Tech Hygiene and Information Gathering

With the firehose of horrific news coming your way, here are a few ways that I'm maintaining my (relative) sanity without burying my head in the sand (or in Michigan right now, the snow).  Some of this post is about what I'm calling tech hygiene and some if it is about the ways I'm getting information without getting so overwhelmed that I shut down. Maybe some of these will work for you.

1. F.B. Purity

If you still use Facebook, I highly recommend installing the F.B. Purity browser extension. It's by the same people who developed the AdBlocker browser extension and it works really well to restore a more functional Facebook experience so you can find the posts or information or friends you want with less of the absolute garbage, like Sponsored Posts and Reels, that clogs up your feed without it. It only works when you access Facebook via a web browser, not via the app on your phone and it works on most major browsers including Chrome, Firefox, Opera and Safari. It does slow Facebook down a little, but honestly, I think of this as the extension doing its job, sifting out the garbage and cleaning up my feed before I have to look at it. One way of comparing how well it works is to install it in your browser and then compare what you see in a browser version of Facebook compared to the Facebook app on your phone. 

Yes, I've joined BlueSky (I'm @hungryandthinking.bsky.social though not posting much there yet) and I'm hopeful that it'll turn out to be a less evil social media platform, but at this stage it doesn't yet replace the information or people that I want to remain in contact with on Meta platforms. I think of it as supplemental at this stage of its adoption and development. So for now, using the F.B. Purity app has made Meta more functional.

2. Meta settings and hygiene

If I am going to use Meta platforms (FB and Instagram) then I want my account to be as unprofitable for Meta as it can be. Here is how you go into your settings and disconnect your meta accounts from businesses:

3. 5 Calls

A wonderfully empowering and highly functional piece of technology that I am using every day is the phone app 5 Calls which is for both iPhone and Android.  Calls to your elected officials have more impact than emails or letters and Republicans have historically called their representatives way more often than Democrats, though that data may be changing in the past few weeks during which Capitol Hill staffers reported that calls went from 40-50 per hour to 1,400 per hour. It's really really really important to voice your opinion to your elected officials who literally have staff members keeping tallies of what their constituents support and oppose. One of my senators went from posting pictures of her dog to videos of her participation in the filibuster of the evil piece of shit Russell Vought. I think the change in her tone is due to her hearing from her constituents that we want her to be visible and vocal in her opposition to this administration.  

I wrote up this description of how to use 5 Calls and posted it on Facebook so I'll reproduce that here (here's a link to the public post if you want to share it with anyone on FB):

5 Calls is an app for iPhone and Android that makes it super easy to contact your elected officials. It's very well designed. Prior to last week when I downloaded the app, I had my reps numbers programmed in my phone contacts and was calling them to let them know what I thought about issues but it took longer, and I had to keep track about which person I had contacted about which issue. I'll share some screenshots to show you how easy 5 Calls makes it.

 
Once you open the app and enter your zip code you will get a main Issues page with check boxes that show which issues you have contacted your reps about via the app. 

It doesn't record activity outside the app so some of my boxes aren't checked for issues I called about last week or times when the phone lines were overwhelmed and I had to email instead, but if you make a call via the app, it will check the box on the main page. So you can see on my page that "Fight Against Elon Musk" box is checked because I contacted all three of my government officials yesterday. The newest issues are listed at the top, so today I need to make calls for the Protect the Department of Education issue.

Click on an issue and it takes you to a page about that issue so, if you haven't had time to research it, the info is all there. 

At the bottom of that page are the people to contact about that issue (in my case, Senator Gary Peters, Senator Elissa Slotkin and Rep. Debbie Dingell) and there are check boxes next to their names that show if you have contacted them about the particular issue.

Once you pick the person, you get a page with the phone number to call and a script you can use if you want. 

I really appreciate the fact that the app includes a link to local office numbers because when the Washington office lines are full, you can sometimes get through to a local office. That's it! It streamlines the process and makes it super easy to have your opinion tallied and shared with your elected officials.

