Conviction

Conviction is an easy thing to have in theory, and when scenarios are abstracted away, perhaps in the outward context of another person’s life, they are much easier to hold. Unfortunately, when convictions are in relation to your personal life and directly affect you and that you hold dearly, they are much more difficult to hold.

Due to my family situation I have now lost contact with my sister. My sister has a daughter who just recently celebrated another birthday on this planet. Unfortunately, due to the serious actions of my sister and her complete disregard for the feelings of people I hold dearly, I am not on speaking terms with her. Given my refusal to be blackmailed with access to my niece, I have come to terms with the fact I will never be involved in her life.

Due to a related situation, I have also lost contact with my brother. My brother has betrayed mine and several people’s trust in a way that only somebody close could do. I’m not talking about some petty argument here, I am talking about such a serious sense of betrayal that if heard in a court room, he would most certainly receive a prison sentence. As he is my brother, he walks away with no legal or any real punishment, other than banishment.

I take no pleasure in this.

Wrath

Wrath is sometimes easily conflated with violence or revenge. True wrath comes from a sense of morality and justice. I am on occasion angry, frustrated, upset, although rarely conveying these emotions.

One person in particular, and those that have aided them, will receive my attention. My attention is split and there is much I want to achieve in my life, but I will make an exception this one time.

My memory is long and unforgiving. They deserve punishment that future religious texts will write about. Their abuse towards me and continued abuse towards those around me, over a prolonged period of time, has warranted nothing short of wrath. Even if I wrote it here, you simply would not believe me. Not tomorrow, not in a month, not in a year, but at some random point throughout a lifetime, they will come to understand.

Perseverance

On a lighter note, I will push myself physically soon. The weather is poor, my health is poor, and I have no business doing so - but that is what makes the challenge more appealing.

Over the years I am somewhat known for pushing the limit on what is possible, both physically and mentally. Despite having poor health I was in a team that won a three day challenge amongst incredibly physically fit people. Another time I did a four day march despite being unfit.

I wouldn’t call myself smart, but I have also pushed the limits mentally too. At the age of 14 I saved up on a paper-round and begged my best friend’s mother to buy me a book: a beginner’s book on programming. By 15 had I written my own DOS-like operating system from scratch. Before the age of 16 I had contacted CERN about particle physics and got banned from the school network for hacking.

What I have learned and accepted is that there is nothing particularly noteworthy of me. I did inherit just one important trait, one that is rare and to date not replicated: perseverance.

I have a fire within me that is not easily extinguished, that if correctly directed, could change the world.

Finally

There was a range of emotion there, but it had to be conveyed somewhere because I don’t outwardly express how I feel about such things.

Addressing Throwaway Article Points

I’m not treating the following points made seriously, but thought I would address them anyway…

But the other day I had someone scoff at me and say “Good luck reading when civilisation collapses! I’ll still be able to read by candle-light.”

This is nonsense. In the case of a Zombie Attack, am I really going to lug a few hundred kilograms of books with me? Or am I going to slip a lightweight eReader into my pocket and have ten thousand books at my disposal?

Most significant survival-like scenarios will likely require you shelter in-place. In the UK for example, there is some 80 million ¹ people, there is nowhere where large amounts of desperate people can actually go. This idea that you will be running around to survive is just nonsense. Our recent “apocalypse” scenario was simply a bunch of scared people cowering in their homes.

Also, where is he getting all those candles from? My eBook has a built in light which is less likely to attract Zombies and isn’t a massive fire hazard.

You can make candles and lanterns pretty easily. You could get a 500ml beer can, fill it with sand and splash some flammable liquid in it for a slow burning fire for light and heat. (More advanced methods exist.) Not to mention, the majority of time could be spent with daylight.

Perhaps he’s concerned that an eReader battery won’t last more than a couple of weeks and then I’ll be stuffed. OK, sure. But I have a solar powered portable battery. As long as the dust clouds don’t blot out Earth’s yellow sun, I should be able to read indefinitely.

Assuming your solar powered battery is portable, it will keep going some 5 or 10 years? After which you are in trouble anyway.

Generally I think it is disingenuous to pretend that somehow your ebook will keep running after 20 years, but a book almost certainly will be in reading condition. No, you can’t carry 10k physical books in one go, but you can do what those before you have done for hundreds a years - return a book and pick up another.

But - and this is a big but - even if eReaders are vastly inferior in an emergency… so fucking what?

