How I'm Staying Sane Right Now
On reskilling to meet the moment.
FYI, this post is too long for some email clients. Consider clicking through to read it on Substack!
I recently read a Substack essay that really resonated with me. With an alternate title of “we need to destroy phone”, Kate Wagner spends the piece self-dissecting their relationship to the magic rectangles we’re all so addicted to. It gets to the bottom of something I’ve been circling around in my own work for a long time: the Internet is no longer a tool for changing minds, never mind shaping public policy, at least not for the Left.
The article resonated with me for many reasons, but the thing that I especially gravitated towards was the idea that phones are deskilling us. “Deskilling” is a term mostly associated with economics: the process of losing skills and knowledge that were once necessary for a particular job or task. In a job context, the automation of a task might make a worker unable to do that task without the machine. We can extend this to the social or political realms, though: thanks to social media, we now think of “maintaining a friendship” as sending memes back and forth but rarely meeting IRL. We now think of “learning” as scrolling on TikTok or passively listening to the podcast. We think of “reading the news” as passively letting a social media algorithm or news aggregator tell us what the news is. We now think of “making each other aware of important issues” as posting something onto our Instagram story or, worse, becoming a political content creator (who would ever do that??)
Due to the many, many problems with social media platforms and algorithms, this has some very obvious problems, ranging from isolation to division to extremism to just plain nothing you’re doing online having a material impact in the real world. As I’ve learned the last few months, you will feel more fulfilled by driving one person to their doctor’s appointment one time than you will by posting 100 infographics to your social media story. You and five friends can accomplish more by attending one town hall meeting than you can by posting 1,000 TikToks. Wagner’s essay is worth quoting at length:
Right now — perhaps this very second, even — we need to regain an ability to ask basic, reorienting questions: Where am I right now? What am I doing? Where are the others who can help me? Who are my neighbors? How can I be a neighbor to others? What’s going on in the world and how do I get out in the world to join in? Is what I’m reading harmful to me? If so, why do I feel a desire to harm myself?
One of the imminent questions of our moment is: what would it take to relearn how to do political work offline, to recognize that there will perhaps be a time — in the very near future — where online work will be rendered impossible for those of us not in favor of the administration? The old ways are already crumbling now in this moment of highly siloed algorithms, where no two people’s internet is the same. Hence, we must quickly abandon the 2010s idea that our content, concepts, and actions will, through the internet, find the masses.
Even beyond the political realm, phones have deskilled us by (among other things) making us forget that we as a species are at our best when we are social. Taking collective action at work will lead to positive change for you and your colleagues. Having a good relationship with your neighbors will save you tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of Amazon purchases over your lifetime by virtue of “borrowing a cup of sugar”, having one another over for dinner, or sharing power tools. The loneliness epidemic is costing us big time, in more ways than one.
It’s no wonder, then, why I’m actually staying pretty sane right now despite all the awful stuff that’s happening in my country: I’m reskilling myself. I quit making video content for TikTok and Instagram in January, choosing to recommit myself to creativity and mutual aid. I still use Instagram to occasionally send memes and cat videos to friends, and yes, I even post political content to my Story, but my use is extremely limited, and I don’t create original content. My TikTok is gone entirely; I’ve even deleted every single video I’ve ever made (much like how an alcoholic might pour their entire liquor cabinet down the sink, the loss may be costly, but it’s more important that there’s nothing to go back to).
Instead of spending my time creating content—which if you didn’t know, is quite time consuming—I’m involved in IRL mutual aid and various creative projects with the ultimate goal of “reskilling” myself. Let’s go over a few of those projects now!
Injection Molding with The Hive
Every Spring, I teach a class on how plastic gets made (ChE 583 Polymer Processing & Sustainability). One of the major themes of the course is seeking alternatives to capitalist economies, since it’s ultimately hyper-consumption and big oil that are driving the plastic pollution crisis. Also, while students see how plastic gets made via PowerPoint slides and YouTube videos, they don’t exactly get a hands-on experience with the material.
