My parents thought they were smart.

As birthdays and holidays approached, a lot of “useful” gifts were smuggled in – necessities like latest shoes, clothes, a scientific calculator I needed for math class, etc. – together with all of the cool stuff like toys, dolls, etc. .

It made a useful necessity appear to be a gift, when actually it was them saying, “Here’s the thing I want you to use, so I’ll wrap it like a gift and smuggle it in next to all the other cool stuff you might have actually asked for.”

It was like, “Oh cool, Western Barbie!” after which, “Oh, great. “Knee-high socks.”

That’s essentially what the U.S. House of Representatives did with a bill that could potentially lead to a ban of the TikTok app within the United States.

On Saturday, o The Chamber adopted the legislative package this includes $95 billion in funding – $60.8 billion in aid for Ukraine and $26 billion in aid for Israel and relief for Gaza.

The same legislative package includes a bill that would give ByteDance, TikTok’s Chinese parent company, nine months to sell the favored app to a US company or face a ban in that country.

The The Senate will vote on the bill late Tuesday or early Wednesdayand that would mean sending it to Biden’s desk for his signature, and make no mistake, he’ll sign it into law.

Once this happens, the clock will start ticking and our beloved TikTok will need to determine what to do next if it wants to stay operational within the US

Congress is seizing on the concept that the Chinese government can have access to TikTok user data, and since China is a bogeyman within the eyes of the US government, they have to accomplish that! Down! All! possible! to prevent China from doing things like interfering in US elections, using social media platforms to spread propaganda, and the like.

But wait. Hasn’t election interference already happened here with American owned social media platform? Isn’t there one other American owned social media platform? Is this a hotbed of disinformation and propaganda?

In my opinion, this is all planned.

Do not get me flawed; Concerns concerning the Chinese government accessing the private data of US residents are a fact of life and I’m not trying to downplay it in any respect, but we cannot overlook the very fact that what the US government condemns has happened and is actively happening within the country today and doesn’t appear to be for Congress to hurry up to fix this problem.

This gives you: “American billionaires selling our data is cool, but other people doing it is not.”

Another a part of me thinks it has a lot to do with the best way TikTok is gobbling up all of the social media sites within the algorithm department.

My TikTok algorithm is so good that I never click the “follow” tab because I do know I’ll see all the things within the “For You” tab. The For You page is all the time up to date and displays information in real time – almost on an ongoing basis.

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TikTok has change into the fundamental source of data and news for many individuals. It stands out for something that began on Twitter – ongoing conversations. TikTok makes this higher because videos are shown based on what you are already watching and fascinating with. He knows what you would like and offers it to you. But users also need to know the way to separate factual information from misinformation.

Neither Mark Zuckerberg nor Elon Musk has managed to capture this lightning in a bottle, and indeed they appear unwilling to accomplish that.

Are there lively efforts on other sites to block information sharing?

Think of all your mates whose Facebook or Instagram account has been flagged for talking concerning the Gaza genocide.

Think about how Black people on Twitter are punished for fighting against racists, while racists run rampant and unchecked throughout the app.

If an American company were to buy TikTok, which American company would it not be?

Would Elon Musk determine to buy it? Mark Zuckerberg? Could they even do it? TikTok is valued at around $150 billion, according to the Washington Post.and there aren’t many individuals who’ve that sort of money to spend on this sort of enterprise.

As the Post notes, a sale would also pose a host of legal challenges, and neither China nor ByteDance will allow the sale of the TikTok algorithm, which, when you ask me, is what this is all about.

As I discussed earlier, neither Zuck nor Musk have been able to get their algorithms to do what TikTok does, and perhaps that’s by design, or perhaps they only cannot figure it out. Either way, the sale of this algorithm to an American company will definitely profit anyone who wants to exploit it for their very own purposes – or crush it completely.

China does have something to say on this matter, nonetheless, considering that in 2020 it added “recommendation algorithms” to its export control list, which suggests that any sale of a product of this sort requires approval from the Chinese government, and that tells me something, that China is not going to come out this manner.

In any case, we at the moment are waiting for the inevitable and we should always keep a close eye on it, because whatever happens with TikTok shall be a harbinger of what will occur to the exchange of data and all the marketplace of ideas.

Don’t say I didn’t warn you all.

Before deciding on her signature silk machine, Vice President Kamala Harris, like many other Black women, experimented with a series of hairstyles. During a recent performance at Buzzfeed’s “Cocoa Butter.” video series, Harris took a visit down memory lane to reflect on a few of her most vital hair moments.

“For as long as I can remember, my mom has been dividing our hair in half and putting it in two tight braids,” Harris said in a video interview, adding, “(but) I wanted to let it down.”

Looking on the photo of the 5-yr-old, Harris recalled how repeatedly her mother sent her to highschool in a classic style, decorated with “big pompoms” and colourful pins. Although Harris sometimes had something to say in regards to the color of her hair accessories, she consistently desired to keep her hair free and flowing.

“It’s funny because I went to school and (my mother) would put it in two braids, and then whenever I came to school, I would take the braids out,” the vp recalled. “To get ready to go home at the end of the school day, my friends braided my hair.”

