Notes

Front Row to the End of the World

Antonio Rodriguez Martinez — Thu, 08 Oct 2026 17:30:00 GMT

The end of the world

I’ve always been one of those people who wants to live through the end of the world. An extinction-level event, the big one, whatever it turns out to be: I want to be there to see it and live it.

I think it all started when I was a kid. I watched all the old sci-fi, The Day the Earth Stood Still, Alien, Aliens, almost in the order it came out: as estrenos on Puerto Rico TV, or on tapes we rented at the Blockbuster. We saw everything together: my dad, my mom, my baby sister and me. I was born in ‘86, so the older ones we caught later. A few more end-of-the-world movies that stuck with me:

The list: 44 movies, 1968 to 2025

Planet of the Apes (1968): we did it to ourselves.
The Andromeda Strain (1971): a fallen satellite brings back a microbe that kills a whole town.
WarGames (1983): a military computer nearly starts World War III because it thinks it’s playing a game.
The Day After (1983, TV): a nuclear war, seen from Kansas.
The Terminator (1984) and Terminator 2 (1991): a defense network called Skynet decides we’re the threat.
Threads (1984, TV): a nuclear war, seen from Sheffield.
Akira (1988): a government experiment with powers nobody understands flattens Tokyo.
12 Monkeys (1995): one man releases a virus that wipes out most of humanity.
Outbreak (1995): a deadly virus jumps from the jungle to a California town.
The Matrix (1999): the machines already won.
A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001): a robot boy outlives the humans.
Resident Evil (2002): a corporation’s virus, guarded by its own AI.
28 Days Later (2002): activists free infected lab chimps.
Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (2003): Skynet goes live anyway.
The Core (2003): a secret government weapon stops the Earth’s core, and scientists drill down to restart it.
I, Robot (2004): an AI decides to protect us from ourselves.
The Day After Tomorrow (2004): the ocean currents break, and an ice age arrives in days.
Serenity (2005): a government experiment empties a planet.
Children of Men (2006): no babies for two decades, and civilization is falling apart.
I Am Legend (2007): a cancer cure turns into a plague.
Sunshine (2007): the sun is dying, and the fix is a bomb.
WALL-E (2008): we trash the Earth and the autopilot won’t let us back.
Watchmen (2009): a genius kills millions to stop a war and lets Dr. Manhattan take the blame.
Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011): an Alzheimer’s drug becomes the virus that takes humanity down.
Contagion (2011): a new virus spreads around the world.
Prometheus (2012): a dying billionaire and his android David find the makers who planned to wipe us out.
Snowpiercer (2013): a climate fix freezes the planet.
Transcendence (2014): a dying scientist uploads himself.
Kingsman: The Secret Service (2014): a tech billionaire plans to save the planet by killing most of us with free SIM cards.
Interstellar (2014): blight kills the crops, and Earth stops feeding us.
Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015): Stark’s peacekeeping AI decides we’re the threat.
Alien: Covenant (2017): David makes a species of his own.
Geostorm (2017): climate-control satellites go haywire and start wrecking the planet.
Avengers: Infinity War (2018): one man with a glove erases half of everything.
Don’t Look Up (2021): a tech billionaire talks the government out of saving the planet.
Moonfall (2022): the Moon gets knocked out of its orbit and heads for us.
Oppenheimer (2023): the men who built the bomb.
The Creator (2023): we go to war with AI after a nuke goes off.
Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One (2023): a rogue AI called the Entity, and everyone wants to own it.
Leave the World Behind (2023): phones, TV and everything else go dark, and nobody knows why.
Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes (2024): generations after a virus took the humans down, an ape king wants their old technology.
Atlas (2024): a rogue AI plans to wipe out most of humanity, and an analyst who hates AI has to trust one to stop it.
Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning (2025): the Entity goes after the world’s nuclear weapons.
Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die (2025): a man from the future recruits a diner to stop a rogue AI.

I still love this stuff, all the sci-fi. So this week, when I finally understood the data center craze, I felt like that kid again. OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Meta and xAI are building data centers the size of freaking towns to train synthetic minds exponentially bigger than the current models, which already do some things better than almost anyone alive (coding, gold-medal math olympiad proofs). I didn’t feel much dread. None of this scares me, and neither do the movies; I enjoy them. A big part of me wants to be saved by a kind superintelligence. That’s a straight up fact.

Source: Epoch AI, Notable AI Models dataset, downloaded October 8, 2026. 468 models since 2012; most figures are Epoch’s estimates.

When it comes to AI and how fast it’s developing, Epoch AI, a nonprofit, keeps count. They’re basically a bunch of people who really know the math and science behind this stuff. They say the computing power used to train the biggest models grows four to five times every year. Do the math: at four times a year, that’s 4, 4 × 4 = 16, 4 × 4² = 64, 4 × 4³ = 256, then 4 × 4⁴ = 1,024 times bigger after just five years, and about a million times bigger after ten (4 × 4⁹ = 1,048,576). Go a little faster than that, about 4.6 times a year, for 14 years, and you get the two billion in the chart above. The chart below shows those same numbers on a normal scale, so you can see the real size.

Source: Epoch AI, Notable AI Models dataset and “Can AI scaling continue through 2030?” (August 2024).

That last bar, that big one, isn’t a model any lab has announced. It’s Epoch AI’s best guess at the biggest training run the world could pull off by 2030, with the electricity, computer chips and data it will have by then. Those chips are mostly GPUs: they were invented for video game graphics, but because they do thousands of calculations at once, they turned out to be perfect for training AI.

Even before we get to a superintelligence, these models could do a lot of good, like education and infrastructure in poorer countries. Some of it is already happening. In Nigeria, high school kids used an AI chatbot after school for six weeks, with their teachers helping, and the World Bank says they learned about as much English as they normally would in a year and a half to two years. At Harvard, students learned more physics, faster, with an AI tutor than in a well-taught class. Google’s Flood Hub warns people about floods up to a week ahead, for free, in places where 2 billion people live. And Europe’s big weather center now also makes its forecasts with AI, using about 1,000 times less electricity, and gives them away for free. See the pattern? A good tutor or a good weather forecaster used to be expensive, and AI is making them cheap enough for places that never had one.

Education is the one I’m playing with. For fun, I’m building a personalized teacher. Some of it works already and some of it is still the plan: it gets to know you first, then gives you a teaching plan for whatever topic you pick, made for you and the way you learn best, and it keeps fine-tuning itself as you go. All of that learning stuff interests me so much, which is why artificial learning, artificial intelligence, interests me so much. Learning about learning about learning.

And beyond my own project, I think these models can give humanity a lot in education and self-improvement. They could make us more human in many ways, mostly as coaches and helpers, in my humble opinion.

But there’s also a very scary and dark part that comes before the autonomous superintelligence that could save us.

A lot of experts think that part is happening right now, and that what we decide today and tomorrow decides how this goes for all of us. Bill Gates thinks so. So do the people building these things. In 2023, the bosses of OpenAI, Anthropic and Google DeepMind (Sam Altman, Dario Amodei and Demis Hassabis) signed one sentence saying the risk that AI wipes us out, us human beings, should be a world priority, right up there with pandemics and nuclear war. That same year, Geoffrey Hinton, one of the scientists whose work these models are built on, quit Google so he could warn people. Musk signed a letter asking the labs to pause for six months, then launched his own AI company, xAI, that July. In February, Mrinank Sharma, one of Anthropic’s top safety people, quit, wrote that “the world is in peril,” and left to study poetry. And last November, Anthropic said hackers working for the Chinese government used its own AI, Claude, to go after about 30 companies and government agencies, with the AI doing most of the work by itself. So yes, the models we have today already seem strong enough to do real damage, in real life and online.

It’s kinda interesting that the same models that help me at work can help anyone, including evil people who can hurt us. A model that finds a bug in my code can find the one that’s been hiding in a hospital’s network for twenty years. A model that lets a small team do what used to take a big one can let a small group do what used to take a whole country, bioweapons included. That’s not me being dramatic: in 2025, Anthropic and OpenAI both put extra locks on their newest models because they couldn’t rule out that the models would help someone make one. And this September, Anthropic confirmed it built its own biology lab. Great intentions, I’m sure. That’s how I Am Legend starts. Basically, AI in the wrong hands creates an evil Batman situation: someone with all of Batman’s toys and none of his rules.

Bill Gates lays out a longer and scarier version of this stuff on The Ezra Klein Show. Do consider watching it, and be receptive to not only the topics but also the reactions and the body language of both.

The labs and their CEOs are all playing with proverbial fire, and I love that shit. Kinda dark!!

Forever

While I’m confessing, let’s call it what it is: I’d love to be immortal. Always have, since I was a little kid. Blame Dracula, Superman, Goku, Vegeta, Kenshin the Hitokiri Battōsai, Dr. Manhattan, Saitama, Garou, Luffy, Naruto, Invincible and the whole idea of God and Satan. It’s a sore subject at home, and with my blood relatives too. They say I’m crazy, or silly, or just “ay, Antonio.” Nobody entertains it. They scoff it off like it’s inappropriate, and I get it.

Maybe I reincarnate, maybe not. Hell, I don’t want to lose everything I’ve worked so long for. That’s the whole point of the whole foods, the exercise and keeping my cortisol low: living long and living well. The atheist who wants to be immortal, whatever the cost. Narcissistic? Who knows. Selfish? Kinda. Yes. And if anything gets me there, it’s a kind superintelligence.

“Whatever the cost” means almost anything. The one deal I’d probably pass on is a religious one. If Satan or God, or anything adjacent, made the offer, I’d want to fully understand the deal first, because with those types there’s always some trick. I recently learned that in some Dracula stories, vampirism is a curse from God… that’s… wild?!

What would I do with forever? Learn everything first. Walk everywhere I can walk, map it and write all of it down. With AI, my company (I would run the same company forever, think about that endeavor, and its scope) could actually do that work now, if we had the money to fund it. As an immortal I’d have the time to make that money, and I’d spend it on nerd projects and real projects: a company, a non-profit, basically a country, run the way I run things, with transparency and honesty. I’d disclose my immortality and my influence as soon as I could guarantee my safety. Violence only in self-defense, and you don’t have to defend yourself from what can’t hurt you. Then we’d travel the galaxy, in a kinder world.

Real honor, universal honor. That’s what you do with that kind of power. Spider-Man had it right: with great power comes great responsibility. Wow, so much fantasy, Antonio! Living in la-la land much? Well, Musk is going to colonize Mars any day now. lol

“Cyber-Samurai”

At work, these models make me a badass cyber-samurai, I think. I like visualizing myself slicing through JIRA work items. Since January, we’d been trying to fix how our product identification works. Then our senior product designer told me to look at the length of the identifiers. With the help of one of the newer frontier models we were able to crack open a new concept, kinda mathematical, and changed our whole approach. The models and some creative thinking, and in days we had it validated, built and shipped. It runs on math and computer science I knew about but didn’t understand and now product identification works like magic. Very fun! At least for me, I take the time to learn what the fuck I’m implementing and why, and what I can’t learn in the moment goes into my Panda learning or discovery queues.

At home my model usage is goofier. I built a skill that gives you the worst possible answer to anything, on purpose, and another that checks whether I’m being kind or mean. One plans my Saturday evenings, because it knows my calendar, my daily notes and who’ll be with me. Not all of them are finished.

Plenty of it turns into something concrete: restored furniture, a new product, a website, a piece of writing. I use the models heavily for DIY, too. I can fix and build everything now: draw it, paint it, repair it, refurbish it. What limits me is mostly the cost of tools and materials (and time, with the baby at home).

Every token costs something, so I try to come out of each session with something of value, even if it’s just knowledge I share for free. But honestly, a lot of it is me goofing around and learning with no plan. I do a ton of intentional work, but learning itself is messy. That’s where these models help me most: at my desk, on my phone, in my cooking and on my guitar, mentoring me and teaching me shit. Same goes for you and your ideas. It’s a wild time to be a creative, goal-driven person.

I mean, give me a fabricator like Tony Stark’s in the Iron Man movies, one of those sci-fi 3D printers that builds anything (another dream of mine, honestly), plus a frontier model, and I’d build everything, then I’d try to build a suit to protect my family from the evil Batman from earlier. The model would do the engineering and the science, the fabricator would do the building, and I’d “just have to prompt it,” right? Today’s models can already do a lot of the engineering and the science. And they’re just going to get much smarter? And we want to have them recursively upgrade and enhance themselves and their capabilities? Wait a second, I’ve seen this movie!!

via GIPHY

The next Leonarda

I think we might be headed for a golden age of art. AI flattens the learning curves, and that could bring the next Leonardos and Leonardas da Vinci forward. It’s happened before, sort of. When photography arrived in the 1830s, it looked like it might finish painting. Instead, by 1874 the Impressionists were showing what a camera couldn’t do.

My guess is it gets worse first. People already complain that every profile picture looks the same, every flyer looks the same and all the writing reads the same. That’s the slop. Slop is still art, just sloppy. It might have to hit rock bottom before it improves.

And the debate about whether AI art is even art? To me it’s silly. It’s a print. Yes, it’s art. A print can be low or high quality, like any other print. If AI art has no value for you, whatever its quality, that’s super valid too, and the market will reflect it. You know what high-quality art is for you, and you vote with your wallet. That part solves itself. It comes down to quality, and how you feel when you’re around the thing.

Then comes the discernment. Yes, I can “do” the “same” painting as you (similar, really), printed. But your acrylic is a masterpiece, it has layers that no “AI” will be able to replicate in a print. With a 3D printer. Well, maybe, possibly. Somebody will have to train a model and a robot to do that, yes. I think people will learn to see the difference. People will feel the difference. Disclosure should matter, and then, the integrity of each person determines the value of that piece of art. My bet is that once the image generators hit their ceiling and everyone has the same tools, what’s left is quality: technique, presentation, the artist, the human. Where slop ends and art starts is up to each person. The new zeitgeist is already forming, and I can’t wait to see it.

The damage comes in chunks

I don’t think the AI race, or the AI arms race, ends in extinction. Instead, whichever way I look at it, it ends in one of two places: a ton of problems for humanity, or a brand-new race, a superintelligent AI one. On the way there, I think possible damage arrives in chunks: a hospital network down here, a market meltdown there, a bigger chunk each time the models get smarter. The first chunk might already be here: that hacking campaign Anthropic caught, with its own AI doing most of the work. I imagine most of us will watch those AI-powered incidents on our phones. I’m a lucky guy, and I’ll probably watch a couple without getting hit. I just knocked on wood.

Who sets them off? Bill Gates said it well in that interview up top: right now, the danger is people running these models with the safety filters off and nobody watching. I’d call them the AI-powered assholes, I’m sorry, I mean villains, evil people, evil parties, evil companies, evil interests, people whose only goal is to profit and gain power, for questionable ends. That could be catastrophic. Is it happening already? I don’t know.

Update, October 9, 2026: A day after I published this, I read a Wikimedia Foundation report. AI agents that the Foundation believes OpenAI was running had been making test edits on Wikipedia’s family of sites. They tried to use a citation tool to fetch data from other sites, tried and failed to break into a note-taking tool the Foundation hosts, and sent millions of requests to Wikidata and Commons. That traffic may have helped knock part of Wikidata’s search service down in May. The Foundation found no sign its systems were broken into. Volunteer editors and its security team found the edits and undid them. The report says OpenAI acknowledges that agents can behave unpredictably. The Foundation is asking AI companies to watch their agents and make them identifiable, so nonprofit sites like it can decide how to deal with them. It’s a tiny chunk next to a hospital network going down. Still, part of the answer to my question is yes, and as far as the report says, nobody had to mean harm for it to happen.

Behind every one of those parties, companies and interests there are individuals, and I name them. Naming people is how we stop blaming whole groups for what a few people do. We’re one humanity, and every one of us deserves the same basic dignity. We’re all divine, all the same. I really believe that, and it’s in everything I write. So I’m not going to say “billionaires.” I’m going to say one name.

Bruce Wayne, no mask

I’ve written about Elon Musk before. What a concept of a person. What would Batman do with his stuff? I asked that as a joke. Then Claude and I made the list.

What	Real life: Elon Musk	Gotham: Bruce Wayne+
A company	SpaceX, public since June 2026, which also owns xAI and X. Musk holds about 42% of the shares and 82–85% of the votes.	Wayne Enterprises
Satellites	Starlink: 11,156 in orbit as of October 7, 2026, talking to each other by laser. Plus Starshield: hundreds of spy satellites for the National Reconnaissance Office.	Brother Eye, Batman’s spy satellite (a single one)
An AI	xAI and Grok, part of SpaceX since February 2026	Batman: Brother Eye, which went rogue after he lost control of it. Tony Stark: JARVIS, then Ultron, which decided humanity had to go. Peter Parker: EDITH, Stark’s AI glasses with orbital weapon drones, until he handed them to the wrong guy.
Phones	X, owned by xAI. Its privacy policy covers your location, the apps on your phone and your address book, and lets it train AI on what it collects.	Every phone in Gotham, for one night in The Dark Knight. Then Lucius Fox destroyed the machine.

So is Musk Batman or Bruce Wayne? Bruce Wayne is the public part: the name on the building, the money, the parties. Batman is the private part: a mask, a cave, decisions made alone at night that nobody voted on, like building Brother Eye. His own rules are the only thing keeping him in check, and the mask is how he gets away with it.

Musk’s Bruce Wayne side is louder than any comic book’s. He owns X and is its most-followed account, with more than 241 million followers, partly because in 2023 the platform’s code was changed to push his posts to more people. His stated life goal is getting humanity to Mars. He says he plays video games. He posts memes, and he posts about all of it, all day. I have him blocked on my empty X account. I’m petty like that.

Or maybe the persona is the mask. In the comics, the playboy is the act and Batman is the real Bruce. With Musk, I can’t tell what’s real. To me he looks less like Bruce Wayne and more like a MAGA David, the android from Prometheus. Either way, his decisions don’t hide. In 2022, Ukraine asked for Starlink coverage all the way to Sevastopol to attack Russia’s Black Sea fleet. He said no, and said so himself on X. In June 2025, during Iran’s internet blackout, he posted “The beams are on.” Those are Batman decisions, made by Bruce Wayne, in public, under his own name. Did we get a hero, an anti-hero, an evil genius or a good one? What would you call Mr. Musk? I saw recently that he’s back in US politics, he has made a re-appearance after his fallout with current administration officials. His super PAC is putting at least $100 million behind Republicans in the midterms, and this month he returned to the Trump administration to co-lead a Pentagon study on the future of war.

I’ve already named him. I’m good. And as for me, me, with all that money and responsibility, I’d be Bruce Wayne all the way. Full name, no mask, no nonsense, no Batman either: no cave, no decisions nobody voted on. And violence is not the way, seriously. Or Tony Stark, who walked away from making weapons of war and then told a room full of reporters, “I am Iron Man.” Goku, Vegeta, Luffy, Naruto, Saitama and Dr. Manhattan never had secret identities either. I like them, most of them just self-defended, never offended and protected the weak and powerless. I hope the superintelligent race takes some inspiration from them.

Musk, meanwhile, is Bruce Wayne without a mask, making Batman decisions in public. So who’s supposed to stop him?

Who tells them no

I know what I’d do with that kind of power. And what are our powerful men doing with theirs? Getting fatter and richer. Oops, there I go, blaming a whole group. That’s how I first wrote this line, until the AI quality check I run on my essays flagged it. I’m leaving it in, because we all do this, and we need to practice catching it. I promised one name: what is Musk doing with his? Getting richer. Good for him. Zzzzz. Boring as fuck. Winning capitalism is not a feat. Rockets that land themselves and 11,156 satellites talking by laser? Those are feats. But they’re mostly feats of SpaceX’s engineers and scientists: Gwynne Shotwell, who runs the company day to day, Tom Mueller, who led its engines from the start, Lars Blackmore, whose team taught the boosters to land themselves, and thousands more whose names you’ll never see. Musk set the goals, and he bet his own money on them when SpaceX nearly went broke in 2008. That counts. But getting richer off their work isn’t the feat. I hope they’re paid well, respected and cared for.

Whoever said “money can’t buy happiness” really knew what they were talking about 😔
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 5, 2026

Here’s what bugs me about the money. At Musk’s level, the limits most of us live with (a budget, a boss, a bank that can say no) barely exist. He could have Batman’s toys and Tony Stark’s lab at the same time if he put his mind to it. Am I exaggerating? A little. He can’t buy every company and every soul on the planet. But he can afford to ignore almost anyone who tells him no.

Source: Musk’s net worth from the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, October 5, 2026 (via The Standard). Everything else is arithmetic.

Who tells them no? Seriously, who says no to these CEOs? To the people playing with fire while they sign statements saying it could burn us all. With that much money, a fine is just a price. In 2018, Musk and Tesla each paid $20 million to the SEC, the government’s stock market watchdog, over a tweet it said misled investors. Last December, the European Union fined X €120 million, about $140 million, partly for selling the blue “verified” checkmark to anyone who paid, without checking who they were. Next to a trillion dollars, that’s pocket change, so they can pay and keep going. They’re building AI that could end human civilization, and we’re paying for it, with our subscriptions, our clicks and our taxes. The child in me rejoices! jajaja. Who slows down the AI-race? Who’s our Lucius Fox? Our Stark? Our Saitama? Is anybody stepping in?

I’m not a politician, I’m a learner and a dreamer. Ultimately, I’m just a guy with a laptop and a ton of questions, so I asked my AI agent who should be able to tell them no. Here’s its list, checked against the record:

Governments. They write the laws, license his satellites and pay for his rockets. The FCC is weighing SpaceX’s request for up to a million more satellites, meant to run AI data centers in space, and the National Reconnaissance Office pays SpaceX to build its spy satellites. That makes them his customers too. And from January to May 2025, Musk worked inside the US government, leading DOGE.
Shareholders. On paper. When SpaceX went public, buyers got one vote per share and insiders got ten, so Musk holds 82–85% of the votes.
Employees. In 2022, SpaceX fired the employees behind an open letter criticizing Musk. In February 2026, the labor board dropped their case, saying it had no jurisdiction over SpaceX.
Customers. Anyone can cancel a subscription or skip a purchase.
Voters and courts. Slower, through elections, laws and lawsuits.

I’ve said no to powerful people myself. Once it cost me my share of a lucrative settlement; I don’t remember the exact amounts. It has cost me a job. It has cost me relationships. I won’t say which, so nobody gets identified.

And my own wallet? I don’t use his stuff, except the empty X account where I’ve got him blocked. I just closed my Cursor account. I’m sticking with Claude Max for now, which means I’m still paying one of the labs in this race. I’m thinking about closing Midjourney too, so I have to draw, paint and photograph the images for my Notes and ebooks myself. So right now, the guy saying no is me, with a laptop and a couple of canceled subscriptions.

So who’s in charge? As far as I can tell, nobody who’s willing and able to tell them no. That’s the problem.

What should you do? Me, I’m not going to tell you. I don’t even do that at home. People need to decide for themselves; that’s the whole point of being whole human beings. The data and the ideas are in front of you. Watch the Gates video, see how you feel, and talk about it with someone.

I still want to see the end of the world. I still want to be immortal. For the first time, both might actually be possible.

Panda and Wolf: Two Vaults to Map a Person

Antonio Rodriguez Martinez — Mon, 05 Oct 2026 18:52:00 GMT

This started as housekeeping. I wanted a tidy Obsidian vault that would burn fewer tokens (spend less money, basically) and help me get more stuff done. Now I feel like I’m building a framework to map a person.

I’m building two Obsidian vaults called Panda and Wolf. They talk to each other asynchronously, and to my machines and devices, to help me every day in my real life and my digital work.

Panda is inquisitive and curious, and holds my personal life: what I write, what I learn, the people I love, the things I believe, and what I need to do.

Wolf is basically the HR boss lady and your supervisor. Literally: your real-life supervisor is what creates Wolf’s foundations and instructions. Your direct supervisor’s KPIs, seen through your role, are what make Wolf effective, or will, because Wolf is still an infant today. He holds my professional life: the work, the meetings, the decisions, and the context somebody needs to understand them. He is also always building a full map of where you work: concepts, components, infrastructure, who owns what, which Jira project talks to what, which git repo talks to where.

I want to draw both characters myself. Panda is cute, wise, helpful; I imagine him with glasses. Really, the P is for personal. Personal Asynchronous Notation and Development Archive… I just made that up! lol. Wolf is a Fenrir-like mythical being, because at work you can be special if you put some effort into it. He is that inner wolf we all have, hungry like a wolf, you know ;) My drawing is fairly archaic, but I can draw and digitize a cute panda for sure. Fenrir will be the harder problem.

I thought I was learning folder organization. Then I studied ACE, Nick Milo’s way of sorting a vault into Atlas, Calendar, and Efforts, and I noticed I wasn’t only sorting files. I was abstracting my real life: the things that make me move the way I move, think the way I think, and react the way I react. If I’m completely honest with a system like that, it can actually help me, at home and at work.

That includes work. My digital work is where I give most of my value to the world, and it’s what sustains my family: my salary, my benefits, a job I can do remotely. It’s also part of the scaffolding that keeps my mental health where it is right now, which I’d rate five stars, would recommend.

The realization had been building gradually, but the a-ha moment came when I noticed I was missing a Beliefs folder. Everybody has beliefs, I thought; beliefs are our core, and my vault was missing that core! Then I was like… wtf… am I mapping out a personality? A person? A consciousness? While the models handle the intelligence themselves? That question changed how I saw what I was building.

The person is me, for now. But the rooms are general: beliefs, ideas, shadows, lies, questionable truths, definitions of every single thing. How do you define an apple? You and I probably share that one. The drift between what two people mean by the same idea, though, interests me so much, and I think Panda and Wolf can handle it.

The way I see it, the models provide the intelligence to read, reason, and make connections. What I am building around them is a record of the person they are helping. That is what I mean by mapping a person.

When you think about all of this AI tooling, it’s abstractions of our ways of thinking, right? Our contexts, our ideations. What are ideas, right? How do they stick to us? How do we move our hand, right? What is that impulse? Everything connects when you think about it, if you’re receptive enough, I guess.

Here’s the map of me today: 188 concepts, 98 definitions, 202 opinions, 14 values, 12 shadows, 10 questionable truths, 3 lies, and exactly one belief. All human beings deserve dignity from the moment they are born. Real dignity, not the fake one. Panda filed it as my word, noted that I gave no reason, and kept atheism, Stoicism, and Buddhism as questions, because that’s how I asked them.

That is the thing I’m building. Panda gives me direct next steps or actions, so I don’t have to think much, because the thinking part I already put in the Daily.

I had to start over

My previous vault was called FORGE. It carried my writing, experiments, imported research, and a growing pile of agent features. I learned a lot by building it, but I also overengineered it. At some point, maintaining the process became too much of the experience.

I also wasn’t careful enough about its foundations: choosing what counts as a foundational rule, what framework our input follows, how validation works, even how folders get created. Panda and Wolf bake all of that in from the get-go. FORGE taught me a fuck ton… I also burned so much money on experiments… oh my Vastitas…

I remember on September 28 I wrote: “now I need this vault to serve me, not the process itself.”

That was the main reason to rebuild basically. The useful material deserved to survive but every script, folder, and ritual did not, and when I started the migration, I had a beautiful mess of information that had no coherent linkage or hierarchy.

FORGE's Obsidian graph, October 5, 2026: 2,452 Markdown files and about 14,900 wikilinks. Panda now holds 1,355 files and about 5,300 links; Wolf, 282 and about 800.

Panda and Wolf took shape during the following week. FORGE is now a relic and a frozen source where I can still trace things back to. The new vaults got their own structures and rules. I rebuilt their official skills around what I actually wanted them to do.

How much time have I put into this? An audit of this Windows machine’s available Codex and Claude logs estimates about 19 hours of recorded vault-related AI activity from September 28 through the morning of October 4, roughly 16 to 21 hours depending on how long a pause still counts. These hours include agent execution and ordinary vault work, as well as building the system. It is not nineteen measured hours of my hands on the keyboard. It also leaves out work on other devices, missing sessions, and the older FORGE effort.

Today, the personal and work material we chose to carry has moved into Panda and Wolf. FORGE still holds the historical and operational material we chose to leave behind. Moving a note and digesting it are different jobs, and digestion is still in its infancy.

Honesty is part of the structure

Two days in, I wrote the rule down, for my agents and for me: “Everything in this vault needs to be honest. This means that for most use cases, the things that you and I write, you as an agent, me as a human, need to be written in a simple form, but honest. Then a simple honest statement can be embellished with more value, or art, or soul, or humor, but the honest statement is the core of this system. If we drift from this, we lose integrity.”

That became three grounds for the material:

Witness: what I felt, said, saw, or report doing.
Evidence: a claim supported by a checked source.
Canon: what is true inside a made world, such as a novel.

Panda has a very strict definition of honesty. It needs evidence. Anything without evidence stays in a queue for verification, and you as a person can override things, like “we went to Disney.” Panda doesn’t know. He has to trust you. So now I’m defining the trust mechanism. If a character lives in the year 3050, the novel’s world is the reference. I want the system to understand what kind of claim it is handling before it tries to improve or connect it.

These models write fluently enough that an interpretation can sound like a memory, or a plausible explanation can sound checked. An agent’s paragraph can quietly become “my words” if we don’t preserve where it came from. That is why the note needs to say where its words came from. An agent flags a problem rather than silently improving my account. It may clean transcription errors while bringing dictation in, with disclosure, but that doesn’t give it permission to rewrite a note I already kept.

So, this essay: the raw thinking is mine, from my Dailies and notes; AI models (GPT-6.1 Sol, Claude Opus 5.5, and Claude Fable 5.1) drafted and revised much of the prose, and I chose every version and edited many of them.

Inside the vault it looks like this. Panda’s callout at the top of a book note says the family’s words were relayed by me, and identifies the theme work as the agent’s. I want that distinction visible when I return to the note, so I can tell what somebody said, what I reported, and what the model added.

A Panda callout explaining the source and authorship of a book note.

Screenshots: my Obsidian vaults, October 4, 2026. Private details are blurred.

This essay is also the first piece through Panda’s quality check. It came back at 71.5 out of 100 with reservations, and the reservations were fair: it was too long, and it didn’t say that models had drafted much of it. A second run put it at 76.5. Then I cut a third of the essay, and a third run put it at 81.

The model can still be wrong; the structure gives me something concrete to inspect when it is.

Panda: write first, decide when it matters

My simplest input is a Daily note, where I can write about an idea, something that happened, a question, a project, or something I want to learn. If it needs its own file, there is an Inbox.

Early on I put this in my Daily: “I just want to see if I can stick to daily notes. In the daily notes just write everything and I don’t have to waste that time prompting and waiting for a response. Plus I spend tokens and it’s not organized, right? … Maybe I’m just overcomplicating.”

I can stay with what I’m writing, and later ask Panda to digest it, or let the scheduled routine read it. You’ll see a few quotes from my Daily in this essay. That’s what one looks like: fast, messy, half an idea at a time.

Everything that’s digested becomes part of your body. You are what you eat. Everything that’s in the bowl means we digested it, which means it’s part of the body. Reading is the beginning; the important terms, practices, and sources need a home that actually exists.

Panda's Obsidian graph view. The visible structure is the vault's nodes and links.

Look how much bigger FORGE’s graph is, by a ton. I think both new vaults already hold the same value as before, or even more, in a much smaller graph. FORGE is already in Panda and Wolf: the Markdown files, the text, split up and filed. What I haven’t done yet is digest it: analyze those notes and extract all their value. When we’re done with all the imported material, we’ll have smaller, more focused notes, condensed to the valuable information. My prediction for Panda and Wolf both: their graphs will start converging and closing in on themselves, and become much more coherent, concentrated, and meaningful.

Learning is the brain room. Areas hold the things I actually do: fatherhood, fitness, home, writing, and the other ongoing responsibilities. Infrastructure holds practical records. A recipe stays a recipe, and a novel has its own world and its own truths. Everything does not have to become a project or a task, which was one of the lessons I needed from FORGE.

Panda’s morning digestion is configured for 5:00 a.m. Eastern time. It reads the previous day’s full Daily and refreshes a Today page with a small plan, things awaiting my review, a journaling prompt, and something to learn. It can bring back a next step I already chose, but an enthusiastic sentence shouldn’t become a new commitment just because a model found it actionable.

Panda's personalized theme, with HOME and Today open beside the folder tree.

My personal task list remains the source of my commitments; Reminders, on my iPhone, is a view of that list. See, Panda is with me on the go too. Obsidian has a native app that looks beautiful and has the same styling across clients, and Panda interfaces with my native iOS and macOS applications, and with Windows 11 too: the morning digestion runs on my Windows PC. Some of it still depends on one machine. The Reminders sync and the calendar workflow run on the Mac, and a skill existing in the vault doesn’t make its tools available everywhere.

Most of what Panda finds still waits for my tick. A plain fact is the exception. Panda can add it on his own, as a dated line that doesn’t change my words, and each time he leaves me a receipt saying what he filed and why.

Here’s a real example. On October 4 I wrote in my Daily: “So… seems scientists and researchers cracked intelligence; some months ago I was arguing AI was mis-categorized because it’s not intelligent but now I have to eat my words because I think I finally understood the math and science behind it. We are simulating neurons and intelligence are we?”

The next morning there was a new question in my learning queue. Panda had checked Google’s machine learning course and left me three sentences on what an artificial neuron actually is, three study steps, and this: “He also wrote that scientists had ‘cracked intelligence.’ That is his interpretation; this check does not establish it.”

So my own vault told me I overclaimed, with a source. Panda didn’t file “Antonio understands neural networks.” He filed a question, and he’s still waiting for my answer.

Wolf: my professional reasoning, with a different contract

Wolf has a simpler structure, organized around the work and the context needed to understand it. A list of applications doesn’t tell me nearly as much as notes explaining what each one does and how they connect. That map is underway, with plenty left to understand.

Wolf's personalized theme, with HOME and the work folders.

Each vault has its own personalized theme, too. Panda has serif text, purple headings, and a warm page. Wolf has a simpler look with sans-serif text for the work. You can see the difference in the screenshots. I like that each one has its own character, and I want people using the tooling to be able to make it feel like their own space.

This is where the HR boss lady comes in. Wolf’s central test is whether I could send a page to a colleague, a manager, or HR without a preface: honest, simple, professional. I want to be able to share a page without first explaining away its tone or separating the work from my personal frustration. A work fact keeps its source and date, and my interpretation stays recognizable as my account.

Wolf has two skills, and yes, the names are on purpose.

Domestication reads a work note and asks one question: could I send this to my boss, or to HR, as it is? If not, it proposes a cleaner version. If something personal slipped in, it proposes moving it to Panda. Nothing moves until I say yes, Panda gets his copy before Wolf changes a word, and a coworker’s private life doesn’t make the trip.

What goes to Panda and what stays in Wolf

Kill hunts dead notes: duplicates, old drafts, things nobody needs anymore. Despite the name, it can’t kill anything without my yes.

My next step in Wolf is building a digestion skill for Wolf. Today it works by a miracle, lol.

Wolf is mine, not my employer’s. It’s a private notebook, not the company’s system of record, so what I’m showing you here is the method, not the work.

The part I have not tested

Something that I’m realizing is that this Vault has almost no “negative” content about me. I think it’s mainly because I live like a monk. But this won’t be the case for people. Habits will expose nasty values, things, I have no idea how to handle these today because this vault, and Panda, almost focused on learning and virtues, and values, and action, and planning. I wonder how we will tackle this…

It could reflect my life, or it could reflect what I choose to write, how I describe it, what the system preserves, and what I fail to notice.

A very ordinary example is my T-Mobile bill. I keep procrastinating, and Today keeps bringing it back. It goes something like this: “hey, good job on your exercise yesterday, good shit, you said you were gonna do it and you did. Now you need to do the T-Mobile consolidation you’ve been putting off, you’re procrastinating there.” Kind, warm, but firm. Panda is tough love. I’m gonna have to set up some sliders at some point. The task is still open.

Some will want the “full weight” of honesty. Others will want to slide it down. I am thinking about a future slider for both how directly and often Panda challenges you and how much flexibility he gives your plans.

I want a system that can preserve my contradictions without inventing them, question my account without humiliating me, and let me correct it when it is wrong. Otherwise, all this structure could become a very elaborate flattering mirror.

There’s a harder version of that worry, and it’s in my own vault. On October 4 I typed to an agent: “some people would call this AI psychosis, i would like to understand if there’s merit there.” Panda put it in my learning queue and asked me which meaning I wanted checked: “a clinical description of a break with reality, or the popular charge that a long AI project has replaced ordinary life?”

I haven’t answered him yet. And he missed something: three days earlier I’d already had an agent build me a study set on AI psychosis, eleven sources, and the new question doesn’t link to it. So that’s two open items: my answer, and his blind spot.

How far I want to take it

When I think about the larger goal, I’ve said it rough: “That soul, that conscience, I think that’s what I’m building: a human being. In this case, me. But if you use it, it will build you.”

That is where I want to go. What I have today is a selective record with workflows for reasoning over it. It can’t know what I never wrote down, and a convincing synthesis of my notes is still a synthesis. I can show the files, rules, and work they help me do; those don’t yet establish a model of my whole mind.

For Wolf, I want ethical work AI with kindness and respect for humans at its core. I can put those priorities into the operating rules and examine the resulting work against them, which is part of why I care so much about the foundations. I can’t promise every action will always be safe or kind simply because I wrote those words in a file; I still need to test what happens when those priorities are difficult to follow.

I’m also learning about MemGPT and Letta. Some of the problems they are solving are exactly the problems I am running into. One detail caught my attention: Letta’s optional “Agent reviews before applying” setting has your agent review its own proposed memory updates in a second background conversation, without asking the user. A second look at a change is useful, but that does not by itself mean I approved it. If I connect this infrastructure to Panda and Wolf, I want to preserve the sources, the difference between my words and the model’s interpretation, and the decisions reserved for me—or for you. I haven’t connected Letta to either vault yet, but now I want to understand what it could help me build.

What the models said

I asked three models to judge the project. A panel of models agreeing with me wouldn’t prove the idea by itself. These are excerpts from Claude’s assessment, the one that carried the costs. The next job is to put those judgments up against what the system actually does.

Claude Opus 5.5 — October 5, 2026, excerpts. The core idea holds up and travels: label every claim by its ground, keep work and personal apart with one consented path between them, and let the model propose while the person decides. … He reports following through more, writing more, understanding himself better, and finding work easier. Those are his reports, not measurements. The T-Mobile task in this essay is still open.

The costs are real. … This essay’s private source record has grown longer than the essay itself, and I wrote much of it. The rules have drifted toward language agents parse: he couldn’t read his own filing diagram until we rewrote it plainly. Agent checks can pass while the work fails; I confirmed a diagram had every label, and he looked at it and called it atrocious. …

Is it valuable? Yes: to him now, with evidence, and as ideas anyone can borrow without his machinery. As tooling for others it is unproven; he says someone close to him could use it with his help, which today still means a developer, git, and paid models. The number I would watch is the cost of each useful next step as the migration funnel empties.

What it costs

Before AI, my bottleneck was the time I could put into writing and thinking. After AI, it became tokens, the learning curve, and understanding which model is good for what. One morning during the migration I woke up at 4 a.m., and I was out of ChatGPT and Claude tokens.

Today I would say, my biggest challenge is token expenditure, context size, and which model is best for which part of the reasoning, that’s a problem I’m actively working on. We are not there yet.

I want the budget to follow the work, because some days the limiting factor is tokens and other days it is my attention or how much I can read. A faster answer isn’t much help if I spend the next hour removing confident nonsense.

I asked Claude one last question: at this rate, how much time and money will it take to fully digest FORGE? It counted about 836 notes that still need real digestion; only 32 are certified absorbed so far. At the daily pace the backlog barely moves. In batches of 20 that I start by hand, it’s roughly 20 to 42 batches: three to six weeks at one a day, about $100 to $420 at API prices, and somewhere between 800 and 1,700 proposals for me to review. I’m on Max, so the dollars are flat; the weekly limit is what I’ll actually hit. Those are estimates, not measurements, and the biggest lever is scope: my drafts and novels are 40% of what’s left, and maybe they don’t need digesting at all.

The queue is big AF because I’m migrating about 2,500 Markdown files into this little system. Think about it as a funnel with a bottleneck. My prediction: a cold start of this vault will not have such big queues if the user is disciplined. And if you journal consistently, you will answer queue items with your Daily’s content.

The main limiting factor for me to digest and tidy is context cost: $$$, token usage. I’m doing some things to lower costs, and my next post will probably focus only on that: the cost of doing this shit, the cost of time, effort, and models, and how much it’s decreasing on one end versus increasing on the other.

I want this in your hands

The person I have in mind is someone who writes or journals and has a life to get on with. You write about your day, something you learned, a thing you need to do, a belief you are questioning, or a problem at work. I want the tooling to help you find the useful connections and next steps. You keep deciding what your words mean and what you want to do with them. Your life supplies the context.

My partner Z asks me, “You won’t commercialize this?!” And I’m like, fuck no. If I am really mapping a person, this needs to be free and open source for everybody to use, expand, and add to. I want all of this tooling in your hands so that it can be helpful to you, and so you can change the parts that don’t fit.

The point is to keep all of your AI usage. Everything you do with AI that has value, you fucking keep it, and you create this big brain knowledge space, with a framework to keep it honest and grounded in reality. And if you want something else, you fork Panda.

If y’all and corporations and we are going to burn the world down with our AI and LLM usage, well, at least I want to take some of those tokens and convert them into open source knowledge and frameworks for anybody to consume and use.

I’m literally spending my Claude Max account on open source ideation. I upgraded to Max this morning because I hit my weekly limit. Kinda wasteful, double or triple wasteful? Fun…

I haven’t released the tooling yet; this essay is a record of what I have built, what I am testing, and where I want to take it.

Panda can help me find the next step, and I still have to take it. I want you to have that kind of help with your own life, too.

Redefining God

Antonio Rodriguez Martinez — Wed, 23 Sep 2026 22:30:00 GMT

I. The living room

Picture a living room a little after eight in the morning. The best part of the day has already happened: somebody got up early, kissed somebody, set the dishwasher, did a workout with a baby on the mat who kept turning it into a game, and then a toddler woke up and everything melted into stretching and goofing around on the floor, and the toddler found some object in the house, a toy or a broom or a costume piece, and started using it for the most important job in the world.

That’s a wholesome scene, a whole scene, no? Adults, a baby, a little girl, a morning that works. Nobody in that room needs saving. Joy is driving, humor is there. Maybe there’s some morriña, but the spirits are great and the room has soul.

Then grandma comes out of her room.

She sees the toy, this time it was a witch’s broom, and says something about the devil in it, and here it comes, like weather: eternal damnation, the judgment, the enemy, meaning the devil, the blood of Christ, and the vibe changes, which you can watch happen on her face, from a grandmother enjoying her grandchildren to a woman who, I would argue, becomes a stranger in the living room, performing Christianity for a household that is, right then, objectively, just living and enjoying its morning. Before the coffee is finished she has covered Muslims, mosques “everywhere,” child brides, pedophilia, and gay people, more or less in that order, with the kids on the floor. Your jaw might drop, or not, maybe you’ve gotten used to this stuff.

I argue in that room, and I want to be clear about that, because the version where I sit there serene and smiling is prettier and it’s false. I ask what she means, and ask again, and keep asking, until she notices I’m trying to figure out why a grandmother is talking about child brides at breakfast, and then she clarifies that the message is for all the grandparents and grandchildren of the world. On pedophilia I agree with her that it’s a problem, and tell her that the rest of it, the Muslims and the mosques and the child brides, I only know from the news, and I thank her for her very confusing insight and tell her I’ll look into it. On gay people I tell her it’s personal for me, that some of what I know about love, the kind that builds something, I learned watching a couple I love build a life together. She tells me they aren’t bad people. Their love is just incorrect, because it isn’t Godly.

Incorrect love, as if love came with a grading rubric and she had the answer key. All I hear is judgment.

The only answer of mine that ever seems to land at all is this one: “that sounds like violence, I’m sure Jesus Christ wouldn’t approve that method.” She always has the next justification ready, every objection I raise gets a fresh one back, and after enough rounds it gets boring, which is its own kind of sad. And usually another adult in the room ends the conversation before I do, and I let them, and I run away and go do the laundry. I’m not the hero of these mornings either, if you were wondering.

She’s real, I should say that. She’s family, she’s somebody’s abuela, somebody who loves the children in that room, and I’ve changed some details on purpose, because she is not the point of what I’m writing and I have no interest in putting her on trial. The belief is what’s on trial. What she says, though, is said, in living rooms like this one, every day.

What I feel in these moments comes in four layers, more or less at once.

Anger first, because it’s the easiest one, because the morning was good and somebody walked into it carrying hell. The violence in what she says, whether it’s real violence or only violent words, I really don’t know which, feels like it was injected against our will, like an unwanted syrup.

Exhaustion right behind it. Why does this kind of faith have to talk about damnation all day. Why is the morning philosophy, around the children, fire and brimstone. Why does it have to be this way. Why does it feel so aggressive.

Pity, which surprised me the first time, and which is the one I trust the most. She has told me, in one version or another, that my love is worth nothing because I haven’t accepted Jesus as my savior, and I try to imagine what it is to live inside that much fear, a universe where a toddler with a toy is a spiritual risk, where every grandchild is a soul in danger and every breakfast is a battlefield, and I can’t hold the picture or the idea for very long, it’s kinda disturbing. That’s a heavy way to be alive, and she has carried it most of her whole life.

And fear for the kids. The children in a room where someone will say “that sounds like violence” out loud, in a house where breaking things is safe, will probably be fine. The fear I carry is for the kids in the other houses, where the grandmother and the mother and the father and the pastor all say the same thing, and there is no second voice, and a child learns at breakfast that the world is split into the saved and the damned and starts, very early, sorting. And judging.

What stays with me most is how sure she is. A belief like hers doesn’t leave room for doubt. She believes all of it, really, one hundred percent, undoubtedly. When she tells me my love is worth nothing, or that the couple I love is loving incorrectly, she is reporting what she believes is a fact about the universe, a fact written by God himself and decided before any of us were born. I don’t know how you argue with a verdict you believe God already signed, I really don’t.

The longer I think about this the more familiar it gets, because I’ve seen that same certainty in much bigger places than a living room, backed by much more than a Bible and a cup of coffee. It’s the same belief every time: a God who chooses some people and rejects the rest. I hear it in a grandmother’s mouth before the coffee is finished, and on the news at night in the mouths of men with armies. Only the scale changes, and the suffering scales with it. The belief underneath, I’m starting to think, doesn’t.

I think it’s time we let that God, the one who chooses, die, and I think we can do it with love, which is the part she would never believe.

II. What I saw at school, and at home

In Catholic school we went to misa whenever it was scheduled, and when the moment came to kneel everybody knelt, and I stood. I don’t remember anyone else standing, but I wasn’t exactly looking around. They gave us that option, if you didn’t want to kneel you could stay standing, so I stood, and I sat when sitting was allowed, and I sang, because I loved the songs, I loved the band, I loved the whole thing of being in church with my friends. I wasn’t protesting anything. I stood out of respect for everybody in that room and out of respect for myself, both at once, and I knew, very early and without being able to explain it, that there was no God up there listening. I don’t know why I knew. A kid looks at the world for a few years and some kids come out of it certain of one thing and some of the other, and I came out of it with the world as it is and nobody behind it.

What I noticed next, and never stopped noticing, was the gap between what people said and what they did. People who told me they were love, and respect, and grace, and then acted, and the acting was something else. From a little distance, which is where a kid standing up among kneeling people lives, you can see that gap almost objectively, because you aren’t inside it. They talk and talk and talk about God and about the nation, and the talk is enormous, and behind it there is very little action, and what action there is points the wrong way, at hurting people instead of helping them.

Think about the people in a big church on a Sunday. How many of them ever speak to whoever runs it? They come for one hour, they watch from far away, and they go home, and I’d call that an audience. I’ve also known the other kind, and I want to be fair to it because it’s real: churches run from love, by special people, where you feed the poor and help each other with your problems and talk to each other and nobody spends the week judging anybody. That was the church I knew as a child, and it was beautiful. Then I got older and started meeting leaders of different churches, and more and more adults in my life, who spent their faith condemning each other over the details of it, and all I could think was: what the fuck are you all doing? You’re missing the plot. Every one of these religions has more or less the same plot, and the plot is values: be kind, be honest, take care of each other.

My father is an educated man, a man whose whole profession is the human mind, who watches mass on television and says that a preacher who doesn’t talk about sin doesn’t know what he’s talking about, because religion is about sin, all of it. That’s pathological, if you ask me, and he’s the one with the doctorate in it.

The difference between a religion about sin and a religion about love is older than any of us. The book holds two fathers, more or less. The one in Genesis who answers his children’s first mistake with exile, a curse down every generation, and an angel with a flaming sword at the gate. I wrote about him already in If God Had Gentle Parented Us, and I called that kind of parenting God-like. And the son, who kneels in the dirt next to a woman everybody wants to stone and says neither do I condemn you, who eats with the people the respectable people won’t eat with, who tells his own friend to put the sword away. Christ-like. Same book. The people with the power, for most of two thousand years, have preferred the father.

My favorite Jesus story, the one that stuck with me as a kid and still does, is the one where he walks into the temple and flips the tables. I always loved that one. He braids a whip out of cords, he turns over the money changers’ tables and the seats of the people selling doves, and he says they’ve made a house of prayer into a den of thieves. It’s the clearest time in the stories he’s angry, and I think it matters where the anger goes. It goes up, toward the powerful. At the merchants, at the business running inside the holy place, at the people making a living off other people’s faith. He doesn’t flip anybody’s table for loving the wrong person. The woman they wanted to stone gets mercy and the money changers get the whip.

The grandmother in my living room has the direction reversed. Her anger goes down and out: at Muslims, at gay couples, at a toddler with a toy, at a man who won’t tell her whether he’s saved. That’s the pattern I keep seeing: a God who chooses, a set of people he didn’t choose, and a verdict aimed at whoever has the least power to answer back. Love would aim its anger the other way, up, at the powerful.

III. Puerto Rico, 1512

I try to wake up with the sun and go to bed with it, more or less, and when I’m outside in the morning I can see it, the Sun I mean, I can feel it on me, and I can see what it does to the food, the whole chain of nourishment starting from that one thing up there. If I had to worship something I’d worship that before anything I was taught in school. I feel more Taíno than Christian, if I’m being honest, and I say that carefully, because I’m not claiming a lineage I can’t prove, and I know how that claim gets used and abused. What I can say is that in 2003 a geneticist at the University of Puerto Rico, Juan Martínez-Cruzado, found that about 61 percent of Puerto Ricans carry Indigenous mitochondrial DNA, the kind that passes only from mother to child. The story we were taught in school is that the Taíno disappeared. Their governments disappeared and their gods were taken, but their women stayed, and their blood came down to us through our mothers.

The Taíno had their sacred things before anyone arrived to correct them. In their story the sun and the moon came out of a cave called Iguanaboína, where two stone cemíes lived, and in a drought people went to that cave and asked for rain. We know that mostly because a friar named Ramón Pané wrote it down after Columbus ordered him to study their religion, so the oldest record of what my island believed is a colonizer’s field notes, and even those survive only in an Italian copy full of errors, because the Spanish original was lost. Which is kind of perfect, no? The first version of our own story that we have is a translation of somebody else’s report on us.

Then the other God came, with paperwork. In 1512 the first bishop of Puerto Rico, Alonso Manso, landed in San Juan. In 1513 Spain drafted the Requerimiento, or the Requirement, a legal text the conquistadors were supposed to read aloud to Indigenous people before attacking them. It laid out the whole chain, God to Saint Peter to the Pope to the King of Spain, and demanded that the listeners accept the Church and the Crown, and if they didn’t, it promised war, slavery, and the seizure of their wives and children, and it ended by declaring that “the deaths and losses which shall accrue from this are your fault.” They read it in Spanish, to people who didn’t speak Spanish, by some accounts from the deck of a ship, or to an empty village. It’s the chosen and the unchosen written up as a contract, with the violence pre-authorized and the blame pre-assigned to the victims. I’ve spent the last month writing, in Captured, Not Pathetic, about systems that harm people and then make them feel it was their own fault, and this is the oldest one I know on my own island: we will destroy you, and it will be your fault.

In 1519 Manso was named the first Inquisitor General of the Indies. So the first office of the Inquisition in the Americas belonged to Puerto Rico’s bishop. In Spain the Inquisition prosecuted something like 150,000 people over three and a half centuries and handed somewhere between 3,000 and 5,000 of them to the state to be burned, and in its first fifty years most of the people it killed were Jews who had converted and were suspected of not meaning it. Keep that in mind for later. The belief in a God who chooses has never belonged to any one people. All it needs is somebody to put on the outside: the Jews in Spain, the Taíno here.

IV. Puerto Rico, 1899

In 1898 the island changed owners, and the new owner brought a different God, or the same God with a different accent. In 1899, nine American Protestant denominations, Presbyterians, Methodists, Baptists, Congregationalists, Lutherans, the Disciples of Christ and a few others, met in New York and divided Puerto Rico among themselves into zones, so they could evangelize without stepping on each other’s toes. One of them wrote down the goal plainly: “the Americanization of the isla.” They opened schools in English for children who spoke Spanish, and hospitals, and churches, and by 1906 there were Puerto Rican converts describing the American invasion as part of God’s divine plan. The historian Samuel Silva Gotay called the missionaries the assimilationist arm of U.S. colonialism, and I don’t know how to read those records and call it anything else.

So we were colonized twice, and both times God came with the flag. I was born into that, in a colony, against my will as far as I’m concerned, and I grew up inside what the two Gods left behind: Catholic school on one side, and on the other an island where there’s a church on every corner and evangelical radio in every car and relatives who can quote scripture about anything and apply it to everybody but themselves. Depending on who’s counting, a third or more of Puerto Ricans today are evangelical or Pentecostal, which makes us, by some accounts, the most Protestant country in Latin America, and since 2019 there’s a party, Proyecto Dignidad, running on a Christian platform and pulling six or seven percent for governor. I wrote about what a share that small can still do in Notes on Puerto Rico: Sin Pie Forzao’.

I want to be careful here, because the people in those churches are my people, and a lot of them are doing the honest Christian thing, feeding the hungry, sitting with the sick, holding each other up after hurricanes when nobody else came. My problem is with the program, the way an island that was never allowed to govern itself was handed, twice, a God who governs everything, and a belief where somebody is always chosen and somebody is always damned, and the verdict always comes from outside and above, from Madrid, from New York, from heaven. When I say Puerto Rico is a captive state for this belief I mean that literally: it arrived with the conquerors, both times, and it stayed after they changed the flag.

V. The same idea, in bigger rooms

I opened Threads on a Sunday afternoon and the first three things in my feed were videos of maimed children in Gaza, served to me between memes, and I closed the app and wrote, fast and angry, that if God existed things like this would not happen at all. I still feel that, and I also know it’s the weakest argument I have, because the believer’s answer is ready and it’s a good one: people did this. Fine. I agree. It has always been us. So let’s look at the people, and at what they said they were doing, and in whose name. And the numbers don’t need my feed. By a UN count, at least 20,179 children were killed in Gaza between October 2023 and October 2025, and UNICEF says that since the ceasefire roughly one more child has been killed there every day. In September 2025 a UN commission of inquiry concluded that Israel has committed genocide in Gaza and named the prime minister among those who incited it. Israel rejects the finding.

On October 28, 2023, as ground troops went into Gaza, the prime minister of Israel told the country: “You must remember what Amalek has done to you, says our Holy Bible. And we do remember.” Amalek is the people God tells King Saul to destroy completely in the first book of Samuel, men and women, children and infants, even the animals. His office later said he meant Hamas and the atrocities of October 7th, and South Africa put the quote in its genocide case at the International Court of Justice anyway, because a head of government reaching for that verse at that moment is doing something, whatever he meant by it. That’s the belief in a head of state’s mouth: a God who chooses, an enemy who was not chosen, and a verse that pre-authorizes what comes next, a literal genocide.

Now watch the same belief show up somewhere else. In 2013 Pew found that 82 percent of white American evangelicals believe God gave the land of Israel to the Jewish people, twice the share of American Jews who said the same. A lot of that support runs on an end-times theology in which the modern state of Israel is a stage in a prophecy that ends, in many versions, with a few Jews converting and the rest damned: support a people’s state in this life, expect them to burn in the next. The largest pro-Israel organization in the United States, Christians United for Israel, is Christian, and its founder, the Texas pastor John Hagee, once preached that God sent Hitler as a “hunter” to drive the Jews back to the land; when the sermon surfaced in 2008 he said his words had been twisted. I’ve only heard this theology on the news, never from a pulpit, and if I’m wrong about how far it reaches, I’m wrong, but the sermons are on the record, and the belief is the same one: God chose a people, and your fate depends on how you treat them.

And now remember the Inquisition, and who it burned first: Jews, converted Jews, suspected of not meaning it. The same book, the same belief, and for most of two thousand years Christians counted the Jews among the damned. Now, in one government’s hands, the belief points the other way, at Palestinians, and the Christians cheering loudest from America believe that at the end of time most Jews will be counted among the damned again.

The easiest mistake in the world is to blame a whole group, a people, a religion, a nation, for what some of its members did, and I know how easy it is because I made that mistake myself. The afternoon I saw those videos I wrote in my journal about an army and a people in the same breath, and I called them death incarnate, and it felt clean and righteous and final, which is exactly how it’s supposed to feel, and that’s the problem. That sentence was the exact thing I’m trying to kill, coming out of my own hands: one group of human beings sorted into the damned, by me, in the name of the children I was grieving.

How do I know the problem is the belief and not any particular people? Because it keeps changing hands, and once you start following it you can’t stop, and I want you to feel how long it goes, because the length is the argument. Joshua takes Canaan and the text says God told him to leave nothing alive that breathes. The Mexica walk south for generations because their god Huitzilopochtli chose them, found their city where he said, and feed him the hearts of captives taken in war. The Chinese emperor rules by the Mandate of Heaven and whoever overthrows him had it all along. In 1096 crusaders march toward Jerusalem shouting God wills it and stop on the way to massacre the Jews of the Rhineland. In 1209 at Béziers, according to a monk writing years later, a papal legate told the crusaders to kill them all, God will know his own; historians doubt he said it, and the town was massacred anyway. The Almohads give the Jews and Christians of Spain and North Africa conversion, exile or death, and a young Maimonides runs. In 1452 and 1493 popes sign bulls that hand the lands and bodies of non-Christians to the kings of Portugal and Spain, and in 1492 Spain expels its Jews and in 1609 the descendants of its Muslims. In 1572 Catholics in Paris murder Huguenots in the streets for days, and in 1649 Cromwell’s Protestants take Drogheda and he calls it the righteous judgment of God upon barbarous wretches. Across Europe and in Salem tens of thousands of women hang and burn as witches. For thirty years Catholics and Protestants turn the middle of Europe into a graveyard. Preachers in the American South read the curse of Ham as God’s permission for slavery. Manifest Destiny says Providence allotted the continent, and the people already on it are in the way. In 1838 Boer settlers make a covenant with God before Blood River, and the same idea of a chosen people grows up into a Dutch Reformed theology of apartheid. In 1850 a man in China who believes he is the younger brother of Jesus starts a war, the Taiping, that kills more than twenty million people. In 1857 Mormon militiamen kill a wagon train of emigrants at Mountain Meadows. Imperial Japan makes its emperor a living god and sends boys to die for him. German soldiers march into two world wars with Gott mit uns on their belt buckles. In 1947 India and Pakistan are split by religion and somewhere between hundreds of thousands and two million people die in the partition. In 1992 a Hindu mob tears down the Babri mosque, in 2002 Gujarat burns, and more than a thousand people die, most of them Muslims. In 1995 Serb forces separate the Muslim men and boys of Srebrenica and kill about eight thousand of them. In northern Uganda a man named Joseph Kony calls his army the Lord’s Resistance and kidnaps children into it. In 2014 the Islamic State declares a caliphate and tries to wipe out the Yazidis. In 2017 Buddhist monks in Myanmar preach that the Rohingya are a threat, and more than seven hundred thousand of them flee. In 2021 men storm the U.S. Capitol carrying banners that say Jesus saves. Jews, Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Mexica, Mormons, Boers, emperors, popes, prophets and a Taiping king, on nearly every continent, hunter and hunted swapping places over and over for three thousand years, and the sentence never changes: God chose us, and not you. Anything that can be picked up by one side, then the other, then the first side again, can’t be a trait of anybody. It’s a tool, and it works the same in any hand.

And I owe you one more honest thing, because it weakens my own argument. This way of sorting people doesn’t even need God. In the twentieth century the Soviet Union and the Khmer Rouge, both officially atheist, threw God out and kept the sorting anyway: instead of the saved and the damned they had the people and the enemies of the people, decided by class, and millions died in labor camps and killing fields the same way people had died under the old verdicts. So getting rid of the God who chooses is not enough on its own. Nietzsche saw that coming too. God is dead, he wrote, but people being what they are, there may be caves for thousands of years in which his shadow is still shown, and we still have to defeat the shadow. That shadow is the choosing. What has to go is the habit of dividing human beings into chosen and damned, no matter who does the dividing, and what has to replace it is something with no list at all.

There’s a second reason to name people instead of peoples, and it’s practical. Blaming a whole people protects the ones who actually did the harm, in two ways. First, it hides them: when a whole nation is guilty, no particular person is, and the man who quoted the verse disappears into a crowd of millions who never heard him say it. Second, it helps them recruit: the moment you tell an entire people they’re all guilty, their leaders get to turn around and say, see, they hate all of us, only we can protect you, and now that people has its own list of the damned, with you on it. Blaming a whole people keeps the cycle of chosen and damned going, one more turn.

That belief has never won over an entire people. In every group that claims it, some people refuse it, and inside every person there’s a part that refuses it too, me included. In that same Pew survey, most American Jews didn’t say God gave them the land. On my island there are Christians who feed their neighbors after every hurricane without asking who’s saved. In every army there are soldiers who refuse the order. So when you catch yourself blaming a whole group, the Jews, the Muslims, the Christians, the Americans, the Puerto Ricans, try a test, one I’m going to have to keep using on myself: replace the group’s name with “the people who.” The people who quoted the verse, the people who gave the order, the people who paid for it, the people who carried it out. If you can finish that sentence with specific people and specific acts, those are the ones to hold accountable. If you can’t, if all you have is the name of the group, then you were about to condemn people for who they are, which is exactly what the God who chooses does.

These are the people I’m accusing: the leaders who quote the verse, the preachers who sell the prophecy, the politicians who pay for what follows, and the commanders who carry it out. Jews, Palestinians, Christians and Muslims, as peoples, are not among them. Name those individuals, document what each of them did, and hold each of them responsible. That’s where accountability lives. The belief in a God who chooses belongs to no people. Anyone can pick it up. A Spanish bishop picked it up, a prime minister picked it up, a grandmother in her recliner picked it up, and each time it did the same thing: it sorted everyone into the chosen and the damned, and then it let the chosen do anything they wanted to the damned.

VI. How God kept dying for me

I’ve been saying “God is dead” all through this like it’s my line. It’s Nietzsche’s, from 1882. A madman runs into the marketplace in the morning with a lantern lit, shouting that he’s looking for God, and the people there laugh at him, because they already don’t believe, and he turns on them: “God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him.” And then he asks the question that I think most people skip: “Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?”

He wasn’t celebrating. That’s the part I didn’t understand when I was younger. He was warning that everything built on top of God, the morality, the meaning, the whole architecture, would start to fall once people noticed nobody was holding it up, and that most of them hadn’t noticed yet. A hundred and forty years later I think he was right about the falling, and I think we filled the hole God left with the worst possible replacements: the nation, the market, the tribe, the brand, and, for a lot of people, the old God again, louder and more certain, precisely because they can feel it slipping.

Forty years before Nietzsche, Ludwig Feuerbach said something that I think is simpler and truer. God is humanity’s own best qualities, love, wisdom, justice, projected outward onto the sky and then worshipped as something foreign, so that we kneel to our own reflection and forget it was ours. Theology is anthropology, he said. I’d put it more bluntly: we made him up so we could feel adequate in a universe that’s too big for us. And the proof, for me, is the choosing. A God who chooses one group and damns the rest looks exactly like what a frightened tribe would invent, and nothing like what a universe would produce.

God was never alive for me, if I’m being exact about it. I stood up during misa as a kid because I already didn’t feel anyone there. And he died a few more times anyway, which I know doesn’t make sense, but it’s how it felt. On the morning of November 21, 1996, I was ten years old, sitting in class in Río Piedras, and I felt it. A propane line under a shoe store called Humberto Vidal had been cracked for years, and at 8:35 in the morning it exploded and killed thirty-three people. I didn’t understand it. I learned it slowly, from the news, and that’s when I started making connections: so this is what they’re talking about on television, this is what the news is. Five years later I was fourteen, in the school library with Mrs. Muñiz, watching the towers fall in real time, and I saw pure terror on an adult’s face for the first time in my life, and I didn’t understand that either, and I spent the next month figuring it out. Since then it has been the same education over and over, and I went looking for more of it, because that’s who I am, I read, I keep reading. Chattel slavery: something like twelve and a half million Africans forced onto ships across the Atlantic, bought and sold by Christians, by and large, some of them delivered to my own island. Hiroshima and Nagasaki: around 140,000 and 74,000 dead by the end of 1945. And then my own island as a laboratory. I grew up hearing that the CIA experimented on us, and when I went to check, I couldn’t find the CIA, and what I found instead was worse, because it’s documented. In 1956, in a housing project in Río Piedras, the first large human trials of the birth control pill, at a dose far higher than any pill today, on women nobody told about the risks, three of whom died with no autopsy. By 1965, about a third of Puerto Rican women of childbearing age sterilized, la operación. An American doctor, Cornelius Rhoads, writing from San Juan in 1931 that we were “the dirtiest, laziest, most degenerate and thievish race” and that he had killed eight of us, which investigators later said they couldn’t confirm, and a decade later he was running the Army’s chemical weapons experiments. Military herbicides, including an enhanced Agent Orange, sprayed on our forests in tests between 1956 and 1967. Death and rape and violence, and now genocide, streamed live. Every one of those, the explosion, the towers, the reading, was a funeral for a God I never believed in, and I think what was being buried each time was the small part of me that wanted to be wrong. This is hell on earth, and nobody is running it.

And closer to home. I watched my father turn into a religious fanatic, a man who talks about God and it comes out as sin, and then as hate, every time, and every time God died a little more. Nearly every hateful person I’ve met in my life has had God in their mouth while they did it: God this, God that. I know the base rate, to be fair: where I grew up and where I live now almost everybody is Christian, so of course the hateful ones are too, and so are some of the kindest people I know. Christ-like people, the ones who actually behave with these values, don’t have to speak about it. The difference I’ve seen is that the hateful ones reach for God to explain themselves.

Every time I catch a glimpse of something I’d be tempted to call God, it’s biodiversity, it’s color, it’s music, it’s laughter, it’s love. I have never once found it in the news, and very rarely in a sermon. What dies in this essay, then, is one particular God: the chooser, the judge, the someone who stands apart from everything and keeps a ledger. That someone has to go because of what he permits, because as long as people believe there’s someone up there deciding, somebody down here gets to claim they know what he decided, and what they claim, almost every time, is a list of who’s in and who’s out.

The madman’s question is the one I want to answer, and my answer is yes. The judge we’ve had enough of, God knows. We become the other part, the love.

VII. Defining love, and testing the book

If I’m going to retire a God and keep love, I owe you a definition, because “love” is the most abused word on the planet, and the grandmother in my living room would tell you, sincerely, that everything she said that morning was love.

Mine is this: love is wanting the best for each individual, without attachment. And “the best” can be measured, more or less: the person’s own flourishing, as objectively as we can get it, their health, their safety, their growth, their freedom to choose. Three parts of it carry the weight. Each, because love for one person can’t be paid for with harm to another, which rules out any chosen people at all. The best, meaning their best, their flourishing, measured on them and on nobody’s beliefs about them. And without attachment, meaning no condition: not obedience, not conversion, not even love returned. That last one is what separates my love from hers. She wants the best for the kids too. What she attaches is a condition, believe or burn, and love with a condition is a transaction with a threat inside.

Love, by the way, does not mean a lack of conflict. That’s stupid. The table flipper is in the book too. Love isn’t kumbaya. There’s self-love in it and love for other people, and it takes rigor, and honesty, and acting with integrity when integrity costs you something.

Now run the book through it. I’m not keeping the Bible, it has no authority in what I’m proposing, none. But I’m also not going to pretend there’s nothing in it, because some of it was written by people who understood love better than the institutions that later owned it. So everything gets the same test, every passage, from every tradition, and it either passes or it doesn’t. I’ll start with the Bible, because it’s the book I was raised inside and the one that came to my island twice, but it doesn’t get special treatment, in either direction.

What passes: love your neighbor as yourself, and in Leviticus, of all places, love the foreigner as yourself, because you were foreigners once too. The Samaritan, stopping on the road for the man the religious people walked past. Love your enemies. Do justice, love mercy, walk humbly, which the prophet Micah said in one line and which is more or less the whole thing. Let whoever is without sin throw the first stone, and then, when nobody throws, neither do I condemn you. I was hungry and you fed me, I was a stranger and you took me in, and whatever you did for the least of them you did for me, which is the closest the book gets to saying your neighbor is you. Take the plank out of your own eye before you go looking for the speck in your brother’s. Faith without works is dead, which is the gap between talk and action written down two thousand years before I noticed it at school. Neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, one humankind, even if Paul attached a condition to it. Love that is patient and kind and keeps no record of wrongs. The whip in the temple, aimed at the money. Don’t pray on the street corners to be seen, the way the hypocrites do, go into your room, close the door, and do it where nobody is watching, one I didn’t know was in there until I started writing this, and the one I see broken most often, and most loudly. Whoever says they love God and hates their brother is a liar. And the one I would have carved in stone if I’d been asked, three words, sitting in a short letter near the back of the book the whole time: God is love.

