Gabe Rocks!

Rolling forward: major mobility milestone

Mon, 13 Apr 2026 12:43:49 +0000

It really wasn’t that long ago that I even struggled with walking, but I am thrilled to share that I have gone roller-blading for the first time in a long time. A lot of great things are coming together this Spring and I am eager to make the best of it. Last week I made a new low of just a hair below 289. Lately I’ve been looking back at just how hard-won my newfound mobility is and reflecting on how different it feels to be able to glide again.

First roll

In truth, I was very anxious to begin roller-blading. I had become so used to everything being a painful and arduous challenge that I was expecting my first attempt to be a humiliating and frustrating experience. Once I got moving, I experienced the exact opposite. Things felt fluid and fun. In that moment it was so hard to believe that I was doing it. Actually having some momentum was a surreal and liberating experience. Feeling the wind against me as I pushed forward made me feel a concrete sense of accomplishment I truly haven’t allowed myself feel until now. It was very helpful that my twin brother sent me a tutorial video on how to avoid common beginner mistakes. I’ve still got a lot to learn but I’m very happy I’ve been able to skate around without any back pain. Hopefully, the weather will cooperate and I can become quite the skating fanatic.

Cooking

I’ve been trying to have more egg whites in general, but it’s been boring to only have them scrambled.

New Low

Lately I’ve been anxious about still not being very far from 300. To be blunt, I don’t quite yet trust that it’s fully behind me. I recently bought some XL shorts not expecting them to fit and to my surprise they did! Despite the scale going slowly it does seem that I’m progressing reasonably well.

Tech troubles update

The i2p version of my site is back online, if there are any problems please let me know.

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Can we short-circuit authoritarianism by understanding fear?

Fri, 03 Apr 2026 13:10:28 +0000

Lately I’ve been wrestling with a quite familiar terror brought on by world events. With escalating wars and energy shocks I find myself reminded of the dark days of the covid years. Since then I have learned that the problem isn’t fear in difficult times, but being ruled by it. One of the most frustrating things to see is how during the chaos, people get taken advantage of by opportunists and institutions alike.

To address my emotional eating, I’ve had to take a deep look at what mental and emotional troubles drive me to seek comfort. As I’ve made progress, I’ve had to wrestle with a deeper understanding of my own fear-driven compulsions. On reflection, it is clear to me that these insights have broader applications beyond just health. I hope you appreciate listening to me try to figure this out.

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Rebounding from troubles and gaining new ground

Thu, 26 Mar 2026 14:11:50 +0000

Yesterday I hit a new low of 292.6. I am so close to leaving the 290s and entering the 280s. This recent milestone was very hard won. Just as I was feeling my absolute best in body and optimism I hurt my lower back lifting. I’ve had pains and aches before in this process, but nothing before this point interfered with what little basic life capacity I had gained so much. In those moments I felt like I was just as limited as I was at my highest weight. The stiffness and soreness of the lower back caused me more than just hurt, but also absolute despair. I wasn’t at all confident I would recover. I endured a week of pure panic as I worried that I had doomed myself.

The pain itself made any kind of restraint I had when it comes to eating habits completely dissolve. Being in a state where every movement was painful and constrained terrified me on top of the shame of feeling completely out of control. In hindsight, I had so much less to fear than I thought. It was certainly scary to see the scale rise all the way up to 320 after reaching the mid 290s, but I massively underestimated how quickly I could get back on track. After a very difficult week I started to feel well enough that I began to feel in control again. I learned so much about myself throughout this.

Above all, I am very grateful for every small piece of patience I have built up throughout this process. It would seem that giving myself flexibility in the past helped allow me to better recognize the impermanence of bad food choices. In the past I would have been much harder on myself for getting off track at all. What made this different is that I was thankfully able to suspend judgement of myself for bad choices made in extreme conditions. Looking back I can definitely see how much of a real difference that made in helping me recover as I regained control.

Betting everything on a good night’s sleep

During this ordeal, I came across a quite fitting quote: You can have 1000 problems in your life until you have a health problem. Then you only have one. It was equal parts frustrating and terrifying to experience my capacity shrink in such a sudden and extreme way. To compound the misery I developed a cold on top of the back pain which felt like a whole new level of difficulties. In a ironic sense, this was actually an excellent opportunity. I decided that since I was already feeling terrible and miserable that the huge amounts of caffeine I was back to having were not actually able to help me at all. So I chose to take advantage of this already challenging time to quit caffeine ‘cold-turkey’ yet again.

This time around, I actually learned something new about myself: all these years, I have actually just been masking sleep deprivation with caffeine. I vastly underestimated the benefits of sleep during ideal circadian timing. Since I was still able to walk, one of the first things I worked to rebuild as I began to feel better was getting my daily step counts back to over 15K. What I noticed is that the high daily activity and no longer having caffeine in my system made sleeping at proper times much more accessible, even if it is still a daily struggle. Having only improved my sleep moderately for a short period of time, I can say the advantages in terms of alertness and focus are un-paralleled.

Moving forward, I am going to continue to spend effort prioritizing proper sleep. I am hoping it will nicely compliment my ambition to stay highly active, and I think it will be required to continue to make radical progress. The hardest part about it really is having to go without many personal tasks that I would like to accomplish day-to-day. At least for now, I see this as me investing in future capacity and that I just need to be patient with myself as the rewards come in.

Volunteering at a power-lifting meet

As I was beginning to feel better, I had the excellent opportunity to volunteer at a power-lifting meet. To me, it really meant a great deal to be able to be there for the many people from my gym who have been cheering me on in my process. I’m fairly used to seeing people lift heavy weights, but seeing people I knew make world records in their weight class was quite the eye-opener. It was quite a lot of fun to witness and a joy to be a part of. In the short term I’m very hesitant to put a lot of weight on my back, but I can certainly see myself working on my bench press to eventually participate. I can definitely say being more engaged with the community around my gym goes a long way to expand my horizons in helpful ways.

Reflections on nervous system regulation

I’ve said before that dieting is just a collection of skills, this recent ordeal has emphasized to me the principal importance of stress management. I am beginning to recognize that the root of my emotional eating patterns is a more broader response to soothing myself with food for a much wider variety of stressors. In reflecting on this I now believe that becoming familiar with a variety of activities is not just useful for neuroplasticity but also to not confine oneself to a single method of soothing. Of course, this area seems to be where prevention is worth a pound of cure. So it is worth doing what can be done to manage internal and external sources of stress.

Unfortunately, it seems to be quite difficult to turn away from well-reinforced methods of soothing and adopt new ones. I’m beginning to recognize how important it is to proactively develop a wider variety of tools for bringing comfort. What seems to help is to embrace a combination of active and passive strategies to account for time and energy limitations. This helps me realize what makes doom-scrolling such a difficult trap, it’s the worst of both passive and active engagement. You’re engaged enough to be drained, but it’s too passive to feel accomplished at all.

Active soothing

Exercise & movement
Creative pursuits (Writing, programming, arts)
Reading
Puzzles
Competitive gaming
Cleaning, collecting, and organization
Prayer & breath-work

Passive soothing

Sleep/naps
Low-stakes gaming
Podcasts, Music, shows & movies
Connection with others

I’d love to hear what really helps keep you fresh!

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Walk with me: Every step counts

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 13:17:28 +0000

I am feeling refreshed and ready these days, I hope you’ll enjoy this pleasant reflection on my recent thoughts and progress.

Recent victories

New low: 295.2, which puts me at 280lbs lost!
New Bench Press personal record: 177lbs for 8 reps
Step count: Averaged over 12k steps per day over the last month!

Feeling overall better

I’m beginning to actually feel lighter on my feet. Moving around is feeling not quite effortless, but at least substantially easier. Regular morning walks are doing wonders for my mood and even productivity. It seems that as the snow melts away so too is the fat covering up what I have built over the last while. I am regularly receiving compliments from people at the gym and even being asked for tips!

I feel wholly recharged and ready to take on the ambitious plans I have for this year. I’ve had some real frustrating setbacks recently, but I’m very excited to make the best of the road ahead.

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Walk with me: Choosing what to carry

Thu, 26 Feb 2026 14:01:31 +0000

I’m happy to share this ‘filler’ update that’s not much more than just a snapshot of what’s on my mind at this stage. I’m thrilled to share that I’ve been averaging over 10k steps a day for the last month. I think the extra movement has done me a great deal of good, and I’m glad to be no longer letting Winter stop me from being outside. I am very grateful for the additional sunshine every day now that Spring feels within reach.

Thoughts on ways to enjoy weight loss

Last time I asked "Can weight loss be FUN?" and had some thoughts on that I wanted to share.

Peace, calm & patience are underrated

It is a genuine shame that for many, a weight loss journey usually begins with a significant amount of pressure. I have noticed that both external and self-inflicted pressure are corrosive to what it really takes to prioritize living a healthy life. I have noticed that stress management is one of the most important fights in the overall process. Urgency, even when well-placed, has to be handled with care.

I am beginning to recognize the benefits of slower approaches and prioritizing presence over performance. So many very important changes are subtle and only noticeable over the long term. No amount of wishing for quick fixes or desperate bursts of unsustainable effort will ever amount to actual change. Real progress only comes from being content with small day-to-day refinements that build up over time.

Ironically, it was really weightlifting that has helped teach me this. It feels like the harder you push in short bursts, the harder the body pushes back. The ‘slow and steady’ approach of building momentum is so much more effective than trying to constantly borrow capacity from the future. Accepting that things take time really does go a long way to refocus on refinement rather than unending reinvention.
Take on parallel adventures

Having spent well over a year losing weight intensely, I can certainly attest that being kind to your mind is a primary objective. Instead of trying to spend every moment ruminating over the weight loss process itself, it is very helpful to enjoy other long-term pursuits. So many of the changes needed to transform the body over time are very applicable to other interesting domains.

For example, I’ve found it enjoyable to learn to cook during this process. It is a great opportunity to build up self-efficacy and is very complimentary skill to dieting. Weight-lifting has been a very enjoyable adventure during this time, and I am looking forward to taking on more active skills. But not all pursuits need to be complimentary with weight loss. I think creative pursuits are definitely worth taking on if for no other reason to be more than a ‘one trick pony’ once the transformation is complete. I feel like I have been missing out for not reading fiction during this time,
Invest in preparation

Anything you can do to save yourself trouble goes quite a long way. Spending the time to plan things out on reasonable timeframes can do a great deal of good. Removing guesswork can definitely reduce background stress and reduce ‘decision fatigue’ day-to-day. A big part of this is ensuring you’re well equipped, having comfortable and reliable gear for activities makes a huge difference. At this stage, I’m really realizing how important it is to try to be proactive rather than reactive.
Make the best of the outdoors

Winter has been a harsh reminder that sunshine isn’t something to be taken for granted. As hard as it’s been I’ve come to realize that wrestling with the cold for some fresh air is absolutely worthwhile. Anything that can be done to enjoy time spent walking is worth it. Most of the time I’m listening to music or podcasts, but bringing someone along is great too. When I was starting out walks felt entirely unbearable, the standing alone would be painful fairly quickly. Now I’m really trying to appreciate the fact that I can choose to slow down and enjoy my walks as I go along.
Hope and optimism

Starting out, it was very difficult for me to believe that change was possible. To the degree I felt it could be done I was terrified it wouldn’t amount to enough. It is genuinely hard to be hopeful and optimistic when the smallest day-to-day challenges feel overwhelming and insurmountable. In getting to where I am now, I can recognize that it is absolutely vital to nurture your ability to feel joy and inspiration. Joining your own team, and building yourself up is the foundation that can make the biggest difference in the face of difficult challenges. Anything you can do to connect with understanding people is worthwhile. Finding people who are supportive and encouraging will absolutely help you learn to be gentler to yourself among other things. There is much to treasure in others, and recognizing it will help you appreciate your own gifts.

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Reflection: Can weight loss be FUN?

Fri, 13 Feb 2026 12:41:31 +0000

It has been quite a struggle to share some thoughts lately. I am realizing just how important these reflections have been to my overall process, so I am very glad to share this update, despite not having much progress to show for it. Despite recently breaking below 300lbs, I am currently hovering just above that as I’m trying reorient myself to push hard. I hope you’ll enjoy this off-the-cuff monologue of my latest reflections on how I want to make the best of the road ahead.

Recent non-scale victories

Appreciating the person I see in the mirror

Despite being very far from done, I am noticing significant changes in my self-image. Very slowly I began to notice I was reflexively avoiding my reflection less and less lately. This recently culminated in actually smiling back at myself for a brief moment. I don’t have a whole lot to say about this beyond the fact that this is a notable event that I want to capture and appreciate.

Meal-prep

Getting back into meal-prepping has been a bit of a challenge. I’ve vastly underestimated the benefits of having pre-prepared meals when things are difficult. I am very glad to have at least made the next week significantly easier and I am definitely motivated to keep this up moving forward.

Trying to imagine dieting happy

Given that getting to where I want to be is going to require a great deal of time and effort for quite a while, I feel that I need to learn to truly enjoy the process. Up until this point I can admit that the vast majority of the enjoyment I’ve gotten from this process have been just about the numbers in my spreadsheet. The problem with this is that it’s ultimately results-driven rather than process driven. I recognize that so many aspects of building a healthier life can be quite fun. Cooking, going for walks, lifting weights, being around people, and so many of the things I’m doing in this process are fun on their own, so why not in totality? I guess that a big part of the problem is pressure. I want to be driven and motivated by the idea of becoming more capable and taking better care of myself rather than a shame spiral over my limitations.

What I’m trying to reorient in my mind is to reframe my conception of this process as a joyful adventure rather than a grueling gauntlet I need to merely survive. I think a way to do this is to double-down on this as a learning process. I’m beginning to realize that a truly growth-oriented mindset is a lot more than just understanding change is possible. It would seem that patience and compassion are foundational to it. I have been really reflecting on how to disconnect the idea of high standards from harshness and impatience. How do I push myself to reach greater heights out of love rather than fear? One largely-untapped resource of joy available to me in this process has been the absolute bounty of encouragement I regularly receive. I still recognize the all-too-familiar numbness preventing me from truly appreciating the kindness I’ve received up to this point. Being open to really focus on those moments and cherish them for what they are is a clear opportunity to derive more joy from this process.

On a more foundational level, I’m recognizing that I need to figure out how to derive joy from doing the things necessary to live a healthy life. The more I think of it, the more it seems to be less of a mystery and more a process of decoupling the goals and strategies from cruel judgement. It feels so natural to believe “I must do this because I am terrible” rather than “I care enough to work on this problem”. I now believe that the problem isn’t actually a lack of intrinsic motivation, but rather a focus on negative intrinsic motivators over positive ones. Reorienting this seems to be very difficult problem. Internal and external pressures seem to be what fuels the harshness, and addressing those can be very complex. So for the rest of this year I have a real question to answer: how can someone enjoy the process of building health despite the pressures and difficulty? I certainly don’t have much of one now, but I am excited to work on that problem.

Mini-rant: Lifestyle carpentry

An axe I have to grind is that people very often want to tell others to “just do X” to resolve various problems. I had a conversation with Samuel about how telling someone to “just install Linux” isn’t exactly a silver-bullet. I wholeheartedly believe that much of this is well-intentioned and is actually people trying to help, but in practice it’s rarely what brings change. Everyone has particular circumstances and capacity to take on particular changes. In my mind, I now think of the process of changing lifestyle and mindsets as very similar to the game of carpenty in Puzzle Pirates but Tetris is also a good metaphor. In both games time passes and mistakes compound. Ultimately the objective is to fit a piece within a space that it may or may not perfectly fit inside. With careful planning and diligent work, it is certainly possible to make the best of any particular piece. That is not the same as saying all pieces are equally useful at all times in the game.

For me, I am realizing that my negative habits relating to sleep are ‘costing me’ a significant amount of space that I need to really focus on resolving them to fit better habits. For example it’s very difficult to go on a morning walk when being reliably awake in the morning is a challenge on its own, and has knock on effects on other things. As such I now see the process of changing habits as a ’trade’ where you try to move time and effort from one domain into another. Naturally some trades are profitable than others in particular situations. The real challenge seems to be about recognizing the opportunities in high value trades.

Interesting find

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Major Milestone: Below 300 / Over 275lbs down!

Wed, 28 Jan 2026 22:45:50 +0000

I hope you’ll enjoy this attempt at a walking monologue in video. Running with the theme of pushing my comfort zone this was a particularly challenging thing to take on. I’ve actually attempted to record many walking monologues lately, which have sadly been kept for my own archives. In many ways I’ve been treating this milestone as a deadline to force myself to get over the self-censorship of perfectionism. As usual, the written portion here is a semi-overlapping blog post.

This milestone has been a long time coming. I can genuinely say that when I started this journey I had zero confidence I would even get this far. I’m finally at the point where I can say I’m quite confident that I haven’t been this weight in almost a decade. I’ve learned so much in this arduous process of reversing course, and there have been many ups and downs. what makes reaching this point most significant is that I’ve begun to notice “good problems to have”. Instead of everyday life itself being a challenge, I have to seek out new challenges to continue improving myself and testing my limits.

As of my latest low of 299.4 the other day, I’ve lost just over 276 pounds from my highest recorded weight in September of 2024. It is a genuinely surreal feeling and I find myself asking “where did it all go?” During my lifts I can see my extra skin hanging off of me and I can even feel my collar bone and calves now. Paradoxically I’m not quite used to feeling like myself again despite spending so much time at this size. I think it’s because in part I have never been as strong as I am now. Getting stronger has been a lot of fun, my latest big milestone is being able to overhead press 135lbs for 6 reps. At the gym I’m told that it’s quite an impressive feat!

The good and the bad

Over the turn of the year, I’ve been definitely having some struggles. A mix of burnout, a personal crisis, and pressure made the last few months a very challenging ordeal. I am very happy to share that I’ve held on and I’m doing quite better. A great deal of this is due to the kindness and support I got from so many different places. I reached out to the people I know in real life and got many great suggestions. My trainer pushed me to get out of my comfort zone and reacclimate myself with what physical limits I still have, a great coach at the gym suggested that I shouldn’t be too hard on myself for not ‘feeling into it’ and endure until I feel recharged again. One of my new gym friends suggested that limiting my food choices too much wasn’t helping at all. With a combination of this, and a desire to shake things up in the new year I decided I needed to focus on an “easy wins” protocol, where I identify ’low-hanging fruit’ that helps keep me moving forward.

The first one was to commit to taking creatine regularly. It’s not a supplement you can expect anything out of taking once so I decided to really focus on ensuring I wasn’t slacking in that department. I certainly can’t report any world-changing effects, but I do think it’s made a small difference. The next ’easy win’ was to stop taking the bus for my daily commutes nearby (mostly to avoid the cold) and to push myself to get back into walking again. This was certainly quite difficult but absolutely had the best ROI. I am no longer paying to be less active which is certainly a bad deal in my circumstances. That said, I really do recognize that this has increased the challenge of each day during this time. As such the next “easy win” was to focus on active recovery and really spend effort taking time to relax. In the past I’ve noticed that spending time away from the pool usually makes things harder, so I’m guessing that physical and mental break goes a long way to help me recharge. Since I’m focused on putting effort into relaxation and I have access to a sauna at the gym, I figured the next ’easy win’ was to focus on actually making use of it regularly. I think focusing on these small ’easy wins’ has been a great way to keep me focused while my passion and motivation recharges. I’m certainly not done with them, my next major focus is getting back into the habit of ‘meal-prepping’ for myself because I find it makes such a huge difference. I’ve been relying a bit too much on ready-to-go greek yogurt lately. Having meals ready really goes a long way to reduce the ‘cognitive load’ of trying to eat right which is something I definitely still struggle with when stress and pressure get to me.

I’m very glad I was able to share that I was struggling in my last recording. It’s not at all an easy thing to do but I got a great deal of encouragement and support from my regular listeners. I am constantly surprised at how many ‘internet strangers’ are willing to take the time to share thoughts and kind words. In a time where governments and corporations are working to seize control over online communications, it is a genuine joy to see that the free and open web can still be a warm and thoughtful place. Ironically, this has been contrasted with some of my negative experiences of getting back on mainstream social media. I am quite shocked how efficient the ‘doom-scrolling’ algorithms are at precisely pinpointing emotional buttons to press. I realize I have been spoiled by the open web and decentralized social media for the meaningful depth to be found in conscious and deliberate engagement. I’m definitely going to have more to say about this in the near future.

Looking at health in a different light

In becoming comfortable at my current size, I realized I needed a deeper reason to carry on this mission further. I am no longer working to reverse the damage sustained during the covid years, and I am no longer a prisoner in my own body. “Scale go down” has been a strong motivator for me thus far but there is definitely going to be a point where that’s no longer a good thing, even if I am in no immediate danger of reaching that point. I’m recognizing that I have certainly built up skills, habits, and systems that will help me move forwards, but I’m also recognizing old patterns coming back with a vengeance. It has never been more clear to me that becoming a radically different person requires a forceful rejection of those ‘old ways’. The effort of consciously interrupting the feedback loops behind them seems to require focus and will that has to come from somewhere… or at least to me.

It feels genuinely deranged to admit that while I’ve been on a ‘health’ journey for many years now, I’m only now beginning to truly rebuild understanding of health. Sure I’ve learned a great deal about mental and physical health in this time, but ultimately much of that was more instrumental rather than fundamental. I recognized that my efforts to lose weight were not ultimately tied to anything particularly deep. Once the ball actually got rolling it happened so fast I didn’t really wrestle with the meaning behind much of it at all. This all likely sounds like terrible navel-gazing, but it’s crucial to understanding where I’ve gone wrong in the past and what I want to do about it moving forward.

Ultimately, my biggest problem was that I treated my own health as expendable. In early adulthood the pressure to secure independence and space I was perfectly willing to ‘cash in’ on health if it meant making getting through the day easier. Effectively I was just digging myself into a deeper and deeper hole. This was part a particularly nasty feedback loop of extra weight causing discomfort and then using self-destructive means to ease that discomfort. I’ve come to realize that not only that not caring about health caused my problem, but that even getting this far wasn’t enough to really start caring. In a small way I guess I had just hoped the “sunk cost fallacy” would be enough to get me to care. Thinking “I’ve done all this, of course I’m going to keep myself in shape”, but I’ve come to realize it takes more to that.

A small metaphor: Finance

To better explain how I see the problem, I’ll try to draw a parallel from health to financial life. There are generally two paths that people recognize in financial living: 1) “Net worth maximization” is the path people intuitively understand as responsible financial management. You spend less than you earn, build up savings, invest over time and build wealth along your life. 2) “Credit maximization” where you earn to borrow. In this path you’ll use up all the credit you have access to until you’re eventually stopped by interest rates or insufficient income and you go bankrupt. I recognize that in reality both of these ‘paths’ are far more complex than I’ve summarized here, but this is the basic concept.

I now recognize that I need to see health less about simple “good vs bad” decisions, but more in terms of managing a growing portfolio. A (good) financial planner will recognize that everyone has unique circumstances, goals, and challenges. That planner is tasked with making the best use of the assets available to grow the portfolio over time. It is intuitively obvious that a ‘health portfolio’ includes a lot more than simply not just being over 500lbs anymore. With this understanding I can better recognize the value of varied health ‘assets’ like V02 max, strength, mobility and even the quirky things people bring up that I still don’t quite understand.

With this in mind, I’m now reinvigorated to learn even more about these things not just to ‘maximize my health portfolio’ but also so that I can have a deeper understanding of how bigger issues relate to the little ones. It’s no secret that I have a very inter-connected view of health and freedom, so I’m very much looking forward to having more to share as I continue to learn and put things to the test. It is a huge relief to have this heading and feel like I actually can “care about health” in a way I have never truly contemplated before. It is equal parts daunting and thrilling, but I appreciate having you here for the ride.

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Walk with me: Regaining Focus

Sun, 11 Jan 2026 17:57:21 +0000

For the last few weeks I’ve been floundering in a couple of ways. Most notably my progress has stalled and I’ve been feeling a great deal of pressure to identify why. What began as a vague sensation of feeling like there’s “nothing in the tank” has expanded into a wider torrent of difficulties. At the most basic level, over the holiday season I introduced more flexibility, and it has been much harder to ‘get back on the saddle’ this time around. I’m realizing that this ‘plateau’ is in some ways driven by familiar pressures driving all too familiar behavior. In being ‘out in the world’ regularly, I am feeling an overwhelming urge to hide from it yet again. Despite everything, I still don’t have enough gratitude for getting to this point, and for the opportunity that this represents for me.

Being comfortable at my current size makes it genuinely hard to appreciate any benefits to reaching a healthy body weight. Intellectually I can comprehend that I’m carrying an extra 100lbs of weight, but on an emotional level it doesn’t register. Logically, I want to reach lower and continue to progress, but I notice that day-to-day I struggle to properly prioritize what it would take to advance. Some of this is the fact that the game has changed in many ways. I am no longer in a situation where losing weight is my only responsibility. Taking on more has been gratifying, but it has also introduced challenges that I haven’t fully handled.

On some level, sharing this is comforting because admitting I have stalled and failed to keep momentum at least puts me in a position to analyze why. I think much of my recent troubles has been out of a panicked denial to reach for a “quick-fix” rather than to slow down and ask myself “what’s happening?”. It is profoundly difficult to say that at the moment, I feel entirely powerless again. I see the challenge before me as too difficult and myself as too weak and incapable to fix it. Ironically enough, this is very similar to how I felt starting this journey. What’s different this time is that I am no longer as desperate for change (even if I should be…) and I have less time, focus, and resources to devote to this.

I know it’s certainly possible to change, and that doing so is going to be worthwhile. I am mired in a haze of confusion as I struggle to remind myself why I’m doing this. I wonder if it is because so much has changed over the last year I am being forced to reassess particular assumptions made along the way. I am beginning to recognize that despite all this I still don’t actually care that much about my own health. Taking the time to prioritize continuing to address my weight feels vain, selfish, and more hassle than it’s worth. I realize that this error is the cause of many of my problems, yet It seems stubbornly difficult to shake. The dark side of this is that because continuing is going to take more effort, I feel it is hard to justify the investment in myself. After all this change, I still struggle to see myself as worthwhile. I didn’t realize just how much making progress means that old wounds feel fresh all over again.

Ongoing issues

Winter is the worst

The cold has certainly won out over what remained of my willpower. Retreating mostly indoors has certainly not helped my mood and motivation. I’m already tired of the wet and the chilly winds. I miss walking more, and these updates have definitely suffered a bit due to that alone. I realized while doing this recording that not having this time to self-reflect out loud has absolutely not done me any favors. It would seem that overcoming my funk is absolutely going to have to involve being more willing to brave the rest of the Winter season.
Intense pain

A recent injury has my back feeling quite sore. It feels like a knife in my back. Not all the time, but a lot of the time. My lifts and ability to function have certainly been impacted. This has been the hardest thing to bear lately. The pain from this is too difficult to ignore and is a constant frustration. Something as simple as looking to the side will aggravate it, and it has lingered for a frustrating amount of time. Despite being a week already, it feels like there is no end in sight.
Pressure & feelings

I’ve been struggling with pressure from being stalled. What little patience I may have developed during this journey feels all used up. I’m folding under it to the point of misery. It is clear to me that I really need to chill out, but the feeling of letting myself down makes that very difficult. The frustration with it all is making it hard to make clear-headed decisions.
Sleep and energy

One of the more clear signs that I need to calm down is that reasonable sleep completely evades me. These days I’m feeling more lethargic, but I’m wondering how much of that is hydration being an issue.

Down but not out!

As melancholic as this reads, the dread is being reasonably restrained. Despite all this I have many reasons to be thankful and optimistic. If nothing else, my situation is a great deal more ‘salvageable’ than before. I’ve learned a great deal that is going to help me, it’s just a matter of realigning my mindset with the process. To me, my current problem mostly seems to be about reigniting my passion to launch myself into it fully, rather than just coasting on past progress. It’s going to take me a great deal to do this ‘mental reset’, but I know it’s a matter of time and effort. I think if I refocus on caring for myself instead of applying pressure things can improve quite a bit.

As bad as it is, I’m still holding on. I am holding on to hope that I will figure this out and that I will begin steadily improving again. The good part of all this is that while I may be having trouble, I still haven’t really “gone completely off the rails” Maybe it’s cope but I’m feeling good about the fact that my eating habits are still wildly better than before given the circumstances. A lot of the work that went in to building up better capabilities and routines is certainly paying dividends. If nothing else I am comforted by the fact that no matter how rough this all is, I am not starting from scratch.

I am looking forward to feeling better, stronger, and more capable again.

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2025 Year in Review & Resolutions

Fri, 02 Jan 2026 09:40:00 +0000

Here is my video update for the year of 2025 and my new year’s resolutions. In 2024, I got the ball rolling. During 2025 I was able to truly dive into this journey for all that it is. I learned a great deal and I hope you enjoy my sappy (and a bit tired) update video. It’s been a very wild ride since getting started in 2024, but I hope I can share how it has been rewarding throughout.

Results

Date	Weight	Lost in 2025	Since start	BF estimate
2025-12-31	307.5	171.5	268.5	38.2%

By the start of this year, I’m very close to being below 300 which is a massive milestone that puts me at a size I haven’t been at for almost a decade. I’m able to comfortably do so many things that were quite out of reach at the start of 2025. I’m very grateful for the support and kindness that has encouraged and carried me through what has been a very long and challenging ordeal. Far from the days where I felt completely out of control when it comes to food, I am now at a point where I feel capable and confident when it comes to making dietary decisions.

Getting stronger has been the best part of this journey so far. The quality of life improvements of being strong feel unparalleled. It’s immensely gratifying to drastically expand my capabilities in a relatively short period of time. Ironically, so much of it is getting out of my own way not just physically. But I can say the best part of getting stronger is getting to know other people who are so much stronger. I am in constant amazement at other people who can lift multiples of what I can. It excites me to know that there’s still a great deal of room to improve on that point.

But the biggest gains haven’t been in the numbers. It has been a profound experience to open up about not just how I’m doing, but where I’ve come from. I’ve shared How did I get so big? as a written blog and The bigger picture in a walking audio. It is genuinely nice to be even able to articulate not just what I’ve been able to accomplish, but what I’ve overcome. But even this is just a tiny fraction of how it feels to have experienced these changes.

While I still have challenges, my mind is a remarkably nicer place to reside in. I feel (almost) wholly aligned these days in ways that are very difficult to describe. The best part of it is that mistakes and setbacks are no longer a reason to turn against myself. The ‘inner critic’ has been demoted and the ‘inner planner’ has been promoted to the driver’s seat for the majority of the time. By taking a more proactive approach to directing my behavior, I’m finding myself to be less critical and more analytical. Instead of harshly condemning myself for particular mistakes, more often I’m trying to diagnose and troubleshoot the issue.

2025 was one of the most dynamic years of my life. While I’ve certainly had worse years, I haven’t had one with such a mixture of highs and lows in very long time. A torrent of physical and emotional pain felt almost insurmountable but I was committed to doing the best for my loved ones. The hope that I can be one of many examples to people that we can come back from much more than we usually think really carried me through many difficult points.

Where I found inspiration

I started this project collecting motivational memes but eventually I moved on to just binge listening to podcasts and videos about health and fitness. I gorged on all the information I could find and got very familiar with ‘fitness Youtube’ as a whole. It was very helpful to listen to so much to ‘keep my head in the game’ as I learned to lift and focused on progressing. While Steve Shaw & Solomon Nelson are definitely my favorites, there are many other great sources of information as well:

I quickly learned that the drama in fitness Youtube is quite spicy. So while I came for the training tips, I am now hopelessly hooked on that particular outrage machine. So much of my online critical thinking guide came from my reflections on the drama of the year.

Transformations

As mentioned in the video overview, I spent a fair amount of time discovering stories of those who have made a similar journey. I can definitely admit to feeling quite alone at my highest, and I had no idea so many people were so successful at transforming teir lives. It is genuinely comforting to see familiar themes, if a bit difficult to watch.

Mike Pridgen
Melissa Lamb
Cole Pochaska
Jesse Shand
James Robinson
Dustin Brown
Nick
Many others, even local success stories!

Fan Fiction

I definitely can’t give enough credit to the fan comic 5 Years Later that later became an animated series Which is a fan creation cross-over of Danny Phantom and Ben 10 that takes place in the future where both characters are a bit older. Despite the story not being finished yet, it’s the right combination of nostalgia and coolness that makes it my perfect ‘comfort show’ to watch when I’m feeling low on motivation. I was thrilled when I got to put on the “Hero Time” hoodie that finally arrived quite recently. It feels great to support a project like that which means so much to me.

Highlights from 2025

Lessons Learned

400 to 300 was a radical shift in life experience, much more radical than 570 to 400

Changes in body composition happen slowly, but compound. So many simple things change. Having changed so much in a short period of time I can definitely notice the stark differences when it comes to staying warm this Winter. It does make some things more complicated, like swimming where I constantly feel like I have to re-learn the strokes all over again.
Laying the emotional foundation has made things ‘fall into place’ much easier

My weight loss chart may look impressive, but I’ve been at this for much longer than the last few years. There were many challenges I faced before I even got to that point. Having support made a huge difference. I am very grateful to my other half for making things so much easier for me, especially starting out in late 2024.
‘Leaving orbit’ of the old comfortable patterns is MUCH HARDER than I expected, but building momentum does lead to ’escape velocity’

Building positive momentum is thankfully not as hard as I anticipated. The real challenge seems to be learning to do without familiar comforts that actually hurt us. Even as I write this I’m yet again fighting to keep caffeine out of my life. While some people can handle it in moderation, I find my consumption rapidly escalates to extreme levels. That’s just one of many patterns I’m finding to be a real challenge to break.
Perfection doesn’t pay, damage control is very valuable

A very frustrating setback I had was an awful ear infection that made me dizzy with pain. Introducing a bit of flexibility instead of taking an all-or-nothing approach definitely helped keep things within a workable range. I now believe the right approach isn’t to eliminate mistakes, but structure your life to ensure they do not compound, but that’s certainly easier said than done.
Strength is a massive quality-of-life enhancement

Getting stronger is awesome, and makes so many things easier.
Community is a vital resource

Many people quietly root for you, far more than you can comprehend. In-person feedback is a great way to reassure yourself that it isn’t all for nothing, even when you don’t realize you need it. Connecting with people has been a great way to see other examples of strength and resilience as well as warmth.
Self-image is complicated

‘Nuff said
The difficulty of maintaining drive

A very hard lesson was realizing that my indomitable human spirit has it’s limits. To make things even more frustrating, pressure can often corrode positive drives. Being in high spirits all the time feels like an unattainable goal, but so did losing all this weight at a point in time. I think it is very important to recharge and refuel motivation and desire over time.

Memes

These were made throughout the year, and are a reflection of what I’ve been thinking about through this process.

Food for thought

By dipping my toes into understanding nutrition I’ve realized I’m somewhat opposed to the “Whatever fits your macros” approach. That said, I’m realizing that nutrition is a much more complex topic than I can reasonably give justice anytime soon. I should emphasize that these memes are a reflection of my approach while dieting for rapid weight loss, not necessarily advice for every situation.

The emotional side

There are definitely a lot of ups and downs when it comes to the process. Some days it can be genuinely grueling while other times it feels absolutely great.

2025 Resolutions

1. Be more present and connect with people more

I’ve come to realize that retreating from being seen made actually being seen so much harder to experience for real. So I’m realizing I need to meaningfully connect with the people around me rather than being ‘stuck in my head’ (and fears) during conversations. Coming out of isolation has been a slow and difficult process, but things are improving consistently. So with all that said my goal truly is to be a better friend, neighbor and overall person when it comes to interacting with others. I’m working hard to try to be more present with people, and engage more deeply with the things I care about as a whole. This involves being more selective, but it also creates opportunity for much more day-to-day meaning and purpose. It’s a challenging and messy thing, but I’m grateful for the opportunity to improve.

2. Continue weight loss at a decent pace

This year I really get to apply all that I’ve learned and truly put it to the test. Will I reach my ambitious 15% bf target this year? Possibly not, but that won’t stop me from making great progress all the same. I am excited to reap the rewards of years of challenges, and embrace the new possibilities that come into reach. I’m fully expecting to have continued challenges in this area, losing the first 50 has certainly been easier than the last 50 so far. I’m beginning to recognize the additional precision and care needed as one approaches a healthy body weight.

3. Continue to work on strength goals

Building strength has been one of the best parts of this journey. The gratification of betting stronger, and the quality-of-life enhancements make things so much easier. I think everyone underestimates the overall benefits of just becoming a bit stronger in a few neglected areas. For me gaining some non-trivial grip strength has made errands much easier, but I notice that even at my current size of 300, going up the stairs feels like a breeze. Not only that, but I started the year entirely unable to do a single pushup, and now I can do 5 in a single set.

4. Go fast: bike, swim, and sprint

When the springtime comes, I’ll be able to get back on my bike for the first time in almost 8 years. One of my biggest regrets becoming so big was no longer being able to feel the wind as I peddle along. I miss going fast, and I’m very interested in improving my cardiovascular capacity. I’ll have to keep on swimming as I have to re-learn the strokes with my body changes, since I no longer effortlessly float. While it’s still cold out I’ll have to stick to indoor swimming and short treadmill sprints to get a taste of speed.

5. Refocusing on low-stimulation activities

I did quite a bit of reading last year, but that slowed down as this year began. I’m trying to motivate myself to get back into reading regularly. Not only that, but I also want to dedicate time to drawing regularly as well. While not quite low-stimulation, I also consider working on my programming projects part of this as well. While lifting and exercise are incredible, I need to become comfortable doing things when I should be resting and recovering that isn’t just ‘doomscrolling’. But, if we expand the category further we can say I did reasonably well when it came to cooking in 2025, which I have already upgraded to regularly meal-prepping. There’s other things around the home I want to become more competent at, so that very much falls under this resolution as well.

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We don't love PeerTube enough

Mon, 01 Dec 2025 11:21:55 +0000

If you can, please donate to support the project!

Corporate media platforms are a mental prison

I’m old enough to remember the days when people were beginning to recognize that putting all our video hosting eggs into the YouTube basket was a bad idea. People were just starting to realize that a single corporation having control over a huge portion of the Internet’s cultural history is a dead end. During this time many platforms spawned branding themselves as a better ‘YouTube Alternative’, only to struggle with little to no actual reach to the general public. Eventually people began to recognize that was truly needed was a “Decentralized YouTube” that could let everyone be in control of their own video platform.

In hindsight, even the very few people who are willing to escape Google’s walled-garden will actually venture away from corporate platforms. Since the beginning, I was skeptical that increasing the amount of corporations hosting the Internet’s video culture going from 1 to a dozen is itself a radical democratization of the information landscape. If anything, this shift has merely been an adaptation of the corporate media control system to dominate (and elevate) particular content niches.

The major competitors to YouTube are just that, competing at the same game. They are not truly any more interested in giving their audience a voice than Google is. While sincere attempts can begin with good intentions, the problem is that you can not dethrone Google without becoming Google. In fact Google couldn’t even be what it was without turning on their own stated principle of “Don’t be evil”.

Corporate video platforms are always going to need to use the finite space in their audience’s attention to market to them, this is why almost every ‘YouTube alternative’ has the same ‘featured page’ that I once remembered to be criticized as even YouTube going too far to push editorialized content on the public.

This is why there is such a radical distinction between the so-called ‘alternative media’ and actually independent voices. While Rumble tries to brand itself as an improvement to YouTube’s draconian speech crackdowns, it seems that it comes at the price of being inundated with advertising for sketchy supplement pushers, and dubious investment schemes. It’s worth noting that if you pay for the privilege, X now gives you the opportunity to serve non-trivial video content on that platform.

It seems that many have successfully escaped YouTube, but not corporate control over online expression. As they say “Meet the new boss, same as the old boss”. The new paradigm is fundamentally the same as the old paradigm, just managed by a cartel instead of a single corporate entity. As far as I’m concerned the difference is negligible.

Many solutions, hardly any coordination

One advantage of time passing alone is that the three primary resources in cyberspace are much more inexpensive than in the past. The cost to store a personal collection of video at reasonable quality, and serve it over the web is constantly falling. One could argue we don’t even need a decentralized “YouTube alternative” because the open web is already well-equipped to address this. Thanks to HTML5 video is a first-class content form on the web that has many features. Many content management systems like Ghost or WordPress can include local videos on your sites, and static site generators are also perfectly able to include videos on even small sites. The simple fact is that the web doesn’t even really need centralized video hosts anymore, those willing to reclaim their own territory in cyberspace are able to use a wide variety of tools to serve their own video.

But the root of the issue ends up being reach. Hardly anyone wants to produce media to an audience of nobody. If the intention is to get the word out, or share with others, reach is certainly critical. Again, this is a circumstance that the open web already has a solution for. RSS is a fully decentralized system for media syndication and sharing. If more people fully embraced the open web and even more ambitiously, the social web (AKA the Fediverse) essentially all of the problems caused by corporate media control would be systematically eliminated. The problem is that people have been taught to expect all their online media in one place. The toil of navigating through different websites and apps is a tremendous hurdle for the public to overcome.

We’re always going to have to contend with smartphones as much as we may dread them. Yes, they are a beachhead for corporations to push products and surveillance on the people, but there’s also a reasons why people just can’t put them down. The vast majority of the public for a long period of time is going to be doing the majority of their computing on a smartphone such as an iPhone or Android device. Only the small minority of people who care about reasonable privacy and security guarantees will be running GrapheneOS. Perhaps the Librephone will eventually save us, or the public will mass abandon smartphones all-together, but I don’t anticipate that being anytime soon.

The problem isn’t just media being available, it also needs to be reasonably ‘within reach’ for people’s habits. Convenience is just a derogatory term for user experience innovation. Corporations have had the resources to reasarch, implement and refine, both helpful and dark patterns that shape how people interact with cyberspace. An interesting attempt to address this is Grayjay that aims to provide a “one stop shop” to the entire multimedia landscape of the web. Despite the many criticisms people have with FUTO and the fine details of how they license their software, I think this was a sincere attempt that should be learned from. That said, AntennaPod leverages RSS to effectively do what almost anyone would want out of decentralized media. Just give me a feed so I can watch what I want, when I want. I would go as far as to say that in a truly independent cyberspace, AntennaPod is all anyone would need. But people want more, they want interaction, they want robust discovery mechanisms, and they want an ability to conveniently post media. Thankfully there is such a solution PeerTube.

PeerTube: everything we could ask for

With the way the corporate media dominates the digital information landscape, one would be forgiven for presuming there was no actual solution. While some people may be able to read an entire Libre Solutions Network treatise on the mindset and long journey of making actual change, most people just want a simple solution they can use today to address their problems. Thankfully, that solution is actually here. By running or joining an independent PeerTube instance, you are directly liberating a portion of the online media landscape on behalf of others. With a relatively small investment in time, and resources individuals and communities can directly work to provide a truly better alternative to corporate video platforms.

It is a genuine shame that PeerTube isn’t more popular amongst those who crave a truly independent media. I personally feel responsible for not promoting PeerTube enough, and this piece is a small gesture to atone for that. It is my belief that dissidents across the political spectrum, and even the general public are “sleeping on” what is an immense game-changer when it comes to online media and entertainment. More adoption of PeerTube alone would drastically reduce the harmful impacts of algorithmic manipulation, privacy invasion, and the “dumbing down” of online media as a whole. This likely sounds ’too good to be true’ but the real catch is that we have to want it enough. We need to be willing to invest the effort and resources to build a better digital landscape, rather than wait for it to be provided for us.

A high-quality video CMS

PeerTube is not just a game-changer on the big picture, it’s a technical marvel demonstrating just how different online media can be. The user interface has all the features an ordinary person would expect, but also a lot more enhancements that make it a first-class video repository. Simple things like automatic transcription, compression to multiple different sizes, and even a mobile app are things that can make PeerTube more useful than simply having video files on your web site.

For those interested in running their own instance, PeerTube is an investment in a well-indexed video repository. I wholeheartedly believe that the future of online media and culture looks bright if people seize the opportunity to provide room for creatives and educators to share their work outside the pressures and influences of algorithmic manipulation and opaque monetization. PeerTube also supports a wide variety of ways to customize how your instance looks, so you can truly make it expressive to your needs. As a Free and Open Source (FOSS) project, with the right support, we can only expect PeerTube to get better and better over time. This can’t be said of corporate media platforms.

Structurally solving the actual problems

Love RSS feeds? PeerTube supports them out of the box. You can add any PeerTube channel to your AntenaPod app, or whatever RSS tool you use. But if you want actual engagement, rather than just a one-way conversation PeerTube is a full-fledged member of the Fediverse. This means that any “social web” application can comment on PeerTube videos. Reach both incoming and outgoing is greatly enhanced by this. But if that’s not enough decentralization for you, there’s a reason it’s called “PeerTube”.

PeerTube allows those watching the video to contribute bandwidth to each other. By “sharing the load” this can drastically reduce the bandwidth costs of serving videos in particular circumstances. This doesn’t eliminate all the costs, but is a significant way to “level the playing-field” for smaller operators. In previous versions this was done through WebTorrent but now has switched to WebRTC and HLS. In practice this has some trade-offs but I can definitely defend the change.

In my opinion, the biggest game-changer of PeerTube is that independent operators can finally break free of many of the incentives that fuel the ’enshittification’ of digital media. Without algorithms prioritizing particular video formats and length, people are free to create for quality rather than to publish. This can help work towards a radically different media landscape that lets people drive virality rather than corporate algorithms and government imperatives. It’s a relatively small thing, but PeerTube also features the addition of funding/donation information on a per video and a per channel basis, meaning that what’s possible in the future is unbounded with the right support.

Not seizing this opportunity would be a BIG mistake

Many of us lament the ’tik-tok’ brain and lack of attention span of the youth, if not the general public at large. But can we truly say we tried everything to ensure they inherit a better media landscape? Do we not have the responsibility to foster a culture that provides real meaningful alternatives to corporate slop? It is easy to critique others choices to validate our own decisions. I believe it is a duty of the modern person to proactively support building independent culture and its preservation. That said, we must also contend with the constraints and realities of our time. Because of this and all the above, I believe that PeerTube is an indispensable tool for building a better digital future. The sad fact of the matter is that many people are just waiting for cyberspace to become less hostile and predatory, but it falls to all of us to do what we can to change it.

I have been pleasantly surprised that even my relatively obscure project The Libre Solutions Network, gets a non-trivial amount of views via my own PeerTube Instance. When I compare view stats against the SubStack publication with over 1000 people signed-up, I am genuinely impressed that those following my projects over the open web will hit comparable watch time. What this tells me is that while you will certainly get higher surface engagement numbers on larger platforms, deep meaningful engagement is only to be found on the open web. Fostering a better digital culture requires us to make decisions with this in mind, and align our efforts accordingly.

This is fundamentally a collective action problem, not a technical one. Corporate media is entrenched because of massive network effects, but this is far from insurmountable. In a time where the plan seems to be trading the spark of human expression and creativity for regurgitated AI slop, quality and meaning are at a massive premium. The public is starved for authentic cultural expression and representation and there is so much potential in the tools we have to provide that. PeerTube is a real chance for us to experience something better than YouTube and its competitors ever could have been.

If you can, please donate to support the project!

How to get started

Go to the website and learn more about PeerTube.

PeerTube channels to consider

You can already start using PeerTube today by checking out these channels. You can bookmark them, use the app, or their subscribe via their feed.

Want me to include your channel? Send me a follow at @lsn@peertube.libresolutions.network from your channel, and I’ll add you to the list shortly!

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Walk with me: The bigger picture

Fri, 28 Nov 2025 23:47:15 +0000

This off-the-cuff recording is an attempt to share the much broader context behind my ongoing transformation. Now that I have accomplished enough that people say they regularly point to my example, I feel obligated to disclose the bigger fight taking place. My health changes have merely been a major objective in a broader emotional battle. This is an attempt to put into words the emotional turmoil behind how I got so big. This particular recording is a bit more intense than usual, so be advised of more difficult subject matter being discussed.

Major Victories

New low: 317.8lbs

Unfortunately, I’m not likely to reach this year’s ‘greedy’ goal of losing 200lbs in 2025. I’ve got a month to go and with everything I have learned I don’t think I will be able to lose 40lbs in another month. But even being already 160lbs down for the year is still a massive hard-won victory. This new low puts me at almost 260lbs down total. By shedding all this extra weight, I’m finally at a point where the benefits are beginning to compound.

Feeling more capable and mobile

Despite a stubborn foot injury, getting around feels so much better. I can move a lot quicker than before and it feels very gratifying. Some of my small investments into building better habits are making things that would be very mentally and physically taxing feel much more within reach. I’m finding myself getting much better at making small investments in taking better care of myself, and feeling the gratifying sense of accomplishment when it pays off.

Feeling genuinely comfortable in my skin

With most of the extreme health and mobility challenges behind me, I’m back to a familiar state. But a great deal has changed under the surface. These days, I genuinely feel like I am at a point where being at peace with myself is closer to the default than the exception. The regular positive interactions I’m having with people is comforting in a level that is hard to get in the moment, but I can certainly appreciate the cumulative effects.

It is very difficult to articulate, but I no longer feel like my mind is actively working against me. I am experiencing a shocking yet familiar sense in my mind that I can only concisely summarize as “I’m back!”. It feels like the fog of numbness and dread has lifted and I get to embrace my chance at life for all it is in both big and small ways.

The emotional battle

The meat of this recording is where I try to articulate the ‘story behind the story’ of my health journey. Making new friends lately has had me face regret and loss I didn’t realize I was burying. I miss many of my old friends so much more now that I have gotten to know other excellent people on a deeper level as I’ve slowly and gradually come out of various forms of isolation. It wouldn’t be me if this reflection didn’t include my thoughts on how it all connects to the wider world. The more I think about the long arc of this path I’ve walked, the more I understand things about myself I took for granted. I am now at a point where I am ignited with a passion for sharing much more than just the physical changes that brought me to this point.

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Walk with me: Double milestone 🎉

Fri, 21 Nov 2025 12:49:08 +0000

In this particular recording I have decided not to remove the background noise, in particular each step through the snow/ice/slush. I hope this isn’t too bothersome, but if it is, consider this a warning.

Strength Milestone: 1 plate OHP

I am very happy to report I’ve achieved one of my major strength goals. For quite some time now I’ve been specifically focused on the overhead press and I’m overjoyed to be able to lift 135lbs. A few months ago this was something I struggled to even attempt, so this is a very concrete sign to me that I am continuing to make strength progress on the way down. Getting stronger, and feeling stronger has done remarkable things to my day-to-day mood over time.

My next strength goal is to be able to bench 2 plates (225lbs) and I think I’m well on the way to being able to do that. I think it will take quite a while to build up to a 3 plate squat and a 4 plate deadlift. I think people at the gym may be right that these targets are fairly arbitrary. If nothing else I think striving for 1/2/3/4 is at least a direction to focus on. That said I definitely intend on continuing to progress my overhead press, which is presently my favorite lift. I think I need to come up with strength goals for different movements like pulling. Currently I can do assisted pull-ups with the help of 200lbs, so it will be very gratifying to be able to work up to un-assisted pull-ups.

Weight loss milestone: 250lbs down

Yesterday I weighted in at 320lbs, which means I’ve lost just over 255lbs! To celebrate this particular milestone I decided to for the first time ever use a whole-body profile photo in a bunch of places. I am beginning to feel proud about how far I’ve come, but I am still primarily motivated to keep pushing towards my ambitious 15% body fat target.

As I’ve continued to make progress, I’ve begun to appreciate just how ambitious that long-term target actually is. I finally understand why people would look perplexed when I was at my highest telling others that this was my goal. Now I realize I was the biggest guy in the gym telling people in relatively good shape “I’m going to be leaner than YOU someday!” 🤣 Hopefully someday I can make good on early Gabriel’s optimistic promises.

Body Doxx

Sadly as you can see my 2nd arm wasn’t able to fit onto the scanning bed. While I meet the weight requirements for a DEXA, apparently I still don’t meet the size requirements. All the same, I will be very happy to have this to compare with another scan near my long-term weight target. According to this scan I’m at ~41% body fat, which is actually well below what my ’napkin-math’ estimate of 50%. It seems I was too pessimistic about how much lean mass I’m carrying.

Due to the arm being cut off, I am a bit disappointed that this won’t quite be a 1-to-1 comparison, but overall I fully expect the changes to be fairly clear regardless.

