2026-03-15 02:35:00
I am an expat. My parents are expats. My grandparents are expats. War and opportunity, the classics. Mine was education but it was also bigger than that. I wanted a new home. And I found one, for a while. But as much as I tried, I never felt fully settled. I moved house every year for the last nine years. It was not always intentional but it was always time to leave.
When people ask me where I'm from, I tend to pause and assess what they’re actually wondering. Oftentimes they can’t figure out my ethnicity. I look racially ambiguous and my accent is hard to place. Other times, they want to know if I’m local to the area.
I guess what they want to know and then I indulge them with the history of my entire lineage anyway because anything shorter feels incomplete.
My last move was intercontinental. To fit my life into four suitcases, I gave away many of my belongings to friends, charity shops, the local library and the trash. For the last decade, whenever I’ve gone to buy anything of a considerable size, I’ve thought about how easily it could fit into a box, a suitcase or an Uber. Even then, there were still too many clothes, books, board games, irons, utensils, foldable Ikea boxes, backpacks.
My minimalism was not an aesthetic choice. It was born out of a jadedness that grew over time from failed attempts to settle. I would buy things like a TV and a shoe rack and they would weigh heavily on my shoulders as I helped an Uber driver with a bad back load them into the trunk of his car. It started to feel cruel and silly.
I let go of the need to want. The one and done became a lifestyle. One pan for my meals, one bag for the everyday, one e-reader for my books. I only restocked products when I fully ran out and I only accepted gifts in the forms of vouchers or experiences. I developed a real dislike for gifts just for the sake of gifting, collections for the sake of collecting.
I don’t want to be a minimalist anymore.
I want to buy something comically big and heavy, like a grandfather clock.
I want to own things just because they’d be fun to own. A big globe, an electric incense burner, bulbs that come with a remote control.
I want to paint my walls and collect books again.
I want a radio and a guest bedroom.
I want to pick up my neighbor’s mail when they’re out of town and trust them with my plants when I’m out of town.
I want to be able to say where I'm from without any hesitation.
I don’t want to be a minimalist anymore.
2026-03-14 09:06:04
After stopping IG cold for about 6 months now, and Facebook since January, I now have distance so I can see what I was doing and how it was affecting me.
Aside from the well known affects of dopamine hits from social media, I was most definitely using social media, specifically IG, to buffer and distract me from feeling any kind of uncomfortable feelings and/or anxiety. I would spend WAY to much time on the never ending scroll. Now this is something I have done in other ways - watching too much tv, binging Netflix, other longer videos. But this never ending scroll of short form video is where the danger zone is. There is documented research out there about the damaging effects of this. I am not going to site sources, but if you want to look there is plenty out there. But yeah, that short form scroll got me good.
So I have been one of those people that doesn't like to pay too close attention to news, but I like to be informed if there is something that might impact me directly. For my sanity's sake. In my habit of infinite scrolling, inevitably at some point curiosity and the algorithm takes over. Next thing I know I am having to tell myself to put the phone down at 2AM so I can sleep, waking up the next day with physical anxiety symptoms. My heart was racing. My chest was tight. And I felt ANXIOUS. That's when I knew that this habit had to stop.
That's what I thought. Long form videos, with some shorts here and there. Should be fine, right? But there's this slippery slope of "habit." The habit of scrolling, still in place. Even though the platform looks different, those tricky short form videos with the infinite scroll, are right there to be my new supplier.
It took me a little while to come to terms with the fact that I was just doing the same thing somewhere else. But I didn't want to give up YouTube. There is a lot of content that I genuinely enjoy on YouTube. However, side note, this is another place that is a minefield of AI that becomes more difficult to maneuver through every day.
So I made the conscious decision to actively not consume the shorts in the same way I have been. So basically I made an active limit to one or two a day. And when those one or two started to turn into one or two... two or three times a day, I decided that I need to actively hide the shorts every time I open YouTube.
Yeah, no. I do know that I have an addictive type personality, so this habit just changed again, from the shorts infinite scroll to the home page of Recommended videos. And I didn't even know that I had just transferred this habit, until one day there was some glitching with the home page that resulted in reaching THE END of the recommended videos. It can go on forever usually. When I reached THE END, I just kept refreshing to see more and different recommended videos.
I then moved on to just binge watching long form videos. And I realized I had a capital R REAL problem.
I still use YT, but I have to go in there very intentionally. These days, I do my best to go in there only if I am looking for something specific. If I am not looking for something specific, then sometimes I don't open it. But if I am feeling regulated, and I go in and see one thing that I really want to watch, I will watch, then make sure I close the app/window afterwards. Then do something else. It's a day by day thing though.
And my algorithm knows me, so I have been tempted, and already fallen into a couple traps. I treat the whole thing as though I am my own experiment and I take note of these things. If it feels relaxed and not all consuming, then I continue. If not, then we do something different. I just want to move to consuming media in a mindful way, instead of it consuming me.
End Transmission.
2026-03-14 06:15:00
Only three days ago, I wrote about the active policing that happens with the data which is not end-to-end encrypted on WhatsApp (a Meta product).
Today, Meta announced end-to-end encryption will no longer be supported on Instagram after 8 May 2026. In this same post, Meta helpfully clarifies why end-to-end encryption is important:
End-to-end encrypted messages and calls ensure only you and the people you're communicating with can see or listen to what is sent, and no one else, not even Meta, can do so.
As of 8 May 2026, the inverse will apply to all messages you send on Instagram. If you were looking for a sign to remove Meta products from your life: may this be the sign.
