The unexpected affects of stress on your body

I recently saw a video answering the question “why do autistic people toe walk”. In the video the speaker explains that while not all toe walkers are autistic and not all autistic people toe walk there is a known connotation between the two and a reason for it. He explains that the reason for toe walking originates from emotional stress which translates into physical stress on the body. As autistic people encounter more stress in their daily lives, this means that they would also be more likely to be impacted by the physical affects of stress which would lead to toe walking.

Specifically, toe walking often happens when stress causes muscle tension, muscle tension in the back causes the spine to curve, a curved spine causes the pelvis to tilt forwards. This pushes the center of balance forward which encourages toe walking.

This made me realize something interesting about myself. When I was in school my hand writing was atrocious and illegible. My father once asked me “what do you think people think of you when they see your handwriting?” I responded “well, doctors are really smart and have bad handwriting so i think it makes me look smart.” He laughed at me. I deserved it. My struggle with writing isn’t just that my script is exceptionally bad. When I wrote for too long (most of three lines on a piece of paper) my hand, wrist, and arm would cramp up and hurt quite a bit. I even considered pursuing a diagnosis of dysgraphia, because I felt that i had all of the criteria to at least a moderate degree.

After seeing the video, my childhood cramping does not surprise me anymore. During my time in school I was subjected to much emotional- and sometimes even physical- abuse. I was under much stress which led to tension in my hands. When writing my fingers would not relax naturally which caused all of the small movements necessary to write to be jerky and uncontrolled, leading to a total mess of unreadable scribbles.

This theory that my handwriting was impacted by stress has more evidence. After leaving school I stopped writing by hand completely, even that to the point that if someone asked me to write something I would flatly say “I cannot.” Recently I bought a field note book and started using that to write notes instead of using my phone. Despite being over a decade out of practice my handwriting is significantly better than what it was when I was in school. The stress of being in school is gone and so is my cramping. My writing is actually legible now.

Whether it is a quirk of being autistic or just something personal about me I do not feel stress on an emotional level. If I’m going through a tough time it would barely even register to me unless I stop and audit myself. How bad is the urge to stim right now? Am I having more trouble than usual looking people in the eyes when conversing? Is masking more difficult than usual? How janky is my handwriting and walking gait? Have I been more nauseous lately? Do I have the physical sensation of ants crawling around inside my brain? I have to actually notice these physical affects and respond to them. If I see that my body is displaying a higher level of stress then I need to do something about it; maybe go out into nature, pray, stretch, or have a drink to get my anxiety down. You might think it’s cool to not feel stress. “Wow, I could get so much done if I wasn’t so stressed out all the time!” Not feeling stress is much like not feeling pain. People with nerve damage that causes them to not feel pain also have to constantly check their bodies. If you get a cut and don’t notice it because it doesn’t hurt you will just keep bleeding everywhere until you actually see that you are hurt. If you sprain or even break something in your legs you’ll just keep using that body part as normal and keep increasing the damage to it instead of getting off your feet to recover. If I do not manage my stress I end up being unable to sleep properly, am constantly nauseous, feel depressed, and get sick more often.

Stress management does not have to be a personal struggle. People can do things that reduce stress for everyone. For example work place policies that would benefit autistic people would also benefit stress reduction in everyone else too. Allow for flex time, if you make it into the office 15 minutes late then no big deal, leave 15 minutes late. Allow people to wear headphones. Autistic people are not the only people that want to avoid social interaction. People with ADD/ADHD would also benefit from wearing headphones. They would be less likely to have someone approach their desk and create a distraction with conversation that would make it difficult to stay on or return to their task. Some neurotypical people either just aren’t in a talking mood or need to hunker down and get some work done. A relaxed clothing policy means no more tight shirt collars and scratchy shirts for autistic people. I can say from personal experience that while its easy to find comfortable relaxed wear clothing, finding clothing that is business appropriate and comfortable is a great difficultly. A relaxed clothing policy benefits neurotypical employees too. People can wear things that make them feel more comfortable or confident in themselves and ultimately more happy. There are numerous studies showing that happy employees are more productive, but just knowing that the people that work for you are happy should be more than enough incentive to make positive changes.

Beating the Attention Economy

Everything electronic today is designed to take your attention. As you scroll through Twitter or Facebook they are offering your other people’s terrible opinions or pictures of their meals in exchange for showing your ads for things you don’t need. Snapchat injects ads between your friend’s stories. Youtube shows too many preroll ads. Time is a finite commodity that you can only offer so much of and should probably be spending it more wisely. How can that be achieved though?