Micro-rant: Dieting is just a collection of skills

After the updates I share some recent reflections on how I believe that “dieting is just a collection of skills.” Many dieting tips are valuable in pursuit of developing or leveraging particular skills that may or may not factor well into a particular person’s life. I wholeheartedly believe that there are essential dieting skills that are broadly applicable to almost everyone’s situation, but there are many particular tools that suit those skills.

Some dieting skills and sub-skills:

Social connection
- Reaching out to others
- Building relationships
- Participating in community
Stress management
- Exercise
- Low-stimulation activities
- Lifestyle management
- Appetite control
Nutrition
- Calorie Counting
- Macros Management
- Micro-nutrients
- Meal planning
Cooking
- Recipes
- Cleaning
- Meal prep

Such a resource may exist, but I think an invaluable resource for helping people reverse particularly dire weight circumstances would be radically different from what I have seen. It could focus much less on specific dietary recommendations, but more on how to build these and other skills from the ground up. It seems that in the modern environment, we may underestimate how many ‘basic life skills’ can fade away if we are not careful. In this micro-rant I share about how much I think social isolation and atomization contributes to people’s health deteriorating. These days, I am more sure that we humans are social creatures, and that means that while the major factors for personal health are individual, that is far from the entire picture.

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Walk with me: On my soapbox

Sat, 15 Nov 2025 21:08:44 +0000

I hope you’ll enjoy this stream-of-consciousness reflection on the last crazy year as I prepare for 2026. Apologies for the lack of a write-up, I am crunched for time at the moment.

I hope this before and after makes up for it!

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Walk with me: New low and reflections

Sat, 08 Nov 2025 15:52:14 +0000

I’m rolling with the punches as I try to refine my plans for the new year. I hope you enjoy this off-the-cuff reflection on where I’m at now and what I’m focusing on moving forward. I am thrilled to report my new low of 327.1. I’m quite happy to have gotten below the three-thirties which were a particularly difficult range for me.

A lot of positive attention has come my way because of how radically different I look these days, but I admit to being in the midst of some difficult feelings in this recording. I wish growing was always fun and exciting, but I’m hoping to make the best of it even when it is challenging.

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Walk with me: 🔧 Readjusting

Sun, 02 Nov 2025 20:16:37 +0000

I apologize for the audio quality of this particular recording, it didn’t turn out quite as I had hoped, but I believe it was still worth sharing an update.

Things have been a bit difficult lately because I majorly injured my foot over a week ago. I clumsily dropped a 45lb plate on it while unloading a leg press machine. It seems I am to endure weeks of of pain for a moment of exhausted carelessness. Quite a painful lesson in diligent and careful moving of weights. Despite that, I have finished the first iteration of my 2026 exercise plan. I am already beginning to ramp up towards being able to stick to it and I am excited for the gains to come.

The first mini-rant of this recording I talk about how I think many things that are often discussed as ‘genetics’ in health and fitness circles seem to cover what I would call “external lifestyle factors”. This navel-gazing hair-split is about recognizing the distinction between inherited constraints on health that are not explicitly encoded in genes but rather inherited socially. This would include things like ACE (adverse childhood events) and other direct impacts on quality of life.

The second mini-rant is a sappy one about the importance of cultivating skill as individuals and as a society. As covered in my Digital Autonomy & The Arts Series I touch on how I am concerned that generative AI may undermine people’s desire to develop important skills, and for people to generally devalue human ingenuity as a whole.

Lastly I finish up talking about a great experience I had at a ‘meet & greet’ lately. I had the thrilling opportunity to talk to one of my personal heroes. After a very nice back-and-forth I was encouraged to explicitly talk about how the Canadian response to the Covid Crisis played a role in making my dire health situation get a great deal worse.

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🚶‍➡️ Walk with me: Flourishing

Sun, 19 Oct 2025 16:08:36 +0000

I’m overjoyed to share that I’ve hit a new low of 333lbs. With that, many other things are coming along quite nicely. I hope you’ll enjoy this stream-of-consciousness monologue from a recent walk. I start with updates on how things have been going, then navel-gaze about my reflections on overall fitness discussions that I’ve witnessed.

Progress

Beyond continuing to lose weight, I’ve also made some significant strength progress. I can finally do a couple push-ups and my overhead press lifts are progressing well. I am learning more about how to better apply myself in strength training and it’s incredibly gratifying. Becoming stronger and more mobile has been a huge comfort in what has been otherwise a very challenging time.

I can definitely say that I feel like I’m in ‘uncharted territory’. I’m fitting into the oldest clothes I still held on to, and I’m more mobile and capable than I’ve been in quite a long time. I’m regularly told by people that I’m ‘unrecognizable’. It is absolutely surreal to have gone from total self-imposed isolation out of shame, to being surprised by a deluge of kindness when I’m at the gym.

Planning for 2026

I’ve come quite a long way from my 2023 New Year’s Resolutions. Soon I will be drafting new resolutions based off everything I’ve learned in this last transformative year. The central focus of these will be trying to become more process focused than results focused. My goal for 2026 should be more about my ability to “keep promises to myself” rather than losing X many pounds a week/month. As such, part of my resolutions will be to more formally plan out exercise routines so I can continue the focus on putting the work in. But I’m also looking forward to taking monthly limb measurements to track change beyond just the scale. I’ve learned a great deal about both diet and exercise, but 2026 is going to be all about how much I can really put it all into practice.

Mini-rants in the audio

In defense of motivation: I talked a bit about how I think the concept of motivation is unfairly discarded. Many rightfully recognize that motivation alone is not sufficient to drive long-term change, but there’s more to it than that. I believe that people need to at least have hope change is possible before any change can be made.

Against weight gain fear-mongering: For me, the fear of gaining all the weight back was a big barrier to making meaningful progress. I think people are often too critical of the specifics of people’s weight loss efforts. For someone like me, it’s a long road and there is a great deal of time for learning through trial-and-error.

Wellness & weirdness

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Self-hosting: Speed, decentralization and efficiency

Sat, 04 Oct 2025 05:48:53 +0000

This post is an attempt to navel-gaze on the finer points of self-hosting your own sites & services. I’m going to put down some of the important but easily over-looked considerations that can really make a big difference. The goal is to help plan to make the most of the hardware you have access to without breaking the bank. There won’t be too much in-depth technical details, but more of an overview of things to think about to guide decision-making. If you’re looking for specific instructions, Reclaiming Territory in Cyberspace is a good place to start. I’m also writing this as a reference to myself for any future server-side projects I intend to build.

I dream of a future where ordinary people express themselves from social web sites & systems that are wholly their own. This requires a bit more than mere static sites. If speed was the only consideration, we could all simply put our data on a rented cloud servers leveraging high-performance SSDs and memory. This has two major problems; cost, and lack of independence. For significant amounts of data this would cost quite a bit, effectively filtering out anyone interested in sharing non-trivial amounts of multimedia content. Realistically, if we want a vibrant open web, people are going to want fast sites & services without too much overhead.

The good news is that local storage and compute is relatively cheap. Self-hosting in 2025 means that your largest constraints are bandwidth and latency. With some clever techniques, you can intelligently leverage limited cloud resources to make the best of your personal systems. By optimizing your setup, you can make the most out of even relatively trivial computing resources. Today the bar is quite low to be able to broadcast so much to the world.

Speed is relative. Some systems and services are inherently faster than others. Static sites are king when it comes to speed on the web, but with proper care other systems can be relatively close. In addition to the privacy risks, serving sites and media from your home is generally not advisable. Your home internet connection won’t be able to handle any non-trivial amount of burst traffic, and will likely leave your visitors waiting to load any media. This gets much worse in situations where residential users only have access to so much bandwidth during a given month.

Gotta go fast, while doing more with less

With enough of the big picture out of the way, let’s consider practical steps. Regardless of what systems and services we choose to run, we have to contend with physics and real-world costs. Hardware can only work so hard and data can only move so fast. The goal is to make the best use of available resources by contending with their limitations. In some situations it may make sense to be extremely selective, but in others it may make sense to take advantage of everything that is available.

Consider the following table, outlining the trade-offs of retrieving data from various methods:

Type	Retrieval Scheme	Cost	Speed	Throughput	Independence
Network	Enterprise ISP	Extreme 💰	High	Extreme 🌊	?
Network	Residential ISP	Moderate	Slow 🐢	Low 💧	Low
Network	Mobile ISP	High	Slow 🐢	Low	None 🔇
Network	Sneakernet	Moderate	Varied 🤷	Varied 🤷	Perfect 💎
Network	Postage	Cheap 🫰	Glacial 🥶	Varied 🤷	High
File access	Memory (Cloud)	Extreme 💰	Extreme ⚡	Extreme 🌊	None 🔇
File access	Memory (Local)	Low	High	High	Perfect 💎
File access	File System (Cloud)	Moderate	High	High	None 🔇
File access	File System (Local)	Slow	High	High	Perfect 💎
File access	Object Storage (Cloud)	Low	Extreme ⚡	High	None 🔇
File 🤡	Generative AI (Cloud)	Absurd 💸	Fast	High	None 🔇
File 🤡	Generative AI (Local)	High	Slow 🐢	Low 💧	High

The point of this chart is to point out that there are inherent trade-offs when it comes to leveraging particular resources. You can specialize by focusing on a few, or handle the complexity of trying to ‘have your cake and eat it too’. By understanding this, you can understand that there are opportunities to leverage (but not necessarily depend on) particular tools to help enhance your systems.

Storage localization

The main point of self-hosting is to keep your data under your control. This is best done with your data on machines you control, rather than cloud providers. This has another significant advantage, storage devices themselves are often relatively cheap. You can store your data on high-end SSDs, and make what you want accessible to either your network or even the public. This can be a LOT cheaper than buying large amounts of cloud storage at the price of some initial cost. That said, if you intend to serve a large volume of data, or to a large audience, trade-offs may have to be considered.

Compute optimization

Just like cloud storage, cloud compute can become expensive quite quickly for demanding tasks. By self-hosting you can pay up-front for your compute needs which often saves you money in the long run. An example of this would be using powerful machines at home as remote runners for a PeerTube instance running on an inexpensive VPS. This would allow you to speed up processing videos without sacrificing on availability to the public Internet. Also similarly to storage, there are serious privacy & security benefits of doing the majority of compute tasks on your own machines.

Mirrors and caching

For small or simple sites and services, redundant mirrors can allow your setup to exist across multiple networks (such as darknets) but a ’thin-cache’ is a simple way of achieving the same goal. By having the external facing server (such as a cheap VPS or mini-pc running a darknet daemon) operate as a server-side cache, you can still reduce the latency penalty of self-hosting. This allows your media to be highly available despite having a relatively modest setup.

Eliminating waste

Since you’re likely dealing with constrained resources, or at least a ‘shoe-string’ budget, it makes sense to optimize things however you can. Even if you’re not aiming to be on the 512KB club, it is absolutely worth your time to consider how you can save your guests time, and yourself resources.

Content: Text is king

It may be worth applying the logic of “this meeting could have been an e-mail” to your own content. If a visual medium isn’t entirely necessary, text may suffice. At minimum, treating text content as a first-class format is critical. Text is universally accessible, and plays nice with text-to-speech systems as well as translation. This also applies to file formats, plain-text data such as html tables and svg images can often be much lighter than images for simple information. With some creativity, a great deal of information can be presented with hardly any bandwidth at all.

Compression: Minimize all the things

Hosting media files can be the biggest challenge for small self-hosting setups. If you’re not familiar with how to compress audio & video files you may be unnecessarily using up loads of bandwidth and storage. For a great deal of content it’s not entirely likely that you need full 4K resolution to get your ideas across. The smaller your media files are the easier it is to mirror them and the faster they load for slow connections. FFmpeg is my go-to for compressing audio & video. Remember that you can always keep your full-quality copies for local use!

Client-side: Make it their problem

With some careful consideration, it can be effective to optimize your setup to have much of the work done on the client-side. At minimum you’re going to want to make intelligent use of client-side caching to reduce load on your services. Another valuable pattern is to lazy load media files on your pages. These simple but effective optimizations can make a big difference on constrained networks.

Network optimization

Since the optimal strategy is to divide tasks between at least two machines, it makes sense to make use of tools like SSH tunnels and VPNs to provide a secure ‘backbone’ for them to communicate. It can be useful to use a cheap VPS to act as the public cache/mirror for your sites & services rather than just purchasing a tunnel to the Internet directly. Ultimately it will depend on your bandwidth and latency as well as the nature and volume of media you’re sharing. The cool thing is that with a deliberately distributed setup, you can make your systems available not only for the ‘clearnet’ but darknets or even nearby networks as well. With enough flexibility the options are truly endless.

Hope this helps!

I am always excited to see more people get into self-hosting and I’m hoping that people find this helpful. In an ideal world, the web would be small and filled with ordinary people expressing themselves easily and seamlessly. I believe that achieving that dream requires for there to be more resources and tools for people to not just self-host but self-host well and effectively. If nothing else I hope that this minor overview can be a small contribution towards that.

I’ve really just scratched the surface of this topic, but there is certainly more to cover.
Any feedback you may have would be greatly appreciated if I’ve missed some major blind-spots.

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Bouncing Back: Sappy and spicy thoughts

Thu, 02 Oct 2025 22:17:24 +0000

In this off-the-cuff recording I celebrate being back on the downtrend, and spend time reflecting on my concerns related to the politicization of health. It seems that novel therapeutics and the end of the ‘monopoly on medicine’ may create unique challenges for biological human rights in the future.

I am experimenting with using libre audio & video formats in this post, so please let me know if anything isn’t working.

Bouncing Back: A new low

I am thrilled to report that I’ve managed to hit a new low again, confirming that I am already back on the downtrend. It is comforting to overcome being disrupted by pain as well as become slightly more comfortable with making mistakes. I have to admit that I’m at kind of a weight point in my journey. Having made so much progress since the high of over 570, I’m struggling to comprehend how much better I can feel as I approach a healthy body weight. As strange as it may sound, I am now near the lowest I’ve been for most of my adult life, so I feel the best I have been acclimated to in a long time. That said, I’m very much looking forward to biking in the spring time, and many other activities that open up as I change.

Does natural weight loss matter?

To satisfy my insatiable curiosity, I’ve recently been absorbing discussions around anabolic steroid use, as well as experimental peptides. In reflecting on these issues I’ve wondered to myself if losing weight (or building muscle) ’naturally’ matters much. I have not / will not be taking any weight loss or performance enhancing drugs, but I am very fascinated by the broader discussion around these things. The implications seem to be directly related to broader trends in healthcare and human rights in our time.

To spoil the rant a bit, I am concerned that the combination of unique therapeutics, social pressure, and public health initiatives can politicize health on a level previously unthinkable. This is especially concerning in light of governments and Big Tech taking control of people’s health data, and potentially weaponizing it against the public. I wholly expect that a combination of debilitating austerity and the digitization of health information can create a terrifying form of automated bio-tyranny.

I wholeheartedly believe that natural (and healthy!) body change is an act of defiance and rebellion from some of the most insidious forces at play in our time. However, I think it is important to have the humility and understanding to recognize the forces that drive people to consider potentially self-destructive ’enhancements’. So I would say, how we approach weight loss or other body change does definitely matter. The challenge is that these novel advancements seem to ultimately raise the stakes of our responsibility to care for those around us in the face of very insidious challenges.

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Minor Setback: Ear pain

Thu, 25 Sep 2025 11:30:13 +0000

The last week has been a bit of a disaster. I was very excited to continue pushing towards the low 300s, but unfortunately I’ve hit a major setback. I have a wicked ear infection that has been causing me extreme amounts of pain. As such, I’ve essentially lost nearly all control over my eating habits. In a fit of restlessness, I recorded this update while coming up with a plan to bounce back from this. It is frustrating to lose all of September’s progress to this, but I’m taking it as a lesson in patience and perseverance.

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Major Milestone: Below 350 🎉

Wed, 17 Sep 2025 22:43:57 +0000

Watch on PeerTube

I’m thrilled to report that I’m comfortably below 350lbs. Coming from a high of over 570lbs not that long ago, it is quite astonishing what has changed. I’m finally beginning to fit into 2XL clothes, (down from 6XL!) taking on a wider variety of exercises, and getting a lot of positive feedback from people online and IRL. As you can see a great deal of weight has been lifted off of me, in ways beyond just physical. So many simple things are much easier, and I’m really excited for what’s ahead. If you don’t mind me getting a bit sappy, you might find this update worth listening to.

Previous Milestones

Loving Exercise

Since ~350lbs is the maximum weight capacity for a variety of cardio machines, being below it expands my options quite a bit. I’ve begun to use the elliptical and stationary bike to really try to push myself to the limit. I’ve mentioned before that changes to your body composition have huge impacts on the sensation of swimming. I am definitely going to miss being able to float on the water effortlessly, but I’ve unlocked a fun new thing. I can now much easier stay underwater while swimming, which is super fun and cool.

I’m eager to push ahead on a wide variety of fitness goals. As my body begins to restrain me less, I am eager to do more and more. It has been incredibly gratifying to take this opportunity to push myself to be familiar with so many things I hadn’t ever tried before. Going from struggling with even basic mobility to trying to become highly active has been equal parts fun and gratifying. One of the adventures I’m on in this regard is learning how to actually train hard while weightlifting. With some honest reflection, it’s clear to me that I very much struggle to really push hard against the weight when it begins to get tough. I am really appreciating what I am learning in improving both my strength and cardiovascular capacity.

Walk with me: Regaining footing

Wed, 27 Aug 2025 11:01:54 +0000

Things have been challenging lately. I’ve been working hard to start counting calories again as well as taking another stab at kicking my caffeine habit. Pressure has been mounting and so have frustrations, but I’ve been doing well to regain momentum. I still struggle to learn to properly pace myself and truly prioritize recovery, so I’m taking time to take on those challenges head-on. Recently I was able to go for a swim and it did me quite a bit of good. I hope you’ll enjoy this off-the-cuff stream of consciousness about my weight loss journey.

Updates

New low!

The great news is that I’ve hit a new low of 353.4! I’m very close to the below 350 milestone. I’m really looking forward to getting a dexa scan, and using more cardio machines at the gym! The hope is that I can be very comfortable cycling before I even get on the bike! I’m eagerly looking forward to being able to fit into 2xl clothes, which radically opens up more options for me. I can put them on, but they don’t fit quite yet. What is funny to me is that compared to the 6xl clothes that I started this with, 2xl feels downright TINY. With optimism returning, I’m looking forward to hopefully being below 300 by the end of the year!

Speaking of scans…

Over the last year of lifting I’ve gotten a few InBody snapshots. While these kinds of measurements have to be taken with a grain of salt it’s nice to have something to compare against. According to my latest scan I only have 144lbs left to lose, which would mean I’m way more than halfway done! According to the scans I’ve gone from a BMI of 80 to 53.

Segmental Lean Analysis: Allegedly 100% is supposed to be what’s normal for your size, so I’m thrilled to at least be pushing over 110% in many limbs! I can definitely say I would love to see over 120% on multiple limbs as I continue along.

Body Part	Sept 24	Jan 25	Aug 25	Total Change
Arm (R)	109.%	111.5%	116.6%	+6.8%
Arm (L)	111%	110.4%	118.7%	+7.7%
Core	101.4%	102.5%	106.5	+5.1%
Leg (R)	95.9%	97.6%	110.1%	+14.2
Leg (L)	96%	94.5%	106.5%	+10.5

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Migrating self-hosted Ghost 5 to 6 and getting Activitypub to work

Mon, 04 Aug 2025 21:28:40 +0000

The long awaited Ghost 6.0 is OUT! This version is the much-anticipated update that allows self-hosters to use “the social web” with their Ghost websites. This is pretty good news, but for me it was quite a headache. I had already migrated one of my websites Canadian Cyber Freedom to Ghost in anticipation for this particular update. It seems that Ghost didn’t integrate activitypub support into ghost directly (which seems like an odd choice) but instead requires two new containers (and multiple others for their analytics support).

Unfortunately, none of this is clear when you just upgrade your Ghost container to version 6. Social web support will appear to be on, but it won’t actually work. I immediately checked the documentation and it says you just need to update your environment variables. Which lead me to realizing that I needed to configure additional containers by checking the new docker-compose.yaml file. Counter to the official recommendation I’m running Mariadb instead of mysql, this is a HARD STOP for the activitypub-migrate container, so if you’re doing that too you’ll need to setup a new mysql container just for activitypub support.

I hope people who are stuck on trying to get federation via Ghost might find this post helpful. Once you’re setting this up, it’s important to clear cache & cookies regularly until you’ve confirmed it’s working. If you can load the new parts of Ghost after logging in to an incognito tab, you’ve configured everything correctly.

Changes

Nginx change

You’re going to need to make sure fediverse requests are handled by the activitypub container. The port I chose was arbitrary, but you can configure your own in the compose file.

Here are my settings:

  location ~ /.ghost/activitypub/* {
    proxy_pass http://localhost:2369;
    proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $remote_addr;
    add_header Access-Control-Allow-Origin *;
    proxy_set_header Host $host;
    proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Proto https;
  }
 location ~ /.well-known/(webfinger|nodeinfo) {
    proxy_pass http://localhost:2369;
    proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $remote_addr;
    add_header Access-Control-Allow-Origin *;
    proxy_set_header Host $host;
    proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Proto https; 
  }

X-Forwarded-Proto cause of this issue

Docker-compose changes

You need to add the two new containers to your docker-compose.yaml and configure the correct DB. activitypub-migrate just needs to do its work, so you can just re-launch it with docker-compose up or docker-compose restart activitypub-migrate when needed.

activitypub:
    image: ghcr.io/tryghost/activitypub:edge
    restart: always
    volumes:
      - ./ap_uploads:/opt/activitypub/content
    ports:
      - 2369:2369
    environment:
      PORT: 2369
      NODE_ENV: production
      MYSQL_HOST: mysql
      MYSQL_USER: root
      MYSQL_PASSWORD: YOUR_PASSWORD_HERE
      MYSQL_DATABASE: activitypub
      LOCAL_STORAGE_PATH: /opt/activitypub/content/images/activitypub
      LOCAL_STORAGE_HOSTING_URL: https://YOUR_WEBSITE/content/images/activitypub
    depends_on:
      - mysql
  activitypub-migrate:
    image: ghcr.io/tryghost/activitypub-migrations:edge
    environment:
      MYSQL_DB: mysql://root:YOUR_PASSWORD_HERE@tcp(mysql:3306)/activitypub
    depends_on:
      - mysql

Useful Resources:

Known Instances

Any website served by ghosts hosted service should already be accessible. You can now follow these sites via the fediverse by their @index@example.com handle. But I’m concerned that self-hosted set-ups will run into the issues that I did. I noticed that @sam@sambent.com works great, but @index@www.citationneeded.news sadly doesn’t.

You can test if the self-hosted ghost instance has activitypub configured by going to example.com/.ghost/activitypub/users/index/ and seeing if you get a reply or an error.

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Walk with me: Appreciating my journey

Fri, 01 Aug 2025 18:52:49 +0000

I was elated while recording this walking monologue. I was granted a single day where I recovered from particularly intense muscle soreness. Recognizing a bit of a lack of appreciation for the hard-won challenges, I took this as an opportunity to reflect on past, present, and upcoming changes. Things are exciting these days as my life has radically transformed, but I can really notice how much soreness keeps my mood down. Ideally, I would learn to better pace myself, but for now I’ll contend with the fact that “pushing hard is hard”.

The past and the future is very much on my mind. I really wish I had consistently taken notes prior to beginning to turn things around. I wish I could go back and talk to myself during the worst of it and interrogate my state of mind back then. I certainly remember a fair amount of it, but I am noticing that I have already begun taking many changes for granted. I was absolutely too hard on myself, but maybe I’m not so different these days. What I do know is that I’m not excited enough for what’s ahead. I don’t really think I can comprehend how good I’ll feel once I can bike as regularly as I’ve been walking lately.

I spoke to my trainer about this and he reminded me of what he remembered from when I first set foot in the gym. On my first day I told him the 45 minutes I spent on my feet that day was the longest I had in a very long time. An early victory I had was when I realized I could stand still instead of needing to constantly sway and re-balance just to stay in place. I’ve come a long way, but it feels like I’ve only really begun to ‘let it in’.

An exciting achievement lately was being able to dead hang for a few moments. Even though is around 8 seconds, I think it’s really cool that I can grip over 180lbs in each hand. It really feels like my grip strength gains are paying off, but getting 200lbs off me certainly made a difference as well. This is definitely something I want to work on improving moving forward.

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Help me build the best desktop RSS client!

Tue, 22 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000

I really would like your feedback on what features are essential for a desktop RSS reader to have in 2025! I am not a designer, so UX suggestions are very much valued. I want this project to be built for making the open web a first-class contender with other media systems. The more feedback I get early on, the better this can be in the long run.

Open video if player isn’t working

I’m not special. I wholeheartedly that any experienced programmer could build what I’m hoping to deliver in much less time. This project is primarily for my own learning, but I want to deliver something game-changing. If you appreciate the vision I’m outlining here, I hope you would consider sharing your thoughts.

I’m programming again

I wanted to actually get good at programming. Over the years what little I’ve done had gotten quite rusty, and I wanted to change that. As a challenge, I’ve been forcing myself to learn a GUI toolkit. Last year I started this project, but as my weight loss journey became demanding it fell by the wayside. Recently I’ve returned to it and have been making great progress. It has been going very well and it is very gratifying to work on. Iced is becoming more familiar to mes. It is great to finally be at the point where there is a lot less guesswork in getting things to actually run.

Ideally, I would be building small silly things for fun to learn, but I’m too stubborn for that. I want to build something that actually matters, and has a chance of making a difference. On the other hand, it has to actually be something I can create, because no program means no impact at all. So I had to come up with something that felt important but achievable.

The plan is to build myself a desktop RSS reader. I’ve written before that more software needs to be written for RSS and I think there’s a lot of opportunity here. Currently I use FreshRSS for keeping up with feeds, but I want something on the desktop that supports more features and especially multimedia like AntennaPod. Kasts is also a great podcast client on the desktop that works pretty well with written content. With these in mind, the goal is to truly highlight the multimedia experience that the open web can be. Instead of being primarily focused on podcasts or articles, the plan is to make the best of both.

Motivation

Despite the potential behind Ladybird, I’m turbo bearish on browsers. AI chatbots replacing search engines, and short-form video dominating the information landscape are terrible things for the cultivation of a valuable independent web. My goal is to build an RSS tool so powerful that I’ll hardly need a browser. Not only that, but I believe that it’s important to solve the demand side of the attention economy as well as the supply side. As such, I want to build a tool that can bring real eyeballs and attention to independent web sites. This means that the application has to be as user-friendly as possible. Discovery features are essential to connecting people with the open web. I’m excited about the fact that this can be purely meritocratic, feeds can be discovered from feeds you already follow. Purely individual, no opinionated or manipulative algorithms needed.

I have many ideas for what I consider to be a truly modern refinement of what a desktop RSS reader should be. I think by actually building a desktop client, so much of the massive privacy attack-surface of browsers can be eliminated. It’s become clear to me that browsers are (at least for now) in a particularly terrible state and I don’t want the open web to die with them. The fact of the matter is, big tech systems always raise the bar for what people expect out of their tools. It is crucial that a modern RSS reader has many features that provide competitive value without sacrificing privacy or autonomy. This requires some genuinely creative thinking if I say so myself. By broadening the scope of what such a tool can be used for, many exciting options open up.

For example, I’ve essentially used FreshRSS as my own mini search engine. With full-text search capabilities and other features, an RSS reader can be a powerful information management tool. Just as I fear for the future of web browsers, I am also concerned about the future of search engines as a whole. If we allow AI agents to be the new gatekeepers of the web, the idea of directly searching the web comes under fire. I definitely want to build a tool that opposes this force head-on. One advantage of building this in 2025 is that expecting users to store archives of their RSS feeds is a relatively trivial demand for most systems. As such, I think search and information management features are a serious game-changer for a modern RSS reader. I already use Logseq and I’ll be thinking about what integrations would be desirable. My hope is that this would create a real avenue for valuable resources to be discovered and engaged with.

It has been pointed out that an advantage of ‘darknet’ sites is that anyone can set one up without having to pay for a domain, or having to expose a public IP to the Internet. Treating Tor & I2P (and hopefully other networks as well) as first-class resources allows users to leverage these powerful censorship resistance technologies. The dream of this is that instead of valuable hidden services being siloed away, they can be full participants in the greater open web. I believe this alone-makes this project a valuable pursuit. A great deal of (actual human) web traffic to my (relatively small) web presence is from both Tor & I2P, this is one way I hope to ‘give back’.

Overview

Current state

You can subscribe to arbitrary feeds
Code is written to discover feeds from an arbitrary url.
```
  via `<link rel="alternate">`
```
Feeds & items are saved and retrieved from the database
Feed content is properly parsed with my module to build objects for the iced gui.
- All feed content that can be converted to markdown is displayed with the markdown widget
- Media such as embedded images, videos & audio are processed separately, with placeholder widgets.
Browsing feeds and items works
Item view page successfully displays article contents (without multimedia for now)

Planned features

Initial support for Linux & Windows
Performance pass before 1.0 version
Tooling to test against the open web for robustness and flexibility

Information Management

Feed management / Categorization
Full Text Search

Decentralization

First-class Tor & I2P support
Feed discovery
Import/Export features
- Full database
- .OPML

Ease of use

TTS with Piper
Configuration wizard
- Font-size & theme
- Application settings
Different views for particular kinds of content
Video support via iced_video_player

Suggestions needed

I’d really like any and all thoughts you may have about what’s worth including or how to get particular features right. If you have any thoughts or suggestions I would really appreciate it if you’d contact me.

Email: gabriel@libresolutions.network | Other contact info

Darknet support

Given that I fully intend to support clearnet & darknets, I’d love to feedback on how they should be handled. The easiest would be to simply load content from it’s respective network, but maybe some people would want to use Tor for clearnet connections as well. I think there are many people much more knowledgeable than me who would have very useful thoughts on how best to handle this.

Discovery

An obvious low-hanging fruit would be to suggest feeds linked from the open article/podcast. I’m curious what other useful avenues are worth considering when it comes to offering suggestions. I was thinking that some form of ranked suggestions based off similar feeds is an interesting idea. I would definitely be open to specific suggestions on this front.

Design & usability

Getting the application to look acceptable will be a significant achievement on my part. Any and all suggestions are going to be vital in the long run.

Support appreciated

If you’re excited by the prospect of a new RSS client with fancy features, any help you can offer would go a long way to making my life a lot easier. I can accept donations through Liberapay or via Monero. I am hoping that once this project beings to show promise, that I can work on this and other similarly inspired projects full-time. I want to spend my time building things that frustrate tyrants.

xmr:83H6o3oMRYog28CbFfG1bQ5vdVG9MQ3itSF1HAPygTyrPsQ7zsXwPXcB5WBei3RqDpdHjitWTeZWkQJSXK3VF8VRG4e2e9R

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🎉 Major Milestone: Over 200lbs lost!

Sun, 20 Jul 2025 14:16:53 +0000

Watch video on: Peertube

I am thrilled to report that I have finally hit a major milestone: having lost over two hundred pounds. It has been a long road, and I still have so much more territory to cover, but there’s a lot to celebrate here. I’m very happy to be much more mobile and capable. So many things that were out of reach not that long ago are things I’m doing regularly. Walking is no longer a chore and is something I do for fun!

I’ve come quite a long way since my first post. Even just since January, I’m down over 100lbs. What I’ve noticed the most is the fitness progress. I’m able to do so much more without being tired and various exercises are progressing well. It has been so exciting to learn to do so many new things and slowly make progress towards more ambitious goals. I’m still not able to complete a push-up, but my modified push-ups are getting better over time.

I’ve got a lot of work to do, but I’m constantly finding more and more to look forward to. Many of the anxieties and fears are beginning to gradually fade as I’m feeling more confident as a whole. There are still many difficult problems to tackle in the future, but I feel more equipped than ever to tackle them. Learning to regain control over myself has changed not only my weight, but also my outlook and approaches to problems.

Interesting finds

My webring neighbor Jacob has been putting out great posts on fitness & Health. I especially like that you can learn a lot from reading the details from his cook book recipes, the peanut butter one was very illuminating for me.

Other media

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Inner Speech and 'Mental Malware'

Sun, 13 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Disclaimer: As always, this blog is about my perspective and understanding. I don’t claim to have the final word on anything, but especially thorny topics like this. This isn’t a particularly pleasant exploration, so you can expect me to bring up heavy topics like psychological and physical abuse. Reader’s discretion is advised.

The mind is a very powerful thing. I like to think of the mind as the bridge between the body and the soul. It impacts both, and can be impacted by either. Our general understanding of our brain is that it is quite adaptive. I know first-hand what this is like having suffered from a stroke that impacted my vision. Despite losing at least a quarter of my field-of-view, it is staggering how the brain tricks me into thinking I still can see just as well. When I play video games I’ll compensate by “blind-firing” in spots players are likely to be based off my understanding of the map. This compensation for my visual limitations does help me enjoy some of these games, but I’m like a fish out of water on maps I’m not familiar with. It’s hard to describe, but there are many similar brain quirks that people may know about.

In my experience, the incredible power of a human brain is a phenomenal blessing, but also represents unique challenges. The body, including the brain, has an impressive capacity to adapt to all kinds of situations. This adaptability itself has both positive and negative consequences. Many people lean on ’evo-psych’ for explaining many common behaviors, but I’ve become more convinced that you can explain a lot of bizarre behavior if you simply know the problem being overcome.

But nothing is more bizarre than the fact that people don’t all agree on the prevalence of an ‘internal monologue’. One would think that since we’re all essentially running the same hardware our mental software should at have some common attributes. Often times, those with an internal monologue can’t comprehend the idea that people live without it. (I’ve personally struggled quite a bit!) On the other hand, when I have talked with friends and relatives who claim not to have an internal monologue running all the time, their reaction is one of shock: “That must be so exhausting!”.

Dissecting the Internal Monologue

The academic term for having an internal monologue is “inner speech”. As I experience it, it is where one internally vocalizes a running stream of thoughts that can include anything and everything. Almost every waking moment my mind is racing from one idea or feeling to the next. This monologue has often been a roller-coaster of feelings, where I try to anticipate things. This regularly leads me to extreme reactions to particular events, details or information as a rush of feelings and ideas all try to fight for attention. Day to day, it’s like listening to an audiobook written by someone who tried summarizing a million short-form tiktok videos.

It has it’s advantages for sure. Playing with ideas is fun and easy. It is trivial to get lost in thought and entertaining oneself is relatively straightforward. When one has to fill so many waking hours with so many thoughts you definitely end up covering a lot of ground. Momentary obsessions become long explorations into all kinds of aspects of things, as one shifts focus from detail to novelty over and over. Because of this there is a peculiar arrogance by some who assume that having an internal monologue makes one intellectually superior to those who don’t.

Rather than deriding those without inner speech as “NPCs” or other similar derogatory terms, I would often recognize that these people were often much better “doers” than I was. I can certainly recognize ways in which a deluge of negative ‘self-talk’ has drastically impacted my life in a wide variety of negative ways. I always noticed that many of those without internal monologues also lacked particular struggles I took for granted. The more I think about it, having an ongoing internal monologue is likely a very inefficient way to use your thinking energy. If one is not careful on how their cognition is directed, it can easily get the best of them. True learning happens from taking action applying what one understands. The ways in which a negative internal monologue prevents someone from taking action also prevents someone from actually getting the important real-time feedback needed to grow. Through my own weight loss journey I began to realize that much of my inner speech included patterns I needed to overcome. There is a huge difference between rational self-doubt as and endless self-flagellation. As I’ve built up discipline, had time to reflect, and made a lot of progress losing weight I’ve begun to understand how much an internal monologue can get in the way of self-mastery.

Improving my situation required me to directly confront the root causes of many of my personal behaviors and thought patterns. This was not an easy thing for me to do. It took me quite a bit of time to finish reading Understanding and overcoming negative emotions which did put much of this into focus. I began recognizing how many of my behaviors were about soothing fears and seeking safety. Despite being quite physically safe, I recognized that I always felt unsafe in the labyrinth of my chattering mind. Only once I read Prometheus Rising did I begin to question the nature of having an internal monologue at all. Over time, I have become convinced that “inner speech” is an adaptation to stressful social situations in childhood and youth. I think this may come as a shock to many with internal monologues that believe that “everything was fine”. There was once a time I too thought everything was fine until information I was not aware of was brought to light.

I can definitely recognize there are advantages to having/using inner speech. It definitely helps me think through ideas that I’m wrestling with, and I think I’ve managed to make some good out of that. It has made me wonder in what situations were these advantages required. Why did I feel it was so important to be mentally hyper-active from a young age? Looking back, it’s so clear but also very troubling. It only takes a few times of your paranoia being proven right to start feeding the beast.

Inner Speech as an adaptation to trauma

Adaptations to particular problems don’t all need to be uniform. People who struggle with all kinds of addictions can often point to the same root causes like stress, pressure, or escapism. To make things even more confusing, not all adaptations will have wholly negative or positive outcomes. What may seem advantageous to others can be a solution to a problem that comes at a significant cost. It is typical for those with difficult family lives to end up as “people-pleasers”, extroverts or peace-makers. This doesn’t mean that these are inherently bad attributes, rather than there can often be tragic sources of them. It is for this reason I have come to suspect that because inner speech is not uniform across humanity, it may be such an adaptation.

Another detail here is that many of these things exist on a continuum. One may only need a relatively small amount of turmoil in their youth to have a particular level of adaptations. I do believe these kinds of circumstances can arise even in particularly extreme life events. I don’t see a reason to necessarily believe too strongly in a formulaic understanding of this. I definitely don’t think it’s as simple as someone having x,y,z set of experiences creates conditions a,b and c. If anything what makes this so complex is our ability to adapt to circumstances in a wide variety of ways.

I wholeheartedly believe that an inner monologue is a form of hyper-vigilance that develops as a survival strategy to some form of extreme or chronic insecurity. One thing I learned from Anton Wilson’s book Prometheus Rising is how brainwashing relies on the psyche’s need for safety. I think people vastly underestimate how high the bar for safety actually is. Dr Peter Breggin’s book discusses about how traumatic it is for children to merely perceive being unloved and the consequences that may have. Fundamentally the insecurity or danger can be relatively short-lived or even abstract. That said, I believe many people are prone to downplay the tragedies of their childhoods, to either protect their own conception of their parents, or to protect the parents themselves from any guilt.

To make matters worse I believe abusers weaponize this to keep their victims compliant and silent. One would assume that speaking in your head constantly would make speaking externally much easier but in practice it doesn’t. This is because the process of piecing things together in your mind has you building on information and context that is very hard to vocalize in a short period of time. Those attempting to explain their circumstances may simply confuse listeners if they can’t plainly state the important details. To the hyper-vigilant mind, you feel you can never prove your case and struggle with feeling understood. This is very likely because abusers often have information asymmetry advantages over their victims.

Mental Malware

Regardless of the actual source of an internal monologue, I wholeheartedly believe that people need to be on guard for the sophisticated mental malware that abusers weaponize against their victims. I believe that inner speech is a defense mechanism to various forms of abuse. Gaslighting means one either has to defend their inner reality or reinforce the false one. Someone with authority putting you down also requires you to either reinforce your own self-worth or belittle yourself on their behalf. A lack of physical safety can lead to one constantly assessing their surroundings and the people around them. All this often leaves little time for actually practicing being heard and understood.

I am convinced that all this is leveraged by abusers. The purpose of gaslighting isn’t truly to convince the victims, but to inflict the ultimate humiliation when they accept the false reality. This creates a debt of guilt and shame that can be an insurmountable burden on many. Because of this, I believe that any chronic form of negative self-talk is a sign of mental malware being deployed. Who does it ultimately serve that such a large portion of the public are not just doubting their selves, but their own comprehension of reality.

This is where I struggle with those who try to police language of fellow activists. Very often you’ll see people nit-picking language used on particular issues, yet others just continue on without any issue. I believe that language is important for those who are trapped in their own mind prison, but not for those who aren’t. Despite what many would believe, there are many ways of thinking and inner speech is just part of a bigger whole. Those of us with inner speech do have to consider “whose words am I speaking to myself?” and why.

It is absolutely crucial to understand this, because once you recognize this pattern you see it in many other dynamics across the world. Just as computer viruses aren’t an ‘accident’ to the power structures of the world mental malware “is a feature, not a bug”.

Suppose you’ll grant these base assumptions:

Serious abuse is something a non-trivial amount of people deal with.
That actual justice would have a destabilizing effect on power and order.

Those two assumptions are enough to explain a great deal of troubling but seemingly unsolvable problems we see today. Robert Anton Wilson’s book Prometheus Rising explains this quite well. To paraphrase: parents don’t hit their kids because it’s good for the child’s development, but because it molds the child into compliant units the system needs. Of course not every parent does this, but without societal stigma to keep it in check, this explains how it would become so prevalent. Robert Anton Wilson argues that our society creates the incentives for all kinds of abuse because the abuse itself maintains power.

You’ll know you understand this model of mental malware once you start seeing it everywhere. Incomprehensible lies by those in authority, threats, people being pit against each other, scapegoating, and many other tactics look like a lot more than just incidental slights. I worry that wrestling with this isn’t easy, especially for those afflicted with hostile internal monologues. In true Libre Solutions Network form, I wouldn’t write about such a dark topic if I didn’t have anything helpful to say. I promise you that your internal monologue can be transformed from curse to gift as long as you accept that you can reprogram your inner monologue.

Mental anti-virus protocols: overcoming negative self-talk

I can understand being skeptical that your internal monologue can change in substance and nature. Just over a year ago I thought it was something that was impossible to change. It is genuinely hard to believe change is possible when one has struggled with such a tragic mental prison for so long. While change is certainly achievable it is by no means simple, and does take time. There are many books on the subject, and I’ve read a couple. Some suggestions are simple, some are absolutely abstract to those in our situation. It’s genuinely hard to know where to start.

While I’m certainly no expert on the topic (is anyone?) but based off my personal development over the last few years I’ve come to appreciate how intertwined my mental and physical health journeys are. To put this into numbers, I’ve gone from having a (at least) 80% negative internal monologue to having a 50% positive inner speech with far more neutral and far less negative self-talk. I know the process will be different for every person, but these are the techniques I’ve found that really made a difference even in the worst of it all.

Curate your information intake

Mental malware leverages every minute piece of information we come across. Instead of you seeing something for what it is, you have to use it to add fuel to your mental machine. Something you see may drive you feel worse about yourself, or make you angry at others. It becomes easy to lose perspective and become strangely narrow-minded despite being exposed to so much variety. This can create a negative feedback loop where you seek out more variety which just adds more fuel to the fire.

I can only guess, but I’m convinced those of us with hyperactive minds “can’t look away” from tragedy and terror. It can be just keeping up with the news, or investigating various things, but we often fool ourselves into thinking the negativity has no cost on our psyche. I think the rational impulse to recognize and understand dangers goes into overdrive in a self-destructive capacity.

I won’t tell you to “digital disconnect” and just take breaks from it all. That’s a nice step, but I know from experience that’s a LOT easier said than done. I think the better place to start is to be more judicious about what information you’re exposing yourself to constantly. I think it’s reasonable to be afraid of hiding from the world, but it is important to remember you have to actually be able to face it, not just absorb the stimulus.

To help decide if something is worth your attention ask yourself:

Is this going to help me today?
Does it make me happier and/or fulfilled?
Am I being properly informed or just entertained?
If it is entertainment, does this help me relax?
Could the presenter of this information have troubling motives?
Is the platform I’m viewing this on addictive?

If you suffer from constant and cruel self-talk like I have, it’s seriously worth considering mega-dosing yourself with actual positivity. Whatever you find encouraging or pumps you up. It can be stories, memes, music, quotes, or even just cute animals online. Taking time to save and curate your own collection of inspiration and peace is absolutely worth it. Adding positivity is never about avoiding negativity all-together, but about ensuring you’re recharged enough to actually act to tackle problems. Instead of letting platforms and habit dictate your information do whatever you can to deliberately access what you choose to.

I have my own collection of motivational memes that have helped me quite a bit in my weight loss journey. Your collection should speak to you as a person. Find things that make you happy to be alive and prepared to take on your struggles. Filling your attention with encouraging messages can help drown out the maze of negativity you’re struggling with. You need to be told that you can do it, you can achieve things, and that you can make it all worth it.

This isn’t merely about drowning out all the negative noise. It’s about filling your life with a chorus of what you should be saying to yourself and others. Over time, you reprogram your inner monologue to work for the things you want, rather than against you. Making the conscious choice to change what information you’re passively and actively absorbing is what will allow you to change the inputs of your mind. If you don’t think you can do something, find all the examples of people who have. If you can’t find any real examples, find stories of similar situations. Challenge yourself to rewrite not only your own story, but your approach to it.

Choose life

When you’ve spent so long turning on yourself, it becomes very easy to turn against life itself. It becomes so easy to withdraw from everything. You start distancing from others, and it snowballs into hiding from the life around you. Shame and regret are difficult burdens. Overcoming them is no simple task, but to live in the moment you need to have a positive conception of the future. Fully committing to playing the cards you’re dealt as well as you can will help you salvage something you can be proud of. Once you’ve done that you’re on track to truly living again.

Developing self-awareness is paradoxically a critical step. We may think by overthinking we’re self-aware, but it’s highly likely that the mental malware is driving us to avoid being self-aware. Telling yourself that you don’t matter or that your needs aren’t important is not self-awareness, it’s doing the work of the enemy for them. Choosing life means not just choosing to participate in your life, but also to experience it. I can say this is no small feat. Giving yourself permission to actually focus on the moment is genuinely challenging when you’ve been taught that you need your mind running to stay safe. Overcoming this requires you to rebuild your confidence from the ground up.

Choosing life can be hard when we suffer hardship. The scars will be with us, and for many it can be terribly painful. I don’t have an emotionally satisfying answer to the Problem of Evil. What I can say is that while we can’t change the past, we can learn to appreciate the life ahead of us. Overcoming tragedy is never easy, and never simple. If you can give yourself credit for the heroism involved in willingly taking it all on, things can begin to fall into place. There is so much that can change, and you’ll be proud of what you can make happen.

Live life

This means learning to knowingly face your life for what it is. Instead of retreating to escapism to avoid your troubles and defeats, you can now properly prioritize taking care of yourself to face them. Choosing to actually experience your life is an exercise in gratitude, hope, and love. It takes gratitude to keep joy alive. You’ll need to fuel yourself with hope for the future, whatever it may bring. It takes love to endure the hardships, but it also makes it worthwhile. Escaping escapism requires tackling your pain head-on, and that demands a lot. Living life is about recognizing your troubles and making progress. Demanding perfection of life, others, or yourself is not facing reality but living in a fantasy.

I used to have a saying: “You’re not wasting time if you’re learning, creating, or sharing.” I’ve now decided that this was cope. I spent very little time creating or sharing under that mantra. I now realize that creating and sharing are what drives learning. Learning on its own, without application, is just collecting, and can absolutely be a waste of time. A simple way to start is to try making things out of what you’ve collected. If you’ve learned a lot about animals you can make art or memes about them. The hardest part is being comfortable sucking at what you’re doing. Your mind has likely tricked you into thinking that analyzing everything has made you adept at many things, once you finally start working on things it will be quite a humbling experience.

But it’s not all bad, once you get started you’ll be surprised at how quickly you discover an unfamiliar feeling that soothes your mind. When your body and mind are aligned on a task you enter the ‘flow state’ where things feel natural. You’re no longer distracted by your own petty insecurities, instead you’re fully engaged with whatever you’re taking on at the moment. This is the prize of transforming your inner monologue: being able to fully engage with the world around you. As you develop self-mastery you can finally put the immense power of your mind to accomplishing things you never would have imagined.

Once you’ve rebuilt your confidence, definitely take the time to connect with others. Appreciate those who’ve been for you in the difficult times, and find ways to pay it forward. We were put on this earth with others for a reason, and I think it’s best not to be trapped in our own minds to the exclusion of everyone else. There is a great deal of joy to find in connecting with people and working together. As your ability to truly engage with others improves, so will your interactions with the good people around you. It is ironic that after you decide life is worth truly living, you’ll never stop finding reasons to.

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Walk With Me: inspiration & hot takes

Sun, 06 Jul 2025 13:24:29 +0000

Glad to be back

It has been too long since I’ve recorded my off-the-cuff walking monologues. I’ve got a great deal on my mind and I hope you’ll appreciate listening to it all. Just a heads up, I do have some residual sniffles, so I apologize for letting a few slip in to the final recording. I think I’ve done a decent job at cleaning this one without cutting out the birds chirping. I apologize in advance for the soapbox ranting. This journey includes a lot of reflection and learning, so I’m open to correction on some of the points I explore.

Things are progressing quite well. I am quite close to a major milestone: 200lbs down since the start of this journey. I can absolutely feel how much progress I’ve made and how much easier it has made things. Soon enough I will be below 350 which is a huge deal for me because it opens up many cool options. Most notably I’m excited to blast myself with radiation to learn what’s underneath all the fat.

Congratulations Reed

A relative showed me a video of Reed hitting a major milestone in his weight loss journey. It seems like he’s really starting strong. He tells his story here. Reed is a few years younger than me, and was heavier far earlier than I was. I hope that he finds support and encouragement in sharing his story. I am humbled by his courage to share as much as he has.

I sent him a short email to offer some encouragement and point out I’ve been making progress on the same journey. I would encourage you to follow his updates and offer any encouragement you’d like to.

Bizarre weight loss spectacles

One of the sub-rants in this recording is based off a peculiar pattern I’ve noticed. These days I’m very sensitive to how the fine details of health are discussed, especially in political circles. I was recently alerted by Robert Malone putting out a post titled Well Being: Keeping the Weight OFF for a Long and Healthy Life some of which is paywalled, and therefore I’m not aware of those sections. I’m less interested at that the self-appointed leader of the Medical Freedom Movement believes about weight loss, but more about the timing and place in the larger discussion.

In another bizarre parallel, Ezra Levant (head of a Canadian alt-mainstream publication) challenges Canadian journalist Rosemary Barton to a weight loss competition over X:

I’m a bit miffed by Rosemary Barton’s bigotry & self-importance but mainly I can’t help notice that (like me) she’s obviously been doing a lot of stress eating.
I’d like to challenge her to a 90-day weight-loss competition. Loser has to subscribe to the other’s channel.

Ezra Levant on X

The challenge included a glossy video promo.

I am highly concerned about the not at all new trend of politicizing health accelerating in ugly ways. I am now much more cynical about public figure’s role in health discussions. If nothing else I think it is worth keeping in mind that people are not their illnesses and problems, and many if not all of us have the capacity to help those around us.

Pushing forward

I’m very eager to be free of these sniffles, and I’m excited to return to being quite active. I’ve started carrying my small (15lbs) kettlebell while going for walks. I’m beginning to be more confident in other projects as well, I recently revisited my recent programming project I spent a long time avoiding touching it because producing something actually useful for other people requires a lot of intricate features. I’ve overcome some difficult hurdles and have begun working on these crucial features again.

I can definitely say the first half of 2025 has been equal parts challenging and fruitful. I am quite optimistic that I can end this year on a great note. It is quite possible I can be below 300lbs by 2026 which would be a radical shift from the fact that I was above 570 just a year from now. I’ve been quite impatient in regards to taking advantage to my mobility returning. I definitely need to strike the right balance between pushing myself hard and not going too hard.

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A difficult trial

Wed, 02 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000

For the last week I’ve been thrust into a very involuntary rest period. Last weekend I started feeling gradually then increasingly sick. Thankfully I’m on the mend but it has been a very difficult hurdle to overcome. I’m quite frustrated at how this stuffiness is stubbornly holding on. I haven’t been sick like this for over two years, so it seems that it was just time. I had already been frustrated with not being able to push harder and harder, so it’s only fitting that I have to be forced into taking an actual rest.

I apologize for the lack of weight loss updates this month. Even prior to getting sick I was finding it very difficult to balance things. I fully intended on doing another video update by the end of the month, sadly I couldn’t make that happen. Things have been weird lately. Finally getting below 400lbs was a massive milestone for so many reasons, and thankfully I’m continuing to push further below it. On the other hand, I’ve been struggling with difficult feelings about where I am.

The hard part is that this entire process has worn me down quite a bit. Other people can see the progress made but I’m very stuck fixating on what hasn’t yet been accomplished. Instead of actually living in the moment I’m entirely consumed by over-thinking the refinements I want to make. I need to spend more time doing rather than worrying about doing. For the most part, exercise has been my best escape from that dilemma. A non-trivial challenge at this point is self-image. I’m roughly back to the size I spent most of my adult life, and I don’t have a clear idea of how I’ll look as I approach my target. The anticipation is weird because in the best case scenario it’s still some time away. I have such a hard time taking care of present Gabriel that I’m not at all sure what future Gabriel needs from me.