 
Another tip: if you are phone shy and would prefer to leave a voice message rather than talk to a human, make the calls early in the morning or late at night and you will be able to record your message. The only risk is that the voice mailboxes fill up (that's when you can try a local office, and sometimes when those are full too, I resort to email though it is not as effective.) 

And remember those good rules of parenting: don't forget to praise good behavior as well as ask for changes. Often my messages start with a thank you, like "Thank you for vocally defending NIH funding, now what I'd love to see is an equally visible support for issuing subpoenas for Musk and impeaching Trump for his violation of the Constitution." 

4. Find the voices and information that work for your brain

I used to be a voracious reader of newspapers: I subscribed to four and started my day reading the news. But it's no secret that the mainstream media is failing and is not providing accurate coverage of our current political crisis. I've never watched TV news though I've heard from a few people that if TV is your preferred news medium, that PBS Newshour is still pretty reliable. (Feel free to correct me or share insights about TV news.)

I still subscribe to four papers, though I cancelled my Washington Post subscription and two of the four papers are for local news (Ann Arbor and Detroit), and I only keep my New York Times subscription going because of the cultural stuff: I still love reading the book and movie and theater reviews, and the Cooking recipes are really good. But I no longer trust their news coverage; they are insanely wishy washy in confronting and complicit in normalizing the insanity coming out of the Trump propaganda network. Sometimes I'll still read the news on the site and compare it to other ways that a story is being covered, but I no longer start my day with their whitewashed view of reality. The one paper that I trust to be more on the correct side of history is The Guardian so I've replaced my Washington Post subscription with an online subscription to The Guardian. 

I've also learned to look outside of the newspaper for news. There are some really excellent newsletters being published now from voices I respect so I now have become a paid subscriber to the following:

• Heather Cox Richardson's Letters from an American is a daily analysis by a historian that's become a phenomenon. I've been reading it for years and I am thrilled that she is now a voice that is being amplified. While her analysis can be hard to read--she tells it like it is--it is just such a relief to read someone who is forthright and smart and provides context and footnotes!
• For wisdom, beautiful writing, and deep and strategic thinking I subscribe to Rebecca Solnit's new newsletter, Meditations in an Emergency. Solnit is also a columnist with The Guardian and she's one of the main reasons I am still on Facebook because she uses the platform, flawed as it is, to disseminate and amplify information that isn't getting sufficient coverage in the mainstream media. Her book, Hope in the Dark, was on my nightstand for the four hellacious years of the first Trump administration, and I often read it when I woke up in a panic at 2 am. 
• I also subscribe to Jessica Craven's Chop Wood, Carry Water newsletter which is a super energizing pep talk about what is happening, things that are going right, and the issues that we need to act on. She also has state specific newsletters (Michigan included) that come out about once a month for a focus closer to home. I look forward to getting her Sunday posts (titled "Extra! Extra!") where she summarizes good news of the week because it helps me make sense of the week I just lived through and feels like a good dose of hope before starting the next one. I often read her posts before opening my 5 Calls app to contact my elected officials because they are energizing without being naïve. 

There are some other really good voices out there that I check in with for information, understanding and advice, though maybe not always on a daily basis. But who knows, maybe they will be the voice that works with your level of anxiety/energy/information gathering! And please feel free to share what voices are helping you out because I'm interested in what is working for other people. Here are some that you might want to check out:

• Hopium Chronicles by Simon Rosenberg
• Good Queer News by Ben Greene
• Law Dork with Chris Geidner
• Civil Discourse with Joyce Vance
• The Contrarian with Jen Rubin

And finally, since we need to laugh, the political humorist Andy Borowitz, after facing censorship of his posts on Facebook, now publishes his Borowitz Report as a newsletter. I often play a game where I check in once a week and pick my favorite of his fake headlines. This week's winner: Europe United in the Belief that JD Vance is a Prick.