Self control

When you don’t need your phone in your hand, don’t have it in your hand. This is a hard thing to do at times especially if you are accustomed to it. Next time you are at the grocery store waiting in line to pay for your food leave your phone in your pocket. Let your thoughts run free, look at what is around you, make plans in your head, just do anything other than let the time stealing gremlin out of your pocket.

We’ve all had this happen: You need to send a message to someone or write down a note. You pull your phone out of your pocket and immediately cannot remember why you pulled it out and now you’re looking at Tiktok. Train yourself to only use your phone for what you want to use it for. Send that message or write that note and put your phone away.

Access Restriction

If you can’t trust yourself to stay away from time wasting apps and websites there are many solutions. Apple and Android phones have built in screen time restrictions that only allow you to access apps for a set number of hours every day. Apple refers to this as “screen time”, Android calls it “digital wellbeing”.

Computers do not have the same screentime limiting features as phones but there are still methods. There are browser extensions that can limit the amount of time you spend on a website in the same way phones do. Your internet router might also support parental controls that limit at what hours certain websites can be accessed when a device is on your home wifi. That way if you work from home you can completely turn off access to social media sites during working hours and have access immediately return at the end of the day. Just because it’s called “parental controls” doesn’t mean that it’s just for your kids. Be your own parent. There are also dedicated applications that will monitor your internet and block sites after you’ve spent too much time on them.

Go Low Tech

Just don’t bring your phone with you. It’s that simple- no phone, no distraction. If you really need a GPS to get somewhere then buy a dedicated GPS device to put in your car or just leave your phone in the car when at your destination.

Years ago I installed an alternative operating system on my phone called GrapheneOS. I went into it with the expectation that I was trading enhanced device security for most apps not working on my phone. It turns out that Graphene works fine and hasn’t failed to install or run any app, but I decided to keep the mindset and just pretend that an app wouldn’t work and not install it. The number of apps installed on my phone years later is still only about a third of what I had installed before switching over. If you uninstall an app from your phone you cant access it anymore, plain and simple.

Find alternative ways to access content while restricting yourself from scrolling the apps. I have an Amazon Kindle that I use for reading books. It is completely incapable of accessing social media. Its only use is to show pages of books. When I use it I don’t have the ability to switch apps and suddenly be looking at Twitter because the last 2 pages of my book were kind of boring. I’d probably be reading a lot less if I were using a phone because at any point I could swipe my screen and be looking at terrible political takes on shady Telegram channels.

Replace your phone with something analog. Rather than pulling your phone out of your pocket to write down a note and risk getting sucked into hole that is as deep as your Twitter feed is long (that is to say, infinite)- buy a pocket notebook. Whatever shopping list additions, remembered dreams, prayers, or personal memos you need to write down a notebook cannot tempt you with “content”. The worst you can do to yourself is flip through a few pages and read back what you wrote down yesterday instead of pocketing your notebook right away after you’re done writing.

Notebooks aren’t the only tool nearly killed off by phones. Instead of using your phone to listen to music consider getting a portable mp3 player and loading up your favorite songs (that you own instead of just streaming, there’s a plus) like it its 2008. Wear a watch so that you aren’t checking the time on your phone. Smart watches don’t count. They show notifications which are just temptations to look at your phone.

Unexpected Consequences and the Dangers of Reinterpreting Law

During India’s time as a British colony the English were concerned with the number of venomous snakes and created a program in which anyone could bring the head of a dead cobra and receive payment for killing it. The intent of the program was to reduce the number of nuisance snakes that were maiming or killing people. In response people started breeding cobras and killing them for the bounties. When the British discovered this they cancelled the program and the snake breeders, having no more use for the snakes, simply released them into the wild leading to more dangerous snakes being present than before the program was implemented.

There is a lot of debate among historians whether this actually happened or not but whether its history or parable, its incredibly believable. “Easy money for dead snakes? Heck I’d breed them too if I had the chance.” This is an example of the intent of a policy not playing out after it has been implemented. There are many true modern day examples of this happening. For example during the pandemic the US government started handing out Paycheck Protection Program loans to businesses. The idea was that the government would subsidize the paychecks of small business employees allowing small businesses to stay afloat during the latest financial crisis and allowing their employees to maintain income. Instead, the pandemic and its financial consequences led to an immense upwards redistribution of wealth with this loan money going into and staying in the pockets of the wealthiest people in America.