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Years later, as a Gen Xer attending Howard University within the mid-to-late Nineteen Eighties, Harris opted for shorter hairstyles. She remembers that between classes, often protesting on the National Mall and taking an energetic role in HBCU student government, she was unable to devote time to styling her hair.

“It was just easy, instead of having to deal with the amount of time it takes to do my own hair or do something that I really couldn’t afford,” she said, explaining her alternative of a giant cut. “When I was in college, I just didn’t want to spend so much time worrying about my hair.”

It wasn’t until after college, while working as an elected district attorney in San Francisco, that Harris decided to grow her hair out again and started to adopt her signature look – a silky hairstyle.

“I decided I wanted to grow my hair out; Drying was just to make the hair easier to style,” she explained. “I know a lot of people saw my interview with Keke Palmer and yes, it’s about the round brush, not the hot iron. This is how I do it…” she added, referring to her June 2023 performance Keke Palmer Podcast “Honey, It’s Keke Palmer” where the VP revealed the key to her hair routine.

“I don’t use a curling iron,” Harris previously told Palmer when asked how repeatedly a month she presses her silk. “It’s too much heat; I use a round brush.”

“Now what kind of magic round brush?” Palmer asked, shocked by her response, “Your hairstyle must be exceptionally beautiful, Madame VP.”

“No, it’s not. It takes a while (using) a boar bristle (brush),” the vp replied, describing the method in additional detail. “It takes a lot of heat. But it’s too much heat to do it and do it (curling iron.) “.

As Harris once more reflected on her hair journey for Buzzfeed, she also shared some advice with her younger self.

“Pay attention to what these amazing people were telling you – and I think I was doing that without even realizing it,” she said, recalling how popular she was Aretha Franklin’s 1978 album “Young, Gifted and Black” she was in childhood. “Everything we were told told us that we were special, that we were loved and that we had responsibilities – and that we should never let anyone tell us who we were; we tell them who we are.”

Watch Vice President Kamala Harris’ video full interview with cocoa butter on YouTube.

Cheslie Kryst’s mother is fulfilling her daughter’s last wish to publish her memoirs.

Two years after Kryst’s suicide, April Simpkins shares intimate details of her 22-year-old daughter’s life in her newly published book, “By the Time You Read This: The Space Between Cheslie’s Smile and Mental Illness.”

According to People Magazine, Kryst wrote the book, which Simpkins accomplished after her death, to help others combating mental health issues. Simpkins also helped launch the Cheslie C. Kryst Foundation, which is able to profit from proceeds from sales of the book and support mental health programs for adolescents and young adults.

“I knew I had to do it,” said Simpkins, a mental health advocate and ambassador for the National Mental Health Alliance. “Doing something that was so important to her was a phenomenal feeling. When I finished, I saw the sun for the first time and I could breathe.”

By the age of 30, Kryst had earned a law degree and an MBA, had been crowned Miss USA and worked as an Emmy-nominated correspondent for “Extra.” Still, she wrote in her memoirs that she had “an unshakable feeling that I didn’t fit in” and struggled with “a constant inner voice that kept saying ‘it’s never enough’.”

Expressing the pressure of success, she added: “I had to be perfect because I had to represent all the youth, women and black people who also wanted to be in the room but were denied access.”

While the news of Kryst’s death shocked those that knew her only as a beauty queen with multiple degrees and a prestigious job, Simpkins understood the gravity of her daughter’s struggles.

She admitted that despite Kryst’s outstanding personality, she had all the time struggled with depression. In 2015, she tried to commit suicide.

“I was blindsided,” Simpkins said. “I thought we could talk about anything, so when I got that phone call, I was replaying the conversations in my head and thinking, ‘Why didn’t she feel comfortable enough to talk to me?'”

Simpkins said that after Kryst’s first suicide attempt, she begged God for “more time” together with her daughter and used that point as best she could. She dedicated herself to supporting Kryst and learning “not to talk to her, but to listen to her.”

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Then on January 30, 2022, Kryst sent her mother a devastating text message wherein she described the private pain she had been through. She began it with a shocking passage: “When you understand this, I won’t be alive anymore.”

“I can no longer bear the crushing weight of constant sadness, hopelessness and loneliness,” she continued. “I cry almost on daily basis now, as if I were in mourning… I now not feel like I have any purpose in life. I do not know if I ever really did it.

Simpkins shared that when she first came upon Kryst had died, a part of her thought she was going to die from a broken heart. The grieving mother faced criticism from some on social media, who questioned why she was unaware of her daughter’s struggles or why she was unable to save her given their close relationship.

However, the mother of six stated that this can be a war that her daughter has been fighting for a few years and nobody is to blame.

As a mother, “you want to fight every battle and you want your children to know, ‘I’ve got your back,'” she said. “But mental illness is a battle you can’t fight on your child’s behalf.”

“I lived every day with her to the fullest,” Simpkins told People. “I can’t let guilt erase what we had together. I’m just grateful for all the days that Cheslie fought, won, and lived to fight another day. You have to accept what happened. You can’t change it. And what remains is gratitude.”