Agreed, the scenario is a prepper’s dream. Onto the real point…

The Main Point

If civilisation doesn’t collapse, I’d’ve wasted time, energy, money, and effort maintaining a physical library. I’d be limited to how many books I can take on a beach holiday. Every time I moved house I’d be straining my back carrying all of them. The fire-risk of hundreds of books would have been for naught.

Maintaining a physical library takes little to no effort. You just place books in a bookcase. Keep them dry and out of direct sunlight and they could serve you well after your death.

You will not need to worry about taking books on holiday with you - soon you will not have enough carbon credits to go visit that lovely beach anyway.

The fact that you are moving house so regularly is a different problem entirely, one I’m not going to address here.

It’s the same as people who don’t pay into a pension because they might be hit by a bus tomorrow. Sure. But what if you’re unlucky enough to reach old age?

Realistically none of us are going to make the age of our recent previous generations because the NHS will collapse. We have simply run out of money to run it.

In our local area (I don’t care what you think goes on in yours), the process to get an appointment is as follows:

1. You realise you need to see a doctor. In typical British tradition, something that was previously fine is no longer fine, you’re quite concerned and the reason you are phoning is not without reason.
2. You go into the local doctors. It’s empty. The receptionist tells you “you cannot make an appointment here, you need to phone”.
3. You walk outside and phone. The same receptionist picks up and starts asking for all the details about your condition. The receptionist, who is not a trained medical staff, then triages your case and decides if you get an appointment with the doctor.
4. A week later (if you are lucky and still alive), the doctor calls you. You then have to describe your symptoms within the 10 minute call slot. The doctor will give you any drugs you think you need, anything recommended by Doctor Google if it makes you stop calling.
5. You go to pick up your medication at the pharmacy, who have run out of the thing you have been subscribed and substitute it with a cheaper alternative. It’s cheaper not because it doesn’t have the same active ingredient, but because the quantity of the active ingredient is less well controlled.

This is an extremely real situation for millions around the UK.

The following is the total public sector net debt in the UK:

Since 2000 our public sector debt has ballooned by five times, and yet our GDP hasn’t matched that growth. Short-term thinking is built into the UK leadership structure, pushing problems such as debt onto people of the future. Worst still, such short-term thinking is even rewarded.

You can either live each day like its your last - and deal with the consequences of tomorrow when they come - or you can take a reasoned approach to the inevitability of the future.

So I’m going to enjoy all the comforts of an eReader now. Come the end-of-the-world, I will regret… well, probably nothing.

You take a dig at short-term thinking, and then go onto embrace short-term thinking?

I don’t want to live like a prepper and have a basement full of pickled vegetables slowly fermenting, or a library of paper slowly crumbling.

Crumbling books is simply not the case. They would have to be stored in poor condition. I have multiple books in excess of a hundred years old in perfect working order.

Digital Book Gatekeepers

The real reason I oppose ebooks is because using services like Amazon, I never really own it. Far more likely than a world ending scenario is simply that the political winds change, and ‘Snow White and the Seven Dwarves’ is rewritten to be ‘The Bearded Lady and the Seven Twerking Gays’. Whether or not I like the new rendition of the book is besides the point, Amazon now helpfully patch all existing copies on Kindles.

I may have a copy of Mein Kampf so that I can understand how desperate and good-meaning people were indoctrinated by evil ideology. One day I find it deleted off of my Kindle, and a new entry on Wikipedia’s banned book list. All for my benefit, don’t you see?

The point is, a physical book I own. It will outlast me, it will always be there. Publishing companies could retract it, governments could ban it, Amazon could go bankrupt, the digital format could become obsolete, the UK’s main language could be switched to Mandarin - and yet my physical book remains as a snapshot in time.

Finally

Don’t get me wrong, I myself own ebooks and have collections of digital books for reading out and about. There is no doubt of their convenience. But. Anything I really value I get a physical copy of.

Space vs Time vs Matter vs Energy

I propose these are all the same thing. Time is a bi-product of space - the relative speed difference in which space can pass space as I think Space = Mass = Energy. I think that for a stationary object, the following applies:

E = m.c^2 = k.s
  Where E=Energy, m=mass, c=constant(speed of light),
  k=constant(unknown) and s=space

Time is a measurement/result of space so doesn’t get consideration here. The only thing I am to figure in this model is electro fields. It doesn’t yet fit the model.

Dark Energy

If this is right I think the need for dark energy disappears. Dark energy has been predicted to be everywhere, pulling things together all around us. I think the reason we can’t find it is because it isn’t there and it’s something we automatically dismiss - space! Imagine that only large amounts of space have measurable gravity. Singly these “clumps” don’t amount to anything measurable but together they represent vast amounts of gravity. Gravity is the stretching of space and vast amounts of stretched space must hence have gravity. It makes perfect sense.