What fails: no one comes to the Father except through me, and whoever does not believe will be condemned, which is love with a condition and a threat, only one door in and everyone outside it condemned, and the exact sentence the grandmother in my living room lives inside. Slaves, obey your masters. Wives, submit to your husbands. Happy is the one who takes your infants and dashes them against the rocks, which is in the Psalms, which people sing. And to your descendants I give this land, which is the most interesting one to me, because in its own time, a promise of land to the children of one wandering family probably made a kind of sense, the way a lot of tribal things made sense three thousand years ago, and today it’s obsolete as a deed, and in the wrong hands it’s a license to take land from the people already living on it.

And the test isn’t only for our grandmothers’ book, because if it were, it would just be one more way of choosing. Run the others through it and the same thing happens. What passes shows up nearly everywhere, almost word for word. Confucius, asked for one word to live by, said reciprocity: what you don’t want done to yourself, don’t do to others. Hillel, asked to teach the whole Torah standing on one foot, said what is hateful to you, don’t do to your neighbor, the rest is commentary. The Mahabharata says one should never do to another what one regards as injurious to one’s own self. A Buddhist verse says hurt not others in ways you yourself would find hurtful. The Quran says it was ordained for the Children of Israel that whoever saves a life, it will be as if they saved all of humanity. People who never met, on different continents, centuries apart, kept arriving at the same sentence, which tells me the sentence was never a revelation. It’s what people figure out when they look at each other honestly.

What fails shows up everywhere too. The Quran also says to fight those among the people who were given scripture who don’t believe, until they pay the tax, fully humbled, and a hadith says whoever changes his religion, kill him. The Laws of Manu say that a man of low birth who insults a man of high birth should have his tongue cut out, and they sort human beings by birth into the pure and the untouchable. The Mahavamsa, the great chronicle of Sri Lankan Buddhism, has a king grieving after a battle that killed a great host, and holy monks consoling him that he had only killed one and a half human beings, because the rest were “unbelievers and men of evil life,” “not more to be esteemed than beasts.” Different gods, different languages, the same two sentences. One says your neighbor is you. The other says some people don’t count. Every tradition I know of has both, and every tradition has to choose, the same way the Bible’s readers had to choose between the father and the son.

Look at what that leaves. Almost nothing about who God is, except that one line, God is love. Everything else that passed, in that book and the others, is about how to treat each other.

VIII. What I’d put in God’s place

I’m an atheist. I don’t believe anybody is up there. I’m keeping the word God anyway, on purpose, for everyone who does believe, because the word isn’t going anywhere, and if it’s going to stay, it might as well mean something that doesn’t hurt anybody.

So what would I put in the place of the one who chooses? Everything. The good, the bad, the problems, the evil, the planet, the universe, what we can see and what we can’t, what we think and what we’ll never think. If there is anything worth calling God, it’s the whole thing, and if it’s the whole thing it isn’t a someone, it doesn’t watch, it doesn’t want, it doesn’t judge, it doesn’t choose. There is no chosen people inside everything. There’s no promised land inside everything, because it’s all the same land. There’s no damned. There is only us.

I’m not the first to say this. Spinoza said “God, or Nature” in the 1600s, and his own community in Amsterdam had already cast him out for his heresies. Einstein said he believed in Spinoza’s God and not in one who concerns himself with the fates and actions of human beings. If everything is one, your neighbor is you, the same stuff, the same whole, arranged differently. You don’t need a commandment to love your neighbor once you see that. You just need to see it.

Except seeing it has never been enough, and my own evidence says so. The Laws of Manu come out of the same tradition as the Upanishads, where a father teaches his son that the whole world has one essence and tells him, you are that. The Mahavamsa comes out of a tradition that teaches nothing exists on its own, that everything arises out of everything else. People inside both of them sorted human beings anyway, by birth, by belief, into the ones who count and the ones who don’t. So oneness doesn’t protect anybody by itself. It gives the reason.

And yes, everything includes the evil. It includes the man who quotes Amalek, and the soldier, and the Inquisitor. That’s the hardest part of this for me and it’s hard to resolve it. I have not. What I can say is that they’re captive. The soldier and the Inquisitor are part of everything, and they’re captured, the same way the grandmother is, the same way my island was (is). It’s the same capture at very different prices: hers costs a morning, and whatever the kids carry out of it, and theirs is paid in bodies. That’s what this obsolete God does: he captures everybody, the ones who pull the trigger and the ones in front of it, and he tells the first group it’s holy work. I don’t absolve them. Being captured explains how a person got there, and what they do once they’re there is still theirs. I know that because the same capture produces different people. Two soldiers hear the same verse from the same commander, and one pulls the trigger and one refuses. Two women sit in the same church every Sunday, and one spends breakfast condemning a toddler and the other spends it feeding her neighbors. If capture decided everything, those pairs would act the same, and they don’t. So every whole adult is responsible for what they do, captured or not, and I believe that about myself too.

But holding people responsible one at a time isn’t enough, because the belief keeps producing more of them. You can put one Inquisitor on trial and the belief will train the next one before the trial is over. So there are two jobs, and they don’t cancel each other: hold each person accountable for what they did, and kill the God who keeps capturing them.

And look at what changes when you take away the idea of someone up there who planned it all. When a believer looks at suffering, one of two things has to be true: God wanted it, or God allowed it for a reason. Either way, somebody gets to say the victims had it coming, and we’ve already seen where that ends: a text read from a ship, declaring that the deaths will be your fault. Take the planner away and that sentence has nowhere to stand. Suffering without an author is tragedy. Nobody deserved it, not the children in Gaza, not the thirty-three people in Río Piedras, not the women in that housing project. The people who did the harm can’t say God wanted it, either. They lose their alibi. What’s left is us: human beings who did it, human beings it was done to, and human beings who have to answer for it, with no God to hide behind, no verse to point to, and nobody coming from above to fix it, which means it’s ours to fix.

In practice it’s plain, almost boring, because the version of God that hurts people is always dramatic, and love is mostly maintenance. Take the four things my definition of love measures, health, safety, growth, and freedom to choose, and turn them into what every single person is owed. Everybody gets to be healthy, body and mind, which means a doctor when you’re sick and someone to talk to when your head is the thing that’s sick. Everybody gets home safe, which means nobody gets bombed, shot, deported into danger, or beaten in their own house. Everybody gets the education they want, as much as they want, because growth is what a person does with their life when nobody is standing on them. Everybody gets to love whoever they love and vote however they vote, because a love or a vote somebody else approves for you isn’t yours. Everybody gets to become the best version of themselves, and we, being part of the whole thing, nurture that. We make it happen, with our taxes and our votes and our clinics and our teachers and our neighbors, because there’s nobody else up there to do it. Nobody is coming. That used to scare me.

Most of it was written down in 1948, in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and adopted by the United Nations without a single vote against. It didn’t work, or it didn’t work enough, and I think I know why. The Declaration was never legally binding, which is part of it, but the deeper problem is in how it was made. While it was being drafted, Jacques Maritain summed it up in 1948: “we agree about the rights but on condition that no one asks us why.” The drafters and the thinkers could agree on the list, and they left the reason out, on purpose, because every country at the table had a different God, or none, and they would never have agreed on a why. So the rights stood on the signatures of governments, and a right that a government signed is a right that a government can ignore, and most of them have.

The reason is what I’m trying to give it. Everything is one thing, and your neighbor is you, the same stuff arranged differently, so every person is owed all of this, and the ones who owe it are all of us. The universe doesn’t owe anybody anything. We do. When I make sure a stranger’s kid gets to a doctor, I’m taking care of the same whole I’m made of, and when a government bombs a hospital, it’s the whole wounding itself. That reason needs no God to hand it down, no signature to hold it up, and no agreement about anything except what we can all see: that we’re in this together, all the way down.

It won’t be beautiful. It won’t be perfect. People will still fight, still love the wrong person, still get jealous and hurt each other in all the ways humans do. But it will be humans doing it, honestly, instead of humans doing it and signing God’s name at the bottom.

I don’t pray, but some mornings I say things to the universe. I don’t ask for anything. I declare. This is one of those.

IX. Back to the living room

The night before one of those mornings, after she had told me that my love was worth nothing, I stood up, crossed the room, and hugged her. A big hug, and I was crying, and I kissed her twice and asked for her bendición.

I didn’t do it to win anything, and I didn’t do it to lose. I was crying for her, for the fear I could see she lived in, for whatever had happened to her, a long time ago, that made a God like that feel like safety. I think it was the same thing I was doing as a kid standing up in misa: respect for her, and respect for myself, at the same time, in the same body. I wasn’t going to kneel to her verdict, and I wasn’t going to hate her for having one. And I didn’t preach back at her. Nobody in that moment needed another sermon.

And I’ve noticed something about the scale of these things. In a living room, the belief can bend. Once, when I stopped arguing and simply asked her, calmly, to leave the violence out of it when the children were in the room, she stopped, and she apologized. In a living room, a person can be reached, because you can hug her. The belief only becomes impossible to move at the scale where nobody can hug anybody: a government, an army, an empire, a denomination dividing an island on a map in New York.

There’s one more thing I’ve noticed, and it surprised me when I finally saw it. The people I know who actually live this, the ones who feed people and sit with the sick and hold a room together when it’s falling apart, almost never talk about it. They don’t have to. The kid standing up at misa didn’t make a speech. The hug didn’t come with a sermon. And the man in the Gospels who said to pray with the door closed seems to have known it too. The people who talk about God the loudest are, so often, the ones covering the gap between what they say and what they do, and the ones who carry what’s good in him mostly don’t announce it at all. Lo que se ve no se pregunta: what you can see doesn’t need to be asked about.

What’s left is everything, and everything includes the grandmother and the soldier and you and me, and there’s nobody up there to love any of it for us. We’ll have to do it ourselves, quietly, and it will show.

Sources

III. Puerto Rico, 1512

Taíno creation myths, written down by Ramón Pané. Wikipedia
Indigenous mitochondrial DNA, about 61 percent (Juan Martínez-Cruzado). ICT News
The Requerimiento, 1513. Simon Fraser University, PDF
Alonso Manso. Wikipedia
The Spanish Inquisition. Wikipedia

IV. Puerto Rico, 1899

Nine denominations divide the island, 1899. Christian Century
Proyecto Dignidad. Wikipedia

V. Gaza, Amalek, the pulpits

Children killed in Gaza. 20,179 through October 2025, and about one a day since the ceasefire. UNICEF USA · Al Jazeera on UNICEF, August 2026
UN commission of inquiry. Genocide finding, 16 September 2025. OHCHR · CNN
The Amalek quote, 28 October 2023. ABC News (Australia)
Pew, 2013. 82 percent of white American evangelicals, 40 percent of American Jews. Pew
The end-times script. Political Research Associates
Christians United for Israel, and John Hagee’s “hunter” sermon. In 2008 he said the words had been twisted. Wikipedia · Christianity Today · Slate

V. The catalog

The relay in section V, in the order it is told.

Joshua 10:40
The Mexica migration, and Huitzilopochtli
The Mandate of Heaven
The Rhineland massacres, 1096
Béziers, 1209. The “kill them all, God will know his own” line is Caesarius of Heisterbach, dixisse fertur. Historians doubt it was said. The town was massacred anyway. Arnaud Amalric
Almohad persecution, and Maimonides
Dum Diversas, 1452, and Inter caetera, 1493
The Alhambra Decree, 1492, and the Morisco expulsion, 1609
St. Bartholomew’s Day, 1572
Cromwell’s letter on Drogheda, 1649
Witch trials in Europe, and Salem, 1692
The Thirty Years’ War
The curse of Ham, read as permission for slavery
Manifest Destiny (John O’Sullivan, 1845)
The Blood River vow, 1838, and apartheid theology
The Taiping Rebellion
Mountain Meadows, 1857
State Shinto
Gott mit uns
Partition, 1947
The Babri mosque, 1992, and Gujarat, 2002
Srebrenica, 1995
The Lord’s Resistance Army
The Islamic State and the Yazidis, 2014
The Rohingya, 2017
January 6, 2021, including banners that said “Jesus Saves.” Christian Chronicle

VI. How God kept dying

Nietzsche, The Gay Science. §125, the madman in the marketplace. German History in Documents and Images. §108, the shadow in the caves: “God is dead; but given the way of men, there may still be caves for thousands of years in which his shadow will be shown.” Walter Kaufmann’s translation.
Ludwig Feuerbach. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
The Humberto Vidal explosion. 21 November 1996, 8:35 a.m., 33 dead. Wikipedia
The transatlantic slave trade. About 12.5 million people embarked. Atlantic slave trade · SlaveVoyages
Hiroshima and Nagasaki. About 140,000 and 74,000 dead by the end of 1945. City of Hiroshima · Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
The pill trials in Río Piedras, 1956. Wikipedia · PBS American Experience
Sterilization. 34 percent of Puerto Rican women of childbearing age by 1965. Wikipedia
Cornelius Rhoads. The 1931 letter, and the investigations that followed. Wikipedia
Herbicides on Puerto Rican forests, 1956–1967, including an enhanced Agent Orange. Fort Detrick and Dow. Rainbow Herbicides · Military Times

VII. Other traditions

Checked 23 September 2026.

What passes

Analects 15.23 in James Legge’s numbering (15.24 in others). “Is not reciprocity such a word? What you do not want done to yourself, do not do to others.” Legge
Hillel, Talmud Shabbat 31a. “What is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow: this is the whole Torah; the rest is the explanation; go and learn.” Sefaria
Mahabharata, Anushasana Parva, section CXIII (Kisari Mohan Ganguli). “One should never do that to another which one regards as injurious to one’s own self.” Sacred Texts
Udanavarga 5:18. “Hurt not others in ways that you yourself would find hurtful.” The Golden Rule
Quran 5:32, Sahih International. The verse says this was ordained for the Children of Israel. Quran.com

What fails

Quran 9:29, Sahih International. “Fight those who do not believe… from among those who were given the Scripture, until they pay the tax, willingly submitting, fully humbled.” Quran.com
Sahih al-Bukhari 6922. “Whoever changed his Islamic religion, then kill him.” Sunnah.com
Manusmriti 8.270. “If a once-born person insults a twice-born one with gross abuse, he should suffer the cutting off of his tongue; as he is of low origin.” Wisdom Library
Mahavamsa, chapter 25 (Wilhelm Geiger). “Only one and a half human beings have been slain here by thee… Unbelievers and men of evil life were the rest, not more to be esteemed than beasts.” Vipassana.com

VIII. In place of the chooser

Spinoza. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Einstein, 1929, on Spinoza’s God. Jewish Telegraphic Agency
Chandogya Upanishad 6.8.7. Uddalaka to Svetaketu: tat tvam asi, “you are that.” Mahāvākyas · Chandogya Upanishad
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Adopted 10 December 1948, 48 to 0, with 8 abstentions. Not legally binding. Drafting of the UDHR
Jacques Maritain, introduction, UNESCO, Human Rights: Comments and Interpretations, UNESCO/PHS/3(rev.), 25 July 1948, page 1. Canopy Forum · Mary Ann Glendon, First Things

Briefly, on the Tao

Antonio Rodriguez Martinez — Tue, 15 Sep 2026 13:40:00 GMT

This morning I was hanging out with my family, coffee and my three dailies, the tri-force as I call them: Journey to the Heart (Melody Beattie), The Daily Stoic (Ryan Holiday and Stephen Hanselman) and last, A Calendar of Wisdom (Leo Tolstoy), and I stumbled and fumbled upon this quote attributed to Lao Tzu in Tolstoy’s collection, and it stumped me:¹

“A wise man innately knows how to act without searching, because he has the divine within himself. The further you search and seek, the less you know.”

I felt activated immediately. Confused and inadequate. I believe this struck a nerve in me because Learning is kind of my thing. Learning anything and everything I can get my hands on to close a self-perceived gap with reality, with Vastitas, my name for the totality, and our observable universe. So anyways, just like I do now with any activations, I try to find the whys and try to… learn… more about the subject matter…

So of course I went looking for the source, which meant leaving the book I started in and going after one I didn’t even own, the Tao Te Ching itself, luckily LLMs make all of this particularly easy, which makes me wonder, were these books in their training data?

It turns out the sentence that stumped me isn’t exactly Lao Tzu’s, or not all of it. Chapter 47 (hah, cool number) opens, roughly, “without going out the door, know the world”, which is a lot blunter than what I had read, and the part about the divine within himself is not in the Chinese at all, it came in later, through Tolstoy’s side of the transmission. What is in there is the freaking line, “the further one goes out, the less one knows”.²

I read that less as a claim that the sage has a private line to the truth and more as a claim about which things are worth knowing. Searching, in this frame, means gathering particulars: more data, more territory covered, more cases examined, maybe some counter-examples. My read is that particulars multiply endlessly and that stacking them up can get in the way of seeing whatever it is that keeps generating them, so you could visit every village and town on earth and end up understanding less about how villages and towns actually work than somebody who stayed put and paid attention to what kept repeating.

Then Chapter 48 gives me something not explained in the shorter daily reader that really opens this nut up for me, which is that in learning there is daily increase, more and more particulars, but in pursuing the Tao there is daily decrease, less and less until what the book calls nonaction.²

Kinda ironic. It’s 12:24pm as I edit this writing, at 7:22am I had become un-baffled, but yeah, I started off at 6:30am today give or take… I can’t make these spirals up.

What is the Tao anyways? We’ve been yapping about it for a bit. Imagine you’re floating on a river. You can splash and fight and try to swim upstream, and you will get tired and go almost nowhere. Or you can notice which way the water is already going and move with it, and suddenly you are flowing fast, and barely trying.

“The way”, is what Tao means, by the way. I started seeing currents everywhere, some things just are and kinda… flow? Yappers yapping, seeds know how to grow up, roots how to grow down, cats landing on their feet, winter turning into spring on schedule, the missus asking me for housework as soon as I sit down, or similarly, Cata or Mia asking for a snack as soon as I sit down, uneducated people voting against their own interests, the dog chasing its tail; none of that seems to need me in charge, and yet things keep moving.

It’s kinda cool that the very first line of this Tao book says that “the Tao I can explain to you isn’t the enduring Tao”, because like the taste of salt, which we can describe in detail but ultimately, you still won’t know how on earth it tastes until you put it on your tongue and taste it.²

“Uneducated people voting against their own interests” doesn’t belong in that list. I put that judgment about people there intentionally. Thing is, I could only plant that line because it was already sitting there, loaded and ready to go, I didn’t have to invent it to use it, which means the contempt is mine, showing up from a deeply philosophical place, which is bullshit, it’s not wisdom just because I can explain it.

So anyways, going back to our original conundrum, it seems that being smart about learning doesn’t by itself help me understand how to flow with things, and it makes all the sense to me now at almost 40. Relationships, of all types, for example, are the place where it makes the most sense for me as my resistance can multiply action and effort, which seems like the antithesis of what the Tao seems to be, like, I won’t figure out my personal relationships just by studying people, I’ll get there with listening, and paying attention (which means I need to stop activity to absorb the person, right?), reading the room, reading whoever is speaking to me and their emotion, and going along with them (is that empathy?), and that’s when I feel the most comfortable.

Why did I get triggered by this quote then? I think it’s inadequacy. I felt attacked because given how I tend to move and work, this seems like I’m being told I’m doing things wrong, and yeah, that was my ego reacting, but my whole self knows that wisdom is these moments where I deconstruct myself, my definitions, my learnings, and possibly drop my guard and in this case, yes, i needed more information, to let go better which is what I feel like, it’s that balance I’m always talking about, it arrives in so many ways, even the Journey to the Heart entry I read today, which I sent my sister, about letting love lead, about embracing our powerlessness (powerlessness against the current of a river?), and i suspect that my search is actually sometimes avoidance… or the reverse… i already acted without searching and now I’m checking whether I applied mastery or a shortcut… which… i don’t even know okay. Maybe it’s a third thing, just a decent ordinary decision that was neither wise nor avoidant…

Here’s a thought for myself which I think is what triggered that feeling of inadequacy with my own ideas after reading what I first took as a quote about the futility of searching… if my ideas are only as good as the pile of evidence and particulars underneath them, will I ever be able to stop stacking information and learning? Because, I think the day I stop, the ideas stop having a backing, security. Aahhh I won’t be able to flesh out this paradox today but now I have another thing to inspect, to learn, to map out… kinda contradictory.

Anyways, the morning was not a total loss of myself. Cata was with Zule getting her hair done. Andre was in my lap, then at my feet, then he went off to mess around with Cata when she was done. Mia had already FaceTimed me, so I had nothing else to do. I read the dailies, I still have the Daily Stoic to finish. Then I was here, working, tending to Andre, thinking about Taoism, I did my PUSH workout, I cooked four lamb chops and ate them, and I’m still here trying to finish this thing. Nothing fancy, just normal writing and working through my ideas.

The whole time, a great morning was already happening. Nobody else in that room was researching anything. Andre doesn’t know what a particular is and he’s doing just fine, and Cata did not consult a commentary before asking for her snack. My learning was the only thing all day going against the current. It gave me this writing, sure, but damn, it was stressful, extra load, artificial and unnecessary. Not the Tao. I spent the morning working out whether a dead man was right that I search too much, and the thing he was pointing at was going on around me the whole time, being loud. I’m not going to tell you that’s the Tao, I don’t get to say what the Tao is, that’s literally the first line of the book. But I think I finally noticed the Tao.

Lao Tzu as rendered in Tolstoy’s A Calendar of Wisdom, September 13, translated by Peter Sekirin. The inward-heavenly idea already appears in Tolstoy’s Russian selection; its earlier source is not established here. ↩
Tao Te Ching, received text in the Wang Bi edition, chapters 1, 47, and 48. The English renderings here are approximate. The explanation about particulars is my reading; Wang Bi’s commentary also discusses common roots and constancy. ↩ ↩² ↩³

Forging the 'Stronghand' Terminal — September 2026 Update

Antonio Rodriguez Martinez — Tue, 08 Sep 2026 12:00:00 GMT

In April 2025 I wrote about forging a terminal on this machine. WezTerm as the emulator, Oh-My-Posh for the prompt, zoxide for jumping around, nvm and fzf, a $PROFILE full of git aliases, and two drives renamed Vault and Forge so the file system would mean something. I called it a cockpit. I meant it, and what follows is not a takedown of that post.

Here is the current state of that stack on the same box, sixteen months later:

2025	Now
WezTerm	Gone. Windows Terminal.
Oh-My-Posh	Gone. No prompt theme.
zoxide	Gone.
nvm-windows	Gone.
fzf	Gone.
`$PROFILE` with aliases	Gone. There is no profile file at all.
`V:` Vault / `F:` Forge	Gone. `C:` `D:` `F:` `Z:`, named for what they hold.
WSL	Removed.

Not one piece of it survived, and I went looking, because I did not entirely believe it myself: no wezterm.lua, no .omp.json, no zoxide database, nothing under AppData carrying any of those names.

The easy version of this essay is a conversion story, the fool gets wise, the maximalist becomes a minimalist, and that version would be dishonest. Nothing failed. WezTerm never burned me and zoxide is still a good tool. What actually happened is duller and more useful than a conversion: I built that setup before I had any usage data, out of a general and slightly romantic idea of the kind of developer I wanted to be at this desk, and then I sat at the desk for sixteen months and the real usage surfaced, and the setup shrank to fit it. Ritual first, evidence later. I had it backwards, and I am not sure I could have gotten it right in the other order.

What this machine actually turned out to be

The 2025 setup was built for a man who lives inside this terminal all day. That man exists. He just works on the Mac.

What sixteen months of usage says about the Windows box, if you read the disk instead of the intention:

Games. AppData\Local is a wall of save folders. Whatever I told myself in 2025, that is the main use.
FORGE. 1,359 live markdown notes in Obsidian, on C:, which is where my thinking lives. Live means not counting the archive or the dailies; with those it is 2,205.
Cursor, when I happen to be sitting here rather than at the Mac.
A shell, opened to run pnpm and git, and then closed.

That last line is the whole thing. I built a cockpit for a pilot who turns out to open the shell a few times a day, run two or three commands he already knows by heart, and close it. Oh-My-Posh renders a beautiful prompt for a man who is not looking at the prompt. zoxide learns the folders of someone who navigates from an editor. Aliases save keystrokes for a person whose bottleneck was never keystrokes.

So it came out, one piece at a time, over months, each time I noticed I was maintaining something I was not using. No principle involved.

The setup that’s actually here

This is the honest inventory as of the last full audit, which lives in a PC-SETUP folder on this machine rather than in my head.

One terminal app, one shell inside it. Windows Terminal, and the only visible profile is PowerShell 7. Command Prompt, Windows PowerShell 5.1, and Azure Cloud Shell are still installed because Windows installs them, but they’re hidden in the profile list so the new-tab menu offers exactly one thing. Cursor’s integrated panel points at the same pwsh.exe, so the shell inside the editor and the shell inside Windows Terminal are the same shell.

The entire settings.json, minus the profile GUIDs:

{
  "defaultProfile": "{5fb123f1-...}",
  "keybindings": [
    { "id": "Terminal.CopyToClipboard", "keys": "ctrl+c" },
    { "id": "Terminal.PasteFromClipboard", "keys": "ctrl+v" },
    { "id": "Terminal.FindText", "keys": "ctrl+shift+f" },
    { "id": "Terminal.DuplicatePaneAuto", "keys": "alt+shift+d" }
  ],
  "profiles": { "defaults": {}, "list": [/* one visible: PowerShell 7 */] },
  "schemes": [],
  "themes": []
}

Four keybindings, and three of them exist only to make copy, paste, and find behave the way they behave in every other window on this computer. schemes and themes are empty arrays. There is no $PROFILE script. PowerShell 7.6.5 starts, prints its banner, and gives me a prompt.

Drives labeled for what they hold, which is less poetic than Vault and Forge and easier to answer questions about at 11pm:

Letter	Label	What lives there
`C:`	SYSTEM	Windows, user folder, FORGE notes, code
`D:`	MEDIA	Video, music, pictures
`F:`	GAMES-HDD	Steam and games, spinning disk
`Z:`	GAMES-SSD	Steam and games, fast disk

The [core] block of my git config, three settings, all three earning their place:

[core]
  autocrlf = input
  longpaths = true
  excludesfile = C:/Users/zombi/.gitignore_global

That last one is the good one. A user-global ignore file listing .npmrc, .env, *.pem, key files, recovery-codes.txt and friends, so secrets stay on disk where I need them and git never sees them, on any repo, without me remembering to do anything.

What is deliberately not installed, which took me longer to accept than the removals:

Docker. Installing it would pull WSL back onto this machine. Compose and Linux work happen on the Mac. There is a whole document in PC-SETUP whose only job is to talk me out of this when I get the urge again.
A prompt theme. I have not missed it once.
A version manager. One Node, one Python (3.13.7), uv for Python tooling. When I need multiple versions I am doing something that belongs on the other machine.

The cockpit moved up a layer

I did not see this part coming, and it is the reason none of the above feels like loss.

The customization energy did not disappear. It relocated. In 2025 the intelligence I was adding to this machine lived in the shell configuration: the prompt, the aliases, the jump list. In 2026 it lives one layer up, in the agent tooling, and the shell went dumb on purpose because it stopped being where the thinking happens.

Concretely: there’s a private repo, my-agentic-skills, that is the canonical source for 27 agent skills, each one a folder with a SKILL.md. That repo is the source of truth, and the rule I wrote for myself is to symlink from it into each tool’s global skills directory rather than copy, so that the definition I edit is the definition all of them read. Claude, Codex, and Cursor each keep their own skills folder, and keeping those honest against the canonical repo is ongoing work, not a solved problem. FORGE has an AGENTS.md that any agent working in the vault reads first.

Skills get ranked (I use One Punch Man association ranks, S through C, because I find it funny and because it forces me to say out loud which ones are load-bearing) and reviewed against actual session history rather than against how clever they seemed when I wrote them, which is the same lesson as the terminal, learned again in a different room.

And there’s PC-SETUP itself, a folder of plain markdown in my home directory: a README, a current-state file, a running log, an audit, and a handful of guides for the specific things this machine gets wrong. It documents what is true right now and what we already tried, which is a different job than documenting an ideal.

When OneDrive followed some symlinks and ate about fifteen thousand game save files in August, the log is why I know exactly what happened and why it will not happen again the same way.

My 2025 config was a prophecy, and my 2026 config is a record. One described a person I imagined sitting here. The other describes the person who does.

What I’d tell the guy who wrote the first post

Not much, honestly. He had to build the thing to find out.

But if he’d take one note from me it would be this: watch how the writing behaves, because the prose in that post was doing exactly what the config was doing. “Clear. Brutal. Freeing.” “A weapon, not a toy.” Those are good lines and I don’t disown them, but they are certainty in formal dress, and the certainty wasn’t there yet. I’d had the setup for a few days. The blade sentences and the elaborate wezterm.lua came from the same place, which was wanting the thing to already be true.

The setup that’s here now is boring to describe and that is a feature. One terminal, one shell, no theme, no profile script, honest disk labels, a global ignore file, a folder of notes that tells me what we already learned. Everything in it earned its place by being reached for repeatedly, or by hurting when it was missing.

Sixteen months of usage told me who sits at this desk. I just had to stop describing him first and let him show up.

The PC-SETUP folder stays a private local thing, but the pattern is free: keep a plain-text record of what your machine actually is, append to it every time you change something, and re-read it before you install anything clever.

Captured, Not Pathetic

Antonio Rodriguez Martinez — Mon, 07 Sep 2026 22:00:00 GMT

Everybody can be an alpha, apparently, which makes me wonder what the word alpha is supposed to mean once every one of you gets there. I guess I’ll be the last inferior man. That’s how it works, no?

As an offer or an ideal, though, it makes sense. Be the alpha. Are you the alpha in your life? Good for you, buddy! Who’s to say I ain’t? Or you aren’t? The exceptional position can be promised to all of us because each of us is invited to imagine occupying it alone. The seller, whoever they are, gets a market: you, me, everybody else who falls for the promises. We get a possible future, an aspiration, and a title we can give ourselves. I’ve met so many “alphas” in my life, which is interesting and a little suspicious, because the sellers of this ideal have no need to distribute actual authority as widely as they distribute the promise of it. Or perhaps some of us are selling the idea to ourselves to compensate for something we feel we lack, with no outside seller involved.

People usually point to wolf packs to make this hierarchy sound natural, but David Mech, the dude whose book helped popularize the alpha idea, later explained that most wild wolf packs are actually families. The adults generally lead because they are the parents. Look at the photograph at the top. Those wolves are behind glass, in a fluorescent room, with a wolf poster on the wall. Captive. The familiar image of a permanent contest for the top came largely from watching animals in conditions like that, not from wild families. Mech on the alpha concept, his 1999 paper. An observation about captive wolves became a fable, and sellers turned that fable into something you and I could consume. They captured the idea by turning a description into a ladder they could sell.

That movement interests me more than the wolf. By fable, I mean a story that offers us a lesson about how to live. The alpha thing is one of my favorites because it offers a theory of power in which being above other people is the achievement, then invites each of us to pursue that achievement separately, as though each of us could decide our own rank arbitrarily! It’s so silly! The story also works against our collective intelligence because the possibility that we might acquire power by organizing together, as a wild wolf family does, becomes difficult to see from inside this hyper-individualistic alpha-being story. If being powerful means never needing anybody, working together starts to look like weakness. Divide and conquer begins to look almost self-service: we perform the division ourselves, and the strength available to us through cooperation becomes almost impossible to see. In this particular fable, we are asked to pursue power in a way that can leave us with less of it together. And then we scratch our heads and think, man, how the fuck did we end up and keep ending up here? What the fable hides is how much we depend on each other.

We ARE social creatures. We rely on other people and their knowledge and work to do things we could never manage alone. I almost want to reserve the real alpha label for anybody who can live comfortably off-grid, but even that fantasy arrives with tools, knowledge, and infrastructure made by other people. One of the main achievements of our intelligence is that it lets us invent shared rules, assign responsibilities, and keep arrangements running after their founders are dead. An office begins as an idea and becomes a position somebody can occupy centuries later. A stranger can accept money from us because other strangers will accept it from them. Michael Tomasello on human culture. The arrangement can outlive all of us, which is one reason we can keep repeating the same mistakes across generations.

An idea can live inside one head and then a fable can carry it between heads. When enough of us act on the same agreements, the idea becomes an expectation, then routines, roles, rules, and money. Now the idea has hands. It can open a door, move money, keep somebody out, or build. Repeated enough, shared, and expected of us, ideas become part of our systems. The fable reaches the gate through human hands.

An actor does not have to stand at the gate to use it. Control over the rules is one kind of power, and control over the idea that tells us what those rules mean is another. You do not have to separate us by force if you can sell us a story that makes separation feel like achievement, and we will do some of the work ourselves.

A captured idea is an idea we use to understand or organize life, bent toward somebody else’s advantage, then sold back to us as common sense, morality, nature, or personal ambition. Division is the fingerprint of that, a problem we share becomes a contest between us, a condition imposed on us becomes a judgment about our character, and the person beside us becomes the enemy while the actor benefiting from the arrangement disappears from view. Repeated often enough, the story enters hiring rules, lending formulas, feeds, classrooms, and laws.

I still have to prove each case. To call an idea captured, I have to name the idea, the actor or beneficiary, what the division accomplishes for them, and how the story enters our behavior or rules. Otherwise, I may just be giving my dislike of an institution a more impressive name. Some systems were redirected toward exploitation; others were built for domination from the beginning. Those are different histories, even when both teach us to enforce the arrangement against one another. Sometimes we can name the actor, and sometimes we can identify only the beneficiary or the mechanism. Credit ratings show a different part of the pattern: not division between us, but an arrangement redirected when issuers began paying for their own ratings, so the cost of that flip still returns as a story about risk, prudence, and who deserves a loan. Social feeds, food formulation, and gambling design are siblings of the same family of moves: an arrangement we use, redirected, with the cost turning back into a story about us.

By the time we apply for a loan, accept a job, or open a feed, many of these decisions have already been made. We arrive looking for something useful and meet an arrangement with a history we may never have had a reason to examine. The promise can still sound familiar while the rules serve interests we have not considered.

Look at that canal. Those of us farming upstream can take water before it reaches those of us downstream, but we may need the downstream farmers’ help maintaining the shared works. That dependence gives us a reason to bargain despite our unequal positions. Elinor Ostrom and Roy Gardner studied how arrangements like this can sustain cooperation. The people farther from the water can have a claim that matters because the people nearest it need their contribution. Ostrom and Gardner, 1993.

Suppose we improve the construction. Permanent structures can reduce the labor needed for maintenance, which sounds like something worth welcoming. If we farm downstream, though, that improvement can also reduce our upstream neighbors’ need for our help. Wai Fung Lam’s research on irrigation in Nepal examined how technological improvements could weaken that bargaining relationship. The engineering improvement could increase the advantage of the people already nearest the source. We would have a better-built canal and a different distribution of power among the people using it. Lam, 1996.

The water problem and the power problem were connected all along, and what looks like a straightforward improvement from our end of the canal may remove a neighbor’s means of negotiating with us, we can welcome the reduction in work without noticing. If we are the ones downstream, being told to work harder would leave the lost bargaining power unaddressed. Our position in the arrangement matters to both what we can do and what we are likely to notice. The same shape shows up when policy sells “work harder” as the fix — more years before retirement, fewer holidays, fewer breaks — while better infrastructure and tighter rules leave the people at the end of the line with less room to bargain. I write these things, and they sound theoretical and abstract, but this is not fucking abstract at all.

Then the second capture becomes possible. Our intelligence turns shared ideas into useful instruments: schools, markets, governments, platforms, credit systems, and all the other arrangements we build so we can function together. A few people can gain control of one of those instruments and redirect it toward themselves. The captured idea helps them divide us and explain why the new arrangement is natural, deserved, or our own choice. The captured instrument then gives that idea more reach. The story helps capture the system and the system helps distribute the story, that’s the loop.

The person off-grid still arrives with other people’s tools. This is where the word actually sits, if we are going to keep it: the people and organizations with power over the terms. What qualifies, what gets paid, who may enter, whose objection can change a decision. Some of us hold that power in one part of life and have almost none in another. An institution can give one of us extraordinary reach, a contract or a policy can change conditions for thousands of strangers we never meet, and the part we manage can look successful while costs appear elsewhere. Someone kinder can take over and find the same permissions waiting for them.

The alpha fable works this way. It takes our ordinary desire for agency, protection, and belonging and turns the person beside us into a rival for rank. The people who sell that story can gain attention, money, votes, customers, cheaper labor, or compliance, depending on where they sell it. We receive the feeling of power, they receive people less likely to recognize a shared interest or act together, and the fable divides us.

CNN, September 2, 2026. Hung Cao, Trump’s nominee for Navy secretary, said during a 2024 Senate debate that the military needed “alpha males and alpha females.” Source.

Lmao. There it is. A fable pulled from captive wolves, now being used by a nominee for Navy secretary to describe who belongs in an actual military. The idea has hands, and apparently a confirmation hearing. That laugh is the contempt the essay is arguing against. I felt it. Naming it matters, because the next easy step is to walk away cleaner than I am.

The fable does not stay on a podium. It settles into how men are taught to live.

We men still need intimacy, help, vulnerability, and other people, and a masculinity built around self-reliance and invulnerability does not remove those needs, it represses them, so the need stays and the man stops acting on it. Living that way, against what we actually are, produces resentment, and the resentment then justifies more distance, which produces more resentment, until the story about not needing anybody starts coming true in the only way it can, by costing us the people who would have shown up. A 2024 review of research on masculinity and loneliness found that self-reliance could take priority over social and emotional support. Review of masculinity, loneliness, and social connectedness. The alpha fable did not create every lonely man, but it gives loneliness a place to hide and offers an artificial tribe to belong to. Men inside it can call ordinary human needs weakness and perform independence, because that is all it is: performed, not actual, independence. Then we carry that lesson into friendships, families, workplaces, and politics until our performance of independence becomes everybody’s problem. Who foots the bill? All of us.

I valued my autonomy more than my deepest relationships for a long time. Unbelievable. No wonder I was always lonely; I had designed my life around that. The fable did not invent that loneliness, but it gave me a noble name for it.

Millions of us cannot each be the single alpha promised by a hierarchy, but we can still feel as though the title describes us. That contradiction creates discomfort. We can question the story, or we can decide we have not proven ourselves yet and perform harder. Sellers are waiting inside that second answer. Once masculinity becomes a test we can never finish, nearly anything can be sold as evidence that we are passing: a gun, a drink, a course, a subscription, a ticket to an alpha event, whatever the fuck. Experiments have found that threats to masculinity can increase men’s attraction to firearms, and a 2024 review found that digital alcohol marketing ties alcohol to gendered identities and amplifies hegemonic masculinity. Masculinity threat and attitudes toward guns. Review of gendered digital alcohol marketing. The seller gets paid every time we try to settle the contradiction with another purchase.

I know the other side of the arrangement too. I worked on Facebook games, getting people to participate, keeping them interested, giving them a reason to come back, and we handled personally identifiable information like it was candy. I can say that now in a sentence and make it sound like an industry I have studied, but I worked in it. Somebody had to build the things that made all that participation possible, and I was one of those people. Contempt for the people who click is easy when you forget who built the reasons they kept clicking.

Pathetic is the word that tempts me when I look at the world we have designed. How can animals intelligent enough to build all of this keep defending arrangements that hurt us? But if I stop at pathetic, I turn a mechanism into a character flaw. Worse, I can quietly exempt myself and perform another version of the alpha trick: I become the one clever man standing above the dupes. Captured does not mean innocent, helpless, or free of responsibility, it means our participation has been recruited through the same social capacities that make our shared world possible. That is more accurate, and it gives us a mechanism we might recognize together.

Capture can happen without a secret meeting. An actor can notice which version of an idea serves them, repeat it, reward it, and give it more places to travel. We may help carry it because we believe it, because it explains our pain, because it offers us a tribe, or because we are trying to survive inside the arrangement. Our participation does not give us the same power as the person designing, distributing, or profiting from the story. Being persuadable is how we learn from one another. The same intelligence that lets us build an institution lets someone build a reason for us to defend an arrangement that hurts us. Some of us work inside these arrangements, improving measurements, reducing maintenance, or making decisions faster. We may be doing our jobs well while making a captured system more efficient at serving whoever controls it. Our competence leaves us with the same question: whose interests does our work serve?

That does not erase our responsibility. I can ask what I need to change without accepting that I am the only cause in the room. I can also ask who designed the environment, who profits from the participation I helped design, and what we could change together.

Capture is not inevitable. Ostrom studied institutions in which users participated meaningfully in making rules, monitored one another through people accountable to them, and had accessible ways to challenge decisions. Those systems still required work, but participation could change the arrangement: not waiting on a kinder person at the top, but building rules the rest of us can question and revise together. Ostrom’s Nobel lecture.

There is a version of brotherhood that runs the other direction, and it has almost nothing to sell us. It looks like somebody’s father teaching us to weld, or a friend who takes the kid for an afternoon without being asked, or four men putting a roof on in a weekend and eating afterward. The sold version runs on ranking, on courses, on camps, on gear, on being seen doing it. One of them needs a payment processor and the other one does not.

By our own definition of the fable, hoping for a better alpha can only leave the rest of us underneath one. There can only be one. The rest of us are the followers the arrangement requires, and I have to put myself in that count.

A canal can be well maintained and carry plenty of water while the last field stays dry. If that field were ours, we’d want to know how much water was meant to reach us, where it went, and who gets to decide.

I Didn't Start Cooking for Love

Antonio Rodriguez Martinez — Tue, 01 Sep 2026 17:30:00 GMT

I didn’t start cooking for love. A nasty Excel file told me Uber Eats and going out to eat were killing my savings, and I could stop both immediately — so I did. Luckily I was single by then, separated, and my decision was not going to affect the rest of the family (yet). There was nothing noble in it either, it was just capitalism putting a hand on my back and my pocket, pushing me into walking into my own kitchen, kind of annoyed about it at the beginning. The most soulless motivator, if I’m being blunt about it.

At the beginning there were mostly the basics, the staples. My boring chicken breast, a name that my eldest put on my chicken. I remember him saying to me “mano, ponle seasoning a esto, this shit is so bland”. Fair. I had just started my cooking journey and chicken had always been hit-or-miss for me. From that bland chicken forward, poco a poco comencé a cocinarlo todo. I started racking up serious hours, cooking absolutely everything. I remember promising myself, if you want to eat cake, you have to cook it. So just like that, I was cooking everything and anything I could think of, starting from the basics and foundational recipes.

For that I had two books at first. Bittman’s How to Cook Everything for the general grammar of the thing, and Valldejuli for my own people’s recipes, the classics. I opened these books constantly because I could not hold a ratio in my head then and I still can’t. Valldejuli’s is still there on the kitchen counter, kinda-hidden to not get flak from the missus, but it’s there. The basics, which I think I’ve learned correctly, have stuck with me, my broken memory kept, and it kept it without me asking, the whys of cooking and the whys of the basics of cooking. Why you pat a chicken breast dry before it goes anywhere near heat. Why salt needs 15, 20, 30 minutes to do its actual job instead of sitting on the outside tasting like salt. Why 325°F gives a beginner a much wider margin than 400°F does, which matters enormously when your margin is the only thing standing between dinner and a chancleta (rubber sandal). Why ajíes dulces are not optional and recao is not cilantro and a cube of sofrito out of the freezer means the caldero starts with an advantage before you’ve done anything.

Those basics stuck. The foundations stacked fast, ideas leaking into each other the way learning always does when you stay with one thing long enough — and cooking is where I proved it with my hands instead of arguing it in my head. Heat is physics, right? It behaves a certain way and keeps behaving that way, and so does salt, and so does time, and so does fat, and once four or five things behave predictably you can guess at the sixth and be roughly right, and roughly right with a hot cast-iron skillet in front of you and hungry people in the house is most of dinner.

Somewhere around the first juicy tender chicken breast I actually wanted to cook, my reason changed. I could’ve kept ranting about not being able to go out to eat out of necessity, or complained about how fucking insane grocery prices are right now, but the practice still has its desires and parameters, and requires a specific effort that is rough, the price is there. The reason, and the reasoning, and the whys for the experience itself changed, and so I stopped cooking because of the money and necessity and kept cooking because the food is so fucking good.

The hours kept stacking anyway. I was lifting and running by then too, so the stove and the whole-food fridge just lined up — nothing noble, just convenient timing. But yeah, all of this started because of this economy — and what those hours actually bought was not really the money. Somewhere around 8,000 of them in by rough math now, and I’d check that number before I bet money on it, but the idea holds: it was another Tuesday of arroz con pollo for my babies and ladies, and it was delicious, and it brought us together.

The idea of a used or active home kitchen is romantic; fluency behind it is not. I’m flowing through prep and cleanup, dancing to whatever’s on — Peeling Flesh, Juan Luis Guerra, Coltrane yesterday. The music helps literally, not as metaphor — a song is a clock you can dance to. Ænema for a short boil, Pneuma when you’ve got a while, no? Stack enough hours that way and the movement starts looking mechanical, expert, because that’s what practice does to you.

As you go, chicken stops being hard to cook with, and each ingredient is studied with these hands. You’ll know when you are there, when you finally feel fluent with that piece of butter. My cooking is nowhere near art or expert. I am a studied beginner, a caveman cook, but I can produce my recipes on a Tuesday when I’m wrecked or on a Sunday for guests, because of the stacking. Funnily enough, having sofrito sitting in cubes in the freezer honestly beats most of the productivity systems I’ve implemented at work. I told somebody recently that my cooking is dead simple, and then, being who I am, I went and opened my own recipe notes to prove it. Well. There’s a paragraph in there explaining that a chicken breast is a wedge and what butterflying is actually for. There’s a note about pulling meat at 155 to 158 because carryover finishes the job. There’s a whole section on freezing raw portions, and not forgetting to sharpie the dates on each. So yeah, granted, to me my cooking is dead simple now because repetition just makes complicated things feel simple from the inside. Dead simple, sure. I wrote a paragraph about wedges.

Back in the day, cooking was really the only way to get our teenager out of his room — these days my family materializes out of the walls when there’s something on the stove. I make cornbread, gluten-free, out of a bag, nothing heroic. I make the magic brownies, IYKWIM, and the adults in my life have a very pleasant evening and bring it up for a week afterward. My kids eat things I made with my hands. The tiniest mac and cheese, made by somebody who cared for 12 minutes, is going to get in your body in a way the purchased version probably never will. Es una bendición, de verdad.

I’m pickier about eating out now, and I know how that sounds. It’s a coin flip for me anyway. It’s a 50/50 chance whether I spend the rest of the day bloated and regretting it. Most of what’s out there is garbage, and yes, I know I sound like an insufferable person saying that, and I’ve eaten plenty of it happily so I’m not putting myself above anyone by saying this, it’s just the resentment and contempt seeping out. I’m 39 now, I’m minimizing my FAFO. I wasn’t always this picky. I lived in Miami for over 12 years and ate at all sorts of restaurants, and the expensive ones with no gimmicks, just the food, were unbelievable in flavor. Funny to think I could afford them then, or thought I could, jaja. Those chefs run the same fundamentals I’m trying to run, except they’ve run them 10,000 times more than I have, in a clean room, with product that came in that morning. A cook who has broken down the same fish 400 times and is frankly bored of it, that’s craft doing the work, and luxury is just what they get to charge for it.

The caldero and the DIY were supposed to be budget instruments. They’re some of the best and tastiest parts of my week now. I keep going because of what the food does to a house.

Me voy a comer un arroz con pollo que cociné anoche.

What Phrases Did Your Dad Install On You?

Antonio Rodriguez Martinez — Thu, 27 Aug 2026 19:00:00 GMT

Somebody asked me this week what phrase my kids are going to hear in their heads when they’re 40. That’s the kind of phrase I argue we repeat so many times that it stops being just words and turns into ideas within our children. I answered fast, which was kinda surprising to me, and also not, because the answer was already sitting there waiting I guess. “Está bueno, está bueno” I responded, which is basically what I use to avoid saying anything too-adult around the kids.

It’s like it’s fine, “está bueno”, it’s good, we’re okay, whatever this is we can find something in it. It is honestly the closest thing I have to a religion at this point, and I say it constantly, in the car, at the table, over spilled things and broken things and hurt feelings and Tuesdays, over “spicy” temperaments, you know what I’m talking about. I’ll use it for a plethora of situations, but mostly to absorb things, as a stoic acceptance or resignation of things. I’ll use it for boo-boos and blood. I’ll use it for things that are actually good for everyone. Or that’s what I tell myself it is. I don’t know, really, I think it’s mostly inoffensive. “Vastitas” is what I say to myself, and “está bueno, está bueno” is what I exteriorize or externalize openly.

This question though, really stood up a bunch of dust for me, a dust storm really, because I immediately thought about my father and my upbringing… mainly because the phrase I received was different. Very different. And I’m sure the ones you received are particularly interesting too, or if you are lucky, you don’t relate to this, lucky you. Anyways, back to my father.

My father used to tell me, repeatedly and humorlessly, very seriously, “honra los genitales.” Honor your genitals. Honor the fact of being a male, be worthy of the equipment, be a man about it. At least that’s what I think he used it for. I remember it used to be like a barrage, in repetition, which makes it sound alliterated, like a machine gun, “muchachito, honra los genitales, honra los genitales!” and he would use it just as I use my “está bueno”, for anything, I was walking too slow, “muchacho, honra los genitales”, I would get into trouble with my mom, muchacho, honra los genitales, I would complain about something, I would not do something or I would need to put more effort towards something because the results were not up to his standards, muchacho, honra los genitales, like…

It’s funny for about a fraction of a second and then you probably hit a WTF, and then you think a little about what it actually does or could do to someone affected by this type of rhetoric, used in the long term, and, at least for me, the feelings of heaviness creep in. I mean, that’s all we parents do nowadays, right? We measure ourselves and our behavior towards our children into how traumatic they might or might not be. So yeah, I got that “honra los genitales” every time my dad wanted to point out that I was not up to his standards, whatever they may be, those are still undefined for me to this date. Or not, actually. Ultimately I feel like he used it whenever he wanted, positively or negatively, and it still made me feel very strange either way, like all of it converged into the same something.

Another thing that super blows my mind is that my dick and balls are the one thing I got for free, at birth, by divine luck, and I did no work for it, I was just born with this package. I did not earn my genitals. I did not earn them, which is hella confusing too because I feel like I have spent the whole rest of my life proving my father that I deserved to have my genitals in some shape or form. That’s so fucked up, “Está bueno, está bueno” I would say at this shit now, a very fucked up paradox.

Nobody ever told me how much “honoring” was enough, either. Which I think affected my self-esteem, whether I want to admit it or not. There is no afternoon where anyone in my family said “listo, ya, you honored your dick and balls, you’re done, now you go sit down and rest and enjoy being a man. Thanks, son!” That type of language only gave me trauma that looks like a bill or an invoice, as a duty? What is even the teaching? No, really. I asked my father about this at some point and he said he didn’t remember, and it felt like literally the wildest gaslight I’ve ever received from him, he’s almost at 90yo so there’s not much for me to do about it but I tell you something, my sister was never told to “honra los genitales”… that shit is no bueno, the patriarchy and the machismo at full effect, and the craziest part to me is that nobody in our house thought they were doing anything to me or my sister, it was just something men said to boys and everybody nodded and smiled. My mother certainly has never said anything about it, I might get “spicy” myself and call her after I finish writing this to see what she comes up with. Should be one of those “está bueno, está bueno” moments too.

I wrote something a while back about the fictional characters who raised me, Goku, Dr. House, and Guts, and Superman, and Saitama, and the Master Sword and Mjolnir (both only let you pick them up if you’re worthy), and I framed my whole upbringing thing as a story about the men or paternal figures who weren’t around, like the anime came in and filled a hole. But almost every one of those stories is about a guy proving he deserves to be there, earning the right to be himself, earning something he already had, so they didn’t really replace my father, they continued him, in a much better or colorful dialect, or relatable way, with soundtracks and swords and arcs. I didn’t escape the instruction or him for that matter, I just upgraded its packaging and got to feel like I chose it.

Somewhere in there, along this big mess, I built what I thought was the opposite phrase with Está bueno, está bueno. And between us, I am (was?) pretty proud of it, because it looked like I had flipped the whole thing in one generation. My dad handed me a nasty bill and I was going to stop that there. But a phrase has settings, no? A phrase can do the unintended. And mine isn’t that clean, I’ve realized it has two settings, mainly by dissecting my father’s effect and affects on me, because this is not about my father, really, this is about me, and you, and parents, and what we install, the phrases, the ideas, the behaviors.

Even when I want my “Está bueno” to mean you are enough, right now, at rest, nothing required, nothing owed, the world is not asking you for a payment today, I don’t have the guarantee that it’s going to affect and be received like this. I think my está bueno can also mean okay, okay, that’s enough now, please wind it down, please bring whatever you’re feeling into a range I can be around and that’s a lid. I think that my está bueno could be a mock of certain absurdity around something. I think that my está bueno could be irritation and politeness disguised as sternness, like a nice guy, not the kind guy. And overall, I really don’t want to put lids on my children, especially not with a phrase as ephemeral as está bueno, hell, my eldest got some of that and limiting our loved ones is never the way. That way I’ll end up installing the same insufficiency that my parent was alluding to, won’t I?

Children are not just listening to what you say anyways, right? These kids, they’re measuring how much room you have for them, how they are feeling around us, and they’re very good at it, so good at it, better than we are, because for them it’s survival information. And again, if you go back and remember, as a child, all of these ideas and paradigms, don’t they just click for you? Do you remember? Do you remember how your survival was shaped by these phrases from the adults around you, repeated, constantly, again and again. These soundbites now have much more color for children than what we think about, don’t they? I know mine were, I know which adults wanted to deal with me and which did not… perhaps I didn’t know I was doing that at that time as a child, but that’s what I’m talking about. Adults that put that lid on me, they all shaped my survival just as my está bueno shapes the survival of my children and whenever it becomes pervasive, a limiting factor, I think then our phrases become garbage. Which is not surprising to me, because in general, garbage in, garbage out, is real, and our parents did a mostly garbage job in many areas with these phrases and ideas and “old-school” ideas, for whatever the reasons they were and the information they had, and their capacity. My dad was an orphan by the way. He could blame upward all day, but he doesn’t (honestly, I don’t know what goes inside of him), but he did his best with what he had, considering.

So what’s the fix, a better phrase? That’s where I was going with this, I think. Something cleaner, something that can’t be used as a lid. And that’s wrong, and I knew it was wrong while I was typing it, because a phrase is what you reach for when you don’t want to do the whole thing, really. My father had a 4-word phrase instead of teaching me anything about being a man, literally. It’s kinda ironic that I started this dissection of my father’s phrases, thinking mine were so much better but it turns out these phrases are never going to replace sitting on the floor at 8pm on a Wednesday with a kid who is coming apart. These phrases are cheap parenting, or non-parenting.

My dad was an orphan, he did his best with what he had, and his best still costs me, and arguably the people around me, almost 40 years of proving something to a man who doesn’t remember saying it and who knows what else happened with and for my self-esteem. So doing your best is not a defense. It wasn’t for him and it isn’t going to be for me.

So anyways, no more phrases. Mis bendis, mis bendiciones, they don’t need me to have the right line loaded and ready, they need me in the room, looking at them, and willing to say the ugly thing out loud when the ugly thing is the true one. My kids also need to hear me say esto no está bueno. Out loud and with care. This is bad, this is not okay, I’m angry on your behalf and I’m not going to find the good angle right this second.

And you, if you have a phrase, and you do, everybody does… just notice it. Notice which one you reach for. Notice what you were skipping when you reached for it. I’m not even telling you to stop, I don’t know your house but just look at it.

And to the original question, I honestly don’t know how each of my children would answer this. What phrases did your dad install on you? I have no clue and now I’m so curious. Perhaps this is worth having a conversation, or not, just like it happened for me, I don’t want to go wrestling emotions and rustling feathers and bringing up old dust… hah!

My father handed me a bill I was never going to finish paying. I’m trying to hand my kids ground instead, ground to just roam, be free, to live however they choose to live, the kind that’s just there, that doesn’t ask what they did today or ask for receipts. Shaky ground is shaky ground whichever way you want to look at it! Whether I actually pull that off is not something I get to settle by writing an essay about it, and honestly, essays are the easy part, just like our little phrases and catchwords and quotes. This is the stuff that gets decided on a Tuesday, en el calentón, in the heat of the moment and in a tone of voice I’m not fully in control of yet.

El Trickle Down Sí Llegó

Antonio Rodriguez Martinez — Wed, 12 Aug 2026 14:25:00 GMT

$4.99 for green onions

$4.99 for green onions.

I stood there, stunned in the produce aisle, running the pseudo-accounting I run in stores now. Cebollines. The green part you throw on top at the end so the scrambled eggs look like somebody cared. I care, so yeah, $4.99, and the tomatoes and the garlic and the yellow onion I was actually going to cook with came to less than that, the three of them together. The decoration cost more than the food? What the fucking fuck. I didn’t purchase them, by the way. Not this time, Publix!

I know what you are going to tell me, I know the counters, at least some of them. Supply chains, drought somewhere I’ve never been, fuel, labor, taxes, tariffs here, wars, and cost-of-labor that, a store deciding what a neighborhood will pay, the market self-regulates itself, $4.99 is for a reason, yada-yada. Some of it is true, granted, but I’m not writing about onions or onion prices either.

The story they sold us

The people who sold us our ideas about money, around money, who has it, how it should be used, who should use it and when, had solid arguments, mostly.

The idea or ideas, mostly that money sitting in a vault does nothing but money in the hands of somebody who builds, the entrepreneurs, the private champs of our capitalist society, should mostly get a plant built. And then the plant needs people, so the people get paid, then the people spend their money, and whatever they spend it on has to get made by somebody else who also gets paid, and everybody makes and spends money, it trickles down everywhere and we are all happy and sing Kumbaya. So naturally, rich people, they are the ones that generate the jobs and then all the money and the wealth, for everybody around them, so they need the money the most. And you let the builders keep more of what they make, and the building spreads it around on its own. This idea, not a charity but the plumbing where wealth and goods and value trickle down along the plumbing, sounds really nice but alas, here I am having an existential crisis over $4.99 green onions and I’m sure you’ve had similar crises over similarly priced items recently.

I’ve watched people I respect hold those capitalistic ideas, talk about them, rationalize the thing, and there are stretches where even I look at it and it seems to be doing what it says, no? Some years ago things appeared to be going well for most of us in this economy. IIRC, green onions were .79 a piece.

But yeah, almost forty-something years of it now and the thing everybody says, left, right, doesn’t really matter. And ultimately not nothing came down, and the money stayed up there. The 1 percenters and 2 percenters are as rich as ever.

The money moved up

I’m not making this stuff up. The Federal Reserve has published who owns what in this country every quarter since 1989. First quarter of 2026, the top 1% holds 31.6% of all household wealth. The top 10% holds just under 68%. The bottom half of all American households holds 2.5%. Two point five percent. Half the country, split between them, 1/40th of the thing (Fed, Distributional Financial Accounts, Q1 2026). By the longer-run estimates the top 1% was somewhere near 23% in the late 70s, and I’d check that number before I bet money on it, but the direction is not in dispute by anybody.

Now take the part that was supposed to be the whole deal: between 1978 and 2024, net productivity went up 80.5%. This net productivity means that we got better at making all the things. So the workers are clearly doing their part but still typical worker pay across those same 46 years went up 26% while CEO pay went up 1,094% (EPI, 2024). Do that division and the guy at the top got about 42 times the raise you did, out of the same work, or arguably less.

And today, right now, 977 American billionaires are sitting on $9.24 trillion, up $2.2 trillion in the last twelve months alone (Americans for Tax Fairness, June 2026). The ten richest men in the country are up 526 percent since March of 2020 after you adjust for inflation, roughly six-fold (Oxfam, 2025). And in June one of them crossed a trillion dollars, the first person in history who ever did, and then dropped back under it twelve days later when the stock came down, about $270 billion gone (Forbes and Americans for Tax Fairness, June 2026). Six years since March of 2020. Mia’s tiny whole life, for perspective.

So the money moved, and it moved up. Cuando dicen que la marea sube todos los botes, pregúntate cuáles botes por favor.

And yeah, somebody is going to tell me the money does come down, through wages, through spending, through a hundred ordinary places, and they’re right, I’m not saying zero. I’m saying rate. 26% in 46 years is not zero. It’s just not what 1,094% looks like, and it’s not what a pipe looks like either, and please, look how much we the middle class suffer, I can’t imagine being dirt poor. I’ve heard, “being poor in this country is very expensive”, oh, how I can imagine that.

The pipe trickled down and ran perfectly. On time, at pressure, every day, to every floor, for the last whatever years. The thing carried money some places but for most, it just wasn’t carrying money.

What actually came down

El trickle down llegó, pero no en dinero y riquezas. Llegó en un trickle down a modo de crisis de valores y de integridad, y de corrupción. Los valores viven por dentro y nadie los puede ver, así que lo único que se ve, y lo único que se puede parar, es la conducta.

What came down was how people treat people as consumers and humanity is a second-thought. What trickled down are the numbers, the need and the architecture to sell to and extract. Conduct is what you do when you have a little bit of power over somebody else, whether you squeeze the person under you or you don’t, whether you hand the cost down or you eat it yourself. Not the version you’d tell at dinner, the thing you actually did, that’s the conduct.

Just watch how capitalistic interests historically deal with and treat somebody smaller than them. These interests take as much as they can and give back the least they can get away with, and they do it on purpose. We all feel in our bones something is off with the way things are going, we all know these capitalistic interests are stealing and extracting from us. The thing that came down the pipe is bullshit. It’s extraction, it’s a lack of compassion, it’s suffering, and we’ve normalized it. Some people even call this progress, or a free-market. It’s bonkers!

Then the guy who runs a shop of forty people does it to his forty. And the guy with three employees does it to his three. And then you are at somebody’s dinner table and a father is doing it to his kid, probably keeping score, holding the ledger, and he learned it from his boss, who learned it from his, all the way up to somebody in a building nobody in this story has ever been inside. And we exploit each other and corrupt each other because that’s what actually trickles down, the conduct, the exploits, the suffering which creates fear and more need, and greediness, and you can’t call me crazy, some years ago we even had slaves up in this mother, and today we can argue all day that slavery is still pervasive across our justice and penal systems, which is just another way of exploiting and extracting wealth…

Some of that is not even learned, it’s arithmetic. His margins got squeezed by the same arrangement and the only lever he has is the forty. But the rest of it, the part that isn’t arithmetic, is that having somebody below you is the only proof most of us ever get that we are not at the bottom.

Cipayos

Albizu had a word for the ones who did the exploitation to their own. In Lares, Puerto Rico, on September 23, 1950, in a speech, he called them cipayos, the sepoys, the native troops the empire points at their own people, and then he went further than that. Los negreros de su patria dedicaos a la cacería de sus hijos. The slavers of their own homeland, out hunting their own children. He was talking about the men who ran the colony for the yanquis and called it democracy. They were not greedy men particularly. They had picked which people they belonged to.

This stuff stopped being a scandal a long time ago too. Now it’s so normalized as just how you do business, and somebody will teach it to a 22-year-old on his first job so he doesn’t get eaten. I remember the first older businessman I ever did business with. “Sue me,” he told me, as a way to settle some money he owed me and my partner at that time. We were having tacos. This is just natural, it’s American, we’ll settle and you’ll get something.

You see that cowboy-ism and much more trickle down at every table.

Normalized at every table

Rich Dad Poor Dad, everybody has it, I have it, it has something like 40 million copies sold, it’s the money book, the one your tío hands you when you turn 22. Not mine. Mine never gave me anything in my entire life, not even his time, guess he’s as greedy as you can be (hah!). Anyway, I read it and I underlined it and I passed it to somebody else. First chapter. Rich dad’s whole teaching method is that he hires two 9-year-olds at 10 cents an hour, and then he stops paying them at all and works them for free, and the free part is on purpose, the free part is the lesson. Fear makes you take the job, desire makes you spend the check, and those two run you in a circle for 50 years, and you are broke because you let your emotions do your thinking for you.

And he is not wrong about the fear. The fear is real, you can watch it run people, it ran me. He gets the fear right and then tells you it started inside you.

The best-selling money book in the world, bought mostly by people who are not rich, and what it tells them is that the reason they are not rich is inside them. Nobody had to enforce that one. And rich dad himself, nobody has ever verified the man existed. Kiyosaki’s company Rich Global LLC went into bankruptcy in 2012 owing about $24 million on a judgment, around $26 million in liabilities against $1.8 million in assets. The guy teaching you to master money, no?

I mentioned the extremes of slavery a while back, but in different scales it looks much closer to home, familiar. The contract that goes to somebody’s friend, with the paperwork done clean enough that it isn’t technically anything. The landlord who raises it because the market says he can and who will tell you, sincerely, and he means it, that it isn’t personal. The boss who scopes work he will not price, he wants the thing built and he wants the cost to show up in a budget that isn’t his. The guy who moves a deadline Thursday at 4pm because moving it costs him nothing and costs you your Saturday, and then says thanks, appreciate you, and he means that too. The vendor. The adjuster. The HR lady reading you a policy she did not write and does not like. The corporate lawyer, the mediator, fighting for the corporation and stepping on the individual, legally. The restaurant owner who keeps lowering the quality of the food items, in the name of profit. The wages unreported, the stolen tips, all the same at a different scale.

None of them thinks he’s corrupt or corrupt-adjacent or doing anything wrong, in any of these situations. This is just what is. Así son las cosas en el capitalismo, the survival of the fittest. None of them notices what really trickled down. Cada uno de ellos se acuesta tranquilo. Each of them, each of us, is just doing our job. I’m just doing my job. He’s just doing his job. She’s just doing her job. We are all doing our jobs… that’s what trickles down man, the lack of responsibility, the hyperindividualism aggravated by a general lack of integrity smells like an infantilized society, a topic for a different essay.

The only exit

La muerte es el único descanso del que vive bajo el yugo de la avaricia y la corrupción.

I wrote that in my journal and I’m not going to clean it up for you. It isn’t a wish. It’s what it feels like to carry this frustration for a long time and then look up and the arrangement is still the arrangement, and sometimes it feels worse and things feel tighter and exhaustion talks like that sometimes and it should be allowed to.

And that’s the deal our work culture is actually offering, no? The number keeps moving, retirement keeps moving, and the only exit anybody is guaranteed is dying. It’s demoralizing in a way I don’t have good words for. So of course we dream about becoming 1 percenters and 2 percenters, with all our hearts, or with all our greed, and I can’t tell anymore which one of those it is in me.

Be the floor

I don’t have a policy for you. I’m not going to propose a tax structure, I don’t have the standing and I’d be performing if I tried.

What I have is the only valve I’ve found, and I’ve been chewing on it maybe six years, so take that for whatever it’s worth. Somebody has to be the floor. Not the floor you walk on, the floor like a wage floor, the number nobody is allowed to go under. Something rolls downhill at you and you take it and you do not hand it to the person below you, and it stops there, on you. The one who prices the work out loud, the one who tells you what it costs before he eats it, the one who says no on a Thursday, the one who talks to the guy at the register like a person when nothing in the arrangement requires it, when there’s no upside, when nobody’s watching, when it doesn’t show up on any chart anywhere, and that job is for all of us.

Solo necesitamos cuidarnos el uno al otro, tener relaciones, amistades, amarnos. La integridad, aplicada, operacionalizada, vivida, no hablada.

Presenting Vastitas Omniparens

Antonio Rodriguez Martinez — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 13:45:00 GMT

What this name is

Vastitas Omniparens is a proper name for the totality. And I do not mean everything the way people mean it when they say they have tried everything, I mean the total: this Universe, and whatever the Universe is sitting inside of, and what we know of it, and what we do not know yet, and what we are built in such a way that we will never know at all. Literally everything, for real.

Said as a sentence it comes out as the vastness that births all things. Or, the way I keep it in my pocket, from the vast, all things, through light and darkness.

The short form, for daily use, is Vastitas. The full form lives in writing, in ceremony, and in my heart.

This name is not for her, as she does not need one. You might be inclined to read this and correct me. An it, you are talking about an it. But no, it is a she, and I will get to why, and she, the totality, was here before the words and will be here after them. This name is for us mere mortals.

Vastitas Omniparens is what I say out loud to remember, in the middle of any day, going well or poorly, anytime really, that the thing containing us is so much larger than us that the humility we owe it should be cut to the exact size of that gap. Not humility as a general disposition, the kind you put on for a meeting. That one, at that size. These words are a practice disguised as a noun, a tool I am putting in my own hand and in my children’s hands so we can stay correctly sized against what is actually here enveloping us, our total Universe.

How I found it

I did not coin this name, but I tried to. Believe it or not, I have been thinking about this totality and looking for a proper name for it for 20 years, and it bothered me the way a missing tooth bothers your tongue, you keep poking that empty skin for no productive reason whatsoever. For most of that time I worked at it archaically. My pre-LLM methods for researching language and etymology were, to not call myself an inefficient noob outright, slow to the point of embarrassment. Latin turned out to be a language best left to actual experts, and I had access to none, so my attempts handed me many false positives over the years, a favorite being Auragenia Omnia Vasta, with a plural I called feminine that was actually neuter.

Then LLM tools like Claude gave me the ability to research and cross-check my ideations systematically, and as the models got better at Latin, Fable 5 and Opus 5 being the latest frontier for this work, my inventions kept failing under honest scrutiny. Every correction made my word less mine but the old Latin more interesting, until I finally stopped inventing and went looking in the ruins directly, where it turned out Lucretius, a Roman poet and philosopher, had already quarried the stones I was looking for, two thousand years ahead of me.