2026-03-14 04:16:00
I have an Obsidian note titled "Copypasta" where I copy/paste random shit I stumble across that I think is weird/funny/interesting and don't want to forget. The other day I was looking at it and found a weird Amazon review I had saved from last year. It was so unhinged, I had to keep it:
"worst pillows ever and way to firm and just slides up your back enough to make it even more uncomfortable and the arms are so little. not what i thought they would be. got these for my elderly mother who's getting out of hospital tomorrow after getting her foot amputated and wanted her to be comfortable in her bed and on the couch. iam not physically able to send these back so i can get the money back to buy different kind and cant afford to buy different ones right now. i used money out of what i had saved for a car. iam a struggling single mother with health issues who cant work and tryin to raise a baby on my own and now tryin to take care of my mother. iam so bummed out cause i really needed stuff to work out right and with these pillows and a mattress i got here also it has went horribly wrong....like iam not overwhelmed enough. so its just $30 some dollars i lost in these."
I guess the thing I find the most interesting about this random review is how much unhinged emotion there is for something as innocuous as a cheap Amazon pillow. It's a really great example of fundamental attribution error, a cognitive bias where people judge others' behavior based on what they do, while ignoring the situational issues that causes that person to act that way.
I always think of this when I'm driving in my car and I'm cut off by some asshole who swerves in front of me without signaling. In my mind I immediately think, "Ugh, what an entitled asshole." But then I think of "attribution errors" and wonder, "Hmm, or maybe he just really needs to get to a bathroom." At the end of the day, we don't know individuals as much as we think. The person who takes their anger out on a McDonald's employee might've just buried their dad that morning. Everyone is going through something.
Of course, critics might say that attribution errors are just a way for people to avoid accountability. I mean, we're all adults, right? And we should all be able to regulate our emotions like adults. But clearly some have a harder time than others.
The fact of the matter is I often stop and think of that random Amazon lady: how stressful her life sounded, how everything seemed to be going wrong, and how she couldn't even get a stupid pillow right. I think it's important to always remember empathy, especially when I stumble across unhinged things on the Internet. You never know what people are going through.
2026-03-14 02:17:00
The Bank of England is planning a big change for its banknotes!
They’re planning to swap out crusty old historical figures for native animals and birds. It’s a move that not only celebrates nature, but brings some much needed fresh design energy, and could even help to raise awareness about our declining species in the British Isles and I’m absolutely here for it.
🐦 Pigeon — Not just any old bird, but a WWII hero. These scrappy little guys carried life-saving messages during wartime, making them punk as fuck and real badass legends.
🦔 Hedgehog — These prickly lil fellas are sadly declining in the wild so it’s a no-brainer. Plus they’re just too cute and everybody loves hedgehogs. If you don’t, we have a problem.
🦫 Beaver — After such a conservation success story being reintroduced in the UK, I think these certainly deserve some extra time in the limelight.
🦊 Fox — Ubiquitous in British folklore and countryside culture. Clever, adaptable, and instantly recognisable, a true symbol of Britain’s wild and urban landscape.
🌾 Fieldmouse — Tiny, and often overlooked, but vital for ecosystems. They are a reminder that even small things matter.
🦡 Badger — Iconic species of British woodlands, legally protected, and recognised as a symbol of resilience and strength. They deserve their spot after being vilified for way too long.
🍦 Gull — The symbol of Britain’s coastlines. I think they perfectly highlight urban and coastal wildlife, reminding people that nature exists right alongside us.
In the summer you can even vote on which species make the cut so make sure that you vote for your favourite!
I love the idea of replacing old portraits with native species that actually mean something to history and to the environment (although the monarch will still be on the front too 🙄). Using our birds and mammals on banknotes isn’t just an aesthetic design choice in my opinion, it’s a way to educate, inspire, and raise awareness for our rapidly declining native wildlife. I’d love to see multiple different endangered or declining species get featured, because the exposure could help people remember who they are and why we need to protect them.
Monuments and portraits are fine in museums and textbooks, where they belong, but our wallets should celebrate the species we live our lives right beside but quite often forget.
Plus, we’re British… So you know it won’t be long before people start asking if someone has a “spare pigeon” instead of a fiver. And that just tickles me.
2026-03-14 00:35:00
so people always ask why i run my own stuff.
"why not just use google drive?" "why not just use discord for everything?" "why not just pay for the service?"
and i get it. it sounds like extra work for no reason. but once you start, you kind of can't stop.
for me it was a single service. something small. a password manager, a notes app, whatever. you set it up, it works, and you feel this weird satisfaction. like. i did that. i own that. nobody can take that away from me. and then you think "ok what else can i run myself?" that's the trap. that's where it gets you.
people assume self-hosting is a budget move. sometimes it is, sometimes it really isn't. between electricity, hardware, domain names, and the hours you sink into it? you're not saving much. but that's kind of not the point. the point is ownership. the point is control. the point is knowing exactly where your data lives and who can touch it. spoiler: it's you. only you.
every self-hoster knows this phase. you're out somewhere and your stuff goes down and you're desperately ssh-ing into your server from your phone like a person possessed. it's not glamorous. it's kind of embarrassing actually. but you fix it, and you learn something, and it doesn't happen again. probably.
i've tried. i genuinely have. google photos felt wrong after running my own gallery. notion felt wrong after self-hosting obsidian sync. youtube music felt... ok actually youtube music is fine i'm not crazy. but for everything else there's this permanent itch. like the data isn't really mine if i can't see the folder it's sitting in.
this is the part nobody talks about. self-hosting teaches you how stuff actually works. networking, reverse proxies, ssl certs, docker, backups, all of it. you stop being a user and start being someone who actually understands the systems they use. that shift is hard to undo.
is it a hobby? technically yeah. but hobbies are things you can put down. i cannot put this down. my server is always on. my uptime dashboard is always open. there are always three new services i want to try. it's a lifestyle at this point. send help.