Back in the Winter, I bought a “goal outfit” for the summer. It’s a 3XL Hawaiian shirt with matching swim shorts. I was pleasantly surprised that I was able to put it on at the start of June. It has been genuinely nice to wear it while out, and I’ve gotten some nice compliments while wearing it. I’m finally at the point where I have reversed years of weight gain putting me back to a pre-2020 weight. I should be more grateful than I am for the situation I’m in. Part of my disillusionment is that while I’ve gotten back my pre-covid body, life circumstances are significantly different now. While I’m more able than I am when I started this journey, I’m still quite far away from being able to be as functional as I would like.

A perfect metaphor for how I’m feeling about things has been my recent experiences swimming. As I’ve lost weight my buoyancy has changed significantly. At the beginning I could effortlessly float with my shoulders above the water, now I’m just beginning to sink with my neck below water. This entire time, as I’ve been trying to learn to swim better, it just changes on me. Swimming below 400lbs is a very different experience than attempting to swim at 570lbs. I feel like I’m not actually making any progress because I’m always in an unfamiliar state with the movements. I know it’s something I have to push through, but it’s absolutely disorienting and hard to remind myself that progress is being made.

This midpoint is very bittersweet. I’m getting close to 200lbs down, but I’ll have to lose around another 200 more. I had the opportunity to yet again go through some of my old clothes and wear things that I haven’t fit into in years. In many ways, wearing these older items puts into perspective how much time I’ve lost to this size. I would have thought that fitting into these old clothes would make me feel “normal” again. Unfortunately, it’s just jarring that I’m significantly less able to produce now than I was then. So much of the pressure on myself that drove me to make unhealthy decisions is returning with a vengeance.

At the beginning, it was so much easier with not being able to do so many things than what I struggle with now. While I can do so many more things, it also creates new problems because I now have the capacity to do things I shouldn’t. Can’t is so much easier to deal with can’t than shouldn’t. For example, while I’m sick I shouldn’t do all the same exercises I used to, because that would just impact my ability to get well. But I want to. The pressure and drive that is helping me fix my situation is very difficult to keep in check. While it is relatively easy to stop myself from taking on things while sick like this, it is so very hard to not feel bad about it.

Despite all this, I’m fairly optimistic. I’m trying to take it easy and hydrate as much as I can. I’ve been a fair bit generous with calories over the last few days and despite that weight isn’t going up so I’ll call that a victory. I ended up losing more weight in June (19.6lbs) than in May (14.3lbs) so things seem to be progressing well. I’m almost on track for my ambitious yearly goal, so I’ll have to see what is in store for July. Thanks for reading!

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Experimenting with the dark arts

Sun, 22 Jun 2025 18:09:32 +0000

Does Gabriel still do tech or is it all just weight loss now?

I’ll admit my weight loss journey and IRL activities are taking up a great deal of my time these days, but I’m still very interested in expanding my technical knowledge! I hope my techie friends will appreciate this post where I try out AI agents so they don’t have to. Of course I will be posting another weight loss update soon, things are progressing well!

My first foray into automation software was an Android application that let you do all kinds of fancy flows. I genuinely believe that accessible automation tools are a genuinely useful thing that any OS should have built-in. Accessibility is a real way to give users power over their own computing. I’ve noticed that most of the refined solutions for automation are commercial products, which in turn means you’ve got to become even more dependent on Big Tech infrastructure. For those of us comfortable around shell scripting, a node-based automation tool can seem like overkill, but there are many people who could benefit from one. The general idea of flows and automation graphs seem to be genuinely interesting things and I’m hoping we see some exciting developments there in the software freedom space.

But this post is about my latest dabbling into the potential of self-hosted “AI agents”. After speaking with James Corbett about many concerns related to artificial intelligence tools, I decided it would be worth spending the time to get a better grasp of what’s possible. Since this was only a brief look at these tools, I am in no way claiming to have advanced knowledge of their use. I am sure many of the problems I encountered have well-known solutions, but I mostly wanted to see how far I could go in experimenting. This is my personal experience with learning how to use self-hosted tools for automation and AI agents.

WTF is an ‘AI agent’?

AI Agent node in n8n

My uncharitable explanation would be that an AI agent is merely the introduction of LLM chatbots to an automated process. For example, instead of parsing an email for keywords to react to it, you can feed the content of the message to an LLM to decide what to do with it. Depending on the model being used, a variety of different tools can be given to the LLM to perform various actions. Since an LLM can generate a list of steps, the idea is based on providing it the tools to actually run those steps.

Having spent some time tinkering with it, I can understand the appeal. By burning an insane amount of resources you can hopefully have the AI agent smooth over trivial problems that arise in your flow. Instead of worrying about minor details, the idea is to get the LLM to simply make the best of the inputs. Provided the problem is broken up into simple enough choices, I can imagine this being quite powerful in specific contexts.

What I find bizarre is how the so-called “reasoning models” start their prompt with self-generated instructions with <think> tags. This means that for every prompt, there is a beginning section where specific instructions are reiterated and elaborated on. I can see why this would help them come up with more useful outputs, but at the cost of additional tokens and attention. This also means that at least when using these models you’ll have to filter out the <think> content prior to responding. I have a feeling that publicly accessible AI chatbots have these kinds of features to sanitize outputs prior to being presented to the user.

‘Reasoning’ example

<think> Okay, so the user wants me to create a concise outline for an article about Mexico’s telecom reform and human rights risks. They’ve shared what appears to be part of the HTML source code for the press release.

{Multiple paragraphs about the article’s content}

For the heading, something catchy but also formal would work well to capture attention while maintaining professionalism. Then I’ll craft a few paragraphs summarizing the main points of the article and explaining its significance in terms that show both immediate impact on Mexico citizens and potential broader implications. </think>

To me, it’s fascinating that this “reasoning” by the model is longer than a decent summary would be. It’s definitely possible that this tactic creates significantly better outputs, but it’s at the cost of so much more compute every step of the way. Part of the idea of how AI agents are sold is the idea that with dozens of these you can replace real human teams. It seems clear to me that to the degree you can replace human workers with LLM-driven automation, it may end up costing multiples of their income in raw electricity, never mind the potential legal and copyright issues.

How did I set it up?

While I wanted to dip my toes into understanding AI agents, my principal goal was to understand what was possible while self-hosting. I’m sure there are so many very different tools for building and using AI agents in the cloud; I would prefer to use self-hosted but ideally free software options. With a limited look around, I didn’t find Free as in Freedom tools for the automation side, never mind the licenses around particular LLM models. So I essentially had to settle for open-source and self-hostable. If you’re aware of fully-free AI & automation suites, I would love to know.

Based off an admittedly quick search, the simplest AI agent tool I came across was n8n which is open source but certainly not focused on Free Software. What I did appreciate about it was its simplicity and support for RSS feeds. I had a simple idea for what I wanted to try out, and RSS support made it a lot easier. The projects website has a collection of templates you can use to import for your own uses. That’s pretty sweet, but I’ll elaborate more on that later. You can install n8n or run it as a docker image. It is a web-based GUI (a WUI?) for building automated workflows and running AI agents.

For your AI agent to work, it needs to be able to connect to an LLM API, such as the big tech ones, but I wanted to try self-hosted. Originally, I wanted to see if I could get GPT4All because the docs claim to support a server mode, but I couldn’t get that working. Instead I opted for Ollama which allows you to serve many LLMs.

Configuring self-hosted ollama on n8n

With Ollama serving Qwen3 over the API I was ready to start my AI agent journey. I wanted to come up with something that could potentially be useful for me, so I would actually be motivated to get it to work well. I chose to try to see if I could build a tool that would read some of my RSS feeds and write me a simple report on pressing issues. The hope would be that if one is using a self-hosted model, with selected RSS feeds and a constrained focus, that many potential censorship issues could be eliminated. If it worked, it could absolutely save me the toil of keeping up to date on many things I struggle to keep up with. I wasn’t aiming for perfection, nor to automate what I care about, just simply to see if such a tool could save me time.

How did it go?

After a great deal of tinkering, I got it to a point where it provides a reasonably useful output. There are many things I would fix if I really wanted to devote the time to perfecting it, but I’m not convinced it would be worth the effort. I really liked playing with n8n, but I’m convinced AI agents are wasteful trash. Part of this is even though I’m providing a set of information to work with, it will still hallucinate additional articles. There are many quality control issues regarding repeating articles and inconsistent formatting. I’m aware you can fix some of this with better prompts, but I expect the path of least resistance for many will be to simply add a “checker” agent and just recalculate the output. This makes zero economic sense when one is paying for their electricity. I believe this will be the mechanism that pushes people on to using artificially subsidized Big Tech infrastructure and not decentralized or self-sovereign AI.

In case you’re curious, my flow begins with a list of RSS feeds that can be updated however we want. It wouldn’t be hard to have it pull from a server or .opml file. It then loops over the items to grab the RSS feed contents. Simple sort and limit nodes are to get only the most recent items. Then each article is given to the “Summarizer” AI agent which actually does a not terrible job at converting rss content into a few paragraphs about it. I then have to filter out the <think> content before passing it along. I also merge the summaries with the original list so that I can preserve attribution. I have another code note that combines and formats the articles and their summaries so that they can be sent to the “report writer” AI agent. The report writer then takes all the articles and their summaries and is supposed to create a pretty HTML email report. I yet again have to use a code node to remove the nasty <think> tags from the output as well as other irregularities. Then the final report is sent to me as-is without any interaction on my part.

When the report writer isn’t just hallucinating articles the proper link is there almost all of the time. But often enough it will simply link to example.com if it has any trouble. Not only that, but you will often see the same article/summary/link combo multiple times in the same email. I am convinced it would be much better to simply use a code node to build the HTML email with the data than to rely on the “AI Agent” feature for that specific task. If I was to go back and fix things I would have the “report writer” agent simply look over the summaries and write a report which would then be used to enhance the email.

Ironically, the fact that a bunch of code nodes needed to be used at all is a bit disappointing to me. It seems like as someone with technical ability, I’d be better off scripting on my own with whatever I want to talk to llama than to use javascript with the n8n suite. But I will say that n8n does have a lot of useful built-in nodes that make it very easy to get started quickly. Having done all this, I think AI agents are still quite far from being something one can expect in a freedom respecting environment. The path of least resistance will always be to simply cobble together Big Tech systems rather than to actually support decentralization and self-sovereign computing.

Closing thoughts

I can definitely say the short time I spent looking at this was valuable. I’ve gained a more refined understanding of how these systems are used, and what can be done beyond merely copy-pasting your homework into ChatGPT. I am genuinely impressed with what is possible from a self-hosted setup, and can imagine many valid use-cases for the software. This has shown me that we may need to rethink what making computing free (as in freedom) means for people with less technical ability. I’m definitely interested in learning what kinds of free software exists for automation, and observing projects like unit. As always, I’m convinced there is a remarkable amount of opportunity if independent technical minds are supported to do what they do best.

Doing this has congealed my feelings about corporate open source quite a bit. I used to be relatively ambivalent towards corporate open source because on some level the money has to come from somewhere. But I’m beginning to recognize first hand what many others have warned about for quite some time now, that Free computing and non-free computing are absolutely at a bifurcation point. The middle of the road is gone, it is clear we will have to choose what kind of a technological future we want to participate in.

When it comes to AI agents, I can definitely see the dark side. Just search “generate post” into the workflows page and you’ll see how many flows exist for generating information pollution. The fact that the online hustler of the 2020s can generate slop without any technical ability is yet another nail in the dead Internet coffin. I think it’s important for me to share this exploration so that people can imagine what tools are being used by governments, corporations, and other entities to carry out their duties, and what kinds of impact this can have on people.

I am now convinced more than ever that the destruction of the open web (for non-technical people) is the point of the pushing “AI” into everything. I fully believe that the free and open web will always exist in some form, but it is clear to me that there can’t be sustained via any commercial means. In some ways this might be the best thing ever, the future of the indieweb will be bright if it’s maintained by people out of passion and care rather than clicks and comments. It just means that the minds of the public are going to need to be prepared for a much more hostile information environment than what we’ve experienced to date.

In short, AI critics actually don’t hate AI enough. This may sound extreme. Even if I extrapolate that these tools work so much better with big tech infrastructure, that won’t fix everything. The fundamental aspects of inserting LLMs into various automated flows seems so much more wasteful than paying people to do work. It is clear to me that the AI hype isn’t actually about sound economics but actually about economic warfare. It won’t matter that doing things with AI agents instead of paid staff will likely cost 10x what it would cost to pay a human a real wage, what matters is that consolidating the technological landscape will yield more returns than money can buy. The point is that using LLMs to fix problems created by LLMs is the robotic equivalent of bullshit jobs, spending money on robotic make-work to market demand for AI “solutions”.

As I stated in my chat with Corbett, I don’t believe that technology = implementation. I don’t think machine learning is evil, nor that we can’t build useful tools with it. I am however very concerned about how political and economic forces are shaping this industry to build “aligned” AI against the public. This has been conspicuously absent from high-profile conversations about “AI safety” and expect it to be a driving force of many near-term trends.

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Walk with me: Below 400 🎉

Mon, 02 Jun 2025 11:10:39 +0000

Big Success!

I’ve finally hit a major milestone! I’m over 175lbs down, and finally below 400lbs. I had the pleasure of somebody telling me they’re noticing that I’m ‘wasting away’ over time. Feel free to join me on this walk where I celebrate this milestone, reflect on recent challenges and how I hope to overcome them. I truly didn’t appreciate how close I was to this milestone when I started. Far from being impossible, I have had the roller-coaster of making it actual.

As I write this my 4xl shorts are already loose enough they need to be tied to stay up. It is clear to me that I have reversed all of my post-2020 weight gain. In so many ways I feel ’normal’ again, because I’ve spent so much of my adult life around this size.

Learning to weave

Ankle pain has become a bit of a constraint on my activities. Instead of stubbornly repeating the same activities expecting a different outcome, I’ve been thinking about how I can approach this differently. Reflecting on this reveals to me that there actually is a great deal of opportunity for growth, and it’s reassuring to find other areas I can work on with less strain. I think this generalizes well to other situations. I understand that just because you’ve hit diminishing returns in a single area, that doesn’t mean there aren’t other ways to continue making progress.

A big part of this has been facing my own mental limitations. It’s clear to me that I recoil from the unfamiliar, and crave steady familiar routines. This is quite the realization considering my ‘routine’ has been so chaotic and counter-productive. I’m recognizing the power of making strange things familiar. This process takes a fair bit of time, but I’m recognizing the incredible power of it. To apply this, I have a goal of attempting to make a variety of new exercises feel familiar to me. Instead of confining myself to merely walking and swimming, I need to expand my exercise options.

Recognizing momentum

I can no longer deny that this is working. This may shock many people, but only now that I’ve lost 170lbs am I really beginning to ’trust the process’. I am now much more confident and dragged down by fear and despair a lot less often. It took a lot of faith to get to this point, but I’m beginning to really feel the changes in my mindset and emotional responses to challenges.

Because of this, I can report that I’m beginning to even out the emotional waves of this process. I feel a level of peace with it that seems entirely unfamiliar. It’s a shame that it took this long for me to truly recognize the power of gradual but consistent improvement. I am immensely grateful for being at this point, and recognize it as the blessing that it is.

I hope that in some small way, the journey I’ve taken can already show others that they can get started. I certainly wouldn’t have believed I would be where I am today as recently as a year ago. I am glad I’ve shared as much as I have, and I wish I had done more in the earliest days.

Are you aware of any health/fitness channels on PeerTube?

The only channel I can think about is Shifter which is a channel urban cycling, particularly in Canada. I found this video on winter cycling very informative! I’d also be curious to hear of any small independent blogs and/or podcasts that deserve more recognition!

Recent Finds

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New video: May Update

Sat, 17 May 2025 18:39:11 +0000

Watch on PeerTube

Looking back at the past

I sat outside in a chair I recently wouldn’t fit in to record a video update. I’ve been having a lot of complex feelings about my journey thus far. While I’ve made fantastic strides in mobility and functionality, I’ve found myself often dwelling on what still can’t be done. In response to this, I decided it was time to revisit some of the content I have from when I started this journey.

I have a folder of published and some unpublished vlogs, audio recordings, and loads of photos. At the end of 2023 I shared my frustrations and goals for making 2024 a year of change. Changes really started small. I began focusing more on swimming and using floaty weights but I knew a lot needed to change to truly make lasting progress.

Unable to avoid the fact that my out-of-control eating habits were holding me back, I decided to write out all my known troubles with food. to try to come up with strategies to tackle them. By the middle of 2024, I got a very lucky break. Already focusing everything I had on making change, I was ready for bolder steps. I decided to hire a trainer for guidance and to rebuilt my mobility. Cautiously optimistic, I realized that this could be the pivot point where I finally begin to see lasting results. Armed with a scale I could actually weigh myself with, I was able to accomplish my first recorded weight loss in a long time.

Of course, this important step didn’t erase all my existing troubles. So much of starting out, and continuing from here is a significant struggle with problems I’ve developed over the years and the consequences of my size. It was enlightening to go back to the start of my journey to reflect. I still very much have many of the same problems and complaints, but I can see the many improvements.

In an early example of gratitude I wrote out the many things I look forward to, some I’ve accomplished already.

Milestones

Activities

✅ Going up stairs without a thought

Biking

✅ Getting better at cooking

✅ Comfortable with long walks

✅ Doing more things away from home / less hesitant to go outside

Visiting friends abroad / being able to travel generally

Taking on more physical hobbies and crafts

Body-weight exercises

✅ Lunges

Pull ups

Push ups (Working on it!)

✅ Plank

Hand-stands

The little things

Being able to move without having my own body in the way

✅ Standing for longer periods of time

✅ Fitting in ordinary bus benches

✅ Not having to lean on things while doing basic tasks

✅ Getting in and out of cars easier

✅ Putting on shoes & socks

Staying in a clothing size long term

✅ Easier hygiene

No longer living in fear, regret, and pain from my size

Under & Over

✅ Under 500lbs

Under 400lbs [ALMOST! (ETA: End of May 2025)]

Under 300lbs

✅ Over 100lbs down

Over 200lbs down (ETA: Summer 2025)

Over 300lbs down (ETA: 2026)

Leaving Obesity Class V

I wish I had more writings from these early days. Even now I’m much more comfortable writing out thoughts than being on camera. I’m very glad I decided to start my Walk with me series where I casually share monologues on my journey. In some ways I find myself having less and less to say, things are moving along and I just need to keep at it. I’m very grateful that many people have found these updates interesting or comforting.

It’s great that I at least have a fair bit to look back on. It seems that I should have done a serious retrospective earlier. I am so happy the warmth and sunshine is back. Thanks for following my updates, and if you have any questions or thoughts don’t hesitate to reach out!

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Walk with me: Learning to be patient

Thu, 08 May 2025 14:47:29 +0000

This morning I went for a short walk and recorded some of my current feelings about my weight loss journey. Things are going well, but I’ve got a lot on my mind of late. In this walk I share how I’ve been reassessing recent changes to try to regain focus and drive. I’ve come far enough to not be able to ignore that I’ve made progress, but also far enough to be a little disheartened by what remains. Listen to me try to be patient with myself as I come up with new avenues to tackle these problems.

Recent finds

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(Tor) New vanity address

Tue, 06 May 2025 21:57:14 +0000

The hidden service (on Tor) for this site has been migrated to gabriel262me3lgv3w7xohtesg3laoojmtye644pwirhdm73qmedmsqd.onion. The previous address was on 3ah6l32ons2mzb65rchl3uz7nrgkecfof4eey7dwmamt5fcvok4h2yad.onion so it’s nice to have a more recognizable one. I’ve set the old .onion to redirect to the new one so there shouldn’t be any issues for visitors. I’m not sure how RSS readers handle 301 redirects, but I assume anyone who pulls RSS via Tor can figure this out.

mkp224o

The documentation on the Tor Project website recommends mkp224o to generate vanity addresses. The tool generates as many .onion keys as possible and saves matching domains to a folder. The longer your desired prefix, (called a filter) the longer it’s going to take to ‘find’ matching addresses. There is a feature that allows you to search for multiple ‘filters’ at once, so it’s best to think of as many acceptable variations and alternatives as you can for longer filters.

You can simply run mkp224o yourprefferedprefix if you like, but there are a variety of useful options worth considering.

-d {folder} puts all the generated folders into a specific location
-f {filter file} matches ‘filters’ in a file, one per line
-S {seconds} prints statistics every x seconds, such as how many addresses are searched per second.

How to generate your own vanity address(es) for your own Tor Service

Install mkp224o
Create a list of your desired filters in a file.
Run mkp244o -f filters_file -d vanity_addrs -s 360
Move your favorite .onion keys files (eg. to /var/lib/tor/yourdomain)
Reconfigure torrc to use your new keys file(s)
(Optional) Make sure to update your Onion-Location on the clearweb!

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Walk with me: Recovering Momentum

Sun, 27 Apr 2025 21:30:29 +0000

I’ve deliberately avoided using denoiseit to clean the background noise because it would feel wrong to remove the birds singing. I hope you’ll enjoy my off-the-cuff walking monologue about my ongoing journey. I’ve had a difficult start to Spring, but I’m really beginning to rebound. I’m looking forward to making the best of May.

Progress update

Unfortunately, April is definitely not as successful as March was. Last month I was down 20lbs and this month I’m only down 11 so far. I can think of quite a few reasons why that was the case. I’ve been pretty stressed, and I’ve been finding it more difficult to control portions. Some good progress has been made correcting these mistakes. Spending time focusing on improving my rest and stress management has made a significant difference on my mood, motivation and drive.

It is clear that I need to re-balance my energies to continue to push hard in a balanced and reasonable way. I am facing significant life challenges outside of this journey at the moment, so my ability to withstand pressures is absolutely being put to the test.

Losing the spark

I recently wrote about hitting a wall of soreness that kept me down quite a bit. It was quite the challenge to learn to rebound from a funk of disappointment and difficulties. Beyond unrelated stressors, a lot of my frustrations have been centered around feeling disappointed in myself. While I’ve made massive strides in strength, mobility, and weight loss, many things I want to do feel out of reach. I’ve vastly underestimated how much difficulties still remain in this difficult road.

I can walk for a decent amount of time and do many things I couldn’t before, but I struggle to properly appreciate these smaller wins. I am so fixated on what I still can’t do that it’s very difficult to have the required gratitude for the situation I’m in. When I really think about it my quality of life has been transformed in many ways since last Summer, but that’s not the same as being finished. While I certainly understood I would still have weight to lose by this point, I fully expected to be able to move better in this body by now.

I’ve seriously underestimated the challenges of being 400lbs while also overestimated the mobility and strength progress that could be made over the last few months. These mismatched expectations have had me languishing in frustration and despair. As shocking as it may seem to those who follow these updates, I am regularly feeling like I may never escape these troubles. It is clear to me that the important progress that remains is going to take quite some time. Day to day, I have an arduous struggle of trying to constantly remind myself that things are changing and real progress is taking place. With the understanding that I haven’t given myself enough time to grow, I really need to practice patience and gratitude to keep my head in the game.

Body image troubles

In addition to all that, I’ve been having very extreme swings in my body image feelings. Some moments I’m feeling like things are all coming together and I just need to be patient, and other moments I feel like nothing has changed at all. Despite losing over 150lbs in total, it is still often quite difficult to recognize the progress. I think part of it is that it’s only a quarter of my highest body weight, and less than half of what I need to lose in total. Again, it seems that my mismatched expectations were the driving cause of my frustration over the last few weeks.

I can definitely say the difficulties of this journey make it immensely difficult to have a positive self-image. Many of the wide variety of things that are still out of reach for me are all very quick reasons for me to feel useless or like a waste. I have found that working on stress management and getting better sleep does make a big difference. It absolutely makes how hard all this is crystal clear to me. It is very easy to spiral into a typhoon of terror, denial, and self-loathing when things aren’t going well.

Something that helped a lot recently was being able to comfortably fit into 4XL clothes, down from 6XL. I effectively ‘skipped’ 5XL because I don’t really intend on buying every size down to whatever I end up at. I underestimated how staying in the clothes I started in for so long would make it harder to appreciate the change. I’ve noticed that feeling comfortable in the smaller sizes does quite a lot for physical and even mental comfort.

Learning to reignite the passion and drive

One advantage to doing this as long as I have is that I’m beginning to recognize some patterns and cycles. I always get nervous when my weight trends closer to my 2-week moving average. This is because I essentially take it as a sign I’m losing momentum. For the last few days, I’ve met and gone above the moving average. One of the patterns I need to resolve is stressing out about stress. Whenever my weight isn’t comfortably below the moving average, I begin to worry and then worry about worrying which makes things so much harder.

Thankfully this time around, I’ve noticed that this exact scenario has happened before. At the start of Winter I can see a very similar pattern where I poke above the average for a brief time. It is reassuring to know that I have faced this before and it does not need to be an unbearable crisis. I guess the transition between seasons is just always a tricky thing for me in this process.

It was really helpful to remind myself that as awful as this all is, it’s not permanent. By rediscovering the gratitude for the fact that I can change this situation I am feeling better about this difficult time. I’m trying to really put my problem back into perspective so that I can be happy about incremental progress again.

A question for you!

I’d really like to know what active hobbies you enjoy! I’ve been thinking about how it’s difficult for many people to stay active with busy lives so I’m very curious to hear about how people overcome this.

Recent finds Roundup

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Walk with me: 🎉 Major Milestone 150lbs down!

Thu, 10 Apr 2025 11:29:52 +0000

I hope you’ll enjoy joining me on this walk where I talk about my recent struggles and successes. These are off-the-cuff talks while I go on walks that are lightly edited. Recently I’ve started using DenoiseIt to clean up the background noise, so listening quality should be reasonably acceptable.

I’m thrilled to announce that I’ve hit a very exciting milestone. In many ways I can say I’ve already transformed my life in a very short time. My quality of life is substantially better in so many ways after a few months of very challenging work. I’ve hit the low 420s after being as high as the mid 570s. I’m excited to keep pushing hard to reach this year’s ambitious goal of being below 300 by the end of 2025.

Smaller things are starting to fit and things I’m used to wearing are becoming far too big to wear comfortably. I love that I’m spending less time thinking about walking relatively short distances, giving me a better sense of agency day-to-day. Currently, I’m working on progressing towards being able to do push-ups. I am really enjoying the opportunity to grow much stronger while making radical changes to my body.

I’d like to thank everyone who has shared some kindness and encouragement my way because it has absolutely made what is a very difficult road much easier. I’ve learned so much even just getting to this point. I really enjoy your thoughts & questions a great deal because I know I have much more to learn on the long road remaining. I especially appreciate book recommendations and make sure to add them to my growing “to read” list.

In case you’re not familiar with my story, I’ve shared how I got so big and just how bad my eating troubles were.

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Big Pain: Soreness and Struggles

Sat, 29 Mar 2025 15:35:58 +0000

Progress update

I continue to make progress despite being incredibly beaten down emotionally, physically, and mentally. I’ve successfully reached this month’s target of beating the previous month’s weight loss. I’ll be down over 20lbs in March, beating February’s 15lbs. Even better, I’m finally on track to meet my annual goal of losing 200lbs in 2025. As I’m writing this I am just under 50lbs down for the year already, a quarter down in a quarter.

Swimming is also going quite well. I broke a new record for continuous swimming time last week. I was able to swim at a consistent pace for 43 minutes straight. It was difficult, but showed me I’m able to accomplish much more than what I think is possible in the moment. The plan is not to push for a whole hour, but be able to at least hit 30 minutes of continuous swimming twice a week.

If none of this was ambitious enough, I’m also working towards a new goal: attempting push-ups. I’m very far from being able to move the full range of motion, but the hope is to be able to complete them in the future. Recently I’ve been not only doing modified push ups with a bar, but also attempting to move from a plank position downwards. I estimate I’m only moving down an inch or so, but it is something I’ll be working to improve on as time goes on.

Under-recovering

I wish I could say I feel good and/or accomplished. Truthfully I’ve been feeling absolutely terrible lately. I’ve been so worn down to the point it’s been difficult to think at all. It reminds me of a quote from my World of Warcraft days: “If your WoW (World of Warcraft gaming) interferes with your life that’s one thing, but if your life interferes with your WoW you have a problem”. It seems that in trying to push myself as hard as I could, I may have been characteristically impatient about it and pushed too quickly.

Recovery is very much my Achilles’ heel when it comes to overall health. It’s the first thing I ‘put on the backburner’ and the last thing I tend to improve. It’s clear that my pains and exhaustion are a consequence of not prioritizing proper recovery for the workload I hoped to take on. I was actually in denial about it for quite some time. I took for granted that at my size, I was unable to actually push myself “too hard” and that I was very far away from ever actually pushing my limits. It seems the problem is not with the targets themselves, but how I’ve been pacing myself.

The first thing I noticed as things started to take a toll on me was that it was incredibly hard to focus on anything. The only lucid moments that remained were when I was doing my exercises. Then I noticed that my performance was dropping, but I was quick to attribute it to other causes or blame myself for not trying hard enough. Eventually, I would begin to get more and more sore and hear pops and cracks in places I wasn’t before. One would think all this would stop me, but it was only once I bough wrist weights for walking and using them made me a new level of sore that I began to realize I had pushed too hard.

While I am glad I’m able to push very hard, I struggle with accepting that I have limits. To many it would be intuitively obvious that someone my size would have hard limits, but I’ve come so far that I’ve been so used to pushing harder and getting more out of it. I am determined to keep pushing hard, but I am deciding to give myself a large break this upcoming week to prioritize actual recovery. I am hoping this temporary cut-back will give me the time to be recharged to push hard consistently again. I want to make sure that this setback doesn’t deter me from my ambitious goals, but I take as an instructive failure to teach myself to recognize when my actual limits are near.

On pain

As I’ve experienced, there are three types of pain one gets from regular exercise. The first is the intense pain one experiences when they begin training part of their body that has never been used like that before. In my experience, this is the worst of it. It’s unavoidable, and as I’ve shifted my focus from lower-body to upper body I’ve had to face it all over again and it feels like it just never ends. The good news is that it does end and gradually shifts into the second type of pain. As the body gets used to strengthening particular muscles, the pain shifts from an intense cold sharpness to more of a dull warm firmness. This isn’t fun either, but is at least an order of magnitude easier to deal with. The last type of pain is from outright injury. Doing some kind of structural damage generally impairs you one way or another. I am glad that I haven’t had any injuries that have impaired my ability to keep going, but I’m learning that I do need to be careful.

Personally, I can’t quite trace it but physical and emotional pain are inextricably linked in my mind. If I’m feeling sore, I am compelled to feel like I am worthless. I speculate this manifests from my learned helplessness. If I’m in pain from trying to do something and fail, it must mean that I am deficient and therefore a problem or a burden. I am still working to improve this, but progress is quite slow. I’ve mentioned it before, but I’ve found ‘recovery days’ to be so much harder than training days because I feel stuck with the pain but none of the sense of accomplishment. This has created a vicious cycle where I’m too worn down to do things on rest days, so I feel even worse about them. Moving forward I’m going to try to use my ability to focus on non-exercise related things as a barometer for how well I’m recovering.

The present moment is very hard for me, but I am quite optimistic I will come out of this much better. Learning to grow stronger has taught me that pain often isn’t a “no” but a “not yet” signal from the body so long as one has reasonable expectations. It seems that just as I need to be patient for weight loss to happen, I also need patience for giving my body time to adapt to new changes. I will admit, it’s very disheartening to have regular, stark, painful reminders that I’m still so far from being able to accomplish so many ‘basic’ things. It’s genuinely very frustrating to have come so far and still feel the frustrations and limitations of my size.

Whirlwind of frustration

I’ve been disappointed in myself for not getting much done outside of my exercise schedule. Part of this has also been to me being stressed and frustrated about things not directly related to this journey. I’ve been quite worried about the whole USA Canada trade war thing that’s whipped up Canadians into fake-patriot fury. I feel entirely burnt out of my capacity to participate in wider discussions. This is in part because I’m really reflecting on lessons I’ve learned over the last few years, and many of them are no joy at all.

I’m grateful that this journey has taught me many things, but it also brings many difficult feelings to the forefront. I hate still being this big. I can’t stand not being able to do the things I’d love to do and continuing to feel so far away from it. It makes the serious progress I’ve made feel so bittersweet. Every bit more I can do makes the sting of being unable to do other basic things much harder to endure. With all this, I’ve been doing a terrible job at managing the stress of it all. I’m thinking in the future I need to come up with more proactive stress management strategies, rather than just addressing things when they get too difficult to deal with.

Recent finds

Nick’s Journey

I stumbled on Nick’s video How Hard Is It to Lose 100 kg (220 lb) in a Year? He’s done a great job documenting the journey and brings up many things that are incredibly familiar to me. I appreciate Nick putting his journey out there and sharing the highs as well as the lows. I’ll admit it was quite hard to watch this because it felt very much like looking in the mirror with all the similarities. When I remember having some nit-pick disagreements with some of the things he said, but I’ll chalk that up to us being different people. What I would absolutely echo Nick on is that it is an incredibly tough journey that is challenging as well as rewarding. Maybe once I’ve made it to where I want to be it would be neat to talk with Nick sometime.

What is enough?

If there was anything that really clued me in to the fact that I have to really focus on my moderation when it comes to pushing hard it would be the NASM talk Optimize is a 4-Letter Word. Consistency is the name of the game, but Darlene Marshall does a great job of asking ‘what is enough?’. The talk was a great reminder that chasing perfection and optimization can often sabotage satisfaction and even results. It was quite timely for this to come out when it did because it’s helping me refocus my energies on appreciating the wins and prioritize longer term progress.

Since reading Food Politics I’ve been reflecting on the broader concerns related to the intersection of health, business, and politics. NASM hosted another talk on The Truth About How Supplements Are Regulated. The talk includes many warnings to consider when one is trying to get into using various health supplements. The most obvious concerns being does the supplement contain what it claims to, are there additional additives, and does it actually work? As far as I understand it, this isn’t easy territory to navigate.

The dark side of fitness

The Bioneer takes on the difficult topic of Fitness and Mental Health. He does an excellent job talking about the limits of oversimplified advice on exercise and lifestyle. I like how he does a great job drawing the fine line between “training to live” vs “living to train”. He points out there are many phenomenal benefits to exercise, but it’s far from a ‘silver bullet’ that will cure all your problems in one simple stroke. He directly takes on the concern that for those who are stuck in ‘bigorexia’, or just the perception that more muscle is better, can fall into the trap of abusing performance enhancing drugs.

This doesn’t come from nowhere. Many of the people I take seriously in the fitness space will decry how influencers are often damaging to the cause of helping people take care of their health. Lyle McDonald explains how Fitness POISON is Everywhere and how it effects those trying to start their journey. Lyle points out that the hypocrisy and judgement prevalent on social media is often counter-productive and ultimately harmful. It’s a little amusing to hear this because I see the same patterns in the areas I pay attention to, it seems that no niche is safe from this problem. Money, politics, and status-seeking behaviors all impact conversations online and one always has to be careful where they put their trust.

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New video: March Update

Sun, 16 Mar 2025 20:17:12 +0000

Watch video on PeerTube or on Substack.

I’ve recorded a stream of consciousness about my situation. I share my recent progress and changes I’m trying to make. Things are going quite well, but I’m finding it all quite difficult. I’m really trying to learn how to keep the intensity up without sacrificing consistency.

I was able to filter out a lot of background noise with DenoiseIt. I was pleasantly surprised at how it turned out and I’m considering using the script on my future walk with me installments. Unless you really like having the ambient noise, if so let me know.

🎉 Recent Milestones

hit a new low below 440lbs (over 130lbs down!)
able to reach my feet well enough to put on socks with the help of a chair.
gone down a size in my shorts, everything I’ve started out with is far too big
walking faster more consistently
successfully stuck to my ambitious “active 5 days a week” target for the last month

📔 Reading Progress: Food Politics

Reading Food Politics by Marion Nestle was quite the eye-opener. As somebody quite new to understanding basic nutrition, it was fascinating to get a look into some of the contentious issues. It was interesting to learn about the ‘food fight’ over the USA’s Food Pyramid, as well as other more nuanced issues like food fortification and supplement regulation. The book introduced me to the complicated politics surrounding nutrition, which opened my eyes to the fact that even basic health has been political for longer than I knew.

This is something I want to learn all I can about, given that it seems that health is only going to become more political over time. The push to collect health information for the purposes of integrating healthcare with AI is a non-trivial concern that seems to have principle relevance to Canadian health care. If nothing else, it is clear that food and nutrition will not be spared from mass surveillance and control. Just as it is important for us Free Software advocates to consider how governments and Big Tech imposes a worse digital landscape, we should consider how “Big Ag”, Pharma, and governments are interested in shaping the future of food.

Reflecting on it, I think the book is very helpful for anybody interested in a more nuanced perspective on nutrition. In a time where many people are getting their information from sub-optimal sources, it was nice to get a perspective from somebody who worked ‘inside the system’. I certainly have different preferences than the author on many things, but I found the book very useful for understanding the broader context. In some ways, it has changed how I look at other issues I care about.

The author has quite a few talks and lectures on YouTube, which I’ll share for context. I feel the need to point out that with an open mind, one doesn’t need to agree with her politics or dietary preferences to learn a great deal. I have my own strong disagreements with the author on many things, but have learned a great deal about how we’ve arrived where we are.

I do really appreciated having the opportunity to learn from someone with a radically different background and perspective. I’ve still got a lot more to learn. I’ll be on the lookout for more resources on nutrition and the broader health picture. I would really appreciate any recommendations! I’d be especially interested in suggestions on books that cover overall nutrition or even specific questions like GMOs.

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Walk with me: Learning to fail

Tue, 04 Mar 2025 20:16:19 +0000

I spent some time reading through Lyle McDonald’s Training the Obese Beginner series. While I’ve got a few months of training under my belt, this guide certainly did a great job reminding me that I’m still very much a beginner when it comes to training. While not a surprise, I had already been considering that I need to understand more to push my strength training to the next level.

In his series of posts, Lyle McDonald explains how the goal for any beginner, but especially obese ones is to train to train. It’s counter-intuitive, but if you’re completely out of shape, you need to rebuild a foundation to truly launch from. I’ve underestimated the difficulty of this alone. A part of me fully expected to be done all that by now. Reading through that guide definitely put how far I truly am from that into perspective.

To really get the most out of it, I need to focus on measuring progression in an objective and consistent way. I also need to plan out my workouts rather than just doing what I feel like doing once I’m there. Another thing I need to get better at is pushing exercises towards failure. I’m starting to recognize that at my phase, the priority is to practice the many movements, rather than necessarily push numbers.

The intricacies of actually learning to use your own body is something I’m only beginning to understand. Understanding theory only goes so far, putting it into practice is the important part. It’s totally mind-boggling to realize how little body awareness I’ve started with and how slowly it develops. There is a lot to look forward to, and I’m excited to learn along the way.

Fitting into old clothes

I’ve hit a pretty emotional milestone. Since I’m down over 120lbs now, I decided to try on some of my old clothes that I grew out of in the last few years. Getting more clothes to fit to only grow out of them is a pretty brutal emotional process, reversing this is very gratifying. I remember tearing up a little bit as something I remember being too tight and uncomfortable actually feeling loose. It sounds weird, but these clothes are stark reminders of all I went through in them. Being able to put things on that didn’t even fit when I bought (and couldn’t return) them was quite the experience.

Almost everything I started this journey with is incredibly loose and oversized. I am absolutely ecstatic to begin the spring with better fitting shorts! I’ll admit, I still struggle to feel the progress I’ve actually made, but wearing some pants that certainly wouldn’t fit before definitely makes it feel more real. I’ve kept a decade’s worth of my old clothes, so I’ll have tons to get through and look forward to on the way down. It’s certainly helpful that I kept my old clothes, because I wouldn’t be able to afford getting new clothes at this rate!

Revenge of the hunger signals

To get control over my intake, I leaned quite a bit on having one-meal-a-day (OMAD) for convenience and simplicity. People regularly recommend intermittent fasting as a weight loss strategy, but I came across some information that changed my mind. It logically follows that your body can only turn so much protein into muscle (or repairing muscle) in a given amount of time. This means that when you fill yourself with your daily protein all in one meal, it’s possible that a non-trivial amount of that protein is ‘wasted’ to be burned for energy.

When I began switching to trying to equally distribute protein throughout the day, I was stunned at how quickly and ferociously hunger appeared. Instead of being perfectly satiated with a single large meal until the next one, I was immediately catching myself counting the minutes until the next meal. This intuitively makes sense. As less protein is available for energy, the body is being forced to lean more on burning fat and bringing in other sources of energy. At least, that’s the situation as I understand it. It could be entirely placebo, but I can say I definitely feel quite differently after making the change.

I’ve been taking this as an opportunity to really face my hunger head-on. I’ve mentioned before that the more I exercise, it’s really the physical pain that is a bigger challenge than hunger at this point. My hope is that if I can continue to push through this, I will be in a better position to tackle the inevitable increase in hunger signals as I leave obesity and become merely overweight. I can say, I’m glad I’m so neurotic about all this, because I’ll have a great deal of trial-and-error to share with anyone who is curious.

Looking forward to making you all proud

What’s really stunned me now that I’m below 450lbs now, is that I’m not that far from being below 400lbs. At my current rate of progress I’ll be below 400 in less than three months. I have so much to look forward as I continue to push through these milestones. It’s quite funny how day-to-day I feel like I’m not loosing enough, but when I think about how I really only began making measurable progress last September, it hasn’t been that long at all. After building a bit of a runway to get started, I feel confident I can soar higher than even I thought possible. It’s actually quite surprising to me how quickly I’ve blasted through the 400s in a relatively short period of time. I definitely expect the 300s to be slower, but also a lot more fun.

I’ll be working hard to reach my ambitious targets and share the challenges and reflection along the way. I greatly appreciate the attention, encouragement, and kindness from those following my journey. One of the things I’ve begun to understand is how applicable much of what I’m doing is to other problems in life. One of the things I’ll never forget is how much a difference a little kindness makes.

New Resources

I’ve started adding various weight loss & fitness resources to my knowledge graph. The hope is to eventually put together a full picture of the process as I understand it, but in the short term it will be where I put links and references as I discover them. I have a weakness for informative information delivered via humorous cartoons. Trainer Winny is a great YouTube channel I’ve recently stumbled on. You’ll hopefully like 5 Things I Wish I Knew When I First Started Lifting.

More motivational memes

I spent some time browsing to see what I could find. I found it fascinating how many of the ‘motivational’ memes out there are just about getting rich and ‘getting it all’. I appreciate the many examples where they show that there is more to this life than just that. Feel free to browse the entire collection

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🎉 Major Milestone: Below 450

Thu, 27 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000

2025 is off to a great start. I am now quite confident that I’ll be able to continue to make progress despite Winter. With Only a month left of the season, I’m very happy that it has been a victory. All the effort facing the cold has absolutely paid off. I’ve recorded this vlog to share some of my recent thoughts as I hit this milestone. By weighing in at 449 yesterday, I’ve successfully lost more weight this month than last, which is my metric for success this month. Naturally, the goal for March is to lose more than February.

Mobility Gains!

In the last year, I’ve made a remarkable amount of progress on mobility. When I first started at the gym, it would be difficult for me to stand still for more than a few seconds. Getting off the floor wasn’t something I could do without help. Now I’m able to do so much more! Getting stronger and more active has transformed my life in many ways and has certainly helped me feel more confident and capable.

I’m really starting to enjoy getting stronger. Maybe the addiction is already starting. 😅 One can hope… While I’m very far from where I would like to be, I feel better in many ways. Getting stronger involves quite a bit of pain, but I’m learning to withstand that more and more. This trial-by-fire has done wonders for my mental state and I am very grateful for the chance to make radical changes.

Updates

Reading Progress

Semi-recently I read Becoming a Mentally Tough Motherfcker: How Elite Powerlifting Made Me a Better Person, Parent* by Sumi Singh. I’d wholeheartedly recommend it for anyone. It’s something I plan to revisit many times on my journey. It’s a short but invaluable guide on how to take on difficult challenges, and is very applicable to my situation.

I’m halfway through reading Food Politics. I’ve learned a variety of interesting points of contention when it comes to nutrition and public health. I’ve been slacking a bit on reading lately, but I’m looking forward to finishing it. The main take-away from the book I have so far is that the conversation is so much more contrived than I had initially assumed.

I’ve decided to start (slowly) adding weight loss and fitness information to my personal documentation. The idea is to at least record resources I’ve found helpful or informative. This will also help me see if I understand the problem well enough to build up my own mini-wiki about it.

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Walk with me: Pushing forward

Sun, 23 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Feel free to listen to this off-the-cuff rant & reflection of my recent progress. These monologues are recorded primarily for my own benefit. Very light edits are done to remove some pauses and repetitions, but the audio itself is very raw.

Recent Progress

Despite recent challenges, things are going quite well. I’m sore and quite tired a lot of the time, but I’m definitely reaching ahead. I’ve successfully completed three weeks back to my fall schedule of being active 5 days a week. It’s certainly very demanding, but looking at my weight loss spreadsheet I can see the difference. I have a daily loss averaged over the last month and it’s gone from 0.5/lbs/day to 0.7 since the start of February.

I’m very close to being below 450. This is incredibly exciting to me. Not only does this mean I’m down over 120lbs, but I spent a long time around 400lbs during my adult life. Getting consistently below that will be a concrete sign that I’m making serious permanent progress. Just the other day, I realized I can finally fit in the bus stop seating. As I’m writing this, I’m wearing a 4xl t-shirt I was gifted from the gym I signed up at. I can put it on without stretching it! Meaning I’m down from 6xl.

Am I losing the weight too fast?

In the recording I spend some time explaining why I feel the need to push as ambitiously as I can. In short much of it has to do with having the privilege of being able to focus on this as my top priority. The other major factor is just the fact that I’m sick of being this large and helpless. The progress I’ve made so far have really just given me a taste for a more capable life that I am desperate to start living. While I may be pushing hard, I know I’m quite far from any serious hard limits. I’m seeing that what I’m able to do is still far less what what I’m likely able to safely do. So I continue to gradually and methodically test my limits while trying to do the best I can to take care of the basics.

Don’t sweat the small stuff

I think the biggest paradox of weight loss is the advice “Don’t sweat the small stuff, then it’s all small stuff”. It’s genuinely important to not obsess over minute day-to-day stressors, but to begin making changes one does have to focus on basic living choices. So while starting out, it seems like you’re doing nothing but ‘sweating the small stuff’. Eventually, you can build good habits that begin to build the foundation for a better lifestyle. At that point, then you need to tune out “the small stuff” and stay focused on consistency without being completely derailed by stressing out about some small failure or setback.

📉 Weight Tracker
Starting Weight	Current Weight	Total Weight Lost	Goal Weight
576	289.9	286.1	15% BF
Current status:	🐢 Slowly and steadily building momentum
Last updated: 2026-04-07

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Sharing some difficult feelings about losing weight

Mon, 17 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This is an off-the-cuff rant about some of the feelings I’ve been recently struggling with as I lose the weight. While things are going well, there are some small things that have been getting me down lately. In short, I am daunted by the fact that I actually have no idea what I will look like at a healthy body weight. Having never been a reasonable weight during my adult lifetime, I actually can’t comprehend what I will look like.

I’m also recognizing is that it is quite hard to keep up the momentum at times. Despite really making a great deal of progress on adopting healthy habits, I definitely feel how hard it is to keep going. It seems that losing the next 10lbs will always be as challenging as the last 10lbs. On top of all this, I’ve been struggling not to dwell on the opportunity costs of getting this big in the first place. It’s very hard to face the fact that my situation was, and still is quite dire.

Despite all this, I am confident I will continue to make progress. I’m continuing to lose a great deal of weight, and I’m keeping to my exercise schedule. I have a great deal to be thankful for and a lot of that is the kindness, support and encouragement I’ve received. As tough as this journey is, I do have a lot motivating me to keep moving forward.

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Over 450lb guy shovels snow for over an hour (timelapse)

Sat, 15 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Turning mass into moved mass

There’s been quite a bit of snow recently. To really push my limits and see how far I’ve come I decided to tackle a pretty serious shoveling job. There was a lot left over from yesterday, so I decided to film me getting the last of it done. I’ve put together a 20x speed timelapse of me spending an hour clearing out the rest of it. I did record audio while doing the shoveling, but that’s more for myself so I can spare you all the huff and puffing. It was fun practicing getting some outdoor footage. The tripod kept falling over so I had to reset it a few times.

If music doesn’t work, try here or here it’s possible the audio may just be muted.

It was immensely gratifying to get this done. All the lifts I’ve done, all the work put into getting stronger really paid off here. It was quite the experience to be able to keep going when it wasn’t so long ago that even getting up off the ground was a huge challenge. I may not be where I’d like to be in terms of cardiovascular strength, but I’ve definitely noticed a huge improvement from the “early days”. I feel strong in more ways than just physical. This was a daunting task that absolutely would have been out of reach not that long ago, and certainly felt out of reach when approaching it.

I’m absolutely sore and worn out from the ordeal, but I’m very pleased with having some hands-on proof to myself that I am much more capable. Doing it was hard, but watching the video afterwards makes me feel downright heroic. Getting out of chairs is still something I brace for, so I really appreciate having this to show me that I’m capable of a lot more than I would initially assume. I’ve re-watched this several times and really can’t believe “I did that.” Being able to go from “I can’t do anything” to “I was able to do that” is making me feel really quite great.

I’m over the moon to be under 460 now! I’m hoping I can be at or below 450 by the end of the month! I’m pushing hard but I’m confident I can get close by then. The long term chart is starting to look pretty decent. It almost looks like I know what I’m doing. 😆

Thank you all for following these updates and especially those of you who take the time to write to me. The encouragement I’ve received from many of you has meant a great deal to me. I hope to impress you all with lots of work and rapid weight loss come spring and summer. I expect I’ll look at least a bit different by 2026. I have a long road ahead of me, but I am much more confident that I can continue to (safely!) push my limits.

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Walk with me: Reflecting on the changes

Fri, 07 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Getting back in gear

I recorded short walks before and after making my way to the pool. I’m pushing hard to re-gain my fall schedule, where I’m at the gym three times a week and going to the pool twice a week. I’m thrilled to say I’ve been successful this week.

Changes now that I’ve lost first 100 lbs

Mobility

I’m able to get off the floor un-assisted.
Able to stand for long periods of time, balance is better.
Falling hardly ever, much less than before.
Can walk longer distances without soreness
Better body awareness
Squats & deadlifts with weight on the bar
Walking lunges

Food

Able to control my eating
Cooking for myself regularly

Other

Exercise is helping mood a lot
Getting more reading done
Clothes are getting real loose

“Bigfoot footage” of me doing lunges at 460lbs

I got my first lunges on video, but unfortunately it was sent to me over SMS and Apple -> Android compresses the heck out of it. I’ll have to make sure to get a good recording in the future!

Dear Minnesota Mom

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Dear Minnesota Mom

Thu, 06 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Inbox flood

I had the pleasure of being featured on The Corbett Report to talk about the Libre Solutions Network and the digital ID agenda. James Corbett has a large audience of wonderful and thoughtful people, so it was to be expected that people would reach out after my interview. I’m hoping to get back to many of those who’ve contacted me, but this particular email got top priority.

Weight loss question

My daughter is in a similar situation. It is a subject that is so touchy to her–we barely ever talk about it. I so fear saying or doing the wrong things. My heart is breaking cuz I don’t know really how to help.

Plz, if you could help by telling me what type of things that are the right kind of way to be supportive–type of things to say & do, I would be eternally grateful.

Thank you so much for sharing your journey & allowing people to better understand & ask questions. ❤️

Minnesota Mom

I’ll admit this was a daunting question to receive. I’m certainly no authority on how to help people resolve these problems, but I’ve shared what I think would be helpful based off my experiences.

Dear Minnesota Mom,

I am definitely very sorry to hear about your daughter’s troubles and your dilemma. My hope is that I can give enough context to help you to feel confident that you can help her without any fear. I’ve certainly been on the receiving end of difficult discussions about weight with loved ones and even with well-meaning strangers who feel the need to comment! Unfortunately, I am quite aware that the mother-daughter bond is a very sensitive thing that I don’t have a whole lot of insight into. I will warn you that I can’t imagine how difficult it is to be in your situation, and I fully expect helping her face it to be quite difficult as well. With great sympathy, I’m happy to answer any questions and/or lend my perspective as well as I can. I apologize if much of what I write feels redundant, but I think there’s a “bigger picture” that’s worth seeing. Feel free to reach out for more questions.