These both are examples of new policies being implemented in a way that was abusable, but what of the reinterpretation of old laws? The second amendment reads as follows:

  • A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

Gun rights advocates say that this law simply grants the right to possess and bear weapons, specifically firearms, to the common citizenry without infringement by feature bans, type bans, licensing requirements, or other hurdles that would limit ownership. Gun control advocates argue that this grants citizens the right only to form citizen militias for the protection of the state. This would limit the right to gun ownership only to those that are members of a militia, reducing the number of legally owned firearms, in turn reducing the amount of gun violence. Were this alternative interpretation of the law play out, what would actually happen?

Currently gun owners only gather in the same way any other hobbyist group would. Board game players meet up at the game shop to play games. Fishers make day outings to the lake to cast their lines. Gun owners go to the range to poke holes in distant pieces of paper. If suddenly the only way to legally keep your guns is to join a militia many people would quickly find themselves actually joining a structured paramilitary organization to avoid turning in their weapons.

Why are militias such a bad thing?

Our founding fathers likely included the right to form a militia alongside the right to own firearms because they had just come out of a war with a global superpower and feared that the British would return for round two to reclaim their lost colonies. Since then United States soil has been attacked twice: Once during World War 1 when a German U-boat ineffectually shelled Cape Cod and the September 11, 2001 attacks. In both cases a militia would not have been able to contribute to the defense of the homeland. Militias are so unnecessary that every state has either constitutional text or a law which prohibits the formation of a paramilitary group or militia. Again though, why are militias so dangerous that every single state would independently write and pass a law to ban their existence?

Many background checks, especially checks done for government employment ask if you have ever been a part of a militia. Answering yes is a negative when considering you for employment. The US armed forces prohibits active duty members from also being members of a militia. In the wake of January 6, 2021, the bulk of the FBI’s investigative efforts were placed upon the Oath Keepers, a militia. In the news, “militia” is synonymous with “domestic terrorist organization”. The government considers militias to be a threat against its supremacy and against its people.

Militias in general have cultures that are consistently revolutionary and often white supremacist or fascist. Not all of them are, of course. There are communist militias, There is also the Three Percenters. The name “3%” refers to the American War for Independence in which it only took three percent of the population to galvanize all of the people into revolution. They do not allow (overt) fascism or racial supremacy in their ranks. They have themselves reported to the FBI their own members they believe are planning terror acts. They keep the early culture of federalism and militias alive in the modern day. Rather than calling for revolution they call for non-seditious reform. Despite this they are still labeled as a domestic terrorist organization by the US federal government.

How would it actually play out if we changed our interpretation of the Second Amendment?

Any state law prohibiting the membership or formation of a militia would be nullified. Rather than being discouraged from joining a militia (seriously, who wants to write their own name down on a terror list by joining?), militia membership would be strongly encouraged as it is the only way to keep your guns. Hundreds of new militia organizations would be formed. Membership of already active militias would swell dramatically. The culture of militias wouldn’t change much. Gun owners would quickly change from regular people who occasionally go to the range to partake in the harmless hobby of shooting guns in a safe environment to engaging in real training. Militias usually offer not just shooting training, but training in squad communication and tactics, combat first aid, room clearing, SERE, urban and forest combat, handling explosive materials, etc. Suddenly the average gun owner would change from being just that- average- to someone being exposed to antigovernmental ideals and being trained in effective means that can be used against the government. Reinterpreting the second amendment in this way would lead to real threats against the sovereignty of the American state.

I think if gun control advocates understood the longer ramifications of reinterpreting the second amendment they would probably realize it’s not the win they thought it was.

Some DnD module ideas

Simple modules

Thee can be used if you have a free hour or so (real time, not in game) and don’t want to finish early or start the next part of the campaign until next session.

Pestering Boar

A very aggressive boar is running rampant in the nearby woods. It poses a threat to hunters and gatherers trying to harvest game and mushrooms. The tavern keep already has plans to cook it up in celebration for getting rid of the pest.

Players can track and kill it or set a trap for it. There is a bonus for killing it with an arrow to the heart with streamers in the town’s colors tied to the arrow.

Collect a mcguffin

kill spiders in a cave for their venom, penalize players for smashing them with a blunt weapon and destroying their venom sacs.

kill boars for their tusks

Someone lost a ring in the woods. You need to retrieve it. The PCs escort the person while retracing his steps. The party is attacked by whatever is appropriate while searching. If the attacker is a boar this can lead to the pestering boar quest.