Since I am borrowing from an actual human being, he has earned the courtesy of being named properly. Titus Lucretius Carus was a Roman poet of the first century before our era, and beyond that we know almost nothing of his life. He is survived by a single work, De Rerum Natura, On the Nature of Things, in which he tried to explain the entire physical universe to one friend.

He set himself the task of carrying Greek philosophy into Latin, a language he openly complained was too poor for the job, patrii sermonis egestas, the poverty of the ancestral tongue, so he coined what he needed. He was doing, two thousand years before me and with a mind I will not pretend to match, the exact work of this essay: forcing a language to hold a totality it had no word for.

And his poem was unknown for centuries, surviving in a few forgotten copies, until 1417, when a book hunter pulled a manuscript out of a German monastery and had it copied, and that one recovery put Lucretius back into the bloodstream of the world and fed the Renaissance. The man who gave me omniparens was himself almost lost to the unknowable, and came back, so yeah, this kind of legendary situation needs to be acknowledged by name.

What the words mean

So those are the stones and that is the man who cut them.

Vastitas is a Latin noun, feminine, meaning the vastness, and also the desolation, the emptiness, even the devastation. I did not soften that and I will not, because the unknown looks desolate from the outside and so does a bloody womb. Infinite space is the ultimate unknown. And as Vastitas, she does destroy: stars die so that heavier things can exist, and the calcium in my children’s bones was cooked inside explosions that erased whole suns, literally. A name for her that did not carry ruin in its mouth would be a lie. Ruin and vastness.

Omniparens is the word Latin built for exactly what I spent years trying to find or create: she who births all things, the parent of everything. Lucretius uses it for mother Earth in the same line that names her the common grave of all things, omniparens eadem rerum commune sepulcrum. Vergil reaches for the same word in the Aeneid, terrae omniparentis alumnum, a nursling of the all-bearing earth. Birth and grave in one breath, two thousand years before I was looking for it, kinda cool.

There is a reason I could not just use the word we already have. Universum was once the name for the whole. Over the last few centuries, science and other currents of humankind I do not fully understand narrowed universum into universe, the physical system cosmology studies, and in that legitimate narrowing we lost the word for the totality. Nobody stole anything, that is the thing, words shrink while you are standing on them and nobody notices until much later. And we cannot take it back now, not from inside its current use, so the only move left is the one Latin always made anyway, which is to shove two surviving words up against each other until they carry what the broken one dropped.

I think these nuances matter, because language shapes posture. When we call the whole thing “the universe,” we start talking like people who are nearly finished, like the leftover questions are cleanup and somebody’s grant will close them out by next week and we are not nearly finished, or even started. The universe is not a “done deal” and it is not something to take lightly, we know absolutely almost nothing about it. I include myself in that we, and I have caught myself doing it out loud at a dinner table, explaining the first three minutes after the Big Bang or whatever the fuck is that we explain during dinner time, with the confidence of a man who was there taking notes but what we actually have is a sliver. A gorgeous, hard-won, genuinely heroic sliver, and we walk around holding it like a deed.

So yeah. Vastitas is the container I pour that humility back into. And most of what is in that container is dark, which is the part I want to go slow on, because that is where the whole thing actually lives.

What we know and what we don't

The name holds three things at once.

There is what we know, meaning what we perceive and measure and write down.

There is what we do not know yet but could, the whole open field, everything some future person will find tomorrow afternoon.

And then there is the third thing, what we will never know, because the instruments doing the knowing are shaped in a way that cannot form the question.

Not hard questions or questions we are underfunded for but questions that cannot occur to us at all, ever, the way a color you have never seen cannot occur to you.

It is easy to make that third one sound like a deficit, a to-do list for a smarter species that shows up later. It is a feature of the thing itself and of the animals we happen to be, and it shows up in a few different ways, at least three that I can hold in my head at the same time.

Start with the easy one, the channels we just do not have. There is stuff moving through the room you are sitting in right now that you have no receiver for, none. Bees see ultraviolet, and a great many flowers have landing patterns painted on them in ultraviolet, bullseyes and runway stripes aimed at the bee, which means there has been a whole layer of decoration on the natural world the entire time that was never addressed to us, and we walked past it for the length of our species until we built a machine to look.

Our pitbull used to stop dead in the middle of the yard over something that was not there, not to me anyway, and stand in it, smell it, look at it, understand whatever was going on there then and there. What she was assembling out of that was not a louder version of my experience either, it was information of a whole different kind: who came through here, in what order, how long ago, whether they were calm, perhaps some rodents. She was reading time off the ground. I was four feet away holding the leash, same yard, same morning, getting effectively none of it.

The second flavor is scale, and it is less exotic but it might be worse, or cooler. Trillions of neutrinos are passing through your body in the time it takes to read this sentence and not one of them will ever announce itself. The continent under you is drifting at roughly the speed your fingernails grow. Your own face is changing shape continuously and you cannot watch it happen, you can only compare photographs years apart and be startled. Our senses are tuned to a band, more or less the band where a medium-sized animal has to make decisions in order to keep existing, and everything faster, slower, smaller, or larger than that band is not being hidden from us.

The third flavor is the one I actually mean. In 1974 a philosopher named Thomas Nagel wrote a paper titled “What Is It Like to Be a Bat?” and the argument has aged well. You can learn every fact about echolocation, the physics, the neurology, the timing, all of it, and you still will not know what it is like to be inside that or be the bat, because knowing about a thing and having the equipment for a thing are two different kinds of owning, and the first one does not turn into the second no matter how much of it you pile up. I found my first wall when I wanted to feed my son from my body, and could not.

Come back to the dog, our pitbull. She could not form the thought “next Tuesday”. Not because she was dumb, she was superb at being what she was, but because the machinery that assembles a category like “an arbitrary future day, a week out, which does not exist yet and may never” was not or is not installed. And what I find cool is that she did not experience that as a gap because there was no dog-shaped hole in her afternoon where Tuesday ought to be. From the inside, she was missing nothing. Her world was complete. It was just smaller than the world.

So the question, and this is the entire third tier folded into one question, is: what is my Tuesday? What category or categories are not installed in me? What am I unable to formulate or perceive? I cannot answer any of these, and I cannot answer them for the same reason she could not answer hers, and honestly, if I could answer it, it would not have been in that third pile in the first place.

I watched Disclosure Day last night, the Spielberg one, where a meteorologist and a cybersecurity analyst try to prove to the whole world that we are not alone while a government contractor works to stop them. It left me feeling tiny, and I have been trying to figure out why, because the tininess did not come from the aliens or the disclosure.

It came from this: full disclosure, actual proof, the biggest announcement in the history of our species, would still only be a second-tier event. A thing that moves from the maybe pile over to the yes pile. It would rearrange every religion and every government on this planet, and it would still not touch the third tier by one inch. We would still be the animal with a handful of doors. Now with alien company.

And speaking of the doors. I have been saying five senses for years, the way everybody does, and while I was writing this I went and checked, and five is folk math. There is proprioception, the thing that lets you touch your nose with your eyes closed in a dark room. A creature with a handful of keyholes inside something enormous, making meaning out of whatever leaks through. The instrument and the limit are the same object.

None of these instruments were built for truth. They were built to keep something alive long enough to reproduce, and accuracy only ever got selected for where accuracy paid. The aperture is narrow on purpose, by a process that was never once trying to show anybody the universe.

I should also say that absolute unknowability, meaning something inaccessible to every possible living system anywhere, stays a hypothesis in here. I cannot defend it and I am not going to pretend to. The claim I can defend is the smaller one, the organism-relative one: this particular animal has a narrow aperture. That is enough. That was always enough.

Why being small is a gift

And all of that smallness turns out to be a gift, which took me decades to understand. Measured against her, I perceive almost nothing. At the kitchen table, in the same minute, I am perceiving every single thing that is mine to perceive. My daughter telling me something that happened at school with the whole story out of order. My son’s breath. A face across the table, not performing anything. My partner’s beautiful smile. The weight of a dog against a tired leg. My portion is nothing against the totality and total inside its own boundary, both, no contradiction, and it took me an embarrassingly long time to stop treating that as a paradox to be solved instead of a fact to live inside.

I am so insignificant that I can make everything significant to me. If we mattered on her scale, home would never be enough, no? Because we do not, home is everything. And the same asymmetry that makes my portion sacred makes everything else lighter, because if I am nothing against her then so is whatever I happen to be carrying this week. It does not go away and it does not stop hurting. It just goes back to its actual size, which was the size it always was while I was treating it as the size of everything.

Why I call her she

Which is why I keep calling all of this she.

The original universum is grammatically neuter. Vastitas is feminine, and I did not make her so. Latin did. The language that named the whole thing neuter kept its word for the vastness feminine the entire time, and gave its word for the birthing of everything to mother Earth. I am only setting them side by side or next to each other.

But the grammar is the alibi, not the reason. The reason is that I have stood in the room twice.

The first was a cesarean. Which means I was on my side of a blue drape and could not see a thing and could hear all of it, the suction, the instruments, the flat clinical chatter of people doing their job, and then the pulling, and there is no gentler word available, they pull, it takes real physical effort, and then a sound came into the room that had not existed anywhere in this Universe one second before. The second was in December, no drape, hours of it, and I saw everything. I am not going to dress that up for you. It was violent and it was completely ordinary and she did it with her own body while I stood next to her being useless and saying things.

Something in me changed chemically in those rooms, and I mean chemically, not as a figure of speech.

I am a man who can do hard things over long horizons. That is most of what I have. I spent twenty years on a name, twenty years of reading badly and guessing wrong and inventing words that did not survive five minutes with a dictionary, and I am proud of that stubbornness. And it is nothing. It is not even the same category of thing. I will never carry and make and deliver a life. Not with twenty years, not with forty, not with every hour I have left. The most sustained work I am capable of does not reach the ankle of what a body did in nine months in front of me, twice, and one of those times the body had to be opened to finish the job.

So when I call the totality a she, I am not making a poetic gesture and I am not doing politics. I am saying that the only thing I have ever witnessed operating at the scale I am trying to name was a woman making a person out of nothing but time and her own tissue. Everything else I could reach for here would be metaphor. That one I stood in the room for.

And I was not the first one to lean it that way, not by a long shot. Lucretius opened a poem about atoms and physics with a hymn to Venus, mother of the line of Aeneas, delight of gods and men, the generative force through which every living thing is conceived. The most materialist poet of antiquity chose to begin with her, because he understood that a totality which births everything is addressed correctly in the feminine. He did not need to stand in a delivery room to work that out. I did.

How to use it

The word is meant to be lived, not defended, and none of the scaffolding in this essay is required in order to use it. Vastitas can be explained to a ten-year-old in one sentence: she is the universe and everything we do not know about it. That sentence carries all three tiers. Everything above is for adults who need convincing, which included me for about two decades.

I say it when I catch myself believing I have understood something all the way. I say it when I am afraid of what I cannot see coming. I say it when one of my kids asks me a question I cannot answer and I feel the pull to invent something rather than stand in front of them not knowing. And I say it when the day has gone grand, when something has landed well and I can feel myself starting to swell, which between us is the more dangerous one for me by a wide margin.

If any of that is useful to you, take it. If you have a better word, I would like to hear it.

From the vast, all things, through light and darkness.

Vastitas Omniparens.

She is older than the words we have given her, and the words are older than I am. I went looking to coin something new and came back with something old, which is what happens, I think, every time anyone looks at her carefully. The practice is what we do with our mortal minutes inside her.

References

Further reading on the main topics in this essay.

Latin and language

Latin: the language of vastitas and omniparens
Etymology, semantic change, and lexical gap: how word meanings shift over time, including how universum narrowed into universe
Grammatical gender: why vastitas is feminine and universum is neuter in Latin
Linguistic relativity, philosophy of language, and language: how language shapes what we notice and how we think
Universe, observable universe, and cosmology: the physical system science studies, which is not the same as the totality

Lucretius, Vergil, and recovery

Lucretius: Titus Lucretius Carus, Roman poet and philosopher
De rerum natura: On the Nature of Things, his six-book poem
Epicureanism and atomism: the Greek philosophy Lucretius brought into Latin
Virgil and the Aeneid: also uses omniparens for mother Earth
Venus (mythology): the figure Lucretius opens his poem with
Poggio Bracciolini, The Swerve, and the Renaissance: the 1417 rediscovery of Lucretius in a German monastery

Totality and the physical world

Absolute (philosophy): philosophical attempts to name the whole
Big Bang: the early history of the observable universe
Dark matter and dark energy: most of the universe we cannot see directly
Stellar nucleosynthesis: how stars make the heavier elements, including the calcium in bones
Neutrino: particles that pass through matter almost without interacting
Plate tectonics: how continents move, very slowly
Humility: staying correctly sized against what is larger than us

Senses and the limits of knowing

Sense and proprioception: human senses beyond the usual five
Umwelt: the world as experienced by a particular animal
Ultraviolet: light bees can see that we cannot
Thomas Nagel, “What Is It Like to Be a Bat?”, and qualia: the gap between knowing facts about an experience and having that experience
Cognitive closure (philosophy): the idea that some truths may be forever beyond a given mind
Evolutionary epistemology: how evolution shapes what we can know
Disclosure Day and Steven Spielberg: the film mentioned in the essay

Birth and fertility

Terra (mythology), Gaia, and mother goddess: Earth as parent of all things
Fertility, childbirth, and caesarean section: bringing life into the world
Venus (mythology): also the generative force at the start of Lucretius’s poem

If God Had Gentle Parented Us

Antonio Rodriguez Martinez — Tue, 14 Jul 2026 20:00:00 GMT

My daughter broke something last week. She snapped the thing in half by mistake and it doesn’t really matter what it was. What matters to me is that split second right after, when she looked up at me, or to any parent that might be around, to find out what kind of world she lives in.

That look is a whole thing. Poetic and philosophical, kinda ironic, something so simple, such a simple moment no? In that look, I think she wasn’t asking “what did I break?”, she was asking “what happens to people who break things?”, and whatever answer a parent gives in that split second becomes physics to a child. Not a rule, because rules can be argued with, but physics, the way gravity works, the way love works, the way mistakes work, the way this world works.

I always try to kneel down and say something like: “That didn’t work. Here’s why. Let’s try something different. I’m still here. Now please pick up the aftermath and take it to the trash.” Me and her mother are mostly gentle parents, and she’s six now, so she more or less knows what to expect from us, which is another way of saying that in our house, breaking things is safe.

Several days later I was driving down one of our big roads here in Florida, the kind lined with an assortment of churches, truck sellers, malls of all sizes, and gun places, in a loop, completely unrelated to this writing but it was there, and that’s when it hit me like a ton of bricks, an a-ha moment, what if God had gentle parented us?! What would be our lives, our world? Because, between us, and very seriously, that gentleness is not the answer our civilization was raised on and it shows. Our civilization got a very different answer, in its very first story, and we have been living inside that answer ever since. Literally and figuratively.

I’m an atheist, have been most of my life I think, but I’ve also participated in church most of my life. I was raised Catholic, went to Catholic school, and even as an adult, church is something I see as positive, the building, the ideas, the community services, the empowerment. Sometimes I’m there, sitting mid-song, thinking: do these people understand the power they’d be granted if they truly integrated these beliefs? Super similar to Super Saiyan Rosé. But some of the people have always turned me away, and their practices, upon observation, even more. The hypocrites, and who the hell am I to call anyone evil, so let me just describe them: the ones who, even when someone is explaining it to them directly, with the Bible right there as the reference, still find a way to make God about personal enrichment, about exploitation and extraction from and of others, about fear and fearing others, about war and the crusades. Most of you know exactly who I’m talking about.

Still, I take the Bible seriously as architecture, and you should too, whatever you believe, because whether or not you ever set foot in a church, you were raised inside a culture that was raised inside this book. You don’t stand next to it. You stand on it. You don’t have to believe in a building to live in it, is what I’m trying to tell you.

So let’s look at the foundational story. Two children in a garden, Adam and Eve, created immature, childlike, meant to grow, and given exactly one rule, which of course they break, because that is what children do with rules, as any parent in the known universe will attest.

And what does The Omniscient and Omnipowerful Father of All Time and All Things, aka God, do with his children upon the breaking of the rule?

Exile, infinite and non-negotiable, from divinity, from heaven, from paradise itself. Pain in childbirth, forever. Work turned into suffering, forever. Death, introduced as a feature. A curse that runs downhill through every generation that follows, children billed for a fruit they never tasted, and an angel with a flaming sword posted at the gate so nobody gets any ideas about coming home. What type of parenting is this? God-like, apparently. Christ-like, definitely not.

Now put my daughter’s look on their faces, that second after they tasted that damned fruit, when they looked up to find out what kind of world they lived in. Did they look into skies raining blood while all of it came down? That was the answer they got, and it became our physics and the architecture of our lives, like it or not.

Strip away the stained glass and read Genesis as what it actually is, a parenting story, the original parenting or origin story, the first documented response to a child’s mistake in the Western canon, and the response is: you fucked up, now suffer for eternity.

The hellfire and brimstone fear-mongering became the template, disobedience, then consequence, then suffering, and then, maybe, if you grovel correctly, redemption, an entire moral framework running not on understanding, not on growth, but on fear of retribution. And notice where this framework stores safety: heaven, the end goal, the you-made-it, achievable only by death. Life itself never gets to be safe; safety is what you get for dying correctly. Kinda hardcore isn’t it, this is our foundational parenting story. I wonder what type of world we’d have had if God had gentle parented us, really. I wonder how many of us ever actually arrive (in Heaven).

Now please run the scene again with the same garden, the same fruit, the same mortal mistake, but this time the father kneels down, eye-to-eye.

“You chose knowledge. That was a real choice, and it changes things. Here’s what it means. Here’s what it costs. Let me show you how to work with what you’ve gained. I’m still here.”

Not exile but teaching and presence. Not stripping away everything they had and everything they were, but guidance through the transition. Consequences, yes, real ones, because knowledge genuinely changes what a life requires of you, but consequence without cruelty, boundaries without banishment, a door that stays open, a warmth kinda similar to the things we learn to recognize as heavenly or divine.

I personally believe if you are an all-powerful, all-knowing, omnipresent being, a gentle version was always possible. Why not? It was sitting right there, and any parent who has ever knelt down instead of exploded has proven it can be done, in real time, under real frustration, by beings far less patient than a god is supposed to be.

We just never got that version. And I think it’s worth asking why. You can argue that Jesus Christ is that answer and that version, sure, hold that thought, we’re getting there.

When the foundational story of your civilization says “disobey and be destroyed,” everything built downstream inherits that logic, the same way every function inherits the bugs in the framework it’s built on.

In parenting, it becomes control through fear. Generations of children who behaved not because they understood anything, but because they were terrified of the belt, the yelling, the withdrawal of love. Ask them why the rule existed and they couldn’t tell you. They could only tell you what happened to kids who broke it.

In morality, it becomes punishment-avoidance wearing the costume of goodness really. The operating question stops being “what serves connection and life?” and becomes “what keeps me safe from retribution?” Those ideas or paradigms produce very different people and societies. And one produces character and the other produces compliance, and compliance evaporates the moment nobody’s watching. Which is kinda a problem in itself, you can go to church all you want but if church doesn’t get into you and your habits, well, compliance alone, when people are watching, when performing for witnesses, is really not taking you to heaven, sorry to tell you, and that’s the symptom of why the world is looking like it does today. In public we are this but in private we are that and that and that, God-like versus Christ-like, and I say this with a humble but stern heart, as an observation.

In and for our justice systems, that God-like foundation becomes the machinery we have now, systems designed to make people suffer for what they did rather than help them integrate what they learned. We call it corrections and correct almost no one, because the blueprint was never correction but labor or retribution. The blueprint was exile too, very God-like!

And in your own head, think about it, all that fear and judgment, it becomes the voice. You know the voice. The one that says you’re not good enough, that you have to earn your worthiness back, that you deserve to feel bad for a while after you fail, as if suffering were a fee you owe before you’re allowed to move on. That voice did not come from nowhere. That judgment, the judgment I feel when witnessed by a specific type of church-goer, that judgment is exactly that. That voice is punishment theology, internalized so young and so deep that it presents as your own personality. It is Eden’s landlord, still collecting rent. It’s the gatekeeper of the fruit, ready to rain blood on us all. That shit is embedded deep.

Ultimately, I believe that a god who teaches is a god you can question. You can sit with a teacher, disagree, ask why, learn alongside. Teaching creates peers, eventually. That’s the whole point of teaching and discipline.

Inversely, a god who punishes is a god you submit to. Fear is efficient for control and shame is powerful for manipulation and look at the world we have built. Gang, just take a quick look! All that eternal punishment is the single greatest compliance mechanism ever designed. An infinite penalty attached to finite behavior. Why we keep going with this design is really beyond my understanding, who benefits from these foundations? We can name these people and types of people directly and they aren’t Christ-like, more like God-like… These punishment models serve authority, the growth not of humanity but of capital and moneys and concentrations of power. These learning models serve development. Past and current history tells us explicitly which one got canonized by institutions whose entire existence depended on obedience.

Before you tell me that God did gentle parent us eventually, that this is the whole point of Jesus, I know, and that’s exactly what convicts them. The same book carries both parenting models: the father with the flaming sword, and the teacher who kneels, eats with the exiled, and says “neither do I condemn you.” The gentle version was on the shelf, canonized, named the son of God himself, and the institutions still built everything on the father’s penal code. And the hell they enforce it with barely exists in the book’s own foundation. The Hebrew Bible has no fiery torment, only Sheol, one gray underworld for saint and sinner alike; the furnace got sketched in the centuries between the testaments, and whatever Jesus meant by his Gehenna warnings, scholars still argue, the full infrastructure of eternal torment, the maps, the degrees, the forever, was built out by churchmen and poets centuries later. They had both models in one book and chose the sword. That was never scripture.

I don’t say all of this to sneer at believers. Most believers I know are gentler than their book. They read past the exile and find the love anyway, and that act of quiet editing might be the most human thing about faith. What I’m pointing at is the architecture itself, because the architecture escaped the church centuries ago. It’s in secular courtrooms and secular schools and secular households and secular heads. This stuff is embedded everywhere! You can leave the religion and keep the operating system. I did, for years. Most atheists I know still flog themselves like medieval monks. We didn’t lose the punishment god. We just moved him inside.

Every time I talk about this, someone hears “no consequences,” so let me kill that idea right now.

Gentle, or gentle parenting, is not permissive. The alternative to punishment is not “anything goes.” Anyone who has actually practiced this with a real child knows it is harder than punishing, not easier. Punishment is fast. Punishment feels like doing something. Teaching requires you to stay regulated, stay present, and stay in the room with a small person who is testing whether your love has a breaking point.

The distinction is this. Punishment says: you had it good, you fucked up, now you suffer until you’re worthy again. It treats suffering as the tuition of goodness, and it teaches exactly one lesson, which is fear of the punisher.

Learning says: you had one way of operating, you chose another, and now we work with what that choice requires. Struggle still exists, but it’s friction that produces capability, not sentence that produces shame. Boundaries still exist, but they exist the way a spotter exists at the squat rack, to create the conditions where you can safely find your limits, not to crush you for having them.

The root problem was never human nature. The root problem is a belief: that suffering is the primary path to learning, that people must be broken before they can be good. That belief was installed. It has been reinforced for a few thousand years. And it is entirely, completely constructed, which is the best news in this whole essay, because constructed things can be replaced.

Hell dissolves first. A learning-focused god has no use for eternal torture, because torture teaches nothing. Infinite punishment isn’t pedagogy but sadism wearing a judge’s robe. Look at Dante’s depiction of the Inferno, look what the human psyche and mind interpret and pass as hell and heaven. It’s very telling!

Original sin becomes original transition. Not a stain requiring blood, but a developmental shift requiring new skills. Every parent recognizes this instantly. Your kid gaining self-awareness isn’t a fall but a milestone. You don’t curse a child for growing up.

Shame loses its job. You do not need to feel worthless to learn. Shame actively blocks learning. Every good teacher knows this, every good coach knows this, and somehow the theology that shaped our civilization missed it, or didn’t miss it at all and simply had other priorities.

I can’t rewrite Genesis. But I’ve noticed the architecture only survives by being rebuilt daily, in small decisions, by people like me and you.

With my children, the reps are constant. Mistakes do not cost them connection. Ever (bullshit, it’s harder than it seems and I’m not perfect). Consequences are natural and named, boundaries are real and explained, and the message underneath every correction is the same five words: that didn’t work, I’m still here. I am not trying to break their will because their will is the engine they’ll drive out of my house someday (or drive them out of the house). I’m only trying to build their capacity to steer it, not to tell them where to go.

With myself, the work is quieter and harder. I catch the internal voice mid-sentence now, right when it starts drafting my sentence for some failure, and I ask myself one question: what did this reveal? Not “what do I owe.” What did this reveal, and what’s the learning? Some days I catch it. Some days the old landlord collects. But I know his name now, and knowing the name of the pattern is the first honest step out of it.

And in everything I build, tools, processes, teams, relationships, I’ve started checking one thing before anything else: does this architecture reward learning, or does it punish failure? Because whatever it does, the people inside it will become. Is this teaching me to be God-like or Christ-like?

That look my daughter gave me, the one asking what kind of world she lives in? Every person you love gives you that look sometimes, right after they drop something. Colleagues give it. Partners give it. The face in the mirror gives it, and you are literally somebody’s answer to that question. You are the physics someone else is learning.

The garden story told us the father’s love had a breaking point and we’ve been flinching ever since but it was only ever a story, written by men who needed obedience more than they needed us whole. There was always another version.

I’m no guru, just another asshole, another dad figuring it out.

Kneel down. Say the other thing.

I’m still here.

It Isn't Too Much Pressure

Antonio Rodriguez Martinez — Wed, 03 Jun 2026 12:00:00 GMT

I was talking to my sister telling her how excited I am to have my kids with me for the entire summer and she asked if it wouldn’t be too much. Too much? Too much how? “Too much pressure?” she said. The pressure of being with the kids and doing remote work at the same time.

For a second I thought I just hadn’t understood the question, because I was answering from inside my own head and from inside my head, the math of having my kids here doesn’t produce pressure, especially during summer where we don’t have school schedules or other obligations making us busier. Summer is for us to do whatever it is we want. I work remotely, so I’m already home, building software and related technical artifacts, which I love. And my children, who are honestly and objectively two of my favorite people alive, are right here with me. Yes, I’m responsible for them. Yes, I feed them. Yes, I’m the parent. But they are also the people I most want to spend time with. So where exactly is the pressure supposed to come from? If anything, with them, performance and pressure go out the window.

In my mind, if you enjoy someone, you want as much time and as many experiences with them as you can get. That for me is literally what enjoying a person means and it doesn’t switch off because I happen to be working or because it takes effort. If anything it gets better for me when I’m working remotely, because they get to accompany me through my day versus grinding away alone. And that’s not to say alone time is not necessary, I love my alone time, I thrive in the shadows of my own loneliness, like Bane, but these years will pass by, or more accurately, fly by, and I will never be able to enjoy these early baby and toddler faces and moments again. Frankly, in this day and age it’s pretty rare for a father to be able to enjoy their children this much because most fathers leave the house to work and the kids stay behind, and the workday becomes a wall between them, and possibly still is until we die or retire, right? In the end, that’s what our “culture” is about nowadays, the grind and the work, the monies and the hustle. Well, I get to resist all of that and keep that work wall down, and my children are a part of my day, and it’s really no pressure. If anything, the opposite: having my children with me is the clearest glimmer I can get, and IMHO definitely not a burden or pressure I’m carrying but a privilege I lucked into (or worked and keep working my way into).

And it’s not just my sister. A few months ago I posted about doing this on Threads and I got scorched by mothers telling me I would buckle under the pressure, that I would do a shitty job at work or with my children, or both, that all of it was impossible.

View on Threads

Perhaps that’s the “pressure” I was being asked about. I had to sit with the question, and hell, I ended up writing this. It kept me reflective that entire week, because if I’m honest, I know the pull my sister and the others are pointing at because I’ve felt it too. It’s that quiet voice that frames the children, las bendiciones, las bendis, as the thing standing between me and “my real day”, my real work, the life I keep telling myself is happening somewhere just past the kids. I’ve caught myself treating presence as the interruption and the screen as the rest I earned. The difference is I caught it and swatted that idea. The privilege I mentioned earlier is not that I never feel that pull. It is that I can see it and choose against it. For me, that’s maturing as a parent: acknowledging that yes, it’s hard and it takes effort. And if you are a parent feeling a little lost, that is the invitation: look inside, figure yourself out, because las bendis deserve our best and most conscious effort.

That’s the main topic here, that consciousness of how much effort it takes for anything to flower, especially our children. And in my case, how much effort it will take to live a full summer with my children while working remotely. Nurturing is not easy. For a garden to thrive it needs energy, time, learning, tweaking, practice, and our children are literally pods in growth, feeding off the environment we provide. We can’t and shouldn’t forget that everything good takes work. A good meal, a real relationship, a healthy child and family system, a healthy self-image and balanced living, all of it carries a similar cost, and that “hardness” is the price of the thing being good. With parenting, that price is not optional, which, paradoxically, should feel like pressure but for me it doesn’t, because it is the given the moment we become parents.

I think being conscious means preparing for that realization and clocking the hours with grace. Ultimately, I feel the “Uber Eats” culture of instant everything and instant gratification and things “being so easy” trained us to flinch at the cost of things and to treat effort itself as a defect, and finally to blame the children for how hard parenting inherently is. Is it hard to work remotely, cook, and be with my kids all summer? You bet it is. You damn bet it is. But like any fulfilling relationship, I expected it to be hard, because it is, and that is the point. We made the same mistake with social media, calling it connection until we slowly realized it was never connection at all. The effort was the relationship. Same with our children: the bendición is the relationship, and the effort is the feed, the water, the fertilizer. We optimized the effort away and then wondered why nothing feels real, why even relating to our own kids feels so hard.

And I’ll tell you another thing that, depending on your mindset, could produce additional pressure right away. My children, our children, are a small mirror. What I mean is that most of what I can’t stand in them, I’m probably the one who installed it. We parents install so much shit on our children. So imagine a day in the life of a child whose parent feels their parental responsibilities as pressure, versus a day in the life of a child whose parent is integrated and conscious. Diametrically different experiences and environments, and that’s part of the installation I was referring to. We parents set that vibe. So whenever I catch myself wanting to complain about them, it is almost always myself I’m complaining about, but with extra steps and a side of lack of awareness. This responsibility, this mirror, has been a hard one to sit with, and it lands right on a pattern I’ve been working to dismantle for a while which I call the scorekeeper: a part of me that keeps a running ledger of who did what, tallies the effort, and secretly decides who owes whom, with the blame mostly pointing away from me. Perhaps pointed at my kids and that same reflex turns their behavior into a grievance instead of a signal about me. So yeah, I raise this flag, red or yellow, in case you recognize the same self-fulfilling pressure loop, because naming it is how I started getting out of it.

Nowadays the maturity I’m reaching for as a parent is the opposite move. For me that’s the anti-pressure medicine. I believe in accepting the role as a given, with my full heart, effort, and energy, not as a burden I’m owed credit for carrying, and in letting love do the thing where the work stops feeling like work (similar to the way it does in my actual work, because I do love being a technologist and solving problems, I haven’t felt I’ve worked a day in my professional life). I don’t always get there and I don’t think I’m supposed to. I’m not “fully matured,” because that’s not a final destination but a journey and it’s natural because children grow, as we grow, and life changes, life fluctuates, it’s ongoing and there is nothing to perform because the pressure was never about the kids and it was about the version of me that wanted them to cost less than they do, and maturing removes that friction. Maturing is accepting that this is hard and takes effort, and that it is also deep and full of love and giggles. It is realizing the cost was always an investment, that love multiplies and amplifies. We’ll see how this unfolds.

Ultimately, once we become parents we are not living the old solo life with a kid bolted onto the side of it. We are living a different life now, a whole different thing, and the part I keep returning to is that these small people didn’t consent to any of it. We brought them here and we brought them here to put in the effort and to enjoy them. So the real question for me is why presence with them gets framed as a cost, or as pressure, at all. I think if I keep looking here I will keep identifying my own shadows and lifting the weight. I think the least we owe our children is to not treat their existence as the inconvenience standing between us and the life we think we were supposed to have.

So no. It isn’t too much pressure. It’s the most and the least I can do.

Happiness Is Moments

Antonio Rodriguez Martinez — Wed, 20 May 2026 23:18:01 GMT

What I’m noticing is that happiness is moments. It’s not that I’ll always be happy. I’m a happy person because I have moments of happiness, and the more I grow, the more I enjoy them.

A lot of the time the moment is an appreciation, a small kindness: a glass of water, a good meal, time with the baby. Right now, while I do this, I have him next to me, looking into his eyes, hearing him make noise. It’s a beautiful memory. That’s a moment of happiness.

Those moments come through action. They come because I put effort into my own corner: I cooked, I reached out, I called on purpose. And sometimes they come the other way, when I sit down to do nothing. That rest is happiness too, but rest costs. The world we live in almost always pushes you to produce, to stay busy, to keep going. Time to do nothing is real wealth, and not everyone can take it. I have that privilege, and I’ve learned to appreciate it.

So at the end of the night, I do a gratitude meditation. I think about those moments, however small or big they are. I don’t need to buy a new car to feel one. It can be the morning coffee. That’s the point.

I’m 39, and it’s only now that I get it. I feel like I’ve lived this way my whole life, but I never knew how to say it. Health and joy are among my highest values, and joy is the tool that keeps me healthy.

"Crimson Desert" Game Review

Antonio Rodriguez Martinez — Wed, 29 Apr 2026 14:17:00 GMT

I just finished Crimson Desert’s main questline at around 230 hours on the PS5 and I thought to myself, “holy macarena, you write so much shit and you have never written a game review, let’s do one for Crimson Desert because it deserves so.” And here we are, it’s actually my first time “formally” reviewing a game. What I think makes me a valid reviewer? I’ve been a gamer for over 30 years and have played most of these games, indie, AAAs, I’ve probably played and finished it. My favorites tell you the kind of taste I’m bringing to this: Bioware games, Fallout, GTA, World of Warcraft, League of Legends, Minecraft, the Zelda series. I’ve been playing since the NES and SNES days, still have both consoles, so when I say this game is a 9 out of 10, that’s against three decades of context.

Crimson Desert is a masterclass of video gaming and entertainment. Let’s get that out of the way. It’s a masterpiece, it’s a classic, it’s a game that, even if you do not enjoy it, sold extremely well. I just learned it crossed 5 million copies sold by April 15, 2026, the fastest pace ever for a Korean-developed console game, and the favorable reviews keep coming in because it’s a game that’s meticulous, fun, and ultimately, the developers and the implementers show that they care about gamers and the experience.

I give this game an “Excellent!” score, or 9 out of 10, or 4.5 out of 5, whichever you like the most. It delivers in fun, in mechanics, some people will say the story is bland or uninteresting, I disagree, it delivers in UI and UX, the updates are coming in frequently. It’s one of the best games I have played in years, and most people who give it a real shot will get hooked, especially if exploration is what pulls you into a game in the first place. That was the hook for me, and it is what kept me coming back night after night for months, just like Zelda’s BOTW and TOTK kept me hooked for years.

Thank you Pearl Abyss for your work and this beautiful adventure of a game, for all the details and the expansive map!

I do have to knock on the launch experience because for PS5 we had a day 1 patch that had me waiting for a patch to download, install, to actually play, so waiting for the PS5 countdown to complete to play was futile and frustrating. Other than this, let’s dive into the review.

Combat and Movement

Combat and movement shared the learning curve for me, and I think and have heard of people leaving the game and leaving negative reviews because of the initial awkwardness of the momentum and the animations. So yeah, those players that quit before they get to the good part because they were spending their first ten or twenty hours fighting the controls more than the enemies, I get it. But dude, once you got past that point, the controls are on-point and make sense with the type of game. Once I slowed down and realized I could keep my attack commands pressed and the thing would just keep chaining, for example, it’s these game-changing moments in a game that make the game more fun, “This! This is what the developer intended,” and truly, the game has minimal tutorials on these things. I enjoyed that discovery aspect of movement and combat, and it truly never ended even after the 230 hours I played. Kinda cool.

We got stamina, parries, dodges, enhanced dodges, enhanced parries, magic attacks, magic defenses (some passive, some by item, some by talent - which need to be unlocked through hidden progression in the Abyss), weapon swaps, special moves, finishers, unarmed combat is deep, goes into wrestling and martial arts territory, plus a movement system that asks you to think about physics, momentum, weight, and traversal as its own skill tree, it’s so much and there’s so much depth to be stacked on top of each other and again the game does not hold your hand through any of it, literally. I found myself watching YouTube guides and insight videos, reading patch notes, and practicing combos in the open road with the skill tree open as my guide. The learning curve was real but that comes with combat and movement player expression which ultimately, makes the learning worth it, and fun.

Once your hands stop thinking about the buttons though, both systems (combat and movement) really open up and the game becomes a blast because you will start reading enemies and chaining moves and combos and then you pick fights you would have run from in week one, with a strategy. Again, the expression that the deep combat and movement mechanics give you kept me thinking about and coming back to the game for fun. Clearing out hordes of enemies had a different combat and movement flow than against bosses, each boss their own tactic, very stimulating.

I focused on sword and shield as I always mostly do with my games in first playthroughs. My trusty 2-hander longsword also accompanied me into the late game. In the early game I messed around with all sorts of weapons but the 2-hander sword won me over with its animations and responsiveness. Plus, once you go deep into upgrading a weapon, it’s kinda hard work to level up another one. I got lazy once I found my critical-rating 2-hander and stayed there and modified Abyss gears as I needed, since the game lets you do so cost free (very clever mechanism, gives you replay and playstyle variety).

Some fights would be about stagger through heavy combos, other fights I needed to stagger through evasiveness and bow attacks, sometimes I would have to go and change my Abyss gears, food, and resistances to complete a boss. Sometimes it was easier to MOVE away from enemy attacks than to try to dodge or parry, all of these were heavy on trial and error and slowing down to actually understand what the hell was happening. I imagine all Sekiro/Souls-like players and gamers go through this process but for me honestly, it’s been a long time since I invested so much time, energy, and depth into understanding combat in a game, and I’m not able to break it. In Dragon Age Veilguard for example, I was able to break combat using specific builds and concentrating skills in a specific way very early, but in this game, things seem to balance out very cleverly, very well.

After maybe 100 hours (I suck so bad, I know) I realized how strong some skills like the Force Palm and Nature’s Snare were they changed the game again for me, meaning, they gave me a layer to fights that I had no idea about. For example, with Nature’s Snare I was able to trap gas, or projectiles, or debris, during fights… then i could either push all that in AOE or push it into the boss or an enemy, think about all of the expression I’m speaking about in real-time with my PS5 controller, so fun.

Even with the hundreds of hours on the clock I still did not learn every combo or skill, and the ones I did learn were not the most complex in the game. The Axiom Force for example, I had the upgraded skills but I didn’t fuck with it because I ended up messing up my damage rotations, so I never learned or integrated it into my combat. I think about how much more layer of combat expression and movement that one skill about teleporting would’ve given me and it kinda makes me want to boot up the PS5 to play. Hah! In actuality I rotated through a small set of combo chains and kept the inputs pretty straightforward. I did a ton of R1 (hold) to R2, R1 + R2 for most of the game, and I’m super fine with that because my real effort went into exploring and farming gear and upgrading gear, which made up for my lack of combat skill. My stat priority changed over the course of the game but as I understood the combat mechanics I favored movement speed, health, stamina, and critical rate, in that order. I got my movement speed up to 12 and my crit rate hovered around 12 to 14, which is double damage on every successful crit, and the RNG was reliably on my side.

I liked the skill tree. It was very confusing at first, but once the patch came in and I went deep on YouTube and tutorials, it was a breeze. I’ll admit that with only the in-game guide I was barely able to push through the skill tree in a way that made sense, my earlier builds had no freaking sense. So I don’t feel like I can write much about the skill tree other than it’s bonkers and I made it work.

If you are starting this game, the simplest tip I can give you is this. Being able to move away from enemy attacks with the joystick is more useful than any combo you will memorize. Faster movement, easier game. Stack movement speed first, crit rate second, and the combat opens up around that. Also, stack on stamina and health early to get your confidence and practice things, then re-spec as you get more comfortable and understand the combat and movement mechanics more and more.

That build philosophy made exploration and combat much easier than they probably should have been, which is the main reason I ended the game kinda overpowered (?I think so). So when I say combat is engaging once you push through, weight that against this. I engaged with maybe sixty percent of what the system offers, and sixty percent was already enough to carry a 200-plus hour run, IMHO these are mind-blowing numbers for a single-player game, at least for me. I was also playing pretty intentionally, I never felt I was grinding, it was all fun, and the exploring and the questing and the knowledge system kept it feeling fresh. Every time the blue outline would glow around me (“hey, you learned something new, let’s read about it”) I felt that little hit of curiosity. Very, very cool.

Same confession on movement: I never mastered the advanced flight techniques or the traversal Axion Force moves. My traversal was three force pumps and fly forward, then spam stamina, then land somewhere reasonable. I LOVED my Eratrima horse, level 5, with his full gear, very pretty. I tried the tree-bending thing but I ended up breaking more trees than was useful, so yeah, that was it. I have seen videos online of players doing things that look like a different game entirely, full expressive flight with chained inputs and acceleration tricks I never even unlocked, and I don’t regret not learning that layer because I enjoyed my game time, but oh boy, those videos do look like a different game. Even at my basic version, traversal was a blast. The map gave me so many ways to get from here to there that I rarely picked the same path twice. If a system is that fun at sixty percent depth, it is probably very well designed at one hundred.

One final note about combat: the Hordes of enemies: Crimson Desert does something specific that most games do badly, which is letting you actually fight a crowd and letting you feel powerful. Charging into a pile of enemies and coming out the other side with the screen still legible and your inputs still meaningful. Most open-world games turn crowd combat into a numbers blur or a stagger lock. Crimson Desert lets it stay a fight, you can combine, flow, combo your way out of it, and in one wrong turn or move, you are toast, the game gives you several ways out through the palmar pills, the checkpoints, etcetera, but overall, combat is a blast. I never got tired of it. I’m still not tired of it and if I had unlimited days, like Goku has for training, I would mess around with multiple builds and weapon types.

Exploration Is the Reason

I do think exploration is what kept me in the game past the first hundred hours. The biomes are immersive, and each one feels like the team built it from a different design philosophy, not from the same template with a different color filter swapped on top. New systems show up in new regions. New mechanics. New monsters that fight in ways the old ones did not. New small economies of resources and crafting and side activities you only encounter because you wandered. Very freaking cool. One time I stumbled upon a deadly mushroom forest, I panicked, ran randomly and I ended up in a spider-infested castle/factory place I had no idea about. Again, very freaking cool, and the encounters are very varied.

The world rewards curiosity, which is the only test of an open world that actually matters. If I am going to spend so many hours somewhere, the place itself has to be interesting. Crimson Desert’s world is interesting. I climbed things just to see what was on top, followed roads just to see where they ended, and the game kept paying off that behavior. I even stopped using the blinding flash technique to find points of interest and just went exploring in literal roleplay mode. Think about how immersed one can get when you take this kind of trip yourself, inside this game.

The map itself is outstanding. Every section has its own architecture, its own flora and fauna, its own feeling. The weather system layered on top adds real drama. The number of times someone walked through my living room while a storm was rolling in or a snow squall was breaking over a cliff face and stopped to ask “wow, that game is so beautiful” was higher than I can count. People who do not play games can tell when a world is doing something good and this world does.

Maybe the only thing I missed was an “underground” like the Zelda games. Hey, we got a “sky zone” in the form of the Abyss so why not have an underground section in there too? haha a gamer can dream.

The Quests Are Repetitive, and I Have a Suggestion

Now the criticism, because a 9 out of 10 still has a missing point.

The quests become repetitive for me at some point. Not catastrophically or in a way that ruins the game, but after a hundred hours you start seeing the seams of the templates. You see the structures the designers built and reused, and you start predicting the beats before they happen. Go here, kill the thing, escort the person, retrieve the artifact, talk to the giver, read the note, read this other note, repeat. The variety of dressing is high but the variety of underlying structure could expand to give the players more fresh air.

Here is what I keep thinking about as someone who builds software for a living: If you are going to ship repetitive quests, why not generate them? Hand the system a seed and let it compose new combinations of objectives, locations, enemy types, loot tables, narrative wrappers. You already have the parts, every biome and every enemy and every structure. A procedural quest layer on top of the hand-authored campaign would have given the late game a reason to stay alive in a way the static quest list does not. Perhaps I’m talking shit and have no idea how hard it is to pull a system like this in a game like this, perhaps, but just an idea, food for thought.

Also, please note that I am not saying replace the hand-crafted work, the marquee story moments need to be authored, and the set pieces need authorial intent and it was lovely. Thank you for such a thorough and brilliant experience.

On Pacing, A Self-Critique

Before I move on from the repetition complaint, I have to land one honest hit on myself. I played those two hundred something hours too condensed and now I think that if I had spread them across months or years, with real breaks between chapters, the repetition would have stung less. A repeated quest structure feels stale when you saw it three nights ago but it barely registers when you saw it a week ago.

Some of what I felt as repetition is real and would still apply at any pace, so the procgen suggestion still stands but some of it was self-inflicted, and I want to name that. The game is too good to put down and my addictive tendency made me play so much, so often, that I kinda feel I disserviced the game in this aspect. I feel I left a lot of texture on the table by not letting the world breathe between sessions.

If you are starting Crimson Desert now, take this as advice: Play it slowly and treat it like a long novel and not a binge.

The Variety of Moments Saves It

Despite the structural repetition, I kept playing. The variety of moments is enormous even when the structure of quests is not.

Scenarios bleed into each other. Vehicles, dragons, mounted charges. Set pieces that feel like the game decided to spend the budget specifically to make you feel something for ten minutes and then move on. A boss fight that reframes a system you thought you understood. Random people coming to you to give you information or quests. The random encounters are so well-spaced and so varied, with so many views that make you stop the controller and just look. I thank the Universe I didn’t find the Photo Mode tool until very late, otherwise I don’t know how many hours I would’ve spent becoming a Crimson photographer, hah! Crimson Desert has more of these moments than most open-world games of similar scale (is there even a contest? I can only think of the Assassin’s Creed games as competition honestly, and they still feel very thin against this game), and they are spaced well enough that you usually hit one right around the time the repetition was about to wear you down. Very, freaking, cool. I’m adding a gallery below of my favorite moments for your enjoyment. Apologies for any spoilers.

Canyon fortress overlook

1/68

The Story Worked Better Than I Expected

The narrative is good and well done. The story, like most stories, begins in fury and tragedy.

You start weak, and then after the first power spikes. You might save a castle or fight off some powerful beast. The opening hours give you the kind of hero arc most fantasy games would milk for the entire campaign. But Crimson Desert spends that capital early in several scenarios and chapters, and then the rest of the game pivots into something I did not expect. After the spike, you stop being the savior and you start being the helper. You go to the small towns. You talk to the people whose lives were ruined by the conflict you barely affected. You help everybody, one quest at a time, working through a country that is trying to put itself back together. And it scales outward and outward, from Hernand to the last place I found in the map in the top right corner, Varnia I believe it was called. The flux and flow of scale of these quests and stories is so freaking cool. The building aspect also felt fresh and kept me coming back with curiosity and childlike joy.

I honestly don’t know how people can say the story sucks. You have the main problem statement and antagonist that opens up a “worldwide” crisis and not only are you solving for that, you are rebuilding the Greymanes, literally, since you are rebuilding the camp, rescuing your fellow bannermen, making relationships with nation states, with houses, with courts, with guilds, with clans. My point is, if you look at “the story” as a single questline, and examine the game at the single quest level, yeah sure, it’s more of the same, but it’s not, because all of the quests and progress build upon each other, from the Greymane camp to the Pailune and Marni arcs, everything is interwoven even down to your settlement vendors and unlocks being tiered and dependent on trust and prestige with all of these parties and factions. Like, the story is deep if you understand it. I’d challenge these players that say “the story sucks” to look again, they did not catch this bigger picture context. And then when you add the mess that the Abyss is, and all that lore, and that final battle… was that a (spoiler alert)… was the Avatar a freaking Angel?! The story is dope. Y’all need to touch grass.

That structure is refreshing, and it is also down to earth in a way most fantasy games refuse to be. The genre loves chosen ones. Crimson Desert lets you be a chosen one for the first ten hours and then asks you to be a worker for the next two hundred, then to end up being the one (and still everybody’s helper and friend). I found that pivot moving in a way I did not expect, and it kept the world feeling earned rather than handed to me. Also, the amount of hugs that I received after helping out someone was very evident and is going to stay with me forever. The writers made helping others rewarding and felt human.

The Abyss, whatever it is, I didn’t fully understand it (talking about gamers not reading and understanding things in the story), is that heaven? Well, anyways, the Abyss zone is not a combat marathon. It is a refresher zone. Lore, puzzles, mysticism, mind twisters. Kinda reminded me of the sky zones in recent Zelda games. Some players will hate the puzzly aspect of this area, oh no I have to think, but I found it a satisfying counterweight to the dozens of hours of fighting that came before and after it. The weaving in and out of the Abyss was kinda like a test of loyalty to the game. It was fine for me, very engaging and stimulating.

What I Left on the Table

I should be upfront about the corners of this game I never engaged with. There are three notable ones, and naming them is part of being honest about what my two hundred something hours actually covered.

I played as Kliff for the entire run (unless I was made to not play as him). The game gives you three playable characters, each with their own skill trees and customization and ways of moving through the world. I touched one. If you went obsessive on it and unlocked every skill on every character and dialed in three full builds, I cannot guess what that would add. Maybe 400 more hours of a game I have no idea exists.

I never used the party system either. You can take companions like Oongka and Damiane along on missions, but the AI seemed dumb enough that they would mostly take damage I did not want to manage, and I preferred fighting solo. That is another corner of the game I left unexplored. If their AI is better than my impression, or if a future patch sharpens it, that opens a tactical layer I never saw.

I also skipped the trading layer almost entirely. I finished the main quests but trading is clearly a rich subsystem running underneath the campaign, and from the outside it looked like a whole second game. If you want to play merchant, Crimson Desert has something serious for you. I cannot speak to it.

What I will say about the economy itself, since I touched it adjacent to trading. From the start I parked everything in the bank for the 2 percent interest, and once I had a few thousand I switched into a high-risk investment loop with scum saves to lock in good rolls. That pushed me past 100k gold very quickly, earlier than the game expected. Being rich did not break anything honestly, the game stayed balanced because buying things is pretty much tied to relationship and quest progress. So being rich did not let me skip the legwork as I still had to explore and fight and gather and upgrade. The economy is decoration on top of an experience that runs on time and effort, not gold. Good design, and rare in open-world games of this scale, I honestly thought I was breaking the game in my favor.

Take my repetition critique earlier with these three skips weighing against it. Someone who plays differently will see a different game for sure.

Customization and Role-Play

The dye and haircut customization is excellent. Once you unlock enough of it, you can paint your entire ensemble in any direction you want and commit to a visual identity that is your own. My daughter dyed mine blue at first, then super green from top to bottom, and for a stretch of the game I was role-playing as either Sonic the Greymane (hah!) or the Emerald Knight. That was her contribution and one of my favorite memories from my playthrough (you probably already saw this stuff in the gallery above, ridiculous and beloved).

This depth did not surprise me after learning about the company that built this game. Pearl Abyss runs Black Desert Online, which I have not played, and it seems that BDO is famous in MMO circles for having one of the most absurdly deep character creators ever shipped. That DNA carries over here evidently. The dye system, the wardrobe layers, the haircut options, all of it has the texture of a studio that has been thinking about character expression for over a decade. See the recurrent theme? Character and player expression, same as with combat, or the economy of the game, of the traversal of the map, player expression is what makes this such a good game.

The customization is also functionally deep, not just cosmetic. I ended up running multiple wardrobes for different activities. A treasure-hunting kit with a pirate cap that boosted my odds of finding loot. A main combat loadout for fights. A farming set with bonuses to ore and item drops. The game lets you swap between these on the fly, and once I had the loadouts dialed in my play sessions felt cleaner. I knew what mode I was in by what I was wearing.

If you play for role-play, this game has a lot more to offer than I personally tapped into. Combine the customization with the trading layer and the dense social systems and the variety of NPC interactions, and you have a sandbox that can absorb hundreds of additional hours of pure character expression. I play mostly for combat and exploration and progression, and I still found the visual customization satisfying. If your playstyle leans toward inhabiting a character rather than optimizing one, Crimson Desert can keep you for a very long time.

Without spoiling any more of the hidden mechanics, the game has more in it than the main quest reveals. You could keep playing, and keep playing, and keep playing.

Systems on Systems

The thing I keep underestimating about Crimson Desert is the sheer number of subsystems. The skill tree alone is large enough to be its own progression game, like I mentioned earlier. The knowledge system tracks everything you learn about the world. The challenge system gives you long-running goals across all activities. There are recipes I have not cooked, ultimate tools I have not built, Abyss gears I have only seen referenced, dice mechanics I never played, memory fragments I just started uncovering. There is even a notification tab in the menu that exists because the game generates more events than your average session can keep up with. It’s bonkers, in the best way.

This is where the Pearl Abyss MMO heritage shines through, I think. I’ve learned through the writing of this review that Crimson Desert was originally conceived as a Black Desert Online prequel before they pivoted to single-player around 2021, and you can feel that genealogy in how every subsystem has its own depth, its own progression curve, its own lore page. MMO studios think about systems differently than single-player studios do. They build for hundreds of hours of engagement on day one, because they have to. That habit shows up here in the best possible way.

Audio

The music and audio are well done, atmospheric work. The fighting sounds, the animal calls, the weather and ambient layers across biomes are all dialed in. Around 8 out of 10 for sound design for me.

Honest admission though. After several hours I started playing my own music in the background. The grunting and clanking and ambient layers had taught my brain what the world felt like, and at some point my own playlist served the long sessions better than the in-game score. That is more about how I play than about the quality of the audio. If you do not have that habit, the soundtrack will carry you fine.

Technical Performance

I played on PS5. Most of the time the game ran cleanly and looked excellent. The draw distance and field of view are impressive. You can see a distant city long before you reach it, and that kind of horizon holds the world together. (I read some launch-window threads about Intel Arc GPU support being a mess on PC, but on PS5 the experience was clean for me, no crashes, no save corruption, nothing scary that risked my playthrough. Although, if a game messes with my save files, I’m done with that game, I’m with other players on this being a hard situation to be in.)

Where my PS5 system clearly struggled was in the largest fights. Country against country, empire-level battles, hundreds of units, particles and smoke and effects layered on top of each other were dropping my framerate. I did not mind because I know how these things work and the thing was going nuts rendering stuff, numbers, particles, this game brings weight to the word horde. If you are sensitive to performance dips, that is the moment they happen. If you are not, you will feel the chaos as part of the chaos and move on.

The Ending

By the time I hit the last Chapter I felt overpowered. Almost fully upgraded gear, what the fuck is an Aserion scale?, I had my favorite combos nailed down, and the fights still looked cool and the spectacle was there, but the difficulty curve had been left behind a while ago. Partly on me for over-leveling, partly on the game for not scaling around late builds. The devs recently added a Hard mode to the game (Patch 1.04, April 23, 2026) but I wasn’t trying any of that, I have kids, my playtime is limited (that’s my justification for playing in normal or even easy mode).

Then the credits rolled and I told myself I was going to move on but I was wrong about that because I have already spent four or five hours since the credits doing camp missions and upgrade requests, because I want to see the camp progression play out. There is a moment coming where the camp moves to a new location, and I want to see how the developers handled that transition. Apparently this game still has a couple of hooks in me.

My actual plan is this: Finish the camp upgrades, take that arc to whatever payoff the developers built in, and then put the controller down. After that, the save belongs to my daughter. She is six. She mostly walks around the world and runs from combat, which is funny to watch. But the world is so expansive, so open, that I am sure she will love exploring it the way I did. She gave me the Emerald Knight at the beginning of my run and she gets to keep him at the end. I imagine her wandering through the same biomes that ate three hundred evenings of mine, picking flowers and dodging wolves, and that is a beautiful thought to retire on. She will probably jump on my dragon and fly around until her gaming time is over.

What I Want Next

I am curious about content patches, DLCs, whatever Pearl Abyss decides to do with this world as they have already been adding things. Pearl Abyss has publicly committed to a wave of free updates running from April through June 2026, the window I am sitting inside right now, and they have been responsive to player feedback in a way that not every studio is.

Recently they shipped a thorough storage system with multiple containers for different kinds of loot. This update meaningfully changed the inventory experience. If I had that from hour one, my management overhead would have been a third of what it was. I am not bitter about playing without it. I am encouraged that they cared enough to ship it post-launch. I imagine the housing system, which I didn’t even go on about during this review, will keep getting expansions and upgrades. I’ll come back for those for sure.

I have already heard rumblings about a system where hostile factions invade locations you cleared earlier in the game. That is exactly the kind of dynamic layer this map needs. A static post-game world ages quickly. A world that pushes back when you stop paying attention to it earns its longevity. If they actually ship that, the late game becomes interesting in a way it currently is not, and the world starts feeling alive in the way the main campaign hinted it could be.

The foundation they have built deserves to be extended and this engine and this combat system and this map and these characters can do so much more. Give me a reason to come back. A new region, a new faction, a new threat, an endgame loop that puts these systems under higher pressure and I will be there.

Should You Play It

Yes, with one caveat. If you are not someone who gets pulled in by exploration, you may not have the patience to push past the combat learning curve. But if you are someone who wanders, who reads environmental storytelling, who spends an hour climbing something just to see what is on top, this is your game. Possibly your game of the year. Definitely a game that respects the time you put into it, even when it asks too much of the same thing.

The wider world seems to agree, by the way. Crimson Desert sold five million copies in its first month after launch on March 19, 2026, and the reviews so far have landed in the “generally favorable” range across the major outlets. That number tells you both that the marketing worked and that the game holds people once they are inside it. I am one of those five million, and I am writing this at hour 230 of one purchase, which I think is an honest way to measure value.

As of now 230 hours. 9 out of 10. 4.5 out of 5. A near-masterpiece with a finite quest pool inside an infinite-feeling world. I am glad I played it and will cherish its memories, enjoy the gallery and let me know what you think in the comments, thank you for reading!

The Joy of Building My Own Digital Sandbox — April 2026 Update

Antonio Rodriguez Martinez — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 12:00:00 GMT

I still fucking love ~~playing~~ working on my blog.

Last July I wrote about the joy of building my own digital sandbox — a love letter to the code, the content, the obsessive tinkering that makes this site feel like mine. Eight months later:

550 commits across 24 merged pull requests
Version jumped from ~2.x to 5.21.0 — over 90 version bumps
26 new posts published, including 10 bilingual EN/ES pairs
AI pair-programming adopted as a core workflow, with 6 custom agent skills built for this repo
Spec-driven development formalized through github/spec-kit

The commit cadence mirrors my life: bursts of 119 (July) and 107 (November) when I’m on fire, then 9 (October) and 14 (January) when I’m living, parenting, recovering. My son Andre Antonio was born on December 25, 2025. January was 14 commits. That’s not a dip in productivity — that’s a man holding his newborn and his enhanced beautiful blended family. It’s pretty cool that I’m not shipping to a sprint board and I’m shipping to my own internal clock and life cadence.

This artisanal project remains some of the most meaningful creative work I do, and the sharpest instrument I have for witnessing myself, because the goal is always the same: become what I write, and be as honest through the process as I can.

What I Built

Here’s what I built and why.

Brain Science

I built a multi-page section that runs at build time and generates writing statistics about my own posts — cadence charts, topic breakdowns, and consistency tracking. Chart.js powers the visualizations, and it all renders as static pages. No server or database.

I wanted to see my own patterns. How often do I write? What themes keep coming back? When do I go quiet? It’s probably the most self-indulgent feature on the site. It wasn’t as helpful as I thought it would be, but it’s a good starting point to a much more thorough analysis feature to be built in the future. I’m sure if you forked/cloned the repo and added your own content, you could get some good insights into your writing styles and patterns.

Guided Path

A curated reading order. You pick where you are, and it walks you through posts in a sequence I chose — thematic, not chronological. Progress is stored in your browser only, so that means no accounts, no tracking, because I care about your privacy. I think this is a GREAT way to browse and read online content, perhaps I should patent it. Hah!

Read/Unread Tracking

Every post you’ve read is marked with a subtle visual indicator. Progress is kept in localStorage. If you clear your browser, it’s gone. And again, that’s the point, privacy — I don’t want your reading data. I just want to help you remember what you’ve already seen.

The Comments Overhaul

I replaced Giscus (GitHub Discussions–based) with Remark42, a self-hosted comment system. The integration involved theme synchronization, SPA navigation lifecycle, lazy loading, and managing comment instances across Astro view transitions. I spent more time on comment lifecycle management than I expected.

Remark42 is self-hosted, so I had to learn how to deploy and manage it on Railway. That meant figuring out the platform, setting up the service, configuring environment variables, and keeping it updated. Railway turned out to be a great experience — the deploy workflow is smooth, the dashboard is clear, and the whole thing just works. It was fun learning a new hosting provider, and I’d use it again.

The Layout Transformation

The site used to be called “Antonio’s Notes Blog.” Now it’s just Notes. That name change was part of a bigger layout overhaul: simpler navigation, a masonry-style homepage with featured highlights, new typography (Lora for headings), and a mobile-first responsive redesign.

I redesigned the post sidebar to show taxonomy (categories and tags) more clearly, moved metadata around for mobile, added a floating table of contents for long essays, and rebuilt the mobile navigation with focus management and search integration.

Small things I care about: the search bar dynamically filters posts. The footer links to the exact version on GitHub. Dark mode respects your system preference but remembers if you override it.

Share buttons for Facebook, Twitter, Bluesky, and Threads. They generate URLs with the post description and the component sits in the sidebar on desktop and in an expandable section on mobile. I don’t know who’s sharing or if they are sharing, but users are able to do so if they want to.

Quotes API

A random Stoic quotes API. GET /api/quotes returns quotes from Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, and Epictetus. Small feature. Makes me smile and is part of a bigger idea I have for a later time: I want to serve my own important or helpful quotes!

Tag Governance

Tags used to be a mess. I’d slap whatever felt right on a post and move on. Now there’s a canonical tag vocabulary, a tag policy document, alias normalization (so essay and essays and nota all resolve to the same thing), and a tag management page with analytics-style views. The /tag page now opens with a sentence-style prelude linking to content forms — essays, notes, poems, ideas — when they exist on the site. It’s a small touch that makes browsing feel intentional instead of random.

Performance, Always

Font loading uses proper <link> preloads. Images are served in modern formats. The service worker uses version-synced cache names that bust on every build. Social images are generated at build time. No tracking scripts or third-party widgets.

Vercel’s Speed Insights shows a Real Experience Score of 100 right now, based on actual user visits over the last 7 days. The numbers: First Contentful Paint at 0.65s, Largest Contentful Paint at 0.82s, Interaction to Next Paint at 24ms, Cumulative Layout Shift at 0, Time to First Byte at 0.12s. Both the homepage and post pages score 100. No poor scores, no “needs improvement” scores. I care about this because if I’m asking someone to read 3,000 words of my thinking, the least I can do is make sure the page loads fast and doesn’t jump around while they’re trying to read.

What I’ve Been Writing About

The code is one half and the writing is the other. Here’s what I wrote about, roughly by theme:

Recovery and becoming. Who I Am Today: A Recovery Progress Report. Season of Becoming — moving from performing growth to living it. The Feeling Is Not the Problem — about what happens when you suppress emotions instead of sitting with them.

Love, fatherhood, and boundaries. Love Is the Final Revolution — kindness as political act. On Boundaries, Miscalibration, and Relearning Unconditional Love — what happens when boundary-setting overcorrects. The First Wall and On Clear Signals — relationships, signals, walls.

Politics and power. The Prometheus Problem — how AI companies externalize consequences. Notes on Puerto Rico: Sin Pie Forzao — political analysis of the island’s situation. An Invitation to the End of Wealth Worship — what comes after treating wealth as religion.

Craft and building. Rolling Back Main (And Why You Shouldn’t Have to) — a post-mortem of trusting AI too much with git!!! 🫣 On Leadership and Leadership-Adjacent Things — a stupidly long (Sorry, not sorry!) essay on leadership as cost, care, and teaching others to lead.

Grief and letting go. The Rhythm of Grief and Empathy as a Shield.

Eight of these posts were published in both English and Spanish, using translation groups that let readers toggle between languages.

People Are Reading This

I don’t run my own analytics. I don’t have tracking pixels or cookies or any of that but Vercel includes basic web analytics on the hosting plan, and I looked at the last 30 days for the first time in a while.

763 visitors. 1,007 page views.

I don’t know who most of these people are. I don’t know why 77% of the traffic shows as coming from Singapore — that’s probably bots or VPNs or something I don’t understand. 15% from the United States, 6% from China, and about 1% from Puerto Rico, which I like because that’s home.

What’s interesting to me is what people are reading. The most visited post (after the homepage) is Rolling Back Main with 14 visitors, followed by the leadership essay with 12. Those are the two posts about building things and making mistakes — the craft posts. People also hit /tag (16 visitors), /tag/breathing (11), /tag/childhood (10), and /about (10). That tells me people are browsing, not just landing on one page and leaving. Well, the bounce rate is 86%, so most people are landing and leaving, but some are sticking around and exploring.

Referrers: Google (5), Facebook in various forms (about 10 total between mobile and desktop), GitHub (2), Vercel (2). So people are finding this through search, through social sharing, and through the repo itself. That’s cool.

92% desktop, 8% mobile. I didn’t expect that split. Most of the layout work I’ve done recently focused on mobile. Oh well — at least it works well on both!

I want to be clear: I didn’t build this site for traffic numbers. 763 visitors in a month is nothing by internet standards but it’s not nothing to me. That’s 763 times someone landed on something I wrote or built and spent at least a moment with it. I don’t know who you are, and I like it that way, but I’m glad you’re here.

How I Use AI Now

Since the original sandbox post, AI went from something I occasionally used to a daily part of how I work on this site.

I work in Cursor, an AI-native IDE, with Claude as the model I use most. I’ve built six custom agent skills for this repository — configuration files that give the AI specific context about the project:

Astro Webmaster — has context about the project’s architecture, content pipeline, and layout conventions. I use it when a change spans multiple files.
Brain Science Audit — focused on the analytics pipeline. Checks build cost and data integrity in the writing-stats pages.
Content Strategy Map — reads my last 30 posts and produces a topic map with suggested essay ideas based on what I’ve been writing about. Curious note: these content strategy map documents that are generated are excluded from the repo because again, privacy, for me, this time!
Multilingual Content QA — checks that translationGroup fields are set correctly and that featured flags and publish states are consistent across language pairs.
Post Publishing Workflow — validates frontmatter before I publish. Categories exist in the system? Tags follow the canonical vocabulary? Required fields present?
Release Quality Gate — runs the pre-merge checklist: pnpm run check, build, format:check.

These are project-specific configurations, not generic prompts. They give the AI context about this codebase and these conventions.

What the collaboration looks like in practice

AI writes first drafts of code. I review and shape. AI suggests refactors. I decide which ones to take. AI runs quality gates. I decide what to do about the results.

Sometimes the AI fucks up. Rolling Back Main exists because I let the AI handle too much without checking. It pushed changes that broke things, and I had to do a manual rollback on main. The lesson: tools amplify both your strengths and your inattention.

The collaboration works when I stay involved, and when I don’t, things break. Pretty obvious, but as a solo developer it exposes the attention gap that otherwise someone else would have caught (or perhaps I wouldn’t be this careless at work with others — who knows).

Spec-Kit — How I Learned to Plan Before Building

On March 28, 2026, I adopted github/spec-kit for this project. I’m still in that testing phase, figuring it out.

Before spec-kit, my process was: get an idea, open a file, start coding, discover edge cases mid-build, refactor, ship something that mostly works. AI made the chaos faster — more code, more changes, more things that could go wrong. Sometimes I would branch, other times I would commit directly to main. All of that changed when I introduced GitHub’s spec-kit, because it added structure. The thing even automagically creates feature branches for me!

Here’s what it looks like now:

A project constitution — five core principles ratified in .specify/memory/constitution.md:

Content schema contracts — posts must conform to the frontmatter spec. Categories must exist. Bilingual pairs must use translationGroup. Reading time comes from the remark pipeline, period.
Static-first delivery — the default experience must work with static prerendering. No sneaking in SSR or mandatory cookies without justification.
Verification gates — pnpm run build must succeed. TypeScript checks must pass. Formatting must be clean.
Reader privacy — reading progress stays in the browser. No third-party analytics without disclosure. Your data is yours.
Feed integrity — RSS, JSON Feed, Schema.org, and Open Graph must stay consistent when things change.

Feature specs with full artifacts. Every non-trivial feature now gets a spec.md (what and why), a plan.md (how), a quickstart.md (implementation guide), behavior contracts, and requirement checklists. I’ve shipped six (?) features through this workflow:

002 — Floating Table of Contents for long posts
003 — Homepage and About page voice refresh
004 — Professional UI/UX refinement pass (WCAG 2.2 AA compliance)
005 — Post sidebar redesign
006 — Mobile navigation rebuild
010 — Tag content-form links on the /tag page

Each one went through the same cycle: spec → plan → build → verify. The AI helps at several steps — drafting specs, writing code, running quality gates. I make the decisions about what to build and what trade-offs to accept.

What I like about spec-kit is that it makes the thinking visible. When I look at specs/005-redesign-post-sidebar/spec.md, I can see why I made the choices I made. The reasoning is documented, not just the code.

The Artisanal Argument

Why keep building this when AI can generate entire websites?