Notes

This is just ramblings, I still want to condense this down into something testable which correlates with what we see around us. I think it helps with the larger picture but not the smaller quantum world.

Review

Again this is a review of this year from my perspective - as you may see the points are very similar to the previous points made.

Goals

I’ve simplified the goals to a list rather than the paragraphs I had last time. This time I want the goals to be simple and measurable (I was somewhat inspired by the Linux Unplugged Christmas episode).

The following are my goals over the next year:

• Fitness - The intention this year is to increase exercise dramatically, now that I have transitioned into a ‘normal’ and sustainable diet. I will post more about this at a later date.
• Travel - At some point it would be nice to actually be able to go home to the UK!
• RoboCup World Cup - I appear to have a viable path to be able to go to Thailand, Bangkok in July of 2022… I’m not holding my breath, but it would be very good to be able to make some more progress in the robotics space again!
• Balance Engine - A long-standing project of mine has been to work on humanoid motion, and towards this end I finally made some time to begin working on a balance engine. I’m making some nice progress in this space and hope to be able to publish some results in the coming months.
• PhD - This needs to essentially be done by July - I run out of time and money, and to be quite frank, patience. I have other parts of my life that I really need to be getting on with!
• Linux PDA - This is something I’ve wanted to build for years now. I finally have a viable path forwards to build this device and will hopefully find time to start making progress on it!

Those are all of the goals I can think of for now!

Predictions

I believe my predictions were pretty good last time! I will make some more predictions going forwards:

• COVID-19 restrictions - I believe these will mostly be lifted in the next 6 months. I believe that Omicron is essentially nature’s vaccination, it spreads fast and kills less. Speaking to experts in the field, they essentially believe that all successful variations from now will be less deadly. Given that Omicron appears to have an exceptionally low hospitalisation rate, I think we are well on our way towards being in the recovery now.
• COVID-19 vaccinations - They arrived too late. Since the Delta variant the vaccine companies were trying to create a Delta-specific version and were not able to create one in time. Now we have the Omicron variant and they need to reset their efforts. I really suspect this will also not happen in time, but also that demand for vaccines will decrease as the death rate massively decreases. Because governments are slow, it will likely take them a while to figure out that this is what the general population believe.
• China tensions - These will continue to get worse. The CCP’s economy will continue to not meet growth expectations, their property market bubble will continue to worsen and they will look weaker and weaker. To re-direct attention they will look to externalise their problems, i.e. with Taiwan and the US.
• Russia tensions - The EU and Russia have been in tensions recently, but I believe this is just Putin positioning and taking advantage (which from his perspective, he should do). In this case I believe that it makes sense tensions will decrease as Russia’s bargaining position decreases. The only future issues I see is a Russia and China collaboration.
• Global recession - You can’t tell an entire economy to not work for a year, print tonnes of money and not expect a recession, these debts need to be paid. A lot of people will lose money and in response people will rush to pull their money out at the wrong possible time.

Let’s hope for a great 2022!

Recap

Addressing the points I made in the previous article:

• Exhaustion – This has felt a lot better since I last brought it up - I’m not sure why. I have increased my coffee intake and this seems to have mostly starved off these side effects. Coffee is an appetite suppressant, so perhaps this is somewhat part of it - I’m not sure.
• Ketoacidosis – A month ago I had some concerns about potentially dropping into ketoacidosis, due to a rare form of kidney failure. I’ve since had my kidney function checked (I will go into this later) and they are operating perfectly - much to the doctor’s surprise.
• Cravings – The other week I had overexerted myself after having already blown through my daily calories and carbohydrates, so I was on a real energy-low. My friends purchased some cake or bread (I can’t quite remember) and that smell drove me mad. I had to remove myself from the situation and go to sleep. Other than this, I was thinking about a friend’s idea to create a tea shop with cakes, and after thinking about many different types of cakes, I was almost visibly drooling. The craving is certainly still existing, but it takes a lot more to make it come out. Ultimately if I don’t adequately address this, it will be a problem when this diet comes to its conclusion.
• Protein shake – I have been successful in replacing cheese with protein shake for the most part - except I’ve simply just not had that much of a snack anyway.
• Creatine – As I’ve not been consuming too much protein shake, my intake of creatine has not been so high.
• Heart rate – This has generally increased, so I am not really sure what was going on there. I generally feel that my heart rate hasn’t experienced a significant drop in the last few weeks, so I think things are much better now. No idea what was happening there, perhaps an illness?
• Doctor – I did finally see a doctor, although not under the circumstances I expected. I will discuss this further shortly.
• Running – I did attempt to start running again, but mostly failed. Although my weight is much less, my body is still very adverse to running - even more so that it was previously. I suspect this is in part due to being fully fat adapted, meaning that I have zero energy stores available for quick and dirty energy pulls.
• Cost – I have very bad at reducing cost recently, but I have made some investments that should allow me to save a lot of money in the near future. Given everything else going on, I’ve been haemorrhaging thousands of dollars this month.