Some effort required

Less straightforward quests that can have multiple endings or require some pre-planning from the DM or players. Expect these to last 1 session.

Acquiring a free home

The town’s sorcerer moved our years ago and his tower still stands vacant at the edge of town. You can have it for yourself but you have to evict the pests that have moved in. NPC enemies can be goblins, robbers, kobolds, whatever is level and location appropriate.
The tower stands 4 stories tall with a flat roof. The bottom floor has 4 barred windows and one entrance. The second floor has 2 windows, one of which is broken. The third and fourth floor have one window each which can be left open for sneaky ingress. There is a cellar hatch on the roof that covers access from the 4th floor. Enemies are mostly congregated on the lower 2 floors with a stronger mini boss on the 4th floor.

Players can choose to charge in or wait for an opportune time to sneak in while enemies are unaware (at night while sleeping, during the day for nocturnal enemies, or after the NPC party leaves to go raiding/foraging the PCs can sneak in and lie in wait after setting traps. gnolls and kobolds will leave traps in the building. The window sills and roof parapet can hold a grappling hook that would allow a rogue to climb up and scout or kill off sleeping enemies.

Revenge for a wayward woman

The city’s guard captain was cuckolded by a man with a silver tongue. He wants something done about it but doesn’t want rumors getting out. Players need to quietly make him disappear either by running him out of the city or showing him just how beautiful the city’s water features are from the bed of the canal, so to speak.

Due debts

A man owes a large gambling debt. The den boss knows that he came into some money recently but still isn’t paying up. Simply roughing him up for his coin purse wont do and killing him means not being able to recover the money. Players need to find out where the money is stashed and get it for the den boss one way or another.

The DM can also tie this into another quest from the man that owes the debt. Paying off his debt could be an option that leads to another quest with a higher reward or could make the debtor’s quest much easier.

Advanced modules

Quests that will probably take more than one session and will definitely require more planning. I try my best to break them up into parts (for example: planning a heist, executing, and then fencing stolen goods)

Stealing business plans

A rich man is hosting a party at his mansion for the city’s elite. His rival wants you to steal some documents from his personal study on an upper floor.

Players will have a few days to move about the city to gather information to make a quiet ingress. Here is some of the information they can learn and how they can use it:
At the brothel it is learned that he will be hiring entertainers. Players can find a way to get on the list of entertainers.
Players can find which butchers and food vendors are catering the party. With how big the order is these businesses would be more than willing to hire temporary help for delivering and serving.
Players can find who holds the gust list and secretly add themselves to the list or bribe/extort him for admission. They could also impersonate someone they knew was going, although they’d have to make sure that person was not attending somehow.
PCs can hire someone to grab the documents when they are dropped out of the window instead of trying to sneak them out.

PCs will have to gain entrance to the party and then while there sneak up to the upper floors which are lightly guarded until they find the study and retrieve the documents. Afterwards they will have to escape with them.

The route that PCs take to get into the party influences how much free access they have to the mansion. a caterer would only have access to the first floor and cellar (which would be easier to egress from rather than the front door). A party goer would only have access to the first floor but instead of getting in trouble on the upper floors like a caterer would, they could have “gotten lost looking for the latrine” and be shoo’d downstairs with a warning. Entertainers could be given a changing room upstairs but would get into much more trouble if found on the third floor where the goal is.

A Unqualified Midwit’s Perspective on Free Speech

What are the outer bounds of freedom of speech? Should there be freedom from the consequences of speech? Should some speech be suppressed? Should there be consequences for suppression of speech?

I’ll start with US federal law regarding speech. “Speech” is not just classified as what you say or write. It also encompasses art and journalism. For instance, the government cannot ban depictions of nudity such as a Greek statue or pornography because it is classified as art and therefore falls under freedom of speech. Most public government buildings such as post offices and city halls prohibit the use of cameras or recording devices, but if an individual is recording information with a camera or sound recorder while in a publicly accessible area of a government office specifically with journalistic intent the US Federal Constitution’s first amendment supersedes rules that bar recording. The Federal Supreme Court has ordained that journalism is protected as speech. If an individual was only taking pictures for personal use that would not be considered speech, and thus could be barred from taking photos.

What about in situations where a private entity is regulating speech instead of the government? If I walked into your house and said something vulgar you could remove me from your property under threat of trespass and police intervention. There would be no opportunity for me to sue for a constitutional violation because I was on your private property.

