I think you could say an animated loading UI is “essential” since it conveys to the user the program is not frozen. Maybe you could implement a “simple” loading animation if the default one is exceptionally flashy.

1st paragraph of the WCAG linked by OP:

unless the movement, blinking, or scrolling is part of an activity where it is essential;

And further down:

Note
An animation that occurs as part of a preload phase or similar situation can be considered essential if interaction cannot occur during that phase for all users and if not indicating progress could confuse users or cause them to think that content was frozen or broken.

Even further down:

A “loading” animation
A preloader animation is shown on a page which requires a certain percentage of a large file to be downloaded before playback can begin. The animation is the only content on the page and instructs the user to please wait while the video loads. Because the moving content is not presented in parallel with other content, no mechanism to pause, stop or hide it needs to be provided, even though the animation may run for more than 5 seconds for users with slower connections.

Good thing nobody is forcing you to have an account on Blahaj

I find the voice assistant on my android to be extra helpful for setting timers because it is way easier to just hit the assistant button and say start a timer for however long rather than messing around looking for the clock app and trying to put in the settings by hand.

The point of the timer is you don’t need to focus. Your phone will tell you when it’s time to go dump everything in the next machine or back to your basket.

Use a timer? Dump the clothes in a pile, most of your stuff doesn’t need to be folded. Pull out shirts and lay them flat to fold later when brain good.

Yea that’ll actually work in jail tho