To start off I’ll share this. I have a collection of motivational memes that I regularly re-watch to keep me motivated. These are especially worth taking a look at:

These have helped me a great deal. It’s not easy to stick through the hard times, sometimes a reminder is enough to keep going. My hope is that these can help you keep an eye out for the kind of encouragement that’s out there.

— Extra info about me detour—

I’ve written about how I got so big which gives the long story about my struggles over the years.
My weight gain was primarily driven by these things:

Not prioritizing my own health & well-being
Emotionally-driven eating & poor food choices
Low activity level, eventually degenerating into zero activity as mobility became a problem
Denial and fear of facing and correcting these issues
Hopelessness that it can’t be changed

Addressing these isn’t easy, and in my experience requires a lot from a person.

I can tell you first-hand that the hardest person on somebody who is overweight is themselves, and especially if they’re severely obese. Based on my experience, I absolutely know there were many moments where I distanced myself from others out of shame. Even worse as one’s self-loathing grows, it becomes second-nature to project that onto those around you. As a millennial, certain challenges in my life made health feel like less of a priority. Due to family circumstances I had a strong desire for independence. Securing that independence required me to make sacrifices and one of the first sacrifices I made was healthy lifestyle choices. I think my generation (and younger) are subject to horrific psyops directly targeted at their emotional, spiritual, and physical destruction. The hardest part of this, is that I’ve found there are serious communication barriers across large age differences that make people feeling heard and understood very challenging. I can’t speculate on what your daughter has faced, but I imagine there are many emotional and lifestyle stressors that are making it harder to prioritize healthier living. There are many things that lead to weight gain, but generally people who end up severely obese end up having many difficulties that are difficult to disentangle.

I’ll also say that turning things around is incredibly challenging. The more dire the situation, the more time real change is going to take. I had to directly face my emotional difficulties, and that was a devastating experience. It’s much easier to avoid how you feel when the alternative is “pushing it off until things are better”. Dr Peter Breggins’ book Guilt, Shame and Anxiety: Overcoming legacy emotions was a huge help to me. I recommend the book generally, but the main benefit I got from it was recognizing that my self-loathing and numbness was something that could change. Dr Peter Breggins recommends the way to overcome these things is to “become a source of love in your life”. This means many things to many people, but to me it helped me recognize that taking care of myself isn’t selfish for so long as I live for others.

— End of detour —

What can you do to help?*

*In my opinion, as a non-expert.

Understand

I would recommend learning whatever you can about the process. It’s a long difficult road, but you never know how what you learn can really help her turn things around. Very often people will suggest simple (and sometimes contradictory) things, which may or may not help resolve things. Weight loss recommendations are very often their own rabbit holes, fads, and trends that I find not very helpful to people in severe situations. The good news is that there are many roads to making significant difference, very often someone just needs to find what works for them. In severe cases, where larger lifestyle changes are required, it’s scary, daunting, and often people don’t necessarily have the time and resources to receive the help they need. I’ll elaborate on eating choices more later, but when I was struggling I wrote a post explaining all the things driving me to over-eat. Everyone is opinionated about particular weight loss strategies, but I would encourage you to recognize that many of them are fairly inter-changeable.

Here’s how weight loss works without all the BS:

To lose weight over time, one must eat less calories than their bodies consume over the same time period. Losing a large amount of weight likely requires tracking calories in one form or another, in addition to tracking weight. Tracking calories sucks, it’s not fun and induces many of the shame responses overweight people generally like to avoid. This is because sticking to eating as little as needed to lose weight is much harder than one would assume. People generally assume that if one eats only healthy foods they’ll naturally revert to a normal body weight and that’s sadly not true. Given my appetite, it wouldn’t be too difficult to maintain my severe obesity eating nuts & fruits, as I have recently discovered. I was used to eating so much that beginning to eat enough to lose weight made me struggle with a lot of hunger and that’s not easy if you don’t have healthy outlets for stress. Foods generally have a certain level of satiety, for example carbs tend to make people more hungry, while fiber and protein tend to make people feel more full. My general recommendation for eating well (as I understand it) is to prioritize “nutrient density” per calorie. For example, the nutrients I want are protein, fiber, and vitamins. Broccoli is a super-food that’s worth going crazy on, but you’ll also want good amounts of protein with it.

Severe obesity (such as in my case) is often rarely a single issue, it’s more likely to be a constellation of troubles that are each difficult to tackle. I wrote about my challenges being large, and how they’ve impacted me. Sleep & stress management may not be as important as calories for weight loss, but they’re really not far behind. When I’m nocturnal, it’s genuinely hard to be productive in any way that doesn’t require sitting at a computer, this makes it much harder to make healthier choices. Fixing sleep is genuinely hard and I certainly can’t claim to have done it yet. I have had a lot of progress out of managing light exposure (sunshine earlier in the day, going for walks, avoiding light in the night).

I will say, stress management is very much the name of the game. It’s relatively easy to become fueled with ambition to make radical changes for them all to collapse the moment life throws a curve ball. Healthy stress outlets are invaluable for being able to withstand the pressure and to maintain long-term goals. Swimming is generally quite accessible. I was still able to do it at my highest, the trouble was just getting to a pool. Taking on an active hobby itself makes a huge difference, especially when it helps you connect with positive people who can help in their own way. Since finding the right gym for me I am regularly surrounded by encouraging people who would be more than happy to answer even simple questions. I would argue the biggest thing most people are missing out on is a large support network. No single person can shoulder the weight of a lifetime of someone else’s pain, nor can they resolve anyone else’s problems. But just as the saying goes “it takes a village to raise a child” building a positive social environment itself can do wonders.

As I understand it, you’re in the difficult position of feeling responsible but not having control. I’m sure if I told you you just had to get her to eat 500g of broccoli and 500g of chicken a day to lose it all, you’d do whatever is in your power to make that happen. When one is struggling with their own body, the last thing we want is to feel even more out of control. In my opinion, this is something that causes a lot of friction. It’s very hard to build up the courage and humility to even let others help even when we want it. Depending on how old she is, how heavy she is, and if you’re still living together these can all complicate matters (to say nothing of stubbornness and shame).

Connect

Your job, as I understand it, is to break through the pain and sadness to be intimately close with your daughter. This is no easy task, because as I’ve mentioned it’s very easy for us ‘big people’ to want to wall ourselves away from others to avoid the shame and regret. As her mother, you’re very aware of what’s beautiful and good about her and what potential she offers. I would go as far as to argue your most urgent priority is to help her see it too. I will tell you that turning my situation around needed a real “choosing life” decision. All that numbness and pain puts people like me in a situation where we alternate between trying as hard as we can and giving up completely after that fails. The truth is that the moderate and steady approach is what wins the day in the end. Patience on your part is no simple thing to ask for. And for on her part, it may be too much for her at this point in time.

It absolutely sounds corny to say “love the pain away” but being a healthy escape from the world is something almost everyone needs more of. The problem with your situation is that you have to console your child who is pushing you away out of sadness, shame and regret. I can only imagine the pain and frustration that causes, but I promise you it is something that can change. The point is to bring yourselves close enough so that she can open up about this incredibly difficult topic. Anything you can do to help her recognize that things can get better, that you’re there to help without judgement, and that she can rely on you can really make a big difference. This is not the same as enabling or prolonging the difficulties, but it’s important to recognize her situation is something only she can change. Other people can help, lend support and advice but nothing anyone else can do will unilaterally change things. Any heavy-handed approach that reeks of “we’re trying to fix you” is generally going to backfire. Anyone with sufficient self-loathing will internalize that to say that they are the problem.

Your mission is to help her recognize that she isn’t the problem, but rather a prime investment. It’s very easy to spiral into self-loathing when one feels trapped in a downward spiral of self-destruction. In hindsight, I feel absolutely silly for not trying to “protein max” before finding a personal trainer, but one never knows what specific piece of information can tip the scales. The most important thing for her to learn isn’t any particular detail or trivia, but truly beginning to believe she has the power to change her circumstances. There are likely many obstacles. I’ve had to give up a great deal and rely on others to start truly turning around my situation. But once you’re at the point where you can both tackle those obstacles together, you’ll finally be at the point where you both feel like you’re on the same team instead of opposing each other.

Remember, a lot of the sensitivity is that she’s judging herself harshly and projects that onto your words. You can’t change how she interprets what you say, but care, understanding and persistence can help the love peek through the darkness. Because of how individual this whole process is, I genuinely can’t tell you what are good and bad areas to try. I imagine it feels impossible, even in the best case scenario you may not even notice when your efforts are working. I know from my experience I certainly looked like I was floundering when I was beginning to change for the better. The earliest steps are so small and so crucial, do not rush it.

Getting to the point where she can talk about her hopes and struggles with this and other problems is a huge asset. If you can’t talk about healthier living at all, identifying and figuring out how to resolve the lifestyle circumstances that make things harder can be a great place to start. Career and social life can very much be a problem. When I was working nights it was incredibly easy to make all the wrong choices. I feel like my generation was afflicted with despair and hopelessness, finding ways to help her disconnect from those can definitely help. It’s possible that there are seemingly unrelated problems you can help her with, which once handled can snowball into bigger change.

Handle setbacks

Starting out is very difficult. Unfortunately it seems almost nobody (if anyone) makes it all the way without some challenges or another. At the beginning, it feels like nothing is working until it eventually does. It’s very easy to blame and shame when inevitable relapses happen. Accepting failure is a necessary part of the process, which is why my weight loss substack is called “Micro-dosing failure”. The point is for her to begin to accept that she can push through adversity. It’s really not about any single day, but about building consistency and momentum over time.

It took quite a long time for me to truly change things around despite putting a lot of work in. Guidance helps, but also getting enough “small wins” to truly begin trusting oneself. When trying to make progress it’s so easy to fall into the trap of trying to do everything “perfect” to only relapse into disappointment and despair. Building the trust so that she can lean on you when disappointment comes, can really help her bounce back and continue along. I can tell you that when starting out, every setback feels like a crisis. It’s a shock that validates all your worst opinions about yourself, and raises the fear that things will never improve.

Anything you can do to help her overcome hopelessness and despair in even the tiniest of ways can help let the light of hope in. There’s a meme I have where it describes the process as:

Realize that we were all born for something
Cover yourself in hopes and dreams
Face your fears and your problems
Fight!

And that’s really it. Your daughter isn’t just starting a weight loss journey, but a personal development lifestyle. Learning to encourage her to stay in a “growth mindset”, or at least be a positive example of it can do wonders. Obesity is an ugly, horrible monster, but it’s something that I believe anyone can overcome it as long as they begin to understand that they are not it. Recognizing the problem does not mean that people have to see her as a problem. Anything that gives her the space to try new things to make improvements can snowball into real action.

Find assistance

The previous section is so important because once she is receptive to help, there’s a great deal that can be done. Anything you can do to help her connect with positive encouraging influences in the meantime can go a long way. Maybe there are good clubs you can join together, classes or even just hosting more family time to bond together can really help. Finding an encouraging environment of good people can make so many things much easier.

Hiring a personal trainer certainly helped me regain my mobility and guided me through so many of the important basics. While I had read a great deal on my own, spending time regularly seeing a person who is incredibly knowledgeable about this problem made a huge difference. She may not be at the point where this is an option she would consider. If mobility is a concern, I would absolutely recommend finding a trainer who has been with heavy clients before and your daughter can connect with. This alone is a non-trivial investment but is the single thing I can think of that would make the biggest difference. The right gym and the right community is a priceless treasure I am thankful to have found in my situation. In your situation, I imagine it could even be worth signing up yourself to meet people and get a sense for it.
Once your daughter is taking charge of her lifestyle as a whole, that’s the best “go time” for you and others to help her make the best of it.

Relatively simple things can help a lot:

Devoting time to regularly walk and talk together (talking about things other than weight if still touchy)
Devoting time to activities both you enjoy together and she enjoys solo (a previous hobby she may want to take back up)
Fitting active wear and clothes (you may need to find a “big and tall” store, feeling comfortable in your clothes is a relief)
Memberships & sports equipment (buy used or share with a neighbour)
Spending time cooking together to “meal prep” food to invest in making the journey easier
Farm shares (healthy food and support your local farmer)
Relevant books (it’s necessary to be choosy here)
Fitness gadgets (I use a waterproof mp3 player while swimming)
Any assistance with travel to help (gym, pool, yoga, etc)
Home gym equipment (kettlebells are great!)

(I’m probably forgetting a bunch, so I’ll probably write a post on that sometime in the near future.)

Have fun

It’s a long journey, you may as well find ways to make it pleasant! There’s no reason it all has to be a joyless slog. Finding ways to (healthily) celebrate successes and comfort in the hard times makes everything so much easier. Not everything should be just about her weight loss, connecting over other shared interests or discovering new ones can help bring you closer. I can personally attest that getting stronger and being able to do more things makes life a lot more fun. Before she’s ready to tackle the weight or other problems, you have an opportunity to help her recognize that what’s hard in her life isn’t a reflection of her character or worth. Once she’s ready to take it all on, there will be many opportunities to share the journey in fun and exciting ways. If she does decide to get into weight lifting, you could even try it out together!

I am confident that all this can be improved. I have no doubt that this is something your daughter would love to change deep down. There’s just likely a lot of pain, regret, and/or hopelessness making her feel trapped. It’s no simple thing to turn around, but it’s also incredibly rewarding. Being able to be there for her when the wins really start is going to feel wonderful. Celebrate every small win. You can look forward to her being in a much better place to connect once she does begin resolving her troubles. There will be much to rejoice over, and I really look forward to you being able to experience that.

Additional Resources

Since I wholeheartedly recommend absorbing as much (decent) health and fitness information as you can, I’ll share what I’ve found useful:

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Walk with me: Looking forward to Spring

Fri, 31 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Feel free to listen to this off-the-cuff rant & reflection of my recent progress. These monologues are recorded for my own benefit. Very light edits are done to remove some pauses and repetitions, but the audio itself is very raw.

Today I went for a nice walk in the sunshine this afternoon. I reflect on how the last month has went. I’ve failed to lose more weight in January than December, but I’m still happy to be down ~14lbs. Despite the slower rate than I would like, I’m feeling very optimistic about the next few months. I’ve noticed successes in other areas, especially controlling food intake and walking regularly.

Figuring out fiber

A question I’ve been digesting this month is how much fiber should I aim for. Until recently my only nutrition goals were to get as much protein in as little calories as I could stand. Now that I’ve started reading Food Politics by Marion Nestle, I’m trying to take a broader approach to nutrition. It’s clear to me that protein shakes and multivitamins are not the ideal path to overall health. Cooking for myself has helped expand my options, but I’d like to understand what to prioritize. As far as low-calorie sources of fiber, your main options are celery, brussel sprouts, & broccoli.

The author of Food Politics seems to think very little about the idea of eating meat. She explicitly argues that plant-based diets are superior. Even if this is true in a general sense, I am trying to optimize a very specific situation. I’m not sure how the science has evolved on meat-heavy diets such as keto and carnivore. What I have taken away is that it is more important than I had already assumed to eat vegetables.

I’ve got a long way to go, but I really appreciate the encouragement and kindness I’ve received from people at the gym, and kind strangers over the Internet. I really hope to do much better in February, and I’m excited to see how well I can do. At least for now, I’m behind my annual target, but hopefully this will change as I get back in gear.

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How did I get so big?

Sun, 26 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

A question I’ve started to get quite often is “How did you get so big?” There are many quick answers that immediately come to mind, but they tend to feel incomplete when I think about it. Generally my answers could have been summed up as “I neglected the basics for far too long.” This is true, but for those who want a more complete explanation, I feel I can do better. This is where I will be laying out everything in entirety to the best of my ability.

I think telling this story can help others consider what to avoid, but more importantly understand the pitfalls many experience on their way up. With years of hindsight and a more complete understanding of my situation, I think it’s crucial for me to understand the entire ordeal from start to finish. In preparation for writing this I decided to record a video of myself explaining it all from memory. This was helpful, but will not be shared. There are many details that could be elaborated on, but I’m choosing to focus primarily on how my weight was impacted over the years.

It feels like the logical way to answer this is to lay out my story chronologically. It certainly didn’t happen all at once. For over a decade things went from troubling, to worse, to horrifyingly dire. I’ll need to go back to my earliest memories to draw out the fullest context I can. Being as large as I was, is a horrific tragedy that I wouldn’t wish on others. The road to getting that big is painful and takes it’s own toll on you. It greatly saddens me that very often, relatives and loved ones often have no idea how to stop and reverse the downhill spiral. Not only does this add to the guilt and shame, but it also makes it easy to begin avoiding loved ones. My hope is that by understanding and sharing my experience, others can be better equipped to help themselves and their loved ones.

Childhood

In hindsight, there are many things I can think of from my childhood that definitely had an impact long term. Only recent events have made me seriously take a look over those years and reconsider the impacts. I had a very controlling and aggressive father. He had a nasty habit of squeezing me and my brother’s hands until the knuckles moved around and hurt as a means of ensuring compliance. Like many other things, I didn’t at all appreciate the significance of what it truly meant.

My father didn’t work for many of my childhood years. Instead my mother had to provide for us, including working nights. I have many memories of him taking me and my brothers out of the house so she could sleep. Generally, these outings involved a fair amount of sugar or empty calories. Quite often we would go to a grocery store and get cookies, bread and soda. Other times he would take us to McDonald’s. I have many memories of having their pancakes during these outings. These moments were fun at the time, but I have a very different understanding of them now.

Over time, I began to grow a bit of extra weight. I remember my father bullying me over it. He would take me outside and have me jog, but then grab my stomach and exclaim “this is what you have to get rid of!”. Later he would then lecture me that running while fat is only going to hurt your joints. Despite all this, he did eventually join the military and had to spend time away from home. Many of my childhood troubles gradually faded away after he was out of the picture, including the weight. I became a very active pre-teen and ended up in very good shape by grade 9.

Teenage years

Being in such good shape, I certainly grew into having quite the ego. I was having loads of fun biking and swimming, and developed quite the invincibility complex. For much of my teenage years, I didn’t really think that I could get obese again. Part of this was because I was active enough that I truly never had to give any thought to what I was eating. I was proud of being capable and took it for granted. I really enjoyed biking and swimming. Since I could bike from home to a beach nearby I would go very regularly and even bring friends. I was notorious for hosting regular beach parties during the summer and I ended up building quite a close-knit group of friends that I had met all over town. Being a natural extrovert it was incredibly satisfying to bring cool interesting people I met to meet each other.

It didn’t last terribly long, because in Ontario, gym class is only mandatory until grade 10. While I was still active outside of gym class, that too gradually faded over the years, and I finished high school much heavier. I remember when I started putting on weight this time, it was schoolmates who would be the ones making comments. I also had a relative out-of-the blue ask me if I was depressed. At the time, I didn’t have the vocabulary and perspective to explain what I was feeling or why. All I knew was that I had an outsized appetite compared to other kids, but always attributed it to my activity level. In hindsight, there was a constant nagging desire to feel “normal” despite glaring signs things were not normal.

After some drama, my parents finally split. This was the beginning of many years of a long and drawn out stressful saga. When I tried to explain it to others, the idea of a messy divorce dragging on for years sounded bizarre. At the time, I felt completely unable to get people to understand the stressors and pressures enduring it placed on me. This was strange to me at that point, but with information I have now it makes a lot more sense. Growing up, I couldn’t comprehend why my father who had so little to do with my life at that point, would always suddenly choose to involve himself out of the blue. He would do absolutely deranged things like stalk my friends and message them on Facebook saying bizarre things. One day he even showed up at one of my beach parties. That in itself is quite the story, but my twin brother thankfully spoke to the lifeguards and got the police to remove him.

It’s outside the scope of this post to explain, but from my early teens I was absolutely certain that my father had to be out of my life. Much of these years were constant frustration from seeing him given the benefit of the doubt. He was absolutely excellent at appearances when the situation called for it, he would often be in his military uniform on these engagements. Over the years, after more and more nonsense I only became much more certain over time that being distant was the right call. Despite my twin brother attempting to mend bridges, he too would experience things that showed me my resolve was justified. Even now, I know so much more that makes me incredibly grateful I was so stubborn about it from the beginning.

But no matter how strong I was, this took a toll on me. It interfered with my school life, causing stress in other areas. As I grew more insecure I began to distance myself from the community I had put together slowly but gradually. I genuinely underestimated the impact that not having a guiding loving father in my formative years would have on me. Without a real focus on activity, I let life changes get in the way of maintaining a high activity level and often relied on fast food for comfort. In many ways I see that I was replicating those experiences with bread and soda with my twin brother as we would chat over large amounts of fast food. This was one of many things I left unexamined until quite recently.

One such outlet for this nagging desire was to play video games late into the night. As a child I would stay up late talking to my twin brother (much to our parents dismay). But later when we had our own rooms I would stay up very late playing video games. While this on its own isn’t unusual for a millennial teenager, my problems were rarely in kind but rather degree. In hindsight I believe I was using revenge bedtime procrastination to hold on to some independence outside of my life that felt very out of my control. Onling gaming was also a great surrogate activity to fool myself into thinking I could still be social while retreating from the world. This really was the beginning of leaning in to my worst coping mechanisms for problems I didn’t understand.

While being overweight as a teen was a source of insecurity, it was nowhere near as challenging as things would get as I grew larger. When entering early adulthood, I was desperate to prove that I could seize control over my life and fix everything, but this was foolish when I didn’t even comprehend the scale of my own self-deception. Often I would get well-meaning approaches from strangers trying to offer advice. Some even had their own experiences with obesity. My mental response was always the same “that’s nice but I can’t do it”.

Early adulthood

As I entered the workforce, I was incredibly grateful to finally be making enough to live independently with my twin brother. I finally felt like I had the breathing room to build the life I wanted. The independence I craved for so long was finally mine. For the first time in a long time I felt like I could move on from my family troubles. This optimism was still muted by an undercurrent of denial. Even though I still hadn’t truly examined my eating habits, I had hope that things would begin to resolve themselves as they had in the past. I was still able to bike around to places, and spent some time having friends over which was really nice. I felt

I underestimated how my habits would worsen while working security. I became quite the stereotypical “obese security guard”. Shift work, with the occasional overnights took my bad eating habits and made them a great deal worse. Instead of fast food being an occasional splurge it became my normal way of eating. While things seemed reasonable at the start, eventually I would be clearing out enough food for a party over the course of an overnight shift. In an attempt to carve out more time for myself, I supported an idea pitched by a co-worker to adopt a schedule of only 12 hour shifts. This greatly condensed the logistics of working shifts, but I chose to take the overnight portion of the schedule. In hindsight this was a terrible idea.

If I had a better understanding of how to properly manage poor sleep, I think it’s something that could have worked out better. But in practice what ended up happening is that I added unexamined sleep troubles on top of my unexamined eating troubles. Part of this was a foolish idea that trading my present health for comfort in the future was something that would work out. Later, I finally began to understand that my size was beginning to limit me. One of the hardest moments was when I got on a bike and collapsed the front tire, having to carry it all the way home in sadness and shame. I would experiment with buying bikes that could carry me at a larger size, but that only worked so long.

This was where the maladaptive patterns really began to fly in. I had to work to keep my independence, so health didn’t seem like a high priority even then. I figured as long as I fueled myself with enough calories and caffeine to keep pushing, I could fix things after I purchased more ‘breathing room’ in the future. At some point, that opportunity did come. I was introduced to the “keto diet” and researched it as much as I could. Once I had a grasp of my plan and determined to turn things around, I started biking and doing keto. For a time, this worked really well.

With a stronger bike and armed with a plan, was energized. I would bike to work and back occasionally, reaching over 30km on those days. This was incredibly fun and I really felt like I was going to fix everything. The problem is that unlike during my childhood, I wasn’t confident enough to commute by bike during the Winter. One winter I stopped biking, and by the Spring I was no longer biking to work. The more I think about it, the reason this didn’t ultimately work out is because I failed to properly prioritize my health and focus on really understanding it. I was still looking for simple solutions to what was already a very complicated problem. The fact is, most people you tell about your problems will also give you simple answers. I am now beginning to recognize how changing serious problems is dependent on resolving other problems as well. For this entire time, I was so preoccupied with getting through the week that the idea I needed to take better care of myself felt unimportant. I was too afraid of admitting weakness that I became very weak in the long run.

Doing keto I lost 80lbs in some time under a year. It was a lot of fun, and quite gratifying. It felt great to continue not examining the roots of my eating habits and instead made progress with a “simple fix”. Sadly, this was cut abruptly short as I suffered a stroke that took half of my vision. This was quite the ordeal. Over the next few years, I would recover a quarter of my vision back but I am still worse off from it. The event and aftermath itself were incredibly stressful and I was uncertain of what to even do about it. I had a near-death experience that could have radically transformed my life in other ways, but I was scared. My primary thought during that time was “I don’t want things to change”. I wanted to keep working security and I wanted to stay independent no matter what it took.

In hindsight, I’m convinced now more than ever that the desire for things not to change is a very sophisticated cloak for denial. Even worse, many it’s clear that what I most feared was being forced to reexamine my life. If I had truly taken this event for what it was, I could have taken the opportunity to examine the problems that caught up with me almost a decade later. But that’s not the road I took. The truth was, it wasn’t clear at the beginning if it would happen again. I was in so much mental and emotional pain over the ordeal that I truly couldn’t handle thinking at all. I spend years under the fear that there would be a more fatal repetition, feeling powerless to make meaningful changes.

I was finally at the stage where I felt I had no choice but to ignore my problems and numb myself to their consequences. Tuning out the pain, sadness, and fear was a whole lot easier than facing it directly. I quit keto because I was concerned based off information shared with me that it may had been the cause of my stroke. That’s far from certain, but it was how I saw it. I regained all the weight and then some. This time, the feelings of guilt, shame, and horror were all too difficult to face. During this time I convinced myself that because of the stroke, if anything stresses me out, I should simply avoid thinking about it. This of course exacerbated by inability to tackle my problems head-on.

Prior to 2020, I moved from security to a daytime job at Canadian Blood Services. I felt optimistic about making better changes. Making more money helped me feel like I had more room to properly invest in making better choices. Without actually taking the time to learn what I needed to, it was hard to overcome my ingrained sense of hopelessness. I could certainly make changes and re-prioritize what to eat, but I couldn’t shake the compulsions that were driving me at that point. Despite all this, working at CBS meant a great deal to me. It felt like an honor to be part of an organization working to make people’s lives better. It was both an opportunity to work on my technical skills and do meaningful work. Ironically, this often helped me ignore what I was doing to myself.

Eventually, my mother suggested joining a weight-loss clinic that she found helpful for herself. I decided to give it a try. They generally take people and recommend a variant of keto to them which seems to work for a lot of people. Despite keto being familiar, and me being willing to try it, adherence was a problem. Each session I would explain that it was incredibly difficult for me to stick to the diet. Which was perplexing to me because I had done it successfully before. What was different this time around was that I was no longer mobile enough to exercise and eating habits were in much worse shape. When I took the time to explain the emotional and lifestyle factors that were pushing me to eat and I was outright told “we can’t help you, you should try therapy” which felt like an outright rejection. Convinced I was truly beyond hope, I gave that up and languished further for a time.

Eventually, my twin brother also got a job nearby the office. It was great to regularly drive in together and chat about things. I signed up at a nearby fitness facility (a massive complex with a pool, gym, and other activities) to start getting more exercise. When I went in to sign up, the employee (owner?) clearly had some sympathy for me and gave me a significant discount on the membership. It was an incredibly kind gesture that has not been forgotten. Just a few short months later, the sociological event known as the “pandemic” began as offices announced they were instituting work from home policies. Even if I would have worked up the effort to make it to the facility, the damage was already done. It seems a wave of cancellations prompted them to shut down their facility. As such, when the Covid Crisis began I felt even more certain that I was never going to be able to turn things around no matter what I try.

Covid years

Working remotely certainly helped me in many ways. I went for walks, sometimes spent time cooking better meals, but eventually that faded. I was consumed with despair over the fact that I knew the measures were doing more harm than good, and I wholeheartedly believe it was intended. My trust in the medical system as a whole was already very low, but this entire saga helped me write it off entirely. Of course, I was not able to “rise above” and make better decisions, eventually the convenience of food delivery apps took over. It is hard to describe my circumstances as anything other than merely giving up on an already dire situation.

On a daily basis I would wake up for work, order a large amount of fast food and drink over 6L of diet soda each day. During this time I let my insatiable hunger dominate my life. I was scared, I felt hopeless, and I felt angry. During lockdowns I had very few healthy outlets for any of this. It was already beginning to be difficult to walk at all, much less for enough time to actually feel any better. Despite working remotely, I was eventually terminated for refusing the “solution” the medical system was coercing people to take after being allowed to cause havoc on society. I worked at Canadian Blood Services long enough to gain a modicum of understanding over medical ethics. The fact that employers were being empowered to force medical products on the general public was a line I couldn’t cross.

It was fascinating and horrifying to meet so many people at “covid dissident” local meetups and encounter many people with similar emotional problems I had. This was an important opportunity, because it helped me see what I wasn’t seeing. Getting to know other people working to shine a light on what was wrong about the covid years has helped me a great deal. I’ve come across many trustworthy people who have given me guidance, and information that has been pivotal in my quest to solve these problems. Not everyone in ‘alternative heath’ is a great person, but the best people are in ‘alternative health’. As I came to learn more, I became cautiously optimistic that it was still possible to reverse my situation. I still had, and continue to have doubts and fears, but I now have a lot more hope.

It was only after the generous support of my loved ones, and a great deal of learning about myself and health that truly turned the tide. Throughout 2023 I noticed my mobility descending into making me all-but-bed-ridden. The love of my life did the difficult and super-human task of patiently pushing me to keep walking despite how incredibly difficult it was. This helped maintain the little amount of mobility I had. During this time, my younger brother confronted me with who my father really was. It was incredibly painful, but my entire life began to finally make sense. I was no longer capable of avoiding my feelings when all the anger and sadness from my youth was relived in an incredibly painful moment of understanding. My life was turned upside down, but when I looked it was turned right way up.

Inspired in part by my younger brother’s strength, and the generous support from friends and loved ones, I realized I had been backed into the corner of the life I lived. As I slowly began to bring together the resolve to take on this mission, I began exploring more ways to improve my many problems. With a wider understanding of my troubles, I recognized I had more to tackle than just weight. I had to improve mobility, tackle my emotions, gain control over eating, become more active, and learn to manage my weight. Last year, (2024) was the most challenging but rewarding year I’ve likely had ever.

The point of laying all this out isn’t to place blame. I could put it all on me, my father, or even society at large. A more nuanced position would be to mix it up in a way that sounded nice. The truth of the matter is that blame is irrelevant at this stage. I think it’s important to understand, but to use that understanding to make rational decisions. It is my responsibility to take care of my body as well as I can and I aim to learn how to do this as well as I can.

Epilogue

In case you’re not aware, I’m already making radical progress turning this situation around. I’ve lost almost 110lbs at the time of writing. I’m feeling much more confident I can continue to approach a healthy body weight. This time really feels different from previous attempts. My head is clearer, I have direction, knowledge, and an appreciation for the stakes. I feel extremely lucky to be able to take on this gratifying journey. I feel compelled to share not just the progress, but the process. This project has been all about me trying to document my experiences turning this massive problem around as best I understand it. I believe that people not only need examples that this can be turned around, but also to put into perspective how challenging it actually is.

Peertube link

I am excited to be healthy and capable for the first time in my adult life. In truth, I am a little scared of looking unrecognizable to myself. While I have no great attachment to how my body currently looks, I’m quite apprehensive about not being able to predict how it will change my appearance. It is certain, that going from over 570lbs to a healthy body weight will be a massive improvement. I’m looking forward to all the things I’ll be able to do again.

📉 Weight Tracker
Starting Weight	Current Weight	Total Weight Lost	Goal Weight
576	289.9	286.1	15% BF
Current status:	🐢 Slowly and steadily building momentum
Last updated: 2026-04-07

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Walk with me: Feeling better

Fri, 24 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

I went on a walk to soak in some sunshine despite the cold. Feel free to listen to me ramble on as I go on a walk. I touch on my recent wins in my weight loss journey, and zoom all the way out to the wild conspiracies I consider. These recordings are primarily recorded for my own benefit, so only a light amount of editing is done.

Great News

Scale go down!

I’ve hit a new low! I’m thrilled to be under 470lbs. It’s wild to think it wasn’t that long ago I was over 500. Looking back on my charts it looks like I’ve successfully been able to ’lock-in’ and be fully back-on-track despite Winter being difficult. I am optimistic that I can successfully lose more weight this month than last December.

Looking at the long-term chart, it really seems like I’m back to being somewhat in line with the progress I’ve been making since the start. While maintaining 1lb per day is not within reach yet, I’m hoping to return to it this Summer! I’m more confident than before that I can make the best of the nicer weather once it returns.

Micro-fast

Yesterday was a roller-coaster & whirlwind at once. A very busy day and a very challenging day, but I realized that I was no longer letting stress determine my apatite. I felt like I could hold off without eating that day. Short of a limited amount of peanuts I was able to endure the day and get to sleep at night, I feel like I succeeded. I’m in no rush to make this a regular occurrence, but it’s gratifying to feel more control over my hunger and impulses.

Cool food tracking app

I’ve started tracking food with a FOSS Android app called Energize. I like how it gives you macro-nutrient targets and interesting micro-nutrient reports. I hope to make regular use of it! Being able to tack protein & fiber easier is great!

New Watch

I acquired a smartphone-free fitness wearable. It’s a simple watch with a pedometer and some timer functions. I’m hoping to use it to focus on getting a good amount of steps on a regular basis. The alarm function on it doesn’t wake me up, but I’m hoping it eventually does. Eventually, I hope to use some of the parts I have lying around and build my own heart-rate monitor, but I’ll admit I’ve struggled to prioritize that little side-project.

Relevant Items

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Vlog: January Update

Wed, 22 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve recorded an update for January. I share some of my recent thoughts and challenges. It’s been a rough Winter, even a bit rougher than I expected. I am glad I am continuing to lose weight and make progress despite recent frustrations and setbacks. I’ve recorded this as a totally off-the-cuff vlog and have hardly done any editing. So if you’re into listening to me rant about my situation, you’re absolutely welcome to!

What I would like to know is if there are any questions I should answer. I feel like I take many aspects of my situation for granted and there may be things you’re curious about that I could explain. If you have any questions about my journey, or even getting big I’ll be happy to follow up.

Ask away!

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Having Trouble

Wed, 15 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve recorded two walks recently, but neither of them are really worth publishing. I spent hours basically just complaining about hard this all is. It’s been good being outside more, but I’ve had a very negative disposition recently. I am uncertain that I should even publish this. This post is being written not for sympathy, but so that I can clearly articulate my present challenges to reference in the future.

In short, things are getting to me. A couple of recent challenges and setbacks have really got me down. My scale broke, which puts previous weigh-ins in doubt and required me to rush to get a new one. I’ve been dissatisfied with what I’ve been able to accomplish in a given day/week. The next few months are also filled with uncertainty, and it is stressing me significantly. In addition to all this, January isn’t looking to be as successful as I had hoped.

Scale troubles

I first noticed a problem with my scale where depending on how I was leaning on it, the weight would vary by 10-20 pounds. I had hoped simply being consistent would work in the long run. Unfortunately one day the scale just simply stopped working and would then only report 16.x lbs regardless of what was done with it. With a new scale I weigh’d in at 476.4lbs 99.6 lbs down from my highest recorded weight. The good news is that previous weigh-ins were not as distorted as I had feared.

Eating challenges

I had hoped to be much further along halfway into January, but I have been finding keeping portion sizes low very challenging. I experimented with trying to have peanuts for their own benefits, but it seems like they are too calorie dense to consider. I’m finding it harder and harder to manage hunger as the stress ramps up. The only consolation I have is that I am sure to be below what I started this month with, but unfortunately not by that much. I am still eating significantly better than I was before, but I am finding maintaining good habits particularly challenging lately.

Feelings

I am frustrated and disappointed in myself. I feel worn down and panicky. My sleep is back to the ’normal’ terrible rotation, and I’ve lost dozens of hours attempting to correct this. I really hate Winter, and it’s wearing me thin. The hardest part about losing weight is that failing to lose weight is just as hard as successfully doing it. If anything, failing to lose is much harder because of the frustration, guilt, and sadness associated with mistakes.

I don’t feel helpless, I know I can continue to make progress, but I am incredibly disheartened. I was wildly optimistic about what I would be able to accomplish this Winter and I’m saddened that it feels like everything I try is working less and less. I am constantly wrestling with despair over the potentiality of reversing course.

Despite making a huge amount of progress, I am still very much in the same trap as before. Being able to do a couple more things makes the things I am currently unable to do so hard to bear. I am disheartened by the fact that my options remain incredibly limited by my size and mobility. It tears me apart that I am still quite far away from being “a functional human being”. It sounds harsh, but I am very aware of the fact that I am not even functional enough that I could be able to work a part time job IRL.

I feel broken, I feel worthless, I feel scared. I know that it will end, but it wears heavily on my heart.

Time is one of the most difficult pressures I have nowadays. I am significantly less functional (wording that generously) during the daytime. The major progress on sleep habits have entirely receded putting me in a situation where getting even the simplest of productive things done feels insurmountable again. It is a bitter reminder that my problems are not limited to weight management. Time is once again an incredibly scarce resource and until I improve my sleep routine, it will remain so.

I am capable of enduring moderate setbacks and failures without becoming too disheartened, but their accumulation over time is something that I can hardly bear. Occasionally, I consider glimpses of where I could have been if I had been more capable and made less mistakes, and feel dread and sadness.While I have a great deal to be thankful for, I struggle to evade harsh judgement of myself. It is the things that I am thankful for that often make dealing with failures so much more difficult.

I am beginning to feel the familiar icy feeling of shame and regret congealing over my mind. The numbness previously erected to avoid facing those feelings is something I am starting to feel drawn to. It is hard enough to fail to succeed at what is so important, is it really so important that I feel these emotions on top of it? It’s never been more clear to me how avoiding these difficult feelings is one of the early steps towards regressing to ‘old habits’. I think I am starting to understand how fully experiencing the torrent of negative emotions can lead to finding hope and optimism on the other side. By wrestling with my fears and regrets I am not avoiding the root cause, the desire to change my circumstances. I hope that sometime soon, I may feel revitalized in taking this on. For the moment, things are cold and grim.

I cannot permit myself to end this on a negative note, so I am going to share a couple of things that are going well.

I have been consistently below what I started at in January.
I have acquired a step counter, and hope to regularly increase it over time.
I recently did over 40 swings of a 70lb kettlebell.
I am now able to hold a ‘plank’ position for a few moments, and looking forward to eventually working towards push-ups.
I am optimistic for Spring.

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Walk with me: Beginning 2025

Thu, 09 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

I hope you enjoy listening to this ‘walk with me’ recording. I am glad to be back in gear doing this. If you appreciate my off-the-cuff ramblings about my situation and reflections on things, you can look forward to a lot more this year. of course, I struggle to stay ‘on topic’ so you can expect me to drift from topic to topic.

Big dreams for this year

I have an ambitious target for 2025. If I was able to lose 100lbs through part of 2024, I’m hoping I can manage to lose 200 in 2025. This would take me 80% of the way to an optimal body weight. I’m prepared to throw everything I can at reaching that. I feel in an entirely different situation from last year. No longer shackled by doubt, hopelessness, and fear, I feel wholly equipped to do the best I can to make radical progress this year.

But isn’t that too fast?

This morning, (the recording is from the day before) I listened to How to Track Calories Kindly by Mike Pridgen. He makes the case that you shouldn’t aim to lose weight quickly, repeating the conventional advice that losing as fast as you can is a recipe for backsliding as you put the weight back on.

At the risk of sounding arrogant, I believe I am in a unique circumstance. I am not merely aiming to lose 20, 50, or even 100 pounds to return to a healthy weight, I have an incredibly long journey ahead of me no matter what I do. Mike is absolutely correct that it is very easy to make short-term desperate changes that ultimately lead to relapse. I wholeheartedly believe he is right to encourage people prioritize methodical and consistent weight loss over speed itself.

But not only do I have a long way to go, I also have the luxury of time. My other half is generously assigning this journey as my “full time job” and so unlike many others with other responsibilities, I can ensure that this is my top priority. Through this process, I am still learning what I can and can’t accomplish at the stage, and what I may be able to accomplish soon. Despite the rapid pace of weight loss I am aiming for, I am confident that I am building lasting habits that will help me to keep the weight off.

Becoming mobile again is exciting and wonderful. I have no desire to celebrate this in moderation. I want every step I’m able to take to be what drives me to make a thousand more. I have been confined by this size for too long, and I owe it to the love of my life to give it the best shot possible. I believe getting excited about exercise, learning to cook, and wrestling with obstacles to my health head-on puts me in a unique position to build an entirely different life by the end of it.

I still think Mike’s podcast is incredibly helpful and would wholeheartedly recommend it to others. We all have different circumstances, lifestyles, and attitudes. If there’s one thing I’ve learned in this journey is that how incredibly personal it is. Nothing I can say will have any concrete meaning to anyone else beyond what may or may not be helpful in their situation. I love how Mike articulates that the goal isn’t to reach arbitrary targets, but to be the best you can be.

I’m becoming a huge fan of Mike’s work and If it sounds like something you’re interested in, I would encourage you to take a look.

What’s going great

Scale go down

I was initially very concerned that I wouldn’t be able to lose weight at all this Winter. In hindsight, I’m doing still quite successfully if I use December as a barometer for how it’s going. My single goal for January is to ensure that I lose more weight through this month than December.
Home gym

One of the concerns for this Winter I had was what I would do if I felt it was too cold to go outside. I wanted to be able to exercise from home to at least maintain some progress. Currently I have my trusty kettlebell and an exercise mat. I’ve started a new routine that involves a variety of kettlebell exercises. Hoping to make small gains this way to keep my base level of exercise above a minimum.
Reading

I blitz’d through Casey Means’ Good Energy around new years, but I’m eager to read even more regularly. The hope is to read a great many books this year. I made a stop at a thrift store and I got two new books! The Case Against Sugar and Food Politics. These books are directly related to my goal of wanting to have a much better handle on nutrition, in addition to understanding the broader context of what has happened to people.

Trying to get back on track

Swimming

Glad to have gotten back to the pool for the second time this Winter. I’m finding it very difficult to accomplish on top of my personal training sessions. I miss swimming a great deal and I’m looking forward to doing more of it as I push myself to be outside more and more.
Sleep

Ever since Winter has started I’ve really felt my sleep habits fall off a cliff. I feel like the progress made improving my circadian rhythm was entirely erased by the reduced amount of natural sunlight in the days.
Vitamins

I’ve made the mistake of not being as diligent as I should be on maintaining fibre and micronutrient intake. It’s unfortunately pretty easy to feel the difference. I have to come up with a mechanism to stay focused on more than just calories & protein intake.
Stress

One of the things I’ve noticed is that I’ve found managing stress a lot more difficult this Winter. I’ve gotten a difficult reminder that my stress eating compulsions are not entirely conquered. It was a bizarre nightmare of gorging on chocolate after spending a day feeling higher-than-usual cravings for fast food. I am thrilled that this incident didn’t bring me down into caving, which I consider a victory.
Documenting

I need to spend more time recording what this journey is like. I’ve struggled to record videos of me doing things and struggling with how I’m feeling. The point isn’t really to publish these, but to keep those for reference in the future.
Programming

I’ve totally failed to continue working on my programming learning project. This is a source of some shame and disappointment. I’m starting to feel intimidated to touch it again, but I know I’ll be a lot happier once I begin make progress.

I’m wishing everyone reading this an excellent 2025 and beyond. Feel free to reach out or share what you find helpful with others. I’m excited for the year ahead!

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New Year New Me: Progress on Eating Habits

Sat, 04 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This is a response to a post titled ‘Why can’t I stop eating?’ I wrote last Fall. I outlined many of my challenges with eating terribly. My situation is radically (but not entirely) different now, and I felt like it is a good time for an update. I wrote that post because at the time, I was highly skeptical I could make meaningful progress on that front. It’s a bit funny to me in hindsight, only 6 months later things are very different. I’ll be sharing my progress and reflections in this post.

Habits vs compulsions

One of the realizations I had during this process was that habits and compulsions are different creatures. As I understand it, habits are deliberately curated behaviors, and compulsions are when you yield control to impulses and drives from the body. To me, this is an important distinction because habits have to be maintained, where as compulsions need to be managed. A habit can go away without deliberate effort to keep it, whereas compulsions will haunt you until you confront them.

For many people, eating is just one of many things they do during their life. In my case, my life has revolved around eating. Meaning that from the moment I wake up, to the moment I pass out to sleep, I am constantly thinking, planning, and negotiating about what I will eat next. In some ways, this was because throughout my career I felt enormous pressure and felt I needed to be constantly fueled to carry out what I could accomplish. I taught myself that my productivity was directly related to the level of C&C (calories & caffeine) I’ve consumed recently.

… While I’ve been far from successful in putting it into practice, my best understanding at the moment is that overcoming compulsive eating requires confronting the causes directly. The causes can be boredom, stress, pain (emotional or physical) which are all chronic problems someone in my situation will inevitably experience. Those in that situation with me will understand how tightly intertwined compulsive eating is with emotional eating.

A bad food habit would be choosing to eat at a particular fast food place regularly. A compulsion would be a sudden all-pervasive feeling that one needs to eat as much as possible as quickly as possible. By understanding compulsions and habits separately it becomes easier to manage both. Habits that are actually bad can be replaced, and compulsions can be anticipated and planned for. You can build good habits without making much progress on your compulsions, but I’ve found that many good habits help a great deal.

Meal prep and exercise are both great activities that can radically help managing compulsions. I’ve found the stress-relief effects of exercise effectively mandatory for making the progress I have. When it comes to tackling compulsions, I’ve found that anything that lets off the pressure even a small bit can make a huge difference. The hardest part is raising your own tolerance to discomfort. When using food as a crutch to bear other pains, it can be difficult to have enough tolerance left over to put down the compulsion to excessively eat.

Past vs present

To begin understand what I felt was wrong with me, I took the effort to define what a “good relationship with food” meant to me.

Not consuming more calories than required

Since the goal was to lose weight, I would ideally need to keep total calories below the total energy required to operate throughout the day.
Acquiring all required nutrients

Harder than it sounds! I still don’t quite have a good grasp of what’s critical. At the moment, I treat this as a reminder to prioritize nutrient density in what one does eat.
Hydration

Getting enough water is crucially important. Insufficient water intake can be a limiting factor on weight loss. Hydration quality matters too. Oddly enough, I’ve been surprised at how much getting some electrolytes in a day can make a huge difference on alertness waking up.
Eating (more/mostly) food prepared yourself

I’ve spent a fair amount of time learning to cook. It’s been absolutely invaluable in gaining confidence and building a better relationship with food. The satisfaction from making a excellent meal is an unfamiliar but incredibly welcome feeling. They don’t always turn out how I’d like, but I’ve learned a great deal taking it on. If you start small, learning to cook is a great exercise in micro-dosing failure.

Emotional eating

One of the problems I felt trapped with last year was emotionally-driven eating. That stress, anxiety or frustration was enough to make me want to really “pig out” to regain some level of temporary comfort.

Since adding strength training to my routine, I’ve noticed a huge reduction in emotional eating. The combination of the healthy stress release, and unfortunately the consistent pain both have improved my ability to withstand compulsions to over-indulge. While I’ve noticed things have changed for the better in big ways, I’m far from done. It is very easy for me to not maintain activity and then feel the overwhelming desire to cave in.

I’ve had an excellent conversation with a great canadian hero, Patrick Phillips about this. who told me “If you’re soothing the pain, you should sooth the pain.”. At the start, I counter-productively took this as a license to continue eating to my feelings. Now I have a more nuanced opinion on what that means. He put me on the path to taking on my negative feelings head on, and was a great help.

It may come as a surprise to some, but I’ve only recently been aware of how much chronic emotional pain I’ve been in. The side-effect of numbing yourself with self-destructive coping mechanisms for years is that you can completely forget why you have them. Eventually, all you remember is that you’re stressed out all the time but can’t really pinpoint things that aren’t too obvious.

If there’s one “hard line” I’ll draw, it’s that addressing the causes of emotional pain is essential. Not everything can be fixed, but understanding and facing your pain can give you a lot more power over it. It’s absolutely worth the time to recognize the degree your own numbness to anger, despair, regret, or whatever else. When one has walled themselves off from their own feelings, beginning to feel is overwhelming. It’s far from an easy task.

The great news is that it doesn’t have to be done alone. When overwhelmed with feeling the wounds of emotional pain for the first time in a long time, connecting with others is invaluable. This is because just as one begins to truly feel their pain, the numbness begins to fade. As that numbness leaves, it’s so much easier to actually connect with people, as you’re no longer distancing yourself from them with projection and indifference. It’s an opportunity to truly get to know yourself and others on a deeper level. While I would never wish this kind of numbness on anyone, I sincerely hope that those afflicted with it get to appreciate the kindness and comfort possible from their loved ones, God, and even strangers.

Food addiction

There’s an important line to draw between emotional eating, and the highly addictive traits of various foods. The strategies for tackling these problems are very different despite having many commonalities. I believe that that “food addiction” is a bit of a misnomer, as one is not addicted to all kinds of foods, but very specific signals often from highly/ultra-processed products.

When one eats fast food or other meals that require no preparation, it’s almost impossible to avoid various addictions. Apparently vegetable oil itself can be addictive, to say nothing about sugar. Many explain food addiction in a simple way: your brain interprets food as a reward, and numbing that reward center requires more and more to be satiated. I’ve been told by those close to me that I have a classic addict’s reaction to large amounts of greasy/sugary/fatty food. I’m told that I “become a different person” and that I light up instantly the moment I realize I’m going to have that hit.

This is inherently a difficult thing to tackle directly. While I’ve been able to quit caffeine ‘cold-turkey’, there is no way I could do the same with food even if it was conceivably possible. This is where I imagine the best bet is to manage the addiction by pushing that effort into preparing food if one is mobile and capable enough. Personally, I still struggle to even comprehend that I don’t need as much food as I want.

There’s some debate if cannabis is actually addictive. Drawing a distinction (above my pay-grade) between physical and behavioral addiction. When it comes to the addictive properties of various fast-foods and processed products, I don’t have particularly strong feelings on where that line is. What is clear, that a process of weaning off it, or going “no-contact” is what’s required to overcome dependency on terrible foods.

I’m often told that judging foods as “good or bad” is itself an eating disorder. At least at the time of writing this, I wholeheartedly disagree. I am convinced that if we see food as a tool for nutrition we can objectively make decisions about which foods are good and bad. By defining the purpose of eating as nourishing the body, you can easily rate nutrient-dense foods over what some people call “empty calories”. I really don’t see the harm of perceiving an energy dense but nutritionally lacking product as paying a huge opportunity cost compared to foods that do provide valuable nutrients.

Now, it’s possible that these lines get more blurry when one approaches a healthy body weight. At my size, my body is not lacking energy at all, so my preferences are focused on that. Not everybody is going to be in the same lifestyle situation. For example there are people on the other side of the spectrum who need to gain mass rather than lose it. All I can say is that experience is totally alien to me so I can’t speak to that.

I have found changing what I regularly eat along these lines very helpful for reducing any feelings of being ‘addicted to food’. I gradually came to understand that I didn’t need all the calories my body was screaming for, and that when prioritizing nutrition I felt a great deal better. I still have to be incredibly careful with portions though. I still have a very warped perception of what is “needed” vs what I need to reach my goals.

Helplessness

The biggest change since I wrote that post is that I no longer feel helpless. Learning to cook and making significant mobility gains have radically transformed my life and confidence. Clearly it is showing, because I got a comment from somebody recently; “Wow, I didn’t expect such a cynical take from you Gabriel, I thought you were a ‘whitepilled’ normie”. My response was “I am whitepilled! Losing almost 100lbs will absolutely do that to you! But don’t mistake my pleasant demeanor for ignorance.”

I’ve noticed a great deal of learned helplessness in my situation. I can only guess, but I believe this is the greatest contributor to people becoming bed-ridden for the rest of their lives. The more weight you gain the harder it becomes to accomplish even the simplest of tasks. For example, even now that I’ve made big strides towards becoming more mobile: I still agonize over the resistance of simple things like standing, getting up from sitting or lying down, and walking.