Public Venues and Private Platforms

Consider these scenarios and decide for yourself which of these are appropriate and which are immoral suppression of speech:

  1. You invite Bob to a private dinner party at your home. Bob says that the state of Israel is illegitimate. You tell Bob to go home.
  2. You host a private speaking event in your home. Bob is invited as a speaker. Bob says that the state of Israel is illegitimate. You end Bob’s speech right then and silence him.
  3. You host a event where Bob is invited as a speaker. Bob says that the state of Israel is illegitimate. You end Bob’s speech right then and silence him.
  4. You host a podcast that is publicly livestreamed to millions of people. Bob is invited as a speaker. Bob says that the state of Israel is illegitimate. You end Bob’s speech right then and silence him.
  5. You host a public Bible study in a public location. You are giving a sermon and are the only speaker but others may ask questions to clarify your statements. Bob arrives as a guest and says that Jesus is not the Son of God. You tell Bob that this is not the right time or place for a religious debate and to be silent.
  6. You host a public debate forum centered on communism versus capitalism. Everyone is invited to speak. Bob arrives and wants to debate atheism versus theism. You tell Bob to stay on topic, be silent, or leave.
  7. You host a public debate forum centered on communism versus capitalism. Everyone is invited to speak. Bob arrives and argues that capitalism is bad. You tell Bob to be silent or leave.
  8. A man stands on a side walk loudly preaching fire and brimstone. You tell him to be silent. He ignores you. You call the police and he is arrested for creating a public disturbance.
  9. A man stands on a side walk shouting racist slurs. You tell him to be silent. He ignores you. You use violence to silence him.
  10. A man holds a gun to your head and tells you that he will shoot you unless you sign a document claiming your support for a specific presidential candidate.

I believe that the first six scenarios are morally sound.

In the case of the first two, you are in your own home. You are not in any way obliged to hear things that disgust you. In the case of scenarios 2-4 you have invited Bob to speak. Other people will believe that you must agree with Bob if you have invited him to say obscene things. If you were obliged to allow him to keep speaking that would be classified as “compelled speech” wherein you are forced to say something that you might not believe. Scenario ten is a radical example of compelled speech. Scenarios five and six are harder to argue for their morality. In scenario five Bob is allowed to ask on topic questions, but is not permitted debate. A hard fence has been set on what discussion would take place. It would be equally unpermitted to talk about what everyone had for lunch that day. In scenario six the forum is public. You didn’t invite Bob to speak, so people cannot argue that you support Bob’s words. This should be a place where Bob can speak freely and his words are only his opinions and not yours or anyone else’s. The issue here is that the forum was built for a specific purpose. A fence was placed around the topic to only include discussion about communism and capitalism, but Bob wants to discuss something entirely unrelated. If Bob wanted to debate for another system of government such as monarchy you might be obliged to expand the bounds of the conversation to include him because his speech might be relevant to the topic.

In scenario seven Bob has arrived and is allowed to speak on the topic of communism versus capitalism. He stays on topic but is silenced regardless. If only the pro-communist people are allowed to speak then there is no debate which is the entire point of the forum to begin with. This silencing is immoral. In scenario eight the preacher is in a public place. Sidewalks have been enshrined by the Federal Supreme Court as a “public forum” where anyone can speak on any topic. The only boundary on this speech is speech intended to cause panic such as claiming a false alarm that there is some imminent harm. For example, that there is a nonexistent man on a gun rampage around the corner. Were a police officer arrest a man solely for preaching the preacher could sue the city that employs the officer, the police force, and the officer himself. The officer would not receive qualified immunity because of his actions because he engaged in “prior restraint” which is when a government official tells an individual that they cannot engage in specific speech. Scenario nine and ten should be obvious in it’s immorality. You cannot bring violence to a person for words alone. You cannot compel someone to say something through violence or threat of violence.

What about large private platforms like social media?

Twitter has been called a “digital town square”. It is not like any of the scenarios listed above. You are not bound to only certain topics. You are not invited to speak. If Bob makes a twitter account and says that the state of Israel is illegitimate his words have no bearing on the beliefs of Twitter or it’s owners. He was not invited to join. He did not stray outside of the bounds of discussion topics. It would be immoral to silence him no matter how obscene his words are. Others should be allowed the opportunity to debate against his position. They are not obliged to hear him and can block him.

What about users posting spam?

