"I got no deeds to do, no promises to keep I'm dappled and drowsy and ready to sleep. . . ."
Paul Simon, "Feeling Groovy," 1966
Sometimes you just want to kick back.
I installed the TikTok app to see what young people like about it. They look at TikTok instead of doing their homework or sleeping or looking up from their phones to engage IRL.
IRL means in real life.
I prefer YouTube's version: "Shorts."
TikTok is owned by a Chinese company and allegedly they are brainwashing our youth. YouTube is owned by Google and I figure that Google already knows everything about me because it knows what I search for and it reads my email.
Look at the bottom of the screen on your YouTube app. Next to the Home icon there is the word "Shorts." Click or press. It brings you to an endless succession of little videos ten seconds to a minute in length. By liking some and disliking others, you train YouTube to send you stuff you wlll probably like.
What kind of stuff? Well, like this, young athlete cheerleaders:
 |
| https://www.youtube.com/shorts/I-ZcTBuYypc |
Or this, an alert and kind dog rescuing a cat:
 |
| https://www.youtube.com/shorts/_2ucyshFmqU |
Or this funny bit of fake lip-reading of a heated conversation between Kevin McCarthy and Matt Gaetz:
 |
| https://www.youtube.com/shorts/2e4BdiJPLW8 |
If you click "like" on snappy ten-second videos of college-age women* jumping rope to dance music then you will get more of those. If you "like" videos of fighter jets landing on aircraft carriers, you will get those. Cute animals. Go-pro dare-devils. Bloopers.
There are lots of demands on our time and energy. Watching short videos is the least demanding thing I can think of other than napping.
It's OK to take a break.
[*Note "girls" updated to "women" after a comment on proper nouns for people of college age.]
[Note: For daily delivery of this blog to your email go to: https://petersage.substack.com Subscribe. The blog is free and always will be.]
10 comments:
Since you try to be respectful and au courant, please note that before high school graduation females typically are referred to as girls (girls track, basketball, etc.). After high school, females are considered adult women and males are adult men. There are women's sports and men's sports.
There are private schools for girls and boys. Smith and Wellesley are women's colleges (unless men are accepted now).
When I was growing up, Seventeen, Teen and American Girl were magazines for girls in junior and senior high. There were many other magazines for women.
Perhaps it was different in your younger days. I have wondered if Harvard was co-ed when you attended that school.
TikTok is dangerous. By manipulating their opaque, “black box” algorithm that decides what you will see next, China has the ability to subtly influence opinions of Americans on a wide variety of topics, including political ones. Allowing China input into the subconscious inclinations of Americans is unacceptable.
China has conclusively demonstrated that they are a bad actor in the world. We may well be fighting a war with them over Taiwan sometime soon. We made a huge, stupid blunder exporting all of our industrial production to them. Handing them mind control on top of that is adding insult to injury.
Good point, regarding the age-break between "girls" and "women." High school graduation seems to be the divide.
Harvard was in transition when I was there. The women section was technically its own college, but it was blending. Classes were co-ed. There were 4 men for every woman, which meant women were four times as smart as the men. When I started in 1967 it was very forbidden to have women in men's dorms except in short hours of daylight. By my junior year--1969--we had co-ed bathrooms. My first years it was required to wear a coat and tie to eat a meal. By 1970 that was all ancient history.
Regarding the ‘Yellow Peril’:
Probably the most effective act of sabotage that Putin ever inflicted on the U.S. was helping a psychopath become president. The influence of TikTok couldn’t possibly be any more malign than that of #45, Margorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert, George Santos, Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson… i.e. the Republican Party.
Interesting, thank you
China illegally militarized islands that it built up out of reefs in the South China Sea. China willfully ignored other countries’ claims to those reefs even after international courts said China was in violation of their sovereignty.
Allowing China to take Taiwan would give China control of almost all of the advanced chipmaking capacity of the world, an unacceptable strategic disaster for the world’s democracies.
The peril from China isn’t the “yellow”; it’s the evil and aggressive communist totalitarianism. It would be a good thing to spare China’s neighbors from the fate that has already befallen Tibet and Xinjiang and Hong Kong.
Yup, China bad. Fortunately, Biden got the CHIPS Act passed to boost semiconductor manufacturing in the U.S., but most Republicans opposed it. That must make them as "evil and aggressive" as them there dirty commies.
Regarding the ‘Yellow Peril’
To counter the aforementioned peril, the world needs to brush its teeth with Pepsodent. 😁
Even with the Chips Act, Taiwan will be producing a large majority of the advanced computer chips for something like the next decade. The act was a good start, but it does not eliminate the strategic threat. We cannot allow China to conquer Taiwan.
I just finished reading Chip War. I recommend it to anyone who wants to understand the situation regarding computer chips.
As to the ridiculous assertion that the Republicans are as bad as the Chinese, ask yourself:
Would anyone living in a red state here in America prefer to live under the Chinese regime instead? How about the other way around? Has Hong Kong recently experienced immigration, or emigration?
Asking for a friend:
"Is my true love a girl friend, woman friend, boy friend, or man friend?"
My wife has many friends here and loves to do things with the gals; she never talks much about the women here, though. She does talk about the lady, lady's and ladies' events, a lot.
Tonight our men's golf group may go out for a boys' night out (we call ourselves the Mah Jong Orphans).
who was it that said, "call me anything you want to, but be sure to call me!"
Post a Comment