While I won’t deny to being quite lazy. A great deal of my efficiency is the embodiment of “If you want something done the easy way, find a lazy person to do it.” I believe this learned helplessness is what causes people to being trapped into a state of [perceived?] laziness.

You’re not going to think to run around and take on all kinds of activities when simple tasks like going up stairs, walking, or carrying things feel almost entirely out of reach. It is horrifying to think about how things that once only seemed out of reach eventually fade into being actually out of reach.

Overcoming helplessness, just like getting into it is a ‘gradually, then all at once’ phenomenon. Any small actions you can take to build up your mobility, autonomy, or even creativity will absolutely pay huge dividends in the long run. What’s clear to me is that all these major factors are related. Helplessness can cause emotional difficulties, which can drive emotionally eating terrible foods, which can then drive addiction to them. As somebody who has been in this situation, I wish I could be able to properly describe the pure terror of being in it. Every day feels like an endless nightmare you’re just working to avoid as much as possible. It’s not at all an easy situation to fix.

What’s worth reiterating, is that I am not some superhuman iron-willed guy who ‘just happened’ to suddenly overcome it all. It took a great deal of time and effort on my part, yes, but it took more than just what I had. Based on what has worked for me I am wholeheartedly convinced that anyone can make the same kind of transformation with the right support, education, and time. Turning it all around is very complex and a very difficult task. I am frustrated that people treat Ozembic (and other GLP-1 agonists) as the individual ’taking the easy way out’. I would go as far as to say it is society that is taking the easy way out by pushing these drugs on people.

One of the greatest, but most tragic lessons I have learned during this time is how much can be achieved if we really worked to support each other more. Even relatively small gestures can make a massive difference for the right person. Yes, discipline and individual effort is absolutely required to make this process work, but giving up on people isn’t what good people do. I say this, because this is applicable to a lot more than just weight loss. I have a much deeper understanding of what caring for one’s loved ones really means, and how far one should go for them.

I am immensely grateful for the progress I’ve made already. I had a great deal of support and assistance along the way. I am humbled by the investment that my other half is making in me by assisting me focus on this journey as my top priority. My goal is to reward that investment with as much effort as I can muster. I am incredibly blessed and I hope that sharing what I have learned can help someone. I am now a pound away from being down 100lbs. It really feels like my journey is only beginning to get really exciting. There are difficult moments, but I’m beginning to feel “higher highs” as all the changes start to harmonize.

📉 Weight Tracker
Starting Weight	Current Weight	Total Weight Lost	Goal Weight
576	289.9	286.1	15% BF
Current status:	🐢 Slowly and steadily building momentum
Last updated: 2026-04-07

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Walk with me: Two small failures

Sat, 28 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Missing the mark

Once I started losing weight at a consistent pace, I set an ambitious target of being 100lbs down by the start of 2025. With three days left, I’m pretty sure I will narrowly miss that target. The target was based on an estimate of losing a pound a day, which I was able to achieve in the early fall, but became harder to maintain as I entered Winter. Given that this is the first Winter I’ve successfully lost weight in a long time, it’s still a massive victory moving forwards. To be fair, 94 is pretty close to 100 in the grand scheme of things!

The Orange line assumed 1lb/day loss

Letting down my kettlebell

Previously I started an ambitious habit of attempting 100 kettlebell swings a day. I choose a lower weight to avoid injury, but this was an attempt to figure out what was possible for an at-home daily workout. Truthfully, I had naively assumed it would be the thing that would single-handedly “make scale go down”, and preliminary results showed that wasn’t really happening. I also struggled with enduring the pain of constantly recovering from such an intense workout. That said, I also noticed feeling significantly stronger in a very short time. By day 6 I felt noticeably stronger. After day 10 or 11, I decided to take a break as I try to focus on staying diligent over the holidays. This is something I would like to attempt again, but with introducing different kinds of workouts instead of just kettlebell swings. I can make it more of a gradual whole body workout instead of focusing entirely on a single exercise

Making weight loss more ‘center stage’

I’ve been encouraged by close friends to move these updates from my ‘quiet’ personal site to a more visible platform. For what it’s worth, this site will always be the primary home for this content. So in addition to this being the first place (with the RSS feed) for sharing my weight loss journey, people will also have the option to follow on my new Substack Micro-dosing Failure. I wrote an introduction post to get anyone who hasn’t been following up-to-speed so I can continue these updates without delay.

Reflecting on personal training

I realized I haven’t really shared how personal training has been helping me much. In some ways, this is because it is going so well. I greatly appreciate having the opportunity to work with a knowledgeable friend who has an incredible grasp of body mechanics. In the audio I elaborate more on how I’ve found it helpful.

Trainer for scale, who was kind enough to retake the photo.

Gratitude

I’m recognizing the importance of gratitude for not only the kindness of others, but also your own accomplishments. I think it’s very important to also have gratitude for progress and changes in your own life. I find that I still haven’t really let losing over 90lbs actually ‘sink in’ simply because I have so much further to go.

2025 New Year’s Resolutions

I had only read two books in 2024. Which while still an improvement over previous years, I’m hoping to reach higher. I want to make reading a regular habit of mine. I want to read more than just what I agree with, but also read to broaden my perspective and learn from others. As part of this, I’m not sure I plan to share the books I’m reading, at least for now. Currently, I have three books started. I think this can help, so that instead of asking myself “Do I want to read now?” I can instead ask “What would I liked to read now?”.

Out-perform month-to-month

Instead of starting out with a new year-end goal, I plan to focus on the smaller scale and just start out working for January to be better than December. If I can successfully lose more weight in January than december I’ll consider that a win worth celebrating. I think at least for the start of the year, a month-to-month pattern of goal setting seems reasonable.

Improve sleep

While my sleepy hygiene is radically better than last year, I still have a long way to go. I still want to work towards waking up and getting to sleep earlier. I’ve found shifting my waking hours more into the daytime quite a boon to my productivity and helps me a great deal.

Meal-prep for myself more

Every time I meal-prep I find the days significantly easier to work with. I find meal-prepping a great investment in reducing ‘decision fatigue’ and eating better. As somebody who still struggles with ‘high-agency tasks’ this is at least a great way to get the most out of an afternoon.

📉 Weight Tracker
Starting Weight	Current Weight	Total Weight Lost	Goal Weight
576	289.9	286.1	15% BF
Current status:	🐢 Slowly and steadily building momentum
Last updated: 2026-04-07

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Walk with me: Struggling to say on target

Mon, 16 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Just over a month ago I pointed out that I was still on track to being 100lbs down by 2025. Unfortunately, december has been quite the slow month when it comes to weight loss. I’m still down, but it’s nowhere near as fast as I would like. The good news is that I absolutely understand where I need to dial things in more and I’m hoping I can return to rapid results as I get more used to Winter.

Of course, even while missing this ambitious target, I’ve still done remarkably over the last while. Finishing December under 500lbs will be it’s own victory. I’m not sure where I’ll end up by Spring, but I’m ready to keep throwing everything I can at it. I will say what this Winter is giving me more appreciation for how much easier it is to make progress during the warmer months. My plan is to keep my Winter struggles close at heart to motivate me further during the Spring, Summer & Fall.

I’m beginning to recognize how many of the challenges I’ve faced turning this around are composed more of mental barriers than physical ones. It’s now more clear to me that while I do have many physical limitations, my own estimation of them vastly outshines them. This means that your own negative self-perception can act as a force multiplier for real but manageable problems.

More Kindness

I got another very kind email from a listener. These simple acts of kindness have always been the highlight of my day when they happen.

just wanted to say that I like that you put your new year’s resolution on your website and you actually managed to stick with it! Keep it up! And it’s really inspiring. If you can solve your problem bit by bit, maybe other people like myself can solve their relatively minor problems, too.

And walking definitely matters. Getting some daylight every day was crucial for me to beat sleeplessness and depression-like states years ago, and I still do it because I don’t want these to come back. Also, I enjoyed your “Walk with me” audios, although I usually hate podcasts.

I really have to share the hearty laugh I let out when I read “maybe other people like myself can solve their relatively minor problems, too.” I truly had not considered that publicly tackling such a big problem would help others resolve other troubles. I am overjoyed to hear it, and wish everyone the best of luck.

I owe this particular person a blog post about matrix, which is coming!

Thank you for reading and/or listening! As always you can see my motivational memes collection here.

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Taking a look at Ghost

Mon, 09 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Going Ghost

I’ve taken another look at Ghost. Ghost is a modern CMS (Content Management System) that supports a wide variety of interesting features. It has built-in analytics, payments & newsletter support. Not only that but apparently Fediverse support is coming soon. (I believe you can test it already, but it’s not enabled by default) I wanted to know if I could rebuild the Libre Solutions Network website with ghost by building my own theme.

My primary motivation was that if I could build a theme that is to my liking I could satisfy the criteria that I had built it with. The Site is a statically generated site using Hugo but I’ve build it’s theme from the ground up to support a variety of features I find important.

Decent social media previews
Shortcodes for multimedia
As Tor & I2P friendly as possible
Very little javascript
First-class RSS feeds with multimedia

The documentation for building themes in ghost is quite excellent. I also appreciate the ability to just zip a couple of files and upload them to the site to test the theme. I would say that the developer experience for theme development is pretty good right now. Unfortunately I hit a couple of frustrations trying to accomplish some of the things I wanted to do. I’m realizing that the ultimate freedom of static site generators is very hard to compete with.

For multimedia in your RSS feeds recommends you use a hack/workaround to actually embed the media. The lack of first-class support for multi-media RSS feeds feels like a huge oversight.
By default the javascript for your membership features and search is served from a remote CDN. It is a shame that this isn’t something at least served by the site itself when one is self-hosting. Changing this requires either going without the pre-filled head partial, or modifying your ghost installation directly.
It seems that supporting other url schemes (such as Tor & I2P) would require running multiple redundant front-ends. This seems like a huge pain, but has advantages when one would want to have different themes for each. In that case you could remove all javascript on the darknet front-ends but keep it on the http site.

This is disappointing because I had hoped that by switching to ghost I could ditch Substack and have a better website at the end of it. These issues are not really that big a deal for anyone building an ordinary site, but for what I want out of the Libre Solutions Network site it’s effectively a non-starter. In my opinion, Ghost is probably excellent for anyone who requires it’s features and wants to build a beautiful looking site. I’ve seen comments to the effect that it lacks the performance one would want which is a huge loss over the speed of static sites.

Is Ghost Good?

If I was building a site for ordinary people and not tech purists, I would say it’s a great option and you can get a lot out of building your own theme for it. I really would like to see Ghost gain more prominence considering how far it goes to lower the barrier of entry for people to have a first-class experience publishing on the web. I’d really like to see them resolve the issues I’ve mentioned, but it’s not likely to be a deal-breaker for many people.

You get a lot “out of the box” with ghost, so for an individual or small organization I think it’s very hard to go wrong with starting with ghost. The membership tier features are pretty nice and the composer works great. Clearly a lot of thought has gone into building a powerful CMS, I just wish it was a bit more flexible. They’re also working on supporting other payment providers so hopefully it will be more than just Stripe in the future.

But what about Static+?

I’ve previously written that there’s probably room for a lightweight CMS that leverages a database and simple API to create a “hybrid” static site with additional features. This would allow a website to support advanced modern features, but degrade gracefully in situations where users disable scripts. In addition to that, you could likely have all the power of a CMS and the speed of a static site all in one. I believe that when supporting Tor & I2P traffic, this is effectively the best you can do. There will always be a need to run server-side operations

I think Static+ is going to be the future of flexible CMSs because it makes no sense to store the entire structure and content of a mostly public website in memory. Instead of having to regenerate every page on each visit you can save a great deal of resources on sites that aren’t focused on constant real-time updates. You could still move fast enough to support the Fediverse and other neat APIs too.

I’m convinced that to actually bring more people into the free and open web requires giving them access to tools that they can reasonably deploy and use. I love static sites, but I understand that the majority of people would prefer posting to their website to feel just like posting on social media. That seems to create challenges because this is impossible to deliver without some service running as a CMS, but for small personal sites I think Static+ strikes the balance well.

I would love to see a new CMS designed from the ground up with many of these concerns in mind. Wordpress can do everything it seems, but it’s so modular that it has it’s own problems. The perfect CMS should be as flexible as using a static site generator, but provide a wide variety of useful features to save you time and headaches. It would be incredible to have a CMS that had the following built-in from the ground up:

Powerful RSS Features (Like Podcasting 2.0 support, and properly styled feeds)
Custom themes support (Configurable, like they are with Ghost)
Configurable taxonomies (like post series’, courses, etc)
Passkey support (Just to make life easy)
Rich media embeds
Webtorrent for large static media

This requires the site itself to run a whitelisted tracker for it’s own content.
Built-in analytics
Multi-user
Fediverse Support (Not because it’s that important, but because it’s much harder to just add on and not consider from the start)
- This has other advantages like potentially being able to side-roll it’s own form of federation for comments / interactions. By modeling the concept of a “remote user” you can build powerful integrations and moderation tools.
…this list could go on and on forever

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Walk with me: Sleep & Swings

Mon, 09 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Sleep Progress

It’s almost two weeks of having successfully switched from being mostly nocturnal to being awake (and productive!) during the day. I’m not sure how big a factor sleep timing is to sleep quality, but I’m convinced it’s a huge factor. Which is pretty important for the overall health and weight loss journey.

Despite experiencing a bit of a slowdown as Winter has started, I’m very grateful to have made significant progress improving sleep. The sum total of the following strategies have made a huge difference:

I took the following steps to gradually shift my waking hours.

Night light settings

On both my phone and computer, I turned on the night light setting that turns the screen orange-ish to mimic sunset. I’ve set both to be sufficiently intense that it’s fairly uncomfortable to focus on for a long period of time. This has helped reduce night screen time.
Sleep Cover

Purchasing a cover for my eyes definitely helped me reduce night time light. Instead of worrying about eliminating every light source, this works fairly well to block out basically all light. It’s a good tool to resist the temptation to doomscroll all night.
Natural Lighting

Instead of keeping the blinds closed to regain some sleep in the mornings, I’ve opened them entirely to get what little sunlight there is in these Winter mornings. I can definitely say this seems to have been the single change that made the biggest difference. It made me wake up a couple of days with less sleep than I would like, but that really helps keep me tired at night time.
Putting the time in

Shifting the sleep schedule took time. Spending a couple of hours a day immersed in darkness at night time really did pay off. It was a frustrating time-sink but it absolutely made a serious difference. In the moment it felt pointless but in hindsight I think it really did have a massive impact on my ability to turn things around quickly.
Electrolytes

One of my biggest challenges in the morning was being able to get things done during the early mornings. It has come to my attention that I was merely dehydrated in the mornings. I noticed a radical shift when I tried having just a normal sports electrolyte mix before I go to sleep.

Kettlebell Swings

I’ve decided I’m going to try to take on lower weight kettlebell swings as a daily exercise. This is partially motivated my goal target of 100lbs down by 2025. I’m 20lbs away and have 20 days to go. It’s achievable, but I need to figure out how to be more active during these cold winter days. So the solution is to use a 15lb kettlebell to do a decent amount of swings.

I’m excited, because I believe this might be the thing that keeps me on track during this month. I’ve also purchased an exercise mat to do basic body-weight exercises that I can do from home. The more progress I can make without leaving the house, the better. I’m quite close to being able to do unmodified lunges, and bodyweight squats are something I’ve been able to do for some time.

Last night I did 65 kettlebell swings right before sleeping (maybe not the best idea) and this morning I did 100 (4 sets of 25). I’m hoping to continue to improve. In the short term I want to make sure I’m getting really comfortable with the form before I push much further. Of course, my impatience will absolutely see me pushing 150, 200 swings a day once I feel comfortable with the form.

More improvement

I still need to get better at documenting the hard times. Despite my positive updates, there are absolutely challenges in this process. It is incredibly difficult emotionally at times and I want to document it better if for no other reason to remind myself in the future. It’s incredibly hard to bear being in huge amounts of pain that’s inevitable when really making progress. In attempting a new body-weight exercise, I’ve definitely pushed the limits of my body as it is. Some of my back muscles were in extreme pain for a couple of days and unfortunately I tend to take pain and discomfort personally.

It’s very challenging to be in so much pain and still frustrated with the reality of being severely obese. It’s very difficult to sustain so much effort for what feels like so little at times. While I logically recognize that being 80lbs down is a huge accomplishment and a major improvement, having a lot left to do really dulls the feeling. I’m trying to get better at appreciating the milestones.

Thanks for tuning in!

Despite many people congratulating me for the courage in talking about my journey publicly, I’ve found it one of the few purely gratifying parts of this. I regularly get a great deal of encouragement from people finding me sharing this informative or helpful. I can definitely say that the kindness of others throughout this process has made much of what I’ve been doing a great deal easier. Not every day is fun or a new milestole, but I’m incredibly appreciative of those who take the time to share some thoughts.

@masta0f1eave@shitpost.poridge.club wrote:

Slowly reading through whole blog of Gabe, and it gives me joy. So much dedication, keep it up Gabriel!

Post in question: https://gabe.rocks/health/progression/
I got a kind message from another fellow techie who is beginning to lose weight himself. He’s at a much lower starting point, but it’s encouraging to see others make progress as well.

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🎉 Major Milestone: Below 500!

Sat, 30 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000

I took longer than I wanted, but I’ve finally accomplished a major step in this year’s New Years Resolutions. I only wish I knew what my actual highest point was. The problem with going a long time without a scale, it becomes harder to identify the highest points.

But, I am incredibly grateful to have gotten to this point. Signing up for personal training has absolutely helped me fill many gaps in my understanding and begin making serious progress. My trainer has helped me a great deal in building up my mobility from the ground up, and has also helped me with strategies to get food under control. The last few months have been a wild success far beyond what I believed to be possible.

I hope you’ll enjoy today’s “Walk with Gabriel” audio, and are having an excellent day yourself.

What’s next?

The big goal for 2024, is to be down 100lbs! I’m ~30lbs away and have ~30 days to go! It’s certainly possible, but I have to really ramp up the cardio, so I’m going to push as hard as I can. Walking is helping, but I’m also planning to focus on sprints while swimming. Excited to see how close I get to the goal for 2025, which will be an excellent birthday gift to myself. Then the real push is on as I go through 2025 doing everything I can do keep this pace up for the entire year.

References

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Walk with me: Keeping at it

Wed, 27 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000

I’m continuing the “walk with me” series, this time with my thoughts on what’s helping me stick to my difficult weight loss journey. Starting out talking about my current status, where I’m getting over a fairly brutal cold. To spoil the major theme, I think the three things that have helped me really keep at it have been:

Keeping in mind what I’m looking forward to get out of this process
Having the gratitude to really feel the kindness and encouragement received along the way
Embracing progression: eagerly pushing towards within-reach goals then celebrating and appreciating them

Kindness Received

I received a very kind e-mail from a reader.

just found your blog as it was mentioned on Hacker news some months ago (don’t remember which specific blog post was talking about).

Since then i was periodically look for updates on your “journey”, i wish you the best and i find really cool that you are pushing your updates in a very sincere way and be “accountable to the world” about your weight loss also by showing your troubles.

I would say i root for you and that i hope you’ll reach your goal, but i’m pretty sure that if you continue this way you’ll surely reach it.

I really appreciate it. I wanted to share this because it’s great to highlight that there are many kind strangers out there on the open web who take the time to drop words of encouragement. It absolutely helps me a great deal!

Discussed items:

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Walk with me: Threats to Digital Freedom

Sun, 24 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Join me on a walk

Update: I think attempting to remove the background noise did more harm than good. The audio has been switched with a much less edited version, which I think is easier on the ears.

In trying to find the motivation to go for more walks. I decided to record an off-the-cuff monologue about my thoughts on the major social/societal challenges to the future of digital liberty. I’m hoping to do more walks, and get better at recording / cleaning audio from outdoors.

⚠️ Warning: Terrible Audio ⚠️

I apologize in advance, if you’re used to listening to clean audio you’ll probably consider this unbearable. This was an experiment in recording on the go. For starters, I’m very obese and still in the process of getting in shape. You’ll hear many breaths and the pacing isn’t quite natural because of it. I’m also just ad-libbing so this is all just a stream-of-consciousness. On top of this it was pretty windy, and there’s a fair bit of outside noise. I’ve made a small attempt to clean up the worst of it, but it’s still very hard to listen to. I’m also a bit stuffed up, so I didn’t expect to sound 100% to begin with. If you struggle through it, I hope you got something out of it.

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The Magic is Progression

Sun, 17 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Embracing Progression

One of the greatest challenges of losing large amounts of weight is that it takes a large amount of time. Living with this requires an extreme level of focus, patience, and dedication. Small achievable milestones are something that has absolutely helped me stay sane during an otherwise immensely challenging last few months. In hindsight, I could have lost weight consistently by counting calories and just playing Star Citizen, but I think I would be going completely insane. Exercise has been a non-negotiable part of changing even if for only the sanity benefits. I truly can’t express how gratifying it

Before I started working with a trainer, I definitely didn’t understand progression. I didn’t understand how to meet myself where I was and gradually increase the effort to get more out of the same time spent exercising. While I was working to improve, I didn’t have much thought put into it. I’ve learned that when one puts some planning and thought into their exercise, even a beginner can get a lot more out of every workout.

Everyone has many days where you don’t feel like doing the right thing. That’s where growth occurs. In those days, in those moments that’s where it’s important to do the right thing. You’re pushing back against your impulses and whims. That is where true growth occurs in the long run. On the days when you do not want to do the right thing.

Growth occurs when you push back when you don’t want to do something.

Steve Shaw Massive Iron Q&A November 15th, 2024

Recently, I’ve started applying this to my swimming trips. I’m on my own, so I have to ensure I’m pushing myself. Originally, I just set goals that seemed achievable, such as working towards doing 10 laps of the (reasonably sized) pool at a time. That took a bit to get to, but eventually I got there. Now I’m planning on increasing the amount of laps per visit. Today I went swimming and did 2 sets of 10 and 1 set of 20! I’ve decided now is the time to start recording my sets and total laps in my weight loss spreadsheet.

I find the best friend of progression is objectivity. That’s why weights have numbers and not feelings on them. I find it especially easy to underestimate what I am able to do, and so sticking to moving numbers higher (within reason) allows me to ensure I’m improving over time. I previously wrote that you can look up how to progress to basic body-weight exercises:

Don’t be afraid to modify!

Bodyweight exercises are incredible ways to get stronger quickly when starting out. A significantly heavy person may not be capable of performing particular exercises. A tip I stumbled on recently is that you can search for whatever exercise with the word “progression” and you’ll find ways to gradually work up to a particular exercise. It’s important not to feel guilty making modifications, as an obese person one is behind the starting line! Constant effort and gradual step-by-step modifications can make improvements way faster than one would think possible.

The Troubles of Severe Obesity - Mobility

I think that’s the really important take-away. Doing anything you can to start small, and then figuring out how you’re going to take on more and more. With the right level of patience, effort, and consistency you would be astounded at how quickly you can make radical changes. One of my major goals this Winter is to increase the amount of laps I do per visit. I’m going to try to spend more time at the pool to make this happen too.

That’s me, I’m mfs.

I’ve really found that scheduling workouts on my calendar instead of “aiming for once every x days” has made a huge difference. Properly dedicating the time has helped me a lot. Sadly as it’s getting colder, I’ve been noticing myself struggle to stick with it. The painful progression for me at this rate is going to be being outside at all during winter. The more I can stick to my exercise schedule the better. I’ve bought some warmer clothes, in hopes that it will get me through the fall, but I am incredibly nervous.

Looking forward to Spring

If everything goes well, and I keep up the pace I can be below 400 by springtime. It’s a pretty ambitious target, but I’m cautiously optimistic. If I can really push through this Winter I’ll be able to bike again when the snow disappears. That will be so encouraging, I’m tearing up writing this. I’ve missed biking so much, and I’m looking forward to doing it again. If I succeed, I’ll have already mitigated many years worth of damage in under a year, which I’ll consider it’s own massive victory. I’ve got a long way to go, but I’m trying to keep it together until the next major victory (hoping to be under 500lbs soon).

Thank you

Thanks for reading. Many more people are following these updates than I have expected. I’m hoping to introduce more audio-visual content for this. I’ve more or less neglected video/audio updates but I have taken a lot of photos that I’m in no rush to share. I’m expecting to have a lot more to say as I continue to make significant progress. Thank you for helping keep me accountable! My hope is that my updates either encourage you or somebody you know!

Motivational Memes

Full Collection

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Things I look forward to

Tue, 12 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000

I’m almost down 70lbs, but I still have a long way to go! Not only am I excited to regain mobility that I had lost in gaining all the weight, but there’s a great deal of new experiences I hope to take on. I am really looking forward to opportunities that open up once I’m a healthy weight again.

Here’s what I’m most looking forward to at the moment:

Milestones

Trying new things

Learning handiwork
Skateboarding
Snowboarding
Cosplay

Activities

Going up stairs without a thought
Biking
Getting better at cooking
Comfortable with long walks
Doing more things away from home / less hesitant to go outside
Visiting friends abroad / being able to travel generally
Taking on more physical hobbies and crafts

Body-weight exercises

Lunges
Pull ups
Push ups
Plank
Hand-stands

The little things

Being able to move without having my own body in the way
Standing for longer periods of time
Fitting in ordinary bus benches
Not having to lean on things while doing basic tasks
Getting in and out of cars easier
Putting on shoes & socks
Staying in a clothing size long term
Easier hygiene
No longer living in fear, regret, and pain from my size

Under & Over

Under 500lbs (ETA: 1 week)
Under 400lbs
Under 300lbs
Over 100lbs down (ETA: 2025)
Over 200lbs down
Over 300lbs down
Leaving Obesity Class V
Leaving Obesity Class IV
Leaving Obesity Class III
Leaving Obesity Class II
Leaving Obesity Class I

Sit-ups at any size

One of the more surprising achievements recently has been starting to do sit-ups with a bit of momentum. This is something I hope to get much better at as time continues to move on by.

📉 Weight Tracker
Starting Weight	Current Weight	Total Weight Lost	Goal Weight
576	289.9	286.1	15% BF
Current status:	🐢 Slowly and steadily building momentum
Last updated: 2026-04-07

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A brief look at Star Citizen

Sat, 09 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000

What is Star Citizen?

Star Citizen is supposed to be two very ambitious games in one. There’s a single-player mode in development called Squadron42 in development, and the MMO has been in alpha for about a decade. Since I backed the game since around 2015, I check in occasionally to see how the game has progressed. While I usually come back disappointed, at least this time I can say I’ve been less disappointed than usual.

Many basic things still don’t work the way one would expect, but there’s always more things added to take screenshots of. I can admit that as somebody who’s seen the game grow over the years that there has been some good progress, but it’s still quite far from what a normal person could consider a “playable” game. One of the biggest mistakes Star Citizens make is playing the game as they would like it to be rather than how it actually is.

Big Dreams

In my opinion, no other game has such a huge disconnect between what the players think it will be, and where it’s actually going. Star Citizen is to many of the backers their perfect space “forever game”, but many of these dreams are incompatible. At least a majority of them are going to be disappointed. Cloud Imperium Games, has a tendency to vastly over-promise and vastly under-deliver. Yet, it is the very dreams themselves that have allowed the game to raise the larger half of a billion dollars to support development.

MMO

The MMO portion of Star Citizen is known in alpha as the “Persistent Universe”. This is where players will be able to progress their character in a dynamic environment like EVE Online. This portion definitely fuels the lion’s share of excitement. The idea of a first-person EVE-like game with advanced combat mechanics is something that even I would find incredibly enticing.

The trouble is, Star Citizen as it exists is currently very far from being charitably called an MMO. Not many players can be on the same server for long, and all kinds of bugs and problems grind the servers to a halt after a certain amount of time. The few “gameplay loops” that actually are implemented in game, have many problems that make immensely challenging to even attempt them.

4.0

The next major content patch had a great deal of gameplay features gutted from it. This has lead to a fair amount of controversy within the community, but apparently the most important feature is still on track to being delivered. That feature is “server meshing” which is very much required to making this game ever qualify as an MMO. According to CIG they want to be able to seamlessly manage players between servers in the same game environment. Presumably those further away from each other will be in their own servers, and those together will share a shard.

If server meshing is as described, I can definitely see why it would make a massive difference in the short and long term. Many basic things in game become completely unusable when the servers slow to a crawl. If server meshing successfully distributes the load that allows for over 100 players to be in-game without experiencing the horrible glitches related to server lag, that would be a huge change in how playable the game is.

I’m still pretty skeptical however. It seems that by design, far too much depends on the server-side. A player can’t even interact with a ladder or open doors without the servers to be functioning optimally. This leads to all kinds of frustrating experiences where in the process of “playing” the most basic of tedium only works 15-30% of the time. Even presuming that server meshing works great, how many players will be able to exist in the same location without running into the same problems. It’s possible they’ll layer shards over each other, like I believe World of Warcraft does, but that may have its own consequences.

Squadron 42

Despite allegedly being almost ready 6 years ago, it is still two years away. Despite the “playable” persistent universe being something that earns CIG a lot of good will, SQ42 is effectively a stain on their record of delivering actual progress. I know many look forward to eventually playing the campaign, but for now it’s just a demo and far from being released. A lot of features claimed to be “almost ready” yet undelivered for years has lead me to suspect that much of what’s shown off by the developers are highly “scripted” demos rather than actual in-development features. This was effectively confirmed to me when it leaked out that CIG made their employees work a crazy crunch to deliver for this year’s “Citizencon”.

Initially, I had hoped that Squadron42 would be where CIG would work on getting the basics of the game working, and the MMO would be based on those systems. It seems in hindsight that SQ42 and the MMO share very little beyond art assets and UI. It is a shame, a lot was paid for high-quality motion capture and even celebrity casting. And we have no idea if the story itself is actually thrilling or entertaining yet, but hopefully that’s the easiest part for CIG.

Playing again

Every couple of years, I actually install the existing version of the game and see what it’s actually like. I decided to learn how mining worked and figure out how to do some of the hauling. I didn’t bother with combat because it appears unchanged from last time I tried things, and it seems still horribly unbalanced. The ground combat missions looked neat, but those also seemed riddled with bugs and problems. For a space MMO, hauling and mining should be very straightforward.

Annoyances

You have to play the game as it is, not how it should work. This has a lot of knock-on consequences that very often aren’t explained by the “influencers” who talk about Star Citizen. They basically gloss over many of the current state of the game to get people excited about the future, which doesn’t help somebody who doesn’t understand why doors don’t open.

Basic things not working
- Elevators (including in ships)
- Ladders
- Terminals & Kiosks
- Objectives
  - I was unable to carry a mission crate to my ship in a delivery mission.
    
    As a returning player it wasn’t clear that the “carry” mechanic just simply wouldn’t work and I should have acquired a multi-tool & tractor beam attachment beforehand.
  - Various mining glitches
    - When you come up to a rock, even one you should be able to mine the mining UI just simply fails
    - Sometimes your mining bags on your ship glitch out with 0 capacity.
      
      If you don’t catch this before you leave you can waste a lot of time.
    - Sometimes your mining laser will inexplicably never fire.
Glitches & Bugs
- Strange (unexplainable) deaths
- Bizarre ship damage, that can be only be repaired by “resetting the ship”
  
  This is a lot of work, you effectively have to land the ship elsewhere, respawn (backspace) and then “claim” a new one. All these actions take a bit of time away from what you’re trying to do.
Server Crashes

Some crashes are recoverable. It seems like CIG invested the effort in building a system to have players moved to a new server when one crashes. It’s a bit of a disruption, but at least people can keep the little progress they were able to get up to that moment.

Fleet Manager

Storing and calling ships glitches out occasionally, this can outright destroy ships or cause unintuitive bugs.

Hauling

Hauling is usually done through missions and the “freight elevator” which is a new addition to me. Seems like a great idea for a system and “cargo grids” are pretty useful as well. In practice both are quite buggy. Apparently the freight elevator currently eats mining pods, and the tractor beam can leave cargo crates in a state that makes them sometimes unrecoverable, thus failing whatever hauling mission you’re on and losing reputation. Allegedly they’re going to be temporarily removing the reputation hit soon.

While space trucking is pretty fun, it still has a long way to go to be a reliable way to experience the ‘verse. In many ways, space trucking relies on other gameplay loops being interesting and valuable. For now, it seems to be a good pair with mining. It’s very profitable to mine the best ores you can, refine them, then spend the time hauling them to a main city yourself for a big chunk of change.

Mining

Despite everything, I’ll say I find mining pretty fun in this game. The ARGO MOLE is a multi-crew mining ship, but the single-seater prospector is probably more worth using for the time being. I quite enjoy how in-depth the mining mechanics are. The overcharge mechanic is pretty neat, and I really like being able to choose what sub-fragments are worth grabbing. If every gameplay loop ends up as good as mining with less glitches, I actually think Star Citizen might be a pretty fun game.

Star Citizen youtubers generally say you don’t have to be picky while mining but I definitely disagree. If one is bothering to mine despite glitches, and then still choosing to sell the ore, every SCU (Standard cargo unit) should be maximized for profit, not time mining. Refining takes quite a bit of time, so you want to make sure you’re only refining what’s truly valuable. To reduce hauling trips, being a picky miner helps some resources are a lot more valuable than others, so its worth always mining the best you can. This is particularly important when you don’t have a bigger ship to haul with.

Final thoughts

Ship rentals

This system is very important. The in-game rental system works surprisingly well and is priced quite fairly. You can rent a Prospector and make the money back very quickly. What I would recommend for mining and hauling is grinding out missions until you can rent a Prospector. Once you have your Prospector you can start mining like crazy. First you just want to sell the ore directly until you have enough to cover refining costs & a Constellation rental. Then you do more mining trips to refine the best of the best. Once all your refining jobs are done you can rent the Constellation to sell all your ore for a very nice profit.

That would give your character quite a lot of UEC in a relatively short amount of time even in the game today. I am skeptical that renting combat ships would give one the same ROI. But it’s very nice that with a bit of grinding you can try out so many of the flyable ships. I think the rental system is a bit harsh in some ways, because your rental is for calendar days and multiple days adds up quite a bit. If I were CIG I would set it to 24hours of playtime not 24 hours on the calendar.

Locations

Many of the newer locations are quite beatiful. New Babbage may be my new favorite place in game. I’ve been quite impressed with how CIG continually increases the quality and look of what they deliver. This does have a downside where it feels they rarely update old assets up to par. The Constellation interior is very dated and some locations look out of place for similar reasons.

The frustrating part about many locations these days is just the travel time to accomplish things. Once you land at a station, you have to go through multiple elevators just to begin making your way around the station. Often times it’s faster to “Exit to menu” so your character is placed in the temporary living quarters instead of fighting with laggy elevators. This won’t work forever because eventually they want your character to always remain where you logged out iirc.

Closing

I definitely wouldn’t recommend putting a lot of time into Star Citizen unless one is steeled for many frustrations. I’m curious to see if the 4.0 patch (which allegedly has to drop before the end of the year) will actually make enough of a difference. I’m very skeptical that Squadron42 will even be available in 2026, and it’s worth wondering what will be cut to even attempt to reach the deadline.

When I was trying things out this time around I watched a fair bit of YouTube commentary by new and long-standing channels on the latest developments. I am suspicious that many of them continue (as has been done in previous years) to deceptively misrepresent the likely state of the near future under the guise of being merely optimistic. They seem to be willing to take CIG at every letter of their word, despite having the first-hand experience to know otherwise.

I think this is incredibly misleading. I have not spent a lot of time watching the “in house” commentary from CIG, but I’m not convinced I would learn much more in doing so. Merely letting the years go by and occasionally taking glances is enough to know they consistently fail to deliver on their own promises. If anything, I think far too many people fill up their mental model of the game with promises from the staff, rather than building up their own from observation of results over time.

I think this has to do with many problems, even totally unrelated to gaming. Many people are incapable of questioning even the most basic contradictions between stated reality and actual reality when emotions come into the mix. Much of the sentiment on the internal forums “Spectrum” is overwhelmingly negative, but you wouldn’t know it from the people who represent the game on YouTube.

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Resistor Observer

Sat, 09 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Learn your resistor values quickly!

Not my creation!

This project was created by Hazlin who generously asked me to host it. I’ve always struggled to learn resistor values, and I think this is a great way to get your mind wrapped around ’em. It’s been a joy to see the updates as this was built in C++, Ruby and now HTML5 canvas! See the announcement post.

Inscribed in the source for the game:

I hope you enjoy the game!

Remember friend, Jesus loves you, and loves hearing from you.

If you have any feedback, I’d be thrilled to pass it along!

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Milestone: 50 Lbs down 🎉

Sat, 02 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000

It just might be working after all

Not only am I over 50lbs down, but I’ve also managed to lose just over 31lbs during October. So I’m still on target with my “1lb per day” goal. It does really seem like I need to “lock in” to stay on track, but I’m optimistic moving forward. I wish I could say it is easy. While logistically, things are simple, the effort required to stay on track feels immense. This entire process is incredibly challenging, and very often I get sore and tired enough that I can no long fight off my fears and doubts. I am afraid of failure, and I still very much doubt I can make it to where I need to be.

It really does take everything in me to keep this going. I’ve more or less put my work for the Libre Solutions Network on a massive slowdown for the time being. This isn’t an easy decision, because it means withdrawing the self-satisfaction from working on what I consider meaningful. Very often when I’m in pain my mental attitude resets back to “I’m useless and worthless.”

I’m incredibly nervous about Winter, mostly being able to stay active during it. While recent progress has been great, I want to ensure I’m in the best possible situation to “hit the ground running” (figuratively) once springtime begins. I miss biking, but I’m not sure if I’ll be light enough to consider it once the snow melts. Optimistically I’ll be able to get on my bike in the fall.

I’ve entered a weight loss contest

As yet another way of keeping me accountable, I’ve joined the Fatty Contest weekly weigh-ins. I’m entered in as “Healthy2026”. This is because I believe if I stay consistent until then, I should be approaching a reasonable weight sometime in 2026. It’s an ambitious target, and a lot of it has to do with how quickly it takes me to leave the 400+ range. It’s natural for progress to slow as one approaches a healthy weight, so I’m just hoping to do the best I can by the end of 2026.

📉 Weight Tracker
Starting Weight	Current Weight	Total Weight Lost	Goal Weight
576	289.9	286.1	15% BF
Current status:	🐢 Slowly and steadily building momentum
Last updated: 2026-04-07

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What is Musk up to?

Fri, 01 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000

⚠️ WARNING: High-octane Speculation ⚠️

These are ideas I’m considering, not strong conclusions. I had intended to chew on this for a while before sharing, but some of my contacts think it’s worth discussing urgently. So here is what I’ve considered.

Background

I had been nursing an idea I call the “Impending Global War Hypothesis” which I’ve been collecting notes for. I was originally tuned into this idea by some of Denis Rancourt’s commentary but eventually decided to start expanding on it on my own. In short, the idea is that the major conflicts right now such as Ukraine & Israel can be considered the precursor to a larger conflict that could end up being called “World War III” in hindsight.

I’ll share some of the disorganized links and thoughts I’ve collected that underpin this idea:

The U.S. will very likely fight a 3-front war against Russia, China, and Iran, Palantir’s Alex Karp says
Recruitment Crisis
- The Army Suddenly, and Chaotically, Told Hundreds of Soldiers They Have to Be Recruiters Immediately
- Navy Could Sideline 17 Support Ships Due to Manpower Issues
- House passes defense bill automatically registering men 18-26 for draft
- Large amounts of young men out of work / direction
Wartime Health
- Even More Young Americans Are Unfit to Serve, a New Study Finds. Here’s Why.
- Unfit to Serve - CDC.GOV
- Greater interest in resolving population-level obesity, rather than merely continuing to profit off it
Wartime Economy
- Economic Consolidation
  - Defense spending on Big Tech & AI
  - Space Race 2.0
  - Austerity / Inflation
- Risks to the Dollar / NATO
  - “De-dollarization”
  - Sovereign debt

Technocrat Tangle

An acquaintance of mine raised a comparison between Bill Gates & Elon Musk. Essentially contrasting their motivations as Gates wanting to reduce the human population and Musk wanting to increase it.

Shorter lives, climate crisis, declining resources

Bill Gates sees a future where more and more people are competing for less and less resources. He believes we need to reduce population and conserve resources, including reducing the consumption of animal products especially meat. It is noteworthy that Gates wants all of these conservation efforts to happen at the expense of the middle and working class, not the super-rich.

Then Michael Kane writes on Musk:

Mars, military readiness, cyborgs

For Musk, the future of humanity involves deep space exploration to colonize Mars and humans combining with artificial intelligence to become cyborgs.

Currently 70% of young men cannot be recruited to the military due to health issues, especially obesity. This is not a ‘healthy’ population that Musk’s view of the future can be built upon. To explore deep space we will need men (and women) who can withstand extreme physical and psychological challenges; i.e. we will need healthy men and women that are military ready.

Now that’s something that I’ve been thinking about recently. Are health reforms being permitted to enter the discussion as a means to improve military readiness? I was asked to leave a comment by a friend, so I wanted to expand the scope of what was being discussed in the post.

I replied to Michael’s post with:

To me, this is a huge discussion, which I know I won’t do justice in this comment, but here’s what I’m thinking. Apologies in advance for the long reply.

I think you’re striking at the root of a crucially important idea.

Personally, I’d want to set Gates & Musk aside to flesh out this idea better. While their stated motivations are diametrically opposed, I’m not convinced that their methods will differ much in the long run.

What nobody in power wants is an engaged self-governing citizenry. This includes both Gates & Musk. Musk seems to me like a transhumanist eugenicist wearing a paper-thin “pro-humanity” persona designed for a particular culture war participant. Instead of merely culling humanity, he would prefer people become cogs in his “Human Colossus”

As somebody watching his platform X from a distance, I feel I know everything I need to know about his plans to “uplift” humanity.

Alright. Musk Bad, but that’s not really a salient point or even the point of your piece here. There are two major questions to address:

To what degree MAHA (Make America Healthy Again) is being permitted to be part of the discussion for military purposes?

What does Musk offer this coalition?

To zoom out a bit, in hindsight, what did Covid-19 accomplish? As a whole, I would say it reasonably effectively normalized injection mandates, expansive public health powers, and totalitarian suppression of dissent. I don’t think I’m alone in that assessment, but many people underestimate the lasting effects.

Back in 2022 Denis Rancourt did an excellent interview on Geopolitics & Empire discussing the concept of the Covid Crisis being leveraged as a way to “totalitarianify” society. Speaking as a Canadian, I think it has been wildly successful at this, despite push back on particular points.

“So you never have democracy during war time and you always have this absolute totalitarian system, and that’s what they’re installing. And that’s what they’re putting into place in making sure that real democratic governance never returns, not for the near future anyway.”

Denis Rancourt on “COVID19 is a War Measure for Population Control in Shadow of US-China Conflict”

So if war (on Earth, or conquest in space) is coming, presumably soldiers (or just bodies) are needed at some point or another. I didn’t consider cyborgs when I started thinking about this, but I think you’re absolutely on to something here. Why can’t “enhancements” be “medical countermeasures”? Regardless, if the war machine needs meat for testing or the grinder, why does the health of the citizenry really matter? We’ve seen increasing amounts of immigration deployed for other issues, why would this be any different?

Technocrats like Gates & Musk are BOTH struggling with the dilemma that it’s very difficult to maintain control over a fractured, alienated, population. To have all the fancy things technocrats desire, they need at least the pretense of a human society to sustain it. People can directly feel and understand when they’re under attack, but it’s much harder for them to realize when they’ve sold themselves out.

This is why I believe Elon Musk is all about neutralizing resistance. Moving forward, I’m convinced that only the most obvious and severe assaults on the public will be given attention. As you’ve touched on many of the health reforms being discussed are directly tied to military requirements. This alone is troubling because it means that we can expect the bulk of the “help” and intrusions to be aimed at children and young adults.

It’s the urgency that’s most worrying. Trying to turn around the “health” of a populace in 30-50 years is a very different predicament than attempting to do so in under 10-20 years. Clearly the desires and long-term well being of the individual will be some of the first corners cut. During this time, we can expect an immense amount of propaganda aimed at bringing people’s guard down while even more nefarious measures roll in.

To not leave this on a completely bleak note, I feel the need to share what the actual way out of this is. I was blown away at Julie Ponesse’s testimony at this year’s National Citizen’s inquiry. Dr Ponesse perfectly explains what the big picture threats are and what we can do as individuals to address the actual root causes.

To which Michael responded:

Gabe in my scenario, the health of the citizenry matters for 2 reasons:

Sick people cannot travel in deep space and colonize Mars. You need people in top physical condition because they are going to be wildly abused for years both physically and psychologically

Cyborg-ing (so go speak) of humans will also damage and kill human beings. The weaker you are, the more likely you will die or become “useless” in the cyborg process.

Lastly what I will say about this - a counter argument could be “Well you only need to take care of SOME people to do those things, not all”

Perhaps, but I would argue that Musk believes you need a LARGE PORTION of society to pick from to be successful in EITHER of these two potential endeavors. These are massive experiments that are bound to fail multiple times in multiple ways. To be successful, you will need millions of prime specimens to utilize and to experiment upon.

I then replied with:

I’m very partial to the cyborg angle for a variety of reasons, but I think we’re both converging on the idea that a radical transformation of the public for some (or many) high risk ventures is desired by part of the technocrat class.

I would argue, the reason for wanting the majority of the population to be… modified in such order is that there is a converging of interests. I don’t presume that Musk himself would be in charge of the White House or policy moving forward. For all we know, Musk himself may simply be one “vendor” for cybernetic “augmentations”. Just as Tesla popularized electric cars, Neuralink could be the wedge to normalize various intrusions to the public.

What’s clear is that there is an obvious national security angle to pushing for better health, and just as we both know there are sincere health advocates, yourself being among them.

But the troubling part is how nominal “improvements” can be made on a population level to justify the erosion of individual autonomy. I can very much see the angle becoming “Russia wants us weak” or “we tried letting people fix themselves but it just doesn’t work” to argue against people’s ability to make their own choices.

To me, this is partially what makes this dangerous territory. It’s one thing to want to remove structural barriers to people living more healthily, but it’s a whole different thing to grant the state presumption it has the right to determine what citizens “should” be. This is partially where my concerns come from, I think this is a particularly slippery slope where very justified concerns can be weaponized for troubling overreach. I believe the broader coalition (Beyond just Musk & RFK Jr.) has reasons to go much further for either wartime, or the reasons you outline.

Regardless, I think the answer is a strong commitment to individual autonomy and medical ethics. If anything we need to strengthen medical ethics conceptually, socially and legally. I greatly appreciate your efforts in this space.

I don’t really have much to add to the above. As I wrote earlier, I’m mostly just trying to hold this idea and interrogate it from different angles. I hope you found this interesting or at least entertaining.

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The Ugly Troubles Of Severe Obesity

Thu, 24 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000

It Ain’t Easy Being Big

As I’m starting to make progress I hope to document the troubles I’ve had to bear in getting this large. This post is to share how difficult it is to be severely overweight. My motivation is to help others understand what those my size are unlikely to share widely. This is because, in my opinion, the heaviest thing many heavy people carry is shame. Nobody wants to be this big, nobody enjoys it. One of the hardest things to learn getting this big is that one is not their weight. It’s hard to reconcile the need to choose and enjoy life, despite being unhappy with the state of their own body.

One of the hardest things about getting not just heavy, but huge is the fact that that the inevitable mental anguish makes it so much harder to turn things around. As somebody becomes accustomed to being numb to the regret, shame, and despair they’re so very far from having the mindset to choose life. This is why I think many misguided attempts to “de-shame” obesity are coming from the right place. Compassion absolutely has to be at the center of helping people overcome it, but not at the cost of factual information.

So yes, obesity is not good. It’s actually horrible for you and those around you. It may, or may not be entirely, or even mostly your fault. No matter where the blame may lie, the only way to resolve it is taking responsibility. Taking responsibility for it can be difficult in different ways. One may struggle with denial, refusing to recognize the path they’re on. This is made worse by relatively low levels of obesity being vaguely normalized in particular circumstances. But the worst thing getting in the way of taking responsibility is despair and hopelessness that leads one to believe it is too hard or outright impossible for them to change their situation. Even worse, many may lack support and guidance necessary to begin and endure the process.

My hope is to be one of many examples that it is possible to reverse even the most dire circumstances. I wholeheartedly believe that with enough support, patience, and hope for the future, anybody can return to a healthy body weight and keep it off. The road is long, and sadly doesn’t end once one has merely shed the weight. The journey is about gradually building (or re-building) a healthy lifestyle to maximize quality of life. I am confident that I’ve begun to make lasting changes in my life, and that I’ll be able to show a way somebody can recover from even class V obesity.

Obesity Classes
Class	BMI Range
I	30-34.9
II	35-39.9
III	40-49.9
IV	50-59.9
V	60+

As somebody who has been all of these obesity classes at some point in my life or another, I feel the need to emphasize that things get so much harder every class you go up. I’m currently working to leave class V, but vividly remember the gradual worsening of so many different things in an easy to underestimate way. It’s worth emphasizing, the larger one becomes, the more dire health risks present themselves. Personally, I think it’s important for people to recognize the different classes to recognize the additional challenges imposed by greater sizes. Of course, this is only a rough outline based on my own experiences. There are a wide variety of reasons why one person may encounter different troubles earlier or later. Fat distribution alone has a significant impact on various quality-of-life troubles.

I believe that severe obesity is a very complex problem to solve. While the ultimate solution: eat right and become more active, is the answer, in practice there are a wide array of obstacles to taking corrective action. Some of these are physical, some emotional, and others a complicated mix of all kinds of things. I think it’s important to recognize severe obesity as not merely a single problem (excess weight) but a variety of interconnected problems that each are non-trivial to overcome.

Eating Troubles

I’ve written an entire post on this, but in this part I want to specifically tackle the numbers problem. It’s often hard to make any progress at all without the dreaded counting of calories. When one has become accustomed to having massive amounts of food, especially calorie-dense foods, it is quite difficult to dial it back. One of the biggest reasons is expectations. In my opinion, raising obesity rates are a consequences of rapid shifting baseline both individually and collectively.

The idea is, that your expectations (and other’s expectations) aren’t actually static. Over time, they can shift to accept a (much worse) “new normal”. This erodes social and emotional barriers to things that would otherwise be unthinkable or too obscene to be considered. In short, both in terms of one’s own comfort, but also in terms of social acceptance, the slope is quite slippery. As one personally gets accustomed to eating worse and worse, even greater excesses become much less strange, especially over longer periods of time.

Metabolism Mismatch

This is never so clear than when it comes to how chronic over-eating impacts metabolism. Intuitively, when one is supplying their body with a huge surplus of resources, the body becomes less efficient at processing them. Another way to think about this is that your body can only digest so much in a given day. I believe this is why obese people constantly crave more and more calories. I remember getting to the point where I felt I needed to have at least 4-6 thousand calories a day, if not in a single sitting, to “function”. When one is “filling” themselves with sugars which quickly turn to body fat, they are also potentially depriving themselves of other important macro & micro nutrients. I’m under the impression this mismatch can create unending hunger that could be addressed with getting the correct nutrients.

In some ways this is great news! The silver lining is that numerically losing weight is easier than gaining it. This is incredibly counter-intuitive to those who haven’t been able to change their diet yet, because they don’t realize how close they are to turning things around. The biggest challenge of this however, is that the road itself is long, so it’s very easy to under-appreciate small but important steps to progress. What’s very difficult to recognize is that while we live day-by-day, how one lives over weeks, months, and years is so much more important than a single day. Finding ways to structurally improve one’s eating situation in the long run can have very effective results.

Mobility

As more weight begins to weigh you down, the harder various tasks become. Even simple inconveniences and slight pains can over time radically reduce how active a person is. In my own life, I’ve gone from being highly active, to being all but bed-ridden. The larger one becomes, the more dangerous it can be to take on various activities, as risks of injury grow significantly. If one is not at least maintaining a certain level of activity as they gain weight, they may even lack the strength to move the body that confines them. On top of all this, the larger size of areas of the body can interfere with all kinds of movements.

You’re not going to think to run around and take on all kinds of activities when simple tasks like going up stairs, walking, or carrying things feel almost entirely out of reach. It is horrifying to think about how things that once only seemed out of reach eventually fade into being actually out of reach.