And with that out of the way…

Social

This section worked really well for me last time as the micro-blogging allows me to make small notes that I am able to refer back to at a later date. So again I will go back through my #keto updates and discuss them one by one in reverse time order.

Leg spasms are still something I’m quite concerned about and need to get properly checked after the visa medical is done. The spasms have continued after this post and continue to get slightly worse, although not crazily worse.

I need to stop buying keto ice cream in any case, it’s simply too damn expensive to do so. It’s time to start tucking some money away.

Again I discussed the issue of leg spasms, it’s a problem that has essentially been plaguing me for at least this month.

My leading theory is that it’s some form of vitamin deficiency, as it’s affecting all of my muscles at the same time. Just today even I was trying on shoes in the shop and my foot went into spasm. The fact that it’s happening in random places I think is a good sign. If it was just one muscle I would be much more concerned.

Unfortunately the blood tests required testing my fasting glucose levels. Fortunately enough for me, I’m mostly eating one meal a day or so, and this really wasn’t a challenge for me.

So this was me panicking about having to perform the test with the spasms going on. As you may imagine, I was really quite concerned about having to undergo the tests.

When they were taking the blood samples, I could literally feel my blood being emptied from my brain and the left side of my body. Not a pleasant feeling, I imagine it’s what bleeding out might feel like.

To celebrate completing the tests, I then decided to have six beers - as you do. This went about as well as one might imagine. Was pretty funny for me to talk to people whilst drunk and then awful staying awake long enough to become sober again.

I’ll discuss this in more detail shortly, but in short, the doctor was very pleased with my progress since my previous health check-up in November.

Medical Check

This is probably the most exciting part of the report here! Rather than some bullshit wishy-washy “I feel better” report, I actually have some numbers to share to backup my words. The following are the direct results from the Doctor’s practice and additionally I will add some reference numbers, as these mean nothing on their own to me and I assume to you the reader too.

Disclaimer: I’m by no means an expert, so please do not use me as a reference for your own progress, etc. Please seek proper medical advice, specifically somebody who specialises in keto diets to properly understand your results.

According to the trusty internet, this is a urine test to ensure to test my kidneys are operating correctly. As my microalbuminuria levels were much less that 30 mg/L, coming in at 9 mg/L - this indicates my kidneys are operating well.

Additionally, they tested urine creatinine - essentially another by-product of muscles. Apparently it’s just used to test how dilute the urine is, encase I had drunk lots of water or mixed water into my sample. This is then used to produce a checking ratio below.

HbA1c is supposed to be your average blood glucose for the last 2-3 months. It is suggested that if you are at risk of type 2 diabetes (which I was), then your levels should be below 42 mmol/mol (6%). Mine at 29 mmol/mol (4.8%) is very good at preventing diabetes.

The lipids panel is possibly the most controversial - the jury is literally still out to whether high or low HDL/LDL is good or bad.

Checking online, my results are as follows:

• Total cholesterol – Desirable is below 5.18 mmol/L - I have 4.4 mmol/L, great.
• Triglyceride – Desirable is below 1.7 mmol/L - I have 1.0 mmol/L, great.
• HDL cholesterol – Desirable is greater than 1.5 mmol/L - I have 1.35 mmol/L, good.
• LDL cholesterol – Desirable is below 1.8 mmol/L - I have 2.6 mmol/L, good.
• Cholesterol/HDL Ratio seems to be another internal measurement.

Considering I weigh 110-120 kg, these numbers are actually pretty exceptional.

Apparently my renal function is about average. Not good, not great. It essentially just says that my kidneys are functioning exactly correctly.

This test is quite hard to decipher, but I am told the numbers are as expected. I am currently trying to get more information regarding these numbers.

The doctor remembered me and was generally very impressed with the progress I have made. Before I left my previous medical test I informed him of my intension to lose weight, and I think he seemed pleasantly surprised that I had made so much progress.