Twitter makes the majority of its revenue from on platform advertising. They want every advertisement to originate from money paid to them. This is a boundary on speech that is acceptable. You can talk about how great essential oils are but direct messaging 400 different people with a link to your store whether they want to see that or not falls outside the one boundary on speech.

What about small groups?

If you make a Discord instance about drinking and enjoying tea and Bob comes in saying “tea sucks! tea is lame! I hate tea” he clearly does not belong in your community and can be removed. the bounds of discussion are enjoying tea, not hating it. Discord allows for multiple different channels for different topics within a single Discord instance. There is an oft repeated meme about Discord culture: “Please do not post memes in #general. Please keep your memes in the #memes channel.” or “Please only post politics in the #politics channel.” This is a clear example of fencing discussion topics within certain channels. You can talk about whatever you want in #general, but if you start posting a dozen memes per hour you are going to clutter the discussion to the point that it would be hindered. To avoid that there is a separate space for posting memes. There is no moral issue with this.

Okay, but how do you manage a community while maintaining this moral framework?

I personally run two Telegram chats that I would classify as medium sized. There are a few specific rules that culminate into two intentions; no porn and no derision. The actual rules are as follows:

  1. no porn
  2. no derision
  3. if you demand someone post hand/physique/fit/1rm you MUST post yours first.
  4. you can ban evade by posting capybaras

Rule one is obvious. Rule two means that you should debate in good faith. You can attack someone’s argument with ad homonym (“that’s retarded”) but you cannot attack the other person with ad homonym (“you’re retarded”). You can get as heated or as passionate as you want but you should respect the person you are talking to. Rule three is more specific but follows the same spirit of rule two. Demanding someone post a photo of their hand is a demand for someone to prove their ethnicity. “Fit” challenges someone to show how presentable their appearance is. “Physique” and “1RM” challenges another person’s strength. The challenger cannot get away with using another person’s appearance in an argument. He must put his own cards on the table as well, so to speak. Rule four exists to create an opportunity for penance and indicate one’s interest in remaining in the group despite having broken a rule in the heat of the moment. Rather than just saying “I’m sorry” and possibly not meaning it, they have to go the very small extra step of searching Google images for a picture of a capybara and posting it as a sign of sincerity.

The chats are both Christian centric. If someone does not believe in Christ that doesn’t bar them from being a member. They can argue against God (in good faith) and I will often respond. They can ignore the issue and focus on other topics. Outright derision without an interest in debate means that the user does not belong in this discussion and should probably find a home elsewhere.

Stop Pirating Movies

Not because it’s wrong or anything like that.

For a long time I’ve felt it necessary to watch popular media so that I don’t feel left out of conversations. When I was a kid Harry Potter was all the rage but my parents didn’t allow me to read or watch the series because it contained witchcraft. I wasn’t particularly unhappy because I wasn’t interested in the series, but I was left out of the conversations about it and I felt that in a way I was being distanced from my peers because they would discuss it often and I didn’t know anything about the story.

After growing up I would consistently consume whatever the popular thing was just to not feel left out. Most of the movies or TV series I watched were not interesting. It was often a boring slog to get through. I wasn’t keen on giving money to the people who made these shows because they are consistently found to be child rapists, serial rapists, serial child rapists, child molesters (as well as enabling and covering up such behavior), etc. For this reason I would pirate these shows.

Eventually I became too busy and too tired to continue this pattern. I stopped watching the popular thing just because it was popular and nothing has changed. I’m not left out of conversations just because I’ve not seen a show. People who are so obsessed with a particular piece of media that they can only talk about that thing are boring. I avoid talking to them unless they have something else to say and my life has been better as a result. Not talking to boring people about boring consumer media or boring current events means that conversations are more vibrant and interesting.

Don’t just refuse to watch something because its popular: Refuse to talk about it. It doesn’t matter. It’s not worth your time, attention, or money.

The Enemy is (not) Always Winning

No matter what your political ideology is you are always being bombarded with news saying “the enemy is winning, do something!” while never encouraging effectual action. If you are a Second Amendment advocate you are scared and angered by the long churning of new state and federal bills that make it harder to acquire firearms, reinstate the 1986 Assault Weapons ban, or otherwise limit your right to self defense and firearms ownership. You hear about these bills being sponsored and submitted but never about their failure. If you are a women’s rights advocate or an abortion advocate you hear about the repeal of Roe v Wade but never about the vast number of states that have certified women’s ability to end a pregnancy. If you are concerned with growing wealth inequality you’ll see disturbing charts and graphs from every publication about Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Bill Gates, et al. seeing their personal wealth as much as triple during the 2020-22 pandemic but Washington Post (which is owned by Bezos) would never run a story about Amazon (also owned by Bezos) workers successfully unionizing to end their terrible working conditions.