Why can’t I stop eating? - Helplessness

In my personal experience, mobility is something very easy to be in denial about. It’s so easy to fall into the trap of believing that one is every bit capable as they were within memory. This predicament creates a very dangerous false sense of security. Being objective about your activity level is vital to maintain and improve your longevity.

Mobility isn’t just about the ability to get up from seating, or out of bed. As one becomes significantly large, various real-world experiences also move out of reach. Traveling becomes difficult, more expensive, and sometimes logistically impossible. Hygiene and cleanliness become more and more of an uphill battle. This means that one who is severely overweight can often miss out on things that could otherwise benefit them in other areas of life. This alone is enough to fuel serious emotional distress and regret.

Getting moving

The exercise paradox is a hot topic of discussion. The idea is that as one becomes more active, their body gradually adjusts to that level of activity overtime, including burning fewer calories. This can be pessimistically interpreted to mean that exercise has no place in a weight loss journey. I couldn’t disagree more! There are many inherent benefits to exercise that make weight loss easier. In addition to this, when one is entirely sedentary, they have a long road to a high level of activity. There is a huge amount of room to keep gradually improving until the body catches up to all of it.

If nothing else, the stress reduction benefits are immense. When one is entirely sedentary trapped with their own emotions, it’s hard to feel useful at all, much less productive. Being as active as one can be is amazing for how you feel day-to-day. I’ve already felt amazing benefits from gradually ramping up my exercise over the last year. I never imagined I would be able to be active 5 days a week, but here I am. I’ve personally experienced that even minor increases in mobility greatly benefit my ability to do other weight loss related tasks, like cooking for myself.

Starting to get moving is hard. Since really escalating my progress by getting personal training, I’ve experienced an incredible amount of pain on a very frequent basis. But, even beforehand every attempt to become more mobile was rewarded with at least a non-trivial amount of pain. I remember when walking around the block felt like more than I could handle.

The problems with becoming mobile are twofold: 1) You have to be strong enough to move yourself. 2) The heavier you are, the more painful even simple movements will be. It’s effectively a judgement call to say what ratio of pain to gain is worth continuing with. However, it is incredibly important to avoid injuries. Falls, or even overdoing it can cause lasting pain that will interfere with your progress. Like many other things in life, becoming more active is a marathon and not a sprint. I’ve benefited greatly from focusing on being more stronger and more mobile. It’s an incredibly painful journey, but I experience significant progress on a weekly basis.

Don’t be afraid to modify!

Bodyweight exercises are incredible ways to get stronger quickly when starting out. A significantly heavy person may not be capable of performing particular exercises. A tip I stumbled on recently is that you can search for whatever exercise with the word “progression” and you’ll find ways to gradually work up to a particular exercise. It’s important not to feel guilty making modifications, as an obese person one is behind the starting line! Constant effort and gradual step-by-step modifications can make improvements way faster than one would think possible.

Poor Sleep

Not getting enough sleep is one of the worst “gainz goblins” that interferes with progress. Insufficient quality and quantity of sleep can negatively impact weight loss and muscle gain in a variety of ways. This is a significant challenge because obesity overlaps with many difficulties that negatively impact sleep. At my current size, it’s very difficult to find a comfortable resting position. I used to work nights, but I’ve always struggled with consistently sleeping at night.

I don’t have any particularly good advice for improving sleep quality. I struggle to get to sleep when I’m not merely too tired or too sore to stay awake. There was a brief time this Summer when I got a bit more sunshine that sleep came easier, but other than that quality sleep has been fleeting. Sleep is definitely something I really hope to improve in time, but all I can say is that it’s something I struggle with, and I’m sure many others in the same situation do as well.

One of the huge challenges of poor sleep habits is that it makes interacting with society harder. Simple things like being awake early enough for most jobs can be a significant challenge. There’s a huge cut when one needs to work their own hours. Even worse is that it’s often hard to be meaningfully productive later at night. While you can do all kinds of things these days from a computer or phone, generally people aren’t cooking for themselves and running errands late into the night.

Emotional Difficulties

In my opinion, the hardest parts of living with severe obesity are the emotional challenges. I’ve gotten a lot out of reading Dr Peter Breggin’s book Guilt, Shame, and Anxiety: Understanding and Overcoming Negative Emotions I’ve written before about how emotional difficulties often turn into over-eating.

Shame & Self-loathing

Unless one is in a terrifyingly toxic echo-chamber, generally obesity is looked down on. At minimum, the inconveniences themselves induce a non-trivial amount of shame & self-loathing. Regardless of the source, these emotions congeal into a thick layer of projection that can make it harder to connect with others, perpetuating a downward spiral. Eventually, chronic shame boils into self-loathing.

“Do not speak badly of yourself, for the warrior that is inside you hears your words and is lessened by them. You are strong and you are brave. There is a nobility of spirit within you.”

David Gemmell

Self-loathing is a very challenging emotion. Like every feeling, it’s your heart & soul trying to communicate something real to your conscious mind. When one is constantly avoiding these feelings with food and other strategies, it can be impossible to recognize what the feelings are trying to communicate. Self-loathing is a very strong signal that I would sum up as “Things need to change”.

I can personaly attest that once one even begins to reorganize their life for the better, the relief is phenomenal. This is an immensely challenging thing to do when one has numbed themselves to their own self-directed hatred and pain. Confronting this directly was the only way I began to make progress again. It’s very hard to begin to make long-term efforts when one is entirely focused on deafening themselves from a torrent of emotional anguish.

In Dr Breggin’s book, he recommends committing to becoming a source of love in your and other people’s lives. I have a shorthand for that, choose life. The way out of your darkest moments is to choose to live for what God put you on earth to accomplish. That means embracing life as it is, ups and downs and all. To make it more concrete: choosing life to me means doing everything I can to rise above the challenges set before me to be a compassionate source of inspiration for others. Which is a non-trivial part of the reason I share my personal collection of memes that have helped lift me up.

Hopelessness

Inspiration is essential. One of the greatest dangers when one is obese is hopelessness. The road to positive change is long and difficult, and it can be very easy to be tormented into giving up. The worst part about hopelessness is that it leads to a significant amount of self-sabotage. The worst form of self-sabotage is being unwilling to even begin to change. When one knows they could be doing better, but is dissuaded by the fear of failure, they can further spiral into despair and more troubles.

Hope, faith, and love are the way out. One needs to have hope that meaningful improvement is possible, and it always is. Faith is what will sustain you through challenges and setbacks. At the very least, having faith in the process can keep you from going mad. Love is what will fill you with purpose to reach higher and higher. It can be love for anything, your friends & family, the natural world around you, a skill, or your wider community. Allow that love to fill you with dreams of what you can accomplish once you’ve reordered your life and given yourself time to mend your physical and emotional wounds.

🚿 Hygiene 💩

Now for the uncomfortable part. This was saved for last, and omitted from the contents list for a reason. Keeping clean becomes harder and harder as one becomes larger and less able to reach particular places. In addition to this, poor diets will radically change the consistency and frequency of defecation. And intuitively, the more one eats the more the more volume of feces that must be dealt with on a regular basis. Beyond a mere inconvenience, this is a huge source of shame and self-loathing as it gets worse. Messes and accidents become more common, even using restrooms can become a logistical nightmare.

Just like exercise, it’s important to remember that modifications can be made to make cleaning easier. Buying particular tools can help in the shower, and carefully planning when you eat can buy you time for particular errands and outings. It’s unpleasant, but staying clean is vital for a variety of reasons beyond peace of mind. There are some absolutely painful and gruesome results if one neglects to, or is unable to stay clean. I am glad that I had managed to avoid the worst scenarios, but it’s been it’s own challenge.

More Memes!

Feel free to browse the full collection!

📉 Weight Tracker
Starting Weight	Current Weight	Total Weight Lost	Goal Weight
576	289.9	286.1	15% BF
Current status:	🐢 Slowly and steadily building momentum
Last updated: 2026-04-07

Thank you for reading this through RSS 📡

Major Milestone: First Recorded Weight Loss 🎉

Fri, 27 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Originally I had intended to write a post when I hit a month of personal training. While there has been a great deal of progress, sadly I actually gained 2lbs in the first month of training. This was not particularly surprising, as I still hadn’t quite tackled food as I was getting started. I did make gradual efforts to learn and to improve on that front.

First Month update

Here’s the audio recording I recorded after a full month of personal training.

Audio not working? Click here

6 Week Update

I feel like I’m getting better at this. I’ve really noticed that many things that have felt out of reach are starting to feel more possible. It’s very much a learning process on my end. I’m learning to live with the discomfort associated with making progress. I’m now active 3-5 days a week instead of merely potentially reaching 2 most of the day.

Progress Made

Mobility

Ironically, one of the biggest changes is that standing still is much easier. I’m also able to perform full, unassisted squats! All the little things like walking and getting up have gotten so much easier, even if they still remain marginally challenging. Currently, I’m still unable to consistently get off the floor without assistance (such as something to grab or lean on). That said, I have successfully done this on a gym mat twice now, which makes me optimistic.
Calories

For the last two weeks, I’ve been having as little calories as I can bear. Limiting myself to protein shakes and a single (good, and reasonably sized) meal a day. Since I had gained for the month, I was determined to do all I could to make the next weigh-in a lower number. I’ve thrown everything I can to get to this point and it has been immensely challenging. While I’m aiming for around half of my TDEE, this is a very tiny fraction of the calories I’m used to having. I’ve found that this has been getting slightly easier.
Productivity

My ability to get things done or even just go for a walk despite being sore has been a very hard-won fight. I didn’t like spending days just sitting on the couch recovering. I still wanted to journal, write, and continue producing Cyber Fix. I can report that I was able to put out a new episode last weekend even on top of doing a solo-session at the gym.
Emotional

I’m really realizing how much confronting my difficult compulsions and their emotional roots has given me a solid foundation for making progress. I am building a sense of control and confidence in the process that feels as unfamiliar as it is comforting. Finally, I understand what I’m doing and feel like I have a non-trivial amount of control over myself. Even my bigger challenges, like maintaining a calorie deficit, feels more within reach that I would have thought at this stage.
Weight

🎇 I’m 18lbs down! I can’t express how much of relief and how encouraging this is. The last two weeks have been incredibly challenging but I finally feel in control. Something that felt so out of reach is now finally something I feel I understand and can put into practice. I was not expecting to lose that much, I was too pessimistic and thinking it would only be 4-6lbs. I pushed myself deep into a calorie deficit but more importantly I was choosing what I ate rather than being driven by compulsion

Challenges:

Pain

I’m still not adapting to the pain very well. I feel sore every day to some extent and sometimes it is very inconvenient or extreme. I’ve had cramps that make me shout in pain. I’ve even had a great deal of foot pains that make putting any weight on them feel unbearable. The pain itself can keep me awake at night, and makes it much harder to go to sleep.
Hunger

Perhaps most unsuprizingly I find the hunger to be a massive challenge. On one hand, I’m starting to find the low-level background signal of a certain level of hunger a reassuring sign that I’m on the right path. I’ve found staying consistent at this incredibly difficult.
Sleep

As mentioned earlier, sleep has more-or-less absolutely fallen off a cliff. I’ve always struggled with sleep, but the trifecta of eating less, being sore, and being stuck in my ways make it very difficult to change. Given the importance of sleep for weight loss, this feels like something I need to directly tackle.
Water Intake

I’ve struggled to have enough water while being more active.
I need to re-prioritize having lots of water per day.
Keeping busy

I still need to walk regularly. I’m trying to push myself to spend time walking on “off days” or to find ways to minimize “off days”. My entire goal since the first two weeks of training has been to maximize what I can do despite the pain and hunger. That’s been immensely difficult. I’m still only beginning to accomplish things while sore but starting with cooking seems to be working well.

Other thoughts

Useful YouTube channels

I’ve recently discovered Steve Shaw’s Massive Iron YouTube channel.

I’ve found his commentary on trying to lose weight as a morbidly obese person very helpful.

I also wish I had found PictureFit earlier! Which has a lot of useful information on a wide variety of fitness information packaged in a humorous and accessible way.

Cooking

One of the more concrete gains I’ve made throughout this time has been being comfortable enough standing to actually prepare non-trivial meals. Cooking for myself was point #4 in my definition of a healthy relationship with food in my Why can’t I stop eating? post. Being able to stand for longer makes a big difference but I’m not too proud to admit I sometimes reach for a chair during long stretches.

Beef Fried Rice

I wanted to make something I enjoy eating for meal-prep. I’m not quite sure I got the sauce down this time, but I’ll definitely need to prepare more in the future. Lots of time to get this right. For a first attempt it turned out pretty good.

Eggs Benedict

I’ve been having a ton of eggs. So it naturally flowed to make egg-based meals. Having made the entire meal, I can wholeheartedly say that Eggs Benedict is absolutely worth the hype. Surprisingly it’s been the tastiest thing I’ve had since starting this journey. It’s a lot of effort, but absolutely pays off.

Maybe as I get better I’ll start contributing to based.cooking!

More Motivational Memes

I need more videos! If you have any to send my way please do!

Full collection

📉 Weight Tracker
Starting Weight	Current Weight	Total Weight Lost	Goal Weight
576	289.9	286.1	15% BF
Current status:	🐢 Slowly and steadily building momentum
Last updated: 2026-04-07

Thank you for reading this through RSS 📡

Trying out iced

Sat, 31 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0000

✨ Update: Help me build the best desktop RSS client!
Requesting feedback on the future direction of the project as I share recent changes.

A new side project

I’ve really wondered what my own concrete contribution to the technological landscape could be. I’m certainly limited in time and resources, but there is much that needs to be done. I hoped to come up with a project I could reasonably accomplish on my own, that would make a meaningful impact. I believe I have found that project. One of the languages I spent time learning the basics of was Rust. I followed the development when it was still in alpha and learned the syntax back then. It has taken a long time for me to find the a library for building user-interfaces that is approachable enough for me to understand.

A close contender was the language Go and module Fyne. Fyne is interesting because I could compile for Android. The downside of this pair is that I haven’t spent any time learning Go. So I would have to spend a lot of time familiarizing myself with the ecosystem before really getting started. Rust has an interesting advantage when it comes to learning how to use their libraries.

So my new obsession is the rust library (crate) iced. It’s a cross-platform user interface library that is in it’s infancy. When I learned the new COSMIC linux desktop environment built by system76 was built using it, I had to try it out. It turns out that cosmic is adding a lot on top of iced with their library libcosmic. But the goal here is to become proficient at building user-facing applications that can move the needle towards greater online freedom. At the moment I’m not sure if I’ll inevitably need to move from iced to libcosmic, but the goal is to get as far as I can with iced first.

So how can I make a difference?

I sincerely believe that we don’t love RSS enough. Many people treat old tech solutions as “tried and failed” and run off to the shiny new idea. I believe that there are many things that can be done to make RSS a first-class contender in the media landscape. RSS already is a decentralized media ecosystem, we just need to figure out how to bring it to more people. To quote the post, I outline that there’s a great deal of opportunity in building new tools for RSS.

Build Software for RSS

As I’ve alluded to before, there are many applications waiting to be written to leverage the benefits of RSS feeds even further. Lowering the barrier to participation can help adoption significantly, and new software can allow us to leverage the best of our modern systems with the full benefits of the old web.

Accessible tooling Static site generators are awesome, but it would be great to have an accessible feed generator that allows for non-technical people to create feeds with an intuitive application. The feed generator could have plug-ins to automatically integrate with a variety of web-hosts to make going online significantly easier.

New media There’s opportunity to leverage completely different multimedia beyond just news and podcasts. RSS feeds support anything you can link to, so other opportunities like announcements, surveys, or even VR experiences are all possibilities. There is a great deal of software that quietly supports them, that can be used in interesting ways. For example, PeerTube supports RSS feeds for channels. This means that even without using the Fediverse, or even PeerTube itself, you can use a podcast app to have your own independent media experience. AntennaPod is excellent for this.

Enhancing the ecosystem Some very low-hanging fruit would be updating existing RSS feeds to have a helpful style where they don’t at the moment. By enhancing discovery, indexing, ranking and aggregation features, there is a phenomenal amount of opportunity left yet untapped.

We don’t love RSS enough

So what’s the project?

I’m building a multi-media RSS browser code-named “Really Sweet Stuff”. Building a functional RSS reader is a relatively trivial task that is a great learning project. You have to learn how to pull information from the web, display it somehow, and add all kinds of extra features to really make it shine. I really love using FreshRSS & AntennaPod, but if I can make a desktop application that’s halfway as good as AntennaPod I’ll consider this project a success.

Immediate to do:

Build reader interface for written content
- write code to parse arbitrary html-encoded content to iced widgets with content. (this feels like a huge pain given my current level of comfort with Rust, so I’ll be learning a bit as I do this)
- create placeholder widgets for embedded items like embedded media
Store information in a local database
- UI for adding/managing feeds
- Additional features such as read/unread flags and favorites
Derive application state from the database
- Basic indexing & full-text search
- high-performance local retrieval of contents from database
- background sync to update feeds
- User-centric design
  - workspaces
  - user-defined themes
  - font-size adjustment
UI redesign

Once the application is a feature-complete RSS reader, a concentrated redesign will be required for the addition of more advanced features. Hopefully by this stage I’ll have enough comfort with the library that I’ll have a grasp of what can be accomplished and how I can make the tool more visually appealing.

I have a long-term vision for this project! I think there are a wide variety of features that can make using a RSS browser more effective than other forms of gathering information online. I hope to build a tool that fellow information junkies see as a critical tool in their toolbox, and motivate people to create informative, entertaining and engaging RSS feeds to browse. My hope is that if this project is successful, I can build more censorship resistant software to exemplify what the Libre Solutions Network is all about.

I hope you’ll find subsequent updates interesting! A great deal of the near-future work involves stuff that isn’t easy to show off, but will pay performance dividends in the long run. At the same time I’ll be wondering how I should lay everything out, and how to make it be a pleasant visual experience. By the next time I write about this project I’m aiming to have a nearly feature-complete RSS reader, but that’s only the beginning of the excitement!

Where is the code?

It’s not ready yet!

Thank you for reading this through RSS 📡

Escape Velocity

Sat, 24 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0000

First Week with my personal trainer

I have great news. I believe I have found the best personal trainer (for me) in the city (at least). I am exchanging a significant sum I’ve made contracting earlier this year to up my game big time. Up until I this point, I felt like I’ve hit a frustrating plateau. Some things improve, some things get worse, I felt like I’ve made good use of the summer, but I need to do a lot more to start actually making a dent on my size.

It’s incredibly helpful to make use of somebody much more knowledgeable than me in well… almost everything when it comes to the body. Despite this being it’s own incredible challenge, I’m grateful for the opportunity to turbo-charge the progress I’m trying to make. I’d never had personal training before, I have to admit I was incredibly nervous. The prospect of throwing all my financial resources into investing in my ability to change my situation is… daunting.

This very much felt like a shot in the dark and I am thrilled it was dead on. He spent a lot of time asking questions between exercises. If nothing else, the opportunity to talk about my situation (judgement free) with somebody who knows what needs to be done was very relieving and helpful. I was weighed in a 574lbs. (260kg) Both sessions this week highlighted my lack of creativity when it comes to modified body-weight exercises. It seems that there is a great deal that can be done with a bit of knowledge to make real practical improvements within reach.

Feet first

I’ve underestimated how important feet are for…everything. It’s all too easy to forget about them when almost everything you do is sitting. What I never quite appreciated until now, is that there’s actually a lot going on in your feet that seriously impact all manner of activities. One of the exercises my trainer had me do was to do a modified stand on my toes (*very hard to do at my size!) and hold it for a short period of time. I believe him when he said that the muscles in your feet are vital to almost anything done standing up. I can certainly attest that when they were sore afterwards, it was pretty hard to do much of anything.

OpenStax, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

I was introduced to other exercises, but on the first day it felt like the big challenge was just staying upright for the entire session. I wasn’t used to standing that long and I’m excited for the time where that no longer feels difficult. I was not expecting the first two sessions to change how various movements felt afterwards. It seems that some movements, such as going up stairs and getting up from sitting are just that little bit easier. I’ve also done so much walking over the last week that that is flowing better too.

Feeling optimistic

It’s been a LONG time since I’ve felt this optimistic about my trajectory. I can say that I haven’t felt this clear-headed about trying to lose weight since I last was making serious progress by biking and cooking (keto) every day. I am still far too large to bike, but I’m taking this as a very good sign. It fills me with hope and joy that so much of what I miss may be within reach in what can be a (relatively) short and (incredibly) challenging time.

One of the things I want to highlight, is that I didn’t get to this point overnight. It’s only since December that I began writing about this mission, and before then I was dealing with challenges not directly related to this problem. In truth it’s all related. People love to say “everyone has the same 24 hours” which is true, but everyone has different things taxing those 24 hours one way or another. I feel incredibly lucky that things have aligned in a way that I get a real chance to push forward.

Turning the ship

Throughout my journey making progress on turning around my situation, I’ve come across various metaphors I find helpful for conceptualizing challenges and strategies. “Turning the ship” is how I describe the process of trying to limit your backwards momentum and increase your forwards momentum. Some people can immediately turn 180 degrees, and I’m happy for them, but I’ve been writing for the benefit of those who don’t find it that straight-forward.

You have to make peace with the fact that most likely, you can’t do everything in this moment to correct your situation, instead you need to focus yourself on building momentum. Your life is like a massive aircraft carrier in the water. The heavier you are the more time and effort required to turn around even slightly. Over time, your good changes open more doors for better changes. That’s the true process, healing your lows and growing your highs. You’ll feel a whole lot better when your ship isn’t moving the wrong way and is instead moving in the right direction.

Previously in: Why can’t I stop eating?

Of course, turning the ship isn’t the end of the journey. Picking up some good habits and dropping some bad ones will definitely help, but in severe situations it’s often not enough to make enough progress to make transformative changes. When there is a great deal of long-term damage accumulated, it takes more energy to push through the forces weighing you down. As such, I want to share with you the concept of escape velocity which in the context of changing your own lifestyle.

Escape Velocity

Escape Velocity: The minimum velocity required for an object to leave the gravity of a nearby planet / object.

Learn more (YouTube) [Wikipedia]

Large objects (like planets) have a massive gravity field called a gravity well. The more mass accumulated in the object, the harder it will be for objects to escape it’s orbit. Thus, as one accumulates bad habits and becomes dependent on self-destructive coping mechanisms, “gravity” builds up making it harder to escape the damaging lifestyle. As somebody who has struggled to make lifestyle changes I can say the greatest barrier was often not specific habits themselves, but rather trust.

When one has become accustomed to letting themselves (and others) down, you lose trust in yourself faster than you realize. This insidious self-doubt permeates every every thought, leading to a wide variety of self-sabotage and self-hatred over time. When one starts making progress, even small steps that are overcome by setbacks, it builds useful momentum forwards. I believe that for those who are struggling with getting anything done, the ideal strategy is to build momentum however you can.

I didn’t start with tackling any of my problems. I was struck so low by particular events that I was paralyzed with shame, horror, and despair. I felt entirely useless and my first step to reversing it wasn’t rebuilding my life in a single event. I chose to start writing. At the start, one (short) article every two weeks felt like all my mind and effort could muster. Of course, I would try to take on changing a habit here and there every once in a while, but hardly anything stuck. It was only this year that I was able to incorporate regular exercise on top of accomplishing writing on top of struggling financially.

Now things are different, thanks to consistent effort over a long period of time, I have achieved my goal of raising my level of productivity over time and gotten to the point where not only can I share my situation, but get to the point of getting a trainer involved. This may sound like hubris, but as of now I am feeling great about the fact that I think I am very close to being at escape velocity for my health troubles.

How does a rocket leave orbit?

Rockets require constant and increasing amounts of energy (fuel) to lift off, fight gravity, and leave orbit. I believe repairing damage from years of living an unhealthy lifestyle is quite similar. The goal is to build up energy from consistently becoming more productive at reversing what needs to be reversed. Most of this I believe is making incremental steps towards enhancing one’s own agency to dispel learned helplessness. As one gradually becomes more competent, mobile, and mentally strong, then the work becomes less of a struggle.

This does not at all mean that the work is done. I’ve really only begun my weight loss journey, but I believe I am now fully equipped to take it on. My mind is so much clearer and I have much fewer doubts these days. I have a path and I just need to put the effort and time in. No longer am I in constant dread of relapse. I know that as long as I continue, making better changes will only become easier and easier.

So to be clear, I believe I have achieved escape velocity on the grand arc of my mission to turn around my overall emotional and mental state but have really only begun lift-off on the weight loss. I eagerly await the moment that exercising itself feels fun and challenging, and making healthy meals for myself is second-nature. That’s when I expect to have achieved escape velocity for weight loss, which is likely still a bit far off.

For me, the difference is that I have drastically resolved the problems weighing me down. I don’t expect to be perfect moving forward, but I have a much firmer resolve and clear purpose that really brings it all together. I believe over time, this itself will yield more fruitful results. I hope that you are able to lift-off whatever troubles you’re trying to solve, and that you also achieve escape velocity and reach your dreams amongst the stars.

Extra Memes

These are made with my voice, but not my words. I was pleased to see somebody else sharing their experiences turning around their own life situation. They made a series of posts which included a series of captioned images. I found these touching and inspiring, so I took the liberty of voicing them and adding music.

So thanks to xweetok on Funnyjunk for coming up with these.

More Motivational Memes

And of course, I wouldn’t hit “publish” (actually git push) without sharing some other motivational memes I’ve collected. I’m hoping that in my next post there will be much to celebrate. As always, you can browse the full collection.

📉 Weight Tracker
Starting Weight	Current Weight	Total Weight Lost	Goal Weight
576	289.9	286.1	15% BF
Current status:	🐢 Slowly and steadily building momentum
Last updated: 2026-04-07

Thank you for reading this through RSS 📡

Why can't I stop eating?

Tue, 23 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000

This is less about compiling a list of excuses, but more about giving a sober look at what years of bad habits can build up to. My intention writing about this is to help others who may know obese people empathize with their troubles. Additionally, I hope that those who are obese to benefit from my retrospection, and can use it to help reverse their own situation.

You’re obviously not supposed to stop eating entirely. “Just stop eating!” is mostly terrible advice for somebody who is already obese, and can often push others into over-correcting in the wrong direction. While there are ‘starvation diets’ these are an extreme circumstance not worth considering without serious medical supervision. The real question is “why can’t I stop eating so much?” Or in some circumstances, “why can’t I stop eating so badly?”.

I’ll attempt to address those questions, but first let’s define eating well. As somebody far beyond the “starting line” when it comes to eating habits, this is how I conceptualize a healthy relationship with food:

Ordered by relevance to weight loss

Not consuming more calories than required

This is the very basic CICO (calories-in / calories out) mantra of weight management. Your total calorie consumption should be as low as possible, or otherwise offset by activity. The problem with relying on exercise to accommodate a bad diet is that you can easily erase weeks of effort with a single bad binge.
Acquiring all required nutrients

The so-called ’twinkie diet’ may conceivably lose you some weight, but may contribute to deficiencies in important areas long-term. Eating should be about nourishing the body not punishing it. Nutrition is it’s own rabbit hole and personally, I’ve only scratched the surface on that.

Based on understanding the above two, I believe the optimal path is to try to optimize getting the most nutrients out of the calories you need.

In short: Make liver and broccoli your friends.

Hydration

“Your problems are because you’re not drinking enough water”
Sodas themselves are a significant contributor to weight gain for zero benefit to the body. Your body’s functions require water to work, being hydrated can help a great deal.
Eating (more/mostly) food prepared yourself

Preparing your own meals gives you a better (but not complete) picture of what goes into making food. If one is going to spend the time to prepare meals, hopefully they conserve their energy to make quality meals, rather than junk.
Having regular meals

As far as I understand it, the body is fairly forgiving but it appreciates regularity. Many people swear by intermittent fasting, others will tell you you should eat a dozen small meals a day. I believe the full range of options are viable as long as you’re not going for long periods of time without eating, then feasting for more than enough to make up the difference.

I believe that anyone with the above under control is doing the best they can for their body. Those are what I understand the ideal situation to be, if you’ve got feedback, contact me!
Back to my situation:

Why can’t I stop eating?

The long arc

Over the course of my adult life, there were particular situations where I doubled-down on a variety of extremely bad habits. I used to work security, including overnight shifts which included a great deal of regular fast-food binges. I can blame my father for some of this, because the majority of the happy memories I had of him (before they were tainted by particular revelations) were of him taking my brothers and I to McDonalds, and/or getting lots of soda and bread while out for the day.

Juhis jwvaofbrnscwdof, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

I mention this, because bad habits compound if you’re familiar with the concept of compound interest you can appreciate how even minor deviations over large periods of time can build up into massive problems. I personally made the mistake of not confronting these mistakes early, and I have to spend an immense level of effort reversing the damage created by them. Unlike financial interest, when it comes to health troubles there is no bankruptcy, only death.

I’ve written before about how life circumstances have exacerbated my situation:

I’ve attempted to lose weight before. I made great strides, I lost 80lbs a few years back, mostly through keto and cycling. Unfortunately, I gained that back as old pressures and old habits overcame me. Struggling with the guilt of regaining the weight, I sought out weight loss counselling. To my dismay, I was told they couldn’t help me when I started to explain my situation as I understood it. Then as I floundered and gained more weight I eventually started going to a gym with my twin brother to help me learn how to start, only to have it all shut down when the covid lockdowns started.

I truly cannot express the full extent of horror, rage, and sadness I have over how the entire covid crisis was handled and the effect it had on many people. This post isn’t about that, but I highlight it to bring to your attention that there are surely many other people who had it much worse than I did. I don’t think many have truly healed from what was done to them through isolation, fear, and medical malpractice.

2023 Resolutions

While having the opportunity to work remotely starting early 2020 made me more comfortable, it mostly exacerbated my existing problems. I became much more inactive than I already was, and spent more time eating worse than I ever did. I’m aware many took the opportunity to turn around their lives, and I’m sincerely happy for those who did. I am sure however, I am not alone in being unable to embrace the opportunity at the time.

Part of this, is that for reasons I’ll elaborate more on later in this post, I was completely unwilling to seriously examine how I could change these habits. They were so in-grained into my life that I felt that it was impossible to change them and I was powerless to even moderate the degree. I believe this is largely because as habits compound and you become set in your ways changing even minor things can feel like an insurmountable task.

In fact, it is only within the last few weeks that I’ve even considered that I could meaningfully change my eating style. Despite spending a majority of my effort on improving my health, and considering my situation over the last few months, hope on this point very much escaped me. I want to share with you that no matter how far gone you are, there is always a great deal that can be done to turn things around.

Now that you have a better understanding of where I’m coming from, I’m going to share the major factors I’ve identified contributing to my situation as a severely obese man.

Compulsion

For many people, eating is just one of many things they do during their life. In my case, my life has revolved around eating. Meaning that from the moment I wake up, to the moment I pass out to sleep, I am constantly thinking, planning, and negotiating about what I will eat next. In some ways, this was because throughout my career I felt enormous pressure and felt I needed to be constantly fueled to carry out what I could accomplish. I taught myself that my productivity was directly related to the level of C&C (calories & caffeine) I’ve consumed recently.

More or less, eating and drinking sodas felt like a natural extension of existence like breathing. Living in a constant see-saw between panic about getting enough, the equilibrium of feeling satisfied, then the regret of overdoing it. A long period of time without eating felt like a time that needed to be filled with food or at least some soda.

While I’ve been far from successful in putting it into practice, my best understanding at the moment is that overcoming compulsive eating requires confronting the causes directly. The causes can be boredom, stress, pain (emotional or physical) which are all chronic problems someone in my situation will inevitably experience. Those in that situation with me will understand how tightly intertwined compulsive eating is with emotional eating.

Emotional Eating

If you’re reading this, and struggle with constant compulsive emotional eating…
I’m going to try to save you a LOT of time by being blunt:

There are reasons you’re doing this.
They are not good reasons.
Confronting them is going to be very difficult.
It’s possible that information has been kept from you, that is hurting you in ways you don’t yet understand.
You’re going to need help, don’t cut people who care about you out.
You’re going to need LOTS of help, be as patient as you can be with those around you.
You have to be incredibly patient with yourself.

If I’ve struck a nerve, I have utmost sympathy for your situation. For me, the hardest lesson was learning that this is something that can be changed. Whatever the source(s) of emotional pain you’ve compulsively avoiding, I promise you that with time and effort there are ways to resolve them.

I’ve had an excellent conversation with a great canadian hero, Patrick Phillips about this. who told me “If you’re soothing the pain, you should sooth the pain.”. At the start, I counter-productively took this as a license to continue eating to my feelings. Now I have a more nuanced opinion on what that means. He put me on the path to taking on my negative feelings head on, and was a great help.

It may come as a surprise to some, but I’ve only recently been aware of how much chronic emotional pain I’ve been in. The side-effect of numbing yourself with self-destructive coping mechanisms for years is that you can completely forget why you have them. Eventually, all you remember is that you’re stressed out all the time but can’t really pinpoint things that aren’t too obvious.

Taking the opportunity to emphasize this: chronic emotional pain does terrible things to a person. Counter-intuitively, even when suppressed, or otherwise not recognized.

I’ve only made tiny beginning steps on tackling this issue. I certainly underestimated the difficulties involved. I’ve mentioned before that I’ve found Peter Breggin’s Book very helpful for this.

The main reason I need to tackle this is that I recognize the degree in which my overeating has been emotionally driven. Through a troubled childhood, a stroke a few years ago and a grave family tragedy, I had learned to merely push frustrations aside and suffer the effects later. Later has come and It’s become clear that many of my daily activities were aimed solely at avoiding how I’m feeling in the present moment. Peter’s book does a phenomenal job at explaining how constant frustration or sadness can build up into a wall of numbness. It is reassuring to learn that this is not permanent and can be reversed.

Is Caffeine the culprit?

The good news is that I can report to being a almost entirely caffeine free since early March. While it was absolutely a temporary and severe hit to my productivity, I can happily say I’ve bounced back. Now I am more productive than ever, regularly publishing my bi-weekly show Cyber Fix. Strangely enough, there are two things I’ve noticed from quitting caffeine.

Dreams are more detailed and vivid (unclear why)
I poop less often and I have a lot less diarrhea

This is pure speculation on my part, but it has been observed that caffeine speeds up your digestive system…without also speeding up your digestion. I wonder if this is a contributor to the unending feeling of hunger that arises. It is often said that when one is hungry their body is signaling that they’re missing some nutrient or another. It’s possible that by not giving the body enough time to digest already sub-par food, one may be inadvertently starving themselves from what they need. At the same time they would still gain weight from the quickly digesting carbs while fats and proteins don’t have time to digest.

Quitting caffeine hasn’t entirely resolved my eating troubles, but it has definitely simplified the process of working on them. Take that with a grain of salt for what it’s worth.

Addiction

When one eats fast food or other meals that require no preparation, it’s almost impossible to avoid various addictions. Apparently vegetable oil itself can be addictive, to say nothing about sugar. Many explain food addiction in a simple way: your brain interprets food as a reward, and numbing that reward center requires more and more to be satiated. I’ve been told by those close to me that I have a classic addict’s reaction to large amounts of greasy/sugary/fatty food. I’m told that I “become a different person” and that I light up instantly the moment I realize I’m going to have that hit.

This is inherently a difficult thing to tackle directly. While I’ve been able to quit caffeine ‘cold-turkey’, there is no way I could do the same with food even if it was conceivably possible. This is where I imagine the best bet is to manage the addiction by pushing that effort into preparing food if one is mobile and capable enough. Personally, I still struggle to even comprehend that I don’t need as much food as I want.

The only minor thing I’ve noticed that helps is if one can afford it, switching from fast food to higher quality (but still easy) food such as fancy deli meats, cheeses, and pre-cut vegetables may be enough to help. I can say when I was not quite so large, I found it quite easy to stick with a rational amount of “carbs”, because keto focuses on that rather than calories. If you go that route I would merely suggest to still have enough veggies than just purely having meat and cheese.

I’m considering simply pre-boiling (and unshelling ugh!) a fairly large amount of eggs and snack on those. This likely sounds unpleasant. But that’s somewhat the point. Only eating when the impulse becomes so hard to ignore with a discrete amount of food to try to manage it. My challenge is that while the idea sounds nice I still have yet to summon the energy, willpower, and patience to get it done. An option that does help me a bit is buying frozen berries. It’s a bit messy but I really appreciate the texture of slightly-thawed berries. Strawberries are great, but not as strong a flavor as blackberries (hey lots of fibre!) but raspberries are a very intense feeling.

Helplessness

Alright, so we’ve fixed the knowledge problem.
I’ve explained eating problems as best as I understand, clearly that’s it.
I’m the genius who’s cracked the code that definitely isn’t found anywhere and everywhere.
We can all look forward to everyone being perfectly happy and healthy from now on right? …Right?

I’ve noticed a great deal of learned helplessness in my situation. I can only guess, but I believe this is the greatest contributor to people becoming bed-ridden for the rest of their lives. The more weight you gain the harder it becomes to accomplish even the simplest of tasks. For example, even now that I’ve made big strides towards becoming more mobile: I still agonize over the resistance of simple things like standing, getting up from sitting or lying down, and walking.

While I won’t deny to being quite lazy. A great deal of my efficiency is the embodiment of “If you want something done the easy way, find a lazy person to do it.” I believe this learned helplessness is what causes people to being trapped into a state of laziness.

You’re not going to think to run around and take on all kinds of activities when simple tasks like going up stairs, walking, or carrying things feel almost entirely out of reach. It is horrifying to think about how things that once only seemed out of reach eventually fade into being actually out of reach.

Accustomed to comfort

There’s a quote I’m going to paraphrase because I can’t quite hunt it down.

One must not become accustomed to comfort, because over time, the slightest discomforts become unbearable.

This absolutely matches my experience. Change is uncomfortable, adapting is even more uncomfortable. The hardest part about being severely obese is that by the time being overweight becomes it’s own problem, you’re already very used to avoiding discomfort. This makes the aches, pains, and despair from being so large and immobile a horrifically crushing experience.

Overcoming the learned helplessness from the consequences of obesity.

In this situation, you have far more problems than merely weight, immobility, and bad eating. No guide, lecture, or intervention is going to single-handedly help you transform your life overnight. It will take time of constantly making little decisions to improve your situation, whatever that entails.

This is going to sound counter-intuitive, but my opinion is that you have to recognize your limits rationally. Too many push themselves hard by attempting to make all the changes they should, rather than the things that they can. A lot of this comes from a good place, a burst of inspiration inspires someone to take on all their problems at once. Because we are only human, many fall short of accomplishing this, and end up filled with sadness and regret.

If this situation sounds familiar, consider that you’re not using the right resource. You have a complex problem and organizations have a role for the person who keeps track of how large problems are solved. They’re called a project manager.

You need a project manager. Turning around a decade or a lifetime of bad habits requires tracking a lot of problems within the larger whole. You can be your own project manager with software, just writing things down, or you can rely on someone else like a friend, family member, or health and/or fitness professional. It may even help to compartmentalize, maybe you rely on one person to help you with eating habits, and fitness with another, or you may only need somebody to understand your blind-spots.

Your job isn’t to fix everything all at once. Counter-intuitively, instead of focusing on what you should do, do everything you can.

Can you bike? Do that!
Can’t bike, but can walk? Walk whenever you can!
Can’t walk, or can’t walk without pain? Try getting to a pool!
You can’t do every day? Do whatever days you can.

You have to make peace with the fact that most likely, you can’t do everything in this moment to correct your situation, instead you need to focus yourself on building momentum. Your life is like a massive aircraft carrier in the water. The heavier you are the more time and effort required to turn around even slightly. Over time, your good changes open more doors for better changes. That’s the true process, healing your lows and growing your highs. You’ll feel a whole lot better when your ship isn’t moving the wrong way and is instead moving in the right direction.

You can do it! Motivational Memes

Browse the collection feel free to send me more!

📉 Weight Tracker
Starting Weight	Current Weight	Total Weight Lost	Goal Weight
576	289.9	286.1	15% BF
Current status:	🐢 Slowly and steadily building momentum
Last updated: 2026-04-07

A kind reader sent me these tips:

Veggie Tips

I also wanted to share a few meal tips that helped me. Most days I’d only have enough energy for “struggle meals” with minimal groceries and prep work. But I’d still aim for nutritious food. I think the key is finding something enjoyable with lots of vegetables:

salad: prewashed greens (or whole head lettuce, since it keeps longer), topped with olive oil, salt, and pepper. Occasionally topped with items like chicken, olives, or chickpeas, whatever makes me happy

broccoli: steamed for a few minutes in the microwave. Baked is good too. But it sounds like you already like broccoli!

brussel sprouts: tasty, but they require stovetop browning or air fryer baking. They also need to be chopped in half. I like getting them charred with oil and salt then topping with raw honey (even tho we should probably avoid sugar)

edamame beans + rice + soy sauce: my grocery store sells pre-shelled edamame beans that can be microwaved in a few minutes. I like how edamame has protein. I add a special tasty soy sauce. Asian flavors are nice for a change

potatoes: Baked potatoes are tasty and nutritious. Sweet potatoes are awesome too but they take longer. Bake with a timer, then salt and eat

hard-boiled eggs trick: I use about 2/3 the typical water amount, bring it to a boil, place the eggs in the pot, cover, and set a timer for 11 mins. Apparently the hot steam is enough to cook the eggs, even if they aren’t submerged in boiling water. And if you (gently) put them in boiling water instead of cold water, the shell will separate from the egg and make it easier to peel afterward. I learned that from a Kenji Lopez-Alt youtube video

nut mixes: I think they’re healthy and filling. I usually buy cashews, peanuts, almonds, dried cranberries, and dried blueberries, then mix it into snack containers

bananas and apples: are always a good snack for me

hummus: Or beans and lentils in general. Filling, tasty, nutritious

when I don’t have any energy to cook, or when I’m out of groceries: I got healthy restaurant food delivered. I have restaurants like CAVA and Bolay, and those are tasty and filling and healthy. I justify the cost by telling myself I’m “investing in my health”, because the alternative is just having a really hungry or unhealthy day

Something about vegetables makes me feel full. Maybe it’s all the chewing, lol. And it’s a healthy full, without bloating or tiredness.

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Live by the sword...

Wed, 17 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000

For those who aren’t aware this is more-or-less a response to the rise of prominent accounts on X leading the charge on getting people fired from their jobs for statements about the attempted assassination of ex-president and presidential candidate Trump.

As of today, if you search “libs of tiktok” on X and browse the top posts you’ll find many such examples, including a termination from home depot. [archive link] This demonstrates that not only is this popular, but it’s widely promoted.

I posted a note on the Fediverse today, which summarizes my position against this kind of behavior. As somebody who was terminated for far less, I’ll admit it pains me to have to stick up for people who likely would do the same to me again.

Forming mobs hunting people down to get them fired for legally protected speech is wrong. In my opinion, there should be stronger labor protections for speech across the board because of nonsense like this.

Despite the recent rise of people on the right going after people for wishing the assassination succeeded, the left absolutely has to own that they’ve spent over a decade normalizing and defending this nonsense. It is no surprize at all, and was predicted from the very beginning that it would eventually lead to this.

My standard for culture war bullshit is that target selection matters. I’m sorry, but I don’t think somebody wishing the president died is actually that big a deal. I’m pretty sure a majority of people are guilty of this for at least one head of state in their lives. If these were people advocating for criminal behavior (or behavior that should be criminal) I would feel differently, but it never has been.

The truth is, I also blame employers for this. It’s all too easy to throw the employee under the bus to avoid a tiny bit of bad PR. I think if there was ever a purpose for ‘sensitivity training’ it should be used for situations like this. I think it shows a lack of respect for your workers if you’ll let them go over such a tiny thing without even attempting to address the root issue.

If people actually want free speech and meritocracy, we’re going to need institutions that are actually more resilient to human failings, rather than pretending we can purge them in totality. Again, this is something I blame the left for a great deal because progressives were perfectly fine with shaping institutions to their values when it suited them. Now the shoe is on the other foot and ordinary people are yet again being torched to establish a new order of political correctness.

This is the bed that was made, I’d like us to build a different one but for now this seems to be the one we’re lying in for the time being.

[Link to Note]

Despite my frustration with those engaging in this, you can see that I actually blame so-called “progressives” a great deal for this. They have a long history not only initiating this behavior, but also normalizing and excusing it. This is exactly what “freedom of speech isn’t freedom from consequences” looks like at the start.

Some can argue this is a normal ‘swinging of the pendulum’ but the truth is that our actions have consequences that do matter. Retaliation and revenge only makes it harder and harder to actually bring people to admit their faults and change for the better.

I pray that those pushing back against the rallying cries to mercilessly punish ordinary people help others choose to save such harsh tactics for truly important concerns, rather than petty nonsense.

“But I HAVE to punish my enemies or things will just get worse!”

It’s funny how common this sentiment is despite it being demonstrably false in the moment.
If that was true why wasn’t left-wing cancel culture able to prevent this moment?

Things are getting worse because people don’t have their heads in the game. That Libs of Tiktok post over a home depot employee got much more attention than many pressing (but complicated) issues. The moment you seriously try tackling a real problem you’ll encounter defeatists who argue resolving it is impossible or just simply too hard to bother.

You should pray for your enemies, but also remember a random cashier in an entirely different region from you isn’t even your enemy. They’re essentially a figment of your imagination put there by those who want to profit of rage-bait and an endless cycle of disrespect. In my opinion, those people are your actual enemies, but the good news is that you can resolve it by simply no longer giving them your attention.

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Static+, can it work?

Fri, 28 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000

I don’t really want to ’let go’ of static sites because I think the benefits are too large to give up, at least as a single person. I love using static site generators. Being able to reuse code in an intelligent way is a huge win over doing all the css/html/js by hand. While it’s nice to be faster than a dynamically generated site, there are times where more data is needed. There are downsides too, such as not having dynamic server-side features. This generally means no comments, or visitor interaction of any kind.

Static+

Less than a CMS, more than a static site.

A reason a lot of “web 2.0” services got big, was that you could embed their fancier features into your hosted blogs. Within the context of self-hosted static sites, there are many reasons why you don’t necessarily just want to constantly embed various big-tech websites for relatively basic features.

One of my hugo sites pulls content from a public API to query information about legislation. Every time I regenerate the site it loads the latest information and inserts it in to the page. I thought this was pretty elegant, but it got me thinking. Is it worth using a database to store information to be used by a SSG?

The problem with wanting to take this step is that eventually you realize you may as well be using a CMS. Somehow your static site needs to be able to read, present, and possibly update your database. This means that you’ll need at least a minimal set of API calls that move information in and out of the database and a server that runs them. Doesn’t this defeat the purpose of avoiding a CMS entirely?

Thinking out loud, I think there is a happy middle-ground where it doesn’t. If you’re simply doing it to replace simple widgets/functionality that is already quite at home on many static sites like search or comments I’d argue it’s a decent half-step. It definitely goes too far when you have to torture (or re-write) your SSG to support new features instead of just building your own custom CMS.

But How?

I’ve been fascinated by PocketBase which gives you all this (including static file support) out of the box. It seems to be a speedy drop-in tool for this kind of technique. It’s built on top of sqlite and provides authentication built-in as well. I only wish it supported hardware-based authentication and then I would call it perfect. The more I think about how the web should be the less I believe that being able to reach millions of people should be the goal. Quality content isn’t always relevant to everyone at the same time, a better web should be a patient and discerning one in my opinion.

This is just an idea, if you have any thoughts feel free to reach out to me

Updates

Brandon has some interesting thoughts

But maybe we’re overthinking this! Why not simply use PHP in your theme files?

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Dipping into Aquafitness 🌊

Wed, 08 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Thankfully I’ve resumed swimming twice weekly. I have the ambition to increase this to three times weekly which is what I believe to be an important step to actually begin making measurable progress in losing weight. My primary goal for the winter and start of the new year was to maintain and enhance mobility. I believe I have achieved this, walking is still challenging but no longer insurmountable. I still have a long way to to when it comes to basic activities, but I’m gaining the ability to do more things easier.

A home gym in the water.

One of the things that has made my regular swimming trips more productive is that I’ve purchased these oversized foam dumbbells. They give me some of the benefits of doing free weights without worrying about balance or falling over. In between laps of the pool I will take a pause to do some basic exercises with them and I feel like they’re making a positive difference. For anyone like me, who is very overweight and struggles with basic tasks, I’d highly recommend getting a pair. They can really help make the best of the time you spend in the water, and help it feel satisfying to continue. Of course, you’ll want to get some inspiration by looking up aquafitness exercises on YouTube or elsewhere.

Some things are getting easier, but I must remind the reader that I am very obese. It is not easy being this big and it is quite hard to reverse. I am very lucky that I have a supportive family that is working to help me improve, but even in that situation there are many challenges. I’m very weary of the false dichotomy many are put in these days. If you love fat people you must enable them, or that if you’re not enabling them you must hate them. As someone who has dealt with a lot of self-hated over my weight I can personally attest that enabling comes from a place of pity rather than mercy. Mercy is accepting the situation as it is, and responding with kindness rather than anger. I can imagine very few things said about fat people online are as hurtful as the things they tell themselves.

As somebody who has been as stubborn and arrogant as anyone else, I would like to remind you that no amount of self-hatred is helpful. I believe this is because for some, a small amount can move them to action for a short period of time, resolving serious obesity requires more action over a longer period than can be sustained with such negativity. I believe the reason why so many fail to regain a normal weight is that the mental methods often employed to maintain a normal weight ultimately fail and backfire causing more suffering in the long run.

My opinion at this time is that actually reversing the damage done in getting this large requires reordering your habits, daily activities, and ultimately your mind. This is an immense undertaking, especially when taken on alone.

Motivational Memes 🌄

You can see the collection here but I’ve added two more videos that I’ve found encouraging and motivating.

Reading Progress 📕

I’ve completed Peter Breggin’s Book: Guilt, Shame, and Anxiety: Understanding and Overcoming Negative Emotions. It took me much longer than I had hoped, but here we are. I’ve learned a lot reading through it, first and foremost that it is possible to overcome even all-pervasive self-hatred and dread. I would recommend this book to anyone who has become numb from built-up frustration, or someone who just wants to learn to live without as much self-defeatism.

I believe I got a great deal out of reading the book over a long period of time, as it helped me reflect on and digest the lessons of the various chapters. Due to the course of my life, some chapters were particularly hard to read through, making progress very slow. A major point raised is that many of your negative legacy emotions such as omnipresent guilt, shame or anxiety are triggered by things outside the present. Regardless if the events were inside or outside of your control at the time, ultimately Dr Breggin argues it’s important to let go of those feelings and focus on living rationally and lovingly in the present.

As somebody who struggles with living in the moment for reasons brought up in this book, it’s helpful to have a frame of mind for how to begin to do so. Dr Breggin defines love as joyful awareness and that you can and should take the time to appreciate simple things in your life. If done right, you can practice applying this to those around you to live a more loving and present life. I’m still very far from putting this into practice perfectly, but I can say it’s been a helpful frame of mind for escaping the maze of my own doubts and fears.

The main reason I need to tackle this is that I recognize the degree in which my overeating has been emotionally driven. Through a troubled childhood, a stroke a few years ago and a grave family tragedy, I had learned to merely push frustrations aside and suffer the effects later. Later has come and It’s become clear that many of my daily activities were aimed solely at avoiding how I’m feeling in the present moment. Peter’s book does a phenomenal job at explaining how constant frustration or sadness can build up into a wall of numbness. It is reassuring to learn that this is not permanent and can be reversed.

In the book, Dr Breggin compares ordering your mind to tending to a garden. Instead of avoiding negative emotions, or distracting yourself from them, you’re supposed to identify them at the root, and refute them. By tending your mental garden you can then order your life to be more focused on loving others and loving life.

I chose to read this book because I have a high appreciation for how Peter and his wife, Ginger explain in COVID-19 and the Global Predators: We are the Prey how the measures taken during the Covid Crisis were an assault on the public. Due to my mistrust with the Canadian medical system as a whole, I decided to reach out for independent help to help understand my issues. I originally reached out to Patrick Phillips who does provide councelling. His approach didn’t work for me, but I appreciated his help. After this, I came across a series of videos by Dr Breggin Simple Truths about Psychiatry where I was reminded of his own distrust for the medical establishment and it recommended his book on overcoming negative emotions.