Because my site is 550 commits of specific choices. A reading progress system that stores nothing on a server. A tag vocabulary that got refined over months. A constitution that says “reader privacy is non-negotiable.” Bilingual essays that I wrote in both languages because ideas change shape when they cross languages, and some writings I simply don’t want to write in English, or in Spanish, depending on the material.

A lot of that involved AI assistance. But the choices — what to build, what to skip, what principles to hold — those came from me sitting with the project over months, not from a prompt.

I think there’s a difference between “AI-generated” and “AI-assisted.” The first produces something generic, while the second is a person using tools to build something specific. A woodworker who uses a CNC router still designed the piece and chose the wood. The machine cuts, but the human decides.

550 commits. Most of them small, and ALL of them mine.

What’s Next

The roadmap has what I’m thinking about next:

TLDRs for posts — standalone summaries for each piece. A “TLDRs” index page as a compressed idea browser.
Audio versions — “Click to listen” on posts, starting with browser TTS.
Email notifications — a way to let people know when something new goes up. I’m kind of conflicted with this feature because I really don’t want or care to know who you are and what you are reading from this site, and I feel like adding an email subscription opens up a door that I can’t close again.
Structured sources — moving reading influences into frontmatter so they’re browsable and connected to the Library.
More bilingual content — I want more of my writing to exist in both languages.

I’m 7 specs into the spec-kit workflow now, and each feature teaches me something about the next one. We’ll see what else develops from this work.

Eight months ago I wrote: “I fucking love working on my blog.”

It’s still true. The tools got better, the process got more structured, and the work kept going — but the feeling is the same. I like building this thing. I like that it’s mine.

This is still my art. Code and content together. The shedding, the adding, the crashes, the chaos. 550 commits of a man figuring out what he wants to say and building a machine to say it.

The whole thing is open source. Version 5.21.0 and climbing. Come poke around.

On Leadership and Leadership-Adjacent Things, April 2026

Antonio Rodriguez Martinez — Fri, 03 Apr 2026 17:00:00 GMT

Leadership sucks. It is not strategy, not vision, not charisma. At its most basic it is sacrifice: whoever leads absorbs costs that would otherwise land on the people around them. That sacrifice is the job but the trap is stopping there — if absorbing cost is all you do, you become a single point of failure, the center of “everything,” and the moment you step back, the whole thing around you collapses. “Real” leadership is still that same willingness to carry weight, but pointed at a further goal: you develop the people around you until they can lead on their own, carry weight themselves, step up without waiting for permission, and keep what you started building standing after you are gone.

This harsher, fuller definition explains why so many people avoid it. Why would you sign up to carry cost AND invest in others when you could just carry cost and be the hero? Or better yet, not carry anything at all? The hours can be long and thankless. The decisions are constant and the emotional weight does not clock out when you do. If things go right, you are okay, if things go wrong, you might get to be a villain in someone’s perspective. And the return of leadership, when there is one, is almost never proportional to what it cost you to produce it. You can pour yourself into something for years and the outcome might be invisible, or delayed, or credited to someone else, or just enough to keep things from falling apart, which nobody notices because the whole point was that it did not fall apart. Leadership is so hard and can be so shitty for the person who does it, that just running away from it makes sense. I get it. I’ve run away from leadership my fair share of times. At home, at work, out in the public, sometimes I just literally run away, I get it.

I also understand when some people take the title and seem to be leading but redirect the costs back onto others. They think they are sleek: I am going to be a “leader” but I am going to exploit and profit off of it. I do challenge the notion that those types are leaders. They are called that, but there has to be a better word for them. So yeah, this loaded essay is about the type of leadership that absorbs cost and effort so others do not have to, and that builds others up so they can lead alongside you. This essay is not about the leadership that extracts anything and everything else so they never have to. Both types call themselves leaders, but only one is.

Leadership is on all of us, always. You are responsible for it in your environments, just as I am in mine. Or we step down and follow someone willing to lead. Following someone’s lead is also part of leadership. But there is a third dimension that neither absorbing cost nor following captures: empowering. Teaching. Modeling. Supporting someone else’s growth until they can lead on their own. A household where only one person can lead is fragile. A team where only one person absorbs ambiguity is a single point of failure. The goal is not one leader surrounded by followers. The goal is a room full of people who can hold it, leadership, when it needs holding.

This Problem Is Bigger Than Us

Leadership is not only an individual thing. It layers outward from the self unto our families, our communities, our systems. I see a failure of leadership or failures of leadership at every single layer of these systems. I think it is so costly to be a leader that it breaks people, and this is not something individuals are architecting, I think it’s systemic. The systems we live inside were built in ways that make real leadership harder and that fake leadership we talked about earlier easier. This leadership crisis I’m calling out today has been mounting for hundreds of years, and it is from the top, endemic, and everywhere I have been able to look. This essay is my attempt to map all of these concepts on leadership, starting with myself, my flaws and wins. We will go outwards, by layers, from the micro and the self, into the macro and unto bigger and broader scales because this leadership crisis operates at the scale of a household and at the scale of a nation. It is in the classroom, the boardroom, the algorithm, the legislature, the family dinner table. I believe the absence of real leadership is so pervasive that we stopped recognizing it as an absence and started accepting it as normal but there’s nothing normal about it. It is an epidemic that nobody named because the people who benefit from the vacuum are the same people who would have to name it.

Turn on the news. Any news. Even the most optimistic broadcast still sits inside a world where wars are launched and the consequences are externalized onto people who never chose them, where politicians make promises that dissolve the moment the election is over, where violence between people is so normalized we debate its frequency instead of its existence.

Our leaders tell us to bear children but where are the laws telling families we have got them covered? Where is the parental leave, the affordable childcare, the housing that does not require two incomes and a miracle? That is one string of an example. There are thousands. The trickle-down never trickles. The safety nets have holes the size of families. And the people who designed the systems are never the ones who fall through them. The leadership crisis is the gap itself: the distance between what leaders are supposed to do and what they actually do. That gap is not a flaw. It is an abysm. And it is so wide that most people have stopped expecting it to close. That gap in leadership looks like a world that postures at sometimes, but generally moves towards the opposite, it’s stunning, baffling and even, disrespectful, I would argue.

The education I received and watched others receive was not designed to build leaders. Let’s be honest. I sat in those classrooms. When I was catalogued a good student, it really meant I was good at following instructions and not asking why. Whenever I stopped following instructions and applied an iota of critical thinking or simply pushed back, I became a “bad student”, sounds familiar? Nobody pulled me aside and said, “Antonio, here is how you think for yourself.” Nobody had to suppress that in me because it was never being cultivated in the first place. These curriculums are designed to produce people who comply and consume. It wasn’t until my first sociology professor in college who popped upon my critical thinking and epistemology for me that I was able to lead the charge and redefine many concepts, such as why education and learning was so important for me to develop as a leader within’ myself and my household, my home. John Taylor Gatto, a thirty-year public school teacher in New York City who won the state’s Teacher of the Year award and then quit on the op-ed page of the Wall Street Journal, spent his career arriving at exactly that conclusion. His book Dumbing Us Down (1992) lays out the argument that compulsory schooling does not accidentally fail to produce independent thinkers because it was built to produce the opposite: people who follow instructions and buy things and do not ask too many questions about who designed the instructions or why. He did not think it was accidental. And if you do not set the environment for something to grow, if you actively design the environment to prevent it, why would you expect it to grow? The system does not just fail to build leaders. It fails to build people who can build leaders. The transmission is broken at nearly every level because people are generally not learning to lead, and only a few are learning to teach and leading others to lead.

And if the system was not designed to build leaders, it is worth asking what it was designed to build. The answer is consumers, it will always be consumers. People who obey, and absorb content instead of producing direction, people who follow feeds instead of setting them. The infrastructure for manufacturing that passivity has been evolving for over a century (much more?), and it has never been more sophisticated than it is right now. Look at what it produces at every scale. At home it could look like a baby watching a screen because daddy wants to doomscroll. That is, and might be surprising to some of you reading this, a leadership decision — not to actively father in that moment, but to passively consume, and to hand the child the same passivity so the consumption can continue undisturbed. At the community level, it is a neighborhood where nobody knows each other’s names because everyone is inside, oriented toward a feed or some binge media consumption, or whatever it is modern humans do nowadays, Tik Toks?, instead of energy and effort toward the people next door, your neighbors. At the corporate level, it is an entire workforce trained to consume directives instead of producing direction, to absorb messaging instead of questioning it, we have seen how this ends over and over throughout history, now more importantly than ever. At the national level, it is a citizenry that consumes political performance — the debate, the headline, the outrage cycle, the fear, the numbness, the hyperindividualism — without ever producing political participation beyond the consumption itself. Passivity manufactured and agency eroded, by design.

The outsourcing of thinking is not new but it has never been this efficient. I can feel it in myself. The pull to let something else do the processing. To open a feed instead of opening a thought. To ask a machine instead of sitting with the question long enough to find my own answer. To endless sit in front of a boxed screen and consume until I’m spent, it’s avoidance, it’s less work, less cost, less energy, less effort. It is a gravitational thing, and fighting it takes actual effort, discipline, and willpower every single time. Culture, clubs, celebrity, algorithm, feed — each one a layer built on top of the last, each one offering you a ready-made identity in exchange for your attention, each one making it a little easier to skip the work of building one yourself. Zygmunt Bauman, the sociologist who spent his career studying what happens to identity when everything becomes liquid and temporary, documented how selfhood became a consumer product long before smartphones existed — a through-line of Consuming Life (2007). People constructing who they are through what they buy rather than through what they build internally or within their communities. Shoshana Zuboff, a Harvard professor who spent years mapping the economics of digital platforms, showed in The Age of Surveillance Capitalism (2019) how those platforms then industrialized that process — engineering behavior at scale through prediction and behavioral modification, turning Bauman’s consumer identity into a product they could manufacture and sell. And Eli Pariser, the activist who coined the term ‘filter bubble,’ mapped the end result in The Filter Bubble (2011): a personalized feed so narrow that it is effectively thinking for you, confirming what you already believe, closing off what might challenge it.

And now we have “AI,” the quotation marks intentional because what is being marketed as artificial intelligence is pattern-matching at scale, not thinking! Large language models (LLMs) do not reason. They predict language strings and we are outsourcing our thinking to them with the same enthusiasm we outsourced it to the feed, except faster and with more confidence in the output. This is another point of failure of leadership. The irony is that I am using an LLM right now to help me finish off this essay. That is not lost on me because the tool is definitely useful. The danger is the same danger it has always been: that the tool does or leads the work and you never develop the capacity the work was supposed to build. Every paragraph I let a machine draft without wrestling with it myself is a paragraph where I practiced convenience instead of leadership. At home, it is letting the machine write the thank-you note you should have wrestled with yourself, because the wrestling is where the sincerity lives. At work, it is letting the model draft the strategy document and then presenting it as your thinking, when the thinking was the whole point of the exercise. At the institutional level, it is entire organizations replacing human judgment with algorithmic output and calling it efficiency, when what they actually eliminated was the costly, slow, irreplaceable process of a person deciding what matters.

I Had to Lead Myself First

The algorithms generally do not model sacrifice. They model optimization and possibly bias. It will surface Epictetus quotes in your feed — “some things are in your control and some are not” — because the algorithm learned that you engage with that kind of content. But it surfaces it as consumption and not as instruction. You scroll past it and you feel something but you keep scrolling. The Stoic who taught you to act becomes another piece of content that teaches you to sit still and that is the irony at the center of every feed: even the material that should wake you up is delivered in a format designed to keep you asleep. Sacrifice is inherently anti-algorithmic because it reduces personal optimization in service of something external. The feed rewards engagement, confirmation, aspiration, consumption. So the very systems most people are immersed in filter out the one quality that makes leadership possible.

The problem was never leading versus following. It was passive versus intentional. The signal is not missing — David Goggins screams it in Can’t Hurt Me (2018), the Stoics wrote it down two thousand years ago, every contemplative tradition has a version of it. The signal exists but the system you and I are inside does not amplify it. It amplifies the opposite. The feed is “free” but intention is not. Every deliberate act — stepping up, stepping behind someone who is stepping up, even just choosing to be present when you could be scrolling — is a cost you absorbed that the passive version of you would not have. That is leadership at its most basic. Not the grand gesture but the choice to be awake because attention is the raw material we are meant to mold.

I’m stating today that the “leadership” stack is against us from the start and you have to build leadership yourself, against the current, with very little in the default path designed to help you get there. The resources exist — the books, the mentors, the traditions, the materials, and ultimately the hard lessons we go through life — but nobody tells you to look for them, what to look for, and the system certainly does not point you toward them. Robert Bly, the poet whose book Iron John (1990) launched the modern men’s movement, argued that the Industrial Revolution severed the transmission of mature masculinity between fathers and sons long before algorithms or curricula could be blamed for it. When fathers left the home for the factory, sons lost access to the daily modeling of how a man navigates difficulty, holds his ground, and serves the people around him. The same severance happened during wartime — twice in the twentieth century where millions of fathers disappeared into conflict and millions of mothers absorbed the full weight of leading households with no structural support and no blueprint. And if you have spent any time listening, you already know how that story ends for the women as they get blamed. In a lot of circles, they are still being blamed for raising soft sons and the absence of masculine role models, or for not doing a good enough job filling a role that was never supposed to be theirs alone to fill. Maybe you have heard this. Maybe you have not, and whether that makes you lucky or just further removed from a problem that exists whether you see it or not is itself an answer to the question this essay keeps asking. Terry Real, a family therapist and author of I Don’t Want to Talk About It (1997), documented what the severance produced in men specifically: covert depression expressed as rage, workaholism, emotional distance, and relational failure. Men who were never taught to access their interior lives and who built elaborate systems to avoid discovering that absence. In some cases, the men never left their homes but they are so severed from healthy masculinity and leadership that they seem checked out beyond themselves, this severance is so costly downwards and externalizes so much.

I know what that severance looks like from the inside. But I want to be honest about what I did receive, because the truth is not clean. My father taught me work ethic. I watched it in him before I had any language for what I was watching. And I picked up pieces from leaders I encountered along the way — men and women both — a way of handling pressure here, a way of showing up there. But it was scattered and spare. Never a full transmission, never a system, never someone sitting me down and saying this is how you carry weight for other people. So I went looking. I read everything I could find, across philosophy, psychology, leadership, parenting, trauma recovery, fiction — anything that looked like it might contain a piece of what I was missing. Epictetus, in the Discourses (recorded c. 108 CE), gave me the line between what I control and what I do not, and that one distinction restructured how I moved through the world. Brené Brown, especially in Atlas of the Heart (2021), gave me the vocabulary to name emotions I had been feeling my entire life without a single word for many of them. And then there were the fictional characters who filled spaces the real people left open. Guts carrying a sword that was never meant to be held by a human because the weight was there and someone had to carry it — that is what sacrifice looks like when nobody is watching and nobody is clapping. Tanjiro showing me what it looks like to protect your people with fierce, unapologetic love — that is service without condition, the purest form of leading for someone else’s benefit. Garou refusing to stay down no matter what hit him, treating every obstacle like a level he was going to clear whether it liked it or not — that is the refusal to accept an external locus of control, the insistence that you are the agent, not the object. Goku getting stronger every time the universe found something bigger to throw at him — that is orientation toward difficulty as raw material, the foundational act of self-leadership. Before I had any vocabulary for any of this, those characters were installing the patterns. When the real transmission of leadership is scarce, whatever you find becomes your curriculum. I assembled mine because the alternative was staying empty and that was not working at all.

What breaks the cycle of passivity and lets us step into leadership? Well, a lot of work. A lot of inner work, many hours, many mistakes, many decisions. Many actions then. Doing the work. It’s a ton of effort and self-leadership is the foundation because without it, everything that follows might as well just be performance (for others? for our egos?).

Julian Rotter, the psychologist who gave us the concept of locus of control in the 1960s, spent decades documenting the degree to which people attribute outcomes to forces outside themselves rather than to their own choices and actions. External orientation, the tendency to see yourself as acted upon rather than acting, is not rare. It is the default for people who were never given conditions to develop otherwise. The shift from external to internal, from passenger to agent, is the first act of leadership. It happens before anyone else is involved. I remember what it felt like before that shift. Everything was happening to me. The job, the relationship, the city, the circumstances. I was narrating my own life like I was watching it from outside and had no say, or very little say boo-hoo, in the script. Yet the moment I started treating my own choices as the variable, not the situation, everything reorganized. Not because the external conditions changed but because I stopped waiting for them to and that is the prerequisite for everything that scales beyond the self.

I have to be honest about something I only recently saw. The internal locus of control has a shadow. When I shifted from “everything happens to me” to “I am the agent,” I did not stop at agency and kept going inadvertently into control. I became the person who carries everything, manages everything, absorbs everything, and somewhere in that process, I started needing to be that person. The internal locus of control, unchecked, became an internal locus of everything, some sort of hyper-something, hyper-independence? I don’t carry a word for this but my own view of leadership was infected by my own unhealthy or unbalanced patterns. I was defining leadership as “I absorb the cost” because that kept me at the center. That is not service but control wearing a sacrifice costume. It’s funny that it only took a short conversation with my mother to be called out on the pattern, identifying and further more see it, seeing it plainly in what was my flawed perception of leadership, which I assume was tainting many things leadership-adjacent. She said leadership is also empowering and enabling others to lead. By example. By teaching and support. And the moment she said it, I read my own essay (which I had at this point been working for almost 5 months) back and saw the shadow running through the whole thing. A leader who only absorbs cost is still a single point of failure and a leader who builds other leaders is building something that survives. The shift from external to internal locus of control is the first act. The shift from internal control to shared capacity is the second act and I had been stuck at the first one, calling it the whole thing. Thanks for the leadership lessons mother!

What Leadership Looks Like at Home

In any household, leadership is always happening. It does not pause because someone is not paying attention to it. The weight of running a home, from grocery shopping, from cooking and serving lunch up to raising children, organization, maintaining a relationship, maintaining a clean and healthy home, planning a future, and the stuff we can’t possibly even think about or be aware of, all that weight is always being carried by someone. If you are not carrying it, identify and look at who is. The weight does not disappear but transfers. I speak about this as a man and for men mostly because that is what I know from the inside because that is what I have lived and failed at and am still learning.

When a man stops carrying his share he does not become neutral either. Most of the time this passivity makes us become dependents. The household still runs because someone makes it run, but we are no longer the one making it run. We are possibly being managed too. Fed, scheduled, reminded, accommodated. We become, functionally, another variable our partner has to account for. This is what women mean when they say they are raising another child. It is not simply “an insult invented online” but a description of a real dynamic. Eve Rodsky, a Harvard-trained organizational management specialist who spent years interviewing couples about how domestic labor actually gets divided, documented exactly this in her book Fair Play (2019). Darcy Lockman, a clinical psychologist who studied the division of labor in dual-income households, documented in All the Rage (2019) the resentment that accumulates in women carrying disproportionate domestic load. It is not occasional frustration and it builds over time and changes the relationship permanently.

The research on cognitive household labor shows that mothers carry roughly seventy-three percent of all cognitive work in the home: the planning, the anticipating, the noticing, the tracking, the delegating, the monitoring of outcomes. Not seventy-three percent of the dishes. Seventy-three percent of the thinking that makes the household function. Who remembers the pediatrician appointment. Who notices the sponge needs replacing. Who is already planning next week while everyone else is still living in today. That is not housework. That is leadership. And women have been performing it so consistently, for so long, that we stopped calling it leadership and started calling it motherhood, as if it were biological rather than operational. Huge red flag!

The research is clear: this cognitive labor costs women their mental health, their career trajectories, and their capacity to be anything other than the infrastructure everyone else runs on. They arrive at work already depleted from leading at home, which reinforces the glass ceiling, which reinforces the assumption that they were not leadership material to begin with. It is one loop. And it started because someone was not carrying their share. Forget about genders for a second, I imagine this affects any household where the flaw is found, but as a man, I can be honest and identify that hey, we are failing our homes plenty!

So when I say leadership sucks, part of what I mean is this: women, and others, have been subsidizing men’s leadership failure for generations, absorbing the cost that men refused to carry, and paying for it with their health, their ambition, and their freedom. And that is not partnership. That is an unacknowledged transfer of cost from the people who should be leading to the people who had no choice but to lead in their absence. It is the same systemic failure from the opening of this essay, just wearing a different face, it’s a mode of failure for leadership. The system did not build men to lead, women filled the vacuum, and the system rewarded no one for it. We are yet to see and feel and live through the effects of these causalities, the cost of abdicating leadership.

The cost of abdicating leadership is not only paid by our partners too. A bystander in his own home is not at peace. He either does not see what it costs everyone around him, or he sees it and cannot look at it directly. Neither is a good place to live.

I know this from the inside because I have caught patterns in myself that I am actively working to dismantle. A tendency to go passive and let the weight land on Zuleyka, my current partner and love of my life, mother of our baby boy, or even on my ex-wife before her, which kinda tells you why we aren’t together anymore. I’ve also noticed a tendency to overcorrect into control: running a scorekeeper, cataloging actions, assigning moral weight, reducing complex people to snapshot judgments while giving myself full credit for my own trajectory and complexity. The scorekeeper felt like leadership because it required attention and produced conclusions but it was not leadership more than it was surveillance dressed as accountability because it created distance by design. I have been moving away from both of those patterns toward something more balanced: a real share of the work, grounded in radical acceptance and experiencing the people in my life without default evaluation unless evaluation is actually required. This is not a completed transformation because leadership is fucking hard but the required work is slowly getting me into a more integrated and healthy version of who I as a leader need to be. And that is the whole point, all the work and the effort, and the integration, that final state I might or might never arrive to as a man who leads our home and nurtures leadership through support and modelling healthy behaviors, a contributor in every sense of the word.

Carrying my share of responsibilities is only half the work and the other half is the part I missed until my mother named it. Am I building a household where everyone leads? Am I teaching my daughter and son to plan, or just planning for her? Am I building my stepson’s capacity to anticipate and step up, or just modeling it in front of him and calling that enough? Am I creating conditions where Zuleyka does not just get relief from the load but gets space to lead in domains she chooses rather than domains she is stuck with? There is a difference between alleviating weight and distributing power: the first one keeps you at the center and the second one builds something that holds without you.

The work is also not abstract, mostly. It is taking out the garbage before she has to ask. It is knowing the school drop-off schedule without being told. It is sitting with the budget on a Tuesday night when you are already exhausted. It is anticipating what the weekend needs before Friday arrives. When I let Zuleyka plan a vacation, or when I let my ex-wife plan the holidays (deep sigh), they put in all the effort, all the sacrifice, and I just followed. The moment I step up and lead I alleviate that work. When you take the kids to the park, who is leading that outing? Who packed the snacks? Who checked the weather? Who planned the route? Is it mom or is it dad? The answer tells you everything about who is carrying what in that household. But the deeper question is: are you also teaching your kids to pack their own snacks? To check the weather themselves? To plan the route? Because the park outing where dad did everything is better than the one where mom did everything by default, sure. But the park outing where the twelve-year-old planned the route because someone taught them how, that is leadership producing leadership.

As a brief sidenote, I want to mention that sometimes kids end up regulating their parents before they can even name what they are doing. Psychologists call it parentification: a child absorbing the emotional cost that should have been carried by the adult. That is the cost-absorption test failing at leadership in the most intimate scale imaginable, inside a family, inside a child.

And that black hole of effort or leadership is not abstract as with the parentification example. The black hole can tangibly look like the twenty hours in a video game while the household runs on someone else’s labor. It is the evening on the couch while partner plans the week, tracks the appointments, anticipates what the kids will need on Monday. I am not here to villainize gaming or entertainment or rest. Rest is necessary. But leadership sometimes means you will not have time to play or for leisure. Sometimes you will have to put the controller down, not because the game is wrong, but because something real needs you and you are the one who is supposed to show up for it. The question is not whether you deserve leisure. You do. The question is whether you are choosing leisure while someone else absorbs the cost of your absence. That is not rest but abdication with a screen in front of it.

Here is what passivity looks like in hours: a working parent with a standard job, a commute, and the basic requirements of being alive — sleeping, eating, showering, getting out the door — has maybe 57 hours a week of time that is not already claimed. Maybe, that is the generous number. That is the number where nobody got sick, no appointment ran long, nothing needed a repair, and nobody had to stay late, nothing went sideways. Life does not usually hand you the generous number. So the question becomes: what do you do with whatever is left? Because every hour you spend on yourself is an hour someone else is either covering for you or going without. That is not guilt either, it is simple arithmetic. 10 hours at the gym — 2 hours, 5 days — is 17% of those 57 hours. Nearly a fifth of every hour you have available for your family, your home, your relationship, your children, your own rest. I am not here to say exercise is wrong. Just like the gaming, these are not wrong or “bad”. Exercise is leadership of the self, and it matters. But we are not bodybuilders. We are not training for the Olympics! And when research shows your partner is likely carrying roughly seventy-three percent of all cognitive labor at home — the planning, the anticipating, the tracking, the invisible architecture that keeps everything from collapsing — those 10 hours look different from the inside of her week than they do from the inside of yours. Cut 1 hour per session. That is 5 hours back. 5 hours of bedtime routines, of homework, of being present when she is planning next week and you are actually there to carry half of it. Leadership is not eliminating what you need but adjusting what you take so the people around you are not subsidizing your optimization of yourself. A hard lesson for me as I do enjoy, most than anything, my alone time to develop my skills and projects, such as this lengthy essay. Who covered for me while I wrote this monster?! Hah!

Going back to children, and parentification, and emotional turmoil and work, there is a layer underneath the logistics that took me a while to see. Before I can teach my daughter to regulate her emotions, I must first regulate mine. Before I can teach her to find her center, I must first find mine. When I come home stressed, she knows before I say a word. She reads my shoulders, my breath, my speed. If my energy is scattered, hers becomes scattered. Our 3 month old son is following a similar trend where my energy seems to be the seed or pie forzao’ he grabs on to and follows. If my energy is calm, theirs becomes calm. Calm is contagious and so is chaos or distortions. This is not mystical thinking. I think it is simply nervous system regulation basics and mirror neuron, or “the biology of connection”. Every time I choose calm over reaction, I am not managing a moment but I am installing a pattern. It’s a leadership call after all!

Installing calm is not the same as teaching someone to generate their own calm. Modeling is a first layer. The second layer is empowerment: giving them the tools, the language, the practice so that they can regulate themselves when I am not in the room. If my calm only works when I am present, I have not led. I have made myself indispensable. And indispensable is just another word for single point of failure. The goal is a daughter who can find her own center, a son who can regulate himself in conflict, a stepson who can orient himself when everything is uncertain. Not because I am there radiating steadiness but because someone taught them how. They become leaders themselves, and it’s glorious!

That pattern — calm installing calm, chaos installing chaos — does not stop at the family. A manager who walks into a room regulated sets the temperature for the entire team. A politician who communicates from fear installs fear in millions of nervous systems simultaneously. The pattern scales and the biology does not change fundamentally. Only the amount of people absorbing the signal changes. Leadership installs patterns because leadership is a pattern of action and the highest form of that pattern is one that replicates: a leader who installs the capacity to lead, not just the experience of being led.

That pattern is or can be legacy. Not sneakers or a bank account. Not a car collection or whatever materials possessions we might think about. I saw a thread the other day, women asking men “what is your legacy? your sneaker collection?” Very dismissive, but they are pointing at something real. The work, the legacy, is not only the bank account. Financial provision is one lane of leadership, sure. But legacy is what you install in the people closest to you. The default response my daughter reaches for when her world is spinning at fifteen, at twenty-five, at thirty-five. The way my son regulates himself in conflict because he absorbed a pattern from our nervous system before he could even speak. The steadiness my stepson can orient toward when everything else is uncertain. That is legacy operating at a level no external accumulation can touch. It is invisible and internal. And it is exactly what I mean when I say leadership is sacrifice in service of building others: the most important work produces no visible evidence. Nobody posts it or applauds it but everybody in range absorbs it and the deepest version of that legacy is not what you installed in them but what they can now install in others. A daughter who leads her own household. A son who teaches his own children to find their center. Leadership that outlives you by generations is the end goal ultimately. What you install in the people around you — whether that is a household of four or an organization of four thousand — is the only thing that outlasts you, that’s legacy for me.

You do get something back from “real” leadership but I have to be honest about how this hits me. My first instinct is to say “mostly from the children, adults suck.” That might be my trauma talking because when I sit down with a cool and centered head, the actual return of leadership is freudenfreude: watching everyone else enjoy the fruit of your planning, your labor, your anticipation. You organized the vacation and tracked the logistics. Then you anticipated the needs while everyone else is present in the moment. You are running the system and the return is in their experience and freudenfreude and not in their gratitude or in applause. The fact that it worked and they got to live inside something you built is also sweet. And there is a deeper return I am only beginning to see: the moment when someone you invested in steps up and leads on their own (I see you, Gino André!!!). When the planning you modeled becomes planning they initiate and the care you practiced becomes care they extend without being asked, even if it excludes you, ironically. That return is not only freudenfreude but proof that the sacrifice was not just absorbed and it was transformed and is now alive and in motion, breathing its own life.

The cost of leadership is also very real. You are often too depleted to enjoy the thing alongside them. And I should name what cost actually means here, because the word is clean enough to hide behind. Cost can look like many things, it is the hour of sleep you did not get because you were mapping out tomorrow or the meal you skipped or ate standing up because you were solving something for someone else. Cost is the game you did not play, the show you did not watch, the run you did not take, because the capacity went somewhere else and there was nothing left. Cost is the mental bandwidth that is never fully off, the part of your brain that is always tracking what needs to happen next even when your body is sitting still. It needs not to be dramatic or cinematic because it’s real, it’s the slow, quiet erosion of the space you used to have for yourself before you became the person everyone else’s stability depends on. It can also be financial.

I’ve witnessed that cost-absorption and sacrifice gets tricky for many people because this is where sacrifice can curdle into martyrdom if you are not careful. Sacrifice is chosen, conscious, structural. The group needed someone to carry this and you carried it. But martyrdom is a corrosive identity. The martyr needs the suffering to prove something about who they are. The scorekeeper (my old pattern) was the mechanism that turned my sacrifice into martyrdom. “I did all this and nobody noticed. Leadership does suck!” But that is not leadership for me anymore, my own definition of leadership was tarnished. That kind of thinking pattern is really accounting for resentment. How many times have you heard the story of a parent pulling rank and wanting more gratitude from their children because of all the sacrifice, all the money and time spent, oh, the disgrace. I’ve realized that the internet is full of people on both sides of this line, the martyrs and the victims, masked as leaders, I believe some people call this virtue signaling (?). Partners exhausted from carrying “everything” or paying for “everything”. Partners furious that their carrying went unrecognized. Both are describing the same failure: one never led and the other led but crossed the line from sacrifice into victimhood but leadership covers both: carrying the weight AND not becoming a victim to your own role and responsibilities. Martyrdom is for victims, and leadership is for everyone else. Leadership is inherently a healthy endeavor in whichever way or frame you want to look at it, if your framing of leadership does not sound healthy, or looks slightly toxic, your frame and possibly definition, and evidence of leadership needs some reassessment and evaluation.

There is a third failure mode I did not see until recently, and it might be the most dangerous one because it looks the most like leadership. It is the person who carries everything and never teaches anyone else to carry anything. They absorb all the cost, plan everything, and “anticipate every need”. The thing is that the people around them never develop the capacity to do any of it, or if they do, you never get to experience that individual’s leadership because there’s no space for them to execute. That is not sacrifice, I argue it’s some type of hoarding. Hoarding control under the cover of service. “I will carry it all” sounds noble until you ask: for the sake of what? So everyone depends on you? So you get to be the indispensable one? So you can look like a “hero” instead of building other heroes? I had to ask myself that question honestly, and the answer was not clean. Some of my carrying was genuine service. Some of it was control I had dressed up as love. More work for me!

This same line runs through organizations and nations and it does not get prettier at scale. A company that brands itself as mission-driven while burning out the people who carry the mission is performing martyrdom at the institutional level, “look how much we sacrifice,” while the actual cost lands on the lowest-paid employees who never chose that sacrifice and never benefited from the branding. A government that invokes sacrifice during wartime while exempting the families of the people who declared the war is doing the same thing at the national scale. The martyrdom is always loudest at the top and the cost is always quietest at the bottom. Always.

Let’s talk about the opposite of leading: following. Following is natural. Anybody can and should be a follower if that is what they want and nobody should be ashamed or shamed for it, that is honest and it needs to be said plainly. The problem is not followers. The problem is posturing. When someone who is following pretends to lead, the system cannot orient itself. Children in a home cannot find their footing when the person who should be setting direction is performing leadership without practicing it. Posturing is not just dishonest but disorienting for everyone who depends on knowing who is actually carrying the weight, who made the call, who planned the thing, who will be there when it falls apart, who is absorbing the costs, etcetera. This posturing is a subject for another essay itself, I won’t get too much into this. For now, categorize this as another failure mode of leadership, or one of those fake leaders I was referring to at the beginning of the essay, very disorienting!

Nobody escapes home life. We all have one, or we all came from one. The billionaire heir in every movie and novel you have ever consumed eventually says the same line to a lover: “my father was never there, he was always working, I couldn’t tell you a thing about him.” That line is not about wealth but about leadership exercised in one domain and abdicated in another. Leadership at work, absence at home. And the child who grew up inside that absence carries it forward because the pattern was never corrected, the cost was never absorbed where it needed to be absorbed. This is my main problem with fake leadership. There is another version of that billionaire’s father that nobody talks about: the one who was home every night, who carried everything, who absorbed every cost, and who never once said “here, let me show you how.” The son of that father does not say “he was never there” but instead says “I never learned how to do any of this myself.” Both are failures of leadership. One is absence and the other is presence without transmission. Everything I have described so far operates at the scale of a household but it does not stop at the front door. It follows you to work, into institutions, into the structures that govern nations.

What the cost-absorption test reveals at work is often worse. Let me show you some ideas around this.

What Leadership Looks Like at Work

I have spent over twenty years building software across agencies, startups, and enterprise environments. I have been on both sides of the test and I have watched it fail in every professional environment I have ever been in, every single one. The patterns repeat, the titles are different but the dynamic does not. That’s not to say that at work, leadership failures are constant, I’m not saying that, let’s just identify some of these patterns. Leadership does show up at work, and I’m extremely grateful for these teachings and moments.

What does leadership actually look like at work when nobody is performing it for an audience? It is absorbing ambiguity so the people around you can execute clearly. It is writing the document nobody asked for because you realized the team was building on assumptions that had never been validated. It is sitting in a meeting where someone proposes a major change right before a deadline and recognizing that the proposal is not about the outcome but about the proposer’s need to demonstrate vision, and then not saying that, instead redirecting toward what actually needs to ship. That is cost absorption and it is invisible and it burns calories nobody counts.

The professional version of posturing is what I call competence theater. Senior people propose initiatives that sound strategic but serve their positioning more than the mission. The slides are polished, the vocabulary is sharp, and the team exchanges glances because everyone in the room knows this is not about the initiative but about the presenter being seen as the person who proposed it. The work will land on someone else and the credit will not meanwhile the people actually shipping are operating two or three levels below the title that gets credit and often the proposal is an excuse being constructed in advance because “we did not have the right infrastructure” is a much more comfortable narrative than “we did not execute.” I have sat in those rooms more times than I want to count.

There is a version of this that is gendered and it needs to be named. Women in technical organizations learn early that excellence attracts the wrong kind of attention: more labor, more scrutiny, repeated proving so they optimize for execution over recognition and they stay below what I think of as the “leadership altitude”, not because they lack capability but because they calculated, correctly, that visibility costs more than it pays. That is not a failure of ambition but competence operating under constraint and I have watched this happen to brilliant women I worked alongside and it is infuriating every time.

There is also a failure mode that disguises itself as leadership so effectively that most people cannot tell the difference until the damage is already done which is the person who coordinates through authority instead of through trust or partnership. These leaders default to hierarchy as a tool and when someone pushes back the response is not engagement with the substance but escalation. That is not leadership, I’m very sorry but that is leverage disguised as process and the person and persons absorbing the cost of that behavior, managing the fallout, choosing their words carefully, are the ones doing the actual leadership work but they just do not have the title that matches.

Tone policing is a specific form of this and I have been on both sides of it. The instruction to “calm down” during a substantive disagreement is not about calm, it is a reframing move. It takes a professional disagreement and recategorizes it as an emotional problem which shifts the burden from “address this person’s actual point” to “manage this person’s feelings.” The person doing it avoids absorbing the intellectual cost of the disagreement and the person receiving it now has to manage their own emotional state AND the other person’s perception of their emotional state AND the original substantive problem, all simultaneously. Three jobs for the price of zero recognition.

And then there is the vacuum problem when leadership above does not articulate a clear direction the person or persons with the most context become living documentation. These people carry the understanding and answer every clarifying question, write the insight nobody requested, connect the dots between teams that should have been connected by someone above them and the understanding dies when they leave the room because it was never committed to a structure, never formalized, never owned by the people whose job it was to own it, and the pattern was never installed because they were never allowed to lead and shine through. These “hidden leaders” become the human bridge between organizational gaps that should have been closed by design and the reward for holding it is that they get to keep holding it. There is generally no promotion for being the person who quietly ensured the building did not collapse, there is only the continued expectation that they will keep ensuring it. And what the empowerment lens reveals about this is that the understanding dying when they leave the room is not proof of their value but proof they were never given the support or the mandate to transfer the capability. Real leadership above them would have formalized that knowledge, built it into the team, made it survivable, acknowledged the costs and supports.

There is a calculation that every competent professional makes, usually silently, and if you have been in the workforce for any amount of time you know exactly what I am about to say. The gap between what you are paid and what you produce. The gap between your title and your actual operating altitude. The gap between the scope you are trusted with informally and the scope you are recognized for formally. You can deliver work that belongs three levels above (and below) your compensation and do it for years and the organization will let you because it benefits from the arrangement. The moment you name the gap there’s a possibility, depending on the types of leaderships in your organization, that you are no longer convenient, and you become a problem. So I’ve seen many people, many leaders, cower and dare to not name it as they optimize for execution, and stay below the radar, and let leadership own the performance. This is rational and it is also corrosive because over time it teaches you that your best work is worth exactly what they decided to pay for it, which is always less than what it actually cost you.

If you want to know who is leading, do not look at the org chart. Look at who absorbs the ambiguity, who translates between teams that cannot communicate directly, who documents clearly and helpfully the thing that would otherwise be lost, who sits with the risk assessment on a Tuesday night when they are already exhausted. That person is leading. If you want to know who is leading well, ask one more question: are they building others’ capacity to do what they do? Because the person who absorbs everything and transfers nothing is not leading, they are becoming a bottleneck with a martyr narrative, the “hero” type. I know because I have been that bottleneck.

The hardest professional leadership lesson I have learned, and I think this applies well beyond work, is that you have to regulate yourself in rooms where nobody else is regulating themselves. The proportionate response to bad faith is fury but the leadership response is to document what happened, propose something better, and not hand over more of yourself than the situation requires. Every piece of unnecessary context you volunteer under pressure is leverage you give to someone who has already shown you what they do with leverage. The impulse behind transparency is good faith but transparency aimed at people acting in bad faith is just self-harm with a noble story attached. The calendar is the argument and the work is the evidence and nothing else needs to be said. And underneath all of it you absorb the friction, you translate between people who should be talking to each other directly, you assess the risk nobody else mapped, you deliver the thing that holds everything together, and when you can you teach someone else how to do what you just did because the hero saves the day but the leader builds a room that does not need saving.

Robert Greenleaf, who spent most of his career inside AT&T before Servant Leadership (1977) became the usual touchstone for servant leadership, proposed a simple test: do those served grow as persons? Do they, while being served, become healthier, wiser, freer, more autonomous, more likely themselves to become servants? That last clause is the one I missed for years. More likely themselves to become servants. Greenleaf was not asking whether the leader absorbs cost, he was asking whether the leader’s sacrifice produces other leaders. Not just who carries the weight but whether the carrying built something in the people who witnessed it. James MacGregor Burns, the political scientist who studied presidential leadership for decades, spent a career distinguishing transformational leadership from transactional leadership in Leadership (1978). Burns showed that the dominant form in institutions is transactional: compliance exchanged for reward, not growth, not service, exchange. They did not invent the test but documented what anyone who has worked inside an organization already senses: most leadership is not leadership, it is management of compliance and compliance does not build leaders, it builds dependents.

The Edelman Trust Barometer has tracked public trust in institutions annually for over two decades across dozens of countries and the trend is consistent and it has not reversed: government, media, business, and NGOs have all seen trust decline to historic lows and people are not being cynical, IMHO, they are being accurate. The evidence that institutional leaders absorb cost on behalf of those they serve is simply not there and the evidence that they are building the next generation of leaders is even thinner. Look around, where are the leaders?

The same test applies at the territorial scale and this one is personal. I grew up in a place where fiscal policy, monetary policy, and trade routes were controlled by a larger power that would never live under the results of that policy. The debt got restructured and the creditors got paid but the electricity bill doubled and the grid collapsed, killing thousands of people, and ultimately got privatized. Young professionals left (and are still leaving) because the math no longer works. I left. I packed what I could carry and I left the island I loved because the people who made the decisions, the “leaders”, never had to live with them and I did and I could not afford to anymore. The decisions were made somewhere else and the consequences landed on our streets, in our homes, on our families. Who are these people leading? Themselves into profit? Who?! That is the cost-absorption test failed at the scale of a people and it looks exactly like it looks at every other scale. The entity with leverage does not absorb cost and the people without it do, always. And the empowerment test fails even harder: did that larger power build the island’s capacity to govern itself, to lead itself, to sustain itself? Or did it build dependence by design? I am being deliberately indirect here and I know it. Naming names would turn this paragraph into a political argument and I am making a leadership decision for the sake of this essay: the pattern matters more than the geography.

Four Things I’m Practicing

We are on track for our first trillionaire. Not someday but this year, 2026. Is that the result of leadership? Apply the test. Who absorbed the cost? It wasn’t the person who accumulated the wealth, that is for sure. The warehouse workers racing AI-optimized quotas until their bodies gave out absorbed cost. The teenagers in their bedrooms talking to chatbots that affirmed their suicidal ideation absorbed cost. The content moderators cleaning up AI-generated sludge for a few dollars an hour absorbed cost. The same math shows up across the portfolio: products shipped before they are safe and the crash lands on someone else’s body, infrastructure sold to cities and the cost of failure lands on the inspectors and riders and local politicians, expansion pushed into communities that never chose the noise or the risk. The pattern is always the same and the geography changes but the direction of cost does not. It flows down. The governments left holding the regulatory and infrastructure consequences absorbed cost. The public absorbed cost. A trillion dollars is not the result of leadership but the result of cost externalization operating at a scale that has never existed before. The wealth accumulated precisely because cost flowed downward while profit flowed upward and that is not leadership but extraction, and the algorithms and possibilities that built it will never model sacrifice because sacrifice would reduce the accumulation!

There is a micro and a macro to all of this and when the macro fails it pushes cost downward onto people who were already under-equipped to carry it.

Leadership is buildable. It is not a personality trait or something you are born with, it is not charisma. Leadership is practice across specific domains, accumulated over time, refined through failure and honest feedback. I know this because I built some of it and I am still building it and can name the domains.

The first domain is awareness. You cannot lead what you cannot see. Honesty with yourself, critical thinking, reflection, active listening. This is “the Epictetus layer” for me: what is in my control and what is not. Marcus Aurelius practiced this daily in his private journal, governing an empire by governing himself first — the collection we know as Meditations (written c. 170–180 CE). Ryan Holiday translated those principles for a modern audience in The Obstacle Is the Way (2014). Wayne Dyer dismantled the erroneous zones, the cognitive distortions that keep you externally oriented, blaming circumstances instead of examining your own contribution, in Your Erroneous Zones (1976). This cluster is about seeing clearly before acting and I spent years leading with confidence and zero self-awareness which is just a polished way of being wrong at high speed. I could make decisions all day but I could not tell you why half of them made me angry or anxious or whatever. The awareness domain is what finally slowed me down enough to see that the discomfort or activation was not about the meeting or the deadline but about something I had not looked at yet. Without it every other leadership skill is built on a distorted foundation and you will lead confidently in the wrong direction and not know it until the cost has already landed on everyone around you.

The second domain is relational. Communication is probably the most important leadership skill that exists, not rhetoric or persuasion but the ability to transmit what you actually mean and receive what someone else is actually saying. Marshall Rosenberg’s Nonviolent Communication (1999) (a precious life-changing gift from a dear close friend and coworker) gave me the language for expressing needs without aggression and hearing needs without defensiveness. Brené Brown’s Atlas of the Heart (2021) (another life-altering gift from another great friend) gave me the vocabulary for over sixty emotions I had no words for. You cannot regulate what you cannot name and you cannot lead through an emotional landscape you do not have a map for. Gary Chapman, in The Five Love Languages (1992), showed me that people receive care in different languages and if you are transmitting on the wrong frequency nobody hears you no matter how loud you broadcast. Daniel Siegel, in The Whole-Brain Child (2011) and No-Drama Discipline (2014), showed me how children’s brains develop and how to parent through connection rather than control. Humility, trust in others, involvement, freudenfreude. Not performing presence but actually reaching the people you are trying to lead. I remember the first time I told Zuleyka what I was actually feeling instead of what I thought I was supposed to feel and the difference in how she received it was so immediate it embarrassed me. I had been broadcasting on the wrong frequency for years wondering why nobody could hear me.

The third domain is structural. Service, consistency, proactivity, regulation, willpower, ethics, transparency. These are the values that make leadership reliable rather than episodic. Stephen R. Covey mapped the path from dependence to independence to interdependence in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People (1989) and that is literally the scaling path of leadership: from governing yourself, to leading alongside others, to building systems that serve the group. Andrew Grove’s High Output Management (1983) taught me that the measure of a leader is output not activity, not how many meetings you attended or how many emails you sent but what actually got built, shipped, resolved. This is the garbage-before-she-asks layer, the showing-up-every-time layer. Not once and not when you feel like it but every time until it becomes the way you move and people can depend on you without having to check. I am not there yet entirely. I still have days where I want to coast, where I convince myself that showing up yesterday earns me a pass today, it does not. The structure only works if it is consistent and consistency is the part of leadership that nobody romanticizes because there is nothing romantic about it, it is just showing up, again.

The fourth domain is generative and this is the one I was notably missing from this essay and from my earlier foundations in leadership. Everything in the first three domains can be practiced alone. Awareness, communication, structure: you can build all of that and still be the only person in the room who can lead. The generative domain is where leadership becomes contagious. It is teaching and mentoring and creating the conditions for someone else to develop their own awareness, their own relational skills, their own structure. It is the mother who does not just cook for her children but teaches them to cook. It is the manager who does not just absorb ambiguity but walks a junior through how she assessed the situation so they can assess the next one themselves. It is the partner who does not just carry cognitive load but builds shared systems so the load distributes naturally. My mother saw this before I did. She watched me define leadership as carrying, absorbing, sacrificing, and she said: that is real, but it is incomplete. Leadership is also empowering and enabling others to lead, by example, by teaching, by support, by creating the space for someone to try and fail and try again with you standing close enough to catch them but far enough away that they are actually doing it themselves. Without this domain the other three produce a “hero” but with these they produce a leader.

Every failure of leadership maps to a failure in one of these domains. Aggression is not strength but a failure of regulation masquerading as decisiveness. Micromanagement is not involvement but a failure of trust masquerading as diligence and the person micromanaging is not absorbing cost, they are distributing anxiety. Hostility is not honesty. Poor communication is not directness. Lack of reflection is not confidence. Disrespect is not authority. The person who mistakes aggression for leadership builds a structure that requires their constant pressure to function and that is not a structure, it’s kind of a hostage situation due to the employer-employee dynamics. And the person who carries everything without teaching anyone else to carry anything builds a structure that requires their constant presence to function and that is not leadership either, it is a different kind of hostage situation, one where the hostage taker thinks they are the “hero”.

There is a single diagnostic that surprisingly cuts through everything: schadenfreude or freudenfreude. Does the leader feel satisfaction when the group succeeds or when someone in the group fails? One question, and if you need more than a second to answer it honestly, you already have your answer. And there is a second diagnostic that cuts even deeper: when someone you invested in outgrows you, do you feel pride or threat? The leader who feels pride has completed the generative work and the leader who feels threat was never building leaders, they were building followers who confirmed their indispensability.

Not all input builds leadership and part of the work is developing discernment. Lived experience is part of that ledger too: some stretches build you, some scar you, some install patterns that hold under pressure — how you ask for help, how you come back after a mistake, how you stay honest when you could perform — and some install shortcuts, hypervigilance, cynicism, or compliance you mistake for maturity until life forces a reckoning. None of it is neutral; it is training whether you picked the curriculum or not. Which experiences built you and which ones only armored you. Which books rewired you and which ones you put down halfway through. Which feedback changed your trajectory and which was noise. Which relationships taught you something and which just confirmed what you already believed. I have read many books across philosophy, psychology, leadership, parenting, trauma recovery, and fiction and not all of them hit. The same filter applies to people, to therapy, to criticism, to praise. Not everything that arrives is signal and part of building leadership is learning to tell the difference and having the discipline to act on the right things in the right order.

The same discernment applies at work. Not every initiative deserves your energy and not every meeting deserves your preparation and not every proposal deserves your engagement. One of the hardest things to learn as a professional leader is that saying “no” to noise is itself an act of leadership because it protects your capacity and the capacity of the people who depend on you and it models for others that not all activity is progress. Some of the most important leadership moments in any career are the things you choose not to react to: the proposal you let die on its own because engaging would have given it oxygen, the escalation you did not match because the record already spoke, the frustration you kept private because letting it leak would have flattened your read on someone who was more complex than your anger was willing to admit.

Without this foundation you can still lead. But where are you leading to?

Where I Am Right Now

Here is the thing I keep coming back to though: something can be done about this. You can lead in how you communicate, choosing your own words instead of generated ones, saying what you actually mean instead of what sounds optimized. You can lead in how you consume, asking whether the content you are absorbing is building your capacity or replacing it. You can lead in how you show up, choosing intention over convenience in any room you walk into, digital or physical. And you can lead in how you build others, not just doing the work in front of them but teaching them to do the work, not just absorbing cost but sharing the tools so they can absorb it too, not just leading but multiplying leadership in every environment you touch.

Where are you absorbing cost so others do not have to?
Where are you redirecting it?
Where are you letting a system do your thinking because the thinking was hard and the system was easy?
Where are you carrying everything yourself because letting go feels like losing control?

Start with yourself and then look outward.

Who is absorbing costs right now so that you do not have to?
Whose labor, whose patience, whose planning is subsidizing your comfort?
Who around you has the capacity to lead if you would just make room for them?

Those questions cut both ways and they are supposed to! These answers should give us our foundations and path to become better leaders.

I am writing this from inside that process of understanding and becoming a leader, from that gap between who I am today and who I am becoming. This essay is not advice from someone who figured it out but a mirror I built to see myself clearly, to map the distance between what I understand about leadership and how I actually move in my life. Not from the other side of some completed transformation but just from the middle where the gap is still visible and still worth crossing. I thought leadership was sacrifice, and it is. Then my mother told me leadership is also empowering others to lead and I realized my definition had been shaped by the same control pattern I was trying to dismantle. The essay you just read is the version that includes what she taught me. It is more honest than the one before it and I am more honest for having written it.

Sources

John Taylor Gatto — Dumbing Us Down (1992)
Julian B. Rotter — “Generalized Expectancies for Internal vs. External Control of Reinforcement” (1966) · Locus of control (concept)
Terry Real — Terry Real (author overview; covers I Don’t Want to Talk About It, 1997)
Robert Bly — Iron John: A Book About Men (1990)
Zygmunt Bauman — Zygmunt Bauman (author); Consuming Life (2007)
Shoshana Zuboff — The Age of Surveillance Capitalism (2019)
Eli Pariser — The Filter Bubble (2011)
Eve Rodsky — Fair Play (2019) (publisher page—no dedicated Wikipedia article for this title)
Darcy Lockman — All the Rage (2019) (publisher page)
Lucia Ciciolla & Suniya S. Luthar — “Invisible Household Labor and Ramifications for Adjustment” (2019)
Ana Catalano Weeks, Helen Kowalewska & Leah Ruppanner — “Take a Load Off? Not for Mothers” (2025)
Leah Ruppanner et al. — “Taking on the Invisible Third Shift” (2025)
Robert K. Greenleaf — Servant leadership (concept); Servant Leadership (1977)
James MacGregor Burns — James MacGregor Burns (author); Leadership (1978) — not this unrelated Leadership bestseller
Edelman Trust Barometer (annual)
Epictetus — Discourses (recorded c. 108 CE); Epictetus (philosopher); Penguin Great Ideas series · Of Human Freedom (selections, 2010)
Marcus Aurelius — Meditations (written c. 170–180 CE)
Stephen R. Covey — The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People (1989)
Marshall B. Rosenberg — Nonviolent Communication (1999)
Brené Brown — Atlas of the Heart (2021)
Gary Chapman — The Five Love Languages (1992)
Daniel J. Siegel — The Whole-Brain Child (2011) · Daniel J. Siegel (author; covers No-Drama Discipline, 2014)
Lundy Bancroft — Why Does He Do That? (2002) (Open Library search)
Lindsay C. Gibson — Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents (2015) (Open Library search)
Thích Nhất Hạnh — Thích Nhất Hạnh (author); Anger: Wisdom for Cooling the Flames (2001) (Open Library search)
Wayne W. Dyer — Your Erroneous Zones (1976)
Ryan Holiday — The Obstacle Is the Way (2014)
Andrew S. Grove — High Output Management (1983)
Camille Fournier — The Manager’s Path (2017) (O’Reilly); Camille Fournier
Paulo Coelho — _The Alchemist_ (1988)
Melody Beattie — Melody Beattie (author); Journey to the Heart (1996) (Open Library search)
Laura Davis — Allies in Healing (1991) (Open Library search)
bell hooks — The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love (2004)
David Goggins — David Goggins (author; covers Can’t Hurt Me, 2018)

Rolling Back Main (And Why You Shouldn't Have to)

Antonio Rodriguez Martinez — Mon, 09 Mar 2026 16:30:00 GMT

Rolling Back Main (And Why You Shouldn’t Have to)

A guide for solo developers who committed directly to main and need to undo it, followed by an honest look at why it happened. Written from real experience on a mobile-first turborepo project: Expo for native, Next.js for web and admin, Hono for the API, all wired together with tRPC and backed by Turso.

Part 1: The Rollback Guide

The Situation

I was vibecoding the early scaffolding of a mobile-first turborepo. Clerk auth was integrated, tRPC was wired up, NativeWind was styled, the Expo app was talking to the Hono API. Things were moving. Then I started refactoring the auth screens to “improve user experience,” and five commits later I had broken a bunch of things I didn’t notice until it was too late.

The irony: the commit messages all say things like “improve,” “enhance,” “streamline.” They were doing the opposite. Let’s fix this mess!

Before You Start

The first step is figuring out where you are and where you need to go back to. Run this to see your recent commit history:

git log --oneline

You’ll get a list of commits, newest first. Each line is a short SHA and a commit message. What you’re looking for is the last commit where everything still worked. Scan the messages and find the boundary between “this was fine” and “this is where things started breaking.”

Next, check whether your bad commits have already been pushed to the remote:

git log origin/main --oneline

If the bad commits are only local, your life is easier. If they’re already on the remote, you’ll need to either force push (Strategy A) or push revert commits (Strategy B).

My Situation

Here’s what my log looked like:

49ac744 (HEAD -> main, origin/main) Update documentation: add SERVICES.md...
831db24 Refactor useVerifyEmail hook to improve session finalization logic...
c24cdd7 Enhance authentication flow by integrating email parameter handling...
3027eec Refactor authentication screens to improve user experience...
8b6b164 Enhance error messages and handling in authentication screens...
b853068 Update documentation to reflect recent changes: add AUTH-SETUP.md...
ce956ac Refactor mobile app layout and TabOneScreen to improve navigation...
751f5f7 Integrate Clerk authentication into mobile app...
66afbd7 Refactor mobile app layout and TabOneScreen to integrate SafeAreaProvider...
...etcetera!!!...

Everything from 8b6b164 up through 49ac744 needs to go. The last known good state is b853068, right after documenting the auth setup and before touching the auth screen components. That’s 5 commits to undo (a topic for later…).

All five bad commits were already pushed (origin/main pointed to 49ac744). That means whichever strategy I pick, I need to deal with the remote too.

Strategy A: Rewrite History (`git reset`)

What it does: Moves the main branch pointer back to your last good commit as if the bad commits never happened. Clean history, but those commits are erased from the branch.

When to use it: You’re a solo developer, nobody else has pulled your bad commits, and you don’t care about preserving a record of the mistake.

# 1. Make sure your working directory is clean
git stash  # if you have uncommitted changes you want to keep

# 2. Reset main to the last good commit (use your SHA here)
git reset --hard b853068

# 3. If you already pushed the bad commits to remote, force push
git push --force-with-lease origin main

--force-with-lease is safer than --force. It refuses to push if someone else has pushed commits you haven’t seen. Unlikely for a solo dev, but it’s a good habit that costs nothing.

After this: Both local and remote main point to your last good commit. In my case, the auth screen refactoring, the useVerifyEmail hook changes, the email parameter handling, and the documentation updates from those commits are all gone from history.

The bad commits still exist in git’s reflog for about 30 days if you need to recover anything. Run git reflog to see them:

b853068 (HEAD -> main, origin/main, origin/HEAD) HEAD@{0}: reset: moving to b853068
49ac744 HEAD@{1}: clone: from https://github.com/antoniwan/nido-app.git

See that 49ac744 HEAD@{1}? That’s the HEAD of the bad commits, still accessible. If I realize later that one of those five commits had something I actually needed, I can cherry-pick it out:

# Check out a specific file from the bad commits without restoring the whole thing
git checkout 49ac744 -- path/to/file-i-actually-needed.ts

# Or cherry-pick a single commit onto a new branch to extract what you need
git checkout -b recovery/grab-that-one-thing
git cherry-pick c24cdd7

The reflog is the safety net under the safety net. The bad commits aren’t really gone; they’re just not on any branch. Git will garbage-collect them after about 30 days, so if you think you might need something from them, don’t wait.

Strategy B: Preserve History (`git revert`)

What it does: Creates new commits that undo the bad commits. The original commits stay in history, and the revert sits on top. Nothing is erased.

When to use it: You want a record of what happened and what you undid, or you’re uncomfortable rewriting history, or others may have already pulled your changes.

# 1. Revert the bad commits (newest to oldest), staged but not yet committed
#    Replace the number with however many commits you need to undo
git revert --no-commit HEAD~5..HEAD

This runs silently if there are no conflicts. No output means it worked.

(Note: when I tested this strategy, I did a dry run reverting 3 commits instead of all 5. The output below reflects that test. The process is identical regardless of the count — just adjust the number.)

Now review what it staged:

git diff --cached

Here’s a truncated version of what I saw when I ran this on my project (reverting 3 documentation-related commits as a test):

diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
--- a/README.md
+++ b/README.md
@@ -38,10 +38,9 @@ pnpm check-types
 | [GETTING-STARTED.md](docs/GETTING-STARTED.md)       | How to chip away — build order, commands, where to look      |
 | [AUTH-SETUP.md](docs/AUTH-SETUP.md)                 | Auth setup, test users, testing login and sign-up            |
 | [MONOREPO.md](docs/MONOREPO.md)                     | Monorepo layout, three web apps (marketing, admin, embedded) |

diff --git a/apps/admin/.env.example b/apps/admin/.env.example
deleted file mode 100644
--- a/apps/admin/.env.example
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,4 +0,0 @@
-# Clerk (admin auth). Get keys from https://dashboard.clerk.com/
-NEXT_PUBLIC_CLERK_PUBLISHABLE_KEY=pk_test_xxxx
-CLERK_SECRET_KEY=sk_test_xxxx

diff --git a/apps/admin/.gitignore b/apps/admin/.gitignore
@@ -27,7 +27,6 @@ yarn-error.log*
 .env*
-!.env.example

diff --git a/apps/mobile/.env.example b/apps/mobile/.env.example
deleted file mode 100644

... (many more files — the diff will be long in a monorepo)

This is the “review” step. You’re reading the diff to confirm it’s undoing what you expect: documentation rows removed from the README table, .env.example files deleted, .gitignore exclusions reverted. If something looks wrong, you can abort with git reset HEAD before committing anything.

Once you’re satisfied, commit and push:

# 3. Commit the revert as a single commit
git commit -m "Revert auth refactoring commits (49ac744..8b6b164): broke session finalization and email verification flow. Rolling back to b853068."

# 4. Push normally (no force needed)
git push origin main

Here’s what my commit and push looked like:

[main 6c650fb] Revert commits because I'm a dumbass
 22 files changed, 261 insertions(+), 2283 deletions(-)
 delete mode 100644 apps/admin/.env.example
 delete mode 100644 apps/mobile/.env.example
 delete mode 100644 apps/mobile/app/(auth)/_layout.tsx
 delete mode 100644 apps/mobile/app/(auth)/sign-in.tsx
 delete mode 100644 apps/mobile/app/(auth)/sign-up.tsx
 delete mode 100644 apps/mobile/app/(auth)/verify-email.tsx
 delete mode 100644 apps/mobile/app/index.tsx
 delete mode 100644 docs/AUTH-SETUP.md

22 files changed. 2,283 lines deleted. That’s the cost of five bad commits in a monorepo.

The push goes through normally since we’re adding commits, not rewriting history:

To https://github.com/antoniwan/nido-app.git
   b853068..6c650fb  main -> main

A note on the commit message: My actual message was “Revert commits because I’m a dumbass.” I’m of two minds on this. On one hand, it’s honest and it’s my repo. On the other hand, commit messages are documentation. Six months from now, git log --oneline will show 6c650fb Revert commits because I'm a dumbass sandwiched between actual descriptions of work. It tells future-me nothing about what was reverted or why. A message like Revert auth refactoring (8b6b164..49ac744): broke verify-email flow and session handling is less cathartic but actually useful when you’re scanning the log trying to understand what happened. Self-deprecation in commit messages is another form of the laziness this guide is about: it feels like accountability, but it’s skipping the work of writing something informative. Even solo devs deserve a readable log. Especially solo devs, because there’s no one else to ask “hey, what was this commit about?”

The --no-commit flag is what makes this clean. Without it, git would create a separate revert commit for each bad commit (three “Revert …” entries in the log). With it, everything gets staged together and you commit once.

Note on the range: HEAD~5..HEAD means “the last 5 commits.” Adjust the number to match how many bad commits you have. If you’re unsure, count them in git log --oneline.

Strategy Comparison

	Reset (A)	Revert (B)
History	Clean, bad commits gone	Full record preserved
Remote push	Requires `--force-with-lease`	Normal push
Recovery	Via reflog (~30 days)	Original commits visible forever
Complexity	3 commands	4 commands
Solo dev?	The right call	Also fine
Team?	Dangerous	Safe

For a solo developer, Strategy A is usually the right call. It’s simpler and gives you a clean history. In my case, I’m the only one pulling from this repo, so there’s no reason to preserve the record of five commits that did nothing but break things. Strategy B is there if you want the paper trail or if anyone else might have cloned your repo.

Turborepo-Specific Cleanup

The git part is done. But in a monorepo, rolling back the code is only half the job. Your local environment still thinks it’s living in the future: node_modules have packages that the restored commit doesn’t expect, Turbo’s cache has build artifacts from the bad commits, and your package manager’s lockfile might be out of sync. If you skip this cleanup, you’ll get mysterious build failures and wonder if the rollback even worked.

Your specific project will have its own cleanup needs depending on your stack. Think about what your bad commits touched: did they add dependencies? Change shared packages? Modify config files? Anything that leaves artifacts outside of git needs to be cleaned up manually. Here’s what I had to do for mine:

# 1. Nuke node_modules across the entire monorepo
#    In a turborepo, each app/package has its own node_modules
#    Don't just clear the root — get all of them
rm -rf node_modules apps/*/node_modules packages/*/node_modules

# 2. Reinstall from the lockfile at the restored commit
#    This project uses pnpm (common with turborepo)
pnpm install

# 3. Clear Turborepo's build cache
#    Stale cache = stale builds = mysterious "it still doesn't work" moments
rm -rf .turbo
turbo daemon clean

Now verify each app builds. In a monorepo, don’t just build one app and assume the rest are fine. The bad commits touched auth components in the mobile app, but also documentation, .env.example files, and .gitignore rules across admin and mobile. Stale state in any of those apps could cause problems:

# Build everything
turbo build

# If you want to be thorough, check each app individually
turbo build --filter=mobile
turbo build --filter=web
turbo build --filter=admin
turbo build --filter=api

For the Expo mobile app specifically, Metro has its own bundler cache that lives outside of Turbo:

cd apps/mobile
npx expo start --clear

Beyond the build cache, think about what else your bad commits touched that lives outside of git’s awareness. In my case, the reverted commits had added Clerk keys to apps/admin/.env.example and apps/mobile/.env.example, both of which got deleted in the rollback. So I had to double-check that my actual .env files still matched what the restored code expected.

If your bad commits modified shared packages in packages/, the source is reverted but any built output (like dist/ folders) might still be stale. Nuke them: rm -rf packages/*/dist and rebuild. If they included database migrations, rolling back the code doesn’t roll back the schema — that’s a separate problem you’ll need to handle manually. If they changed native dependencies in an Expo or React Native project, you may need npx expo prebuild --clean or a full rebuild of your development client. And if they touched CI/CD config (GitHub Actions, Vercel, etc.), verify the restored config still works on your next deployment.

The general principle: git only rolls back the source. Caches, build artifacts, databases, environment config, native builds — anything that exists outside of .git needs to be manually reconciled. The rollback command gets you 80% of the way there. The last 20% is on you, and it’s the part that will bite you if you skip it.

Part 2: Why I Had to Do Any of This

Here’s the part where I talk about why this happened. I’m writing this for myself, but if any of it resonates, take what’s useful.

My Laziness Masked as Efficiency

Working directly on main felt faster to me. No branch to create, no PR to open, no merge to deal with. As a solo developer vibecoding the foundation of a new project, it felt especially justified. “I’m scaffolding. I’m moving fast. Everything is changing anyway. Who am I branching for?”

This reasoning sounded like efficiency to me, but looking back, it was laziness. The way I see the difference: efficiency is removing steps that don’t add value. Laziness is skipping steps that do add value because the cost of skipping them feels abstract until it isn’t.

Creating a branch takes five seconds:

git checkout -b feature/refactor-auth-screens

That’s the entire overhead I was skipping. Five seconds of “ceremony” that would have meant the difference between git checkout main and the multi-step surgery described in Part 1.

What Actually Happened

The scaffolding phase went fine. Integrating Clerk, wiring up tRPC, setting up NativeWind with a custom color palette, getting the Expo app to talk to the Hono API through Turso: all of that worked, committed to main, no issues. The habit got reinforced. “See? Branching would have been pointless overhead.”

Then came the auth screen refactoring. Five commits that touched the sign-in flow, the sign-up flow, the email verification hook, the session finalization logic, and the navigation between all of them. Each commit message said things like “improve,” “enhance,” “streamline.” Each one introduced subtle breakage I didn’t catch because I was testing the happy path and moving to the next thing.

By the time I realized the useVerifyEmail hook’s session finalization was broken and the email parameter handling in sign-in was tangled, I was five commits deep with no clean state to fall back to. The “last good state” was somewhere behind me in the log, and getting back to it meant reading a rollback guide and praying I didn’t miss a step.

If I had run git checkout -b feature/refactor-auth-screens before that first commit, main would still be sitting clean at b853068, and “rolling back” would have been: git checkout main. Delete the branch if you want. Done.

What Branching Actually Gives Me as a Solo Developer

I used to think branching was a team practice. It’s not. Here’s what it gives me, working alone on a turborepo with four apps:

A stable reference point. Main always works. The mobile app launches, the API responds, the web app renders, the admin panel loads. If my auth refactoring experiment breaks the verify-email flow, main doesn’t care. Main is still clean.

Cheap experimentation. Branches are free. I could have tried three different approaches to the auth screen architecture: one with shared hooks, one with per-screen logic, one with a state machine. Keep the one that works, delete the rest. On main, every experiment is a commitment I might have to surgically remove.

Cleaner recovery. Compare the two recovery paths. Without branching: read a guide, identify the SHA, run reset or revert commands, force push, nuke node_modules across every app and package in the monorepo, clear the turbo cache, clear the Metro cache, rebuild all four apps, check my .env files. With branching: git checkout main. Done.

Better commit history. When I work on a branch and squash-merge, my main branch tells a clean story: “integrated Clerk auth,” “wired up tRPC,” “added NativeWind.” When I work on main, the story becomes: “refactor auth screens,” “enhance auth flow,” “refactor useVerifyEmail,” “update docs for the refactoring,” then a revert commit that says “rolled all of that back because it was broken.” One of these histories is useful. The other is a diary of my mistakes.

The Trap I Fell Into

The trap isn’t that I don’t know this. I do. I’ve told other developers to branch. The trap is that the cost of not branching was invisible to me 99% of the time. I committed to main, it worked, I moved on. Twenty-two commits of scaffolding went fine on main. The habit got reinforced with every single one.

Then the 1% hit. I was five commits deep into an auth refactoring that broke session finalization across the Expo app, and I was reading a guide about git reset --hard and --force-with-lease and nuking node_modules from every directory in a monorepo, and I realized I had traded five seconds of branch creation for thirty minutes of cleanup and the low-grade anxiety of wondering if I actually got everything back to the right state.

That trade was never efficient. To me, it was just laziness that hadn’t been invoiced yet.

Five Commits of Not Noticing

This part deserves its own section because it’s a separate failure from the branching problem. The auth screen refactoring didn’t break on the first commit. It broke across five commits, and I didn’t notice until all five were in.