In 1990 nearly all US States either did not allow concealed handgun carry at all or were “may-issue” States meaning that they would only issue licenses to conceal a firearm in public if the requestor was a retired police officer, gainfully employed armed security person, had a distinct need such as being a celebrity with stalkers, et cetera. In 2022 nearly all States are “shall-issue” meaning that unless there is a specific prohibition such as being a felon or mentally adjudicated by a court as incompetent you will get a license on request. Nearly half of all states have gone a step further in not requiring any permit to conceal carry. Some even claim to be “sanctuary states” that prohibit local police from prosecuting against federally banned devices such as suppressors and fully automatic guns that are not being used for crime. The Assault Weapons Ban ended in 2004.

Roe v. Wade was overturned but the majority of states have their own laws that still allow for abortions in most to all cases. The ones that don’t have threatened to pass laws that would make a woman guilty of felony murder if she crosses state lines to have an illegal abortion either fail for lack of legislative support or because they understand that this would almost certainly be found to be unconstitutional by the State or Federal Supreme Court. Many companies even go as far as to provide women with thousands of dollars for travel and medical expenses incurred from having an abortion.

The rich get richer but this is only rope for them to tie their own nooses. Socialist ideals are spreading like wildfire on both the left and right with young people pulling away from the Democratic and Republican parties towards left libertarian socialism and national socialism respectively. Eventually the rich will be incapable of keeping the status quo through bribes political donations because there will no longer be enough crony capitalists and moderates to give money to due to outvoting and political pressure from constituents.

This isn’t encouragement to do nothing. After all, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” This bad news that is always being pumped out is designed to make the masses feel incapable of affecting change. “It’s always getting worse” they say. “It’s not worth leaving the house to protest anything.” Find the victories and celebrate them loudly. It’s fuel to to keep doing more. Change is possible but is slow and requires constant pressure. You roll the stone up the hill and celebrate, then there is another stone at the bottom of another hill that needs pushing. You did it before, you can do it again.

The lowest effort VPN guide for newbies

A few friends have asked me for recommendations recently so I thought I would write a guide with recommendations and explain why I chose them.

The recommendations:

  • Vpn.AC – fairly cheap, good speeds, does not spy on you
    • downside: does log time, IP, and bandwidth but not actual traffic
  • Mullvad – fairly cheap, takes antispying very seriously, anonymous payment
    • downside: does not support easy payment such as PayPal. Your best bet is to buy bitcoin, which is easy but an extra step.

The basis of my recommendations:

  • Threat model: Your threat model is the basis of who you are hiding sensitive information from. If you are in a US university they are legally required to log information about the internet traffic you generate, that is, they are mandated to spy on your browsing history, and some people may not like the websites you visit. Even if you are not in a university, internet service providers will soon be allowed legally to sell information about you and your browsing habits to advertisers and that is creepy. Even if you “have nothing to hide” this information is still valuable to bad guys who want to know things like the name of you dog or you mothers maiden name. That information is valuable for password reset security questions and for stealing your identity. This guide should cover most threat models. Personally, my interest in in hiding from advertisers and the government.
  • Is the provider based in a Five Eyes or Seven Eyes country?
    • Five Eyes / Seven Eyes / Fourteen Eyes is an international spying program in which countries spy on their citizens. If the information is stored, it can either be used for immoral purposes or it can be hacked and stolen.
  • Does the provider store logs?
    • if the provider logs things like your IP, the times you were logged into the service, your bandwidth used, or the websites you visit that information could be either sold to creepy advertisers or hacked and used against you. You are paying for the product, you should not also be the product.
  • Does the provider by default put policies into place to avoid leaking data.
    • A misconfigured VPN can leak DNS data, which is the method that your computer translates a domain name (google.com) to an IP address (216.58.193.142). Providers should force DNS data through the VPN so that your university, ISP, or other DNS provider cannot see the websites you visit.
    • Misconfigurations can also leak WebRTC traffic which unmasks a permanent token that can be used to track your web browsing.
  • Do policies require full disclosure?
    • This basically means that the VPN provider will promise to always make a public statement when they receive a legal order for user data, or if they have a security breach.