Next Steps

In the next steps, I have the following goals:

• Further medical tests – I need to figure out why my muscles keep going into spasm. I think I am vitamin deficient, but I cannot for the life of me figure out which one it is.
• Running – I am so close to being able to run again it’s unreal. I really want to be able to go out running again. I’ll definitely need to build myself up again, but I am looking forward to the day where I can run again. I really expect progress to massively increase once this is the case.

Anyway, that’s all folks! Until next time.

The Medical Argument

“Stay home, save lives” in the mantra being spread world-wide as people are locked in their homes. But we must consider reasons why people left their homes in the first place - other than to work and collect groceries. There used to be valid reasons other than simply to socialize or to relax in some social setting, such as a bar or restaurant.

I’m not going to make the argument from the perspective of exercise, in my experience people have been using their allotted daily exercise as a good opportunity to not kill the people they live with. During World War II, despite shortages and potential malnutrition, generally Britain’s health improved both mentally and physically. Like war, we have a common enemy and a strong resolve, I believe we will come out the other end of this stronger - we’ll need to be.

It’s quite likely that progressive diseases such as cancer will be allowed to ravage those who have it. Regular check-ups have been postponed, people are too afraid to seek medical treatment in fear of the silent enemy and as a result, there will be a death toll as a direct result of our actions.

But almost as pressing as cancer is heart disease, obesity doesn’t simply go away because we will it to. Because these people are unable to socialize and are fearful of visiting medical facilities, people are going to die from heart attacks, strokes, maybe even diabetes. Very few people are actually aware of what these things look like.

And those are just two major diseases affecting the population of the world, not to mention of the many, many others. It turns out those doctors and nurses did actually do something useful before this virus happened.

I make this argument as somebody who has lost people to cancer, people diagnosed with diabetes and died from the China virus. These are difficult decisions to make, but I think that when posed with two bad options, one should pick the lesser evil. We need to have an honest discussion about the medical cost of this virus.

The Doctors Argument

Due to a lack of PPE (thanks China) and continuous close contact, medical staff have been putting their lives on the line. It’s why people have been stupidly clapping and ignoring the quarantine to do so.

The result? Doctors and nurses have been contracting the virus, some dying, some taking time to recover. They didn’t sign up for this, when they were studying they were not told “you may need to sacrifice yourself to help people”. They didn’t think the probability of dying as a result of their work was very high (and are paid to reflect that). When they were told “wear this PPE for several days” and “your PPE is now bin bags”, many doctors and nurses have simply quit.

Bright-eyed bushy-tailed students are looking at this and thinking “will I be thrown onto the front-line next to sacrifice myself?”. I suspect that although the medical workers of today will be hailed as heroes, we could potentially see a large drop-off in people applying for such positions all around the world. People don’t tend to be so fast to rush towards their own demise.

The Economic Consequence Argument

To be clear, this isn’t an argument about preserving our wealth (as this doesn’t appear to phase the Marxists of you), this is simply to discuss what will happen without it. There are links between economic growth & health, economy & health, education & health, work & health.

We could do this all day, the link is very clear: People in poorer economies often have poorer health, whereas people in richer economies usually have better health. And in this case we can extend health to mean a healthy life-style, including education and work security.

The Freedom Argument

This may not be so pressing to others, but it is to me. Many people will happily give away their freedom at the promise of potential safety, but it’s ultimately our freedom that makes us safe and people tend to not understand this.

Is our freedom at risk? Yes. After 9/11 (the September 11th terrorist attack in 2001), a significant number of freedoms were given up in the US. Privacy was breached in digital communications, freedom of movement was lost or at least hindered by security searches, freedom of speech was threatened, the right to bare arms in some places, the list goes on - all in the name of “national security”. People were frightened and willingly gave over these freedoms.

Once again we are in a position where people feel frightened and governments have enacted restrictive laws in the name of “national health”. Are these restrictions needed and if so, will they definitely be lifted after the virus outbreak? Possibility not. Freedom is easily lost and hard to win. Ask the slaves, ask the people who died for it.

Why is losing freedom bad? Losing freedom is extremely bad in the long run. The best places in the world are the most free. All the places I could name where I wouldn’t want to live are either a dictatorship or are communist, i.e. a dictatorship by one or many. Our freedoms allow us to act without fear, they ultimately allow us to question authority.

Conclusion

There is a cost to saving lives and it’s this: Other people’s lives. Everything has a cost and we should consider exactly what that is when making our decisions. Yes, people will die due to the virus, maybe even a close family member of myself. But we must also consider the greater picture and be willing to do the right thing in spite of our own potential mortality. We will pay a price for these actions and we should be aware of that in advance.

I don’t have the answers. I wish I did. I hope the people who are able to get the answers are actually asking them.