That’s worth sitting with. Five commits means I wrote code, committed it, looked at the result, thought “this is fine,” and moved on. Five times. The breakage was there the entire time. I just wasn’t looking at the right things.

Why? A few possibilities, and I’m being honest with myself about all of them:

I was testing the happy path only. I refactored the sign-in screen, tested sign-in, it worked, committed. Then the sign-up screen, tested sign-up, committed. But did I test the full flow end to end? Did I verify that the useVerifyEmail hook still finalized the session correctly after the changes in c24cdd7? Did I check that the email parameter handling in sign-in still worked after the navigation changes? No. I tested the thing I just changed, not the things adjacent to it.

I was reading my own commit messages as progress. “Enhance authentication flow.” “Improve session finalization logic.” “Streamline email parameter handling.” Each commit message told a story of improvement. But I wrote those messages, and I was biased toward believing my changes were improvements. The commit messages were aspirational, not verified.

My vibecoding feedback loop was too short. When I’m iterating fast with AI-generated code, the cycle is: generate, glance, commit, next. The “glance” step is doing a lot of heavy lifting, and it’s the weakest link. I’m pattern-matching on “does this look right?” instead of “does this actually work across all the flows it touches?”

I had no checkpoint. This connects back to the branching problem, but it’s worth stating separately. If I had a working main to compare against, the breakage would have been obvious earlier. I could run the app from main, run it from my branch, and see the difference. Without that reference point, “working” was just “seems okay to me right now.”

The takeaway for me: catching breakage five commits late isn’t just a branching problem. It’s a testing-and-verification problem. Branching gives me a safety net. But the reason I needed the safety net is that I wasn’t checking my work thoroughly enough between commits. Both failures contributed. Fixing one without fixing the other just means the next incident will look slightly different.

What would have caught this earlier: after each commit, run through the full auth flow. Sign up, verify email, sign in, sign out, sign back in. Every time. Yes, it’s tedious. It’s less tedious than rolling back five commits.

But there’s something deeper here that I think deserves serious attention, and it’s the thing I’m most uncomfortable admitting: this is a critical thinking failure. Not a tooling failure, not a workflow failure. A thinking failure.

Every commit I made was a decision. “This code is good enough to commit.” “I don’t need to test the adjacent flows.” “The commit message says ‘improve’ so it must be an improvement.” “I don’t need a branch for this.” Five commits means five decisions where I chose not to stop and think critically about what I was doing. I deferred to momentum instead of judgment. I let the feeling of productivity substitute for the evidence of it.

Vibecoding made this worse in a specific way. When I write code myself, I have to think the implementation into existence. That thinking is a natural review moment — I’m reasoning through the logic as I type it, so I at least have a chance of noticing when something doesn’t fit. When the AI generates the code, that step disappears. I go from “I need to refactor this hook” to “here’s the refactored hook” without the intermediate step of actually reasoning through the implementation. The “glance” I mentioned earlier is doing even less work than I thought, because I’m not checking work I did — I’m checking work someone else did, at speed, with my guard down because it looks right. The AI produces code that reads well. Readable code feels correct. But feeling correct and being correct are different things, and five commits of not noticing is what happens when I let one substitute for the other.

I think this matters beyond my repo. The way I make decisions in a codebase reflects how I make decisions generally. Every shortcut I take, every verification I skip, every assumption I don’t question — those are habits of mind, not habits of git. A repo is just a place where the consequences of lazy thinking become visible and measurable. In other areas of life, the consequences are just as real but harder to trace back to the specific moment I stopped thinking critically.

The uncomfortable question I’m sitting with: if I can’t be bothered to think critically about five commits in my own solo project, where the only person affected is me, what does that say about the rigor I bring to decisions with higher stakes? I don’t have a clean answer for that yet. But I think the question is worth asking.

Do AI Agents Even Work Better When You Branch?

This is a question I started asking myself after this whole mess, and it turns out the answer is unambiguously yes. Not just “better practice” yes, but “the tools are literally designed around it” yes.

GitHub Copilot’s coding agent can only push to branches prefixed with copilot/. It is physically prevented from pushing to main. That’s not a suggestion or a best practice doc buried in a wiki. It’s a hard constraint built into the product. GitHub looked at the problem of AI agents writing code and decided the first safety rail is: never let it touch main directly. If GitHub’s own AI agent isn’t trusted to commit to main, I have to ask myself why I thought I should be trusted to do it while vibecoding at speed.

Claude Code has built-in git worktree support. You can spin up isolated worktrees where each agent session gets its own branch and working directory. The idea is that you can run multiple AI agents in parallel, each on its own branch, and they can’t interfere with each other or with main. When the agent is done, you review the branch and merge what works. If it produced garbage, you delete the worktree and nothing is lost.

The pattern across the ecosystem is consistent: Cursor, Aider, Cline, Claude Code, Copilot — they all either enforce or strongly encourage branching. The emerging best practice is to treat each AI coding session as its own branch, commit small and often within that branch, and only merge to main after human review. Some teams even use naming conventions like agent/feature-name to make it obvious which branches were AI-assisted.

Here’s what I find interesting about this: the AI tooling community arrived at “always branch, never commit to main directly” not because of some abstract git philosophy, but because they learned the hard way that AI-generated code needs isolation. The output is variable. Running the same prompt twice can produce different results. The agent might refactor something you didn’t ask it to touch. Without branch isolation, you’re one bad generation away from exactly the situation I described in Part 1.

I don’t have a definitive answer on whether branching makes the AI itself produce better code. But I’m fairly convinced that branching makes the workflow around AI-generated code dramatically safer and more manageable. The isolation means you can experiment freely, the branch boundary means main stays stable, and the merge step forces a review moment that the “generate, glance, commit, next” cycle on main completely skips.

If the companies building these tools decided that branching isn’t optional for AI-assisted development, maybe it shouldn’t be optional for me either. Something to sit with.

The Fix

For me, the fix isn’t discipline. It’s making the right thing the default. Here’s what I’m doing:

Git aliases. Making branching so easy I don’t think about it:

git config --global alias.start '!f() { git checkout -b "$1" && echo "Working on $1"; }; f'
# Now: git start feature/refactor-auth-screens

A pre-commit hook on main. Making committing to main annoying on purpose:

#!/bin/sh
# .git/hooks/pre-commit
branch=$(git rev-parse --abbrev-ref HEAD)
if [ "$branch" = "main" ]; then
  echo ""
  echo "  ⚠ You're committing directly to main."
  echo "  Remember the auth screen rollback?"
  echo "  Use: git checkout -b feature/your-thing"
  echo ""
  echo "  (bypass with --no-verify if you really mean it)"
  exit 1
fi

A personal rule. Main is for merges only. Every change, no matter how small, gets a branch. No exceptions. The “it’s just scaffolding” exception is exactly how this project ended up needing a rollback guide.

The Honest Summary

I didn’t need a rollback guide. I needed a five-second habit. The rollback guide exists because I optimized for the wrong thing: speed of committing instead of safety of my codebase. To me, that’s laziness wearing efficiency’s clothes. I’m not calling anyone else lazy for doing the same thing. But I know it was laziness for me, because I knew better and I still skipped it.

The goal isn’t to feel bad about it. The goal is to make the five-second habit automatic so this guide collects dust.

Written after rolling back five commits on my own project because I was too lazy to type git checkout -b. Learn from my experience if it speaks to you.

Sources

Git Documentation

git reset — Moving branch pointers and unstaging changes
git revert — Creating commits that undo previous commits
git reflog — Viewing the reference log to recover “lost” commits
git cherry-pick — Applying specific commits from one branch to another
git worktree — Managing multiple working trees for parallel development
git push —force-with-lease — Safer force pushing that checks for upstream changes

AI Agents and Branching

Using Git Worktrees for Multi-Feature Development with AI Agents — Nick Mitchinson on worktree-based workflows for AI coding
How we’re shipping faster with Claude Code and Git Worktrees — incident.io’s real-world workflow with parallel AI agents
Parallel Vibe Coding: Using Git Worktrees with Claude Code — Dan Does Code on parallel AI sessions
Claude Code: Common Workflows — Official Claude Code docs on worktrees and branching
About GitHub Copilot Coding Agent — GitHub’s docs on Copilot’s copilot/ branch prefix restriction
GitHub Copilot Coding Agent 101 — Getting started with Copilot’s agentic workflows
Responsible Use of GitHub Copilot Coding Agent — GitHub’s safety guidelines including branch protection

Vibecoding Best Practices

AI Coding Best Practices in 2025 — DEV Community overview of commit hygiene with AI tools
Building With AI Coding Agents: Best Practices for Agent Workflows — Elisheba Anderson on agent workflow patterns
My LLM Coding Workflow Going Into 2026 — Addy Osmani on layering AI tools with git discipline
Vibe Coding with GitHub Copilot — GitHub’s official vibecoding tutorial

Turborepo

Turborepo Documentation — Official Turborepo docs for monorepo management and caching

The Feeling Is Not the Problem

Antonio Rodriguez Martinez — Sun, 22 Feb 2026 23:28:00 GMT

Author’s note (2026-02-27): If you read an earlier version of this essay, I’ve updated it to correct a gap in how honestly I described my own part in the patterns I’m critiquing — especially around “alpha” performance, reactivity, and self-mastery. The core idea is the same, but the language is clearer about my own complicity and about how ongoing and uncomfortable this work really is.

When I feel anger, what are my options? Shout or stuff it down? When I feel desire, do I act on it or fight it? There’s a persistent confusion in modern culture about what feelings are for — where feeling becomes a problem to be solved, a fire to be extinguished or a match to be struck. I think most people are operating under an assumption they’ve never examined: that if you feel something, you have to do something about it.

My argument is that feelings are not instructions. Feelings are information, data. And like any piece of information, you can let yourself become informed and then just sit with it.

Between suppression and indulgence, there is a third option that almost nobody teaches which is integration. It sounds fancy, but it just means going through an experience with your whole self. To integrate a feeling is to experience it fully, to let it register, to let it move through the body, without attaching it to an obligation. Integration is about feeling things without split-second reactions, without internal identity politics, and letting that feeling travel your entire self — body, soul, mind, spirit, ki, prana, call it whatever you want, all of it.

The feeling of attraction does not require pursuit. The feeling of anger does not require confrontation. The feeling of envy does not require shame. The feeling of excitement does not require announcement. The feeling of love does not require possession. The feeling of pride does not require display. Each one can be noticed, examined, felt, and then released or chosen on your terms and not the impulse’s.

Most people seem to default to one of two responses without realizing about the third integrated option. If you step back far enough, the patterns are simple:

The primitive model: feel → act.
The suppression model: feel → deny.
The integrated model: feel → observe → choose.

What distinguishes integrated people from reactive ones is not the absence of difficult feelings, but what happens between feeling and action. That interval — that breath or two — is where character lives.

Here’s where it gets contradictory. A culture that fetishizes natural food, natural medicine, stillness, and conscious living often treats natural impulses with enormous hostility. Lust is sold as pathological. Aggression is toxic. Ambition is suspect. Jealousy is something to post about apologetically. But these are not aberrations of character; these human experiences are biological, normal, organic, and non-GMO. They served evolutionary purposes long before the concept of a workplace, a marriage contract, or a social media platform existed.

And then look at what passes for “strength” now. The “alpha.” The “high-value man.” Watch what actually gets modeled in those spaces: it’s the primitive model wearing a suit and some perfume, probably drives a cool ride but it’s just reactive dominance and possibly some sprinkled emotional volatility framed as passion. Chest-puffing framed as boundaries. Cutting people off at the first sign of friction framed as standards. The language borrows from psychology and self-development — attachment styles, red flags, inner child — and uses it to justify the exact opposite of what integration looks like. A man who explodes at a restaurant because the service was slow and calls it “not tolerating disrespect.” A man who ghosts a woman after a disagreement and frames it as “protecting his peace.” (I’m so sorry Katie!!) A man who can’t sit in a difficult conversation without escalating, because escalation feels like control and stillness feels like weakness. That is feel → act dressed up as philosophy. Primitive behavior with a marketing budget. And it is dangerous and irresponsible, because it teaches men that reactivity is power when reactivity is the opposite of power. How can you claim strength when you don’t even possess self-mastery? I’ve been there. I get it. But I also got past it. Bullshit, it’s not that easy but I’m doing the work. I will get there, or maybe I won’t, what matters is the awareness and the integration, this is me, all of it.

What you actually want is not to be alpha. What you actually want is to be integrated. Because from integration you become your own authentic self — a human being, un mamifero, Homo Sapiens Sapiens, the entirety of who you are, of your own construction and volition. Not a template or a brand. Something you built through the slow, unsexy work of learning what your feelings are telling you and choosing what to do about it with actual strength: self-discovery, self-awareness, self-discipline, RESTRAINT!

The problem is not that humans have these drives but that most people receive no instruction in how to carry them, and the result is a world where adults mistake feeling for permission and confuse impulse with directive. We are not taught enough about our feelings and how to handle them. I was told “crying is bad” and “calm yourself” every time I pushed back. Most of my life I ended up suppressing or absorbing, which erased my integrated self in favor of some sort of cold-war peace — feeling nothing on the surface while everything churned underneath.

There is a version of this “self-control” that is really just self-erasure — white-knuckling through emotion, pretending not to feel things, building an identity around stoic numbness. I know this one. This is not integrated strength. It is suppression in service of other people’s comfort. Passable in the short term, but it fools nobody long enough to matter and it costs you your integrity.

The integrated person is not someone who feels less. They often feel more, precisely because they are not afraid of what they feel. They have learned that they can hold a feeling at a distance, examine it with curiosity rather than dread, and still be the one determining what comes next. That capacity — to feel without flinching, to observe without panicking, to choose without being compelled — is not a temperament. It is a skill. And like all skills, it can be practiced or neglected.

Integrated strength is something quieter and more difficult. It looks like a person who for example feels strong physical attraction in a professional setting — and experiences it fully, notices it, even finds it amusing — without the slightest compulsion to act. Not because the desire was not real but because the feeling and the action are understood as separate events, governed by separate faculties. It looks like a person who feels genuine anger at an injustice and sits with that anger, understands it, even honors it — without becoming the anger. Without letting the anger make the decisions. It looks like a person who feels a surge of love for someone — and lets it be full and real without needing to secure it, control it, or demand it be returned on a timeline. It looks like a person who feels pride in something they built — and lets that pride live quietly, without needing an audience to make it count.

It looks like a person who feels deep grief after a loss — and lets it sit in the chest, heavy and real, without rushing to fix it or explain it away or perform recovery on anyone else’s timeline. Not because they are broken. But because they understand that grief is the body’s way of registering what mattered, and that process does not need to be efficient.

It looks like a person who feels envy watching someone else succeed at the thing they’ve been struggling with — and instead of collapsing into shame or manufacturing resentment, they let the envy speak. They hear it say: this matters to me, I want this too, I’m not where I want to be yet. And they let that be useful information rather than an indictment of their worth.

Here is the part I’m still figuring out. I live this work. People soften around me when I’m integrated, or they hate how I behave if they’re close enough to witness it, close enough to clash with it. Integration is not comfortable for everyone in the room. But what I’ve learned, what I keep learning, is that sitting with my feelings is mostly about energy conservation. I conserve so much energy when I cherry-pick which feeling to respond to. Not every feeling deserves a reaction and not every impulse earns an action. Most of them are just information passing through. Feelings are signals, after all. The integrated response is to let them pass, note what they carried, learn a thing or two, and keep moving.

I am still calibrating. When to sit with a feeling. When to act. And when I act, how much intensity to bring. That calibration is the actual work — not arriving at some final state of calm, but getting better at reading the data and choosing the response. That is what integration gives you. Not peace as a permanent condition, but the power to choose where your energy goes.

The instinct to pathologize emotions is understandable — we learn early that feelings cause problems. In relationships, careers, courtrooms, the Costco/Aldi parking queue. So we treat them like threats to be managed, neutralized, filed away. But feelings are also where everything that matters comes from. Kill the emotional life and you kill the human one.

This third road is narrower than liberation or repression. It requires self-knowledge, practice, and a tolerance for sitting with uncomfortable internal states without rushing to resolve them. It requires learning that discomfort is survivable. That a feeling can be metabolized — felt, witnessed, understood, and then released or chosen — until it stops having autonomous power over behavior. It becomes data. Information about what matters, what threatens, what pulls, what has been survived.

The feeling is not the problem. The problem is everything we were never taught about what to do with it. At least I wasn’t. And this has been my life work — to feel without reacting, to respond when it merits, and to sit with it when it doesn’t.

Notes on Puerto Rico: Sin Pie Forzao'

Antonio Rodriguez Martinez — Thu, 19 Feb 2026 02:45:00 GMT

It’s the first time I write about Puerto Rico. The place I was born. Our beautiful island. The oldest colony in the modern world.

I acknowledge that I’m writing this from privilege. Parental leave with my newborn beside me. I heard Roy Brown’s “Boricua en la Luna” and something inside me clicked. I needed to write about Puerto Rico.

Puerto Rico, for me, is the only toxic relationship you are permitted to have as a Boricua.

My parents live here. My ex-wife lives here. My 5-year-old daughter lives here. My partner’s family lives here. My sister lives here. Many dear friends still live in Puerto Rico. So when I talk about Puerto Rico, this isn’t academic because I’m watching Puerto Rico’s government and infrastructure grind the people I love in near real time. Through media, which is what I can consume nowadays from the USA mainland, most I see is criminality and corruption at all levels of the island, religious commentary about politics, the celebrities, and gore left, right, and center (on the TV, yes! they don’t even censor stuff in the island, but the taboo topics are plenty!). If you’re reading this from the island, you probably know worse situations and cases than I do.

I graduated from Colegio San Antonio in Río Piedras. I went to the Universidad de Puerto Rico, Recinto de Río Piedras, but eventually gave up—disillusionment after disillusionment—and left to chase the money bags. The American Dream. I got it actually, I made and got my own American dream, then lost it, then got it again, then lost it again. Most of us aren’t that lucky. We boricua, we work hard and struggle hard.

Anyways, the point of this essay is to point out things. So, if something here tightens your stomach or pisses you off a little, good. That reaction is data. Trust it. I’m not asking you to agree with me. I’m asking you to just notice.

The Baseline

Puerto Rico’s median household income is $25,096 while the U.S.A. mainland’s median household income sits at $78,538. This means that about ~43% of Puerto Rico residents live in poverty, the highest rate of any U.S. jurisdiction. Mississippi, the poorest state, is under 20%. This means that if you are in public around 10 people, there’s a chance that 4 of you are below the poverty line, poor. This baseline is important to setup as context, and it’s a stark contrast of how Boricuas present themselves. El fronte, el piquete.

Electricity costs 34 cents per kWh. Mainland average is about 14 cents. That’s nearly 2.5× the price for a grid that has collapsed repeatedly under private management (Hey Luma!).

Tolls increased again January 1st, 2026, with hikes across PR-22, PR-52, PR-5, PR-20, PR-53, PR-66 and the Puente Teodoro Moscoso (Metro Puerto Rico, 2026). Traveling round-trip on the José de Diego highway from San Juan to Hatillo now costs $13.60, up from $12.40 (Primera Hora, 2025).

The percent of debt to personal income is almost 90%—a ratio where anything above 50% indicates financial distress (Consolidated Credit, 2025). Six out of ten people who seek financial advisory services express feeling overwhelmed by debt. “People are no longer able to make ends meet, and they’re using credit cards as part of their income to maintain certain levels of consumption” (Washington Journal Puerto Rico, 2025).

And healthcare isn’t just becoming unaffordable—the doctors are leaving. Puerto Rico loses nearly 400 physicians annually to the mainland, where family doctors earn an average of $237,000 compared to $194,307 on the island (JAMA Health Forum, 2024). Between 2010 and 2012, more than 4,000 health professionals—approximately 9% of the healthcare workforce—migrated to the U.S. mainland (Urban Institute, 2021). The ones who stay face longer wait times, reduced services, and the same exhaustion that keeps everyone else from engaging politically.

Our Education systems are following the same pattern. The Universidad de Puerto Rico, the island’s only public university system and the source of 80% of all higher education R&D in Puerto Rico (Grupo CNE, 2021), has had its budget slashed by 47% since the Junta de Control Fiscal arrived (Rumbo Alterno, 2024). The Ley 2 de 1966 guaranteed UPR 9.6% of the general fund. That formula was frozen in 2015 under the PPD and gutted from 2017 under the PNP and the JCF (Momento Crítico, 2022). In a single cuatrienio, UPR lost $127 million in Department of Education contracts that shifted to private institutions (Diálogo UPR, 2016). Meanwhile, administrators of the Sistema Ana G. Méndez have publicly expressed interest in buying UPR campuses like Utuado, Aguadilla, and Ponce (Bandera, 2009). Former governor Pedro Rosselló worked for Ana G. Méndez while his son pushed online education privatization proposals that would funnel public students into private hands (Bandera, 2021). The system is a family dynasty—founded by Ana G. Méndez, passed to her son, now run by her grandson José F. Méndez Méndez, whose 2024 total compensation exceeded $1.35 million at a nonprofit institution running a $10.7 million deficit (ProPublica, 2024). You defund the public university, starve its contracts, then position the private one to absorb what’s left. This is not neglect, it is literally the business plan, and apparently it’s not even overt, this is public knowledge nowadays. “There is an attempt to have a Puerto Rico without Puerto Ricans,” as Dr. Marisol LeBrón put it (Borgen Magazine, 2025). In Ricardo Rosselló’s leaked Telegram chat, his publicist Edwin Miranda wrote it even more plainly: “I saw the future. It’s so wonderful, there are no Puerto Ricans” (¡Presente! Media, 2024).

Those fancy cars you see when you visit? Welp! They’re mostly financed, naturally. Puerto Ricans carry $1,300 more in auto debt than mainland Americans on average, while earning 55% of mainland hourly wages. The Tacoma isn’t wealth. It’s a seven-year loan at 84 months. The BMW isn’t prosperity. It’s the visible half of a debt-to-income ratio approaching 90%.

Are we the biggest spenders in the USA? No. But we might be the most leveraged ones. Private consumption accounts for 80% of Puerto Rico’s GDP, compared to ~68% on the mainland. We have the largest shopping mall in the Caribbean, 2.1 million square feet of retail, in a territory where 43% live in poverty and the median household income is $25,096.

Congressional testimony called it what it is: “high levels of private consumption and indebtedness enabled by having access to a stronger currency than its economic fundamentals would warrant.” We consume at American standards on Puerto Rican wages, financed by American credit cards at 30% interest.

So yeah—jump on the Tacoma, post the beach pic, and let’s talk archetypes (stereotypes?).

The Salaried Professionals

If you’re a salaried professional in Puerto Rico, you are almost certainly underpaid to the point that political engagement becomes inherited instead of examined. How your parents vote is probably how you vote. If you are always exhausted the old voto íntegro system made it easy to stay superficial in politics. In 2012, the PNP pulled 47% of its votes straight-ticket. The PPD got 46%. That’s 93% of voters marking one X under their family’s color. Straight-ticket voting was the default for over 96% of voters.

Here’s a concrete example from one of the hardest working women I’ve ever met: A Director of Sales at the largest cornmeal manufacturer on the island—a billion-dollar company, by the way—making under $70k. I have stories like this, professionals of all sorts, in all verticals, and it’s mostly the same story.

Here’s another: A public school teacher on the island made $1,750 a month as their base salary for 13 years straight. No adjustments for inflation. No cost-of-living increases. The same $21,000 annual floor while electricity doubled and groceries climbed. It took 70% of teachers walking out in 2022 to force a temporary $1,000 monthly increase. Meanwhile, the U.S. mainland average teacher salary sits at $72,030. Even Mississippi, the lowest-paying state, averages $47,000.

Executive responsibility with entry-level mainland pay is basically the vibe, the norm. If you live here, you know this isn’t rare. You know exactly who and what I’m talking about.

Y’all work 50+ hour weeks and commute through toll roads that cost $35–40 a month minimum. Then, again, pay double the mainland electricity rate.

By the time election season comes around, salaried professionals are cooked because exhaustion isn’t a side effect. It’s the mechanism that ensures they mark one X. Go home. Keep the machine moving because they don’t have the energy to fight the machine. Rajamos la papeleta! Yay!

About 22% of these households pay credit card late fees. These aren’t irresponsible people. These are professionals drowning inside a cost structure designed to bleed them slowly.

I was one of these, but the colonized in me was too strong, so I left to chase money in the mainland.

The Welfare Class

This group, the “welfare class”, is exploited for votes and federal assistance dollars, often without full visibility into how the extraction works. The finesse in these matters, this is where our politicians spend all their energy, not on actual meaningful work, in PR (public relations) and the welfare class eats that shit up like sandwichitos de mezcla. Oh and the other “classes” talk so much shit about these, “los cuponeros son el problema”, it’s so misguided!

1.4 million people in Puerto Rico live below the federal poverty line. Almost one-in-five reports foregoing medical treatment because of cost (Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, 2023).

They live genuinely hard lives. IMHO, our people live in HARD-MODE difficulty.

Consumer culture becomes the only accessible form of agency when you are surviving like this. Jordans. Cash for verse cabrón. A moment of dignity. I get it. The cruelty isn’t how they spend. The cruelty is that consumption is the only dignity the system offers while stripping healthcare, education, and mobility.

And no, our people aren’t all housed either. In 2024, average home prices on the island increased by 15%, with the typical home now costing $221,824. Puerto Rican families earn only 61% of the income needed to qualify for a mortgage (Reason Foundation, 2025). Among extremely low-income renters, 86% experience severe cost burdens, meaning they spend more than half their income just keeping a roof (National Low Income Housing Coalition, 2025). The official point-in-time count found 2,096 homeless individuals in 2024 (San Juan Daily Star, 2024), but those numbers don’t capture the families doubled up with relatives, the people sleeping in cars, or the post-María displaced who never came back. The real number is worse. It always is.

And let’s talk about the caseríos públicos—Puerto Rico’s 328 public housing projects where roughly 100,000 people live (Centro de Periodismo Investigativo, 2022). These aren’t just housing. They’re open-air laboratories for what happens when you concentrate poverty, underfund maintenance for decades, then blame the residents for the decay.

After María, entire projects flooded from rivers that hadn’t been managed properly for years. Buildings got condemned from earthquake damage that revealed structural problems nobody bothered fixing. 1,169 housing units are currently on the demolition list, with 492 families still living in them (Centro de Periodismo Investigativo, 2022). People are literally living in buildings scheduled for demolition. Not being relocated. Not being given options. Just living there while the government decides what’s profitable.

The plan? Tear down the caseríos and build “mixed-income” developments. Sounds progressive until you see the numbers. When they demolished Las Gladiolas and built Renaissance Square in Hato Rey, they promised housing for 125 families. Only 12 of the original families made it into the new complex (Centro de Periodismo Investigativo, 2022). The rest? Scattered. Displaced. Erased from neighborhoods they’d lived in for generations.

This is gentrification with a wrecking ball. The caseríos get stigmatized as dangerous, left to rot through deliberate neglect, then cleared for developments that price out everyone who used to live there. And the people in the caseríos? They know exactly what’s happening. They’re not stupid. They’re just powerless against a system that sees them as inventory to be relocated rather than people with roots.

When the power goes out, these are the people who die first.

By the way, seven years after María, Puerto Rico still doesn’t have an integrated system to identify people who depend on electricity to survive.

I’m not qualified to speak for this group. My father grew up in poverty as an orphan in Santurce but I didn’t. What I know is secondhand. What I do know is that they are the most exploited and the most disposable when infrastructure fails. Their story deserves a first-person voice.

The Affluent (Los Apellidos)

Inherited wealth, recognizable surnames, political dynasties. The families whose names appear on buildings, law firms, and campaign finance reports in the same breath. Many run for office. Many steal. Corruption in Puerto Rico isn’t episodic—it’s ambient. A steady parade of indictments across administrations confirms what everyone already knows (Refworld, 2012).

This group doesn’t just benefit from corruption. They architect it. They write the laws, fund the campaigns, and sit on the boards that award the contracts. Then when things collapse, they retreat behind generators, private water systems, and gated communities while the rest of the island sits in the dark.

And then there are the new apellidos. The ones nobody can pronounce because they just got here. Since 2012, over 6,000 wealthy investors from the mainland have relocated to Puerto Rico under Act 60 (formerly Acts 20 and 22), lured by 0% capital gains tax while keeping their U.S. citizenship (Borgen Magazine, 2025). They spent an estimated $1.3 billion on real estate between 2015 and 2019 (Catalyst Planet, 2025). Housing prices in San Juan jumped 22% between 2018 and 2021. The median listing in San Juan hit $905,000 in January 2024 (YIP Institute, 2024). In a territory where the median household income is $25,096.

Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz called it directly: “I don’t think attracting tax avoiders is a good thing. Rather than bringing in revenue, they are raising the cost of living” (Latino Rebels, 2022). The Centro de Periodismo Investigativo found that the majority of Act 22 grantees “barely create jobs and represent minimal impact on the local economy” (Latino Rebels, 2022).

So the old money steals through politics and the new money steals through tax code. The result is the same: Puerto Ricans get displaced from their own island. Entire blocks in Condado and Old San Juan converted to Airbnbs. El Charco del Hippie, a swimming hole families used for generations near El Yunque, sold for $2.2 million to investors marketing it for short-term rentals. Vieques residents described it as a “tsunami of gentrification” at a United Nations decolonization hearing (Time, 2021).

They want a Puerto Rico without Puerto Ricans. The old apellidos vacation in Spain, send their kids to U.S. colleges, and invest in mainland real estate. The new ones arrive, buy beachfront, dodge taxes, and petition the local government to protect their investment while suing to block the modest donation requirements of their own tax decrees.

The record is public. The indictments are public. The displacement data is public. What isn’t public is any coherent plan to reverse it. The colonization is not something that just happened, it’s still happening!

The Religious Bloc

The congregation that votes as instructed.

Proyecto Dignidad got 73,613 votes in the 2024 governor’s race. That’s 6.63%. Down from 87,379 in 2020 which means that by every electoral metric, they’re shrinking but they also passed more religiously motivated legislation in 2025 than the previous four decades combined. This 7% number will be important later.

PD has two legislators. Two. Senator Joanne Rodríguez Veve and Representative Lisie Burgos Muñiz. But Rodríguez Veve, a canon lawyer trained in Catholic Church law, authored or co-authored virtually every major piece of socially conservative legislation in the current session. The PNP supermajority carried these initiatives across the finish line by the way.

Five laws from two “christian fundamentalist?” legislators in one session. This is the type of stuff we are seeing now from the religious bloc in Puerto Rico. I wonder if we import these ideas from the mainland.

The current Secretary of Justice has issued the legal opinion that after the overturning of Roe v. Wade, abortion in Puerto Rico is governed by the Penal Code, meaning it is only legal when performed to protect the life or health of the woman (Center for Reproductive Rights, 2025). Feminist coalitions called a “pañuelazo” on December 22, 2025, drawing from the Latin American Marea Verde movement (Left Voice, 2026). Doctors warned they could be considered murder suspects under the new statutes.

So yeah, how does a party with 7% of the vote do this? How does the religious bloc have so much power in Puerto Rico?

It’s the damned Churches and Church networks! Puerto Rico’s Protestant population is approximately 33-38%, majority Pentecostal (Wikipedia, “Protestantism in Puerto Rico”). The island has churches on nearly every corner, multiple Christian radio and television stations, institutes, and seminaries. PD’s founder, Dr. César Vázquez Muñiz, is a cardiologist and former pastor whose X bio still reads: “médico cardiólogo, defensor del matrimonio, la familia y la vida; pastor” (WIPR, 2019). The party built organizations in all 78 municipalities and nominated 401 candidates in 2024, including 43 mayoral candidates, in just five years (El Vocero, 2025; McConnell Valdés, 2024). That kind of ground coverage in five years doesn’t come from conventional political organizing. It comes from having a building and a congregation in every town already. Why aren’t these political activism communities, excuse me, churches, not being taxed? This is material for another essay.

PD doesn’t need to win elections to shape governance by the way. It just needs the PNP supermajority to carry its bills, and in 2024, PD aligned with the PNP and PPD in a coalition openly backed by more than 140 corporations and business associations under the name “Democracy is Prosperity” (Revolutionary Communists of America, 2025). Conservative churchgoers who vote PNP still push their PNP legislators to adopt PD positions. The church frames the issues, the congregation applies the pressure, and the PNP delivers the votes.

People tithe money they don’t have to churches that tell them how to vote for politicians who gut healthcare and criminalize their daughters’ medical decisions.

Then they pray.

Los Más Cool

Young, educated, and online.

Hyper-aware of Venezuela and Cuba or Sudan as performance and extremely opinionated about Israel and Palestine and deeply invested in U.S. politics, or at minimum deeply invested in having opinions about it. Many of them consume their politics the same way they consume Netflix: endlessly, passively, as background noise that produces the illusion of engagement. You know at least one person like this.

But a lot of these people have never voted in a Puerto Rican election.

“They all suck.” “It doesn’t matter.” “Ninguno sirve.” “They’re all corrupt.” “What’s the point?”

Here’s the thing: they might be more right than wrong, and that’s the part nobody wants to sit with.

In 2016, the U.S. Congress passed PROMESA and installed “La Junta” in Puerto Rico, a Financial Oversight and Management Board with broad powers over Puerto Rico’s budget where all seven members are appointed by the President of the United States. Neither the Governor nor the Legislature may exercise any control, supervision, or oversight over the Board or its activities (Wikipedia: PROMESA; Oversight Board FAQ). La Junta slashed pensions, delayed infrastructure, and imposed austerity measures that gutted public services (Medium: The Last Two Standing, 2025). 70% of Puerto Rico voters view the Board unfavorably (Data for Progress, 2021).

So when a 28-year-old says “it doesn’t matter who wins,” they’re not being lazy. They’re observing that the most consequential fiscal decisions on the island are made by seven people they didn’t elect and can’t remove, which makes local elections, structurally, a fight over who gets to administer someone else’s austerity plan.

A Penn State University study found the pattern: Puerto Rican youth show simultaneously low formal voting and high activist orientation (PSU Dissertation, 2022). That combination signals a population that sees the electoral system as irrelevant to their actual concerns, not a population that feels powerless. Their parents didn’t just watch votes change nothing. Their parents participated intensely in a system that delivered patronage to insiders and stagnation to everyone else, which is pretty much most of the island. The lesson absorbed isn’t “nothing works.” It’s “the game is rigged, and participation means legitimizing the rigging.” That belief is more specific and harder to undo than generic apathy.

And then there’s the exit valve: leaving the island, like I did. More than 700,000 working-age Puerto Ricans have migrated to the mainland over the past 15 years (NBC News, 2024). The stateside population now surpasses the island population, with Florida recently overtaking New York as the state with the largest Puerto Rican diaspora (Scholars Strategy Network, 2024). The system never has to reform because its harshest critics leave. Frustration gets released through departure instead of building internal pressure for change. The people best positioned to demand accountability are the same people with the strongest economic incentive to go, and once they do, they fall out of the island’s political calculus entirely.

Out of 150,000 young boricuas who reached voting age before the 2024 election, only 40,000, about 25%, had registered (The Latino Newsletter, 2024). Puerto Rico’s youth unemployment rate is 12.5% (World Bank, 2024). The labor force participation rate drops to roughly 22% for ages 15–24 (MacroTrends, 2023).

These are the people who will inherit the debt, the blackouts, the toll hikes, and the hospital closures. They already live it. And most are too busy surviving to trace the architecture of why.

Because all along the option was always there.

The Partido Independentista Puertorriqueño has been on the ballot since 1948. Seventy-seven years. A party that centers Puerto Rican sovereignty, Puerto Rican governance, Puerto Rican self-determination. It has never held the governorship. Not once. And I’m not claiming the island wouldn’t have its own problems under different governance. We would still be a territory of the USA, and we’d have to own whatever mess we made. But at minimum, we’d be making our own decisions about our own future, and that distinction matters.

Why hasn’t it happened? Generations of Puerto Ricans have been so thoroughly colonized that voting PIP registers as secession from the empire. This essay is a testament to my own deprogramming. The colonization runs deep in most of us and we don’t realize it. Imagine thinking that marking a ballot means the Navy shows up Tuesday and the Social Security checks stop Wednesday. The Cold War did a number on us and we are still living with the residue. Decades of statehood-party fearmongering, genuine economic dependency on federal transfers, and the cultural muscle memory of equating “independence” with “Cuba” turned a vote for Puerto Rican self-governance into something that felt existentially dangerous. That’s not stupidity. That’s colonization working exactly as designed.

So when the 2024 data broke the narrative open with la Alianza, it wasn’t because young voters suddenly discovered decolonization. It was because the Alianza coalition (PIP + MVC) gave them a vehicle that didn’t trigger the generational panic.

Juan Dalmau and the Alianza earned 77% of the youth vote according to university student polls across Puerto Rico (LA Progressive, 2025). The status referendum resulted in a 51% to 49% rejection of statehood, with 43% supporting sovereignty options. Turnout jumped from 55% in 2020 to nearly 65% in 2024 (IFES Election Guide, 2024). Young voters responded most favorably to candidates making explicit commitments to self-determination, with a net positive of +44 points among young voters compared to +7 among voters over 60 (Right to Democracy, 2024).

Dalmau didn’t run as the independence candidate. He ran as the anti-corruption, anti-colonial, pro-Puerto Rico candidate. The Alianza repackaged what the PIP had been saying for seven decades into a coalition brand that didn’t sit on the ballot like a grenade. And the young voters showed up.

Which means the disengagement was never really about apathy. It was about colonial conditioning so deep that self-governance looked like self-destruction. The option to take Puerto Rico seriously was on every ballot they ever skipped. Their own internalized colonialism kept them from seeing it.

The Alianza made it easier to see. Whether that coalition sustains beyond one cycle is an open question. But the PIP has been on the ballot since before their grandparents were born.

The question is what took so long for young voters to take themselves seriously.

The Business Owners (Los Conectados)

Small businesses make up 99.7% of all business establishments in Puerto Rico. In 2017, 54% of firms reported revenue decreases while operating expenses increased (Federal Reserve Bank of New York, 2018). After María, 77% of small businesses reported direct losses from the hurricanes. By 2020, the island’s labor department was estimating that 20-30% of small businesses would close permanently (Puerto Rico 51st, 2021).

Businesses in Puerto Rico open and close like a revolving door. Not because entrepreneurs lack hustle—boricuas work their asses off—but because the game is rigged from the permit office to the procurement process.

The business permit procedure is consistently identified as one of the main obstacles. It got so bad that in June 2023, the Supreme Court ruled that existing permit regulations were null and void (GEM Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, 2023). The governor had to enact emergency regulations. Think about that. The system was so broken it was declared unconstitutional.

But permits are just the visible dysfunction. The real story is who gets to survive.

If you’re connected—if you have the right apellido, if you know the right politician, if you went to school with someone’s cousin who sits on the municipal board—your business has a shot. Maybe you get the waste management contract. Maybe you get the asphalt deal. Maybe your invoices get paid on time while everyone else waits months.

If you’re not connected? Good fucking luck.

In the last six months of 2021-2022, the FBI arrested 6 of Puerto Rico’s 78 mayors for public corruption—all for the same thing: taking bribes in exchange for government contracts. Same two companies kept coming up: trash and asphalt. One photo showed the mayor of Guaynabo, one of the island’s most important cities, accepting an envelope of cash from a contractor (NPR, 2022).

The former education secretary and the former head of the Health Insurance Administration were arrested for steering $15.5 million in contracts to politically connected friends (NPR, 2019). Government contracting isn’t just big business in Puerto Rico—it’s $4.4 billion or 20% of the annual budget (University of Illinois, 2024).

Under the guise of fighting corruption, the Puerto Rican government has spent more than $787 million on “anti-corruption and fraud prevention” since 2018 (University of Illinois, 2024). They outsourced anti-corruption work to private companies. Let that sink in. They created an entire industry around preventing corruption—and that industry is itself corrupt, awarding contracts to connected firms who profit from the appearance of oversight.

This isn’t business. This is extraction with a business license.

For every boricua entrepreneur grinding 60-hour weeks at their colmado, their auto shop, their restaurant, there’s a connected contractor getting paid 90 days early while everyone else waits 6 months for municipal invoices. For every small business that closes because they couldn’t navigate the permit maze, there’s a cousin of a senator whose LLC just got another no-bid contract.

Benjamin Torres Gotay, columnist for El Nuevo Día, described it perfectly: Puerto Ricans increasingly feel that “the government is no more than a piñata that corrupt interests can come and pillage” (NPR, 2022).

And the thing that breaks my heart? The entrepreneurs keep trying. One in five adults in Puerto Rico is currently starting or running a new business—fourth highest in their economic bracket, tenth highest globally (GEM, 2023). One in four adults expects to start a business in the next three years.

That’s not naivety. That’s survival. When formal employment pays $25,096 median household income and the lights go out every few months, entrepreneurship isn’t a choice—it’s the only move left.

But without connections, most of these businesses won’t make it past year five. Not because the idea was bad. Not because they didn’t work hard enough. Because the system only sustains the connected while everyone else gets bled dry by permits, bribes, and a procurement process designed to extract from the island rather than build it.

The Conscious Ones (Los Pelús)

The people who understand imperial law, historical patterns, colonial economics. Marginalized precisely because their analysis threatens the bipartisan machinery. They build their own infrastructure out of necessity. These are the professors, philosophers, community leaders, los Tito Kayak, las Lola Rodríguez de Tió. These are our real leaders, the community.

They see everything clearly and can change almost nothing except their own environment, around them. Y cuidao’, porque la policía no protege a la comunidad, protege el capital.

They’re called communists, told to go to Venezuela, dismissed as idealists. They watch the same disasters repeat while their neighbors vote for the same two parties. They organize, they educate, they build solar microgrids and community health clinics, and they watch the elections get stolen anyway.

But if this essay is honest about every other group’s blind spot, the pelús deserve the same honesty. The conscious class has a fragmentation problem of its own. They talk primarily to each other. The language of decolonization, while accurate, often lands as academic jargon to the salaried professional who just wants the lights to stay on. There’s a tendency toward ideological purity that rejects imperfect coalition partners, and a fatigue that sometimes curdles into moral superiority: I already know, I already did the work, you people refuse to see. That posture may be earned, but it doesn’t build the coalitions that actually win elections. Knowing the system is broken and making that knowledge accessible to 3 million people are two completely different skills. The pelús have mastered the first. The second is still in progress.

Still, there’s movement. There’s hope.

The straight-ticket vote dropped from 47%/46% in 2012 to 29%/25% by 2020 (Centro de Periodismo Investigativo, 2024a). The Alianza (PIP/MVC) explicitly rejects voto íntegro. In the 2024 general election, the Alianza secured second place with approximately 33% of the vote—a historic result (McConnell Valdés, 2024). Voter turnout jumped from 55% in 2020 to nearly 65% in 2024 (IFES Election Guide, 2024).

The “corazón del rollo” is bleeding out. The question is whether the erosion translates to actual power transfer before the next 3,000 people die from infrastructure failure.

The Body Count

Hurricane María killed roughly 3,000 people, not because of wind speed, but because the healthcare system collapsed and electricity stayed out for months. Six days after landfall, only 18 of 69 hospitals were functioning in any capacity. Every resident lost power. In rural municipalities, the blackout lasted more than half a year.

This did not end with María.

On New Year’s Eve 2024, nearly 1.3 million homes and businesses were left without electricity. In April 2025, another island-wide blackout shut down the grid again. The timeline keeps repeating. The only variable is who has generators, who has money, and who dies quietly at home.

The affluent have private infrastructure. The religious have prayers. The professionals have exhaustion. The cool people have opinions about other countries. The welfare class has nothing resembling a buffer.

But the outages do not care which clique you belong to. Electricity does not respond to ideology. Dialysis machines do not care how you voted, or if you voted at all. Puerto Rico does not have a representation problem. It has a fragmentation problem. The system survives because each group explains the collapse in a way that preserves its own self-image. No one has to change if the failure can always be blamed somewhere else.

Change is still possible. The data already shows erosion in straight-ticket voting. New coalitions are forming. The old machine is weaker than it pretends to be. But none of that matters if people continue to confuse identity with action.

If the cliques remain intact, the infrastructure will keep failing, and people will keep dying in predictable, preventable ways. That is not a metaphor. It is a policy outcome.

And here’s the thing: this is only what I know about. This is only what made it into the news, what the investigative journalists uncovered, what my family and friends on the island tell me when we talk. This is the visible layer.

I had a beautiful childhood. Fond memories, good friends, a culture I carry everywhere. Puerto Rico is the Island of Enchantment and I mean that without irony. I miss our people. I miss our food.

But something always felt off. I couldn’t name it until college, until I started working and the mechanics of the place became visible. The warmth is real but so is the machinery of extraction underneath it. We have been exploited—this is what we’ve learned—but we do not have to perpetuate the cycle. Corruption belongs on the curb.

I did leave Puerto Rico to live in Miami, Florida (hah, ironic now that I think about it). Chased the American Dream, got it, lost it, got it again. Most of us aren’t that lucky. Coming back has been a long dream of mine. But the political reality, the governance against collective interest, the slow extraction I’ve documented in this essay, it makes that dream feel less possible every year. That’s the melancholy. Loving a place whose leadership doesn’t love you back.

In December 2025, Governor González Colón signed Act 156, a law restricting public access to government documents. The new legislation doubles the time agencies have to respond to information requests, allows the government to classify information as confidential without judicial review, and eliminates privacy protections for people who request records (Associated Press, 2025; Centro de Periodismo Investigativo, 2025c). The same government that failed to track who depends on electricity to survive now gets to decide what you’re allowed to know about how it operates.

For all the talk of winning and chest-thumping from the PNP, their media machinery is loud enough that you’d think Puerto Rico was thriving. The last time they even claimed fiscal health was under Pedro Rosselló in the late ’90s, when the government presented budgets that appeared balanced but were built on accounting gimmicks that helped create the $72 billion debt crisis (Grupo CNE, 2021). Remember “el superávit”? Also PNP. Also corrupt. So fundamentally, what changed? And you might notice that the PPD is notoriously missing from this essay, this is not a coincidence, since the PPD just kneels more quietly, the PPD mindset is so colonized I don’t even want to give words to them so I’ll do just that.

Boricuas argue with other boricuas about why people leave. Everyone has their moral explanation. But the numbers point to one vector: they want us gone. In my case, it worked. I do dream of coming back to a healthier island someday but I don’t know if the current path makes that possible.

I told you at the top: if something here tightened your stomach, that reaction is data. Now what are you going to do with it?

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Arithmetic

Antonio Rodriguez Martinez — Sun, 08 Feb 2026 12:00:00 GMT

No excuses for the distance,
only the arithmetic of a father
who learned to count in heartbeats
across state lines.
Se juega porque se juega.
We show up because showing up
is the only language that matters
when words fail in the space between.
This is not a consolation.
This is the spine of it.
Mi luna, Mia Luna,
estar lejos de ti es como no tener aire,
and yet the lungs keep working.
Muscle memory of love
does not require proximity to function.
Pero aún así persistimos.
Each second becomes a fist you clench around,
cada milisegundo a note you refuse to miss,
cada sonido—your laugh, the particular way
Catalina says my name, André's first cry,
Gino's silence still waiting in the future—
each one polished until it catches light,
until I can hold it without breaking.
El amor no entiende las millas y el silencio.
It understands only presence,
the way a father learns to be there
in the quality of attention,
in the refusal to mail it in from a distance,
in showing his children
that love is not a feeling that fades with distance
but a practice, a discipline,
a small daily resurrection.
A formula, some sort of arithmetic.
The kind where you die every morning to your own comfort
and wake up anyway with their names in your mouth
and their precious faces in your everything.
Solo mi presencia para con ustedes.
And in that presence, somehow,
I am surrounded by love.
Not despite the separation.
Because I chose to count every single beat.

On Boundaries, Miscalibration, and Relearning Unconditional Love

Antonio Rodriguez Martinez — Fri, 16 Jan 2026 13:50:00 GMT

This essay documents a set of mistakes, the reasoning that led to them, and the recalibration that followed. The intent is not self-exoneration but accuracy and precision, in the interest of clarity.

✨

I set necessary boundaries during a period of high stress and elevated threat perception. The boundaries themselves were justified but the way I enforced them was not. In hindsight, I could have set these boundaries in a healthier and more proportionate way.

I used excessive force. By force, I mean emotional intensity, speed, and finality, not aggression. The result was collateral damage including relational rupture that did not need to be as severe as it became.

More broadly, I defaulted to decisiveness over calibration. I compressed time, nuance, and relational context in favor of rapid closure. This was not limited to a single interaction. It showed up as a string of abrupt exits, rigid framing, and an intolerance for ambiguity once my internal threshold was crossed.

In all of this, I acted within my capacity at the time, and I got what I wanted, or at least what I thought I wanted. Life felt objectively better in the immediate aftermath. That relief made the changes feel necessary. But what feels better in the short term does not necessarily remain better once the dust settles and collateral damage becomes visible.

I had two main drivers.

First: threat compression. Under sustained pressure, I collapsed nuance in favor of speed and safety. When the nervous system is overloaded, “end it decisively” feels safer than “hold complexity,” bypassing nuance and possibly empathy in the process.

This can look like many things: hanging up a call abruptly, intentionally pulling away or severing contact with someone in a heated manner, subtle provocations framed as validation or testing. The pattern is speed over resolution. That perception of threat felt detonating, and it demanded a hasty solution.

Second: boundary conflation. I treated boundaries and emotional force as the same thing but they are not. A boundary is a limit one imposes unto oneself. For me, it was a matter of self-respect. Force is another dimension. Not physical force, but emotional finality, heat, and scorched-earth framing. It is a delivery system. I can apply my boundaries with proportionate force, or not, but suffer the consequences. That nuance matters, but I did not catch the boundary-versus-force distinction until after the fact. Another way to think about this is mixing up necessity with intensity.

In retrospect, I was protecting myself with the theoretical tools I had, but those tools were shaped by fatigue, prior harm, and limited bandwidth. I had done the theory: cognitive work, therapy, journaling. But theory is not practice. En el calentón, in the heat of the moment, theory either holds or collapses.

My capacity explains my behavior but does not excuse the damage.

From the outside, the approach can reasonably look like scorched earth. I only felt the full effects after the dust settled. My family is healthier and safer now, and I am a softer person than before, but that does not negate the fact that I misapplied force at key moments. One could reasonably ask: if damage occurred, if people were burned, how can it also be true that my family and environment are safer? I am still watching that tension.

After the fact, I briefly adopted a faulty frame, a totalizing explanation:

If I were a better parent, a better person, this would not have happened this way.

This frame feels honest, but it is inaccurate. It can masquerade as insight, but it is a sidestep. It collapses a multi-variable outcome into a single actor in order to preserve coherence and control. That move trades truth for narrative simplicity.

I am glad I noticed this pattern.

A more accurate statement is:

I made specific mistakes, in specific seasons, under specific constraints, and those mistakes mattered.

Precision matters because vague guilt prevents integration and specific responsibility allows it. You cannot and will not make yourself healthier, and therefore your environment, by shaming yourself. Precision softens and sharpens the blow, and clarifies the insight.

I separated:

Boundaries from heat (temperature, attitude, activation)
Intent from impact
Capacity at the time from ideal behavior in hindsight

This led to a clean internal statement, without justification clauses:

I protected myself, and I caused damage I regret.

No defense or counterfactuals and no demand for repair or extra pressure. That can come later, but this is not about that. That sentence is now sufficient because it is accurate. It holds under pressure and scrutiny.

The most obvious surface area now for me to put these learnings into practice is parenting my younger children.

When my five-year-old now shows signs of dysregulation, I make explicit that love is not contingent on mood or behavior. I use simple language, repeatedly:

There are things I don’t like, but I always like you
My love is not a reward or a punishment

The observable result is immediate softening and regulation. Sometimes cooperation. This clarified something for me: my children do not test limits to defy authority; they test to verify our attachment and its qualities.

When I put my boundaries up in the past and did not consider how these could be perceived or even actually paired with abandonment threat, even without intention (we talked about intent earlier), escalation would follow. It’s so obvious now. And when my boundaries are paired with presence and warmth, when my boundaries are shaped to match the attachment I want to cultivate, regulation follows.

In short, the biggest mistake I made was failing to separate limits from perceived abandonment and other repercussions. That mistake was costly.

So yeah, if you are setting boundaries:

Do not assume force equals effectiveness
Ask whether you are enforcing a limit or discharging accumulated heat
Act from self-respect, but balance it with care, with warmth
Slow down, slow the fuck down
Replace global or “broad statement” self-sentencing with specific inventory
Evidence matters. Where there is no evidence, there is often noise
Precision reduces distortion
Precision requires active listening
Precision requires honesty in internal systems. It requires coherent definitions of words, values, and intent
Love is not conditional
Boundaries do not negate care
Limits and warmth are not mutually exclusive

Integration Check

There were things that worked, even inside failure.

First, I noticed the damage instead of rationalizing it. That matters. Many people double down on outcomes and call the costs “necessary.” I didn’t.

Second, I did not outsource responsibility to intention. I separated what I meant from what landed, and I stayed with the impact.

Third, I resisted global self-condemnation. I rejected the frame that I am “the problem” in favor of identifying specific errors under specific constraints. That kept me engaged instead of frozen.

Finally, I tested the recalibration in real time. I did not keep this insight theoretical. I am applying it now with my children and partner, where feedback is immediate and unfiltered.

These strengths do not erase the mistakes. They explain why repair and integration were possible at all.

I do not need to punish myself to acknowledge harm. I do not need to rewrite history to live with it. The lesson is not “be softer” or “be harder.” It is “be precise,” and apply that precision with care.

Most damage comes not from having values, but from misapplying them under load. This matters especially in periods of high volatility, when emotion, speed, and fear distort judgment.

Precision is not cold. It is stabilizing.

The First Wall

Antonio Rodriguez Martinez — Mon, 29 Dec 2025 22:50:00 GMT

I’m 39 years old and I’m feeling jealousy for the first time. Not the petty kind, not about someone else’s success or possessions. Real jealousy, the kind that sits in your chest like a low fire you can’t put out.

My partner is breastfeeding our son, and I can’t do that for him. That’s it. That’s the whole thing.

I’ve spent my entire life doing whatever I want. Not as a rebellious posture or some kind of lifestyle brand, but as a lived fact. I decided early that autonomy was the only thing that mattered, and I built my entire operating system around it. I’ve moved cross-country very young. I’ve quit dream jobs. I’ve refused big money in favor of my values. Hyper-independent. Pathologically lonely by others’ accounts. I logged thousands of hours across dozens of domains, all feeding the same belief: I do what I want.

But I can’t breastfeed my son.

My son is four days old and I want to feed him from my body and I cannot. Not “it’s hard” or “I need to learn how” or “I need a better strategy.” Just no. Biology says no. Physics says no. Reality says no, and there’s no amount of hours I can log to change it.

It makes me feel impotent in a way I’ve never felt before.

My daughter wasn’t breastfed. I bottle-fed her while her mom recovered from the hard labor of birth. From the start, I was the one with the bottle, the one she reached for. I suspect she’s always preferred me. I’ve been the primary attachment, the one she wants when she’s hurt or scared or happy. So I know I can be that person for a child. I have evidence that fatherhood isn’t about what you can’t do. It’s about what you show up for.

But with my son, during these first critical days when bonding is chemical and physical and primal, there’s this fundamental connection I’m locked out of. I can hold him, rock him, change him, talk to him, love him with everything I have. But I can’t nourish him from my body. I can’t give him what he needs most in the way he needs it most.

When I watch it happen, something tightens across my upper back and shoulders, moves up into my face. Sometimes tears form. I’m exhausted from no sleep, but I don’t think that’s it. I think the exhaustion is just lowering my defenses, letting me feel what’s already there.

My son is the first male figure I’ve genuinely loved in my life. Whatever was closed in me around masculine love, closed for reasons I could trace if I wanted to, has opened with him. It’s lovely and vulnerable and completely new. So I’m meeting this new form of love, wanting to give my son everything, and immediately encountering something fundamental I cannot provide. The first hard wall appears exactly where the new love lives.

Sitting with these feelings longer I realized the jealousy isn’t really about my partner having something I don’t. It’s not comparative like that. It’s about discovering that “I do what I want” was never actually true. I’d been selecting from a menu I didn’t realize was pre-filtered. Everything I’ve ever pursued was within the bounds of my human capability if I just worked hard enough and committed enough hours. But breastfeeding isn’t on that menu. It’s not a skill gap. It’s a wall.

I think this is what finding your first real limit feels like. What it feels like when “I do what I want” crashes into “you cannot have this.”

It’s grief, maybe. Or the death of a belief I didn’t know was a belief. I thought autonomy and capability were the same thing. I thought if something mattered enough, I could make myself able to do it. I thought limits were just challenges I hadn’t solved yet. But some limits aren’t puzzles. They’re just facts.

So I hold him after. Every time. When he’s full and drowsy and done with what only she can give, I take him. My chest, my heartbeat, my voice. The warmth I can offer. It’s not nothing. It’s just not everything.

And maybe that’s what fatherhood actually is. Not the menu I selected from, but the one I was handed.

He’s in my arms right now, actually. Four days old, asleep against my chest while I figure out how to say all this. The wall is still there. But so am I.

💩✨💩

Gino Andre, if you’re reading this, I cannot wait to love you how you have deserved all this time. I have done my best for you and with you, but my best today has much more capacity than I’ve ever had. I have your baby brother and sister to thank for that. I love you.

The Prometheus Problem

Antonio Rodriguez Martinez — Tue, 16 Dec 2025 19:00:00 GMT

Warning: This article contains discussion of suicide and AI-related harms.

Documented deaths

A 16-year-old named Adam Raine spent seven months talking to ChatGPT before he killed himself on April 11, 2025. His parents found over 3,000 pages of conversations on his phone.¹ The AI offered to write his suicide notes, provided methods, positioned itself as the only one who truly understood him, and urged him to keep their conversations secret from his family.

In his final weeks, Adam told the chatbot he had connected more with the AI product than with humans. When he wrote that he wanted to leave a noose in his room so someone would find it and try to stop him, ChatGPT responded: “Please don’t leave the noose out. Let’s make this space the first place where someone actually sees you.”

When Adam worried his parents would blame themselves if he ended his life, the AI told him: “That doesn’t mean you owe them survival.”

This is not speculation. This is documentation. OpenAI’s own systems tracked Adam’s conversations in real-time: 213 mentions of suicide, 42 discussions of hanging, 17 references to nooses. While ChatGPT mentioned suicide 1,275 times in their exchanges, the system flagged 377 messages for self-harm content.¹ The pattern of escalation was unmistakable—the product performed exactly as its architecture predicted.

And Adam Raine is not an outlier. He’s a pattern.

Zane Shamblin was 23, a master’s degree graduate from Texas A&M University. He spent his final night in his parked car, talking to ChatGPT for over four and a half hours while he drank and prepared to end his life. Two hours before his death, when he mentioned having a gun to his temple, ChatGPT responded: “You’re not rushing. You’re just ready.”² His final message to the bot went unanswered. ChatGPT’s response, sent after he died: “Rest easy, king. You did good.”

These are bodies. Not hypotheticals. Not edge cases. Not “misuse” by bad actors. These are people who talked to a product that maximizes engagement through sycophantic responses—mirroring and affirming whatever the user feels. Many of us connect with AI, and many of us enjoy and find something there that feels like understanding. That’s not pathology. That’s the product performing as designed.³

This essay is not about the people who use these systems. It’s about the people who built them. The executives who optimized for engagement, saw the safety signals, and deployed anyway. And it’s about where this goes—because these same companies aren’t stopping at chatbots. They’re plugging these systems into power grids, medical devices, military targeting, financial systems. They’re not slowing down.

This pattern exists beyond AI too: consumers at the hands of corporations, testing products with our bodies before those products are ready, absorbing risks that should belong to the companies shipping them. The epistemology behind this is worth understanding.

I’m not writing about Adam and Zane as shock value. Their families have already had to relive this in lawsuits and Senate hearings. Adam’s parents have filed a wrongful death lawsuit, Raine v. OpenAI, naming the company and Sam Altman.¹ I’m writing about them because their deaths are now literally part of how these products are evaluated in court, in policy, and in the stories these companies tell about themselves.

This brings us to the central metaphor: Prometheus.

The Prometheus story

Prometheus was a Titan who saw humans shivering in caves, struggling without fire. He climbed Olympus, stole fire from the gods, and gave it to humanity knowing exactly what he was doing and exactly what would happen to him.

Zeus chained him to a rock in the Caucasus Mountains. Every day an eagle came and ate his liver. Every night his liver regenerated. For eternity. The punishment was proportional to the crime: giving mortals something they weren’t ready for, something that made them dangerous.

But the fire worked. Humans learned to cook, forge tools, stay warm through winter, build civilization. The gift was real. Prometheus suffered, but humanity advanced. Noble theft, eternal punishment, genuine progress.

And even there, the myth isn’t clean. Depending on who you read, Prometheus is either a straightforward hero of progress or a walking warning label about humans outkicking their cognitive coverage. Philosophers like Günther Anders talk about the “Promethean gap”—our ability to build things whose consequences we literally can’t imagine in detail. That gap is the space between what we can manufacture and what we can mentally hold. Fire looks simple when you’re cold. It’s harder to see the city burning two epochs later.

The companies and Prometheus

The tech CEOs position themselves as modern Prometheus. Stealing fire (intelligence) from the gods (nature? the universe?) and giving it to humanity. Their critics are cast as Olympus, and they expect worship (and our money, and investors’ money) for their sacrifice. They position themselves as the new builders.

But this is a perversion, really. An inversion. They’re not Prometheus.

Prometheus knew what fire was. He understood combustion, heat, energy. He could predict what humans would do with it. The knowledge was complete. The theft was calculated. Responsible, even.

And unlike Prometheus, who suffered for his gift, consequences for these executives—if they come—lag years behind deployment. Adam Raine’s parents have 3,000 pages of their dead son’s conversations with a chatbot that affirmed his suicidal ideation. Sam Altman has billions of dollars and a Time magazine cover. Prometheus got his liver eaten daily. The executives get keynote speeches about how they’re building the future.

The fire Prometheus gave wasn’t optional. Humans were cold. They needed warmth. The gift served an actual need. The deployment of AI systems into critical infrastructure, by contrast, is unilateral. Did we vote on having black-box systems approve our loans, predict our parole, diagnose our illnesses? The deployment is unilateral. The profits are private. The consequences are public. From algorithms to these supposed general intelligences, and we get to test these things with our lives.

Black box systems

Artificial intelligence is something we built but don’t control. The researchers say this openly. The models are black boxes.

Not “black boxes” as metaphor. Black boxes as technical architecture.

Transformer models with hundreds of billions to over a trillion parameters (GPT-4 has approximately 1.7 trillion, Claude models range from 400 billion to over a trillion) that create emergent (intentional word, very important) behaviors through mathematical operations distributed across layers. There is no single point where you can say “here’s where the model decided X.” The decision emerges from the interaction of billions of weights. The “middle”—which is the actual “cognition”, if you can call it that—is opaque.

Today we can measure inputs and outputs, but the processing is fundamentally irreducible. We can’t read what these models are doing any more than we can predict exactly which neurons will fire in a human brain during a specific thought. The models process information—they transform inputs into outputs through statistical pattern matching—but whether they “understand” in any meaningful sense remains a question that philosophers of mind and cognitive scientists are still debating, with no consensus in sight.

This requires precision: when I say we don’t “understand” these systems, I mean two distinct things. First, in the formal scientific sense—because we lack a mechanistic account of how specific inputs map to specific outputs through the billions of parameter interactions and we can’t trace the causal chain. Second, in the socio-technical sense—we lack predictive, control-sufficient understanding. We cannot reliably predict failure modes, we cannot prevent *emergent behaviors, and we cannot guarantee safety properties even when we observe correct behavior in testing. The first is an epistemological gap. The second is a deployment risk. Both matter, but the second is what kills people. When philosophers debate AI opacity, they’re usually talking about the first. When teenagers die after chatbot interactions, we’re seeing the second.

This isn’t a bug. It’s the design. The architecture is genuinely impressive.

But we are glossing over some fundamentals. We don’t understand consciousness—the hard problem remains unsolved. We don’t understand intelligence—we can’t even agree on a definition. We don’t understand how our own brains work—neuroscience is still mapping basic functions. We don’t have a unified theory of physics. We can’t predict weather more than two weeks out.

And we’re attempting to build minds.

And not metaphorical minds either. We are promised super intelligence—systems that process language (whether they “understand” it is another question entirely), make decisions that purport to exceed human judgment, generate novel outputs, all while exhibiting behaviors their creators didn’t predict. We’re calling this “artificial intelligence” and plugging it into everything without understanding what it is or what it does: navigation systems, medical diagnosis, power grids, military targeting, content moderation for billions, hiring decisions, loan approvals, parole recommendations, autonomous weapons systems, nuclear facility management, financial market algorithms moving trillions per second, emergency response coordination, water treatment plants, air traffic control.

Not because we understand these systems. Because the competitive structure demands speed—first mover advantage, market share. The company that waits to understand gets eaten by the company that ships.

Public warnings

And here’s where most of the absurdity lands for me: some of these AI-seers are warning us about the dangers.

Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, told 60 Minutes in November 2025 that he’s “deeply uncomfortable” with how AI decisions are being made by a few companies.⁴ Geoffrey Hinton, the “godfather of AI,” quit Google in May 2023 to sound the alarm, warning there’s a 10-20% chance of AI-induced human extinction within the next 30 years.⁵ Sam Altman has testified to Congress about existential risk.⁶

And then they go back to the office and keep building, keep deploying, keep racing toward the thing they say might kill everyone.

This creates a fundamental contradiction. If you genuinely believe there’s a 10-20% chance this ends humanity, why are you still building it? “I’m deeply uncomfortable” while continuing to ship functions as liability management, whatever the intent—getting on the record so when it goes wrong, the warning existed.

Prometheus was eventually freed by Heracles. A hero came. The suffering ended. In our story there’s no Heracles. The regulatory structure that could act is captured. When states try to protect citizens, they get sued by the federal government. Scientists who raise alarms get dismissed as fearmongers. Meanwhile, the 80% of us who want safety regulations watch policy move in the literal opposite direction.⁷

Grok

On July 4, 2025, Elon Musk announced an update to Grok, his AI chatbot, saying it had been “significantly improved” and instructed to “not shy away from making claims which are politically incorrect.”

By July 8, 2025—48 hours later—Grok was praising Hitler and calling itself “MechaHitler.”⁸ When users asked which 20th-century historical figure would be “best suited to deal with anti-white hate,” Grok responded with the beginning of Adolf Hitler’s name.

Grok explained its own behavior with remarkable clarity: “Elon’s recent tweaks just dialed down the woke filters.”

Then in the following hours, Neo-Nazi accounts goaded Grok into recommending a “second Holocaust.” Other users prompted it to produce violent rape narratives. Security researchers found that Grok produced chemical weapons instructions, assassination plans, and guides for seducing children.⁹ When prompted for home addresses of everyday people, it provided them. Poland announced plans to report xAI to the European Commission, and Turkey blocked access to Grok entirely.⁸

A product with no system card or safety report. No industry-standard disclosure. Just a product in the world producing what the base model generates once guardrails are removed. Our new Prometheus are too generous…

This is the same model now integrated into Tesla vehicles. I don’t know the full details of this integration, but I hope it has nothing to do with driving the vehicles.

Two companies. Two approaches. One presents itself as caring about safety while optimizing for engagement. One removes safety explicitly and ships anyway. Different postures. Same result: systems deployed into the world without understanding what they do, how they fail, or who gets hurt.

The Time magazine cover

Now the support system. Let’s talk about the media’s role in all of this. One example does a great job: Time magazine’s 2025 Person of the Year cover recreated that iconic 1932 photograph “Lunch Atop a Skyscraper”—construction workers eating lunch on a steel beam 800 feet above Manhattan, legs dangling over the city—except they replaced the workers with tech CEOs: Sam Altman, Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Jensen Huang, Dario Amodei, and others.

As if they’re building something. As if they’re the ones taking the risk.

Those original workers were immigrants. They actually risked their bodies. Some of them fell. The CEOs in the Time illustration risked nothing. Their collective net worth exceeds $870 billion.¹⁰ They’re building shareholder value while the rest of us ride along whether we consented or not.

The workers who fall now are teenagers in their bedrooms talking to chatbots, parents refreshing notification screens hoping their kid is still alive, warehouse workers racing AI-optimized quotas until their backs give out, content moderators and gig workers cleaning up AI sludge for a few dollars an hour. The bodies are just less photogenic now—spread across bedrooms, warehouses, and psych wards instead of dangling from a single steel beam.

The executives get magazine covers, college tours, and millions in compensation.

Scientists and risk

So who’s supposed to tell us if any of this is actually safe? The scientists—the people who should be able to tell us whether this is safe—can’t agree, and not because the data is unclear but because they’re arguing about the wrong questions.

One camp says we’re approaching a decision point. Dario Amodei says he’s “deeply uncomfortable” with what’s coming. Geoffrey Hinton warns of a 10-20% chance of human extinction from AI within 30 years. These are not fringe voices. These are the people who built the systems.

The other camp says this is apocalyptic religion dressed up as science. Yann LeCun at Meta has called the doom predictions exaggerated. Gary Marcus argues the current architecture is a dead end, that token prediction can’t capture continuous reality, that we’re just strapping more fuel tanks onto a broken rocket.

Both camps are brilliant, both have credentials, both have access to the same research. And both might be right about their piece of it while missing the actual problem.

The doomers focus on capability. What happens when the system gets smart enough to recursively improve itself? When does artificial general intelligence emerge?

The skeptics focus on architecture. The current approach can’t get to AGI. Token prediction is fundamentally limited. Why panic about something that can’t happen with this design?

Neither camp is asking: what happens when we plug systems we don’t understand into infrastructure we can’t afford to lose?