More Peter Breggin

With my self-help book of the year taken care of, my next book to read is Cybersecurity First Principles: A Reboot of Strategy and Tactics as I aim to regain my focus onto the technological space when it comes to reading. Reading itself may not seem like a personal health activity, but I believe it has many benefits in helping with weight loss. For example, if one is constantly overstimulated with digital distractions, taking the time to read carefully helps bring you to a calmer state. By reading you can disconnect yourself from the dopamine overdose of constantly hunting information and novelty and give your mind a proper pace to learn. I can’t prove it, but I’m convinced that racing your mind constantly itself correlates with either weight gain, or substance abuse. Your mind is precious, treat it with care.

📉 Weight Tracker
Starting Weight	Current Weight	Total Weight Lost	Goal Weight
576	289.9	286.1	15% BF
Current status:	🐢 Slowly and steadily building momentum
Last updated: 2026-04-07

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We Don't Love RSS Enough

Tue, 30 Apr 2024 00:00:00 +0000

If you’re reading this, you probably do, but someone you send this to might not. There are many compelling reasons to use RSS which is a permission-less open protocol for sharing multimedia. RSS is a phenomenally powerful extension of the basic web that can enable a much more democratized and honest media landscape. Adoption been on an incredible upswing since more people have decided to run their own independent web sites. The indieweb is a treasure-trove of people taking the time to save the web by contributing to it.

It might shock you to realize that: not only is that RSS is an old solution to many of our current-day problems, many advocates for it have been unknowingly sabotaging it! If you’re already sold on RSS and want to learn what anyone can do to resolve this you can skip ahead to that section.

You’re not dependent on a social media platform.

The content you receive is not dictated by an algorithm.

No invasive data collection.

No obnoxious advertisements.

You get to choose your sources and what you want to give your attention to.

Better information diet - less noise, less nonsense, less garbage.

Chuck Carroll

While I agree with these basic points, I can imagine situations where there could be exceptions. Your RSS experience is entirely related to how much effort one puts in to discovering, curating, and ultimately engaging with the medium.

RSS is Powerful

If they’re familiar with it at all, many people associate RSS with news. Due to the ability to link any content, or even embed audio/video, the possibilities are much grander. People may be familiar with podcasts, but it is all too easy to forget they’re simply RSS feeds with a media attachment, that can be either audio or video. In addition to this, it’s very fast, since a feed is usually just a simple text file, there’s very little processing needed to share and distribute.

What makes RSS so incredibly useful is that it’s machine-readable, this means that not only can programs interact with it, but it’s relatively simple to build new software to build on top of it. The possibilities are endless. For example, suppose you never really cared about browsing the web for feeds, and sorting through posts. Running your own software providing a web crawler, index, and suggestion algorithm based off your own preferences is very achievable.

RSS is actually decentralized

Fake decentralization is becoming it’s own niche industry. Too many would rather build a giant bloated mess of a one-size-fits all solution, instead of something small and flexible. With a focus on being a simple standard format, RSS is a lot more accessible than almost anything else on the internet. RSS is easier to learn than HTML, once you’ve familiarized yourself with a basic example, you’re ready to start sharing your own content. Being perfectly decentralized, there’s no token to use, or central server to check in with.

RSS works in every situation where you have an http connection. This could be over the web, darknets like Tor or I2P, or even through the airwaves with a packet radio. It’s simplicity allows for much more flexibility and there are no limitations or assumptions. You can even use RSS feeds entirely offline as a way to organize playlists of various forms of media. Once you’ve done that, you still have the option of eventually serving the feed to others in a wide variety of ways. Archiving RSS is absolutely trivial. If the feed is of blog posts and articles, you can simply save the rss file itself. Even the multimedia can be downloaded for offline use, and distributed over other mediums.

If it’s so great, why hasn’t it been adopted more?

When people open a link, they expect it to do something. This creates a small problem when someone who has never used RSS encounters it. They’re greeted with either:

A) an incomprehensible mess of text
B) A file download with no clear purpose

This is not what people have been trained to expect when they open a link. On desktops or mobiles, the expectation is that if the link isn’t a web page, a program opens the file or media directly, sometimes opening a specific app. This leads people to confusion, disappointment, and frustration. A large majority of people at this point will simply move on with their day, only to discover much later what they’ve been missing out on.

Libre Solutions Network RSS Feed

Taking adoption to the next level

Unfortunately, this means that many of us have been unknowingly serving RSS all wrong. Basic text or html is perfectly presentable without any styling at all. This unfortunately doesn’t apply to RSS feeds. I had assumed, like many others presumably, that this was just what we were stuck with. While doing my regular round of bookmarking new sites and subscribing to their feeds, I discovered that there was a solution all along!

Styling your RSS feed

Remember that RSS is actually XML, which is the eXtensible Markup Language. Meaning that it’s a data format that’s designed to be extended for particular uses. RSS feeds are just one of many. A website is HTML, which is the HyperText Markup Language for sharing hypertext. (Text that links to other text) What I recently learned thanks to Sacha Chua, is that XML, including RSS feeds can be styled just like a web page.

This sounds simple and inconsequential but I assure you this is incredibly profound. With a relatively small amount of effort we can truly make RSS feeds feel part of the web. This solves a major user experience problem for those without RSS, and has no impact on those who do use it already. As an example, I’ve updated my personal blog’s feed. You’ll notice that link works in your browser, and you’re greeted with a simple page explaining how you can get started with RSS and links to learn more. With more time, there’s aot that could be done to make this very accessible for those who aren’t tech savvy at all. If you serve an RSS feed that you share regularly or link to, please seriously consider making your own style.

Playlists

Believe it or not, you don’t have to be a content creator yourself to make a useful RSS feed. Instead of maintaining a large multimedia project, you could simply run a simple feed that includes some of the most important or insightful news and media. This is something very within reach for somebody to learn by hand, and it would have the advantage of being an un-censorable index of information, or even just entertainment.

Speaking of entertainment, RSS feeds can be an excellent way to share curated media. A notable podcast, The Bible in a Year is an excellent example of how long-form content can be set up to be taken in over longer periods of time. With your own private feed setup, it would be a very efficient way to queue up particular syllabuses of information to digest whenever you have moments to give it time. This works very well because many podcast apps save your place so you can always continue where you left off. Even for purely informational purposes, it can be useful to have a specific feed for a specific niche. It could be about an event in history, updates about a precise topic, or even a focused lecture series.

In a world where the free and open web is more embraced, TikTok would be unable to compete with personally curated collections of wholesome, informative, or otherwise nurturing media without the risks of censorship, surveillance, or addiction. This could open up a world of new possibilities for those who wish to create authentic art without being manipulated by their reach being controlled.

Aggregation

Due to being machine-readable, RSS feeds are able to be easily and even automatically aggregated into new feeds. This allows for a group of people who contribute less often to provide a steady stream of media together. One of my personal favorite aggregated feeds is Planet KDE, which aggregates posts for the wider KDE community. (KDE is the linux desktop environment I run, and enjoy a great deal) There are other “planets” for other communities within the linux space such as GNOME, GNU and Debian. It would be wonderful if people were inspired to create new planets (aggregated feeds) for non-technical communities.

Many feed readers support exporting your subscriptions to an OPML file. This is a list of feeds that can be easily imported into similar software, or shared with others. The best way to help democratize information and media would be to share your own hand-picked feeds with a friend or loved one. This can be done without the Internet, and would be effectively impossible to censor. Community groups working together could share their own aggregated feed with their members, providing a resilient fast notification system that can be used for a variety of situations.

Extending it

Static websites and RSS feeds have a major game-changing advantage for information resilience: they’re just data. This data can be extended for a variety of purposes. The podcasting 2.0 initiative is all about adding more functionality for podcast apps without sacrificing decentralization. All it takes is a widely accepted namespace, which is a fancy word for standard. Podcasting 2.0 adds new features like chapters, funding links, and transcripts that can be used by new or recently updated podcast applications.

Build Software for RSS

As I’ve alluded to before, there are many applications waiting to be written to leverage the benefits of RSS feeds even further. Lowering the barrier to participation can help adoption significantly, and new software can allow us to leverage the best of our modern systems with the full benefits of the old web.

Accessible tooling

Static site generators are awesome, but it would be great to have an accessible feed generator that allows for non-technical people to create feeds with an intuitive application. The feed generator could have plug-ins to automatically integrate with a variety of web-hosts to make going online significantly easier.
New media

There’s opportunity to leverage completely different multimedia beyond just news and podcasts. RSS feeds support anything you can link to, so other opportunities like announcements, surveys, or even VR experiences are all possibilities. There is a great deal of software that quietly supports them, that can be used in interesting ways. For example, PeerTube supports RSS feeds for channels. This means that even without using the Fediverse, or even PeerTube itself, you can use a podcast app to have your own independent media experience. Antennapod is excellent for this.
Enhancing the ecosystem

Some very low-hanging fruit would be updating existing RSS feeds to have a helpful style where they don’t at the moment. By enhancing discovery, indexing, ranking and aggregation features, there is a phenomenal amount of opportunity left yet untapped.

HTML Redirects & CSS grids.

Tue, 16 Apr 2024 00:00:00 +0000

CSS Grids

I intended to do a more ambitious overhaul of my site, but I decided against it when I realized I could accomplish what I wanted much simpler. Instead of using a flexbox layout like before, I learned that I could use a CSS grid layout.

CSS grids have some interesting properties, the most useful one is that you can rearrange parts of the site in to specific locations. This is useful for making this site play nicely with mobile/portrait layouts.

Here’s the layout code for the site as it is now.

main {
    display:grid;
    grid-template-areas:
        "header header header"
        "side1 content side2"
        "footer footer footer";
    grid-template-columns: 1fr 3fr 1fr;
    grid-template-rows: 20% 60% 20%;
    max-width:100vw;
    justify-items: center;
    gap:20px;
}
header{
    grid-area: header;
}
#content {
    grid-area: content;
}
#side1{grid-area: side1;}
#side2{grid-area: side2;}
footer{grid-area: footer;}

Pretty simple, I have the homepage content in the center and two sidebars on the side. In hugo, the sidebars are each their own partials that can be modified on their own. The magic comes in when I add a portrait layout media query:

@media screen and (orientation:portrait) {
    main {
        display:grid;
        grid-template-areas:
            "header"
            "content"
            "side1"
            "side2"
            "footer";
        grid-template-columns: 1fr; 
        grid-template-rows: auto;
    }
    header{
        grid-area: header;
    }
    #content {
        grid-area: content;
    }
    #side1{grid-area: side1;}
    #side2{grid-area: side2;}
    footer{grid-area: footer;}
}

And voila! All the content is arranged into a single column but in a different order than they are declared in html. This is useful because it allows me to move the sidebars to after the main content when in portrait mode. I can imagine there are much more sophisticated layouts but it will take time to really design something interesting.

Using your own static site as a link shortener.

If your site has a short domain (or shorter than your other domains) you can use a simple trick to redirect browsers

I noticed on this Peertube Channel he has a variety of redirects pointed at various links with easy to remember links. You can replicate this without touching your webserver config while using an html redirect.

Step 1 Create a folder for your location

For example, instead of just linking https://mk.gabe.rocks/@gabriel (my fediverse profiel) I can instead create a link at gabe.rocks/fedi. Since I’m using hugo I’ll create the fedi folder in the static directory, but if you’re managing your site directly you can just create the folder at the root.

Step 2 Create your index file

You’ll need an index.html file so that the pretty link works nicely. Here’s an example.

<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="0; url=YOUR_URL_HERE" />
</head>
<body>Attempting to redirect, if this fails <a href="YOUR_URL_HERE_AGAIN">click here</a>.
</body>
</html>

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Upcoming Site changes + Personal Note

Fri, 29 Mar 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Site Changes

TL:DR: Site redesign incoming, expect links to break and a new look in the near future. The RSS feed at /rss will stay the same.

I’m not overly happy with the current design. I’m thinking that while I do the work of properly documenting the hugo themes I use, I’ll also work to completely revamp this site’s theme visually. I feel I have a decent grasp of how to use CSS, but I don’t really have the faintest clue what to use it for.

The sidebar design is interesting, but I’m terrible at making the header/sidebar component look interesting and useful but still keep it customizable. The new plan is to build the hugo theme with a straightforward concept: the home page is designed with various shortcode widgets and combinations of them that allows for easily switching. This way, individual components can be overwritten but maintains the rest of the properties of the theme. This is all about building on the concept I discovered in big brained hugo

Designer tools?

I toyed around with a designer tool penpot that I found when I stumbled on the Creative Freedom Summit. Unfortunately I don’t think it beats what can be done with inkscape, a browser, and an IDE. Sure having everything in one program is nice, but I think for what I’m trying to accomplish it’s not quite refined. In addition to this, penpot requires you to host the service even when running from flatpak, it would be nice if the desktop application optionally included an “offline” version.

Pi Server 2.0?

My Raspberry Pi 5 now boots from usb because I ordered the new official power supply. The Pi5 needs 5A at 5.1v to even attempt to boot from usb so don’t try fiddling around with different chargers that don’t provide that. Given that I don’t support a lot of users I would like to host everything I run from the pi5 but there are a few hiccups. The biggest problem is that it’s not quite enough for transcoding large PeerTube videos. What I’d really love to do is to configure this pi5 and leave it with a relative with some storage and have a remote backup server.

Personal Update

Quit Diet Soda ‘Cold Turkey’ 🎉

Three weeks ago from today, I was down to my last 2L bottle of coke zero, and decided I would commit to leaving it untouched. Three difficult weeks later the same bottle is still there. Instead of entirely eliminating the temptation by removing it or throwing it out, the point was to acclimate myself to refusing to have it. This was quite a challenge for me. I’ve struggled with being exceedingly dependent on the caffeine I would get from drinking insane amounts of diet soda. Predictably, I’ve slipped on other bad habits like eating more and snacking more in general. I still consider this a victory as I can work on those while I maintain that objective.

I’m definitely not unaware of the various health concerns related to diet soda. High caffeine intake isn’t ideal, in addition to this the artificial sweeteners have their own potential issues. Originally, I thought it would help mitigate risks from having regular soda. Unfortunately switching to diet soda has not helped me at all in the last few years, and going back to calorie-dense soda is a non-starter. I’ve wondered more and more about why diet soda contributes to weight gain despite artificial sweeteners having trivial calorie counts. I don’t have any academic proof, but based off my personal experience I would argue that consuming large amounts of diet soda creates these problems that interfere with weight loss directly:

Impacts proper digestion

I can only speculate what the actual mechanism is, but I have a feeling you get less out of the food you do eat when constantly over-caffeinated.
Increases anxiety/stress

If you eat for comfort, making the problems worse will only make your eating worse.
Ruins sleep

Unfortunately, it’s very hard to live an active and healthy life late into the night when one isn’t very mobile. Arguably, sleeping well is the most productive thing an unhealthy person can do during the night.

To say nothing of other more complicated effects…

Gone Swimmin’ 🌊

I’ve also been making significant progress on maintaining by mobility throughout the winter months, it is springtime now and I’ve still gone swimming on a regular basis for the last few weeks, before then I was doing more walking. I’ve come into a lot more time over the next little while, so the plan is to (metaphorically) hit the ground running, doubling down on exercise. I’ve been gifted a significant amount of time to really make progress so I’m optimistic for this spring.

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What's up with webtorrent?

Tue, 27 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Webtorrent has been around for a while, and torrents have been around since 2001. Webtorrent is a big part of the reason why I found PeerTube so exciting. Outside of streaming PeerTube videos, and downloading a linux install ISO, the technology itself seems to be under-utilized. Many fediverse fans want to see webtorrents used to distribute all media, which would significantly help smaller servers, but that would require building in suport to each server.
This lead me to a simple question:

Do [bit]torrent and webtorrent overlap at all?
Is there a torrent client that can seed both?

I’ve seen a couple of unresolved issues on clients like qbittorrent, but I’m wondering if there’s one people use.

Same question, but also for the tracker side, is there tracker software that both clients can talk to?

Answering the question:

Short answer: Yes, but…

To revisit the fundamentals, I’m going to give a basic summary of how torrents work:

A torrent file or magnet link will provide a client with the hash of the file(s) requested, as well as any trackers or webseeds.
Torrent Clients will request peers from trackers that list where the other peers are.
Trackers can be contacted through UDP, HTTP/HTTPS and Websockets (for webtorrent).
Torrent clients will then request data from their peers. If they can communicate the peers who have the data will seed the file(s) too the client requesting the data. On webtorr

This means that for downloads to succeed, you need at least:

A tracker that lists peers
Peers that can communicate with each other

For some very popular torrents, it’s highly likely that both BitTorrent clients and webtorrent clients will be able to download the files regardless. This is because with many trackers and many peers, it’s very easy to find lots of overlap.

The challenge for those trying to distribute new torrents (such as their own work or archives) seeding from a single client may often not be enough. This is because despite the libtorrent library supporting communication with webrtc peer, torrent clients like qBittorrent still don’t support it.

Recommendations for distributing your own files via BitTorrent & webtorrent:

Host your own tracker that supports at least websockets and either UDP/http(s) bittorrent-tracker is a good pick, but I’m also wondering if torrust supports websockets.
Ensure you’re seeding from both a webtorrent client and a regular BitTorrent client until there is a client that allows seeding to both.
Make sure the torrent/magnet you’re distributing includes a good variety of trackers, such as a good mix of https & websocket (wss://) trackers.
Make use of webseeds! A webseed allows peers to download the files from URLs. For bootstrapping webtorrent peers, it’s a no-brainer!

Additional thoughts

DHT probably helps a ton once more than a couple people are seeding.
Many sites like archive.org & peertube use v1 hashes instead of BitTorrent v2
Webtorrent may work well on static sites, I may experiement with the file.getBlob feature to see how doable it is.
Misskey clips are really handy, it’s like having your own curated online forum powered by interactions on the fediverse. I’ve set one up for these kinds of Q&A style posts.

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Non-linear Progress

Thu, 08 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0000

One of the things I’m trying to do here is illustrate my challenges of getting better from this point in hopes of helping other far-gone individuals. Undoing damage is not gratifying at all, at least not in the early stages I’m in. It’s very easy for me to focus on recent mistakes and get demoralized with the process. It’s very easy for me to beat myself up over mistakes and allow the self-hatred to derial other improvements. I have been given help tracking improvements which has helped contextualize failures and successes.

If I take it as a big picture, I do think I have made meaningful improvements over the last three months. I have walked every day in the last week, and my daily eating and sleeping has improved significantly. I am frustrated however that I have found it a big challenge to dedicate the time to ride the bus to go swimming. Walking instead of just wallowing in self-pity over not going has helped, but I do fully intend to return to the pool.

I’ve also taken to soothing my addiction to sugar with frozen berries, specifically blackberries. It does seem to help a great deal so I am likely going to stick with it until I am sick of it. While I have definitely avoided consuming too many sweets over the last short while, I haven’t made complete progress on portions, so I am in no way done improving my eating habits. Some days are ideal, some are far from it.

A huge change is that for the first time in a long time I am regularly awake during the day. For most of my adult life I have been used to staying up late. This accellerated after I started working nights, and meant that sleep had always been a challenge. Now I am a “daytimer” most days, which is very different from being awake until morning being the norm rather than the exception.

Summary

I’ve made progress in some areas, and fallen behind in others.
Here is a non-scientific self-assessment demonstrating what I’ve been tracking:

Sleep has definitely helped my productivity, I just need to keep reinvesting it better.

The Good

Sleep: Started awful, has improved a lot.
Eating: Started terrible, has improves fairly.
Walking: Wasn’t walking much at all, now walking regularly.

The Bad

Swimming: Started Great, but has fallen off.
Writing: Has stayed consistent, but hasn’t improved.
Reading: Made some progress, but fell behind.

Other things I should consider tracking:

Stress management: Stress locks me into bad habits
Screen time: …Yeah

Additional Thoughts

I had realized that part of the reason I haven’t done quite as well as I had hoped is that I am under a serious time crunch. In response to this I am cutting back on my work hours specifically to devote more time to this. I am realizing that it’s very easy for me to fill up my schedule to avoid thinking any of this through. I am grateful I have the luxury of being able to reduce my working hours, and cut back on fixed time commitments that were above-and-beyond what I should have expected myself to take on. Part of this is that I’m still finding time management quite a struggle.

I am hoping a quarter from now I will have much better news. Given that I’m giving myself more time to focus on it, I’m optimistic. I am committed to the goal of getting better but I’m still very disheartened and overwhelmed by just how far there is to go. I haven’t lost any weight over this period which is unsurprising. I am hoping that will change throughout the year.

📉 Weight Tracker
Starting Weight	Current Weight	Total Weight Lost	Goal Weight
576	289.9	286.1	15% BF
Current status:	🐢 Slowly and steadily building momentum
Last updated: 2026-04-07

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Resume

Mon, 01 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Independent Technical Assistance

Currently available for work

Experience

Over 10 years of customer support
Including 8 years of technical customer support
Digital Liberty Advisor for White Rose Intelligence
Sole operator of the Libre Solutions Network multi-media project.
Administrator of Canadian Cyber Freedom
1 year as Co-producer of the Rounding The Earth show on Rumble.
Six months working as Technical Editor for American Values 2024 working on The Kennedy Beacon
See my current projects

Skills

Web Skills
- HTML
- CSS
- Javascript
  - Alpine.js
  - Vue.js (basics)
  - Vanilla.js
- Optimizing for Tor & I2P
Python
- Flask Web Development
- Browser automation
Linux system administration of a variety of services including:
- Matrix
- PeerTube
- Nginx
- Docker and docker build
- Shell scripting with bash
- Hosting Services over Tor & I2P
Version control with git
Level 3 computer skill

Software Experience

While I am familiar with many non-free alternatives, I prefer to work using these tools.

LibreOffice
- Calc (Spreadsheets)
- Impress (Presentations)
- Writer (Documents)
Inkscape
Thunderbird (Mail Client)
OBS Studio (Streaming)
Blender
- 3d modeling for 3D Printing
- Basic Animations
- Video Editing
FreeCAD (parametric 3D modeling)
DrawIO (Diagrams)
Audacity (Audio Editing)

Media Production

Streaming with Streamyard
Scheduling streams for a variety of platforms
Brand asset creation in Inkscape

Want to get in touch?

Contact

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First Steps: New Years Resolutions 2023

Sat, 09 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000

This is more about me than I would usually share. I’m choosing to share this in an attempt to be more accountable to myself, but also to point back to as I try to go into more detail about the journey moving forward. If you know someone who’s struggling with their weight, please be as patient and compassionate as you can. If you’re struggling with your weight, please try not to project your own self-loathing on other people. In all situations, being proactive can go a long way.

Many people don’t need to be told this, but for those that do: never compromise on your health. A healthy, mobile body is a gift that should never be taken for granted. Do not fall into the trap of trading it away for temporary comfort or career advancement. I don’t recommend working nights if you can avoid it, and this includes staying up all night for recreation. If your lifestyle is causing you to gain weight beyond a healthy range, seriously consider taking proactive steps to make change. No matter what, it’s always worth your time to enjoy exercise to keep you mobile.

Looking back on 2023

2023 has been a wild year for me. Much of it has passed in a blur. I started the year with no job, lots of stress, mostly running purely on hope and faith. Over the last few years, I’ve gone from struggling to get anything done, to finally being productive again. Not only am I working full-time with a few projects, but I’ve also been able to start making serious strides in taking better care of my health. I’ve made some great friends in the last year, so I have a much better support network this year than I started it with. I feel like many things have aligned in a way that put me in a great position to make real transformative change.

I would be a liar if I said it was all me or all my will that got me making progress again. I can admit to not being strong-willed in the slightest. Over many years, many bad habits have built up in ways that are very difficult for me to unravel. My point is that I’ve gotten a lot of serious support from those around me. I am blessed to have had the people in my life that I do, and their generous time, and work has gone a long way. It’s hard to be my size, but it’s also hard for those around someone like me. I think one of the major reasons people in my situation don’t fare well is that people hardly have the slack to devote to helping them turn it around, and even when it is the case; built-up guilt and shame can make one unable to accept the help necessary.

🤔 It's anyone's guess how it got this bad.

Something I feel that’s important to share is that the reasons for someone getting as large as I am are rarely simple. There is no quick-fix for a decade of gradual emotional and physical decline gone unaddressed. Self-loathing and loss of mobility are a combination that literally have and will kill. I’ve decided to document this recent attempt to turn things around and share what I think helped got me to this point. I wish I could say this progress started with a “just do it” moment, but it’s something that I’ve had to grow back into.

I’ve attempted to lose weight before. I made great strides, I lost 80lbs a few years back, mostly through keto and cycling. Unfortunately, I gained that back as old pressures and old habits overcame me. Struggling with the guilt of regaining the weight, I sought out weight loss counselling. To my dismay, I was told they couldn’t help me when I started to explain my situation as I understood it. Then as I floundered and gained more weight I eventually started going to a gym with my twin brother to help me learn how to start, only to have it all shut down when the covid lockdowns started.

I truly cannot express the full extent of horror, rage, and sadness I have over how the entire covid crisis was handled and the effect it had on many people. This post isn’t about that, but I highlight it to bring to your attention that there are surely many other people who had it much worse than I did. I don’t think many have truly healed from what was done to them through isolation, fear, and medical malpractice.

Current Weight: >500lbs

Yep, it’s a big number. So many things that one would take for granted, like getting up in the morning, going up stairs, even walking moderate distances are a serious challenge for me. I’ve noticed that for every 100lbs I gained, things got much more challenging in ways I wouldn’t have imagined. Breaking things is always a depressing reminder that you’ve gone too far, same with every time you try to find bigger and bigger clothes. Surprisingly, clothes you’ve had for years are stretched to still fit, yet you’ll struggle to find things to fit within your size. Hygiene is a big issue, I’ve gone from needing a shower a day to remain comfortable, to requiring multiple to avoid…problems.

Despite all this, in many ways I feel blessed. I’m quite lucky to have made it this far. I suffered a stroke a few years back that has permanently impacted my vision, but it could have been fatal or left me with a more serious injury. I think the only thing that has saved me from being bed-ridden permanently is the fact that the one thing I maintained so far was the ability to walk despite the weight gain. Unfortunately, it’s gotten to the point where I really can’t walk very far. It’s not that I get tired, but the pain definitely gets me. Not only that but winter is starting, facing Canadian winter is difficult on top of related problems like slipping on the ice.

What’s changing?

Over the last year, I’ve made attempts to proactively make myself better food instead of sticking to what’s comfortable. Ironically it’s not the time preparing that takes the most time, but rather overcoming the immense temptation drains a lot of focus. I’ve had mixed results with that, some weeks it helps a great deal, other weeks it feels like too much. Overall I still need to find ways to make it simpler for myself and keep up the habit. Over the last few months, desperation has set in over my lack of mobility, so I’ve come up with a solution.

The following photos are from a pool that I’ve started going to. There’s a pool I used to go to that only requires me only to walk to the closest bus stop, then the rest of the way is essentially all indoors. This means I don’t have to worry about slipping on ice, it being too cold, or anything like that. It also means I can get there on my own without requiring anyone else’s assistance. It’s a bit of a trip, but even getting there is like a workout for me. The pool also has a gym that I can use as well, which will help a lot in the long run.

Having only gone twice a week for the last three weeks I can’t report any crazy improvement. I am already seeing reassuring signs though. I’m becoming more comfortable with the journey and I’m noticing some basic things being slightly easier. As I said earlier, I feel like I just need to keep at it and that things will start to improve. I’ve got a lot of work to do and I’m trying to be patient with the fact that it will take time. Ideally, I’d like to find time to move up to three times a week, hopefully soon!

Some Motivational Videos

It’s good to have reminders that it’s not hopeless. There are people who have overcome this and many other troubles. I’ve found inspiration in these, and I hope others can too.

I’ve gotta learn dance moves from this guy!
A punching bag looks like a smart idea.

Got others? Please send me a link!

The Resolutions

Health

Continue to go swimming at least 2x weekly.
Improve meal planning
Live in the moment more
Appreciate and focus on prayer.
Sleep more consistently

Part of this, is that I hope to write more about my weight loss journey.
There’s a tag for it if you’re curious.

Writing more

I’ve found writing to be helpful, but I need to do it more. Like many other positive changes I’m struggling to properly nurture the habit. It’s not a super-high priority, but I’d like to get into the flow of regularly writing in my journal every day. For the last few months, everything I’ve written has been public, and I think that’s a bit of a mistake. Ideally I think my public writing should be the best subset of a larger collection of writing I do.

Reading more

I’d definitely read a lot less than I had intended this last year. Part of it is that I’ve become much more busy than I had anticipated. That said, I’ve collected a couple of books that I’m looking forward to spending time with. One book I’m really interested in reading is Guilt, Shame, and Anxiety: Understanding and Overcoming Negative Emotions by Peter Breggin. Early last year I read How To Stop Overthinking And Start Living which I think helped frame things for me a bit.

I’m always interested in book recommendations, fiction and non-fiction alike!

📉 Weight Tracker
Starting Weight	Current Weight	Total Weight Lost	Goal Weight
576	289.9	286.1	15% BF
Current status:	🐢 Slowly and steadily building momentum
Last updated: 2026-04-07

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Big-brained hugo time

Sat, 25 Nov 2023 00:00:00 +0000

I had no idea that hugo shortcodes could call partials. I’m going to try to integrate this more into my themes. Partials can call each other too, which is very handy. Meaning that you can reuse these modular components even more. This is important to me because I want my themes to be usable by someone without any knowledge of hugo internals. There are a lot of great hugo themes out there, but I’ve noticed many of them make heavy use of the data folder and custom parameters. I think this gets in the way of wider adoption because ideally, most things would be configurable from the .md files or the site’s config file.

This is just an opinion, but I would argue that progressive enhancement should apply to how the site is built as well. If somebody just wants to change their site’s basic colors, images, and move some components around, the explanations would ideally be quite simple. That said, I’ve fallen behind on documenting my themes. Partly because I’ve got a bit of an overhaul pending. Of course, anyone who does understand hugo wouldn’t have any issues getting started, but I’m sure they’d have an equal chance of loving or hating my choices.

Using that knowledge, I’ve created a couple of shortcodes that I’m going to port to the base themes.

Recent Audio

I like this one, after I rebuild my html5 audio/video players I may upgrade to these. All things considered, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with the default audio player. This shortcode is very simple, I just include “{{<podcast>}}” into the markdown file.

Rolling forward: major mobility milestone

Apr 13 2026

Can we short-circuit authoritarianism by understanding fear?

Apr 03 2026

Rebounding from troubles and gaining new ground

Mar 26 2026

Walk with me: Every step counts

Mar 06 2026

Walk with me: Choosing what to carry

Feb 26 2026

Hero

I’m definitely going to steal this for the libre solutions network, allowing for fancier elements to be copied between sites easily. Of course, this shortcode is more customizable.
The parameters are pretty straightforward:

bg: background image, uses the theme’s accent color otherwise
title: The heading
description: Any text you want included
href: The link when the button is clicked

{{<hero bg="/images/mmbn-banner.avif" img="/favicon.png" btn=“About Me” href="/resume" title=“Gabriel” description=“I’m a passionate and curious Canadian 🇨🇦 with a fascination of Free Software and bottom-up strategies. ✝️ Through Him, all chains are broken - Pray for love and peace always. 🕊️”>}}

Gabriel

I'm a passionate and curious Canadian 🇨🇦 with a fascination of Free Software and bottom-up strategies. ✝️ Through Him, all chains are broken - Pray for love and peace always. 🕊️

You can also reverse the order of items by adding reverse="1"

Gabriel

I'm a passionate and curious Canadian 🇨🇦 with a fascination of Free Software and bottom-up strategies. ✝️ Through Him, all chains are broken - Pray for love and peace always. 🕊️

I’m thinking it’s a handy way to make all kinds of pretty call-outs for things.

Potatoes

Planted in the backyard

Some fields are optional, but I’m working on improving the look and feel of limited ones.

Back to the top!

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Fixing the PeerTube plugin on Grayjay

Thu, 02 Nov 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Correction I originally wrote that Grayjay was FOSS, this isn’t true. Grayjay is simply source-available, even if the plugins actually are licensed under the GPL.

Grayjay appears to be intended to be a one-stop-shop for all of one’s digital consumption needs. It has support for YouTube, Rumble, Odysee, and others, but what got my attention was the PeerTube support.

I still don’t quite understand how plugins work under the hood. It seems that they inherit functionality from classes that provide standard interfaces for the client to use. Essentially the goal seems to be that every platform can be abstracted in the form of a plugin.

The Official Plugin

The PeerTube plugin has some issues. It’s not immediately apparent how to use your own peertube instance instead of FUTOs. The “open in Grayjay” button just outright ignores whatever you add. So the easiest way to rectify that would be to hit the “copy link” button and open it from your android. If you’re having trouble with this, simply make a simple web link to the url with html, open it with the html viewer and click the link, or find a different way to send you the link as a hyperlink, just opening the link in your browser may not work.

So once that’s taken care of local peertube videos will work great! As of writing this I haven’t tested casting, but I know casting from other platforms works so I assume there aren’t issues there. The problem is that remote videos will all fail to load. When you open a link in grayjay it’s designed to choose a plugin that’s authorized to open it, the app doesn’t seem to understand that the peertube plugin works for all peertube sites.

Thankfully there’s a fairly simple solution to this. The real reason remote videos fail is that the URL provided from the api call /api/v1/videos/ gives the remote url, not the local url. This confuses grayjay because it doesn’t realize that it can play the video.

Making my own

You see, a remote video on peertube can be loaded from the instances URL. So I simple forked the plugin and changed how remote videos are loaded.

Shamefully copied from my readme.md in the repo:

Hopefully this specific plugin will be unnecessary. I forked the official peertube plugin because as it currently exists, it doesn’t properly load videos from remote instances.

My solution isn’t very elegant, I’m not familiar with typescript, but this plugin will allow you to browse videos within the network for the Libre Solutions Network PeerTube

Changes made:

Changing from trending peertube videos to most recent

Setting the baseURL to peertube.libresolutions.network

To allow remote videos to load, i had to hardcode getVideoPager url parameter with: url: "https://peertube.libresolutions.network"+ v.url.substring(v.url.search("/videos/")),

*I also made a similar change elsewhere*

Why? Because when the peertube plugin loads a remote video it throws an error No source enabled to support url Meaning that you would need to install the peertube plug-in for every instance within your network.

Thankfully peertube seamlessly handles links to remote videos when you replace it with your instance url.

Outstanding issues

I would prefer to pull the baseURL parameter properly, but I had trouble making that work and decided to just hardcode it.

I have no idea how/if this will impact casting, but hope to test that soon.

I need to properly sign the plugin

If you have grayjay and want to give it a try feel free to install it from here.
Simply install the grayjay app and open that page, the install button will have grayjay load the plugin. I’ve limited it’s reach to only peertube.libresolutions.network but you could fork your own and make it work for your instance.

I’m hoping the main peertube add-on gets fixed, and/or that the plugin system allows the user to configure variables like the baseURL from within the plugin settings. Once that’s done, all that really needs to be done is for the plugin to properly add the configured baseURL to videos as they are loaded in.

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Some updates

Thu, 14 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Matrix migration

Switching from Synapse to Dendrite was always inevitable. I had dragged my feet on it largely due to an if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it mentality. The challenge was that eventually it did break. Somewhere between Synapse 1.8 and 1.9 I was unable to update without getting DB errors. I had tried a query based off someone having similar issues, but when the issue reappeared, it was for a different relation in the synapse db. This was when I decided to throw the towel and start fresh. Up until this time, my matrix instance has really only been for me and immediate family, and this was bound to happen because at the time of writing, you can’t migrate to dendrite and keep your messages.

No shade intended on the matrix or synapse team. This instance was running for quite a few years and it served me very well. I’m looking forward to the performance upgrades of running dendrite.

Should have backed-up contact handles & my e2e keys! Oops!

PeerTube is the greatest

Libre Solutions Network now has 200 views on the PeerTube channel! Not a huge number, but it’s a great start! I think the best thing about it is that PeerTube instances themselves can follow others. For now, when I upload a new video it shows up on a wide variety of other instances in their “recent items” feed. This is almost the exact opposite of youtube alternatives just becoming their own echo chambers.

I’d argue that PeerTube is one of the most important projects that currently exists. It sounds like hyperbole, but it really has the ability to be a huge game-changer. With features like webtorrent, remote transcoding, I’d argue the only thing that’s missing is support for multiple domains (like Tor & I2P addresses.).

If you agree with me on this, please consider supporting the project

Don’t erase your Arch Linux install just yet!

I’ve noticed something that may not be great for new linux users trying out Arch Linux. I wish I knew exactly what triggered this, but sometimes when you reboot it will fail to boot waiting on a particular disk UUID, despite no disks being changed. I remember in my distro-hopping days, this would be the moment I’d just grab the home directory and switch to another distro.

Oddly enough, I had noticed a long time ago that a very fast and efficient way to fix this issue pacman -S linux. Reinstalling linux, which triggers a bunch of other changes seems to resolve the issue. This is where it’s handy to boot from your installation media then chroot back into your installation.
Essentially, the process is:

Boot up the installation media
mount your partitions to /mnt

After mounting your root partition taking a look at /mnt/etc/fstab can help give some insight on how/where things should be mounted.
chroot into the system with arch-chroot /mnt
Reinstall your kernel with pacman -S linux

Wireguard is pretty neat

It was recommended to me to replace ssh tunnels with a VPN connection. In hindsight, it takes about the same amount of time to configure either solution. I would still recommend SSH tunneling for temporary or one-off configurations, but I can see why a VPN is a preferable solution. Wireguard is pretty simple and straightforward to setup, and all-in-all is painless to keep running.

Gotchas

When actually running services from behind a VPN to a VPS (or other machine) there are things you may want to keep in mind:

Ensure that your VPN server is actually able to forward traffic

At minimum you’ll need
```
net.ipv4.ip_forward=1
net.ipv6.conf.all.forwarding=1
```
In your /etc/sysctl.conf file

Correct iptables configuration on both hosts

PostUp = iptables -A FORWARD -i wg0 -j ACCEPT; iptables -t nat -A POSTROUTING -o eth0 -j MASQUERADE; ip6tables -A FORWARD -i wg0 -j ACCEPT; ip6tables -t nat -A POSTROUTING -o eth0 -j MASQUERADE # Add forwarding when VPN is started
PostDown = iptables -D FORWARD -i wg0 -j ACCEPT; iptables -t nat -D 

POSTROUTING -o eth0 -j MASQUERADE; ip6tables -D FORWARD -i wg0 -j ACCEPT; ip6tables -t nat -D POSTROUTING -o eth0 -j MASQUERADE # Remove forwarding when VPN is shutdown

Is used by this config file to turn the rules on-and-off with the VPN.

If you’re hoping to forward outbound traffic, ensure that you’ve set the allowedIPs to 0.0.0.0/0 and ::/0 for IPv4 and/or IPv6.

I have noticed that doing this really makes life difficult for docker. I’m not entirely sure why. Setting dns settings in /etc/docker/daemon.json didn’t seem to really improve things. If I wasn’t already hosting many services through docker I would consider moving to VMs / “bare metal” installation due to this.
Since you’re now using more than just the default network interface, make sure your services are binding to all interfaces "0.0.0.0"

Gnome & Kde NetworkManager GUIs can also be configured with wireguard. I found this link helpful for someone trying it out for the first time.

As someone who doesn’t have IPv6 on my own internet, it’s good to know that I can access it through wireguard from a VPS.

I think tailscale is built on top of wireguard. It essentially marries the VPN with SS0 and dns as well, I believe. There is a self-hostable server in development but I’m starting to worker if it may be easy for one to create their own mesh of these ideas. I think for self-hosters, families, and communities it would be a very valuable tool to leverage. Something like a digital hearth to gather around.

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Git submodules are cool!

Wed, 14 Jun 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Modular repositories

I’ve harmonized the shortcodes for my valor and freedom themes.
This meant that I’d prefer to have them both reference the same ones and keep in sync with each other.
I found out that I could use submodules to modularize the projects. Now instead of trying to manage the hugo shortcodes in both locations I have a single shortcodes repository that both (and upcoming) themes will reference.

After I completed that, I decided that for many who don’t want to spend time configuring a complicated hugo setup, I could create quickstart repositories that would allow people to start making changes right away. These are still somewhat of a work-in-progress but I’ll be overhauling the documentation for them soon as well.

Theme Quickstarts

The themes for this site and libresolutions.network are available on my code forge.

The goal for these themes were to always be “batteries-included” type themes. I have a variety of shortcodes that I think are useful and intuitive that can make a great starting-point for a media-rich site.

Thanks to some new repositories I’ve setup, you can now get started even quicker. With very little knowledge of templates or you can just clone quickstart-freedom or quickstart-valor to have a blank site using both themes.

Getting started

Download/install hugo
Chose from one of the above quickstart repositories and use:

git clone --recursive https://code.gabe.rocks/quickstart-valor.git
or
git clone --recursive https://code.gabe.rocks/quickstart-freedom.git
to get the project files.
Now you can change the basic parameters in hugo.toml to change the site title.
Then you can build out your content by editing markdown files in the content folder.

Once the documentation is complete, I may demonstrate this in a video.

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Object storage

Wed, 10 May 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Fixed! (Update)

I was wrong! if you migrate your videos with rclone you can seamlessly update the video location on PeerTube by changing the base_url parameter in your production.yaml file.

For misskey I’ve opened an issue for it

  streaming_playlists:
    bucket_name: 'streaming-playlists'

    # Allows setting all buckets to the same value but with a different prefix
    prefix: '' # Example: 'streaming-playlists:'

    # Base url for object URL generation, scheme and host will be replaced by this URL
    # Useful when you want to use a CDN/external proxy
    base_url: '' # Example: 'https://mirror.example.com' # CHANGE THIS

  # Same settings but for webtorrent videos
  videos:
    bucket_name: 'videos'
    prefix: ''
    base_url: '' #and this too!

Object storage Troubles

I’ve spent some time experimenting with S3 / Object Storage for public content.
I’ve found it useful for things like fediverse attachments & PeerTube videos.

What is object storage?

Object storage is a form of cloud storage that works well to host files cheaply. This is very helpful in circumstances where your own bandwidth is limited and you want to share large files (like video) with the wider internet. You can still back-up your files easily with rclone so you can always change providers if needed.

The snag

When using software that uploads files to object storage. Such as a fediverse instance like PeerTube, it may associate the upload with the storage location in the database. This means that even if you move the files to the new provider, your software will still look for the content in it’s old location. While many software projects support object storage, they may not support migrating storage.

Recommendations

0) Choose a provider carefully

Shop around before choosing a provider. You may be able to find one available at another price. You may not necessarily need object storage depending on what your requirements are, storing files through most applications does work quite well.

1) Don’t change unless you absolutely have to

In my case, switching providers means I have to re-upload my peertube videos if I want the new location to be reflected. This would be a lot of work if I had uploaded a large amount of videos.

2) Where possible, manage files with your own solution

When choosing to support object storage in your project, ensure that the capability to seamlessly migrate providers is a use-case you build for. If you use a static website generator, it can often be quite easy to set your object storage location to a variable and merely update that reference, or simply do a mass “find-and-replace”.

3) Roll your own Object Storage

If I had significant bandwidth, I would setup my own MinIO server that could then be migrated to different hardware or collocation suites if needed.

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Some updates

Thu, 30 Mar 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Troubleshooting PeerTube S3 uploads

In the interest of being cost-efficient I’ve setup my PeerTube to use object storage to store and serve the videos.

Steps

1. Configure PeerTube

Ensure you’ve got PeerTube setup.
From your peertube directory (or docker volume) you’ll want to update your config/local-production.json / config/localproduction.yaml file.

NOTE:At the time of writing, Updating your server configuration from the management console will ERASE your settings. This means you’ll want to make sure to back up your settings so you can copy over your changes when needed.

Then you’ll add your object storage settings to PeerTube. Using the repository’s production.yaml.example as a guide:


object_storage:
  enabled: true
  endpoint: 'your-s3-provider.com'
  region: 'us-east-1'
  upload_acl: #This is quite important, no real reason to change it.
    public: 'public-read'
    private: 'private'
  proxy:
    proxify_private_files: true #needed with the previous setting
  credentials:
# You can also use AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID environment variable
    access_key_id: ''
# You can also use AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY environment variable
    secret_access_key: ''
# Maximum amount to upload in one request to object storage 5-?MB
  max_upload_part: 100MB

#You have to configure both the "videos" and "streaming playlists location" they can't be the same destination, unless you put them on different buckets.
  streaming_playlists:
    prefix: 'pt-playlists'
    bucket_name: 'bucket_name'
  videos:
    bucket_name: 'bucket_name'
    prefix: 'pt-videos'

2. Upload videos

This is the easy part, if you’ve already uploaded videos you can use the cli tool to move existing videos to storage

# Basic installation
cd /var/www/peertube/peertube-latest
sudo -u peertube NODE_CONFIG_DIR=/var/www/peertube/config NODE_ENV=production npm run create-move-video-storage-job -- --to-object-storage --all-videos

# Docker installation
cd /var/www/peertube-docker
docker-compose exec -u peertube peertube npm run create-move-video-storage-job -- --to-object-storage --all-videos

Otherwise, you can upload your new videos as normal, then PeerTube will:

Store the Video
Transcode the video
Upload the video & transcodes to the Object storage

You’ll be able to check the status of the jobs from the management UI at: /admin/system/jobs from your instance.

What if the upload fails?

Fear not! As long as PeerTube has correctly created the folders, you can use the tool s3cmd to manually upload the files.

s3cmd put data/videos/$video s3://$bucket_name/pt-videos
s3cmd sync data/streaming-playlists/hls/$video_UUID s3://$bucket_name/pt-playlists/$video_UUID

Once complete peertube should simply complete the jobs faster when restarted.

My video isn’t listed in local videos

You’re going to need to set the video state manually to 1. You can do this from your postgres:

update video state=1 where UUID='$video-UUID';

I’d really recommend waiting before transcoding and uploads are finished. Also, your video may just be missing the language attibute if it’s not visible in the “local videos” page.

3. Configure CORS

Your object storage provider may not allow CORS by default. You’ll want to use s3cmd to update the headers

Uptime Monitoring with Kuma

A friend introduced me to Kuma which is an excellent self-hosted status reporting tool. I wanted to share my unique twist. Because I use ssh tunnels to provide services I can redirect 502 errors to the status page. This requires Kuma to stay on the VPS, which I’m perfectly fine with.

To get this result there are two major things you need to keep in mind:

No Redirects If you simply add the nginx option to 502 to your status page, it will return a 502, and simply work, instead you’ll want to configure the monitor to want a specific api endpoint or page that won’t redirect. This means properly entering the url such as ```https://yoursite.com/about`.

Then you set the allowed redirects to 0 so it will properly report the service being down.
Update the nginx config

It’s quite as simple as adding:

502 https://kuma.your-site.com/status/status-page; to each server block!

I like this temporary way of replacing the typical scary 502 - Bad Gateway nginx page in a way that provides more information. I’m quite impressed by kuma. It supports many different services for alerts, including matrix!

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Self-hosting with SSH tunnels

Tue, 21 Mar 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Self-hosting with SSH tunnels

I wrote in a previous post that I’ve been using SSH tunnels to self-host services, but serve from a VPS. This was primarily motivated by the fact that a residential IP may inadvertently give out your exact location to others. Another advantage, is that your files and keys are still kept on your local machine instead of in the cloud. For services that require heavy use of files that aren’t private, I’d recommend using an S3 bucket if possible.

Essentially there are three steps

1. Setup SSH tunnels.

The best way to setup your tunnels is to use your ~/.ssh/config file.

Host vps
    Hostname {your-vps-hostname}
    User {your-server-user}
    ServerAliveInterval 300
    RemoteForward 0.0.0.0:8080 localhost:80
    #...
    #You can forward multiple ports
    RemoteForward 0.0.0.0:8008 localhost:8008
    #IdentityFile ~/.ssh/your-ssh.pub

man page

What this means is that when your machine has an ssh session to the vps, you want to open the ports listed, from the ports on your machine which are listed second.

2. Keep an always-open SSH tunnel.

For this, I created a systemd service:

Using: systemctl edit --full --force systemd-tunnel to create the service

[Unit]
Description=Reverse SSH connection
After=network.target

[Service]
User={your user}
Group={your group}
Type=simple
ExecStart=/usr/bin/ssh -vvv -g -N -T -o "ServerAliveInterval 10" -o "ExitOnForwardFailure yes" vps
Restart=always
RestartSec=3s

[Install]
WantedBy=default.target

Then you can simply start the service with systemctl enable --now secure-tunnel

3. Configure your reverse proxy

In the example .ssh/config we forwarded local port 8080 to the vps port 80. This means that for that port no additional modifications are required. Anything served on your port 8080 will be served from your vps as http. The second example we forwarded local (http) synapse port to 8008 on the vps. So you’ll want to reverse proxy that.To do this on nginx, on your VPS you’ll proxy_pass to https://localhost:8008.

Here’s an example nginx config sample that would be in /etc/nginx/sites/available/matrix

server {
    listen 8448;
    server_name matrix.your.domain;
    location / {
        proxy_pass http://localhost:8008;        
    }
    #SSL and other options here...
}

I hope you’ve found this helpful. I plan to explain this in even more detail in a peertube video sometime soon.

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Now available on Tor & I2P

Fri, 17 Mar 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Onion: http://gabriel262me3lgv3w7xohtesg3laoojmtye644pwirhdm73qmedmsqd.onion

I2P: gabe.i2p

Is one darknet really enough?

I’ve already maintained a presence on the Tor network for a couple of months now. Sadly I noticed that my relative links on this blog were broken! Essentially gabe.rocks worked great, but any relative link would take you back to gabe.rocks and redirect back to Tor (probably not a best practice). I’ve finally fixed this. sorry!

Coming across this blog post by moneromaxi showed me that it shouldn’t be that much extra work to get on I2P.

Maintaining multiple sites

I use hugo to generate this site. Hugo has a handy option that lets you change the base url. I’ve setup a webhook with my forgejo instance that when I update a private repository, it automatically calls my upload.sh for the site.
Which means my basic script works like this:

#!/bin/bash
hugo 
rsync public/ vps:/var/www/gabe.rocks
#Regenerate for onion
hugo -b 'mysite.onion'
rsync public/ /var/tor/gabe.rocks
#Regenerate for I2P
hugo -b 'mysite.i2p'
rsync public/ /var/i2p/gabe.rocks

Future Steps

Ideally, I’d like to migrate all my public services (forgejo/peertube) behind Tor & I2P.

Note: I need to make some updates before my themes are available at gabe.rocks/themes again.

learn more

(RTP) Privacy and Tech Tips has a great tour for I2P.

After getting started, I realized that landchad also has an I2P guide.

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Pi-Server no more

Tue, 07 Mar 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Goodbye Pi-Server, it was a good run.

I’ve moved many of my self-hosted services away from the pi-server to a proper deskstop. The primary motivation was to get more CPU for PeerTube hosted at peertube.libresolutions.network

I’ve also setup Forgejo at code.gabe.rocks.

Thanks to a helpful tip from RetroEdgeTech:

The programmer can now access the machine behind the firewall by connecting to a different machine on the internet at a specific port that forwards ssh to the machine behind the firewall. This command has to be run from the internal network, or in this case the machine we want to grant access to from the outside.

ssh -R 0.0.0.0:43023:localhost:22 sysadmin@machine-on-internet

The part that took me so long to figure out was the “0.0.0.0” before the first colon. This binds port 43023 (or whatever port you choose) to all ipv4 interfaces on that machine, including external ones, not just the internal loopback (localhost) device.

Despite some overhead, this is more-or-less what I’m working towards. At least until I can afford my own rack-space

#TODO:

Update theme documentation

Now that both of my themes are in better shape, I’m hoping to devote some time soon to refreshing the documentation.

Darknet upgrade

Thanks to this post by moneromaxi I’ve decided that I want to make more of my own projects available over Tor & I2P. Both of my websites currently have Tor hidden services, but at least I’d like to throw my code forge behind both as well. Once fully deployed I’ll be in a good spot to make some major updates to interverse

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Remembering Satine 🐰

Sat, 18 Feb 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Satine was my first rabbit. An adorable white dwarf bunny. She was playful, curious and affectionate. She was a rescue, first plopped on my chest in 2016.

It was a joy getting to know Satine, especially for the first little while when it was just me and her.

Rabbits are lovely pets, they’re smart and very expressive.

Every “binky” was a nice heart flutter when caught.

Her other half, Obi-Wan

Obi-wan was her brown lop-ear companion. There was an adorable incident where Obi had to go to the vet, and Satine lunged in when they went to grab him. She was definitely willing to fight for him when it counted!