That’s where The Hive comes in. The Hive is a cooperatively-owned makerspace in Greenfield, MA whose members are very interested in hands-on, community-based recycling (think Precious Plastics machines). Last Spring, some students at Smith College built a plastic shredder as well as an extrusion machine that can turn take 3D printed parts (or scraps from the 3D printing process), shred them into plastic bits, melt them down, and extrude the parts back into 3D printer filament, creating a closed-loop recycling process. This was extremely cool and I actually had the students visit my ChE 583 class in 2024…
This semester, thanks to help from the UMass CESL Fellowship, I decided to add a service-learning element to my course where students can help The Hive build out their plastic-recycling capabilities. Fortunately, four amazing students stepped up to take on this unique project, and together we all decided that we’d build an injection molding machine for the Hive. Specifically, a Buster Beagle MK3. Injection molding can do things that extrusion can’t do and vice versa, so adding this machine to the makerspace will allow us to use recycled plastics to make even more cool shapes out of even more diverse materials (such as flexible parts with TPE)!
The project is already well underway, with the team on track to finish the build next weekend so we can spend the rest of April testing the injection process! Most importantly, the students are learning a LOT through this experience: not just project planning skills, but about tooling, wiring & electrical diagrams, mold design, and polymer processing in the real world. (Check out this time lapse of the build as of yesterday!)
While this project is slightly entangled with my day job, it’s also filled with radical potential: imagine never having to buy anything ever again because you can take your used plastic junk and turn it into something new! I have a lot more to say about this project, in fact I’m recording a documentary on the process that should be out this summer. I’m very proud to be working on this project and I hope it’s the first of many UMass x Hive collaborations to come!
Off-Grid Communication with Meshtastic
In the spirit of circumventing phones and Big Tech oligarchy, I’ve taken the plunge into Meshtastic, an off-grid, open course, decentralized form of communication using long range radio waves. That’s a lot of jargon, so what does that mean? Basically, it means we can use cheap handheld devices (as low as $15) to send text messages to a friend several miles away. Since messages travel from node to node, the more nodes there are in a given area, the more likely it is that you’ll be able to message a friend that’s far away (or, say, on the other side of the mountain). Meshtastic nodes connect to your smartphone using Bluetooth to make typing and reading messages easier, but there are also standalone devices that don’t require a separate phone at all.
Luckily, I’m not the only weirdo using Meshtastic in Western Massachusetts; on the iPhone app, you can see a map of all the nodes that have GPS functionality (don’t worry, you don’t have to share your location with the world; the cheaper devices don’t have GPS, anyway). You can buy a credit card-sized device with a GPS for when you lose your wallet, though!
While messages aren’t end-to-end encrypted and thus not as secure as Signal, this is still a way for people to talk in cases where the power goes out or in other instances where we don’t want to rely on Big Tech to communicate with one another. There’s something strangely addictive about getting texts on a device you built yourself using platforms that aren’t made by giant corporations; it makes you think “wow, this is what’s possible??”
Meshtastic has a pretty supportive community on Discord who are building even cooler projects with their nodes. I even had someone at The Hive print this absolutely slay case for my next node. If you want to get started for yourself, here’s the cheapest way to do so; follow this exactly and then see if you want to upgrade!
Soil Sensing with Arduino
A couple months ago, after mentioning that I wanted to get back into tinkering with technology, my partner handed me an Arduino and a Raspberry Pi 3B that they had laying around. They also mentioned that they had been wanting to make a soil sensor with the Arduino (they have many plants and would like to know the best time to water them) but never got around to it. My imagination was immediately activated, and I started researching the topic more. A few Adafruit purchases later and I had the beginnings of something cool…
The system I designed cost less than $100 and includes two capacitive soil sensors, a 4-in-one temperature/humidity/pressure/VOC sensor, and an LCD screen for readouts. Once I actually finish the system (I bought the wrong cables for the sensors, haha), my partner will be able to stick the soil sensors into their potted plants and use a button to cycle through the moisture levels in the soil as well as temperature in the room, etc.