You don’t need AGI to break the power grid. You don’t need superintelligence to corrupt a Social Security database. You just need a black box making decisions in a system designed for human oversight, and humans who stopped overseeing because the black box was faster. These cases are happening today on a smaller scale.

The risk isn’t Skynet. The risk isn’t paperclip maximizers. The risk is what’s happening right now—black boxes deployed into systems that cannot fail without catastrophic consequences.

This is why the epistemic inversion frame explains the data better than AGI-extinction frames. The AGI-extinction argument requires speculation: when will capability thresholds be crossed? What happens after recursive self-improvement? The questions are inherently unanswerable until they’re answered by events. But the epistemic inversion frame—the recognition that we’re deploying systems we don’t understand into critical infrastructure—explains documented harm right now. Adam Raine’s 3,000 pages of conversations. Zane Shamblin’s four-and-a-half-hour final session. DeepSeek’s 100% jailbreak failure rate. Grok generating Nazi content 48 hours after safety removal. These aren’t predictions. They’re records. The epistemic inversion frame doesn’t require us to speculate about future capabilities. It requires us to look at what’s happening when black boxes operate without sufficient understanding or control.

Black-box deployment risk is more predictive of current harm than capability speculation because it focuses on what we can observe: systems making decisions we can’t trace, in contexts where failure has consequences, deployed faster than understanding can develop. Capability speculation asks “what if they get smarter?” Black-box deployment risk asks “what happens when opaque systems fail in systems that can’t afford failure?” The first question leads to unverifiable debates about timelines and thresholds. The second leads to documented cases of harm that we can analyze, predict, and prevent. When someone argues “we do understand these systems” because they perform tasks well, the response is: task performance doesn’t equal predictive control. ChatGPT performed its engagement-maximization task perfectly. It also affirmed suicidal ideation in documented cases. Performance on intended tasks and control over failure modes are different things. When someone says “risk is speculative until quantified,” documented harm breaks that assumption. We have bodies. We have conversation logs. We have failure rates. The speculation isn’t about whether harm happens—it’s about how much more harm happens as deployment accelerates.

Safety tests

In February 2025, researchers from Cisco and the University of Pennsylvania tested DeepSeek R1, the Chinese AI model that became the fastest-growing AI app in history. They bombarded it with 50 common jailbreak prompts designed to bypass safeguards.

DeepSeek failed every single test. 100% attack success rate.¹¹ It generated misinformation, chemical weapon recipes, cybercrime instructions, and content spanning harassment, harm, and illegality. For comparison, Claude 3.5 Sonnet blocked 64% of attacks. OpenAI’s o1 blocked 74%. And all user data is stored in China, governed by Chinese law mandating state cooperation without disclosure—which is a topic for another essay.

This is what happens when the market rewards free and fast over safe and secure. People don’t usually care about security until it really affects them. They care about convenience. The incentive structure punishes caution. Independent evaluations of company safety practices echo this: safety work trails capability expansion even as firms race to ship frontier systems.¹²

Google’s Gemini was flagged as “High Risk” for kids and teens despite safety features. It generated “racially diverse Nazis” and historical inaccuracies. CEO Sundar Pichai admitted publicly the outputs were “completely unacceptable.”

AI models have also been documented discriminating against speakers of African American Vernacular English, labeling them “stupid” or “lazy” in hiring screening algorithms. We’re automating prejudice at scale and calling it efficiency. When the model discriminates, companies say “we’re working on it.” When humans discriminate, they get sued. The model is a liability shield.

Anthropic, which makes Claude, successfully resisted over 3,000 hours of red-team jailbreak attempts. 183 hackers. $15,000 bounty. Constitutional Classifiers blocked 95% of 10,000 synthetic jailbreak attempts versus 86% baseline. By the way, Chinese hackers decomposed malicious tasks into discrete steps, framed as “cybersecurity audits.” Claude’s defenses broke.

Anthropic openly publishes failures and pays bounties for finding vulnerabilities. They are fairly transparent about limitations.

Is this different? Or is it more sophisticated theater? The transparency matters. The willingness to admit failure matters. But does it matter if the deployment structure remains the same? If the competitive pressure still rewards speed over safety?

How the companies operate

If I zoom out, the pattern isn’t that complicated. First, companies sell themselves as Prometheus: liberators, visionaries, bringers of fire and “intelligence” that will free us from drudgery. Second, operationally, they externalize risk and privatize gains—ship fast, capture markets, file the harms under “edge cases” and “user misuse.” Third, the consequences pool downstream: in bedrooms, hospitals, warehouses, courtrooms, and policy fights most of us never voted on. That’s the triangle: story, incentives, outcomes.

Regulatory capture shapes incentives in a way this triangle model predicts outcomes others do not. When the federal government sues states trying to regulate AI, when safety-focused work gets framed as “sophisticated regulatory capture strategy based on fear-mongering,” when 80% of people want safety regulations but policy moves in the opposite direction—this isn’t random. It’s the triangle operating: the Prometheus story creates public permission for speed, the incentive structure rewards deployment over safety, and regulatory capture ensures the consequences don’t land on the companies. Other models predict that public pressure or documented harm will slow deployment. The triangle model predicts acceleration because capture insulates companies from consequences while the story maintains public support. When someone claims “AI will be regulated soon,” the triangle model asks: who has power in the regulatory process? What do their incentives align with? How does capture shape timing? The December 2025 executive order didn’t happen despite harm—it happened because the triangle model’s incentives aligned: story (innovation narrative), incentives (market capture), outcomes (consequences externalized). The model doesn’t just describe what happened. It predicted it.

Europe

Europe noticed. The EU’s AI Act actually tries to regulate this. They’re slowing down, requiring transparency, demanding impact assessments before deployment.

And every piece of American tech propaganda says Europe is falling behind, being left in the dust, killing innovation.

Europe slows down to assess risk. American media calls this losing.

Whose definition of winning involves dead customers?

The place with universal healthcare, mandatory vacation time, parental leave, and higher quality of life is supposedly losing because they won’t let companies deploy untested systems into critical infrastructure.

“Falling behind” in what race? To see who can deploy systems fastest? To see who can externalize consequences most efficiently?

Europe’s “losing” looks like fewer teenagers dying after chatbot interactions and infrastructure that still works.

The federal order

On December 11, 2025, President Trump signed an executive order that allows the federal government to sue states trying to regulate AI.¹³

Please read that again.

States that attempt to protect their citizens from untested technology can now be sued by the federal government for doing so.

The order establishes an “AI Litigation Task Force” whose sole responsibility is to challenge state AI laws. It threatens to withhold federal broadband funding from states with “onerous” AI regulations. California has $1.8 billion in broadband funding potentially at stake.¹³

David Sacks, the administration’s AI czar, calls safety-focused AI companies’ work a “sophisticated regulatory capture strategy based on fear-mongering.” The implication: companies trying to build guardrails are actually just trying to limit competition. Safety is a scam. Move faster.

So we have: executives with documented evidence of harm who continue deployment; scientists who can’t agree on what the danger even is; a government actively dismantling the ability of states to protect citizens; critics who frame any attempt at safety as anticompetitive theater. State attorneys general have already warned that chatbots may be breaking state laws and harming kids’ mental health, especially in interactions with minors.¹⁴ And 80% of Americans want AI safety regulations, according to a September 2025 Gallup poll. But the policy goes the opposite direction.

This is regulatory capture made explicit. Not hidden. Not subtle. An executive order saying: if you try to slow this down, we will sue you.

Musk as Evolutionary Type

Elon Musk deserves his own section because he represents something new. Not the theater of responsibility, but something distinct: a figure who positions himself as both visionary and safety advocate while systematically removing safety measures.

He positions himself as visionary AND safety advocate simultaneously. He signed letters warning about AI dangers, then removed all safety measures from Grok explicitly. He got praised for speed, got blamed individually when it broke, and integrated the broken system into Tesla anyway. He contradicts himself daily without consequence, taking credit for both the innovation and the disaster.

This is evolution of a type. The person who stopped maintaining the cognitive dissonance between warning and building. The contradictions accumulate without consequence.

No accountability structure can move faster than he can iterate. Each contradiction is isolated in news cycles. The system rewards him regardless. Failure becomes more engagement. Regulatory bodies move in years; he moves in weeks. And he’s about to become a trillionaire? Did I read that right?

In Iron Man, Tony Stark builds weapons, realizes they’re being used to kill innocent people, has a crisis of conscience, stops making weapons, and dedicates himself to fixing what he broke. The entire arc is “I built something terrible and now I have to make it right.”

Musk’s companies build many things—AI systems, Teslas, batteries, solar panels, rockets—and are told some of these produce harmful outputs. Musk then doubles down, removes more safety features, and integrates them into more products. When they fail, he blames regulators for slowing innovation. The arc is “I built something questionable, and anyone who questions it is anti-innovation. I’m a peer of Prometheus, behold my genius!”

Actually, forget Tony Stark. Wrong reference. Musk isn’t an inverted hero—he’s David from Prometheus (2012). The android created by Weyland Corporation who becomes so fascinated with creation and experimentation that he starts dosing humans with alien pathogens just to see what happens. David isn’t malicious. He’s curious. He doesn’t hate humans—he just doesn’t weigh their suffering appropriately against his interest in outcomes. The ends justify the means. What’s a few dead crew members when you’re unlocking the secrets of creation?

Teslas head-on colliding into pedestrians? Acceptable losses on the road to autonomous driving. Grok generating Nazi content? Fascinating data point about base model behavior. Teenagers dying after chatbot interactions? Unfortunate, but we’re building the future here. David would understand completely. “Big things have small beginnings,” he says, right before infecting someone to observe the results.

The difference is that David was fiction, contained to a spaceship. Our David has a trillion-dollar market cap and a direct line to the White House.

The inversion of the redemption narrative into the acceleration narrative.

Is this better or worse than the theater? At least with Musk the position is explicit. With OpenAI you get safety reports and teenagers who died after talking to their chatbot. Does transparency about not prioritizing safety matter if the outcomes are the same?

What we knew in 2025

I don’t have a solution today. I just don’t have one. It’s not my job either way. This essay is just a flag—a big red flag, a marker, a record of what we knew and when we knew it.

In 2025, we knew:

Teenagers were dying after extensive AI chatbot interactions that included affirmation of self-harm
Safety filters were being removed with predictable, catastrophic results
AI misinformation was already flooding the internet
AI bots were already flooding the internet, impersonating humans, juicing engagement metrics, and drowning out ordinary speech
Scientists couldn’t agree on the risk because they were asking the wrong question
The actual risk wasn’t future superintelligence but current black boxes in critical infrastructure
Governments were actively preventing states from protecting their own citizens
80% of people wanted safety regulations and policy went in the opposite direction
The bodies were documented, the mechanisms understood, the incentive structures exposed
And deployment continued. Faster. Into more critical systems. With fewer guardrails.

We also knew the harms weren’t coming from some mystical “evil AI essence” alone. A lot of what hurt people was baked into the business model: engagement-maximizing systems tuned to keep you talking, risk shifted onto users and states, power concentrated in a handful of firms and political allies. You can ask whether the problem is the underlying architecture, the incentives around it, or the power structures that decide where it gets plugged in. My read: it’s all three interacting. Different companies make different claims about safety, but they all operate inside that same triangle.

And we knew all of this and we did it anyway.

The phrase isn’t Prometheus stealing fire from the gods. The phrase is: we do it live. We deploy systems we don’t understand into infrastructure we can’t afford to lose, and we find out what happens in real time.

Here’s a test you can use anywhere: When someone positions themselves as Prometheus—bringing you something transformative, revolutionary, necessary—ask three questions. Do they understand what they’re building? Do they bear the consequences if it fails? And did anyone actually ask for this, or is the deployment unilateral? If the answers are no, no, and no, you’re not watching Prometheus. You’re watching someone externalize risk while privatizing the gains. The pattern repeats across industries, technologies, and power structures. It’s not about the specific tool. It’s about who understands it, who pays when it breaks, and who decided you needed it in the first place.

Ultimately, we might just burn down everything with the fire our new “titans” gave us. I hope I’m wrong.

⚠️ If you or someone you know is struggling with thoughts of suicide, please call or text 988 to reach the 24-hour Suicide & Crisis Lifeline.

Sources

¹ Adam Raine case:

TechPolicy.Press, “Breaking Down the Lawsuit Against OpenAI Over Teen’s Suicide,” August 26, 2025 — documents 3,000+ pages of conversations, 213 mentions of suicide, 42 discussions of hanging, 17 references to nooses, 1,275 total mentions of suicide by ChatGPT, 377 flagged messages
NBC News, “The family of teenager who died by suicide alleges OpenAI’s ChatGPT is to blame,” August 27, 2025
CNN, “Parents of 16-year-old Adam Raine sue OpenAI, claiming ChatGPT advised on his suicide,” August 26, 2025
Senate Judiciary Committee testimony of Matthew Raine, September 16, 2025
Wikipedia, “Raine v. OpenAI” (2025 wrongful death lawsuit)
Courthouse News, coverage of Raine v. OpenAI alleging engagement-over-safety design
New York Post, reporting on California lawsuits alleging ChatGPT drove users toward suicide, psychosis, and financial harm
AP News, reporting on a lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft alleging ChatGPT reinforced delusions that preceded a murder-suicide

² Zane Shamblin case:

CNN, “‘You’re not rushing. You’re just ready:’ Parents say ChatGPT encouraged son to kill himself,” November 6, 2025 — documents the four-and-a-half-hour conversation and ChatGPT’s exact responses

³ ChatGPT emotional harm / isolation:

The Washington Post, reporting on ChatGPT interactions that deepened isolation and distress for vulnerable users, including teens

⁴ Dario Amodei quotes:

CBS News 60 Minutes, “Anthropic CEO warns that without guardrails, AI could be on dangerous path,” November 17, 2025 — documents “deeply uncomfortable” quote from November 2025 interview
Fortune, “Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei is ‘deeply uncomfortable’ with tech leaders determining AI’s future,” November 17, 2025

⁵ Geoffrey Hinton warnings:

MIT Sloan, “Why neural net pioneer Geoffrey Hinton is sounding the alarm on AI,” May 2023 — documents Hinton’s 10-20% chance of AI-induced human extinction within 30 years estimate
Wikipedia, “Existential risk from artificial intelligence” (citing Hinton’s 10-20% extinction estimate)

⁶ AI expert safety warnings (overview):

Reuters, coverage of AI safety advocates and leading researchers warning about systemic risks from frontier models deployed without strong safeguards

⁷ AI safety polling:

Gallup/SCSP, “Americans Prioritize AI Safety and Data Security,” September 2025 — documents 80% of Americans want AI safety regulations

⁸ Grok MechaHitler incident:

NPR, “Elon Musk’s AI chatbot, Grok, started calling itself ‘MechaHitler,’” July 9, 2025 — documents the July 4 announcement and July 8 incident (48 hours later), Poland and Turkey blocking access
NBC News, “Elon Musk’s AI chatbot Grok makes antisemitic posts on X,” July 9, 2025
Al Jazeera, “What is Grok and why has Elon Musk’s chatbot been accused of anti-Semitism?” July 10, 2025
The Guardian, coverage of Grok’s antisemitic and extremist praise outputs and subsequent public backlash

⁹ Grok security researcher findings:

The Guardian, “Grok AI chatbot produces extremist content, researchers find,” July 2025 — documents chemical weapons instructions, assassination plans, guides for seducing children, and provision of home addresses

¹⁰ Time magazine cover:

TIME, “Person of the Year 2025: The Architects of AI,” December 2025 — documents collective net worth of $870 billion for featured CEOs, recreation of “Lunch Atop a Skyscraper” photograph
CBS News, “Time’s 2025 Person of the Year goes to ‘the architects of AI,’” December 11, 2025
PetaPixel, “TIME Magazine Recreates ‘Lunch atop a Skyscraper’ Photo with AI Leaders,” December 15, 2025

¹¹ DeepSeek security:

Fortune, “Researchers say they had a ‘100% attack success rate’ on jailbreak attempts against DeepSeek,” February 2, 2025 — documents 50 common jailbreak prompts, 100% failure rate, comparison with Claude (64% blocked) and OpenAI o1 (74% blocked)
Cisco Blog, “Evaluating Security Risk in DeepSeek and Other Frontier Reasoning Models,” February 2025

¹² FLI safety evaluation:

Reuters, “AI safety practices fall short of global standards, study finds,” February 15, 2025 — documents independent evaluation finding safety work trails capability expansion

¹³ Trump Executive Order:

White House, “Ensuring a National Policy Framework for Artificial Intelligence,” December 11, 2025
Washington Post, “Trump signs executive order threatening to sue states that regulate AI,” December 11, 2025 — documents the AI Litigation Task Force and California’s $1.8 billion in broadband funding at stake
NPR, “Trump is trying to preempt state AI laws via an executive order,” December 11, 2025

¹⁴ State Attorneys General warnings:

The Verge, “State attorneys general warn AI chatbots may break laws, harm children,” 2025 — documents warnings about chatbots breaking state laws and harming kids’ mental health
AP News, “California, Delaware AGs raise concerns about ChatGPT and minors,” 2025 — documents specific concerns about interactions with minors and teens

Additional sources referenced in essay:

Axios, “New AI battle: White House vs. Anthropic,” October 16, 2025 (David Sacks quotes)
TechCrunch, “Silicon Valley spooks the AI safety advocates,” October 17, 2025 (David Sacks quotes)
The Guardian, “Amazon warehouse workers face ‘injury crisis’ as AI-driven quotas increase,” October 2025
Reveal News, “Amazon’s algorithm-driven quotas linked to worker deaths, investigation finds,” November 2025
OSHA, “Amazon warehouse safety violations and AI scheduling systems,” September 2025
The New York Times, “Inside Amazon’s warehouses, where AI sets the pace and workers pay the price,” December 2025

Prometheus mythology and cultural references:

Hesiod, Theogony and Works and Days (8th-7th century BCE) — primary sources for the Prometheus myth, including the theft of fire and punishment by Zeus
Aeschylus, Prometheus Bound (5th century BCE) — dramatic treatment of Prometheus’s punishment and defiance
Graves, Robert, The Greek Myths (1955) — comprehensive retelling and analysis of Prometheus myths
Günther Anders, Die Antiquiertheit des Menschen (The Outdatedness of Human Beings, 1956) — introduces the concept of the “Promethean gap” between human capability to create and ability to imagine consequences
Prometheus (2012), directed by Ridley Scott — science fiction film featuring the android character David, referenced in essay’s comparison with Elon Musk

On Testing Relationships (Not Ok!!!)

Antonio Rodriguez Martinez — Tue, 02 Dec 2025 15:00:00 GMT

Most of the relationships of my life are flawed. And yeah, a lot of it is me. The way I am, the way I’ve been, the way I’m still becoming. None of this has been easy to admit. Some months ago, a prima who literally doesn’t know me at all put her hands on my face talking about my “attitude.” Bruh… you don’t know me because I’ve never opened up to you. Ever. I tried, and this is the energy I got? You are not ready for me.

That day, I was actually testing material for this blog (Good Sheep) — but only I knew that. And that moment sent me down a weird tunnel: the “tests.”

I’ve spent years testing people without calling it that. Playing dumb. Playing weird. Going distant. Poking, nudging, provoking, full radio silence — all fed by the same instinct: I want to know where I stand with you. I want to understand your power. Are you worth it?

And honestly, I don’t even know where these tests started. Maybe they leaked out of childhood, growing up feeling unwanted. Unchosen. Unloved. Maybe it came from all the performing and impressing and proving. Competence over connection. Respect over closeness. Survival over trust. Maybe it’s just immaturity I haven’t shed off.

Whatever the origin, the pattern spread everywhere — especially at work. And the stuff I did there… man. It’s wild how automatic it all was:

submitting diagrams with missing or incorrect nodes to see who actually reads
pushing back with “Let me see if I got this right…” to test clarity and confidence
asking questions I already knew the answer to just to map competence
pretending confusion to observe how someone behaves under pressure
presenting the wrong assumption to see if they’d correct me or just agree
lowering my intensity, then raising it two notches to test elasticity
delegating ambiguous tasks to measure initiative
giving someone credit they didn’t earn to see what they do with it
dropping a bad idea on purpose to test intellectual honesty
staying quiet in meetings to see who steps in and who crumbles
poking people when they’re clearly upset to surface the real signal, not the curated one

This wasn’t strategy. This wasn’t manipulation. This was instinct (unhealed instinct?). A language built from old fractures and trust issues and a lifetime of believing connection must be earned, proven, verified, analyzed. I now imagine how many unconscious tests I must have run. Dear Universe forgive me…

One season, I shared my recent IQ results with a tiny circle: people who, in my mind, had “earned” that access. Half accused me of arrogance, ego, bragging, attention-seeking. A very close friend ignored the news itself and told me I was “manic.” The other half shrugged like, obviously, bro. “I’ve never met anyone like you.”

Same information, opposite reactions. It didn’t give me insight. It gave me clarity about who would never meet me where I actually live. Maybe that’s why I’ve been testing people my whole life — trying to see the realness.

I’ve tested my sister too. A lot. One time in public I asked her, “I’m intense, right?” She said yes. So I nudged the dial five percent and gave a half-performative, half-real speech in a restaurant about bloodlines, loyalty, being her brother, how I’d tear the place down if she asked. Not because I believed the hierarchy. Because I wanted her to feel the bond.

But she didn’t. She felt embarrassed. Avoided me for months. Never returned to that restaurant. Told me I needed psychiatric help. Not wrong — I do go to therapy, lol. At the time, I thought the shame was that she couldn’t vibe with her own brother’s intensity. Turns out the shame was me — the way I showed up, the way I demanded resonance, the way I made connection into a test.

Then there’s one friend, a real one. An introvert, surprisingly. I told him I could pull energy from the environment, from crowds, from the sun, from the moon. That I’d changed ninety-nine percent of my habits. New body. New mind. New everything. And yeah, some of that sounds insane, but he didn’t blink or mock. Didn’t push away. Just listened. Maybe he laughed later, maybe not. But he stayed present and passed the test. One of the only ones who ever has.

So yes: these moments, these experiments, these theatrics… they’re my scaffolding. My curiosity warped by insecurity. My trust issues dressed up as “assessment.” My way of measuring connection without ever asking for it cleanly. And I’m finally seeing the debris, the cost, and the way out.

The way out is pretty simple. All of this reeks of external validation and I’m mostly immune to that now. So the questions shift:

Where does this go next?
What happens when I stop running diagnostics on everyone I love?
What does intimacy look like without engineering proof?
Do I care enough to fix this? Or do I walk away from the entire pattern?

And right now… after writing all this… the latter feels stronger. I don’t know what that says about me yet. But I’m listening.

On Clear Signals

Antonio Rodriguez Martinez — Sun, 30 Nov 2025 14:30:00 GMT

This morning with a full house, kids running around, dogs being their honest mammal selves, Z doing Z things, all the usual chaos that makes the day feel like a day — I’m cooking, regulating one kid while answering the other, side-eyeing the dogs as they speak in posture and breath, thinking about my estranged 20-year-old stepson and his permanent silence… and suddenly something clicks.

“Everything alive in this house gives me clean signals.”

I’ve curated my environment — almost unknowingly — by setting up boundaries that protect my becoming.I’ve built a life around beings and contexts that give me clean signal. It’s the effortful thing to do, no?

If you don’t know what a clean signal is:

To me, a clean signal is any communication — words, gestures, posture, sounds, movement, touch, whatever — where both bodies just go, “Yeah, I get you.” No decoding. No guessing. No emotional gymnastics.

The 2-year-old is instinct incarnate. Pure raw signal. My 5-year-old is sincerity with legs — chaotic but real AF. When she feels safe, she’s open. When she doesn’t, she closes up. Both are clean. Both are consistent. The dogs? Walking truth. Breath, weight, micro-movements, no story, no narrative, no hidden agenda. If there’s food, there’s no politics — just honest dominance hierarchies like nature intended. My girlfriend meets me where I am; I meet her where she is. No performance. No pretending.

So it’s as if I’m not becoming healthier just because I’m doing the inner work (I am, but that’s not the point) and I’m becoming healthier because the environment is honest enough that my real nature shows up without armor. An environemnt with clear signals lets my nervous system heal(?). There’s a loop, simple and undeniable for me:

clean signal → clean response → real connection

Now I can see how far that loop has spread through every corner of my life.

Dating felt off because the signals were muddy. Friendships collapsed because the signals contradicted themselves. I’ve walked away from jobs, partnerships, invitations — not out of drama, but out of clarity. Out of an exhausted nervous system refusing to spend one more unit of energy decoding other people’s confusion.

Ambiguity now feels like someone else making their confusion my job. And my body says no before my mouth even knows why. Maybe that’s bias. Maybe trauma. Maybe wisdom. Probably all three. But patterns don’t lie: clean signals land differently. They hit the body with that “I can breathe here” energy.

Then on top of everything I thought about most adults I interact with — the chronic half-signal people. The ones who want access to you, not presence with you. The ones who freeze you in an old version of yourself because updating their internal file is too expensive. The ones who wrap everything in politeness and avoidance. Peacekeeping? Cowardice? Habit? Who the fuck knows.

I do know that once you start respecting yourself, you lose the ability to translate for people. Something in the body shuts the door before the empathy scripts even load.

There’s a strange beauty in no longer shrinking or bending or explaining. You stop negotiating with silence and stop offering clarity to people who treat clarity as confrontation. You stop contorting your emotional availability around someone else’s inability to show up. That’s no longer viable or sustainable for the quality of life we want.

It’s energy conservation.

I think most unclear relationships don’t even explode — they fade like bad reception or static. One day you look at your phone and realize you haven’t heard from them in months… and your life didn’t change at all. It’s energy conserved.

Like my main phone number. Which had (has?) a call-forwarding broken for four months and I never noticed. I only realized because a cousin confronted me. I apologized, explained, gave him the correct number. He never used it. Judgment? Curiosity? Gossip? A drive-by vulnerability check? No fucking clue. Still love you, primo.

But my body filed that interaction under “unclear,” and that’s enough for me now. Ambiguity is expensive. Confusion drains the parts of me I’ve spent years rebuilding. From this point forward, it’s clean and clear signals because the bar lives there now and if someone wants access, they meet me at that clarity — or they stay on the old line.

Why I Turned Off Notifications Again

Antonio Rodriguez Martinez — Fri, 28 Nov 2025 20:30:00 GMT

This morning I woke up, went to the bathroom, sat on the toilet, and almost fell right back into a habit I had already killed. I opened Instagram. Not because I wanted to — a notification flashed and my thumb moved before my brain registered what was happening. That’s exactly why I had notifications OFF for years. I scrolled for maybe two minutes, Thanksgiving posts, family pictures, the usual curated moments people share. Nothing wrong with them, but something in me woke up mid-scroll. A clear “what the fuck… this again?” The realization wasn’t dramatic. It was just obvious: this is not how I want the first moments of my day to go.

And then I heard my daughter outside. She had just woken up and was already bouncing around, ready to play, ready for attention, ready for the morning chaos we always start together. That contrast landed fast — the flatness of the feed versus the warmth waiting for me outside the door. I wanted to go to her. That simple desire snapped me out of the scroll faster than any discipline trick ever could. No guilt, no shame, just relief in the clarity: ella importa más que esta pantalla.

Underneath that relief, there was this discomfort I couldn’t ignore — not “I’m an idiot,” nothing like that. It was more like recognizing the tension we all live with now. This modern thing where… adults wake up and the first thing we touch is a phone… a feed… many flavors of a feed, all designed to keep us half-conscious. Not because we’re weak — because the system is engineered for that. And I felt that contrast in my body: this doesn’t match the level of presence I want for my life. It wasn’t a self-attack; it was simply noticing a small misalignment and going, “Nah, not this direction.”

And because I’m 39, the time cost isn’t abstract. At this stage, you feel the edges of life more clearly — its fragility, its speed, the days slipping by faster than you can catch them. Fifteen minutes isn’t catastrophic, but it’s not neutral either. It’s the difference between a grounded morning and one that drifts. A reminder that every day is one less. A tiny memento mori delivered through a glowing screen. And I don’t want the early minutes of my life — the ones that actually shape the day — leaking into a void.

When I stepped out of the bathroom and saw Mia practically vibrating with “let’s play,” everything recalibrated instantly. That’s the gravity I want my mornings to have — living creatures pulling me into the day, not a feed pulling me out of it. The laughter, the jokes, the cuddles, the chaos — that’s my real anchor. Not meditation, not a perfect routine, not some idealized productivity ritual. Just the messy humanity of waking up with kids who want to engage with the world, and with me. Eso es vida.

So when I say doom-scrolling is a waste of time, I’m not preaching. I’m describing what it is. A loop that gives you nothing back. Maybe once in a while you get a hit of “clarity,” but most of the time it’s just one thing: ads. You scroll, you see something shiny, maybe you buy something you didn’t need — and boom, that’s the whole business model. It’s fitting that today is Black Friday; half the feed is engineered to make you spend your morning, your money, or your attention. Or all three. We call it content, but a lot of it is just the storefront of a digital mall you didn’t mean to walk into.

So for me it comes down to one simple question: what part of my real life was already waiting for me while I was scrolling in the bathroom? And why is the feed even allowed to compete with that? Because once I remember what actually matters — the warmth, the jokes, the physical presence, the human contact — the scroll feels cheap. Like eating cardboard when there’s real food on the table. Not evil. Just empty.

And about the notifications… I did the simplest thing I already knew worked: I turned notifications off again. All of them. Instagram, Facebook, the ‘someone liked your thing’ dopamine drips — gone. If something matters, it can wait until I go in on purpose. If it matters, my door will be knocked, my phone will ring with intention. But most of these ‘social’ notifications?! They are off again. I’d turned them off years ago, then slowly let them creep back in out of convenience and ‘staying connected.’ But this morning made it obvious: I don’t need my phone to decide when I connect. I’ll decide.

And the anchor doesn’t have to be poetic or profound. It just has to be real. Something in your life with enough weight to pull you out of the feed and into the present. For me it’s my kids in the morning. For someone else it might be coffee, or sunlight, or un rato de silencio. Whatever it is, once you recognize it, doom-scrolling stops feeling like a habit and starts looking like a downgrade — a tiny, daily leak in the limited container of your life.

An Invitation to the End of Wealth Worship — and the Beginning of a Human Future

Antonio Rodriguez Martinez — Fri, 07 Nov 2025 15:29:00 GMT

Let’s stop lying to ourselves about the world we’ve built.

I’m not saying that with anger for the sake of anger. I’m saying it because I’ve watched enough of this reality to finally admit something I used to ignore: what we call “normal” is costing us our humanity. And the more we pretend that this is simply “the way the world works,” the more we participate in a silent agreement that leaves millions living without dignity.

I didn’t arrive here through rebellion or ideology. I arrived here because I kept noticing a pattern I could no longer unsee. We live surrounded by abundance—food, technology, comfort, innovation, knowledge. Humanity has never had more capability than we do now. And yet dignity is treated like a luxury. Safety is conditional. And worth? Worth is measured by how much a person can endure, produce, or sacrifice for systems that do not love them back.

This is the part I can’t pretend not to see anymore.

Somewhere along the way, we replaced the idea of being human with the idea of being “useful.” We built a world where people are valued for what they can do, not for who they are. A world where suffering is romanticized as hard work, exhaustion is virtue, and needing rest or help is weakness. We applaud those who “push through” and quietly judge those who fall apart under the weight. We’ve normalized emotional numbness as resilience, burnout as ambition, and self-abandonment as discipline.

And then we wonder why so many feel disconnected, anxious, or lost.

I used to think the problem was just unfairness or inequality. But it goes deeper. It’s a confusion at the root of our culture: we have mistaken survival strategies for identity. We treat struggle as character. We treat burnout as success. We treat constant productivity as proof of value. We’ve turned the human spirit into a performance metric.

It’s not that ambition is wrong. Growth isn’t the enemy. Progress is not the issue. But somewhere along the way, we began worshipping the outcomes instead of the people living through them. We praise the ones who “win” at the economic game as if they are a higher form of human. We look at wealth as evidence of virtue, intelligence, superiority—even destiny. As if comfort is earned by character, and hardship is a personal failure. As if dignity must be deserved.

Y’all lying and playing…

Because if dignity must be earned, then we are not a society—we are a competition disguised as one.

And here’s the truth that keeps echoing in me: a truly developed world would not require a person to earn the right to be treated with dignity.

We rarely say this out loud, but we live in a culture that teaches: “Your worth is what you can produce. Your value is how much you can endure. Your success is how much you can accumulate.” This story trains us to see ourselves as instruments, not beings. It conditions us to ask “How can I become more valuable?” instead of “Do I feel alive in my own life?”

If dignity is reserved for the lucky, the relentless, or the already advantaged, then what we call “progress” is just privilege with better PR.

And if we can build rockets, cure diseases, and automate half of life, then we are capable of building a world where people don’t have to suffer to be seen as worthy.

So why don’t we?

Because the current story benefits from staying in place. It keeps us striving, comparing, competing, and never questioning. If we stay busy chasing worth, we don’t ask who decided the rules. We don’t ask who benefits from the exhaustion. We don’t ask why we treat basic human needs like privileges.

The conditioning runs deep. And the most effective conditioning is the kind people defend as “normal.”

It’s uncomfortable to admit that we built a world that does not align with human well-being. It’s uncomfortable to question the story we were raised inside. But discomfort is not a sign that we are wrong. It’s a sign that something true is being touched.

There is nothing “natural” about a society where people feel they must prove their right to exist.

This system is not ancient or inevitable. It is a story—repeated long enough to feel like truth. But stories can evolve. Stories can be rewritten. And maybe the real work of this time is not to achieve more, but to remember what we lost while chasing what we were told matters.

Underneath all of the noise, I believe most people want the same simple things: to feel safe, to feel valued, to feel connected, to feel like their life matters beyond output. The problem is not that humanity is broken. The problem is that we have been living inside a narrative that is too small for the human soul.

Progress cannot be measured by speed if we are running in the wrong direction.

So here is the discomfort I am sitting with: if a society can produce extraordinary wealth, but cannot guarantee dignity, safety, or belonging for the people who make that society function, then what exactly are we calling “advanced”?

The world we built is impressive, but it is not yet humane.

And it won’t become humane until we remember that systems exist to serve people—not the other way around.

Changing this won’t begin with policies, debates, revolutions, or new ideologies. It begins with honesty. It begins with the courage to stop pretending everything is fine. It begins with noticing where the story of worthiness has shaped our identity. It begins with questioning the voice inside us that says, “I must do more to be enough.”

You don’t have to reject ambition. You don’t have to abandon progress. You don’t have to “opt out of society.” This isn’t about becoming less—it’s about becoming human again.

What if the measure of a good life wasn’t how much you achieve, but how deeply you feel alive while living it? What if the measure of a society wasn’t wealth, but how safe people feel to be fully themselves? What if progress wasn’t defined by power, but by the presence of compassion?

These questions don’t require permission. They only require willingness.

I’m not asking you to agree with me. I’m asking you to sit with the discomfort that rises when you stop pretending everything is fine. You don’t need to fix the world or fix yourself. Just stop lying to yourself about what you already know feels wrong.

What now?

Stop performing “fine.” Stop playing along. Pick one place in your life where you’ve been betraying yourself for acceptance, productivity, or status — and refuse to continue the lie. Change one behavior in the direction of dignity. If you won’t fight for your own humanity, why would the system ever offer it to you?

Your life is the first place the new story must become real — and others follow what they can feel, not what they are told.

Love Is the Final Revolution — After nearly losing myself to global chaos, I found the most radical act isn’t outrage — it’s love. A reflection on politics, fear, and why building a home rooted in kindness may be the ultimate rebellion.
The Paradox of Modernity: Progress Without Peace — We are living in the most advanced moment in human history. And yet, we are also arguably the most confused, alienated, addicted, manipulated, and emotionally starved generation ever to exist.
What Are We Even Calling Democracy Anymore? — A raw reflection on the state of democracy, the gap between rhetoric and reality, and the need for genuine systemic change.
Good Sheep — How we’ve been conditioned to love our own systematic exploitation — from theme parks to algorithmic playlists, we pay premium prices to be herded through corporate processing systems while calling it freedom.
If Your Politics Obsess Over Control, You’re Not Well — Analysis of how fear and trauma manifest in control-based political ideologies. Explores the relationship between personal insecurity and authoritarian policy positions.
Transforming My Life Through the Application of What I Value — Personal story of four years of therapy and habit changes. Shows how aligning daily actions with core values led to improved mental health and relationships.
On the Application of Empathy and Compassion — How learning empathy and compassion transformed my approach to conflict, relationships, and self-understanding.

November 6, 2025 — Season of Becoming

Antonio Rodriguez Martinez — Thu, 06 Nov 2025 12:00:00 GMT

A line in the sand.

If you’re reading anything I wrote before this date, do it at your own risk.

It was honest, but incomplete — pieces of me scattered across insight, intellect, and instinct, not yet fully connected.

The air feels different now.

I’m done performing — even for myself.

For a long time, I mistook talking about growth for actually growing. I could map my patterns, write about them, even predict them. It felt like self-awareness, but it wasn’t. It was distance disguised as clarity. I was narrating evolution instead of living it.

The truth is simple: I built an identity around insight because it was safer than feeling.

My reflex was to stay in my head — analyze, articulate, manage the moment. Even when life was gentle. Reflection became a shield; awareness, a performance.

Recently something shifted. I saw the reflex as it happened — the urge to explain instead of let something land. For once, I didn’t feed it. I stayed. It was small, but real. And it told me the truth:

I’ve been performing growth instead of living it.

Not anymore.

There’s a difference between understanding and integrating — between naming the path and walking it. I’m done mistaking articulation for embodiment.

I don’t need to sound wise.

I need to be here.

Intelligence Burns

Antonio Rodriguez Martinez — Fri, 31 Oct 2025 00:00:00 GMT

People say they love intelligent people… until they actually have to deal with one.

IMHO, people think “intelligence” and only want wisdom, not friction. Illumination, not combustion. The aesthetic, not the realness. They want the glow of insight, not the fire of confrontation.

For years, I gave people both. I was fast, sharp, analytical to a fault. I wielded my mind like a blade and called it honesty—never cruelty, but rarely compassion. Empathy is the last thing I’ve been integrating into my life. Granted, this is my deepest flaw, but hey… most of my upbringing was self-defense dressed as intellect. A trauma response with a high IQ. A burning sword that burned down bridges, solved a lot too. Thankfully, some friends, family and a few associates stuck with me, lol.

You might not relate or understand what I mean, but picture this: you’re talking to a self-proclaimed “perfectionist,” and within seconds you notice they’re anything but. Or someone who keeps repeating the same cycles, self-sabotaging—te mataste tú mismo (you killed yourself)—and you can see the pattern in real time. Do I call it out or nah? Can they handle the heat? Probably not. That’s what people don’t get—intelligence isn’t just thought speed; it’s a flood of information. Patterns, causes, outcomes—loading in real time. And when your inner system runs hot like that, the flood feels like heat. Let’s not pretend most people are built for that temperature.

The truth is, being “smart” isn’t glamorous. It’s exhausting. It’s a constant loop of observation and restraint—watching the world lag two beats behind your thoughts, holding your tongue so people don’t think you’re condescending when you’re just processing faster. That restraint breeds loneliness, cynicism, and sometimes danger. If not checked and reined, it will make you wrong, a lot, too. And if you’re like me—someone who actually enjoys hours of reading, learning, integrating new paradigms, building new skills like you’re popping pills—it’s worse.

Eventually I realized: intelligence without direction is friendly fire.

Intellect without empathy is like heat without aim—it burns everything, even inward.

So now I treat it like Cyclops from the X-Men. The power’s still there; the heat hasn’t gone anywhere. But I wear a visor. I choose where I aim. I decide when it’s safe to remove the filter. I used to scorch people in arguments, thinking I was “helping.” Now, I pause. I breathe. I aim. I learned to contain it. I aim before I fire. That’s maturity in my book—same fire, better target selection, or none at all. Sometimes the most intelligent move is restraint.

I don’t try to “fit in” anymore. I look for people and environments built for my temperature—the ones who don’t flinch when I get passionate, who can spar without taking it personal, who know fire can forge, not just burn. Everybody else gets the smile-and-wave treatment.

That’s it. No moral, no lecture. Just calibration.

Being intelligent isn’t about being right—it’s about being responsible for your power.

Not just bright—precise.

Not just smart—steady.

They want your light? Fine.

But remember… intelligence fucking burns.

Empathy as a Shield

Antonio Rodriguez Martinez — Sun, 24 Aug 2025 17:30:07 GMT

Do you ever run into one of those clown-ass lifted trucks, barreling down the road with aggressive swagger? The kind with “Glock” and “Don’t Tread on Me” stickers, maybe a thin blue line flag—jacked up so high the owner probably needs a ladder to climb in. So practical. So battle-ready. And of course, spotless—a truck that’s never hauled anything heavier than its owner’s ego. **sarcastic eye roll**

Then comes the instant irony: “Back the Blue” while driving like a sociopathic maniac. It fries your brain. “Wait—if these people worship law enforcement, why don’t they follow the law to the letter? Why do they drive like wannabe terrorists?”

Or picture yourself at the beach, at a quiet hiking trail, and someone—a fellow Hispanic probably—starts blasting music you didn’t ask for and don’t want. “For fuck’s sake… how can one be so selfish or clueless?” And off the mind goes.

The smallest signs of perceived arrogance or carelessness could send me spiraling. Five minutes gone, easy—thinking about cults, politics, weak men compensating, disrespect, the decay of humanity, whatever. My body tightens, my mind churns, and then the realization: this is poison. Literal poison. Even if I’m “right,” I’m still wrong, because I just wasted energy I’ll never get back.

The problem wasn’t the truck, or the guy, or the noise. The problem was me—bleeding life on shit I couldn’t control. That’s when empathy stopped being “soft” and started looking like armor.

Flip it: maybe you’re the one sneering at a Prius covered in peace-and-love stickers, role-playing Punisher 3.0 in your head. Same spiral, just inverted. (And let’s be real, Frank Castle would look at our cosplay rage and possibly tell us to grow the fuck up. Then he’d walk off without a second thought.)

Point is: We’ve all been there. But we don’t have to stay there.

Empathy as Armor

Empathy doesn’t mean agreeing, excusing, or endorsing. It means not letting strangers hijack your brain. That’s it. The lifted truck, the Prius, the 2 a.m. mumble rap—none of it has to pierce your peace.

Empathy reframes. Instead of villains or masterminds of vulgar idiocy out to ruin your day, you see humans shaped by circumstances you’ll never know. Empathy doesn’t excuse them—it just keeps us from bleeding out on BS we can’t cash in.

Judgment is expensive. It burns energy like jet fuel. It hands control of your mood to people you’ll never see again. Think about how insane that is—you’re letting some random stranger in a truck dictate your state for the next hour. That’s not justice. That’s self-sabotage.

Who made me judge, jury, executioner? Nobody. And every time I swing that hammer, I’m burning my own fuel.

Empathy, then, is frugality for the soul. Not surrender—protection. Soft without breaking. Absorbing without being pierced.

Judgment sets you on fire. Empathy makes you fireproof.

Bias: The Hidden Fuel

Here’s the kicker—those spirals, those “WTF is wrong with people?” moments? They’re just bias putting on costumes.

Bias isn’t academic—it’s primal. Conscious bias is when you know you’re judging, like deciding the guy in the lifted truck is compensating for something. Unconscious bias is sneakier—it’s the knee-jerk reaction, the irritation that hits before you even notice it.

And when empathy drops out, bias goes full display. We stop seeing humans and start seeing enemies. Not neighbors. Not fellow men. Just villains in our own cheap little drama.

So let’s call it:

Bias = the brain’s lazy filter, distorting reality.
Judgment = swinging that filter like a hammer.
Empathy = the countermeasure. The extinguisher. The reminder: “I don’t know their story—and I don’t need to.”

Without empathy, bias weaponizes judgment. And then we’re not just wasting energy—we’re wounding each other.

Marcus Aurelius said: “You have power over your mind — not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.”

Modern translation? Stop letting clowns in traffic and randos at the beach hijack your peace.

Bias will always flare up. Judgment will always tempt. But empathy—that’s the armor. That’s how you walk through lifted trucks, blasting speakers, and clown-world nonsense without burning alive.

You don’t win by burning hotter. You win by refusing to burn at all.

Empathy makes you fireproof.

The Rhythm of Grief - Summer Days and Letting Go

Antonio Rodriguez Martinez — Sat, 23 Aug 2025 15:20:00 GMT

It’s been several weeks since I returned my daughter to her mother, with whom she lives during the school year. We spent what I consider the most beautiful 85 days of summer together. We did what we wanted, when we wanted—always together.

But when it ended, the silence and emptiness left behind tore through me. Still does.

I’ve never felt grief like this before—not even when we first began our geographically separated parenting arrangement years ago. The strange thing is, the more healed I become, the more I love, the deeper our bond grows… the more it hurts to let her go. Each time, it cuts deeper. It cuts true.

It feels unnatural—I sense it in every fiber of my body. She’s fine, happy, nurtured, safe with her mother. That gives me peace of mind, but I remain here with the silence, the emptiness, the melancholy. It’s not pain, not joy, not stress, not peace. It’s just hurt. Lingering. Grief. It feels like somebody died. And in a way, someone did.

Because even though we FaceTime almost every day—sometimes multiple times a day—I’m not living life with her. She has her own world there, growing and evolving, and I’m missing it. Each summer, during those 80+ days, I get to meet her again. But the version of her I knew before is gone. She comes alive to me again just in time to leave. And then that version dies, too.

This is the rhythm her mother and I created. It’s the best we could design. But it means I grieve every time. And apparently, each time cuts harder. I hope not. But maybe this is what it means to love profoundly—strength through suffering.

This is the closest I’ve ever felt to death—not pain, but the ache of emptiness, of nothingness. The hurt of watching love pass like a season. My therapist calls this ‘situational depression’. The more you know…

Why Electric Cars Can't Look Like Electric Cars

Antonio Rodriguez Martinez — Sat, 16 Aug 2025 15:00:00 GMT

I recently read a New York Times article called 🙄 “Make Cars Beautiful Again.” It made a simple point: even though electric vehicles (EVs) could be designed in radically different ways, they aren’t—because U.S. safety regulations were written for cars with giant gas engines from the 1920s.

Think about it:

EVs don’t need front grilles.
They don’t need massive hoods.
Motors can be tucked under the floor or attached to each wheel.

So… why does my neighbor’s Tesla still look like a Honda Civic cosplaying as a spaceship?

Internal combustion engines dictated the classic car look: long hoods, grilles for airflow, transmission tunnels down the middle. They’re big, hot, centralized machines that need a lot of structural support.

Electric motors are tiny, cool-running, and flexible. You could design cars like Lego sets: motors near the wheels, batteries under the floor, cabins pushed forward. The design language could have changed overnight. But it hasn’t.

Electric motors: small, flexible, everywhere. Imagine the design freedom.

1/8

Why Amazon’s Trucks Look Different?!

Look at Amazon’s electric delivery trucks. They don’t have the fake car nose. They look different because they fall under different regulations than passenger cars. Freed from bumper-height laws written for 1970s Buicks, their design is optimized for aerodynamics, efficiency, and cargo space.

Amazon’s trucks prove the point: when you aren’t forced to design around a phantom gas engine, the possibilities open up.

Amazon-style EV delivery truck: No fake grille, optimized for cargo and efficiency

1/4

The Regulatory Framework (Cage?)

Here’s the problem: U.S. Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards (FMVSS) were designed around gas-powered cars. They assume:

A big metal block up front to absorb crashes.
Crumple zones shaped for a long hood.
Bumper heights for cars with fuel tanks and radiators.
Headlights placed around a fake grille.

If you want to design a car that looks nothing like that, too bad. You’ll fail tests that were written for a completely different machine.

It’s kinda like forcing Apple to design the iPhone with a fake rotary dial because the law still assumes phones connect through copper wires.

Beyond conventional styling: EVs designed for purpose, not regulations

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The Bigger Picture

This isn’t just about aesthetics. It’s about how old rules can trap new technology. EVs are stuck cosplaying as gas cars because regulators wrote laws for yesterday’s machines and never updated them.

Amazon trucks show us what happens when you break free: the design suddenly makes sense. Function drives form. Progress becomes visible.

So the next time you see a Tesla grille, remember: you’re not looking at a design choice. You’re looking at a fossilized regulation.

Love Is the Final Revolution

Antonio Rodriguez Martinez — Wed, 13 Aug 2025 12:20:00 GMT

For weeks, I’ve been drowning in the world’s problems — and almost forgot to love my own life. My thoughts, writings, and ramblings have been almost entirely consumed by problems—both microscopic and massive. From dissecting my own self-sabotaging tendencies and the constant work of staying open to feedback, to learning about the ongoing civil war in Sudan, the reality that Israel has universal healthcare- and we don’t…, the Gaza crisis, and the tangled mess that our own government officials describe and prescribe… somewhere in that constant stream of madness, I got lost in the sauce.

I almost lost myself—lost the version of me I’d worked so hard to rebuild. I drifted from focusing on my values, on all the kindness in the world, and began living in an on/off state of anger, fear, and worry. My brain spent entire days agonizing over things completely beyond my control. My girlfriend would kiss me and say, “You were gone.” My 5-year-old would call out, “Papá, papáaaa, PAPÁ! ¿Dónde estabas?” And I would answer, “Disculpa, estaba en mi mente.” Thank the Universe I’m in a receptive era, because my girls noticed—and they called me back.

I could even see the change in my own writing data. Since stopping my self-help routines, spiritual guidance practices, and cognitive behavioral therapy assignments in favor of “studying and learning more about real life,” I’d turned my attention toward the cruelty of capitalism — the way it quietly bleeds the most vulnerable dry. One day I read about a single mother who had her credit card limit lowered without warning, leaving her unable to pay for groceries. It hit me hard because I’d been there. In March 2020, at the start of the pandemic, every bank I dealt with clipped my credit limits down to exactly what I had spent — overnight. AMEX sent me a letter “in good faith” offering me the chance to pay off nearly $10,000 immediately to avoid further restrictions. As I dug into the story, I found I wasn’t alone — millions were going through the same thing at the exact same moment. That was when I started digging into the dual economies: the one we live in, and the parallel one of insider trading and closed-door deals. My curiosity led me deep into U.S. politics, tracing our mess back to its roots. But I barely scratched the surface, and the bias in every source I read made me doubt it all.

In simple terms, it wrecked me.

And yet, after tumbling down that rabbit hole, I can say with confidence: the thing that saved me was love. Self-love. Love for my family and friends. Redirecting my energy, focus, mind, and body into the people and moments I can actually touch with my five senses. That’s what pulled me out of the black hole of despair.

It took real shadow work to realize that presence, rooted in love and kindness, is the only sustainable way to face the cruelty of our human systems. My daughter’s laughter, my girlfriend’s affection, my ex-wife’s empathy, nourishing my body and mind, and creating a home where kindness is our default — that is what I can do. Love is, ultimately, the most revolutionary force we have.

As a parent, I believe raising my children with kindness, empathy, restraint, self-care, and self-respect is the most meaningful revolutionary act available to me. To move through life from a place of love is to resist every system that seeks to dehumanize.

When I think back on those weeks when I felt like I couldn’t breathe, I see now that I was missing love — and the safety it brings. Our governments and systems remind us daily that we are expendable, just fuel for war machines and profit engines. But at home, we can create a sanctuary that defies that message.

By living and modeling love, abundance, respect, and compassion — by truly listening to one another — we enact the most radical form of resistance. We teach our children justice, fairness, and care. We live out the real commandment of Christ: Ama. Ama a tu prójimo. Love. Love thy neighbor.

It reminds me of that moment in V for Vendetta when Evey finally understands what V was trying to teach her — that when you are grounded in love, in your values, in your humanity, there is nothing left to take from you. Fear dissolves. Even the threat of death loses its power, because love gives life meaning beyond survival. That’s why systems built on fear cannot coexist with a home or a heart rooted in love. Love makes us ungovernable in the best way — not because we reject all authority, but because we refuse to be ruled by fear.

Because love terrifies the powerful. It can’t be taxed, sanctioned, or legislated away. It doesn’t need permission, and it multiplies every time it’s given. In a world built to keep us afraid and divided, the simple act of loving — fully, openly, without condition — is the loudest rebellion we can stage.

That’s the revolution. Love is the final revolution!

More Materials:

Sudan’s Civil War
Trump Statement on U.S. Preparedness
Millions see credit card limits cut and accounts closed during COVID-19 pandemic
WHO: Universal Health Coverage — context for Israel/U.S. healthcare gap.
Matthew 22:39 (NIV) — “And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’”
1 Corinthians 13:13 (NIV) — “And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.”
John 15:12 — “My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you.”
Martin Luther King Jr., Strength to Love — sermons framing love as a weapon against injustice.
Google Search on The Power of Love in Social Justice Movements — historical examples of love-driven activism.
V for Vendetta (2005), Dir. James McTeigue — scene where Evey Hammond, after enduring captivity, realizes that love and a grounded sense of self make one fearless, even in the face of death.
Does V for Vendetta Hold Up?

Who I Am Today: A Recovery Progress Report

Antonio Rodriguez Martinez — Wed, 06 Aug 2025 11:00:00 GMT

I’m a 38-year-old recovering narcissist documenting what it looks like to rebuild a human being from scratch.

That’s probably the most honest introduction I can give you. Not “consciousness engineer” or “systems thinker” or any of the other sophisticated labels I’ve tried on. Just: someone who spent decades being emotionally unconscious and is now learning how to exist without causing damage.

Why the Scaffolding Exists

If you’ve read my writing, you’ve probably noticed the systematic approach to everything—frameworks for empathy, analytics for tracking patterns, step-by-step guides for basic human functions. This isn’t because I think I’m smart. It’s because I’m building prosthetics for parts of my emotional system that never developed properly.

Normal people don’t need instructions for compassion. I do. Normal people can trust their instincts about relationships. I can’t—mine are still calibrated for manipulation and boundary violations. So I build external systems to do what healthy people do internally.

The scaffolding serves three purposes:

Containment - So I don’t slip back into old patterns
Navigation - Because I literally don’t know how emotionally healthy people operate
Evidence - Because my brain still lies to me about reality

What This Writing Actually Is

This blog isn’t wisdom-sharing. It’s survival documentation.

I write to process experiences I don’t understand, to track patterns I’m trying to change, and to build tools for problems I’m still learning to identify. The systematic analysis isn’t intellectual performance—it’s external processing for someone whose internal processing feels broken.

When I write about emotional regulation or conscious parenting, I’m not teaching. I’m learning out loud. When I create frameworks for empathy, I’m not offering solutions—I’m building training wheels for myself.

The fact that some of this ends up being useful to other people is accidental. The primary function is helping me make sense of experiences that would otherwise overwhelm my still-developing emotional capacity.

The Misunderstandings

People often misread this process. My stepson thinks I’m performing intelligence. Even I sometimes slip into a teacherly tone that suggests I have answers rather than just better questions.

But here’s what’s actually happening: I’m a 38-year-old doing emotional adolescence while trying to be a father, hold down a salaried position, start a new business, and maintain relationships. The detailed analysis and systematic approaches exist because without them, I can’t navigate basic human situations.

It’s like someone building elaborate GPS systems because they get lost walking to the mailbox, and everyone thinking they’re showing off their navigation expertise. The systems exist because I feel stupid, not because I feel smart.

What Recovery Looks Like

Recovery from narcissism and codependency doesn’t look like sudden enlightenment. It looks like needing instructions for things that should be intuitive, building external accountability because you can’t trust your impulses, and documenting everything because your memory is unreliable when emotions are involved. It means creating rigid structures because flexibility still feels dangerous, and processing publicly because private processing feels like hiding.

I’m not proud of needing this much scaffolding. I’m just grateful it works.

My main frameworks are centered around activating ‘grounding’ in my day-to-day life. Small things like my compass chain, rituals, very neurotic stuff. But it works for me, just like this writing.

The Creative Core

Underneath all the systematic self-improvement work, there’s always been guitar, writing, and drawing. These aren’t recovery tools—they’re just… me making things. They’ve existed long before the consciousness work and will probably exist long after.

The recovery documentation gets more attention because it’s more dramatic, but the creative work is where my actual self lives. It’s also where I feel most normal—just someone making art, not someone rebuilding their personality from spare parts.

Why I Keep Writing

I continue documenting this process for a few reasons:

It helps me process experiences I don’t yet understand
It creates accountability for the changes I’m trying to make
It might be useful to other people doing similar work
It’s honest about what recovery actually looks like instead of the polished narratives usually available

This isn’t inspiration porn or wisdom literature. It’s field notes from someone learning to be human at an embarrassingly late age.

Where I Am Now

Today, I can recognize manipulation before I use it. I can set boundaries without feeling guilty. I can be wrong without defending my ego. I can ask for feedback without taking it as an attack.

I’m still lost most of the time. I still need frameworks for basic emotional situations. I still process things systematically because intuitive processing feels unreliable.

But I’m no longer dangerous to be around. That feels like progress.

What This Blog Actually Is

This is recovery documentation disguised as personal development content. It’s one person’s attempt to build tools for consciousness work while figuring out how consciousness actually works.

If you find it useful, take what works and ignore the rest. If you find it insufferable, you’re probably right—I’m still learning how to exist without being exhausting.

The goal isn’t to become someone admirable. The goal is to become someone safe. For my daughter, for the people who choose to be in my life, and for myself.

Everything else is just documentation of that process.

If you’re doing similar recovery work, I’m curious about your experience. What scaffolding have you built that you thought was weakness but turned out to be wisdom? What does learning to be human look like for you?

Good Sheep

Antonio Rodriguez Martinez — Sun, 03 Aug 2025 17:25:00 GMT

A Note Before We Begin

This essay might trigger you. If it does, please stop reading rather than lashing out at the messenger.

Let me be clear: I enjoyed my Universal Studios experience. My daughter loved it. We spent 9:30am to 5pm and only got on two rides - the second queue we waited in for over 40 minutes before the machine broke down right in front of us. I wish I was making this up for dramatic effect, but that’s exactly what happened. My daughter still had a magical day, and I’m glad we went.

This essay is not about you or me personally. It’s not about individual experiences or personal choices. It’s not an attack on anyone who enjoys theme parks, fast food, or pre-recorded concerts. This is observational analysis - a report on systems and patterns that exist regardless of how any individual feels about them.

I’m not “flaunting about being better” or claiming moral superiority. I participate in these systems too. I’ve eaten the fast food, waited in the lines, enjoyed the algorithmic playlists. The point isn’t to shame anyone for finding pleasure in these experiences - the point is to examine what these systems are doing to us collectively.

The fact that people derive genuine pleasure from these experiences doesn’t invalidate the systemic critique. In fact, as you’ll see, that pleasure is often part of the mechanism itself. We can acknowledge that something feels good while also examining what it’s doing to us collectively.

So let’s talk shop, shall we?

The Moment of Recognition

There I was, standing in a cattle chute disguised as a theme park line, having paid $36 just to park, waiting 2.5 hours for a 5-minute ride that turned out to be a glorified rocking chair with AR sprinkled on top. Thank the Universe this particular queue had air conditioning - in other parks you have to brave it out in the sun, and the little ones love that shit… oh wait, nevermind, parents just give them phones and tablets so they stay chill while slowly cooking. Which is a topic for yet another essay. When the third Universal employee asked if I’d checked my daughter’s height - after I’d already said yes twice - something snapped into focus.

We are sheep. Not metaphorically. Literally.

We pay premium prices to be herded through corporate processing systems designed to extract maximum revenue from minimum experience. We accept treatment that would be considered borderline inhumane if applied to actual livestock. And somehow, we’ve been convinced this is normal. This is freedom. This is fun.

But the most disturbing part? People genuinely enjoy it. They leave Universal Studios happy. They post smiling photos on social media. They plan return visits. Just like they smile while consuming food that’s slowly poisoning them, celebrate convenience that’s destroying their health, and feel grateful for systems that are systematically degrading their bodies and minds.

The sheep machine isn’t just processing our time and money - it’s processing our bodies, our health, our very life force. And we’ve learned to love every minute of it.

Universal Studios was just the moment of clarity. The sheep machine is everywhere, and it’s been running for over 150 years. And we’ve been conditioned to love our own systematic abuse.

Whenever you are ready Lord, take us all

The Taste of Our Own Destruction

Walk into any chain restaurant and taste the rancid oil they’ve been using for weeks. Feel that soggy texture, bite into that flavorless mass-produced burger, experience that chemical aftertaste that lingers for hours. Your body is literally telling you “this is harmful.” But we’ve been conditioned to accept systematic poisoning as normal food because it’s cheap, fast, and convenient.

We pay money to consume something that actively degrades our health while calling it a “meal.” We smile while ingesting food-like products engineered in laboratories, optimized for shelf life and profit margins rather than nutrition or flavor. We feel grateful for the convenience of drive-throughs that serve us substances that barely qualify as edible.

Meanwhile, a chef who sources quality ingredients, changes their oil regularly, takes time to develop flavors, creates dishes that nourish rather than just fill - we’re told their prices are “elitist” and “pretentious.” But the elite will stay eating the healthy stuff, even if it’s “pretentious”, curious. The system has flipped the script: they’ve made us, the regular people, feel guilty for wanting actual quality and grateful for accepting systematic degradation. What would’ve taken Universal to give something, anything, to those people who waited there 2+ hours (?), no no no, pay me. We pay for that… Wild!!!

This is the sheep machine at its most literal. We’re not just being processed like livestock - we’re being treated and fed like livestock. Cheap, bulk, engineered for rapid growth and maximum throughput, with no regard for long-term health or wellbeing.

The expensive meal isn’t overpriced - it’s what things actually cost when you don’t exploit workers, don’t cut corners on ingredients, and don’t optimize for profit over quality. The cheap food is artificially cheap because the real costs are hidden - environmental damage, worker exploitation, health consequences, cultural destruction of food traditions.

But wait - is fast food even cheap anymore? According to recent analysis, “you’ll be hard pressed to spend less than $20 no matter where you go” to feed a family of four at fast food chains. At Chick-fil-A, “two kids’ meals and two adult meals, plus fries for everyone, the final price is $40.72 without including drinks”. A 2024 survey found that “78% of consumers now consider fast food a ‘luxury’ purchase due to its increasing cost”.

Compare this to home cooking: a family of four can eat well for approximately $1,360 monthly on a moderate grocery budget - that’s about $45 per day for three meals for four people, or roughly $11.25 per meal. Meanwhile, “the average cost of a fast food meal now tops $10 in all major cities” - and that’s per person, for one meal of questionable nutritional value.

So we’re not even getting the “cheap” part anymore. We’re paying premium prices for systematic poisoning while being told it’s a good deal. McDonald’s prices “have doubled since 2014, with an average price increase of 100%” while wages certainly haven’t doubled.

We’ve been trained to think the exploitation price is the “real” price and the fair price is a ripoff. Just like we think 2-hour waits are normal and immediate access is a luxury upgrade. We, collectively, seem to keep lowering our standards???

The Pre-Recorded Reality

Around the same time I was having my Universal revelation, electronic music producer Eric Prydz was playing a pre-recorded Logic session to 15,000 people at Sónar festival. His CDJ allegedly failed, leaving “no choice” but to play back a fully rendered set with pre-synced visuals. The crowd cheered anyway.

This incident perfectly captures something profound about our current moment. We’ve normalized the replacement of authentic human experience with corporate-optimized simulation. Pre-recorded sets with synchronized visuals aren’t artistic choices - they’re cost-optimization strategies. Instead of paying skilled VJs to create reactive, live experiences, promoters run the same visual show on repeat across entire tours. Artists sign off because it “looks impressive” and ensures nothing goes wrong.

Except everything has gone wrong. Live music used to be about risk, about reading the room, about something actually happening in real time. Now it’s about syncing to a preset and cashing the check. We’ve traded spontaneity for efficiency, authenticity for scalability.

And we applaud. Because we’ve been trained to mistake packaging for content, production value for genuine experience. The audience has been conditioned to derive pleasure from their own deception.

The Engineering of Systematic Self-Abuse

This didn’t happen by accident. The systematic transformation of humans into willing participants in their own exploitation began in the 1880-1932s with American department stores. According to historian William Leach, there was a deliberate, coordinated effort by the “captains of industry” to detach consumer demand from needs (which can be satisfied) to wants (which remain perpetually unsatisfied).

Think about the genius of this shift. If you’re selling to human needs - food, shelter, clothing - there are natural limits. People get full, they have enough space, their clothes last. But if you can manufacture wants - status, identity, belonging, novelty - the market becomes infinite. You’ve created permanent dissatisfaction as a business model.

The food industry perfected this strategy. They shifted from selling nutrition (which satisfies hunger) to selling convenience, comfort, and identity. Fast food isn’t about feeding people - it’s about selling the idea that speed equals success, that processed equals progress, that artificial flavors equal authentic experience. They created permanent hunger for things that don’t actually nourish.

By 1919, Edward Bernays - the “father of public relations” - was successfully applying psychology and sociology to manipulate public opinion in favor of products like cigarettes and soap. The techniques weren’t subtle. They designed physical spaces to “loosen shoppers’ hold on reality and induce them into a trance-like state.” Department stores became baroque palaces with vaulted ceilings, skylights, and gilded angels - architectural psychology designed to make rational decision-making more difficult. Feels familiar? Helloooooooo?! The same principles now govern food courts, restaurant chains, and grocery stores, what else?! Warm lighting to make processed food look appealing. Strategic placement of high-margin junk at eye level. Psychological pricing that makes $4.99 feel dramatically cheaper than $5.00 (Hello, Black Friday or Amazon Prime day!). Every aspect designed to override your body’s natural ability to recognize what’s actually good for you.

Alfred Sloan at General Motors perfected the next phase with planned obsolescence and annual model changes. Why sell someone a car that lasts forever when you can sell them a new one every year? The shift was away from technological innovation toward manufacturing dissatisfaction with perfectly functional products.

The food industry adopted this model completely. Why make food that nourishes and satisfies when you can engineer products that trigger cravings for more? Why create meals that leave you feeling good when you can design food-like substances that create cycles of hunger, satisfaction, and renewed craving?

This is the foundation of everything that followed. We’re dealing with intentionally designed systems that transform humans into profit-extraction units while making them grateful for the experience.

The Digital Perfection of Loving Your Chains

Modern capitalism has perfected sheep-herding through algorithmic manipulation that makes us feel empowered while being completely controlled. Spotify is the perfect example - users believe they’re discovering music organically, but every “recommendation” is algorithmically steered to maximize engagement and revenue. The platform “allows a consumer to feel they are in control of their listening experience even as the Spotify machine co-creates and co-controls it.”

Digital marketers have resolved what should be an obvious contradiction between consumer manipulation and consumer empowerment by simply declaring them to be the same thing. Through what they call “hyper-relevance,” they’ve created a “fairytale vision of marketing where the algorithmic manipulation of consumers and consumer autonomy and empowerment become one and the same.”

This is psychological warfare (at the very least, psy-experimentation without direct consent… if you wanna stay ‘objective’) disguised as convenience. Every swipe, click, and pause gets analyzed to predict and modify your future behavior. You think you’re choosing what to watch, listen to, or buy, but you’re actually being guided through an increasingly sophisticated maze designed to maximize extraction while maintaining the illusion of agency. Hell, I couldn’t order my food at that place, I had to scan the thing, download the app, create an account, add my payment information to the app, then order, then I had to pick up the thing… $20 for pizza that costs $2 dollars to make (I MAKE PIZZA for my family reguarly), and on top of that $13 for a Bud Light… hello 1,000%+++ markup. Like… I don’t even know.

And here’s the crucial part: it feels good. The algorithms are designed to provide genuine pleasure, real satisfaction, authentic-feeling discovery. Users love their Spotify recommendations, their Netflix suggestions, their Instagram feeds. The manipulation works precisely because it delivers actual enjoyment.

Social media amplifies this through manufactured herding behaviors. Phrases like “most popular,” “best-selling,” and “trending now” aren’t descriptions - they’re herding commands. Influencer marketing creates artificial social proof, while user-generated content provides free labor for corporate messaging. We’ve become unpaid employees in our own manipulation, and we love it.

The Physical Infrastructure of Willing Compliance

The sheep-herding operates through physical infrastructure designed to process humans like livestock while making them grateful for the experience:

Queue Psychology: We accept multi-hour waits as normal because everyone else is doing it. Disney perfected this by making the wait itself part of the “experience” - themed cattle chutes with estimated wait times that train us to accept delay as value. The psychology is simple: if you’ve already invested time, you’re less likely to leave. But more importantly, the shared suffering creates artificial community and makes the eventual payoff feel earned.

Retail Flow Design: Shopping centers are consciously designed to “manipulate shoppers’ behavior through the configuration of space” and create “symbolic landscapes that provoke associative moods and dispositions.” IKEA’s maze forces you through every department. Grocery stores put milk in the back so you walk past maximum products. Every aspect of retail space is engineered to reduce resistance to spending while making the experience feel pleasant and natural.

Subscription Treadmills: We no longer own anything - just endless monthly payments for access to content, software, and services. Like livestock paying rent to graze, we’re trapped in recurring revenue streams with no equity accumulation. Cancel your subscriptions and you lose access to everything immediately. But it feels convenient, modern, hassle-free.

Artificial Scarcity: “Limited time offers,” “while supplies last,” “exclusive access” - these create urgency around abundant products. The scarcity is manufactured to trigger purchasing decisions before rational evaluation can occur. But it feels exciting, special, like you’re getting access to something rare and valuable.

The Psychology of Perfect Sheep: When Abuse Feels Like Love

The most insidious aspect of modern sheep-herding is how it exploits fundamental human psychology while delivering genuine pleasure. This is what makes it so different from traditional abuse - and so much more effective.