I will say he was the more photogenic of the two. I’m not sure if it was simply his fur texture, or if he just was better at sitting still!

It was always really nice to see them playing together. They will both always have a special place in my heart.

This bowl was made at the mud oven. My other half did an incredible job painting the two of them in a water dish we had glazed for them.

Why the names?

Satine is named after Satine Kryze from the Star Wars: Clone Wars show. Her companion Obi-wan Kenobi, needs no introduction. I named them so that Obi-wan and Satine could have the life together they missed in the show. I am very happy that they, (the rabbits) actually were deeply in love. It’s a tragic tale for sure, and certainly has a deeper meaning for me now. —

Reminder: Animals go to heaven.

While I have no theological authority to declare this, I wholeheartedly believe it. Heaven is when you are fully in the presence of God, you not only experience God’s infinite love for you and humanity, but all acts of love through all of time and space. In heaven, you are with all of it:

Your mother holding you as a baby
A cat carrying her kittens
Baby ducks following their mother
A father marmoset carrying his babies

In all of life’s infinite wonder, love is never lost. Anything that is alive, is one with God.

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Personal Homepages are really cool

Fri, 20 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Most browsers support some kind of custom home page that’s easily accessible at the press of a button, even on mobile. I love bookmarks, they’re a vital part of how I browse the web on firefox. Sadly, I find I don’t have quite the same functionality on brave mobile for Android. The good news is that a simple static page hosted anywhere is enough to provide a fantastic interface for sticking to relevant sites. Giving me the opportunity to keep sources I like readily accessible.

After making a relatively trivial homepage for myself I’ve noticed myself spending much less time idly browsing. I’m more focused on keeping up with the content I find interesting, instead of endlessly scrolling on feeds.

How to build your own homepage

1. Build the page

Even without knowing any html you can start small.

For example say you want a simple set of three links

    <a href="https://site1-link">Site 1</a>
    <a href="https://site2-link">Site 2</a>
    <a href="https://site3-link">Site 3</a>

As you get better, using the <style> tags can help keep your css rules in the same files.

2. Save the location

Throw it anywhere as ‘index.html’ and bookmark that location.
If you just want it for a single device you can save it locally.

Fancy ideas for a personal homepage

Simple enhancements:

Static reminders
Date & time clock
Images and icons
Rotating wallpaper
A webGL background

Things get really interesting the moment you use some kind of server-side functionality

I’m considering using Alpine.js and PocketBase to build a variety of enhancements like:

A search bar, using specific sites as options
Dynamic backgrounds
Alerts & Reminders
Updating items from the homepage with a login
Keeping it private with the login
Calendar & Agenda
Pulling content from feeds
Interverse
…Widgets?

Far from a new idea, I think homepages are a very accessible way for people to gain some digital independence.

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Keeping it simple.

Fri, 13 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0000

I’m going to be doing a major re-work of the valor theme. While I did successfully create what approximated an individual ‘social media’ like design, I’m not very happy with how it’s turned out overall. So the plan is to rebuild it simpler, and eventually update the repository. The goal is to maintain the same multimedia-friendliness but without the confusing layout. In the meantime, I hope this simple layout suffices. If you’re shopping around for a hugo theme I’m fairly happy with where freedom is at, but I need to document my new shortcodes as well as the theme features better.

Journaling

While my good friend at retroedge.tech is starting #100DaysToOffload, I have a slightly different new years resolution. I am starting to use Obsidian to write my own personal journal. While I have many goals for 2023, if nothing else finding ways to reduce stress is one of the most important at this time. I’m hoping to offload fears into my personal journal, as well as to collect my own personal knowledge to either bring to this blog or to Libre Solutions Network. I’ve successfully maintained two weeks of consistent journaling, and I’m already feeling a bit of relief. For any fellow ‘over-thinkers’ out there, I would highly recommend taking up the practice.

Bookmarks

If you haven’t already, feel free to browse my curated bookmarks file. Eventially, I’d like to publish a set of bookmarks by topic, and streamline how I export them. If nothing else it gives me a reason to continuously seek out interesting or useful resources. That file isn’t what I would consider comprehensive, but eventually I hope to get around to sharing more. For all the hype brave gets, being able to import search bookmarks with firefox/librewolf feels awesome. I love being able to cut out most search engines by using various sites’ own search function from the address bar.

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Apocalypse Scenario #253

Wed, 07 Dec 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Matt Stoller writes:

I hear from right-wing small business owners that employees are just not showing up, and I also hear from left-wing professors that students are just not showing up. This dynamic got much worse during Covid. Something is very off.

Church attendance is down, crime is up, labor force participation is down, life spans are down, drug overdoses are up. I don’t know what’s going on but it’s not good.

Twitter

There really is an agreement all over the political spectrum that things are in fact quite dire.
There is a near universal belief in the replies that the root of the problem is a sick culture.

Here are particular axes people grind:

because of long covid?
because easy money spoiled people and they’re unwilling to toil for meager wages?
because kids are lazy or their parents failed them?
because the naked corruption of the pandemic response demoralized people?
because of vaccine mandates and other abuses violated the social contract?

I found the following quote tweets illuminating:

I don’t know the way forward from this. In the face of these concerns optimism reeks of denial. If you’re struggling to stay motivated I wish that you find ways to work to help those around you. If this as bad as some are predicting, we are all going to need a lot of help.

I pray that that through the holy spirit, people find fulfilling, meaningful and honest means to move forward in their own lives.

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Don't turn on the flock!

Fri, 25 Nov 2022 00:00:00 +0000

@ForgedaNohledge posted a fantastic rebuttal to Andrew Tate saying that the “slave minded” sheep are the problem. As someone who’s life is threatened he can’t be accused of not having a stake on the issue.

He posts his rebuttal across 4 clips:

I’ve stiched them together as audio here:

As a personal note I can attest to feeling betrayed by how people have acted during the covid crisis. ForgedaNohledge correctly points out that the people whipped up into a frenzy over covid are themselves victims of the agenda. My other half has consistently reminded me that I am privileged to be in the position to spend countless hours to do my own research on things I find pressing. It is tempting to take one’s own situation for granted and then judge others.

People who have families and/or demanding jobs aren’t always in the position to immediately distinguish, reason against, and ultimately overcome well-funded highly coordinated propaganda campaigns. This doesn’t excuse those in positions of authority from criminal or civil liability, but it is a reason to forgive many of those who may have wronged you. The proper way to heal the massive wounds that were torn and salted during the Covid Crisis is for those who orchestrated and profited off its execution are not only prosecuted under the law, but also give restitution to those they harmed.

Dehumanizing those who simply didn’t have the ability or disposition to turn over every rock despite nearly all in authority telling them not to isn’t the right answer. I can understand the anger, to many of us I’m sure mask wearing does perfectly symbolize the very essence of what allowed this tyranny.

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Follow me on Misskey!

Wed, 02 Nov 2022 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve setup my own Misskey instance with their super useful docker guide.

Follow me at: @gabriel@mk.gabe.rocks

So far I’m really loving the UI and features. Misskey seems like a really cool place to kick it.

Also if you’re reading this, you may want to consider adding my button to your website!

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pi-server upgrade

Fri, 07 Oct 2022 00:00:00 +0000

No longer using the pi-server

Upgrading my pi-server’s boot drive

I don’t trust microSD cards. They’re tiny, and so very flimsy.
It’s hard to believe you can throw 1TB of data on these tiny things now.
I craved the certainty of an old reliable sata ssd with a usb-type c enclosure.

The pi-server serving you this site no longer uses a microsd card at all!

The raspberry Pi imager makes it very easy to change your Pi’s boot order.
Simply select usb boot, and flash it to a small microsd card.

When you boot up with the sdcard wait for the green light to start flashing rapidly, that means it’s done.
You can now remove the microsd and boot your usb drive.

To migrate my existing installation I simply made new partitions on the SSD and copied the files.
Additionally you’ll want to make sure your /etc/fstab/ points to your new /boot/ partition

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Hugo Themes

Sat, 17 Sep 2022 00:00:00 +0000

My hugo themes are open source:

Valor
- You can see a preview with extra tips here
Freedom
- You can see a preview with extra tips here

Hoping to make more themes, these are just the starting concept.

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Now available on Tor

Sun, 11 Sep 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Something I found helpful:
How to have your site automatically redirect Tor users to your onion address.

Onion Address

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Stable diffusion: first look

Sun, 04 Sep 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Stable diffusion is an AI tool for generating images from text prompts or other images.

How to get started:

I found this video helpful the basic process is:

Install pytorch (docker images are available)
Download the pre-trained model
Run the scripts

Playing around

Why not start with some Transformers eh?

I was a bit shocked how quick it was to genereate these and how decent they look. I really like the one on the left.

How about dragons?

This didn’t suprise me much, I included artstation in the prompt to get some more detail.

Knights?

These are okay, I love the helmets but I can tell the prompt I gave could have been improved.

How about something cute and fluffy?

I was hoping for a bunch of baby bunnnies…which I got…but oh my! What’s wrong with them?!

More transformers! On the death star!

All-and-all I think these are downright fantastic!

How about something hard! A star wars fight!

A bit confused but not bad!

How about reaaallly fancy sandcastles?

I really like how these turned out!

LEGO on Mars?

Cherry-picking

Here are some of the ones I liked specifically or found interesting.

Summary

Be specific! There’s a great deal the model doesn’t seem to understand. It understands cute though

Some details will be wrong A lot of specifics will slip through the cracks.

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Running Pi Arch Linux

Wed, 17 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0000

No longer using the pi-server

This site was served to you by a Raspberry Pi 4 Model B running Arch Linux

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Freedom Convoy 2022

Wed, 13 Jul 2022 00:00:00 +0000

I have seen Canadians of all walks of life set aside class, ethnicity, province, and everything else to stand against abusive covid-19 policy. I’ve personally experienced a loss of income due to these policies. When things look bleak, remember that all over this great country there are hardworking people willing to make real sacrifices for freedom, prosperity, and the hope of a better future. I know that together there are no limits to what we can achieve.

I am forever inspired by those who have spoken up against institutional corruption and championed fundamental rights in these dark times. Now more than ever we need strong courageous people willing to work towards building a future worth inheriting. The challenges in repairing Canadian culture and institutions are incredible. I believe that together there are enough people willing and able to face these challenges.

Learn more at Campfire.Wiki

If you’d like to see some phootgraphs I’ve taken you can browse them from the internet archive

Now is the time to stand up and be counted

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Reclaiming Territory in Cyberspace

Thu, 16 Jun 2022 00:00:00 +0000

PDF also available

Humanity has lost cyberspace to corporations, corruption, and algorithmic control. It is of utmost importance that we increase people’s general technological understanding. We can all build a human-centric cyberspace instead of one used to dominate and control us.

Hardware Basics

We are living in interesting times. These days a vast array of tools are aimed at harvesting as much data as possible to build powerful centralized control systems. These systems are then leveraged against people in all kinds of insidious ways. This is not merely self-interested profit-seeking; it has a purpose and that purpose is to wage war on humanity. The Tools of the Technocracy series was intended to demonstrate the vast array of tools being weaponized against the people.

With this in mind, it is challenging to know how to proceed. People may want to simply eliminate all contact with technology, it’s hard to blame them. Others, are simply not prepared to make that decision and can fall into a trap of apathy. This series aims to build a solid foundation to reclaim much of your own digital sovereignty. As you do this, you can leverage many useful systems without becoming a prisoner of the technocracy. Those who are locked into the cloud are not only captives of the system, but are actively providing assistance to those who wish to control everyone, and everything.

But how can we turn the tide? What if it is too late to meaningfully change things? While I can not promise total victory, there are many important ways for people to take action and start to liberate themselves from the cloud. I believe the pursuit of liberty is an asymmetric one in the people’s favor. While things may look bleak, it is very clear that every act of defiance, every action taken to bring freedom; costs the tyrants exponentially more effort to reverse.

Strategic overview

In cyberspace there 3 major resources: Storage, Bandwidth, and Computing Power. Our goal must be to maximize our use of these resources without having them being used against us.

1. Storage

For content and information to exist it has to be stored somewhere. Storage varies in capacity, speed, and form-factor.

Capacity:

Hard drives (HDD) offer significantly more storage per $ than solid-state drives (SSD).
Speed:
- Solid-state drives are much faster than hard drives.
- Optical media is much slower.
Form-factor:
- Flash drives are smaller portable storage devices that can be carried around with you.
- SD Cards are very tiny and have very high storage-to-space ratios.
- Hard drives and most solid-state drives are significantly bulkier.

These trade-offs represent opportunities in some areas and troubles in others. Depending on your needs you may only need a small amount of storage, in other cases you may need significantly more. In my opinion, here are the optimal roles for each storage device:

Solid-state drives:

Primary storage for Desktop/Laptop devices.
Their faster speed offers a great deal of advantages:

Your system will boot faster
Loading files and programs will be faster
They are significantly quieter than hard drives
They’re also smaller than hard drives

Hard drives:

Additional storage for media, such as videos, music, documents, and images. Due to their cost effectiveness these are fantastic for larger backups.

Flash drives & SD Cards:

Transferring files over the “sneaker-net” by personally delivering them, or through the mail. Additionally, these are very great for “quick-and-dirty” back-ups of small amounts of files.

Optical media:

Aside from being able to be played directly with their respective reader, optical media is fantastic for archiving. Anything you you want stored in an untouched format.

At minimum you’ll want to preserve data you care about. Backups are very important to prevent data loss. At least having some storage helps prevent you from keeping all your data in the cloud. Portable storage is a great way to have access to the same files on multiple devices without having to constantly sync those files over the network. You can turn HDDs and SSDs into portable storage by using their respective enclosure.

2. Connectivity

The “information superhighway” is fueled by the ability for large amounts of data to be transferred large distances. Connectivity varies in latency, bandwidth, and range.

Latency is how fast it takes information to arrive.
Bandwidth is how much information can be carried in a given time.
Range is how far you can send information.

Wired networks are king in terms of speed, very low latency and very high bandwidth. Attackers need to have access to the wires to intercept your network information.

Wireless networks have significantly more range, but have significant speed and security trade-offs.

LoRa (Long Range) has incredible range, and is simple to deploy yourself. Unfortunately, it is not suited for significant amounts of data transmission. Bluetooth is infamously insecure, but has a shorter range and conveniently integrates with many devices.

Mobile Networks (LTE/5G) are run by large corporations,but they are convenient. Outside of specific circumstances connectivity is generally associated with your identity. WiFi is most commonly providing internet access to devices in specific buildings. It is generally recommended to use your own access point instead of relying on the router provided by your ISP.

While you may have a fantastic connection, others may not. Ensuring that content you produce is accessible to low data connections puts you at a significant advantage. This means you may want to have as much raw text as possible, and smaller sized images & video. If your website is under 512KB consider joining the 512KB club.

3. Computing power

More computing power exponentially increases the possibilities available with given resources and information. Computing power has to balance heat, energy efficiency, and complexity. Powerful machines use more power and generate more heat. Clusters of powerful machines generate even more heat and require incredible amounts of energy. It is important not to underestimate the computing power available to the technocrats, many feats impossible to consumer grade hardware are still on the table for larger entities. Likewise, it is foolish to dismiss the capabilities of even relatively small amounts of computing power, even the most simple devices can still relay data to more sophisticated ones.

AI is a force multiplier for computing power. It requires a massive amount of energy, computing power and energy to train, but once the model is trained it requires exponentially less to use the model. This is incredible because AI models can be shared, potentially saving people large amounts of computing power, which in turn saves lots of energy. Unfortunately, this is also means that those with access to privately trained AI behind close doors have disproportionate advantages in specific areas.

Smart phones provide a significant amount of computing power on the go. Their operating systems do a great deal to restrict people from installing software outside their store. Many of these devices are sold with relatively little storage to incentivize people to move onto the cloud. The biggest challenge with having a much more powerful device is ensuring it isn’t being leveraged against you.

Do you necessarily need to hoard the most computing power you possibly can? I don’t think this is necessary. In fact I believe the best strategy is to ensure that the computing power is well distributed between people to even the playing-field. One way of achieving this is sharing a used system with someone instead of recycling it. Not everyone stays up to date with the latest hardware and your “obsolete” device may be an upgrade for someone else. Where possible, it’s important to liberate hardware from the cloud, instead of simply purchasing devices and creating more e-waste.

Assessment

The cloud as a whole is an atrocious waste in the first place. Crimes against ordinary people aren’t prevented by all this passive surveillance, children still go missing in incredible numbers despite all this incredible technology, and none of it has been used to make people happier, empowered, healthier human beings. At best, the cloud is a tax-write-off for enterprises that do not wish to maintain their own systems. This has significant costs to us as we lose any and all privacy from the system.

Even as a group, humanity is at a staggering disadvantage in terms of these resources. Governments of the world, big tech, and other large institutions will have the majority of the storage, bandwidth, and computing power.

While that makes it sound like it’s “game over” it’s really not. Manufacturing, configuring, and maintaining all of these systems is insanely expensive. Much of the work done by these systems is solely focused on collecting data on people, analyzing it, and then manipulating people…if the people let them. This is why it is very important for these systems to make it as easy as possible for people to keep feeding them data; every single conscious choice to send these systems less data and reduce it’s influence turns this very expensive enterprise into a massive waste.

This asymmetry is the root of our goal. We don’t need to build a competing digital-financial-complex to win, we simply have to regain enough privacy in our own lives to undermine this system. The goal of these systems isn’t to simply hijack our devices and turn them against us; where possible, they want to turn us against ourselves.

Devices

The internet as a whole is a giant battlefield in the war for cyberspace. In this respect, every single connected device is a strategic location that may be already entirely compromised by malevolent forces. These are not limited to the technocracy, ordinary cyber-criminals would be very happy to make use of the resources your device has access to. When an attacker takes control of your device, it will inevitably cause you problems. The more capabilities the device has, the more of a danger it is to you. Machines can lie, a compromised device can and will act in subtle, unpredictable ways. Many systems ultimately trust that the device is doing what the device reports it is doing.

What kind of capabilities can devices have?

The main computing elements in machines are the CPU (Central Processing Unit) and the GPU (Graphics Processing Unit) also known as the video card. The CPU is responsible for running the majority of the tasks the system runs, with the GPU being responsible for drawing the display(s).

For CPUs there are specific instruction sets used by programs for that architecture. This is important because not all software will be available to each architecture.

When the machine turns on the boot-loader looks for any Operating Systems that are stored on the system, which are then loaded. Once the OS is loaded, the OS prepares any systems and services that are needed to run. Unfortunately these devices can and do have back-doors in them, most infamously there is the IntelME which is essentially a whole new system running underneath your system. There are mitigation (discussed below) but it’s important to have the long-view when understanding what we are up against.

The immense cost of anti-human devices

Planned obsolescence

A major factor in the increasing amount of e-waste is manufacturers dropping support for devices. When a device no longer receives updates it is not only a significant security risk; it also can arbitrarily limit what software the device can run. This robs people of the time and resources used to acquire and maintain the device in the first place.

Defective by design

In addition to planned obsolescence, many devices are made difficult to repair. Often by Manufacturers not disclosing vital information required to maintain and fix them. By not being able to repair devices, you often can’t update or even modify them to your needs.

This increasingly applies to more than just computers, but appliances, vehicles and tools.

Mitigation measures

Dedicated devices

When it comes to hardware “less is more” in so many ways. The only way for someone to access photos on a non-networked digital camera is for them to have the device. On the other hand, “smart” devices, with many features and little transparency will be passively sending all kinds of data without the people nearby being aware. An “air-gapped” PC (a computer without network access) is a lot harder to hack into, usually requiring physical access.

A webcam you can unplug is one you can easily prevent from recording you
A hardware authenticator can keep encryption keys safe
Having your backup on storage that isn’t plugged-in can protect you from ransomware
Using a power bank to charge your mobile device can prevent them from being hacked by charging ports

Faraday bags

Not every device can be single-purpose unfortunately. For laptops, smartphones, and tablets you may want to consider using a faraday bag that can block out any network signal.

Hardware switches

Some devices provide hardware switches to turn off specific features, some laptops have it for WiFi. Note that this may be more of a hotkey or “suggestion” to the operating system rather than actually cutting off the power. Make sure you know that the switch actually cuts power to the device you intend to turn off.

Right to Repair

Right to repair is an important movement in restoring our rights over our devices. Keeping details about these devices secret does little to keep things secure and is simply a subsidy to platforms with the worst practices. Total ownership over your devices is one of the most important steps in ensuring the creators don’t end up owning you.

Free and Open Source Hardware (FOSH)

Instead of fighting existing manufacturers, it can often be easier to support the creation of new devices with open schematics and great documentation. This is another area where a little effort goes a long way. As the tools to build devices become more accessible more and more useful projects will come online.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-source_hardware

Libreboot

Libreboot is a fantastic project for creating Free and Open Source (FOSS) firmware for computers. This is very important in removing the Intel ME from intel devices.

https://libreboot.org/

-https://libreboot.at/

Operating System Fundamentals

After you’ve taken careful consideration of what devices you want in your life, it’s important to take control of the systems you use. Just as not all devices are equal, different systems have massive differences. Fundamentally the question ends up being one of trust. Do you trust your data on a Windows machine designed by Microsoft? Do you trust your data on smartphones with Google or Apple? One of the most powerful tools these systems have is to convince you to put your data onto the cloud by making it easier and more convenient. They don’t need to proactively steal information from you if they can simply encourage you to do it yourself.

Our primary advantage against the technocracy is that we can almost always do more with less. By taking control of your systems, you can make significant steps to enhancing your digital privacy, security, and freedom. Every unit of data you deprive from the cloud incrementally makes a waste out of the immense resources spent on running it. This means that it is critical to prioritize keeping your data and data processing on your own systems. Thankfully this doesn’t mean doing it entirely alone. There are many ways to collaborate and pool resources without sacrificing ownership, autonomy, or privacy.

First, we need to understand our systems better. By understanding how our systems work, we can truly reclaim our own processing and bring our data home.

Abstraction

Every time you launch a program or open an app your device has to use the Operating System (OS) to make important preparations. Application files are loaded from storage, and all kinds of system resources and devices are accessed. The important feature of the OS is abstraction; simplifying complex systems into easy-to-use interfaces for applications. Because of this, application developers don’t need worry about what kind of device your system has, they only need to know what features it has. For example, your browser can easily use whatever camera & microphone you have, rather than only supporting specific ones.

Computing power abstraction

The heart of your computing power is the CPU, it is the engine that provides the raw power for computations. Almost all modern CPUs have multiple cores which are units that allow more processing to be done synchronously. The OS translates physical cores (and extra functionality) into virtual threads which run tasks. The important part to understand is that when processing large amounts of data there are often ways to do it faster with programs that make use of more threads.

Memory is similar to storage, but it’s the warehouse the CPU uses to organize data. As programs bring in larger and larger units of memory it is up to the OS to eventually free that memory when it is no longer in use when the program stops using it. Operations that use memory are significantly faster than ones working on storage. These trade-offs are things software developers should keep in mind when writing software, it can very often be the difference between a powerful or unusable tool.

Simply being aware of the limits of your system (such as how much memory it has, and how many cores/threads the CPU has) goes a long way in helping understand how to optimize certain tasks. When processing large amounts of data, you may prefer to use a program or tool that makes use of more threads. You can avoid crashes by not attempting things that use up all of your memory.

The critical part of taking control of your own computing is ensuring that you’re doing your processing on your machine. Running your own programs rather than using software-as-a-service (SaaS). By doing this you are not only protecting your data, but also your processes. With total control of your environment you are less vulnerable to outside failures.

Storage abstraction

The most important aspect of having control of your own data is making sure it is only on storage you control, and ideally have physical possession of. For each storage device you have the ability to divide it up into partitions. These are useful in situations where you need different filesystems on the same device. In many cases, the bootloader will be installed to a small system partition and the rest will use the filesystem your OS prefers. For example, your Windows system likely already has a system partition with the bootloader installed, the main partition with all your files, and possibly a recovery partition.

Devices need to have a partition table which tells the system how the partitions are set. The two partition tables are GPT & MBR. On older devices you’ll more often see MBR partition tables, and newer devices will often use GPT. Once the partition table is written you can now write the filesystems to the partitions.

Filesystems allow you to save data on your device. There are many other useful ones like sshfs, which allows you to remotely manage files on different systems. When installing a new OS to a device, you may have to create a separate partition for the bootloader first. Many installers make partitioning substantially easier, but understanding how they work helps you better suit systems to your needs.

Storage is the very first thing the cloud aims to take away from you. In exchange for access to your files from everywhere, they put your data in their control. Putting your files on your own devices takes a bit more effort, but it’s one of the most important ways to secure your data. The easiest way to keep information safe is to not distribute it when you don’t need to.

Network abstraction

There’s no place like “127.0.0.1”.

There are many important systems used to simplify various aspects of connecting to the internet. DNS (Domain name system) allows you you access sites and services without knowing their IP address. Your own system has a hosts file which is another way to assign names to IPs. For almost every device 127.0.0.1 maps to localhost, which means the device itself. Any service running on your own device will then be accessible from there.

DNS

DNS (Domain Name System) is what allows your system to communicate with other devices. It works like this: 1.ou open your browser and enter https://fsf.org 2. Your device asks the DNS server “Where can I find fsf.org?” 3. The DNS server will then ask other nameservers for an up-to-date record of where the site is located 4. The DNS server will then reply to your device with an IP (such as 209.51.188.174) 5. Your browser then loads the page from https://fsf.org

This is generally done on the system level in your network settings. A huge privacy concern is that by default most DNS queries are not encrypted which means it isn’t difficult for bad actors on your network to:

Know what sites you visit
What online services you use
How often you use them

This doesn’t necessarily relay any information about the content of the connection however. If you’re using encrypted connections you can be reasonably sure that the content remains safe. This isn’t a huge comfort because for many actors metadata is far more valuable than the content. From a privacy perspective, DNS seems to be one of the most under-appreciated aspects of protecting oneself. In many ways it is because most good VPNs will handle DNS as well, but there are other considerations.

DNS can also be set at the application level. Browsers, for example, will have their own DNS settings. Most major browsers now support DOH, which is a very convenient way to encrypt your browser’s DNS queries. For encrypting all of your system’s DNS queries you may want to consider using DNSCrypt.

Challenges

Hardware restrictions

Hardware will significantly limit what options you have to install on your device. While some options may simply be more difficult (Android on the desktop? Say it isn’t so!) others simply won’t be possible at all. This is a significant challenge when “de-googling” android phones. Custom ROMS won’t always be available for less-popular devices. Specific software may not be accessible on all platforms, software you use on Windows may not be available on MacOS or Linux. Even when it’s compatible, both Android and iOS restrict “side-loading” (installing) software outside of the store by default.

Spying

From phones to fridges, “smart” devices continuously collect data on their users and how the device is used. Most spying takes place on the network or application level but the OS itself may prevent you from removing unwanted applications or services. In almost every case, this telemetry doesn’t benefit you at all. They will often say that the data is collected to improve their services, but in most cases the data collection is the end itself.

Vulnerabilities

It is important to make sure your OS & programs are up to date to avoid well-known vulnerabilities from being used against you. Law enforcement agencies have deployed malware to bypass encryption.

Breaking Free

Removing data from the cloud

Move it all. Move everything off the cloud. The goal of this course is to give you ownership and agency over your own data. You’re going to want your own local backups regardless. Have multiple redundant (offline) backups in multiple locations to be safe from corruption, damage, and house-fires.

Free Software

Free software is software that gives you the user the freedom to share, study and modify it. We call this free software because the user is free.

fsf.org

Using the terminal

While you can do all kinds of things with without interacting with your system’s terminal, being able to type out commands can really help you use some very powerful and flexible tools.

There is a fantastic array of software that you can quickly use by typing a few short terms.

yt-dlp

You can easily download videos from many sites, like twitter, with a simple command. This tool is fantastic for being able to keep local copies of videos that may be censored or otherwise unavailable.
wget

Downloads files from the web, including archiving entire websites for offline reference.
ffmpeg

Great for converting videos.
ssh

ssh is used to remotely manage systems by using their terminal.

For example, imagine you want 10 seconds out of a 40 minute video on Youtube and want to put it on your website. I’m running Linux. Here’s one way to accomplish that using the terminal:

yt-dlp youtube.com/some-video -o video.mp4

(downloads the video to ‘video.mp4’)

ffmpeg -i video.mp4 -ss (start time) -t 10 video-clipped.mp4

(uses ffmepg to clip out the 10 second clip at the chosen start time and save it as ‘video-clipped.mp4)

scp video-clipped.mp4 my-website:/var/www/website/videos/video-clipped.mp4

Using scp I then copied the clipped video on to the website’s files making it available instantly.

Anyone would then be able to access the video from https://my-website/videos/video-clipped.mp4. This does require a webserver and a few other things setup, which you will learn how to set up in future parts. I use this example to demonstrate how much time you can save with a few quick keystrokes. Especially once you start to automate things you do on a regular basis.

Linux terminal commands

Basic command prompt in Windows

Virtual Servers

If you are interested in running your own servers and services you’ll likely want to get familiar with Linux and Open Source software. Instead of rushing to reinstall your system, you may want to try it out without changing your current system. Here are some ways to get started:

VPSs

One of the easiest ways to get started is to spin up a Virtual Private Server (VPS) with a cloud host. This will allow you to try out all kinds of different configurations without using virtual machines yourself. Sign up to Vultr with this link and get $100 in free credit.

Virtual Machines

With virtualbox you can create systems on top of your system. This gives you a fantastic simulation of what would be an entirely separate device. Virtual machines are handy because you can even pause them to freeze them in time, save the state, and even rollback to that state in the future.

How to install Ubuntu on Virtualbox

The World Wide Web

This is one of the most critical posts in the series. The primary battlefield in the information war is the world wide web. A majority of internet users aren’t actually users. They are captives of digital kingdoms that harvest their data, control their interactions, and manipulate them. Breaking free requires not only escaping these digital fiefdoms but also helping others do the same.

Understanding the battlefield

The world wide web is a network of networks. You connect to it through your ISP (internet service provider). Your ISP will then connect to large networks that act as the backbone of the internet. This is what allows almost anyone to connect to all kinds of different sites and services.

Websites

When you load a website here is what happens:

Your browser does a DNS query asking for the IP address of the server.
It then downloads the page, and any data and media associated with that page.
As it displays the content of that page, any additional scripts running on that page will start automatically.

Websites can have all kinds of content on them. Beyond simple text and images there can be video, audio, as well as interactive content. Extra content isn’t always good. Many times your browser can be downloading media and assets from sources that track the people accessing that content. This one of the ways Facebook, Google, and other Big Tech companies are able to track your browsing habits.

Scripts running on pages can do a wide multitude of things, from dynamically updating content on the page, to fingerprinting you to identify you specifically. While you can turn off scripts, many sites will unnecessarily gate content behind scripts and often an account as well. This trains people into constantly handing over more and more personal information in exchange for basic access. This is has fundamentally altered the web from an open information resource to a highly controlled technological terror.

Services

Servers can send information other than just pages and content, they can process and serve data. This allows many sites to have a more interactive experience. For example there’s infinite scrolling, instead of you having to open more and more pages to see results, the page just asks the server for more items and slots them into the page. The opportunities are limitless; and so are the troubles. This functionality allows sites, apps, and even smart devices to monitor and manipulate you.

Services also opened the door for people to be able to establish an online identity. This is what allows people to do all kinds of things like online purchases and comment on posts.

Many services these days have either been naively or malevolently made to collect much more information than would be ideal. Not all services need to operate this way. Where possible it’s important to redesign services from the ground up to respect user’s privacy & autonomy.

Your tools: Browsers

Browsers are the program or mobile app you use to access content on the web. Choosing what browser to use is a complicated topic without a ‘one-size-fits all’ solution.

When taking charge of your online interactions, you need to be aware of how browsers work. Then you can make more informed decisions about what browser to use.

Permissions

You may trust some sites more than others. Permissions decide what kind of access each site can use. Depending on your settings; sites may be able to autoplay videos, request the camera/microphone, and use your location. As always, the best way to keep information safe is not to distribute it.

HTTPS

HTTPS is an encrypted connection for the web. This requires the server to have a certificate. The certificate is an encryption key that can ensure the validity of the content. Certificates have to be signed by by a certificate authority. Let’s Encrypt is a free, efficient way to generate certificates for servers you control.

HTTPS is not a perfect guarantee of safety.

SSL added and removed here :^)

This diagram from the Snowden leaks means that if an entity can put a server in the middle of the connection, it can remove any and all protection provided by the connection. This is essentially what Cloudflare does in exchange for their DDOS Protection.

Javascript

Web pages can be enhanced (or corrupted) with javascript. Interverse is a project designed to help web people discover links between sites. By providing a machine readable index, sites can promote other sites to each other. This can eventually build a fully-decentralized, resilient way to discover sites.

The javascript running interverse does a variety of things:

After the page is loaded it downloads a file (/.well-known/interverse) from the website hosting the client.
The browser to then directly loads the file from the sites linked to by the origin site, receiving their details and connections.
Using a library called Alpine.js the data is then displayed on the page.

Dev tools

Both Firefox & Chrome provide very featureful tools for understanding how sites you use work. You can open them with CTRL-SHIFT-I. You will then be greated with either a new window or a sidebar with multiple tabs including:

Elements

This tab lays out the entire page’s code. You can make changes which will be reflected as long as you keep the page open.

Console

This will display any errors or logs on the page. You can even run your own javascript on the page.

Sources

Displays files and media used by the page.

Network

Lists and profiles any network connections made while loading the page.

Censorship Avoidance

RSS

Using an RSS reader allows you to directly download new content from sites directly. This is very useful in reducing your dependence on big tech social media feeds. Here’s how you can get the RSS URL from nearly any website:

Open the page
Search for the word ‘RSS’ using CTRL-F or “Find on page”
If there’s no link there, view the source of the page (CTRL-U) and see if there’s an RSS link. An easy way to find it may be searching for ‘/feed’
Copy the link
Add the link to your preferred RSS reader

Bookmarks

Saving websites you visit by bookmarking sites reduces your dependence on search engines. You can have your browser auto-complete results from your bookmarks so every site is only a few keystrokes away!

Privacy front-ends

Sometimes the content you want to access is on social media sites you no longer have accounts for. Libredirect is a fantastic service for redirecting you to a website that grabs the content for you. The major ones are:

Invidious for YouTube
Nitter for Twitter
Bibliogram for Instagram

Communications

The technocracy is highly motivated to take control of your means of communication. It’s no longer simply about who can promote messages to the masses, rather it’s increasingly focused on how you communicate with your intimate contacts.

Regardless of how the technical implementation turn out to be in detail: if the plans of the commission should be coming into action, the intrusion into privacy will be fairly deep. Just imagine for each and every message, regardless of a suspicion, to be automatically searched, evaluated and, in terms of a supposed match, reported — not only to the providers but straight to the authorities.

Inevitably, this would include countless perfectly normal, legitimate photos and videos that people send each other. If automatic detection, so far still unreliable, should raise alarm, the content would have to be checked by humans either way. Not only would this violate the right to privacy even more, but as well open another gateway that opens a possibility to be misused.

Why Chat Control is Dangerous

Public vs Private

There are all kinds of different choices you’ll want to make in terms of public vs private communication. For communications meant to be private you’re going to want to encrypt them in some way. It’s important to be clear with yourself about which communications are intended to be private or which are for the world to see. If you’re not careful they’ll often get mixed.

An N-Way street

Communications aren’t just about sending messages, it’s also about receiving them. It doesn’t matter if someone has a megaphone to the world if the systems in place have mechanisms to prevent that message from being received by anyone.

Means

Communication ideally involves a connection. It doesn’t matter if it’s wifi, fiber, or your cellular connection, odds are your communications are being done over one or many networks.

Resources

In part 1 we defined the primary resources in cyberspace to be:

Storage
Computing power
Bandwidth

Computing power is currently the least important when it comes to communications, in most scenarios either Bandwidth (specifically latency) or Storage become more important. Your communications need to be stored somewhere and the cloud is just someone else’s computer. The privacy and security of your devices matters a great deal in keeping your communications safe.

Just as it is important to move your data back onto devices and systems in your control it is ideal to use forms of communication that don’t leave your messages on servers outside of your control.

Encryption

When it comes to communication there can be different stages of encryption:

Encryption for transport (Network)

Which means that messages can’t be read while being sent to their destination
Encryption at rest (Storage)

Which means that messages are encrypted when stored, and need to be decrypted to be read

The ideal to have both, many services (such as gmail) will say they’re protected with encryption, but they only mean (1) encryption over the network, and can be scanned / catalogued.

Another harsh reality when it comes to encrypted communication :

Not your keys, not your messages.

Just like when it comes to cryptocurrencies, the data is only as safe as the encryption keys themselves. Some providers will additionally encrypt your messages at rest (2) but they will manage the keys for you. In every circumstance the ideal is to control the keys yourself.

Mitigation

End-to-end encryption

End-to-end encryption is a sophisticated method that uses keys from both participants to encrypt messages directly for those participants. This feature is a must-have for private communications on platforms you don’t control.

Peer-to-peer connections

One of the best ways to have direct communication would be to not have to route messages through a server. When trying to do this over the internet (instead of locally over WiFi/Bluetooth ect) your devices need a method to “find each other”. WebRTC is a solution that requires a TURN server. This means that the server knows that two IPs are communicating, but has no insight into what is being communicated.

Keep sensitive information away from these:

SMS / MMS
Phone calls
E-mail
Hosted apps such as:
- Facebook
- Twitter
- Whatsapp
- Google Hangouts / Gmail
- Telegram

This doesn’t necessarily mean that you must entirely avoid these, even if in some cases it would do you a lot of good. Where possible you want to at least move any important or private communications to alternative methods.

Useful Solutions

There are some excellent privacy resources available:

Delta Chat

Delta chat is incredibly unique. Instead of building a protocol and new network from scratch, it’s built on top of e-mail. This means you can seamlessly interact with your existing contacts with added privacy and security once they start using it.

Matrix & XMPP

Embrace the Analog

Because nothing is really safe from state-level actors, in-person and non-digital means of communication are the ideal methods for really sensitive information.

The only way to truly protect data is to never record it in the first place

Self-hosting

What is self-hosting? It’s running your own software and services.

At minimum it means using offline, local software (like LibreOffice) instead of cloud-based solutions. For many it also means running online services from your own systems.

Often when you leave big tech platforms like Microsoft and Google you often want to enjoy many of the useful features like having data automatically sync between devices. The nice thing is that with the power of your own computing you have total freedom in dictating how exactly you want this done.

As you become more proficient at managing your own systems, more options become available. Learning to become comfortable with GNU/Linux systems and how to interact with them through the command-line makes troubleshooting significantly easier.

Data sovereignty

Having your data stored on your own systems is a pre-requisite to computing on your own terms. It is not only your own digital sovereignty that matters but also of those around you. This is because the very systems that manipulate and control people will use any and all information against anyone and everyone.

Your own website

Instead of relying on a cloud provider you can also host your website from your own systems.

Fediverse

Advanced users can often self-host their own fediverse servers.

Fantastic self-hosted projects:

Helping others

The more services you run, the more you’re able to share those services with those you trust (and hopefully trust you back). Which is a great way to help those who may not necessarily be ready to put the time and energy into setting up their own. Fortunately, the familiarity of using these services may motivate them to try hosting the services themselves.

Costs

Hardware

Naturally, you will need to have hardware to run services on. This includes not only the routers, computers, & servers but also the storage if you’re storing large amounts of data.

In the fight to re-democratize cyberspace, it’s important to support initiatives that make hardware more accessible and more free (as in freedom).
Skill

In many cases there is somewhat of a barrier-to-entry that this course tries to diminish as much as possible. Spending time to learn and practice the skills required is definitely worth the time and effort.
Start-up time

Some services are simpler to setup than others. It may take some time to configure a service. The more familiar you are with these systems the more you can make use of time-saving methods.
Maintenance

In most cases you’ll want to run your services on a simpler device that uses less energy so that you can keep it running as much as possible. Service interruptions are something you may not always be able to prevent.
Growing complexity

Depending on how they’re organized, the more services you run the more complicated administration of it can be. Unless it’s your passion, it may be worth considering if you’re running the systems or they’ve somehow grown to manage you.

The Process

You’ve found some software you’d like to run. Maybe it’s hosted on a github repository somewhere or it’s in your Linux distribution’s packages. Either way, you have acquired the program and just need to know how to run it.

Services are simply programs like any other. They just usually have some extra steps to get them running.

Dependencies

Software is usually built on other software. Instead of packaging everything together the program may simply rely on the program being installed on the same machine. Dependencies are other programs that the service requires to run.

For example a service that’s written in the python programming language will need need python installed on the system. This can also include individual python libraries or modules.

Different software ecosystems have their own different ways of managing dependencies. Python uses pip and rust uses cargo to install their libraries.

Installing

In many cases, the installation guide for the service you want to run may tell you what dependencies are required or install them as part of the process. When your Linux system’s package manager installs software it usually places it in a specific place on that systems filesystem.

When the service’s files are in a desirable location (depending on your system, or personal preference) your system can now attempt to run the software. If it’s not properly configured you can usually expect an error, some software may simply act in unexpected ways.

Configuration

Sometimes software will have specific attributes or data that will need to be specific to that installation. This information can be:

your machine’s domain name
user accounts & passwords
choosing where persistent files are stored
any additional ‘settings’ for the program

Usually you will change these settings in a text file in the correct name and location. Other programs make use of environment variables to access this information.

Post-installation

For remote services, you may also need to do additional steps to make them accessible. For other devices to easily find yours you may need a domain name and an SSL certificate. With these you can securely accept connections for your service.

Getting it done - the easiest way

Today, to start you’re going to use a Virtual Private Server (VPS) provider called Vultr. With my referral code you can sign up and get $100 in credit to test with.

In many cases you’ll want to use your own hardware, but if you’re new to GNU/Linux it can be much easier to simply learn with a disposable VPS. This way, you can learn specifically what you need to and start from scratch for the next project.

Simplicity without giving up control

Yunohost

Keep calm and host yourself

https://yunohost.org/

Libre Server

Running a personal server for you and your friends or family can be one way to regain agency within an otherwise dehumanizing system. Such servers can federate together to create community oases within the information desert. Growing and connecting in a decentralized way, rather than building a single monolithic platform for the next Silicon Valley tyrant to monopolize.

https://libreserver.org/

EmbassyOS

Take back control

Everything you do online is intermediated - your actions permissioned, your data custodied.

Opt out by running a private server.

Previously, it was only available to the tech saavy and the wealthy. Start9 levels the playing field by making it possible for everyone else.

https://start9.com/

Censorship Avoidance

One of the more troubling trends of our time is the outright suppression of alternative points of view. While power-plays and tribalism are essentially hallmarks of the human experience, our modern digital experience introduces new challenges in this domain. With an essentially limitless deluge of information, spam, and outright assaults on your mind, it can be very difficult to navigate it all alone.

Because it’s impossible for a person to understand every topic with the detail and respect it deserves, people inevitably have to rely on others on a variety of topics. This creates other challenges because when someone outsources their thinking, (or has been made to outsource it) is that it puts that person at massive risks of abuse by those doing the thinking.

It is impossible to entirely eliminate “outsourcing thinking”, but we can actively choose how we direct it. By consciously taking control of or or what we allow to influence us, we can move many unconscious choices back into the conscious realm.

Trust is a fundamentally important aspect of this. Do you really trust those who seek to micro-manage every aspect of everyone’s lives? Do you trust those who seek to profit off limiting your access to information?

Censorship is more of a cultural problem than a technological one. People have largely accepted large unaccountable corporations being able to eliminate dissent, even when edicts come from governments. Tragically, this means that people themselves do most of the censorship for these large institutions.

Behavior

The good news is that because it is still mostly people’s choices making information out of sight and mind, there are real concrete steps we can take to mitigate censorship.

When ideas or people can’t simply be outright banned, a large driver of present-day information control is amplification of prioritized content and voices. Choosing to re-focus your attention onto the voices you choose really goes a long way.

Feeds

Wherever possible you should prefer chronologically sorted feeds to algorithmically determined ones. Services will often decide what’s more “relevant” for you to see first to take control of your time and attention. Even many big tech social media platforms still provide the possibility to view “latest” or “new” items in your feed, where possible it’s best to choose this option.

Lists

Another level of taking control of your information sources involves using the lists features on various platforms. Instead of solely relying on the main feed to find content. Once you have trustworthy people and organizations you can ensure you’re not missing any updates from them.

Bookmarks

Visit websites directly. Bookmark it so you can revisit the website without relying on a search engine to remind you that it still exists.

Running your own services

A great way of keeping the free and open web alive is to participate. Run your own website outside the control of big tech platforms.

To be accessible to the world wide web you really only need three things:

A web server There are many different web servers you can run on your machine. If you’re not very proficient at making websites hugo allows you to generate all the files from simple markdown.
A Domain You can get a FREE subdomain at FreeDNS, with a free subdomain you can make your content immediately accessible. It’s also a great place to practice how to setup more intricate dns options.
SSL Certificate Thanks to Let’s Encrypt, anyone can generate a valid SSL certificate on their machine for free. Because these certificates are signed by Mozilla.

Remembering Peter Eckersley
Use a host If you’d really like to skip all that you can make use of hosting services like Neocities to get started quickly.

Tor

The Onion Router is what’s often referred to when people say “the darkweb”. The Tor Browser uses the Tor network to access either the “clearweb” which is the internet most people are familiar with, and hidden services.

I2P

The Invisible Internet Protocol is another darkweb focused on hidden services.It’s less popular than Tor but often has better performance.

A hidden service is a server that is accessible from within the tor network. Hidden services don’t require a domain be provided to them by any central authority. This means that .onion and .i2p domains can’t be seized.

Hosting your own hidden service

If you already have your website up and running the Tor project has fantastic documentation on getting started. The basic process is:

Install Tor
Modify your Tor configuration file to specify what hidden service(s) you want
restart tor
open the hostname file to get your .onion address

VPNs & Tunnels

If you have a small group of people you trust, you may not need to have your secret services accessible to the world. Perhaps you want your communication devices to solely utilize your private network to avoid leaking all kinds of data.

Using something like WireGuard you could setup your own private network and host private services. SSH Tunnels are also really useful tools you can use to essentially create 1-to-1 hidden services between devices.

SSH Tunneling Explained

Hardware

Hardware matters, now more than ever it’s important for people to have access to Free (as in Freedom) devices that can be run on our own terms. Unfortunately manufacturers and retailers themselves are guilty of tilting the scales against people. This is a must-watch conversation.

Your Website

Do I need a website?

The more people who control their own web presence, the less vulnerable we are to information suppression from large institutions. In many ways we are very lucky to be alive in a time where it is so simple, and so inexpensive to distribute important information so widely.

A simple website, is really just a folder with different text and media. In most cases it is outright trivial to serve basic websites out of one’s home, but many public hosts exist. By keeping it simple, the web can be more free and accessible for all.

Introducing: The site generator

While learning CSS, Javascript & HTML is worth doing, there are tools that will transform markdown formatting into a usable website. This is a fantastic way to save effort, and allows you to focus solely on the content.

Two great ones are:

Jekyll

You can download themes here
Hugo

Hugo themes are available here

I use hugo, so this will be written with hugo in mind. You’re welcome to take a look at the Jekyll documentation to see if it suits your needs better.

Themes

Themes lay out the overall look and layout of the website. Depending on the theme you use they can change things a great deal, or only a little. Thankfully everything about the theme can be overridden.

Here are my themes:

These themes are being developed partially as a learning exercise, but also to create an easy way for someone to be able to build media-rich online presence without relying on other platforms. Multimedia embeds are a high priority, and so are social media previews. If you’re interested in using these themes your feedback is greatly appreciated!

Using hugo

Once you’ve installed hugo, the process is very simple:

Create your site with hugo new site mysite “mysite” is a placeholder name here.
Move into your the project root with cd mysite
Start the temporary webserver with hugo server
Open the page with the link provided by hugo (usually http://localhost:1313)
As you stare into the blank page, imagine the possibilities.

Making Changes

First you’ll want to create the index page. Open mysite/content/_index.md with your favourite text editor and add whatever you’d like.
Download a theme and place it inside mysite/themes/
Open mysite/config.toml and add theme = “freedom” (or the name of a different theme you downloaded)

Provided there’s no errors, you’ll see your changes refresh in real-time. Once you hit save the page will reload immediately. Once you’re done making your changes you’ll want to run hugo once and copy the contents of the mysite/public folder to your webserver.

Building up your infrastructure

Building the website is really only the start. Ideally you’ll want to make sure your website is on hardware you control. For serving content, computing power isn’t a huge concern. Storage and Bandwidth become your primary concerns when serving static content like pages, audio, video, and images.

Storage

Naturally you need enough storage to store all the files you want to serve. You’ll likely want it to be on a fast and reliable storage like SSDs.

Bandwidth

With large data formats such as video and high resolution images you’re going to need a very fast upload speed ideally with very little latency. For most basic uses you may not need a great deal of storage or bandwidth. Video content is a challenge because even relatively small amount of views can become very demanding. When serving video content I would highly recommend keeping file sizes as small as possible.

ffmpeg makes that easy with the following options -s 1280x720 -b:v 750K if high quality video is a priority I would recommend trying to make use of webtorrent. That way large media can at least be shared between concurrent users.

Prying eyes

When choosing themes, libraries and even hosts, it’s important to make sure that those choices aren’t impacting your users. Extra “bloat” really doesn’t help much in the long run. Try to use refined and streamlined ways to display your content.

Data

There are many exciting things you can use hugo for with relatively simple data setups. Hugo has the functionality to load local and remote data to create interesting pages.

Fetching Local and Remote JSON in Hugo

Collaboration

One of the fantastic things about static site generators is that it makes it easy for people to work together on vital projects. Spyware Watchdog is an excellent example of this.

Anyone is able to use git to contribute. This kind of activity can scale quite well, and be used in almost any domain. There needs to be more projects like this taking advantage of these amazing collaborative tools to create phenomenal resources

Sneakernet

The fascinating thing is that these tools don’t require an internet connection. People can build private offline resources that could be shared through flash drives at gatherings. This allows people to bring together and share information much faster, and without risks of surveillance and censorship.

Sneakernet: The Fastest Internet

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Gabe Rocks!

Rolling forward: major mobility milestone

First roll

Cooking

New Low

Tech troubles update

Can we short-circuit authoritarianism by understanding fear?

Related

Rebounding from troubles and gaining new ground

Betting everything on a good night’s sleep

Volunteering at a power-lifting meet

Reflections on nervous system regulation

Walk with me: Every step counts

Recent victories

Feeling overall better

Walk with me: Choosing what to carry

Thoughts on ways to enjoy weight loss

Reflection: Can weight loss be FUN?

Recent non-scale victories

Appreciating the person I see in the mirror

Meal-prep

Trying to imagine dieting happy

Mini-rant: Lifestyle carpentry

Interesting find

Major Milestone: Below 300 / Over 275lbs down!

The good and the bad

Looking at health in a different light

A small metaphor: Finance

Walk with me: Regaining Focus

Ongoing issues

Down but not out!

2025 Year in Review & Resolutions

Results

Where I found inspiration

Transformations

Fan Fiction

Highlights from 2025

Lessons Learned

Memes

Food for thought

The emotional side

2025 Resolutions

1. Be more present and connect with people more

2. Continue weight loss at a decent pace

3. Continue to work on strength goals

4. Go fast: bike, swim, and sprint

5. Refocusing on low-stimulation activities

We don't love PeerTube enough

Corporate media platforms are a mental prison

Many solutions, hardly any coordination

PeerTube: everything we could ask for

A high-quality video CMS

Structurally solving the actual problems

Not seizing this opportunity would be a BIG mistake

How to get started

PeerTube channels to consider

Walk with me: The bigger picture

Major Victories

New low: 317.8lbs

Feeling more capable and mobile

Feeling genuinely comfortable in my skin

The emotional battle

Walk with me: Double milestone 🎉

Strength Milestone: 1 plate OHP

Weight loss milestone: 250lbs down

Body Doxx

Micro-rant: Dieting is just a collection of skills

Some dieting skills and sub-skills:

Mentioned & related links:

Walk with me: On my soapbox

Walk with me: New low and reflections

Walk with me: 🔧 Readjusting

🚶‍➡️ Walk with me: Flourishing

Progress

Planning for 2026

Mini-rants in the audio

Wellness & weirdness

Self-hosting: Speed, decentralization and efficiency

Gotta go fast, while doing more with less

Storage localization