Surely, we could have purchased a device on Amazon that can accomplish the same tasks, but there’s a satisfaction to building it yourself that is far greater than the gratification of an impulse purchase, especially when it’s for the love of your life. Not to mention the customizability of the system: we can add up to 5 more soil sensors, add an LED light to indicate whether a plant is dangerously low on water, a data logger to plot the moisture levels over the course of time, or even add a valve that waters the plants automatically. Plus of course, I first learned Arduino in my freshman year of college and it’s nostalgic to be relearning those same skills!
A Raspberry Pi Cyberdeck
This one is in the very early stages. My partner also had a Raspberry Pi 3B, which is essentially a very tiny computer that runs a form of Linux. Pulling from cyberpunk fiction, I wondered if I could design a portable PC in a Nintendo DS-like form factor. So, I purchased a compatible touch screen, a tiny wireless keyboard, and a battery pack that would allow the device to work while not plugged into a wall. Sure enough, it all worked!
My next step is to try to connect everything to other buttons (such as this Adafruit rotary encoder that would make scrolling and using directional keys far easier) and possibly a Meshtastic-compatible board. Then, I can try my hand at 3D printing a case for the thing. Then, if all goes well, I may upgrade the board to a Raspberry Pi 5 so that I can have even more RAM for even more functionality. Hooray for iteration!
Each of these projects have something to do with collective power, collaboration, or circumventing/rejecting Big Tech. The beauty of this project is that I’m absolutely certain that I’ll fail, which is an experience I strangely miss; you can’t exactly “fail” at scrolling your social media feed or texting your meme group chat. The goal of Big Tech has been to remove the friction from our daily lives—the friction of a failed social interaction, the friction of having to call a restaurant to place our order, the friction of trying to schedule meetings by ourselves—but the more you reduce the friction of daily life, the more you lose the humanity off daily life.
Humanity, after all, is what I’m after, what I’m trying to save. The survival of our species is dependent on those of us in the imperial core toppling oppressive systems and building (physically, with our hands) a world without corporate dominance over every aspect of our lives. I may not know exactly how to do that, but now that I’m spending time off my phone, I’m a little bit closer.
Currently Reading
Tomorrow is Trans Day of Remembrance! Consider joining the Trans Rights Readathon. Remember that I have educational resources on my website, too.
It’s time to up your cyber security. One framework I found that makes this a little less intimidating is the “ABC Life” as put forth by Margaret Killjoy.
Speaking of, here’s a guide for visa holders in the U.S.
Gaming Out
Over Spring Break, I played Lorelei and the Laser Eyes, a surreal nonlinear puzzle game that had me scribbling notes with a real-life pen and paper. I strongly recommend if you enjoy puzzles!
Watch History
Babe wake up, Contrapoints is back with a new banger on conspiracy thinking! (Also, my take on her body of work still holds up.)
A stunning video essay (which includes some original research) on two pieces of early-pandemic YouTube art.
An analysis of Rollerdrome, a solid video game whose developers were all laid off.
An analysis of a trucking sim that critiques post-capitalism.
A short nonfiction story about the American criminal legal system.
Bops, Vibes, & Jams
Three new albums for you! The new Lucy Dacus album is one of her most vulnerable, yet one of her most cheerful. Fav tracks: “Best Guess”, “Bullseye”.
SPELLLING dropped a new album for the rock-lovers. Fav tracks: “Portrait of My Heart”, “Destiny Arrives”, “Ammunition”.
Finally, the new Japanese Breakfast album is stripped back and sweet. Fav tracks: “Orlando in Love”, “Picture Window”.
And now, your weekly Koko.
That’s all for now! See you next week with more sweet, sweet content.
In solidarity,
-Anna
I loved the name "Magic Rectangles"