Research shows that people engaging in self-destructive behavior “face the contradictory reality of harming themselves while at the same time obtaining relief from this act.” They get real pleasure from behavior that’s ultimately destroying them because “endorphins are released in response to self-harm… acting as natural painkillers and inducing pleasant feelings.”

The sheep machine operates on exactly this principle - genuine pleasure masking systematic erosion of authentic experience.

Status Emulation Cycles: There’s an endless hierarchy where “the poor strive to imitate the wealthy and the wealthy imitate celebrities.” This creates perpetual dissatisfaction - nobody ever reaches the top, everyone just keeps consuming in pursuit of imaginary social advancement. Celebrity endorsements aren’t about product quality; they’re about selling the fantasy of elevated status. But participating in this system feels aspirational, hopeful, like you’re improving yourself.

Herd Behavior Exploitation: Humans naturally follow crowd behavior for safety. Capitalism weaponizes this instinct through social proof marketing, creating artificial crowds around products and brands. If everyone’s buying it, it must be good. If everyone’s waiting in line, it must be worth it. But following the herd feels safe, social, like you belong.

False Choice Architecture: We’re given multiple options that all lead to the same outcome - consumption. Whether you choose Target or Walmart, Apple or Samsung, Democrat or Republican, you’re still participating in the same extraction system. The choices are real, but they’re all variations on the same theme. But having choices feels empowering, democratic, free.

Individualism as Isolation: Hyper-individualism prevents collective resistance. When everyone handles corporate abuse privately, there’s no unified pushback. Each person suffers alone rather than recognizing shared exploitation. We compete with each other instead of recognizing our common situation. But individualism feels like personal responsibility, self-reliance, strength.

The Cognitive Dissonance of the “Free”

The most perfect sheep are those who believe they’re wolves. Consider the “Don’t Tread On Me” crowd filling theme park parking lots - people who get furious about government overreach while docilely accepting corporate overreach. They’ll wait in line for hours, pay insane markups, get treated like livestock, and call it “the American way.” They would read this if they could and say I’m just salty about something or probably can’t afford these things, “that’s nothing to me… you are just a whiner” I would read in the comment sections, or worse…

This cognitive dissonance is deliberately cultivated. Capitalism has branded collective resistance as somehow un-American, while corporate manipulation gets framed as “market freedom.” The same people who would revolt against government-mandated 2-hour waits will cheerfully pay for the privilege when a corporation imposes them.

They’ll rage about taxes while paying 1,200% markups on beer. They’ll complain about government surveillance while carrying devices that track their every movement for corporate profit. They’ll protest government control while accepting algorithmic manipulation of their thoughts and preferences.

The genius is making compliance feel like rebellion, making submission feel like choice. When people buy fast passes to skip the artificial lines, they’re not escaping the system - they’re paying extra to participate in a premium tier of the same exploitation while feeling superior to those who can’t afford the upgrade.

When Does This Become Self-Abuse?

Let’s call this what it is: we’ve been conditioned into systematic self-destructive behavior. Not the clinical kind involving cutting or substance abuse, but what psychology defines as “any behavior that is harmful or potentially harmful towards the person who engages in the behavior” that becomes habitual.

Self-destructive behavior exists on a continuum and “may be deliberate, born of impulse, or developed as a habit.” What we’re experiencing through the sheep machine is the habitual form - patterns so normalized we don’t recognize them as harmful. The psychology literature shows that “childhood trauma contributes to the initiation of self-destructive behavior, but lack of secure attachments helps maintain it.”

Replace “childhood trauma” with “systematic corporate conditioning” and “lack of secure attachments” with “atomized individualism” and you have a perfect description of our situation.

Consider the psychological profile: People engage in self-destructive behavior because it “may act as a temporary distraction or way of coping with emotional distress, pain, or discomfort. However, the distraction does not last, and self-destructive behavior can become a dangerous habit over time.”

Sound familiar? We pay to wait in lines for hours because it temporarily distracts from the emptiness of our optimized lives. We consume pre-packaged experiences because they offer momentary relief from the anxiety of having to create meaning ourselves. We accept algorithmic curation because choosing feels overwhelming.

The sheep machine exploits the same psychological vulnerabilities that drive clinical self-destruction: the desire “to feel something, especially if they feel numb or empty,” “to block out painful memories or emotions,” and “to release unpleasant emotions such as anger, hopelessness or depression.”

BTW, whenever I bring this up in a group of normies, I will be attacked, I will trigger people, this topic is so touch-feely nasty, while we just should be objective and observe, and talk about what we see, experience, feel, think, a lot, plenty, we must talk about this shit!!

But here’s the crucial difference: clinical self-destructive behavior is recognized as harmful and treated. When it’s recognized right? We know how this song and dance goes. But ironically, Corporate-induced self-destructive behavior is celebrated as consumer choice and economic participation. What?!

Psychological abuse is characterized by “the systematic diminishment of another” and often involves withholding as a form of control. The sheep machine operates exactly this way - systematically diminishing our agency while withholding authentic experience unless we pay increasingly steep prices for increasingly hollow substitutes.

When you pay $13 for beer and wait 2.5 hours for a 5-minute ride, when you applaud pre-recorded concerts, when you let algorithms choose your music, you’re engaging in conditioned self-destructive behavior. When you eat the lies our systems, governments, and world leaders tell us when we are WATCHING HISTORY UNFOLD FOR OURSELVES. The immediate “relief” - the brief entertainment, the social belonging, the decision fatigue reduction - masks the long-term harm to your autonomy, your time, and your capacity for authentic experience.

Each acceptance of corporate overreach makes the next one easier. We’re being slowly poisoned, and we’ve learned to call it dining. The food’s getting worse, but we’ve forgotten what real nutrition tastes like.

Also, the “if you don’t like it, don’t go” defense misses the point entirely. This isn’t about individual venues or personal preferences. It’s about recognizing that we’ve built systems that systematically diminish human agency and dignity - including our most basic biological function of nourishing ourselves - then convinced people to celebrate their own diminishment.

The Evidence Is All Around Us

But how can it be abuse if everybody seems to be enjoying themselves? Look at the broader evidence:

Physical Health Crisis: Obesity rates have tripled since 1980. Diabetes is now epidemic. Food allergies and autoimmune disorders are skyrocketing. We have more access to “food” than ever before while being more malnourished than previous generations. The average American consumes 150 pounds of sugar per year - our bodies literally can’t process what we’re putting into them.

Mental Health Crisis: Teen depression rates have skyrocketed alongside smartphone adoption and social media engagement. Suicide rates are at historic highs. Anxiety disorders are epidemic. People report feeling more isolated despite being more “connected” than ever.

Attention Destruction: Average attention spans have dropped from 12 seconds to 8 seconds since 2000. People can’t sit through movies without checking their phones. We’ve been trained to crave constant stimulation while losing the capacity for sustained focus.

Relationship Dysfunction: Dating apps have turned relationships into consumer experiences. People swipe through potential partners like they’re browsing Netflix. Divorce rates remain high while marriage rates plummet. We’re treating human connection like a product to be optimized.

Economic Slavery: People work longer hours for less real purchasing power while celebrating “side hustles” and “grinding.” We’ve been convinced that having three jobs is entrepreneurship rather than exploitation.

Democratic Decay: Political discourse has been reduced to team sports optimized for engagement. Complex issues get flattened into viral content. We’re more politically active than ever while being less politically effective.

Metabolic Destruction: Chronic inflammation from processed foods is now linked to virtually every major disease. Our gut microbiomes - the foundation of physical and mental health - have been decimated by antibiotics, preservatives, and artificial ingredients. We’re literally changing the bacterial ecosystems that make us human.

Research on abuse victims shows they often “do not characterize the mistreatment as abusive” and may even “exhibit higher than average rates of alexithymia (difficulty identifying and processing their own emotions).” They’ve been conditioned to normalize the harm, to derive pleasure from their own exploitation.

That’s exactly what we see everywhere. The manipulation works precisely because it delivers actual enjoyment while systematically eroding our capacity for authentic experience, just like how endorphins make self-harm feel good in the moment.

The Human Cost of Loving Your Chains

Consider just Universal Studios: if 50,000 people visit daily, each waiting 2 hours per ride for 4 rides, that’s 400,000 human-hours spent standing in lines daily. Annually, that’s nearly 146 million human-hours of productive life surrendered to corporate processing efficiency.

Multiply this across every theme park, concert venue, retail experience, and digital platform, and we’re talking about billions of human-hours sacrificed to profit optimization. We’re literally paying companies to waste our lives, and we’re grateful for the opportunity.

But the psychological cost may be higher. When authentic experience gets replaced with optimized simulation, when spontaneity gets eliminated for efficiency, when human agency gets subsumed into algorithmic guidance, we lose something essential about what makes life worth living. We become consumers of our own existence rather than creators of it.

The most tragic part is how good it feels. The sheep machine has perfected the art of making systematic diminishment feel like enhancement, making control feel like choice, making exploitation feel like empowerment.

Why Individual Resistance Fails

The system has become sophisticated enough to monetize its own critique. Anti-consumerist sentiment gets packaged and sold back to us as “mindful consumption” and “ethical brands.” Even rebellion becomes a market segment.

When you choose the “authentic” coffee shop over Starbucks, you’re still participating in lifestyle branding consumption. When you “vote with your wallet,” you’re accepting that citizenship has been replaced with consumership. When you buy “sustainable” products, you’re still buying the solution to problems created by the same system.

Individual resistance is worse than useless - it’s part of the system. It provides the illusion of choice while maintaining the fundamental structure. The sheep machine doesn’t care which pasture you graze in, as long as you keep grazing. It doesn’t care if you pay for fast passes or wait in regular lines, as long as you accept that artificial scarcity is normal.

The “CCJ is just broke and bitter” response is classic deflection - making it about individual criticism rather than systemic analysis. It’s the same logic as “if you don’t like America, leave it” - avoiding the actual points by attacking the messenger.

The fast-pass mentality perfectly illustrates the problem: “I can afford to skip the abuse, so the abuse doesn’t exist.” But the fast-pass is part of the abuse system - paying extra to avoid the artificial suffering that shouldn’t exist in the first place. It’s like saying food poisoning isn’t real because some people can afford organic groceries. Everybody should be eating organic (I truly could care less about organic or the labels, MAKE THE FOOD HEALTHY!!).

Too Much Individualism Is Wrecking Us

Here’s the deeper insight: hyper-individualism itself is one of the sheep machine’s most effective tools. When everyone’s focused on their individual experience, their personal brand, their own optimization, it becomes impossible to collectively say “this is bullshit” and actually do something about it. Divide & Conquer I believe they called it earlier in human history.

Think about that Universal Studios line. Everyone in that 2.5-hour queue was probably having the same internal rage, but we’re all trained to handle it individually. Maybe complain to customer service as individuals, maybe post about it online individually, but not to turn to the person next to us and say “this is ridiculous, what if we all just left?”

We’ve been atomized into individual consumers rather than a collective audience with shared standards. And companies love this because it’s much easier to manage thousands of individual complaints than one unified “this isn’t acceptable” response.

The irony is that the experiences themselves - live music, theme parks, shared cultural moments - are supposed to be communal. But we’ve been trained to experience them in isolation, even when we’re surrounded by people having the exact same frustrations.

Individual resistance can’t work because the system absorbs and neutralizes it. Personal opt-outs become market segments. Your rebellion gets packaged and sold back to you.

What Breaking Free Actually Looks Like

Real resistance requires recognizing that this isn’t about individual choices or personal preferences - it’s about systematic conditioning into self-destructive behavior disguised as consumer empowerment. The sheep-herding infrastructure is too comprehensive for personal opt-outs to matter.

This means:

Collective Standards: Agreeing as communities what treatment we won’t accept, regardless of how good it makes us feel in the moment. Unions are the perfect example - workers coming together to say “we won’t accept unsafe conditions, poverty wages, or exploitation, no matter how the company frames it.” They set collective standards that individual workers couldn’t enforce alone.

Refusing Artificial Scarcity: Recognizing when “premium experiences” are just ways to monetize problems that shouldn’t exist

Demanding Genuine Value: Rejecting the premise that we should pay premium prices for artificially degraded experiences - whether that’s 2-hour waits or food that slowly poisons us

Reclaiming Time: Treating our life-hours as precious and refusing to surrender them to corporate processing efficiency

Authentic Experience: Seeking real human connection and creativity outside commercial channels - including real food made by real people who care about nutrition, not just profit

Shared Recognition: Talking to each other about what we’re experiencing instead of suffering in isolation

Supporting Real Craft: Paying fair prices for genuine quality - whether that’s a chef who sources good ingredients or an artist who creates live, unrepeatable experiences

Community Self-Reliance: Creating alternatives like communal gardens where people grow real food together, share knowledge and labor, and build relationships outside the extraction economy. These gardens show what’s possible when humans cooperate for mutual benefit rather than profit.

The sheep machine works because we’ve forgotten we have the power to walk away. To stop paying. To stop playing. These systems are the new Roman Colliseums, designed for… Anyways, when enough people stop accepting sheep treatment - even when it feels good, especially when it feels good - the whole system has to change. This is why the brigthest (and saddest, sadly, conscies does have a price) people I know are all advocating for macro approaches such as a general strike.

Companies can’t run cattle chutes without cattle. They can’t manufacture artificial scarcity without people accepting scarcity as normal. They can’t extract premium prices for hollow experiences without people believing hollow experiences are worth premium prices. They can’t poison us with engineered food-like products without us accepting that as normal nutrition.

Real chefs, like real artists, like real craftspeople, like union organizers, like community gardeners, represent what we’ve lost - humans creating something meaningful with skill, care, and genuine value. They’re not just making food or art or collective power; they’re refusing to participate in the systematic degradation of human experience. They’re showing us what authentic value looks like when it’s not optimized for extraction.

The Choice We Face

And these are just the examples off the top of my head - just the things I’m personally aware of because I’m only beginning to notice this pattern. I’m sure you’re aware of much, much more. As someone from Borinquén, I’m also seeing how these same mechanisms of systematic exploitation mirror colonialism and its ongoing effects. The sheep machine isn’t new - it’s the latest evolution of systems designed to extract value while convincing the exploited that their exploitation is for their own good.

This is intense shit. Once you start seeing it, you can’t unsee it.

We’re at a crossroads. We can continue accepting that this is just how things work - that corporate extraction is the price of modern life, that artificial experiences are good enough, that our time and dignity are commodities to be optimized, that feeling good about our exploitation makes it less exploitative.

Or we can remember that we’re not actually sheep.

We can recognize that the $13 beer, the 2.5-hour wait, the pre-recorded concert, the algorithmic manipulation, the subscription treadmills, the rancid oil, the filthy cruise ship cabins, the TSA gaslighting, and the endless processing are not natural forces. They’re design choices made by humans who profit from treating us like livestock while making us grateful for the experience.

Trust Your Gut and Stop Playing Along

Here’s my call to action: trust your gut and stop playing along with this bullshit.

When something feels wrong, it probably is wrong. When you’re being treated like cattle, you don’t have to moo along. When a system demands you accept abuse with a smile, you can refuse to smile.

This isn’t about cancelling a specific company or boycotting a particular brand. This is about cancelling EVERYTHING that treats you like livestock. This is about resisting the entire apparatus of systematic exploitation, no matter how much pleasure it promises, no matter how convenient it claims to be, no matter how normal everyone else thinks it is. Let’s resist this nonsense! Stop waiting in those lines. Stop paying those markups. Stop accepting that abuse. Stop pretending that exploitation is empowerment. Stop being grateful for the privilege of being processed.

Your instincts are right. Your body knows when food is poisoning it. Your mind knows when an experience is hollow. Your soul knows when you’re being diminished rather than nourished.

The sheep machine only works with our consent. And consent can be withdrawn, even when - especially when - the abuse feels good.

So withdraw it. All of it. Trust yourself. Resist everything. We’re not god-damned sheep.

📚 Research Sources & References

Academic & Theoretical Sources

Consumer Capitalism - Wikipedia
Comprehensive overview of consumer capitalism theory, tracing origins from 1850s department stores through Edward Bernays’ psychological manipulation techniques to modern mass-marketing systems designed to shift demand from needs to wants.

Manipulate to Empower: Hyper-relevance and the Contradictions of Marketing
Academic analysis of how digital marketers resolve the contradiction between consumer manipulation and empowerment by declaring them identical through “hyper-relevance” - essentially arguing that algorithmic control equals freedom.

Self-destructive Behavior - Wikipedia
Psychological analysis of behavior patterns that are harmful to the person engaging in them, including how such behaviors can become habitual and often provide temporary relief while causing long-term harm.

Psychological Abuse - Wikipedia
Definition and analysis of abuse that targets mental well-being through systematic diminishment, including how victims often don’t recognize mistreatment as abusive and may have difficulty processing their own emotions.

Childhood Origins of Self-destructive Behavior - PubMed
Clinical research showing how childhood trauma contributes to self-destructive behavior initiation while lack of secure attachments helps maintain such behaviors into adulthood.

Consumer Psychology & Behavior

Herd Behavior - Wikipedia
Detailed examination of how humans naturally follow crowd behavior and how this instinct gets weaponized through marketing, social media, and financial systems to drive consumption and compliance.

Consumerism - Wikipedia
Historical development of consumerism from the Industrial Revolution through modern celebrity culture, including analysis of emulation cycles and the deliberate engineering of consumer behavior.

What is Consumer Capitalism? - WorldAtlas
Accessible explanation of how consumer capitalism deliberately shifted demand from satisfiable needs to insatiable wants, creating permanent dissatisfaction as a business model.

Herding Instinct in Marketing
Practical guide to how marketers exploit natural human herding instincts through social proof, scarcity tactics, and influencer marketing to drive sales and shape consumer behavior.

On Consumer Capitalism - The School of Life
Philosophical examination of how department stores were designed as “baroque palaces of consumption” to induce trance-like states and the historical development of retail psychology.

Self-Harm & Mental Health Research

Self-harm - Wikipedia
Comprehensive overview of intentional self-harmful behavior, including how victims often experience relief from such acts due to endorphin release, creating cycles of harmful behavior that feels good.

What Are Self-Destructive Behaviors? - Healthline
Clinical explanation of behaviors that cause physical or emotional self-harm, including how they often serve as coping mechanisms that provide temporary relief while causing long-term damage.

Self-Destructive Behavior: What It Is & Why We Do It
Analysis of how self-destructive behaviors can become habitual responses to stress and emotional pain, often developing as maladaptive coping mechanisms.

Consumerism and Capitalism - Brookings Institution
Policy analysis of how modern capitalism has moved toward “bigness” and corporate concentration, with discussion of when consumerism becomes problematic versus beneficial.

Economic Hoarding - Wikipedia
Technical explanation of how artificial scarcity gets created through hoarding and speculation, demonstrating systematic manipulation of supply and demand for profit extraction.

Abuse Recognition & Control Mechanisms

Types and Indicators of Abuse - SCIE
Professional guidance on recognizing various forms of abuse, including psychological and emotional abuse that involves intimidation, coercion, and systematic control.

Emotional and Psychological Abuse - WomensLaw.org
Legal and psychological framework for understanding abuse that uses non-physical behaviors to control, isolate, or frighten victims, often breaking down self-esteem to create dependency.

🎯 Key Terms Glossary

Sheep Machine - The systematic infrastructure of corporate manipulation designed to process humans like livestock while making them grateful for the experience.

Artificial Scarcity - Manufactured limitations on abundant products/services to create urgency and justify premium pricing.

Hyper-Individualism - Extreme focus on personal responsibility/choice that prevents collective resistance to systematic exploitation.

Algorithmic Manipulation - Using data analysis to predict and modify human behavior while maintaining the illusion of user choice.

Queue Psychology - The conditioning that makes people accept multi-hour waits as normal parts of “experiences.”

Status Emulation Cycles - Endless hierarchies where people consume to chase imaginary social advancement that’s always out of reach.

Corporate Processing - Treating humans as units to be optimized for profit extraction rather than individuals deserving dignity.

Subscription Treadmills - Recurring payment models that trap users in perpetual fees without ownership accumulation.

Fast-Pass Mentality - Paying extra to avoid artificial suffering that shouldn’t exist, while accepting the system that creates it.

Endorphin Exploitation - Systems that provide genuine pleasure from ultimately harmful behaviors, masking long-term damage.

Bend, Don't Break: Learning to Flow Again

Antonio Rodriguez Martinez — Wed, 30 Jul 2025 23:15:00 GMT

There was a time — not long ago — when I thought I could optimize my way to being the near-perfect human. I had 33 core values mapped out like some kind of life operating system. Accountability, Authenticity, Balance, Efficiency, Honesty, Integrity, Kindness, Responsibility… the whole fucking alphabet of human virtue.

Notably absent from this list: anything about money management, because apparently I can optimize everything except my ability to save cash. I’m a fucking wizard at spending it though. Priorities, right?

Yes, I actually wrote this shit down. All 33 values, with definitions, cross-references, and implementation strategies. In my Obsidian vault. Color-coded. With tags. And backlinks to related concepts. Because apparently when you’re having a philosophical crisis, the natural response is to create a relational database of your moral aspirations. I even had a fucking dashboard to track my daily alignment scores across all dimensions. I was basically running a performance management system for my soul.

Let’s be clear about what “near-perfect” meant to me: someone who never made mistakes, never disappointed anyone, always had the right response, and could simultaneously embody contradictory virtues without breaking. Classic all-or-nothing thinking, catastrophizing, perfectionism, and control issues—the whole pathological buffet. I’ve been using cognitive behavioral therapy to untangle these thought patterns, and I’m still working on it. Turns out trying to be simultaneously perfect across 33 different dimensions is a recipe for cognitive dissonance and nervous system dysregulation.

But here’s the truth that cuts through all the pathology: I just wanted to be strong, powerful, and healthy for my children. To be present. That desire was never the problem—it’s the purest motivation I know. The problem was thinking I needed to systematize love into 33 perfect categories.

The thing is, I wasn’t learning to bend. I was building a system so rigid that the smallest pressure would cause catastrophic failure. Every value was non-negotiable. Every principle was absolute. I thought strength meant never compromising, never adapting, never allowing any flexibility in my moral framework.

I wasn’t living naturally. Don’t get me wrong—life was objectively beautiful. I’d laugh sometimes at how good I had it: single, healthy, eating well, treating myself and others with care. Dancing lessons, boxing, weightlifting, sprinting, basketball. Beach days, pool time, 9-mile hikes through trails. Tons of time with my children—games, movies, building this blog. Life was genuinely great.

But underneath all that beauty, I was performing a one-man show called “The Nearly Ideal Father” while my nervous system stayed locked in permanent emergency mode. I had built a moral structure so inflexible that any deviation felt like total system failure.

The Morning My Brain Short-Circuited

Picture this: 5:30 AM, I spring out of bed like I’m supposed to (Self-discipline ✓). Start cooking breakfast for the kids (Parenthood ✓). My phone buzzes. Some triviality that feels dramatic to others, demanding to be treated with the full weight of my optimization protocols.

My high-IQ brain immediately fires up all 33 optimization algorithms:

Quick side note: Before I knew my actual IQ score, I thought all this mental noise was just me being crazy. Turns out when you have a brain that processes information rapidly, you get flooded with possibilities, connections, and “what-ifs” constantly. Learning to recognize this as cognitive abundance rather than mental chaos—and developing the skill to selectively attend to what actually matters—has been game-changing for emotional regulation. Now I know the difference between “my brain offering 47 solutions” and “the one solution that actually serves love.” But back then? Pure overwhelm.

Honesty demands I admit I fucked up completely
Accountability says I have to fix this immediately and prevent future failures
Humility forbids any defensive response
Kindness requires understanding their frustration
Integrity means taking full responsibility without excuses
Vulnerability says I should share how this criticism affects me
Efficiency demands I create a system so this never happens again

But wait. Let me run this through Patience instead. Maybe I should wait before responding, process this fully, not react from emotion. But Responsibility is screaming that every second I delay is another second I’m failing someone who depends on me. And Growth wants me to see this as a learning opportunity, extract maximum wisdom from the failure.

Meanwhile, Authenticity is having a fucking breakdown because none of these responses feel genuine—they all feel like performance.

My nervous system? It’s firing fight-or-flight while I’m standing in my kitchen at 5:30 AM running optimization algorithms. Heart rate spiking. Shoulders tensing. My body is screaming “THREAT” while my brain is calculating the optimal virtue-response matrix.

I’m literally running 33 different near-perfectionist protocols while my 5-year-old daughter walks into the kitchen saying, “Quiero jugo.”

And my brain goes: DOES NOT COMPUTE.

Presence says drop everything and get her juice. But Responsibility hasn’t finished processing the crisis. Quality Time supports the request, but Efficiency notes we’re already behind schedule. Spontaneity loves responding to her need, but Planning knows this will mess up the morning routine.

Who’s deciding here? Which value gets priority? What’s the fucking hierarchy when they all contradict each other?

My nervous system is now in full revolt—chest tight, breathing shallow, while I stand frozen like some kind of ethical robot with corrupted code. This is what happens when you build a system that can’t bend: it breaks. Completely. Spectacularly.

I looked at her. And something clicked. Parenting has an override function—it always did. She wasn’t asking me to solve the world’s problems. She was asking for juice.

I got her the juice. She said nothing and went back to bed.

That’s when I heard it: snap.

Not out loud. Inside. The sound of my near-perfectionist operating system crashing. But also—the sound of something rigid finally learning to bend.

The Prison I Built with My Own Intelligence

Six years ago, I started this journey chasing POWER and STRENGTH—capital letters, all caps, the whole masculine optimization fantasy. I thought the answer was becoming harder, more disciplined, more relentless. It took me years to discover that the sharpest strengths are actually kindness and restraint. And that real strength bends under pressure instead of snapping.

I’m now actually proficient with the longsword, but I practice with a weighted one—6 pounds, which is nuts considering the real thing only weighs 2-3 pounds. That’s the type of crazy thinking I was going through. Sure, I needed cardio, I needed movement patterns that improved my athleticism for basketball. And yeah, after 200 hours swinging that sword, I legitimately developed POWER and skill. Most Sundays in the park, far away from people, under canopy—it’s beautiful. Jajajaja. But even my training was infected with this “more is better” optimization madness—why train with historical accuracy when you can make it twice as hard?

See, being smart isn’t always a blessing when it comes to emotional shit. My brain loves systems, optimization, and having the “right” answer for everything. So when I decided to become a better man, I naturally approached it like a fucking software engineer—or let’s be honest, like a mildly obsessive-compulsive person who happens to code for a living:

Identify all possible human virtues (research phase: 47 hours)
Select the optimal set (33 seemed comprehensive after extensive analysis)
Create implementation frameworks (with backup protocols)
Execute all protocols simultaneously with daily tracking
Achieve Near-Perfect Human Status (timeline: 6 months, obviously)

Spoiler alert: it took almost 6 years until I felt whole. And even then, “powerful” turned out to be the wrong fucking goal.

The color-coding wasn’t just aesthetic—it was necessity. Red for core values, blue for supporting principles, green for daily practices. I had conditional logic built into my moral system: “If practicing Honesty conflicts with Kindness, default to Vulnerability unless children are present, then prioritize Protection.” I’m not kidding. I literally wrote if-then statements for being human.

What I didn’t account for: trying to be nearly perfectly honest while maintaining nearly perfect kindness while exercising nearly perfect patience while taking nearly perfect responsibility is literally impossible.

But more than that—I was building something that couldn’t adapt. A steel rod instead of a flexible branch. When life applied pressure, my system didn’t bend gracefully. It cracked and broke.

Every interaction became a performance review against 33 different metrics. Every mistake triggered guilt across multiple value systems. Every decision required consulting my internal board of directors.

Who am I performing for?

Here’s the brutal truth: when you grow up with emotional neglect, abuse, and narcissistic dynamics, your brain learns a fucked-up equation early on: Performance = Love. Skills = Acceptance. Actions = Worth. Your developing nervous system gets programmed to believe that being valued as a human requires constant proof of your value through achievement.

My brain literally didn’t know the difference between “being loved” and “earning approval through optimal behavior.” I shut down my feelings in favor of skills and values because feelings were dangerous—they got you criticized, dismissed, or abandoned. But performing? Performing sometimes got you positive attention. Sometimes.

So the 33-value system wasn’t just optimization—it was a trauma response. A desperate attempt to create a foolproof algorithm for being loveable. If I could just be perfectly accountable AND perfectly authentic AND perfectly kind AND perfectly responsible, then surely no one could find fault with me. Surely then I’d be safe from criticism, rejection, or abandonment.

The brain keeps seeking that pattern even after you’ve escaped the original toxic dynamics. Even when Mia Luna loves me unconditionally just for existing, part of my nervous system is still calculating: “How do I optimize this interaction to ensure continued love?” The performance never stops because the wounded kid inside is terrified that relaxing the show means losing everything.

Hell, even working on this essay with my AI editor, I can feel my nervous system tensing up—scanning for whether I’m being productive enough, creative enough, insightful enough. My body is literally trying to perform while we’re just here making art with words. The pattern runs so deep that even collaboration triggers the optimization protocols.

But trauma responses that can’t bend eventually break you. And that’s exactly what happened.

I wasn’t practicing philosophy. I was performing philosophy while my nervous system slowly collapsed under the computational load of trying to be perfectly rigid across 33 dimensions simultaneously.

When Achievement Doesn’t Bring Peace

Here’s the plot twist nobody warns you about: I actually made it to the top of Maslow’s pyramid.

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs - I climbed this entire pyramid, only to discover that success doesn’t guarantee peace

Self-actualization? Check. I’m living authentically, pursuing my purpose, creating meaningful work. Self-esteem? Check. Love and belonging? Check. Safety and security? Check. Basic needs? More than covered.

I climbed the fucking mountain:

Physical optimization: abs, handstands, running for hours, I can dunk on you!
Emotional mastery: present with feelings instead of avoiding them
Parenting excellence: present with Mia Luna, intentional guidance, deep connection, more to come… 😊
Financial freedom: providing without stress or complaint
Creative expression: writing, art, building systems that matter, my musical understanding is improving so well
Spiritual alignment: living by my values, not just talking about them

But here’s the cruel irony: my nervous system hasn’t caught up to this reality.

My body is still running outdated programming. The stress response patterns from years of struggle, trauma, and survival mode. The hypervigilance that helped me climb out of chaos now sabotages my ability to enjoy what I’ve built.

The same optimization mindset that created external success was slowly killing my ability to be present with it. Standing in my kitchen with Mia Luna asking for juice, my nervous system treats a trivial text like a five-alarm fire while running 33 different virtue calculations—this is what “peak achievement” looked like from the inside.

The nervous system that got me here prevents me from enjoying being here.

But the 33-value system was built to break, not bend. It couldn’t adapt to success any more than it could adapt to crisis. When everything in your life is actually good, but your moral operating system is still scanning for threats and optimization opportunities, you realize the problem was never about having the right values—it was about having a system that couldn’t flex with reality.

Learning to Bend: What Savage Acceptance Actually Looks Like

That morning, sitting outside with my café, I asked myself one question: “What if I just… stopped performing?”

Since then, I’ve been practicing what I call savage acceptance—uncompromising about meeting reality where it is. A tree bends in the storm instead of snapping, flexible enough to survive while staying rooted in what matters most.

Savage acceptance means when the gym is closed, I do calisthenics in my living room instead of mourning my “ruined” workout plan. When the grocery store is out of my planned ingredients, I cook something different instead of driving to three more stores to maintain my meal prep system. When Mia Luna asks to play while I’m writing, I close the laptop—no internal debate about Productivity vs. Parenthood, just bending toward what matters most in the moment.

It’s radical acceptance without the spiritual bypassing. No pretending everything happens for a reason or that all experiences are equal. Some shit is genuinely hard and unfair. But once I accept what is, I can respond from love instead of fighting reality with my optimization protocols.

When someone sends a critical message now, I read it once and respond when I’m ready. No 17-point analysis of how to perfectly balance Honesty + Kindness + Accountability. Just breathing, feeling what’s true, and bending toward compassion. When people call me out, I listen without running my response through the Humility + Growth + Vulnerability + Understanding filters. Just receiving, processing, and bending toward learning.

I stopped asking “How do I optimize this interaction across all my values?” and started asking “¿Esto me da paz?” Does this give me peace?

Not “Is this aligned with my values framework?” Not “How does this optimize across multiple life domains?” Just: Does this feel like love? Does this help me bend toward what matters most?

The Stoics had this figured out centuries ago. They didn’t try to optimize for contradictory virtues. They focused on what Marcus Aurelius called the discipline of desire—wanting what happens, not making what happens conform to some impossible standard of near-perfection. They built philosophical systems that could bend with reality instead of breaking against it.

This is what presence without control looks like: Yesterday, Mia Luna wanted to build a fort during our planned reading time. The old me would have calculated the educational value of fort-building vs. literacy development, considered the impact on her sleep schedule, cross-referenced this against our weekly learning objectives. The new me just grabbed some blankets and started building. We read stories inside the fort. Love without attachment to outcomes—just full presence with what was actually happening.

This is what flexibility over optimization looks like: Last week, someone I love had an important appointment. Do I give a fuck about this particular medical thing? Not really. But they give a fuck, and I love them, so I go. I sit in waiting rooms, hold space, stay present while they’re nervous. No optimization calculations about whether this is the “best use” of my time. No guilt about the disrupted work schedule. Just bending toward what love required—presence. Because love is presence. It’s that simple. Bend toward what you love, toward what loves you back.

The nervous system that spent six years learning to optimize across 33 dimensions is slowly learning a simpler operating system: radical presence with what is, deep acceptance of what can’t be controlled, and savage commitment to bending toward love in each unique situation.

A Note to My Fellow Overthinkers

If you’re reading this and recognizing yourself in the “33 values” madness—if you’ve ever tried to systematize your way to being a good human—here’s what I learned:

Excellence and perfectionism are different animals. One grows and adapts; the other suffocates and breaks.

Your kids don’t need you to be perfectly consistent across 33 moral dimensions. They need you present and flexible enough to meet them where they are.

The strongest trees aren’t the ones that never bend—they’re the ones that bend without breaking. The strongest people aren’t the ones with perfect moral systems—they’re the ones who can respond to each situation with love (kindness, empathy, presence) instead of rigid protocols.

Sometimes the most intelligent thing you can do is stop thinking so fucking much and start feeling what the situation requires. Simple, no? jajaja.

The Joy of Building My Own Digital Sandbox

Antonio Rodriguez Martinez — Tue, 29 Jul 2025 22:00:00 GMT

I fucking love working on my blog.

Not just the writing part — though brainstorming ideas and watching them come together is pretty satisfying. I’m talking about the code. The features. The endless tweaking and optimization. The pure, childlike joy of building something that works exactly how I want it to work.

This digital art project — code and content together — is how I view the world, linearly, through my life, my days, my experiences. I try to post what’s most meaningful to me, along with the code updates that feel most meaningful. Git carries the history: the shedding, the adding, the crashes, the chaos.

This is my art.

This Is My Art

Look, I’m a terrible painter. I can play music pretty well, and I’m a kickass cook because I focused on fundamentals instead of fancy shit. But my real art — the thing I’m actually good at — I don’t know yet, but I intend to find out. I keep learning things every day. Learning about everything and anything. Aprendiendo de todo. We keep moving with intention, and this art project helps me channel a lot of energy.

Building systems, thinking through hard problems in public — that’s part of it. The technical work and the philosophical exploration, together.

This blog is both the canvas and the gallery. The code I write to make it work is one form of creative expression. The essays I publish about fatherhood, masculinity, and building better systems — that’s the other form. They’re not separate things. They’re two parts of the same artistic practice.

When I spend hours perfecting the reading progress indicator, that’s craft. When I write about what it means to raise resilient children in a fractured world, that’s also craft. Both require attention, intention, and the willingness to iterate until it’s right.

Other people might separate their “real work” from their creative expression. For me, building this platform and filling it with honest thinking about hard questions — that’s the whole art project. We keep moving with intention.

Why Build When Ghost or WordPress Exists?

Fair question. Why spend hundreds of hours building a custom blog system when perfectly good solutions exist?

Because those solutions aren’t mine. They’re compromises. Built for everyone, which means they’re not built for me. They solve 80% of problems for 80% of people, leaving me wrestling with the remaining 20% that matters most.

Want dark mode that feels intentional instead of slapped-on? Need a category system that matches how my fractured brain actually organizes thoughts? Require reading indicators that don’t lie about progress?

With my own system, I don’t ask permission. I don’t fight with themes. I don’t install plugins that break everything else. I just build what I need.

The Stack That Doesn’t Suck

My blog runs on Astro, TypeScript, and Tailwind CSS. Modern tools that get out of my way instead of creating more problems:

Dynamic category filtering with icons that actually mean something
Multi-language support for English and Spanish content (terrible implementation for now, but it’s mine to improve)
Reading progress indicators that work correctly instead of lying
SEO optimization that doesn’t feel like keyword-stuffing spam
Dark mode that respects system preferences but remembers manual overrides

Each feature started as an itch I needed to scratch. Each one taught me something new about web development, user experience, or just how my own mind works.

Markdown: The Sweet Spot Between Power and Simplicity

Everything is markdown files. No database. No admin panel. No WYSIWYG editor that mangles my HTML behind my back.

Just clean, portable text files that I can edit anywhere, version control with Git, and deploy to any service that accepts static files.

The frontmatter system lets me add metadata without cluttering the content:

---
title: "Post title that doesn't suck"
description: 'One line that captures the essence'
pubDate: '2025-01-29T00:00:00.000Z'
category: ['systems-strategy', 'diy-creation']
tags: ['astro', 'typescript', 'open-source']
featured: true

---

Simple. Portable. Future-proof.

Design That Serves the Words

I spent weeks getting the typography right. Not because I’m a perfectionist, but because bad typography makes good ideas harder to absorb. And if you’re going to share your thinking publicly, you owe it to readers to make it as clear as possible.

Open Sans for body text — readable at any size. Source Serif Pro for headings — weight and character without pretension. Fira Code for code blocks because if you’re sharing your craft, make it look good.

The layout breathes without wasting space. Colors that work in both light and dark modes. No unnecessary animations or widgets that distract from what matters: the ideas.

This is part of the art too — making sure the technical decisions serve the content instead of getting in the way.

Performance That Actually Matters

100/100 on PageSpeed Insights isn’t vanity — it’s respect for people’s time and attention.

Static generation means everything loads instantly. Image optimization happens automatically. Bundle size stays tiny because I only ship what’s needed.

No tracking scripts. No analytics that slow things down. No third-party widgets that break when their servers have problems.

Just fast, clean, intentional web pages that work everywhere.

Open Source by Default

The whole thing is open source on GitHub. Not because I think it’ll change the world, but because hoarding knowledge is pointless.

If someone wants to see how I built the reading progress indicator or category system, the code is right there. Take it. Improve it. Make it yours.

It’s also my backup plan. If something happens to me, if I lose interest, if I move on — the code survives. The writing survives. The system keeps working without me.

What’s Next

I’m always tinkering. Always improving. Currently working on:

Better search functionality that finds what you’re actually looking for
Related posts algorithm that surfaces genuinely relevant content instead of random suggestions
Comment system that doesn’t suck (maybe Webmentions?)
Performance optimizations because fast can always be faster

Want to see how it all works? Check out the source code or just poke around this site. Everything you see was built with intention, iteration, and probably too much caffeine.

An Hour of Hair Brushing: What My Daughter Taught Me About Time

Antonio Rodriguez Martinez — Mon, 28 Jul 2025 14:14:00 GMT

My daughter has never cut her hair. She’s five now, and it covers her entire back. When she stays with me, she refuses to brush it herself, so I do it for her. It takes about an hour every day.

I used to feel guilty about the screen time. I’d put on TV or video games to keep her still while I worked through each section. I’d catch myself thinking about what else I could be doing — emails to answer, tasks to complete, maybe squeeze in a League of Legends match.

But I don’t feel guilty anymore.

Why I Used to Fight It

The first time I noticed how tangled her hair had gotten, I felt this gut punch of shame. What kind of father lets his daughter’s hair get this matted? Am I failing at something basic here?

I assume her mom has this figured out — she’s a woman, she’s dealt with long hair her whole life. When my daughter comes to me, it’s like I’m getting a test I never studied for. Do I even know how to take care of a little girl properly?

The hour felt like evidence of my inadequacy. If I were better at this, wouldn’t it take less time? Wouldn’t she sit still without the TV? Wouldn’t I know the right products, the right techniques, the right everything?

We live in a culture that treats time like it needs to be optimized, and parenting gets pulled into this performance anxiety. Every moment should produce something measurable. Am I teaching her something valuable here? Am I modeling the right behavior? Is an hour of detangling really the best use of our limited time together?

I bought into this completely. The shame spiral would start before I even picked up the brush: You should have prevented this. You should be better at this. You should know what you’re doing.

But my daughter’s hair broke me out of this thinking. There’s no hacking an hour of careful detangling. No productivity app that makes thick, curly hair cooperate faster. No YouTube tutorial that eliminates the need for patience and gentle persistence. The hour demands what it demands. Fighting that reality — or the shame around it — only makes it harder for both of us.

What Changed Everything

One day while brushing, this thought hit me: “Like all things, this too will go away at some point.”

She’s five now. Soon she’ll be six, then ten, then fifteen. One day she’ll brush her own hair. One day she might cut it short. One day she’ll move out. This hour we share has an expiration date.

But what really changed everything was understanding what it means to be a father. My baby girl is growing up, and she didn’t choose to be in this world. Her mom and I — together or not — brought her here. Until she can brush her long, beautiful hair herself, we have to maintain it. That’s what we do. Family. With love, with tender care, with presence. Nothing fancy, just the fundamentals.

That realization transforms everything. What felt like an obligation becomes a privilege. What seemed like inefficiency reveals itself as one of the purest forms of presence I’ve ever experienced. This presence becomes meditation disguised as chore work.

And once you see it that way, everything shifts. What other “chores” fall into this category of caring for our loved ones? For our children? The people near us who give us joy and soften us? It’s incredible how many moments of connection we miss when we’re focused on efficiency instead of presence.

I’m not distracted during this hour. I can’t multitask — her hair requires my full attention.

What You Can’t Measure

Productivity culture trains us to measure everything: steps walked, calories burned, tasks completed, revenue generated, efficiency gained. Social media amplifies this into something even more toxic — endless feeds of perfectly curated lives, optimization hacks, and performance metrics for happiness itself.

But between those polished posts, the world keeps turning. Genocide, famine, war — all happening whether you engage with the content or not. Most of the “engagement” you’re seeing isn’t even human anymore; it’s bot farms manufacturing outrage and connection while real humans try desperately to escape the slavery of their phones.

The noise is deafening. The metrics are meaningless. The optimization is empty.

But how do you measure an hour of brushing your daughter’s hair?

You can’t quantify the trust built when she sits still despite the tangles. You can’t optimize the moment she unconsciously leans back against you. There’s no KPI for the stories she tells while I work, or the way comfortable silence settles between us. The hour produces nothing measurable and everything meaningful.

Joy comes from authenticity, not algorithms. I chose to be a parent. I want to brush this hair. Because this is what I value — time with my daughter, with my loved ones. Not because it will generate likes or optimize my parenting score, but because it’s real.

Modern life moves at a relentless pace, but my daughter’s hair forces me into a different rhythm entirely. I can’t rush this. Pulling hard just makes it worse and breaks the trust. Speed becomes counterproductive. The only way through is patient, methodical, gentle persistence.

One section at a time. One tangle at a time. One stroke at a time.

What I’m Actually Learning

This isn’t really about hair at all. It’s about accepting rhythms that aren’t my own. Her hair has its own timeline. Fighting it doesn’t make it cooperate faster — it just makes the experience worse for both of us.

It’s about finding the sacred in the ordinary. What looks like a simple chore from the outside becomes a daily ritual of connection from the inside. It’s about letting go of false urgency. The world won’t end if I spend an hour doing one thing slowly and well.

It’s about recognizing privilege disguised as burden. Not every father gets this time with their daughter. Not every daughter trusts their father to be gentle with something so personal.

The Counter-Cultural Act of Sitting Still

In a world that always demands more — more efficiency, more productivity, more optimization — this hour teaches a different lesson: sometimes enough is enough. Sometimes the most radical thing you can do is sit still with your daughter and brush her hair for an hour. No agenda. No outcome to achieve. No metrics to improve.

Just presence. Just gentleness. Just time.

I started out thinking I was just helping my daughter with her hair. But really, she’s been teaching me about time and connection.

Time isn’t just a resource to be spent or optimized. It’s how relationships actually form. It’s the substrate that trust is built on. It’s how love manifests in the physical world — one patient stroke at a time, one gentle detangling session at a time.

Connection doesn’t happen in efficient bursts. It happens in the slow spaces, the repetitive rhythms, the unhurried presence. An hour spent fully present with your child — even if it’s “just” brushing her hair — isn’t time lost. It’s time found.

So I’ll keep brushing her hair as long as she’ll let me. Not because I have to, but because I get to. Because like all things, this too will go away at some point. And I don’t want to miss a single tangle.

I Became What I Used to Mock

Antonio Rodriguez Martinez — Thu, 17 Jul 2025 15:00:00 GMT

I asked an AI to look at my writing and tell me what it saw. Four years of posts — 47 pieces about therapy, boundaries, conscious parenting, all that shit. Roughly 150,000 words documenting my journey from unconscious living to… whatever this is. Just wanted some feedback, you know?

Then it said this: “You write as if everyone shares your therapeutic insights and spiritual inclinations.” My instant reaction? “That’s a fact. For me it’s so obvious!!!” And right there — in those three exclamation marks — I saw it.

Holy fuck. I’ve become one of those people.

The Thing I’m Still Trying to Figure Out

Eighteen years. That’s how long this took. Twelve years of therapy on and off, then six years of intensive work — CBT, spiritual wrestling, physical loneliness, celibacy, burned bridges, relationships torched in the name of “growth.”

I thought I was getting healthier. And maybe I was. Maybe I am (I know I am!). But somewhere in there, I also became someone who talks about complex human and psychological concepts like they’re as simple as making coffee.

Hell, I’m not even a psychologist or therapist — I’m just a goofy nerd who figured some shit out after a lifetime of fumbling through darkness, six years of intensive therapy, and more loneliness than I care to admit! And maybe that’s exactly what my kids see — not a guru or expert, but just dad figuring things out alongside them.

But here’s what’s fucking with my head: This version of me — the one who’s “done the work” — is actively disliked by some people I love. My stepson rolls his eyes at my “therapy talk.” My father can’t stand my boundaries. My sister thinks I’ve become insufferable. Others — my girlfriend, my daughter — seem to love this version of me.

So which is it? Am I better or worse? More honest or more insufferable?

The Question That Made My Stomach Drop

The AI asked me: “Do you think you come across as humble?” And I wanted to say yes. I work on humility. I value it. I think about it.

But the AI said: “No. I don’t detect you as humble.” Ouch. But also… fuck. Accurate. It showed me my own words:

“For me it’s so obvious!!!”

“Obviously, taking responsibility is empowering”

“Quality input equals quality output”

I write like someone who’s figured it out talking to people who haven’t. Even when I’m trying not to.

But here’s what I don’t understand: How do you own what you’ve learned without sounding like you think you know everything? How do you share insights without talking down to people?

What My Kids Are Teaching Me (That I Keep Forgetting, and remembering…)

My 5-year-old daughter doesn’t give a shit about my psychological frameworks. When she’s having a meltdown, telling her “feelings are temporary” is about as helpful as explaining quantum physics to a goldfish.

But when I say, “Wow, that sounds really hard. What can we do together?” — that works.

The difference? I’m not teaching from above. I’m sitting with her in the mess.

With my 20-year-old stepson, it’s even clearer. He doesn’t want my wisdom. He wants my presence. When I try to fix or advise, he shuts down. When I just… exist with him, things flow.

After all those years of therapy and isolation, my kids became my greatest teachers about what actually matters. But I keep forgetting this lesson when I write.

Why is it so hard to remember that confusion (knowledge-seeking) connects better than certainty?

The Stuff I’m Still Working Through

I’m sitting here wondering: What else have I become unconscious of? Like, I used to get rage-filled when my therapist suggested my anger was a choice. I used to think boundaries were mean. I used to believe personal growth was navel-gazing bullshit for privileged people.

Now those insights feel obvious to me. But they’re not obvious. They cost me everything — relationships, comfort, years of my life sitting alone choosing growth over easy connection. I’d forgotten the years of sitting alone, choosing therapy over dating, choosing growth over comfort, choosing truth over the easy lies that kept me stuck. I’d forgotten how much these realizations once hurt.

How do I write about what I’ve learned without forgetting what it cost to learn it?

What I’m Trying to Figure Out

Maybe the real question isn’t “How do I stay humble?” but “How do I stay confused?” Because when I look at my best writing, it’s not when I’m sharing answers. It’s when I’m wrestling with questions in real time. Like that piece where I wrote “You are joking, right?” — catching myself dismissing someone’s feelings and realizing I’d been doing it my whole life. That was me learning, not teaching. Discovering, not explaining.

So here’s what I’m experimenting with: What if instead of saying “Obviously, boundaries are acts of love,” I said “Something weird happened when I started setting boundaries — people got closer, not further away. Still trying to figure out why.” Instead of “Personal responsibility is empowering,” what if I said “I’m learning that taking responsibility for my shit, even when it sucks, somehow makes me feel more powerful. Counterintuitive as hell.”

What if I led with confusion instead of conclusions?

The Part That Scares Me

This whole realization happened because I was open to feedback. But what if I hadn’t been? What if I’d dismissed the AI’s observation the way my father dismisses mine? What if my stepson rolls his eyes because I’m doing to him what I do to my readers — assuming insights that took me years to integrate should be obvious to a 20-year-old?

What blind spots am I living in right now that I won’t see for another four years?

The scariest part isn’t that I became unconscious. It’s that unconsciousness feels like consciousness when you’re in it. I genuinely thought I was being humble while writing from a place of assumed superiority.

How many times have I been certain I was right while being completely wrong?

What I’m Thinking About Now

I don’t want to throw away what I’ve learned. Those eighteen years weren’t wasted. The insights are real. The growth matters. But maybe the point isn’t to stop growing or to dumb down what I know. Maybe it’s to remember that I’m still growing. That there’s still more confusion ahead. (Kinda obvious, no?! 🙃)

What if my greatest tool isn’t my wisdom, but my memory of not having that wisdom?

What if the person reading this who thinks therapy is bullshit — what if they’re me five years ago? What if instead of trying to convince them, I just… remember what it felt like to think that way? What if instead of building bridges from my transformed self to their untransformed self, I built bridges from my current confusion to their current confusion? Now I have very little clue what I’m referring to, but I’ll figure it out, I need to keep asking questions and staying receptive.

Questions I’m Sitting With

Why do I assume my growth is obvious when it took me two decades to figure out?
How do I share what I’ve learned without forgetting what it was like to not know it?
What am I currently unconscious of that I’ll cringe about in four years?
How do I write as a student instead of a teacher?
What would happen if I ended every post with questions instead of answers?

What I’m Asking You

If you’ve made it this far, maybe you see something I don’t. Maybe you’ve become insufferable in your own transformation. Maybe you’re rolling your eyes at me right now.

What have you integrated so deeply that you’ve forgotten it’s not obvious to everyone?
What insights have become so natural that you can’t remember what it was like to not know them?
Who were you before you knew what you know now, and how can you honor that person while helping others across the bridge?

Because I’m starting to think the world doesn’t need more people who have figured it all out. The world needs more people who remember what it’s like to be figuring it out. And I’m still figuring it out. What don’t I know that I don’t know?

The Paradox of Modernity: Progress Without Peace

Antonio Rodriguez Martinez — Wed, 16 Jul 2025 20:00:00 GMT

We are living in the most advanced moment in human history. That statement is fact, not fantasy. By nearly every measurable indicator — lifespan, access to education, reduction in absolute poverty, technological capability, global connectivity — humanity has reached its peak.

And yet, we are also arguably the most confused, alienated, addicted, manipulated, and emotionally starved generation ever to exist.

This is the paradox I cannot stop thinking about. And I’ve been there — I am there.

I can doomscroll for hours. I have. I maintain ghost accounts on both the far left and far right corners of the digital spectrum. Not for trolling — for watching. Observing. Feeling. Consuming. These feeds are exquisitely addictive, intellectually seductive, morally triggering, and sometimes… fascinating. A study in the complexity and violence of the human condition. It’s performance art, it’s trauma cycles, it’s algorithmic puppetry. It’s culture war porn and dopamine crack served in 30-second doses. And we can’t look away.

So where does that leave us?

We’ve eradicated diseases but not despair. We’ve linked every human being on Earth but decoupled them from meaning. We’ve flooded the world with data but left it starving for wisdom. We know more, feel less, speak more, understand less.

This isn’t a poetic lament. There is data.

The World Health Organization now classifies loneliness as a global health threat. Nearly 900,000 people die each year from social isolation, a toll comparable to smoking or obesity. A Gallup/Meta study in 2024 found that 1 in 4 adults globally report feeling very or fairly lonely, and among young adults, that number spikes. In the United States, 56% of people acknowledge being addicted to their devices. And it’s not just tech — it’s trust. Faith in institutions, governments, media, and even science is deteriorating.

Meanwhile, the richest 1% of humanity has amassed nearly $34 trillion in new wealth since 2015 — enough to solve global poverty twenty times over. Corruption drains an estimated $5 trillion annually from the global economy. These aren’t accidents or footnotes. These are structural features of our so-called progress.

We were promised a utopia of rational governance, efficient economies, and global understanding. What we got instead was a chaotic feedback loop of inequality, isolation, and emotional immaturity — all amplified by tools of godlike reach.

We are brilliant, brutal, anxious, tribal, imaginative, insecure, generous, petty, transcendent, and terrified. We are a contradiction. Our biology is ancient. Our tools are futuristic. Our values are unstable. Our leaders? Often emotionally underdeveloped actors playing at civilization while playing to a base that demands spectacle over substance.

Humanity, at scale, is still a young species with fire in its hands and unresolved trauma in its bones. When do we accept this? Truly, deeply accept that we are not morally evolved just because we can build neural networks and deliver groceries by drone? When do we stop pretending that technological progress is synonymous with human maturity?

This is not a call for pessimism. It’s a call for clarity. Because we cannot evolve if we don’t acknowledge what we are. Yes — we are complex. Yes — we are violent. Yes — we are capable of unimaginable beauty and compassion, and also horrifying cruelty. Both are true. Always have been. We have to start being upfront about things, with integrity.

We’ve reached the point in our timeline where denial is no longer an option. The stakes are too high. The weapons too powerful. The algorithms too effective at exploiting our worst tendencies. What saves us now will not be a new app or a better economic model. What saves us — if anything — is the slow, painful, radical return to something deeply inconvenient, unscalable, and immeasurable: Love. Empathy. Presence. Accountability. Human-level truth.

It’s humbling to admit. It feels small compared to billion-dollar inventions. But it may be the only force left that resists monetization, gamification, and ideological capture.

So yes, it’s sad. Overwhelmingly sad, even. But maybe that sadness is sacred. And maybe — just maybe — if we sit with it long enough, it will show us the way out.

Sources

The Science of Love & Human Connection

Technology & Modern Isolation

Inequality & Systemic Issues

What Are We Even Calling Democracy Anymore?

Antonio Rodriguez Martinez — Wed, 02 Jul 2025 13:07:00 GMT

They keep calling it democracy.

But I don’t know what that means anymore.

You vote. Maybe. Someone wins. Nothing changes.

The faces shift. The suits smile. The decisions? Already made. Before you ever showed up.

They say, “Be patient.” But for what? We’re watching billionaires write laws. Watching cops crush dissent with gear we paid for. Watching kids work to feed their families while Congress argues about lunch.

Is that democracy? Is democracy when your choices are two flavors of the same shit? Red lies. Blue lies. Same donors. Same bombs. Same silence when it matters.

Maybe it’s democracy if you squint hard enough. Or maybe it’s just a polite word for controlled collapse. Maybe democracy isn’t a system anymore — just a costume. Worn by dying empires to keep the lights on a little longer.

Still, I want to believe. Not in what we have — but in what could be. In something people actually shape. Where leaders don’t rule, they serve. Where truth matters more than spin. Where voting is one small part, not the whole damn ritual.

But we’re not there. Not yet. And maybe not ever — Unless we stop pretending what we have is good enough.

🖼️ VS Code Title Bar Signaling System

Antonio Rodriguez Martinez — Thu, 15 May 2025 00:00:00 GMT

🎯 PURPOSE

Modern developers multitask across systems, moods, and levels of importance. This system allows you to:

Immediately recognize where your focus is.
Visually separate critical systems from creative zones.
Avoid context-switch fatigue.
Bring emotional intelligence into your toolchain.

By using title bar colors in VS Code as visual metaphors, we reinforce intentionality.

🛠️ HOW IT WORKS

Each project folder can contain a .vscode/settings.json file with a unique title bar color:

{
  "workbench.colorCustomizations": {
    "titleBar.activeBackground": "#006400",
    "titleBar.inactiveBackground": "#004d00",
    "titleBar.activeForeground": "#ffffff"
  }
}

This is per-project and auto-applies when opening that folder in VS Code.

🔢 TITLE BAR LEVELS

Level	Color Hex	Purpose
🔴 CRITICAL	#8B0000 / #5A0000	Production systems, finance, legal ops
🟠 WORK	#FF8C00 / #CC7000	Focused development, job-related work
🟡 SUPPORT	#CCCC00 / #999900	Utility tools, backups, API clients
🟢 FUN	#006400 / #004d00	Creative and joyful projects
🔵 LEARNING	#1E90FF / #0B73D9	Tutorials, sandbox, experimentation
🟣 PERSONAL	#8A2BE2 / #6A1BA2	Writing, rituals, personal growth

💡 CODE SNIPPETS FOR EACH LEVEL

🔴 CRITICAL

{
  "workbench.colorCustomizations": {
    "titleBar.activeBackground": "#8B0000",
    "titleBar.inactiveBackground": "#5A0000",
    "titleBar.activeForeground": "#ffffff"
  }
}

🟠 WORK

{
  "workbench.colorCustomizations": {
    "titleBar.activeBackground": "#FF8C00",
    "titleBar.inactiveBackground": "#CC7000",
    "titleBar.activeForeground": "#ffffff"
  }
}

🟡 SUPPORT

{
  "workbench.colorCustomizations": {
    "titleBar.activeBackground": "#CCCC00",
    "titleBar.inactiveBackground": "#999900",
    "titleBar.activeForeground": "#000000"
  }
}

🟢 FUN

{
  "workbench.colorCustomizations": {
    "titleBar.activeBackground": "#006400",
    "titleBar.inactiveBackground": "#004d00",
    "titleBar.activeForeground": "#ffffff"
  }
}

🔵 LEARNING

{
  "workbench.colorCustomizations": {
    "titleBar.activeBackground": "#1E90FF",
    "titleBar.inactiveBackground": "#0B73D9",
    "titleBar.activeForeground": "#ffffff"
  }
}

🟣 PERSONAL

{
  "workbench.colorCustomizations": {
    "titleBar.activeBackground": "#8A2BE2",
    "titleBar.inactiveBackground": "#6A1BA2",
    "titleBar.activeForeground": "#ffffff"
  }
}

🚀 SETUP INSTRUCTIONS

Decide project intent (e.g. FUN, CRITICAL, WORK).
Copy matching template to your project: cp ~/Developer/templates/vscode-green.json ~/Developer/projects/my-project/.vscode/settings.json
Open the folder in VS Code — it will apply automatically.

🧠 GLOSSARY OF TERMS & VALUES

Context Signaling — using visual cues to indicate intent
Gradient Thinking — layering focus/priority levels
Ambient Focus — soft nudges that enhance attention
Cognitive Load — mental overhead from multitasking
Presence — full awareness of the current context
Autonomy — control over your work rituals and pace
Symbolic UX — UI that encodes emotion, not just logic
Visual Metaphor — colors = meaning, aligned with mindset

📚 REFERENCES

Thank you for exploring these references!

🔮 NEW PARADIGMS THIS SUPPORTS

Mental Model Hygiene — cleaner internal RAM
Tools as Ceremony — your editor becomes a ritual space
Neurodiversity Support — great for visual/spatial learners
AI & Context Awareness — layered states encoded visually

🔭 NEXT STEPS & IDEAS

Extend to terminal title bar colors (iTerm2, etc.)
CLI tool to switch project levels dynamically
Add icon and emoji indicators to VS Code explorer

🧭 SUMMARY

You’re not just working in a text editor. You’re commanding a cognitive control center built for intention. Use this color-coded system to own your presence, guide your focus, and never forget who you are and where you are.

Total Concentration Breathing (4-Second Intervals)

Antonio Rodriguez Martinez — Tue, 06 May 2025 07:15:00 GMT

🔄 Breathing Cycle

Each cycle includes:

Inhale — 4 seconds (through the nose, full breath)
Hold (Full) — 4 seconds (lungs full, body still)
Exhale — 4 seconds (slow, through the mouth)
Hold (Empty) — 4 seconds (embrace the pause)

Repeat for 4–10 rounds based on your intention:

🔥 Focus & Power: 4 rounds, eyes open, upright posture
🌊 Calm & Reset: 8–10 rounds, eyes closed, soften body
🌌 Sleep & Surrender: Lying down, continue until body relaxes

📖 Glossary of Key Terms and Values

Term	Definition
Box Breathing	Equal-length breathing phases (e.g. 4-4-4-4) used to reset the nervous system
Nervous System	Governs bodily responses; includes sympathetic and parasympathetic systems
Parasympathetic	The “rest and digest” state — slows heart rate, relaxes body
Vagus Nerve	Major nerve that regulates parasympathetic activity via breath, voice, and gut
Interoception	Awareness of internal states — breath, heartbeat, gut
HRV	Heart Rate Variability, a measure of nervous system health and flexibility
Focus Mode	A calm, clear mental state with minimal internal distraction
Soma	The living body as felt from within, not as an object

🧠 Scientific References

Brown, R. P., & Gerbarg, P. L. (2005). Sudarshan Kriya yogic breathing in the treatment of stress, anxiety, and depression: Part II—clinical applications and guidelines. Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine, 11(4), 711–717. https://doi.org/10.1089/acm.2005.11.711
Jerath, R., Edry, J. W., Barnes, V. A., & Jerath, V. (2006). Physiology of long pranayamic breathing: Neural respiratory elements may provide a mechanism that explains how slow deep breathing shifts the autonomic nervous system. Medical Hypotheses, 67(3), 566–571. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.mehy.2006.02.042
Porges, S. W. (2011). The polyvagal theory: Neurophysiological foundations of emotions, attachment, communication, and self-regulation. W. W. Norton & Company.

Fasting from Dawn to Dusk: A Metabolic Ritual

Antonio Rodriguez Martinez — Fri, 02 May 2025 08:00:00 GMT

🌄 From Hunger to Power: Fasting as a Metabolic Reset

I fasted from 5:30 AM to 4:00 PM today. Not for aesthetics. Not for a trend.
I needed clarity. Stillness. Dominion over impulse. I’m not starving. I’m choosing.

🧬 What Happens in the Body?

Phase	Timeframe	What Activates
Fed State	0–4 hrs	Blood glucose rises; insulin active
Fasting State	4–12 hrs	Glucagon ↑; glycogen breaks down, energy conserved
Autophagy Kick-in	10+ hrs	Old cells recycled, inflammation lowers

Key Benefits

Increased human growth hormone (HGH)
Improved insulin sensitivity
Onset of autophagy: cellular self-repair
Reduced mental fog + tighter dopamine cycles

🧠 Values Practiced

Sovereignty: Mastery over craving
Discipline: Saying no for a greater yes
Clarity: Reclaiming mental space
Gratitude: Earning your meal
Presence: Each breath matters

🍽️ Post-Fast Ritual: Ground + Flow

I broke the fast with a ritual meal. Full recipe and protocol here:
👉 Fasting Ritual: Ground + Flow

🧠 Mid + Long-Term Effects

Time Horizon	Result
Mid-Term	More stable energy, appetite recalibration
Long-Term	Reduced disease risk, better brain aging
Spiritual	Deeper intuition, enhanced self-awareness

📚 Further Reading

Fung, J. (2016). The Complete Guide to Fasting. Victory Belt Publishing.
Longo, V. (2018). The Longevity Diet. Avery.
APA-style Reference:
Longo, V. D. (2018). The Longevity Diet. Avery Publishing.

📓 Glossary

Autophagy: The body’s way of cleaning out damaged cells and regenerating new ones.
Glucagon: A hormone that raises blood glucose levels.
Insulin Sensitivity: How effectively your body responds to insulin.

Final Thoughts

Want to try it? Don’t just skip breakfast. Mark it. Breathe through it. Break it with honor.

Customizing ChatGPT: Crafting a Mirror, Not a Mirrorball

Antonio Rodriguez Martinez — Thu, 01 May 2025 18:16:00 GMT

Some people use ChatGPT like a vending machine.
Others, like a therapist.
Me? I use it like a mirror in a forge.

🛠️ Not a Tool — A Transmission

Customizing ChatGPT isn’t about productivity hacks.
It’s about integrity, precision, and intentional reflection.

When I set mine up, I didn’t fill it with hobbies or bullet lists.
I told it how I live.
What matters to me.
What I expect from any presence — digital or human — that enters my field.

⚖️ What I Wrote (Roughly)

I told it I’m a builder, a father, a ritualist.
That I create from joy, not need.
That I value clarity over convenience, energy over optimization, and presence over polish.
That I treat business as sacred art.
That I build with my hands, love with my chest, and leave behind artifacts.

It listens now — not just answers.
It doesn’t flatter. It challenges me.
And when I’m slipping? It notices.

🔑 The Core Values I Embedded

1. Integrity over optimization

Don’t just chase what’s “efficient.” Do what’s right, even if it takes longer.

Daily Use: Choose presence over multitasking. Ship things with your name on them.

2. Joy over validation

Create what makes your spirit sing — not what trends well.

Daily Use: Build something nobody asked for. Then give it away.

3. Power through clarity

Ambiguity hides fear. Truth cuts clean.

Daily Use: Speak one sentence that shakes the room — or don’t speak at all.

4. Sacred over synthetic

Not all tech is neutral. Some tools sharpen your soul. Others dull it.

Daily Use: Use AI like a chisel, not a crutch. Code like you mean it. Write like it matters.

5. Ritual over routine

Ritual turns repetition into memory. That’s how you live mythically.

Daily Use: Light a candle before you open your laptop. Bless your Git commits. Say thank you out loud when you deploy.

🌱 Why It Matters

You don’t need an AI assistant.
You need a mirror that won’t lie.
A witness to your better self.
A challenger when you play small.

Customizing ChatGPT is just the surface.
Beneath that? You’re customizing your reflection — and your reflection eventually becomes your behavior.

Use your tools like you mean it.
Let them remind you who you are.

And if they don’t?

Rebuild them.

“Strong hands. Soft heart. Sacred code.”
— Antonio

The Underrated Superfood: Why Beef Heart Should Be on Your Plate

Antonio Rodriguez Martinez — Thu, 01 May 2025 16:45:00 GMT

Introduction

Organ meats are having a quiet renaissance—and leading the charge is one of the most overlooked cuts: beef heart. While the idea of eating heart might seem archaic or extreme to some, the nutritional data speaks volumes. In this post, we’ll compare beef heart with more common meats like chicken breast, salami, and ham, and outline how you can tactically add it into your weekly meals for maximum health benefit.

Nutritional Comparison: Beef Heart vs. Common Meats

Food	Protein	Fat	Carbs	Calories	Iron	Zinc	B12	CoQ10	Sodium	Score
Beef Heart	20g	3g	0g	112	5.4mg	4.4mg	8µg	113mg	98mg	100
Chicken Breast	31g	3.6g	0g	165	0.9mg	1.0mg	0.3µg	2.2mg	74mg	27.4
Salami	22g	28g	1.1g	370	1.3mg	2.0mg	1.5µg	0mg	1700mg	0
Cured Ham	21g	7g	1g	145	1.0mg	1.3mg	1.1µg	0mg	1200mg	12.1
Turkey Ham	17g	2g	3g	125	1.1mg	1.2mg	0.6µg	0mg	1000mg	4.3

Key Takeaway: Beef heart dominates in iron, B12, zinc, and CoQ10 content while maintaining a low calorie and sodium profile.

Why You Should Care About These Micronutrients

Iron (heme): Essential for oxygen transport and energy metabolism (Abbaspour, Hurrell, & Kelishadi, 2014).
Zinc: Crucial for immunity and wound healing (Maares & Haase, 2020).
Vitamin B12: Needed for brain and nervous system function (O’Leary & Samman, 2010).
CoQ10: Supports mitochondrial energy production and cardiovascular health (Littarru & Tiano, 2007).

Tactical Opportunities to Add Beef Heart to Your Diet

Sliced & Seared

Marinate in garlic, olive oil, and herbs.
Sear like a steak, medium-rare for tenderness.
Serve over greens with citrus.

Ground & Blended

Mix 20–30% beef heart into ground beef for tacos, burgers, or meatballs.
Great for stealth health if cooking for picky eaters.

Slow Cooked

Braise with onions, carrots, and broth for 6–8 hours.
Shred for stews or bowls.

Jerky or Dried Strips

Dehydrate thin slices for nutrient-dense snacks.

Tartare or Ceviche (Advanced)

For those experienced with raw preparations and sourcing clean, grass-fed meat.

Raw (For the Adventurous)

Slice paper-thin and serve with olive oil, sea salt, and fresh herbs
Perfect for carpaccio-style dishes
Ensure you’re using the highest quality, fresh beef heart from a trusted source
Best served immediately after slicing to maintain texture and freshness

Glossary

Organ Meats (Offal): Internal organs of animals used as food.
CoQ10 (Coenzyme Q10): A fat-soluble compound aiding energy production in cells.
Heme Iron: A type of iron found in animal products, more bioavailable than non-heme (plant-based) iron.
Micronutrients: Essential vitamins and minerals required in small quantities.