You can see a huge comparison chart of VPN providers here to see a larger list of issues and providers to do your own research and select your own. Edit: TOPS sold out and the link now redirects to some fake comparison advertisement site. I could link to some wayback machine archive but it would be 2 years out of date.

A lot of people missed me after I left, and that was more impactful than I expected.

I recently started an excellent new job in Kansas and I left Ohio for it. During my last week at my old church my leaving was announced and there were quite a few people who wanted to see me one last time to give me well wishes. Even though I had not made an effort there to be well connected with them, they still cared to give me heartfelt goodbyes, capped off with lunch with my Pastor who recommended me an excellent church near my new hometown. I partied with my friends one last time, even having one old friend come that I had fallen off with since finishing highschool.

After leaving I’ve been hearing stories that members of my old church are asking my mother how I am doing to the point that she confided in me that she wishes they would not as their queries remind her that I am no longer there with my family. In my friend groups I am hearing that they are remembering me by trading fun stories of me in my absence.

I expected more to miss my old life there, possibly even to feel remorse for leaving, but in keeping touch with family and closest friends the disconnected feelings are kept far at bay. Still, it gets me that all of these people care so much. I really feel that love. It reminds me of my inability to read people and understand them, but without the typical negative feelings of disconnection and disassociation from people. These feelings allow me to better explore new healthy social connections instead of being mired down in feelings of not being able to form social relationships with people and become a happier person out here in windy Kansas.

Look at this lad. He is happy, excited for his future. This is an accurate representation of me.


How to migrate from YouTube subscriptions to RSS subscriptions with TinyTinyRSS

Over the last several years Youtube has been changing their user interface in ways to make it harder for viewers to see posts from content creators that deviate from YouTube’s political and social ideology. In 2014 the subscriptions page would show every video posted by every subscribed channel in order from most recent to least recent, with no special treatment given in thumbnail size or weighting the order in which videos are shown. The total number of videos shown on a 1920×1080 screen was approximately 5 rows by 6 columns (if I remember correctly). The subscription page is back now, but for a time, it was completely removed and replaced with an abomination that is very similar to the current home page, where instead of showing recently posted videos, youtube would have horizontal showcases of the most relevant or popular videos by a single channel. As you can see in a screenshot of my home screen, channels that I not interested in and not subscribed to are being advertised to me instead of showing relevant content.

Scrolling down would show more showcasing either by channel or by topic. Much of the content was not curated by the user through subscriptions, rather it was curated automatically by YouTube and often caused frustration for users because the content was low quality. YouTube’s current trend is to lower the quality of recommended videos by removing many historical, political, and pro first and second amendment videos. Going by their trend, it is likely that they will turn their evil eye against subscriptions again in the future. I decided before then to simply use a different service to curate youtube content to avoid new frustrations with the service.

 

1. Export subscriptions from YouTube

Go to the subscription manager page and scroll to the bottom of the page. Click “Export Subscriptions” to download the .opml file to your computer.

2. install TTRSS

Instructions are listed on the TTRSS website. When creating the database remember to collate the database using UTF8 Unicode. The standard collation in Postgres cant handle extended 4 hex emojis and will crash when one is encountered in the feed.

3. import your subscription feed

  1. After creating an account and logging in on TTRSS, click “Action…” then “Preferences” in the upper right.
  2. Select the “Feeds” tab.
  3. Select the “OPML” group
  4. “Choose File” > select your file > “Import My OPML”
  5. You can choose to put these into a folder if you like.

4. how to manually add new youtube channels to your feed list

Case 1: the channel ID is in the URL

Example: the channel URL for YourMovieSucks is https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCSc16oMxxlcJSb9SXkjwMjA

The channel ID is UCSc16oMxxlcJSb9SXkjwMjA

The resulting RSS URL to add to TTRSS is https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=UCSc16oMxxlcJSb9SXkjwMjA

Case 2: channel ID is not in the URL.

Some channels reach a minimum subscriber count to be able to set their channel URL to replace the channel ID with their channel name.

Example: The URL for the channel TheGreatWar is https://www.youtube.com/user/TheGreatWar, but that’s not the channel ID.

To get the channel ID, open the landing page of the channel you want to subscribe to (not the Videos page or any other page) and look at the source of the page. This can be done in Firefox with ctrl+u or right-click > View page source. Search the page source with ctrl+f for channel_id. There should be one match which includes the entire URL needed to subscribe with TTRSS.

Subscribing to an individual feed can be done with “Actions…” > “Subscribe to Feed”. Paste the link into the field and click “Subscribe”.