to include everyone who was interested in following along. Other academics got involved, and now there are dozens of courses being offered ranging from health sciences to accounting to psychology to child welfare. It's being referred to as an HBCU, but given online in an accessible format. The professors are all tackling it in different ways: some are giving lectures on TikTok live, some are using Google Classroom to share materials, and any number of other resources, all for free. They're putting out syllabi, and planning to teach a full "spring semester's" worth of courses. It's one of the most hopeful things I've seen in a long time. This happened entirely spontaneously, and it's reaching a lot of marginalized people who would otherwise never have had access to this kind of teaching. It's humbling that yet again, black women are offering up free labour (time and energy and knowledge and everything else) in a way that may very well radically change society. It's been exciting and inspiring to watch this unfold in real time.

So, yeah. A timely reminder that can and should keep doing the work. There is hope, so long as we roll up our sleeves.

Life, uh, finds a way. :)

And I think that's enough from me for today. Catch you tomorrow!