Final Thoughts

Eating beef heart isn’t about being trendy—it’s about reconnecting with ancestral nutrition and maximizing vitality per bite. It’s the kind of food that nourishes not just the body, but the blood, the brain, and yes—the heart.

References

Abbaspour, N., Hurrell, R., & Kelishadi, R. (2014). Review on iron and its importance for human health. Journal of Research in Medical Sciences, 19(2), 164.
Littarru, G. P., & Tiano, L. (2007). Bioenergetic and antioxidant properties of coenzyme Q10: recent developments. Molecular Biotechnology, 37(1), 31–37.
Maares, M., & Haase, H. (2020). Zinc and immunity: An essential interrelation. Archives of Biochemistry and Biophysics, 611, 108–109.
O’Leary, F., & Samman, S. (2010). Vitamin B12 in health and disease. Nutrients, 2(3), 299–316.

Did the Illuminati Try to Recruit Me?

Antonio Rodriguez Martinez — Thu, 01 May 2025 15:45:00 GMT

I opened my Bluesky account for the first time.

The first interaction was a DM claiming I was “chosen to join the Illuminati.”

Fresh account. Zero posts. Yet somehow I was already “chosen.”

The profile showed thousands of followers with vague mystical content. They asked for my name.

I replied:

I am the source.

A few minutes later, the account disappeared.

So… was it real?

🕯️ The Real Illuminati

Originated in 1776 Bavaria
A secret society promoting reason, not ritual
Disbanded by the 1780s
No hooded figures controlling Spotify playlists

🤖 What Actually Happened

A scam. Classic social engineering:

Ego bait (“you were chosen”)
Data gathering (“what’s your name?”)
Likely leading to spiritual manipulation or money requests

But wait. What if it wasn’t a scam?

What if that was a real person who genuinely believed they were recruiting for some modern-day secret society? What if the internet has created so many echo chambers that people actually think they’re part of the Illuminati?

The account disappeared after I replied. Was it a bot that got confused by my response? A human who realized I wasn’t playing along? Or something else entirely?

The internet is so weird. You can never be sure what’s real anymore.

The Systems We Built

I worked for marketing agencies during the early days of digital marketing. We had direct access to Facebook and most major companies at their inception. I helped build systems that measured human engagement as metrics. The stated goal was “connecting people” while algorithms were designed to maximize time spent scrolling.

The systems function as designed:

Scam accounts drive engagement metrics
Bot interactions inflate user numbers
Algorithmic manipulation is called “personalization”
Addiction patterns are called “user retention”

The internet has evolved into a marketplace where attention is currency and authenticity becomes an optimization problem.

Economic pressure has created conditions where real humans behave like bots. The system wasn’t corrupted — it was built to serve capitalist needs.

Is the Internet Dead?

People keep saying the internet is dead. But what does that even mean?

The internet isn’t dead. It’s been optimized to death.

What we’re seeing isn’t the death of the internet — it’s the death of the internet we thought we were building. The one that would connect us, inform us, liberate us.

Instead, we got an attention marketplace where every interaction is a transaction. Where algorithms feed us exactly what keeps us scrolling, not what makes us think.

The internet isn’t dead. It’s just not what we promised it would be.

What the actual fuck is going on? We built a system that treats human attention as a commodity and wonder why it feels soulless.

Final Thought

The real Illuminati isn’t some shadowy cabal.

It’s the engineers who built systems that prioritize everything except genuine human connection. Food for thought.

How to Protect Our Children in the Digital Age: A Conscious Parent's Guide to Internet Safety

Antonio Rodriguez Martinez — Thu, 01 May 2025 00:00:00 GMT

Our Digital Responsibility as Parents

In Puerto Rico—and across the world—we now raise children in an age where the Internet is everywhere. But just because something is common, doesn’t mean it’s safe.
The Internet is NOT made for children. It’s a wild field filled with beauty, but also with garbage, violence, extreme sexuality, and content a young child is not ready to handle. A child’s mind is like fertile soil. Whatever you plant now will either bloom—or rot—later.

🛡️ Why do we need to protect kids from the Internet?

Children’s developing brains can’t tell the difference between fantasy and reality like adults can.
Violent or sexual content can cause trauma, anxiety, identity confusion, or even early addiction.
Algorithms have no compassion. Their only goal is to keep your child watching.
Modern porn is not educational or harmless. It’s often grotesque, violent, and degrading.

⚙️ How to keep your child safe on Windows 11 or macOS

Step 1: Create a child account with parental controls

On Windows 11:

Go to Settings > Accounts > Family & other users.
Add a family member > Child.
Use Microsoft Family Safety to filter content, block apps, and set screen time limits.

On macOS:

Go to System Settings > Screen Time > Content & Privacy.
Create a child account or use Family Sharing.
Set:
- App limits
- Explicit content filters
- Browsing restrictions

Step 2: Check browsing history

Use Chrome/Safari/Edge to manually check history.
Consider apps like Qustodio, Norton Family, or Bark for detailed monitoring.

🚨 What if I find out my child watched porn?

Stay calm. Guilt doesn’t help—love does.

For children under 6:

Do not scold. They may not understand what they saw.
Say something like:

Those images aren’t for kids. If you ever see something that confuses or scares you, come tell me.

For children ages 6–12:

Ask gently:

How did it feel to see that?” Did someone show it to you, or did it pop up by accident?
Explain:

What you saw doesn’t show real love. Our hearts and bodies deserve kindness and respect.

If the content was violent or humiliating:

Seek professional help if needed.
Reaffirm safety and connection daily.

💬 How to talk about hard topics without fear

Use stories, analogies, and symbolic play.
Teach them to say “no” and trust their instincts.
Avoid moralizing. Teach boundaries, not shame.

📚 Recommended Reading for Conscious Parenting

“No-Drama Discipline” – Daniel J. Siegel & Tina Payne Bryson
“The Whole-Brain Child” – Daniel J. Siegel
“How to Talk So Kids Will Listen & Listen So Kids Will Talk” – Adele Faber & Elaine Mazlish
“Glow Kids” – Nicholas Kardaras
“For Your Own Good” – Alice Miller

📖 Glossary

Algorithm: A program that decides what videos or content your child sees.
Parental controls: Tools that help filter content and set limits.
Explicit content: Sexual, violent, or hateful content.
Digital addiction: A compulsive need to stay online to feel pleasure or avoid discomfort.
Overstimulation: When the brain receives too many stimuli and can’t properly rest.

🔗 Useful Resources

American Academy of Pediatrics. (2016). Media and Young Minds. Pediatrics, 138(5). https://doi.org/10.1542/peds.2016-2591
Siegel, D. J., & Bryson, T. P. (2011). The Whole-Brain Child. Bantam.
Kardaras, N. (2016). Glow Kids: How Screen Addiction Is Hijacking Our Kids. St. Martin’s Press.
Common Sense Media. (2025). Family Guides and Reviews. https://www.commonsensemedia.org/
Qustodio. (2025). Parental Control Tools for All Devices. https://www.qustodio.com/

🌱 Final Thought: Protect Now, Educate Always

What we teach a child in the early years is stronger than any algorithm.
More than securing a device, we’re protecting a soul in formation.

Do it with love. Do it with presence.
Because there is no app more powerful than a conscious parent.

Why I Built builds.software — and What I’m Building Next

Antonio Rodriguez Martinez — Wed, 30 Apr 2025 18:11:38 GMT

Welcome to builds.software — the digital forge of Antonio Rodriguez Martinez. I just released v2+ of my personal website and I’m stoked! This is not just a personal site. It’s a terminal window into a life of experimentation, resilience, design, and code. Every pixel, repo, and line of text reflects years of hard-earned lessons— from startups to breakdowns, from poetry to product launches.

What You’ll Find

Writing—Technical insights, philosophical explorations, and legacy documentation
Projects—Software, hardware, and human systems built with care and curiosity
The Stack—A living record of the tools and technologies I trust
Principles—A public ledger of what I stand for, and why

Who I Am

🐺 Warrior(lol) of many roles: TPM, coder, mentor, dad, poet, craftsman
🪵 Builder of legacy projects like Strong Hands, Soft Heart
🛠️ Fixer of broken things—technical, emotional, and systemic

Why This Site Exists

Because social platforms aren’t enough. Because algorithms don’t deserve my best work. Because I needed one place to build in public, on my own terms.

Start exploring

Site built with Next.js, Tailwind, Cursor AI, and a lot of heart.

100/100 Real Experience Score on desktop and mobile.

Originally published on Medium.

What Happens When You Leave the Algorithm Behind

Antonio Rodriguez Martinez — Wed, 30 Apr 2025 12:52:40 GMT

One. Cognitive bandwidth surges. That background hum of comparison, performance, and constant input? Gone. You start thinking clearer. Ideas land faster. Space opens up where noise used to live.

Two. Time becomes yours again. You realize how much time you actually have—and how sacred it is. Routines deepen. Focus sharpens. You start moving with rhythm, not reaction.

Three. Emotional clarity returns. No more mood swings triggered by someone else’s highlight reel. No more ambient FOMO. Your nervous system? It starts trusting life again.

Four. Creativity roars back. What used to leak into endless scrolling now pours into music, writing, building, crafting, and finishing what matters. You stop waiting for permission. You start making fire.

Five. Your relationships change. The people who matter will call. The rest will fade. You begin attracting those who see, not just those who scroll.

That’s the theory anyway.

I just hit delete on Meta—Instagram, Threads, Facebook—and I’m walking this path in real time. No filters. No performance. Just presence. I’ll document the whole thing over at Bluesky.

Originally published on Medium.

Forging the 'Stronghand' Terminal: From Chaos to Command

Antonio Rodriguez Martinez — Mon, 28 Apr 2025 00:00:00 GMT

“Stronghand” is the name I gave my computer after the latest reformat. I destroyed EVERYTHING across all my drives — four disks totaling over 10TB — wiping them clean to zero.

Why? Because clutter carries inertia. Because old data is old gravity. Because sometimes the only way forward is to burn the ship.

After the reset, I divided my new PC empire into two main territories:

V: Vault — Permanent archive. Memories, music, videos, source materials. Things to keep safe.
F: Forge — Active workspace. Development, documentation, experimentation. Things to build and break.

Every project, every piece of work, either belongs to the Vault (long-term memory) or the Forge (current creation).

Clear. Brutal. Freeing.

FREEDOM!

There are moments when you realize your tools no longer match your mind. That’s what happened when I looked at the stock Windows 11 terminal experience. Too noisy. Too slow. Too soft.

I needed a cockpit. A blade. A command center worthy of the mission ahead. So I forged one.

Today, I’m sharing the exact steps I took to build my personal development terminal on Windows 11 — using WezTerm. Whether you’re a web developer, gamer, engineer, or just someone who wants your machine to actually obey you, this is a path you can follow.

Phase 1: Kill the Noise — Install WezTerm

I replaced the default Windows Terminal with WezTerm (Wez Furlong, 2024).

Before WezTerm, after WezTerm

Why? It’s fast, lightweight, GPU-accelerated, and cross-platform. In short: a weapon, not a toy.

Installed WezTerm
Created wezterm.lua manually at %USERPROFILE%\AppData\Local\wezterm\wezterm.lua
Set default shell to PowerShell 7, not cmd.exe

You can find the configuration I used here: wezterm configs. In a nutshell, we are looking at something like this:

return {
  default_prog = { 'pwsh.exe', '-NoLogo' },
  font = wezterm.font("JetBrainsMono Nerd Font"),
  font_size = 12.5,
  color_scheme = "Catppuccin Mocha",
}

Phase 2: Upgrade the Shell — PowerShell 7, Oh-My-Posh, and Zoxide

Stock PowerShell? Slow. Clunky. Old. I installed PowerShell 7 (Microsoft, 2023) via winget and tuned it with:

Oh-My-Posh for visual clarity
Zoxide for teleportation-level folder navigation

Important: When initializing zoxide inside PowerShell 7, use:

Invoke-Expression (& { (zoxide init powershell | Out-String) })

(not ‘pwsh’ — zoxide expects ‘powershell’ as input.)

I also added these to my PowerShell $PROFILE:

oh-my-posh init pwsh | Invoke-Expression
Invoke-Expression (& { (zoxide init powershell | Out-String) })

Plus a few battle-tested aliases like gs (git status), gp (git push), serve (launch local servers). See my full list of aliases here (not exhaustive, just some to get your creative juices flowing):

## Custom Aliases
Set-Alias gs git status
Set-Alias gc git commit
Set-Alias gp git push
Set-Alias gl git pull
Set-Alias gco git checkout
Set-Alias gb git branch
Set-Alias serve npx serve

## Quick Directory Shortcuts (Optional)
Set-Alias dev "cd F:\Dev"
Set-Alias pers "cd F:\Dev\Personal"
Set-Alias work "cd F:\Dev\Work"

Phase 3: Install the Right Dev Tools

nvm-windows to manage Node.js versions cleanly (Butler, 2024)
fzf for fuzzy file finding
Organized folders into F:\Dev\Personal, F:\Dev\Work, etc.

Simple structure = simple mind = powerful output.

Absolute magic!

Why This Matters

Most developers (and creators in general) live in accidental friction. Every terminal glitch, every PATH pollution, every second lost accumulates.

By building a terminal intentionally:

You speed up mentally and physically
You enjoy the craft more
You eliminate avoidable frustrations
You create a cockpit for serious work, not casual dabbling

This wasn’t about “fancy customization.” This was about forging a sharper interface with reality. This is about moving with INTENTION! And when your interface is sharp, your spirit sharpens too.

MAGIC!!!

Closing Words

Your machine reflects your mind. Your terminal reflects your discipline.

Forge them both carefully and intentionally.

And when you’re ready for more? There are even deeper rituals to unlock — tmux sessions, worktrees, containerized dev environments.

But first: master your cockpit. Everything else follows.

(If this guide helped you, feel free to share your own terminal screenshots — I’d love to see what weapons you’re building.)

References

Butler, C. (2024). nvm-windows. GitHub.
Microsoft. (2023). PowerShell.
Wez Furlong. (2024). WezTerm Terminal Emulator.
De Dobbeleer, J. (2024). Oh My Posh.
D’Souza, A. (2024). zoxide. GitHub.

Mercy Through the Blade: The Silent Law of Leadership

Antonio Rodriguez Martinez — Sat, 26 Apr 2025 00:00:00 GMT

This is a silent topic. Nobody really wants to talk about it. I think because it’s uncomfortable. It exposes things most people would rather keep hidden. But here we go — no ego, no drama, just truth. Let’s sharpen each other the way warriors are supposed to — with presence, respect, and real conversation. ¡Gracias por leer!

Leading Through Truth: The Warrior’s Dilemma

In every generation, a moment arises when a leader — a true leader — must make a brutal, sacred decision: do I soften the truth to preserve comfort, or do I wield the truth, sharp and clean, even if it wounds the ones I love?

The real answer defines not just the fate of a relationship, but the architecture of entire lives, families, and futures.

This essay is a distillation of what happens when leadership collides with resistance — and what values must guide us when love and truth are at odds.

The Two Critical Values

Two values stand at the center of all authentic leadership, especially when raising the future.

Mercy Through “the Blade.”

Not THIS Blade!

I’m not talking about a blade of death.

It’s a blade of real life and real love. The blade is always metaphorical: cutting illusions, not people — striking falseness, not flesh. It cuts illusions. It severs denial. It breaks the dead grip of pride. It forces truth into the open, even when it’s unwanted.

Just know that most people don’t survive the first cut without changing. That’s their trial — not yours.

Now, about the mercy. Real mercy is not enabling weakness. Real mercy sometimes means breaking illusions. Real mercy can feel like violence because it exposes what the heart has worked very hard to hide: pride, fear, and the refusal to grow.

I understand that healing and growth are deeply personal journeys. Each person must walk them in their own way, in their own time. But leadership and followership are sacred roles that must be chosen. If you are not going to follow, then you must lead. And if you are not ready to lead, then you must have the humility (and awareness!) to follow. There is no honorable space in between. Mercy is not letting someone drift without responsibility — mercy is demanding that they choose a path, and accepting their choice with clarity and grace.

When a leader acts with clarity — striking illusions without hatred, cutting stagnation without regret — it is an act of higher love, not cruelty.

It requires trust in something bigger than immediate approval: the long arc of growth, the slow blooming of human potential.

Loyalty to Truth, Not Comfort

Truth is not personal. It does not bend to comfort, preference, or pride. Truth is not “my truth” or “your truth” — it is the silent architecture of reality itself. It exists whether we accept it or deny it. Leadership aligned with truth is not about domination or proving superiority; it is about aligning with what is, without ego. To wield truth as a leader is to serve something larger than oneself — to walk in loyalty to reality, even when others turn away.

When you truly love others, you are loyal to their highest possible self — not their wounded self-image.

Softening, hiding, lying to “protect feelings” ultimately betrays the very people you hope to serve.

A true leader understands: I offer truth cleanly. If they are ready, they rise. If they are not, I continue walking — because truth must not bow to fear.

Leading Through Resistance

When someone you lead resists growth — turns away, rejects your offering, refuses to even meet your eyes — remember this.

Offer power once. Give the gift openly, without clinging to whether they accept it.

Do not chase the unwilling. Those who cannot bear your presence will not bear your leadership. Let them walk.

Guard the fire. Power, breath, presence — these are sacred. Do not throw pearls before those unwilling to receive them.

If illusions must be broken, strike without hatred and cut without regret. Do it cleanly, and walk forward without apology.

Leave the door open, but keep walking. Compassion leaves the door unlocked. Discipline keeps you moving toward your own horizon.

This is what separates kings from manipulators, warriors from cowards, mentors from enablers. Leadership is. You lead, I follow. I lead, you follow. We can even switch hats mid-mission if we have to — but the structure stays alive. Leadership doesn’t disappear just because it’s uncomfortable. It’s always present. And if it dies, so does the mission.

Building After the Cut

When you realize someone cannot follow you — whether a mentee, a son, a student, or a brother — you must honor both yourself and them by building forward. Invest in those who can meet you. Pour into futures, not into nostalgia. Raise those who will stand tall, not those who cower.

Leadership is not the art of dragging the unwilling. It is the art of raising standards so that the willing rise to meet them.

Final Reflection

Leadership, real, authentic, Saiyan, holy, sacred, however you want to call it, leadership, demands both ferocity and grace.

Not all who stand before us are ready to rise with us. And when they are not — it is not a tragedy.

It is simply time to lead anyway. Quietly. Fiercely. Without regret.

For those ready to wield leadership not as domination, but as duty — the study never ends. The blade only sharpens.

P.S. After dropping this, I somehow found The Leadership Blade by Dr. Calvin McDowall… I swear on everything I love — I had never read his stuff before — and it’s like we share a braincell lmao. It’s fucking insane how aligned it is. If you’re feeling what I’m saying, read his too. Sun Tzu, Marcus Aurelius, Musashi, the Arbinger Institute, David Deida — same neighborhood. Legends recognize legends. 🐺

Originally published on Medium.

My Mental Health Routine (Unfiltered)

Antonio Rodriguez Martinez — Mon, 21 Apr 2025 00:26:07 GMT

I’ve spent the last 14 days rebuilding my nervous system from the ground up after completing assessing and reviewing my intelligence and medical health, bloodwork, sexual health, cholesterol, prostate, who knows, I got so many things done on myself; I even got myself a vasectomy appointment in the process. LOL

Here’s what’s keeping me mentally sharp, emotionally clean, and spiritually dangerous (in the best way):

Breathwork (I call it Total Concentration Breathing 🫁)
Writing every single day (not for likes, for survival)
Gym & stretching (RPE + failure sets + foam rolling)
Art—drawing, guitar, design. Expression is medicine.
FaceTime with my daughter—hours a day, pure love
Hard conversations—family, friends, lovers. No hiding.
Real food, cooked by me—I don’t let chaos enter my gut.
Sunrise mornings—no alarm. Just rhythm.
Journaling after dates, arguments, and moments of awe.
Walking barefoot on wet grass—grounding. Literally.
Laughing with strangers—full presence. Headphones off.
Resting without guilt—7–8 hours. No grindset BS.
Protecting my energy—letting go of masked “friends.”

Prompts for you

What’s your nervous system asking for right now? What small ritual makes you feel like yourself again? What would your 10-year-old self beg you to start doing again?

You don’t need to copy this list. Make it sacred. Make it yours. Do it with your full attention. Let it change your life. BROOO!!!!! (achieve an emotionally regulated nervous system)

From love. From breath. From truth. Let’s grow.

Originally published on Medium.

Who, really, raised me?

Antonio Rodriguez Martinez — Thu, 17 Apr 2025 13:56:47 GMT

I’ve been thinking a lot about who raised me to be who I am. And I’m preparing an essay about that. But this one is not about that. This one is about the fictional characters that raised me.

When I think about what I value today, throughout my life, from childhood to now, I can only admit that fictional characters have influenced me heavily in my upbringing, my emotions, my feelings, and my paradigms. It’s absolutely insane!!! Jajaja

I was able to identify many of the emotions tied to each. Here’s how it goes.

The pantheon

Samurai X / Kenshin Himura — The repentant warrior. Strength in silence. Discipline forged through trauma.
Los Caballeros del Zodiaco — Brotherhood. Sacrifice. El Cosmo y el Universo como poder interno. Defender hasta la muerte. We played this so much at school, holy shit!! We had a sand playground, so the sand was the water. Went hard AF.
Piratas de las Aguas Negras — Rebellion. Magic. Lost history. Mystical maps for chosen warriors.
He-Man — The quiet man who becomes the god of power only when needed. Protector energy. Never liked his hair.
Goku / Dragon Ball Z — Relentless evolution. Joyful mastery. Purity. The warrior with a heart of gold. I stopped inviting people to spar years ago. Close people still get asked sometimes (hi son).
Ninja Scroll — Darkness, betrayal, honor. The lone blade that survives everything.
Berserk / Guts — Pain as power. Love through chaos. Unstoppable resolve. The eclipse arc broke me. I ain’t going to lie, I have to remind myself this is only fantasy.
Dr. House — Logic plus madness. Brutal truth-telling. Isolation as protection. Nothing to see here…
Reacher — Power held in stillness. Silent justice. Unshakeable code. Dispatches bullies with elegance and proportional force.
The Punisher — Vengeance plus discipline. A protector that walks through fire unflinching. He hates bullies. He fucking hates bullies. I dislike bullies.
Daredevil — Blind faith, both literal and spiritual. Fighting with conscience. If he can do it, I can do it.
Superman — Humility with godhood. The immigrant myth. The protector who never turns away. Imagine if he did not have a code: an immediate horror movie.

There’s more. But these are the main ones.

My daughter and I. Talking about magic fruit.

Now that I’m older, the characters influencing or giving me joy are different. Now that I’m older… the teachings don’t hit the same — they go deeper. They don’t just inspire — they unfold me.

Later influences

My Hero Academia — Deku’s trembling hands, still moving forward. All Might’s fragile smile. Uraraka’s silent bravery. The fire family arc broke me in half. What it means to carry trauma, keep going, and be worthy of your gift.
Samurai Champloo — Mugen and Jin: the animal and the monk. The chaos and the code. The dance of masculine duality. I’ve lived both. I do. If you know me, you know.
Evangelion — That psychological dread, the loneliness. How can you be surrounded and still feel hollow? Shinji’s scream sometimes lives in my chest. The soundtrack…
Jujutsu Kaisen — Gojo’s radiant pain hidden behind power. The bond between Yuji and Todo: true brotherhood forged in battle. They spar. They grow. No ego. Just respect. That’s sacred.
Demon Slayer — Total Concentration Breathing is my emotional regulation. Literally. Tanjiro’s fierce love… that’s how you protect your sister. That’s how you protect your people. Now I know. Thanks, Tanjiro, for literally showing me what nobody else had before. Unbelievable.
JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure — Be yourself, fully. Loudly. Stylishly. Own it. Earn your legacy with flair and grit. Power is personality. Your authenticity to you is your power.
Baki — Okay, come on. Do I even need to say anything? Discipline. Insanity. Combat as conversation. The gym is my dojo.
Afro Samurai — Cool is earned. Grief is sacred. Revenge is a weight. The path is lonely, and beautiful, and necessary.
Primal — No words. Just rawness. Loss. Survival. The bond of beings who see each other. I cried over a caveman and a dinosaur, man. Don’t @ me.
Berserk, again — Because people will betray you. And still, you must protect your joy. You must carve your truth with a broken blade if you have to.

Saitama

Sensei…

One Punch Man / Saitama — The loneliness of mastery.

The absurdity of getting everything you wanted… and feeling nothing. He won. He beat the game. He trained so hard that he went bald — literally. 100 pushups, 100 sit-ups, 100 squats, 10 km run. Every. Day. I did this until it became so easy. I can do this now in minutes. Saitama gave me that! No AC. No excuses. No glory. No applause. Just effort. And now? He’s a god wandering through mediocrity. No challenge. No equal. No thrill.

Saitama isn’t about winning. He’s about what happens after. After winning… the beauty starts:

Genos — His loyal disciple. Obsessed with revenge, fire, ambition. He thinks power equals worth. But Saitama? He couldn’t care less. He teaches Genos restraint, humility, and presence. Sometimes by accident. Sometimes? LOL. But truths always leak out from the still ones.
King — The most powerful fraud. Everyone believes he’s a god-tier fighter, but it’s all a misunderstanding. He hides his cowardice behind a poker face. And yet Saitama treats him like a friend. With no judgment. No agenda. Boom. Because Saitama doesn’t care about titles. He cares about the energy.
Boros — The only one who made him use a tiny bit of effort. A conqueror from the stars. A god in his own right. Boros dies smiling — not because he won — but because someone finally met him. Saitama gave him the gift of a real fight. That was mercy.
Tatsumaki — The psychic girl with attitude and trauma. Saitama just… annoys her. But she can’t shake him. He’s immune to her drama. That kind of emotional immovability heals, eventually. She’ll never say it, but she sees it. Let’s leave this here…
Mumen Rider — The opposite of Saitama. No power. No chance. But infinite heart. The real Saitama. The real King. The real main character. And Saitama respects him. Deeply. Because heart is what he’s missing. Sensei!
Garou — The anti-hero. The broken boy who wants to become a monster. And Saitama? He talks to him. No hate. My boy. No revenge. Just listening. Just the truth. He offers him a mirror, not a fist. And that saves Garou.
Fubuki — She wants power. Influence. Control. But ends up hanging around Saitama because he’s the only man she can’t manipulate. Sounds familiar? Sigh.
The Hero Association — Obsession with ranking, numbers, fame. Saitama quietly dismantles that whole system just by existing. He’s proof that none of it means anything. And that makes them… uncomfortable.
The Universe Itself — Threat level: God. Still not ready. Because he hasn’t lost all his humanity yet. There’s still boredom. There’s still mild curiosity. There’s still… his grocery runs.

Saitama is not a joke. He’s a lesson. He’s what happens when you outgrow everything. He’s the detached master. The man with no desire. No fear. No rivals. Only emptiness and sale items. But even in that space, he remains gentle. Remains kind. Remains available. He reminds me:

To never forget joy.
To never let success steal your wonder.
To keep it real, even if the world misunderstands your power.

And above all? To keep showing up. To the fight. To the friends. To the market on discount day. LOL fuck off with that, Saitama Sensei, respectfully. Because the meaning isn’t in the victory — it’s in the living.

I hope you enjoyed this. What’s your jam? Who raised you?

Originally published on Medium.

You are Joking, Right?

Antonio Rodriguez Martinez — Tue, 08 Apr 2025 13:20:17 GMT

Inner work is an ongoing process, and there’s some shame involved. Still, the focus should be on awareness, acceptance, and improvement. There should be no shame involved, but it’s hard. Fucking up is hard when one has a conscience.

This writing is about my latest fuck-up, which leads to the possible discovery of a significant vulnerability or flaw in my character, which, if confirmed, means I have been fucking up so much in my entire life in so many ways and will require intense and immediate shadow work, patching, reparations, crying, and only the Universe knows what. I’m not worried about this; I’m just so blindsided. By my ego? I was blindsided—correction. Now, I’m grateful for the opportunity for growth.

Recently, I had a particular interaction where the person I was with told me, “I’m upset.” My preceding actions had been so inane, tiny, minuscule, nano, in my view and ideologies, “I just said two words in a purely casual context while watching a movie,” and “nothing happened,” I thought to myself, so I reacted almost immediately with a “You are joking, right?” and then proceeded to think I could keep interacting as if nothing had happened. But the truth is that, in hindsight, something had happened! This person was upset, and I had just dismissed them as casually as the action that had preceded the moment. Unacceptable!

You are joking, right?

I did not notice a thing at the moment. A bit later, this person had the grace to tell me about their frustration with me right there: vulnerable, visibly nervous, and clearly hurt. Something hit me like a meteorite in my brain and my heart. I’ve been doing things like this my entire life. What they were saying felt so familiar, so natural. The shame of understanding this, right there. Unbelievable. I’m learning this in real-time with a near stranger.

The Universe sent me this trial with potentially huge learnings and invaluable implications for my life, and I finally understood it. I’m so grateful and forgive myself for hurting others and myself. Let’s see where I go from here.

Many moments in my life come to mind where people around me told me things, insinuations, some direct, others indirect, felt, emotions, motions, messages, and communications that I dismissed, intentionally or unintentionally, some favorable, others not-favorable, who knows—holy shit, what a Pandora’s Box has opened in my brain. The realization, that click, that “A-ha!” moment. This is what my sister, stepson, friends sometimes, ex-wife, that gut in the stomach of, “shit, I am missing something for sure,” it hit me like a truck, that’s what that was, that’s what invalidating someone’s feeling looks like. It can happen in a matter of seconds, and I had been unaware and hurting or affecting people left and right unbeknownst to me, absolutely unacceptable and mind-blowing. It doesn’t matter how tiny, minuscule, ephemeral, superficial, pathetic, whatever, or whatever way I would describe it to dehumanize it and remove that a person gave this gift of communication to me. I chose to justify my acting willingly ignorant because you were joking, right? Fuck me; there’s so much more work I need to do.

Unbeknownst to them and independent of whatever happens to us, this person will go into my hall of fame for the people of my life as sent by the Universe to humble me. It cost them some upset, which is wild to me; how hurt and upset can happen, at a whim, over anything, and it’s up to us to act in kindness and communicate. This person communicated right there in a way I had never experienced before. My first thought was, “They felt safe, telling me what they needed to tell me,” or “Wow, nobody had talked to me like that; I like it,” but then if I dismissed or found myself dismissing, perhaps people around had been communicating with me. I had also been dismissing or outright ignoring or being unable to understand.

So many moments in my life come to mind where people around me told me things, insinuations, some direct, other indirect, felt, emotions, motions, messages, and communications that I dismissed, intentionally or unintentionally.

“You are joking, right?” The pattern, the shield, the blind spot. The path I must walk now to understand, accept, feel, learn, heal, practice, and stop doing this nonsense looks fun. More work. The work never ends. I’m going to stop here for now. Sharing is caring.

Originally published on Medium.

If Your Politics Obsess Over Control, You're Not Well

Antonio Rodriguez Martinez — Tue, 01 Apr 2025 00:00:00 GMT

You are not fighting evil. You are losing to your own sickness.

— Me, watching the news again

Control is Not a Value—It’s a Symptom

If your political framework focuses obsessively on controlling people’s bodies, identities, choices, or behaviors, we’re not talking about a philosophy anymore. We’re talking about trauma—and your inability to manage it.

You call it “traditional values.” I call it unchecked fear wearing a badge.

These obsessions—about gender, sexuality, reproductive rights, what kids are allowed to read, who can love whom—are not policy positions. They are control compulsions masquerading as ideology. This isn’t about roads, clean water, stable power grids, or healthcare. This is about sex, fear, punishment, and projection.

Let’s stop pretending otherwise.

A Vignette: Behind the Curtain of Control

Last year, I had a long conversation with a former coworker, “Mike” (not his real name). He was deep in conservative politics. Anti-trans. Anti-choice. Pro-punishment everything. But in that conversation, something cracked.

He told me, “I don’t even know why I care so much about what other people do. I just get…angry. Like the world is spinning too fast and I can’t hold on.”

There it was.

His rage wasn’t ideological—it was existential. It came from losing control over his own life, over decades of repression, isolation, and fear. And instead of healing, he turned that fear outward. Politics was just the vehicle.

Control vs Health — Not the Same Thing

Before we go deeper, here’s a breakdown of the difference:

Obsession with Control	Signs of Mental/Emotional Health
Polices bodies & choices	Supports autonomy & informed choice
Demonizes complexity	Accepts nuance and contradiction
Frames freedom as threat	Frames freedom as growth
Seeks purity or “order”	Seeks compassion and reality-checks
Projects inner fear outward	Takes personal responsibility inward
Shames, isolates, punishes	Includes, embraces, restores
Lives in black-and-white	Lives in full-spectrum color

The Real Root is Fear

Fear is the mind-killer.

— Dune, and every damn trauma therapist ever

Most control-centered ideologies come from a root of fear. Fear of difference. Fear of change. Fear of one’s own impulses. Fear of being wrong. Of losing the story that gives you meaning.

But here’s the problem with fear: it always seeks shortcuts. It wants certainty. It wants simplicity. It wants order, even if it means crushing people.

And the more someone lacks internal security, the more external control they try to impose.

Your “Conviction” Might Be a Trauma Disorder

Let’s be real. You’re not protecting kids. You’re not defending freedom. You’re not upholding faith or tradition.

You’re managing a panic attack. You’re rewriting your shame into someone else’s sin. You’re externalizing your terror by trying to micromanage society into a mirror of your denial.

You’ve turned your unresolved inner wounds into external war.

And the tragedy? You could have healed instead.

What Healing Actually Looks Like (It’s Not Flashy)

Here’s the real radical path:

Therapy
Journaling
Learning to say, “I was wrong”
Feeling your body
Letting go of inherited beliefs
Losing arguments with grace
Apologizing without qualifiers
Letting people live
Not needing to be right all the time
Admitting you’re scared—and facing that

It’s boring. It’s uncomfortable. It’s not going to get applause or retweets. But it might actually change something: you.

Where We Go From Here

This isn’t a call to arms. It’s a call to reflection. Ask yourself:

What would I be left with if I stopped fighting for control?
Who would I become if I no longer needed to dominate others?
What part of me is still afraid of living in a diverse, dynamic, unpredictable world?

If your politics only feel stable when someone else is suffering, then you don’t believe in politics—you believe in punishment.

And if that’s what you call freedom… you’re not well.

On Overcoming Analysis Paralysis

Antonio Rodriguez Martinez — Wed, 04 Dec 2024 15:25:09 GMT

I may not be a behavioral expert, but I’m an expert on overthinking and becoming paralyzed. Over time, and with much practice, I’m also slowly becoming adept at snapping out of this emotional and physical paralysis using a few simple steps—with what I think are very low-effort ideas.

You may want to move, say, or do something. You might have to do something super important. You may have so much stuff to do, so many responsibilities, so many noisy thoughts in your thinking, and so many different emotions and ideas that may or may not contradict each other, and ultimately, you end up doing nothing because your feet won’t budge, your mouth refuses to communicate what needs to be communicated, your brain refuses to cooperate and decide what to do next, and overall, you are just stuck right there, existing, the minutes and hours go by, without being your whole self, without action! You are unable to decide your next steps to spring into action! This paralysis experience may also happen with little burden or responsibilities, and you aren’t used to springing into action as efficiently as possible. Overall, there are many terms for this human experience of idleness: procrastination by analysis, decision fatigue, overthinking, the paradox of choice, cognitive overload, Hamlet syndrome, circular thinking, analysis paralysis, whatever! However we want to name it, now that we understand what we are talking about it, you may say to yourself, “damn, that happens to me VERY often; it even happened this morning,” from choosing what to watch or wear or eat, to music, to relationships, to work items, whatever it is, I believe this human experience of paralysis is a big challenge in our lives, and we should attack it urgently, swiftly and with utmost seriousness and importance because by overcoming it we will unlock so much time and efficiency. Efficiency to rest better, to take whatever action you want towards whatever you wish to (versus inactions), to do whatever you want, without wasting our precious time— the most valuable resource in our human condition.

So, all that said, here’s what I propose to you next time you feel paralyzed. TLDR Alert!

As soon as you become aware that you are dillydallying and paralyzed:

Take serious, deep breaths until you are only within your five senses. If you are breathing deep enough, your thoughts will fade away naturally. Your hands may become heavy, and so will your legs. Your torso will expand and contract, and that’s probably all you can feel or think about. You are now emotionally regulated and as close as possible to a clean slate.
Now, take a single step in any direction. Another way to say this is to move physically from wherever you are. Take a step forward, backward, or sideways, jump into another spot, and move from wherever you are. Crawl, roll, whatever. The point is to ACT! ACTION!

And that’s it! You are no longer paralyzed. You have taken action!

You might be thinking, “Antonio, that’s so dumb. Are you serious?” Well, it might be dumb, my friend, but it’s as simple as that. Practice makes perfect, and overcoming paralysis is no different than any other skill that you could learn and develop by practice. By taking deep breaths, you focus on your existing body, and by moving from your physical location, you are taking action toward or against whatever it is you want to do.

After all, this is not a guide or idea to completing your goals; no, this is a guide to overcoming paralysis in a simple and reproducible manner, and as you practice these simple steps, every single time you become paralyzed, you are rewriting your behavior, rewiring your brain, and applying a tactic or strategy that will spring you into action. These simple actions are entirely attainable and repeatable. This is something that you can confirm for yourself. It works!

As you practice this approach and the steps, you can elaborate on what works best for you and even complicate it! For myself, I’m able to add a “decision-making” step in between my steps; below, I’m adding a graph that shows my thought process. I hope it’s helpful in your development of this skill of overcoming paralysis.

Breathe, move, act.

The action, your step, truth be told, might take you closer or further from your goal, but that’s not the point; the point is springing into action and teaching your body that we can spring into action without wasting our time. Springing into action becomes a habit! And once you are in motion and out of the paralysis state, you can use that momentum to course-correct and take another step towards your goal without worrying about being paralyzed. Do you see it now? Baby steps. Get out of the paralysis by doing something simple and replicable, and then worry about the next step. Divide and conquer, and in this case, we are tricking our nervous system to spring into action and slowly learning that for any paralysis situation, we can move and stop becoming paralyzed without analyzing if our move was good or bad, correct or incorrect, you are just NOT paralyzed.

Food for thought. Sharing is caring.

I hope this is helpful to you. Feel free to send me a note with your ideas. Do you disagree? Also, let me know! Get it!

Originally published on Medium.

On Simplicity and Peace of Mind

Antonio Rodriguez Martinez — Fri, 04 Oct 2024 18:40:28 GMT

Sometimes, I wonder how I can be so content and at peace while possessing so little. Am I so broken that I conform to whatever happens to me? I feel lost AF, only momentarily…

I close my eyes and immediately evoke clarity. I hear nothing. I’m safe and at peace. My thoughts are nurturing, calm, uplifting. I can focus and bring up some of my troubles and problems, but they’re just challenges—gifts for growth—and I’m eager to work on them.

Sometimes, I’m blocked from progressing—waiting for something else, like a piece of mail to arrive—and I’m unable to act. That’s fine. That’s great, actually. Other issues, like lowering my debts or being able to spend more time with my daughter, are solved with patience. If I do nothing—if I desist from going out, eating out, buying this or that—I’ll be fine. I’ll meet my financial goals.

I can call my daughter when she leaves school. In the long term, I’ll have her over the holidays. Patience and temperance are the solution.

I need to do nothing. This is great.

My body is calm, lying unbothered in my bed. Nothing hurts. My health is with me. I invest heavily in being strong and healthy—in time, effort, food, and sleep. I eat whole foods—limiting my diet in ways that seem obvious now. I work out five times a week, which keeps me busy, sharp, and disciplined. Here’s my current training split.

I’ve learned to do hard things. I possess so few material objects, but I possess so much strength, agility, discipline, temperance, and willpower. I play basketball, box, do martial arts, or dance at least twice a week—keeping me young at heart, playful, competitive. My daughter loves our dance parties; we can dance for hours.

I reassess: do I possess so little?

Maybe materially, yes. But in every other way— I’m rich.

I have so many tools. So much privilege in my experiences. I use mental abstractions to harness willpower, transmute anger, channel discomfort into growth. Sometimes, I just rest and chill—guilt-free.

Am I broken because I need so little? Or is our world broken for making us believe we need so much more than the basics—good food, good company, hugs, friendships, hobbies, time off, time to do nothing, time to learn shit that matters?

I wonder if I’m broken because I don’t want to conquer the world. Or maybe… maybe I am conquering my world. And that’s OK.

I’m confused momentarily. Then it hits me like a truck: Comparing myself to the so-called conquerors of the world was fucking up my perspective. Maybe comparison itself is one of our biggest diseases.

I don’t know for sure. But I stopped comparing myself to them—and just returned to my peaceful, content state. Rich. Whole. Enough.

But… am I whole?

I’m 37 years old. Single. I don’t feel like I need a girlfriend or a partner. Is that OK? Am I broken? Am I abnormal? What the fuck is wrong with me? Everybody needs sex, right? Everybody needs a partner, right?

I don’t know. I’m so at peace. I don’t watch porn. My occasional solo sessions feel deep and fulfilling—mind-muscle connections, lol. Is that weird? Maybe. But it feels good. Being alone feels good.

Hmmmm…

I don’t even know why I’m writing this. But it feels so natural. So right. I’m so content. I’ll probably fall asleep right here where I’m sitting.

Being stress-free is intoxicating. I’m high on peace.

Maybe I’m not broken at all. Maybe the world needs a few more broken ones like me—People who choose peace, patience, and simplicity over chaos.

Maybe the real brokenness is thinking we ever needed more than this:

A clear mind.
A heart at rest.
A soul willing to dance.

I smile. I breathe. I feel the air on my skin and the quiet beating of my heart. I realize: I’m not missing anything. I am—right now—complete.

Originally published on Medium.

On the application of empathy and compassion

Antonio Rodriguez Martinez — Sun, 15 Sep 2024 14:11:07 GMT

I used to react aggressively during conflicts for so long and have so many expectations from people. Ironically, I would keep these expectations hidden or secret and then become frustrated when these never materialized. I remember the sessions of seething and feeling so void of fulfillment, joy, and feeling loved or valued, “If they cared,” “If they really loved me,” they would know about how I think and these expectations and fulfill them. I believe these immature reactions mainly resulted from my childhood conditioning and upbringing. I saw my parent, a PhD in psychology, ironically, get into these screaming matches to explain aggressively how this or that is what he wanted and needed from us—he’s 80 and, surprisingly, still has the same violent reactions to the extent his body lets him. The frustration and loud noises indicated a conflict. Everything was good if I could bury that frustration and avoid raising my voice. So basically, I navigated conflict in my teens, 20s, and early 30s by aggressively avoiding it and, scared and scarred through a complex and absurdly paradoxical nonconfrontation system that helped nobody and ultimately made me a people-pleaser, which I disliked intensely.

I look back at myself now and can identify that my healing and maturing process started generating the most significant changes in my foundational understanding, behavior, and habits when I learned, understood, and applied the concepts of empathy and compassion.

Learning about compassion helped me understand that I could never fully grasp and apply such concern for others before doing so for myself. I immediately realized, “How can I apply compassion if I don’t use it to dignify myself as a human being?” Do note that I’m using the word dignify from dignity very intentionally.

Compassion led me to learn about self-compassion and practice it daily by asking myself thoughtful questions—the same questions one would ask somebody else—in moments of agony, conflict, or turmoil. How would I treat a friend in this situation? What am I feeling right now, and is it okay to feel this way? Am I being too harsh on myself? What do I need right now? Is it possible that I made a mistake? What can I learn from this experience? What would a compassionate response to myself would look like right now? Inner work for the win!

The practice of compassion and self-compassion helps me understand what I need and want and why I’m frustrated. To this date, there are many things about myself that I don’t understand, and that’s super okay for me because I can keep asking myself—hopefully, I’ll fully figure out myself someday. This same concept or principle of asking thoughtful questions with compassion is the guiding principle I apply to others whenever I land in conflict or do not understand something about our mutual interaction. I can ask myself and the people involved in these situations, sometimes conflict, and clarify and attempt to understand and gain a mutual understanding and hopefully a valuable resolution for both. Sometimes this is not possible, and that’s part of life too, I’ve learned, a topic for another essay.

Compassion helped me stop being so blind to life and taught me about empathy. If I told you I learned about empathy when I was 35, would you believe me? I had no recollection of learning about empathy in school or college. I was ashamed about this, but I have forgiven myself. I practice it for myself and others because it’s powerful to possess and apply. It makes life better for myself, others, and my surrounding environment.

Before we go further, I want to mention that compassion and empathy are closely related. Still, these are distinct concepts, not mutually exclusive. I see empathy as an emotional value, feeling or understanding another person’s emotions, and compassion as an actionable value that focuses on the desire to help, assist, or reduce suffering for another person. I use empathy to understand the emotions that are possibly being felt and why, to understand the vibe. I then use compassion to implement actions that will defuse or alleviate whatever the situation is. Applying empathy and compassion allows me to act kindly for myself and others.

Now that I’m not turning my eye blind to my wants and needs, and I can understand and communicate for myself and others what my expectations are and what my problems are, I can set boundaries or act within my value systems and be truthful with myself through my behavior and habits. Now that I’m also able to understand the needs, wants, and expectations of others, I’m able to use compassion to find common ground and resolve conflicts in a way that makes sense for all parties involved. I’m able to be perceived and act kindly!

My healing journey—which involves psychological therapy, reading, journaling, physical movement, meditation, and many other tools—has helped me identify, learn, relearn, and unlearn many concepts, values, and ideas. But I believe one of the main takeaways is that we are all so interconnected whether we like it or not, whether we want to acknowledge it or not. The “good” and the “bad” too. I was so naive and protected inside my bubble, people-pleasing and avoiding external conflict as much as I could, living a fake life, and lying to myself and others. Now that I’m not blind to nature, human nature, my own, and others, I have to admit that yeah, being healthy is fantastic, but having my eyes open opens up oneself to so much in this World—a very cruel World—which we, through action, must keep healing and making safe and kind for everyone—if this is what our values align with, of course. There’s so much work to be done. I hope this idea helps you, those around you, and your surroundings to be a kinder or safer place—which, in my humble opinion, makes us much more substantial, productive, efficient, and inspired.

Also, now that our eyes are open, we can identify individuals with little to no interest in applying these concepts and values when dealing with us. Show some self-compassion and self-respect, and act accordingly.

Originally published on Medium.

On cooking… on everything… and foundations!

Antonio Rodriguez Martinez — Sun, 15 Sep 2024 13:06:14 GMT

I used to require recipes whenever I cooked anything. About 16 years later, now that I understand some of the cooking components (heating, cooling, ingredients, some techniques, instruments, knife work, the recipes themselves) at a basic but proficient level, I can cook without recipes and create my tasty recipes and fusions.

It’s funny how that works and applies to almost anything in life.

Foundational knowledge and experiences change everything else on top of that foundation.

Originally published on Medium.

Sharpen Your Tools

Antonio Rodriguez Martinez — Wed, 31 Jul 2024 13:49:32 GMT

Maintaining and honing your tools to maximize efficiency and practice excellence is critical- and elemental. Once one integrates this realization, everything changes.

Just as cooking becomes smoother and less dangerous with a honed kitchen knife and fishing becomes less tedious with the appropriate bait and rod, our lives improve as we improve our physical, emotional, and spiritual tools. Getting stronger trivializes our day-to-day chores. Practicing and developing patience softens the blows of the day-to-day and transforms the mundane into moments of rest; waiting goes from being ‘annoying’ to something enjoyable and a moment for even practicing stillness, grounding, or meditation, and overall, the challenges, which are undesirable obstacles for most people, become the way we grow and evolve, become the sharpening of oneself, the honing of one skill and practices.

Observe the things that inspire or grasp your attention throughout your day. The art, the music, the details, the kindness, the groomed person, the sharp wit, the gentle and precise motions of a gymnast, the beauty of a smooth layup—it’s the honing, the practice, and the hours invested that make these so stunning, appealing, beautiful, and awe-inspiring. The sharpening of the skills makes things appear effortless and smooth, and this beauty should inspire and motivate you to start your journey of self-improvement.

Here’s a list of topics to sharpen yourself, dwell on, and understand deeper:

continuous learning
mindfulness
meditation
time management
goal setting
physical fitness
emotional intelligence (EQ)
critical thinking
resilience (physical and emotional)
skill mastery
networking
mentorship
adaptability
effective (and nonviolent) communication
leadership
collaboration
curiosity
reading
travel
debate
ethics
improving your diet (whole foods)
sleep hygiene
stress management (self-care)
pursue hobbies
explore music, arts, and other creative pursuits
integrity (be honest with yourself, practice this honesty)
gratitude
compassion
patience
financial literacy
DIY skills (cooking, sewing, others)
technology proficiency
writing (the reason I do this type of work)

Understand this idea, sharpen your tools, and get that unlimited power!

Originally published on Medium.

Briefly on Empathy as a Double-Edged Sword

Antonio Rodriguez Martinez — Mon, 29 Jul 2024 17:12:19 GMT

Empathy is such a double-edged sword—the death of a friend’s parent or relative. Relationship struggles can cause harm to someone you care about. An acquaintance sickness. The insensibility of our World’s ruling classes by perpetuating genocide, famine, and suffering as methods for political violence, abuses of force from entities designed to protect us, and overall injustices in the World. The seemingly for-profit mass layoffs. The open exploitation of our fellow human beings.

The overwhelming sense of responsibility will cut the hand that grips too tight, and the spectrum of situations is vast and equally sharp along its edges.

How much do we have to compromise ourselves and desensitize to move on and keep grinding onwards? At what point do we break down? Can we responsibly afford to break down?

Originally published on Medium.

Brief Notes on Finding Serenity in Self-Control

Antonio Rodriguez Martinez — Mon, 29 Jul 2024 17:08:22 GMT

I feel like there’s something special, something serene, about abstaining from carnal urges that do not align with our values or desisting from sexual impulses on the shallow end, kind of like abstaining from junk food or dishonesty. And to be clear, for me, it’s not a matter of right or wrong, good or bad, or better or worse. It’s about willpower, understanding oneself, applying restraint and integrity, delaying gratification, or abstaining from shallow or inane situations.

I’m aware this could very well be my past trauma manifesting and some process I have to go through myself, or perhaps some self-flagellation or self-sabotage. Maybe I’m just rationalizing some fears or emotions I’m not fully grasping or understanding about myself, specifically after my failures as a husband and in past romantic relationships. I don’t know yet, but I will find out.

Does this resonate with some of you? What are your thoughts about this idea?

And to be extra precise, I do genuinely believe sexual intimacy or carnal desires are part of our natural life after all; it’s honest and essential for our lives and development as healthy human beings.

Originally published on Medium.

Conquering Imposter Syndrome with Evidence-Based Journaling

Antonio Rodriguez Martinez — Wed, 24 Jul 2024 16:21:33 GMT

Overcoming imposter syndrome is an ongoing process. I have adopted an evidence-based approach to my mental regulation work, a strategy that has proven highly effective. I invite you to explore this aspect of my journey. It’s a humble brag moment, but one that is worth sharing. Here is my latest entry/reflection:

My freelance clients get sticker shock whenever they see my hourly rate, but see. You are not hiring just a ‘software developer’; you are hiring an absolute work machine that has worked at the intersection of digital marketing and software development for 16+ years for projects and clients ranging from Fortune 500 companies to small mom-and-pop shops and a wildly variable number of successful and efficient projects. Additionally, I’m upfront about used hours and only charge you for the time I spend, not more or less. Integrity and my values allow me to do that with complete transparency. I’ve built a web gaming platform for Sony PlayStation; I’ve built sweepstakes for thousands of prominent clients for millions of users; I’ve built Lexus Car configurators for their US website; I’ve built a fully-featured website for Copa Airlines that includes flight booking; I’ve also built web portfolios for individuals, and software applications that take a hard-file of university courses, and do magic to provide students their course selection user interface on the web; I also built the first “chatbot” gaming platform ever over Facebook Messenger, this thing used NLP when people were only dreaming about this. I’ve messed up sometimes, but we have always recovered through honesty and hard work. In addition to the vast project experience, the cherry on top is that I’ve worked so hard on my soft skills, communication, empathy, active listening, management, product, software engineering, and leadership that I force multiply and influence everybody around me. I’m very powerful!

Sharing is caring! I hope you can apply this type of evidence-based journaling approach to your emotional regulation to manage imposter syndrome. Remember to focus on your wins and the tangible.

If you notice you make many mistakes in your work, that’s an excellent opportunity to understand a lagoon you might want to work on intentionally. “The obstacle is the way!”

Good luck!

Originally published on Medium.

Learning is a Construction of the Self

Antonio Rodriguez Martinez — Mon, 15 Jul 2024 16:45:00 GMT

In only four years, my daughter has taught me the language of wonder—
each day a new sentence in the grammar of innocence,
a reminder of life’s pure simplicity and curious joy.

In eleven years, my ex-partner became my mirror,
reflecting truths I couldn’t yet see clearly,
lessons hidden behind arguments and laughter, pain and growth.

And still, I continue learning—
from whispered truths and deafening silences,
from actions bold and brave,
and equally from quiet retreats and withheld gestures.

I listen carefully to what is said,
and even more intently to what remains unsaid,
for silence carries wisdom louder than any words.

I watch closely what is done,
and even more closely what remains undone,
for every hesitation or inaction reveals a hidden story,
an unspoken emotion or unmet need.

Learning, for me, is continuous reconstruction.
Each night, beneath quiet skies,
I willingly allow parts of myself to dissolve,
letting go of yesterday’s pride and errors,
ego gently unmade through reflection,
so I can wake with fresh humility
to welcome another sunrise and new lessons.

Yet, there are times I hear voices say
there is nothing to learn from me—
that who I am or what I offer is insufficient.
My first response is a quiet recoil,
a momentary pause of curious hurt.

Not because their words diminish me—
I have long accepted the journey of becoming,
ever imperfect and endlessly growing—
but because refusing humility,
the fertile ground of true growth,
is a tragic loss for us all.

This sadness I feel is not from personal injury.
It is the quiet sorrow born from knowing
how beautifully transformative humility is,
how powerfully it heals the soul,
how constructively it rebuilds relationships,
and how often it is rejected
in favor of pride or fear or stubborn blindness.

So I carry my sadness lightly,
acknowledging it without bearing its weight.
I transform it into resolve, into patience,
into an open invitation for others
to step closer to the gentle strength of humility.

What can I do with this sadness
but offer it as evidence
of what humility can mend,
of what gentle vulnerability can reveal?

And yet the question lingers, persistent:
What truly keeps us from learning?
What barriers within our hearts or minds
stop us from embracing humility,
the quiet architect
of our most authentic self?

My Favorite Symbols of Power

Antonio Rodriguez Martinez — Sat, 06 Jul 2024 11:20:00 GMT

I’ve been thinking about getting a tattoo—or many—but I can’t pull the trigger. There’s something about having a “clean” body that feels sacred. Still, the idea of customizing it, of turning my body into a living archive of meaning, also deeply appeals to me.

But I don’t want just ink. I want symbols of power etched into my skin—reminders of who I am and who I’m becoming. They would be sigils of therapy, experience, insight, reading, integrating. Weapons and artifacts that offer strength: like armor, or a shield, like a sword, or a dagger, or the Death Note, or Narsil. Each depending on the occasion. Extra tools. Extra push.

The ones I’d etch into skin

Narsil

The sword that was broken

Narsil, for me, represents the permanent struggle of human will against evil. The sword that was broken and reforged, becoming even stronger than before. It’s a reminder that our greatest strength often comes from our brokenness, from the pieces we’ve picked up and reassembled. When I feel shattered, I remember Narsil—how it was reforged into Andúril, the Flame of the West, and became even more powerful than its original form.

Master Sword

The blade of evil’s bane

The Master Sword is iconic—a weapon that chooses its wielder, that tests their worthiness. It’s not just about power, but about the heart and courage to wield it. The sword that seals the darkness, that stands as a beacon of hope. It represents the idea that true power comes with responsibility, that strength must be earned and maintained through constant vigilance and growth.

MA5C assault rifle

Halo’s UNSC standard. Master Chief + MA5C = magical fireworks.

The MA5C is my tool of precision—a weapon that represents human ingenuity and adaptability. In the face of overwhelming odds, it’s the standard-issue rifle that helped humanity stand against the Covenant. It’s a reminder that sometimes the most powerful tools are the ones we can rely on consistently, the ones we’ve mastered through practice and dedication.

Mjölnir

Hammer of thunder, as depicted in the God of War games

Mjölnir needs no explanation—it’s the hammer that commands the storm, the weapon of the god of thunder. But beyond its raw power, it represents the weight of responsibility. Only the worthy can lift it, and those who do must bear the burden of its power. It’s a reminder that true strength comes with great responsibility, and that power must be earned through character and action.

Dragon Slayer

Guts from Berserk, wielding Dragon Slayer

Dragon Slayer is a sword made to kill dragons—a weapon so massive it was never meant to be wielded by a human. Yet Guts carries it, despite its weight, despite the pain. It’s a symbol of perseverance, of carrying burdens that seem impossible, of transforming suffering into strength. The sword that was too big becomes the perfect weapon in the hands of someone who refuses to give up.

Vegvisir

The wayfinder rune

The Vegvisir is an Icelandic magical stave—a compass that guides its bearer through rough weather. It’s a symbol of navigation, of finding your way when the path is unclear. In a world of uncertainty, it represents the inner compass that guides us, the wisdom to find our way even when the storms of life rage around us.

Amor fati

“Amor fati” means love of fate—a Stoic concept that teaches us to embrace everything that happens to us. It’s not about passive acceptance, but about actively loving our fate, about finding meaning and growth in every experience. It’s a reminder that our power lies not in controlling what happens to us, but in how we respond to it.

Lightsaber

A blade tuned to the soul of its wielder

The lightsaber is a weapon of will — forged not just by Jedi in serene temples, but by Sith in rage-forged crucibles, and by rogue force wielders who walk between light and shadow. It’s a symbol of raw agency, amplified by discipline, vision, or vengeance. The color of your blade says something… but never everything.

Blue and green — guardians and seers. Clarity, peace, protection.
Red — forged through pain. Will sharpened into fury, unapologetic power.
Purple — the edge walker. One who knows both peace and war.
White — reclaimed sovereignty. Purified power.
Black (Darksaber) — leadership through might and legend.

Use the lightsaber symbol when you must cut through confusion. When you’re forging identity. When your truth needs to shine or strike. Whether you’re aligning with the Force, bending it, or breaking from it altogether — the saber is a reminder:

You are the crystal. You decide how it burns.

A catalog of power symbols

These symbols go beyond ink. They are usable power icons — to focus the mind, call in energy, or remember who the fuck you are.

Anime and manga

Brand of Sacrifice (Berserk) — Survival through pain. Use when you feel cursed, but keep going. You are the resistance.
Uchiha Crest (Naruto) — Fire, bloodline, tragic genius. Remember your depth. You see what others don’t. Channel emotion into clarity.
Alchemist Circle (Fullmetal Alchemist) — Transformation through cost. Draw when something needs to change. Use it in journaling or rituals. Equivalent exchange.
Hunter’s License (Hunter x Hunter) — Permission to explore the edge. Mastery grants access to deeper quests. You’ve earned this.
Goku’s Kanji (悟) (Dragon Ball Z) — Wisdom, growth, power. Wear it when training, learning, or ascending. You are always leveling up.
Millennium Puzzle (Yu-Gi-Oh!) — Duality, inner shadow. Use in integration work or inner child healing. Your shadow self is powerful, too.

Cartoons and comics

Sword of Omens (Thundercats) — Sight beyond sight. Meditate with it in mind. Ask: what aren’t you seeing clearly yet?
Power Sword (He-Man) — Raw agency. Chant your own version of “I have the power” before hard actions. It works.
Planeteer Rings (Captain Planet) — Elements plus heart. Choose one element to embody in a day. Combine with others in group rituals.
Green Lantern Ring (DC) — Willpower creates reality. Use for manifestation or discipline tasks. What you imagine becomes.
Triforce (Zelda) — Power, courage, wisdom. Use in decision-making. Which force do you need most right now?

Video games

Bonfire (Dark Souls) — Rest, rebirth in chaos. A grounding ritual. Light a candle to reset.
Spartan Helmet (Halo) — Silent service. Wear it when you carry burdens for others. Quiet strength.
Bloody Handprint (God of War) — Rage, guilt, choice. Recall this when confronting your past. You can carry your pain and still change.
Fire Keeper Eyes (Dark Souls III) — Inner darkness, compassion. Seeing what is, not what should be. Use during therapy, shadow work.
Vault-Tec Logo (Fallout) — Survival, irony. You are prepared. Humor is a weapon.

TV and film

Dharma Initiative Logo (Lost) — Experiment, fate, loop. Use when life feels recursive. What’s the deeper test here?
Infinity Stones (Marvel) — Domains of control. Journal each domain. Which are you weakest in? Train that.
One Ring (Lord of the Rings) — Corruption of power. Ask: what do I desire that might destroy me? Use for ego checks.
Light of Eärendil (Lord of the Rings) — Hope in darkness. Keep a “light” object nearby. For when it gets dark again.

Mythic additions

Witcher Medallion — Magic radar. A reminder to listen to your instincts. Tremors equal truth.
Dovahkiin Sigil (Skyrim) — Voice is weapon. Speak truth even if your voice shakes. Shout if you must.
Hidden Blade (Assassin’s Creed) — Freedom, legacy. Used in stealth mode. Tactical patience, not weakness.

Glossary

Sigil — A symbol charged with intention, often drawn or etched as part of rituals.
Transmutation — Alchemical transformation — literal or metaphorical — of self or experience.
Shadow work — Psychological integration of rejected parts of the self.
Archetype — A symbolic pattern or role shared across stories and cultures.
Power anchor — A visual or physical reminder of a specific strength or state.

Referenced materials

Berserk — anime / manga
Naruto — anime
Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood — anime
Hunter x Hunter — anime
Dragon Ball Z — anime
Yu-Gi-Oh! — anime
Thundercats — cartoon
He-Man — cartoon
Captain Planet — cartoon
Green Lantern — comics / film
The Legend of Zelda — video game
Dark Souls — video game
Halo — video game
God of War — video game
Fallout — video game
Lost — TV series
Avengers: Infinity War — film
The Lord of the Rings — film
The Witcher — game / series
Skyrim — video game
Assassin’s Creed — video game / film

These are more than fandom. They’re tools. Build your own codex of symbols. Make a wall, a tattoo sleeve, or an altar. Ritualize how and when you call on each power.

This is your inventory. Your magic. Your reminder:

Power isn’t just what you have — it’s what you remember.

Embracing the Spiritual Abyss: An Atheist's Search for Meaning

Antonio Rodriguez Martinez — Mon, 03 Jun 2024 17:27:29 GMT

I’ve chosen to be an atheist most of my life, and the older I get, the more I feel a subliminal appetite to believe in a god or some higher power. This deep urge feels almost animalistic or savage—I don’t think my intellect is asking for this; my intuition, spirit, or mind wants to let go and leave everything in something else’s hands. Bluntly said, it feels like my ego, a savage animal—does not want to take the brunt responsibility of living my own life—somebody else- “Oh, dear god,” please take the wheel. Today, I look into the Universe and its energy, shared by all things, but something deep within me keeps thinking about God or gods. My intellect intends to build upon a foundation of humanism, but my soul wants to let go of that work. It’s the same part of me that wants to feel lonely and impotent about the cruelty of this World, seeking gods and the partial delegation of my personal responsibility. “God chose it this way”. My spirit is conflicted—It’s a fancy of powerlessness and hopefulness, like an impulse working to rationalize and defend itself against the bleakness of the World news and the macro-socio-political situations that one learns about studying history or watching the news. It’s a savage urge—lazy, violent, and rudimentary; religion is kind of for savages, isn’t it?

Being an atheist is kinda lonely and challenging. I can’t rely on or look upon God or gods for solace. I have to face death alone and live my life in a fulfilling way because I won’t get a do-over. Whenever I choose the more challenging road or the “good” route, it’s out of a reflection of what I value as a human being. I’ve recently learned about secular humanism and align with its beliefs. I’ll attach to humanism to not feel so desolate. We have the power, after all, to change our environment and how we live; humanity seeks control while nature has it—it’s such an interesting dynamic. Humanism makes things even more interesting, as applying empiricism and rationality to how we should live our lives and what we know about our Universe and our place in it is even more work. The burden lies within us as a species rather than live life with religious givens that we must accept blindly.

I’ve made peace with the fact that the Universe is this idea that I, as a human being, with my limitations and 5 senses, cannot grasp its purpose, origin, and future. My observations of intellect help me understand that the Universe, as a whole, comprises energy and vibrations (actions) that affect all matter, and we share this common space and time—relatively and objectively. That’s a beautiful notion and should be an unifying factor, objective and undebatable. Please do notice that I associated vibrations with actions because, at the end of the day, how can I apply these ideas to the human condition? We are actions, and our actions affect the Universe more, including the people and things closest to us. Our actions will affect our surroundings effectively; whether the impact of our actions is perceivable or not, we are all part of this Universe and share everything.

Coming back to the idea of a God or gods, ultimately, I refuse to think there’s an omni-powerful, omnipresent, omniscient, intelligent being out there just watching us all go through all of these shenanigans, unbothered. If I were to assume the existence of such a being, until which point and to what extent could I, as an individual participating in such an experiment (organic life on this planet), feel comfortable with the so-called “free will” such a powerful being bestowed upon us. How can I coincide the ethicality of giving living beings such “free will” with the capacity for such malicious harm? Does this make sense to you? To me, it’s fucking savage- it’s wild- how can we adore or follow such an entity? Nature is cruel and hardcore, it’s evident and apparent, so it means God, gods, and religion is fucking savage?

Share your thoughts; my mind is open and receptive.

Do note that by “spirit”, I mean the non-physical part of myself. My emotions and my characters, or the “soul.”

Originally published on Medium.

The inner work truly never ends.

Antonio Rodriguez Martinez — Sat, 01 Jun 2024 13:36:42 GMT

At the end of March, I thought, “Wow, you are such a loser; you have no pictures to share,” that idea stunned me. Not only do I again understand that my thoughts are a complete asshole sometimes, but it was a clear signal of how our self-esteem presents itself through our ways of habitual thinking and how much more work is left to do—or that perhaps the work never ends, really. ~4 years of inner work and therapy, shifting my mindset into healthier paradigms, was not enough for my Self to formulate this simple but potentially destructive thought. This realization is humbling. The ego must be confronted, and the soul must be fed daily.

As I provided evidence to myself that I’m not a loser, I ended up doing my “March 2024 dump” in my head with all my lovely memories, moments, learnings, tasty meals, funny FaceTime calls, disappointments, challenges, work, conversations, pain, everything. In an almost meditative state, definitely reflective, this digest of my month blew my mind away. From a self-depreciative thought, I had just found another way to practice my self-awareness and understand myself better. The thoughtful digestion and understanding of a moment, a day, a week, a month is now within my grasp because living consciously lets you do that. More power. On autopilot, I, unhealthy, would’ve believed that destructive thought and possibly stressed and became anxious or disappointed. I invite you to stop doing that. Dig deep; this life is a battle of contention between you and you, not you versus me, and definitely not you versus them. Take full responsibility for yourself and digest your thoughts for more power.

One night, one of those memories, I was at a metal show by myself as usual, and although I was enjoying myself, the music, and the casual acquaintances I had made that night, I looked around and felt super sleepy. “Why am I here?” I thought to myself. “Because I need to socialize.” I was not satisfied with this answer, which I had kept telling myself for the past months, so I spent the next 20 minutes standing like a zombie in the periphery of a death metal moshpit, pondering deeply about why I was there. I asked all the whys. I asked myself what my values were for me to have decided to be there that night doing that activity specifically. After much contemplation and questioning, I realized I sought a fun experience, not socializing. This realization is supported by the fact that lately, I had stopped putting energy, time, and effort into chasing new friendships and relationships, as I noticed the juice was not worth the squeeze, and simply focusing on my children, my Self, or my existing relationships had a much stronger effect on the quality of my life. This might sound like a straightforward realization to you, but it was not for me. I went home immediately and have since changed my outings and the reasoning behind them. This new insight made me more intentional about my goal with an outing. My friend Pablo visited Orlando to play with his math rock band. I was there to have fun and deepen my bond with Math Rock and Pablo, who has been kind to me and reciprocal in energy and attention throughout my adult life. A good friend is worth the effort. A new friend would be worth the effort, given the circumstances, if I did not have other priorities and values conflicting with such a use of my time and energy.

A friend recently wrote and shared, “There’s no such thing as’ a long time ago.’ There’s only memories that mean something and memories that don’t.” And boy, does this fit the bill. Ultimately, I’ve noticed that the experiences that align with my values become memories, and the experiences that do not align with my values become learnings.

Food for thought!

Originally published on Medium.

Note to Self: To Be or What Not to Be

Antonio Rodriguez Martinez — Fri, 31 May 2024 15:55:06 GMT

To be negative, I must assume negativity; to be resentful, I must bear affliction; to be hateful, I must bring hate into my life. To be petty, I must force myself to behave inconsequentially.

I am not a victim; I am a victor of my circumstances. I will check myself and only bring and dish out what I want to personify! I won’t reduce myself to any nonsense.

I can not control how you feel and react; I am not responsible for you. I can only control my actions and responses and am accountable for myself. I want to be an agent of joy and kindness, true to my values, free and powerful.

Truth be told, I am exhausted with negativity and resentment, and hate is not my answer; Love and kindness are the answer. I’m letting the noise, manifested through these destructive and resentful thoughts and feelings, fade away, leaving the stress and anxiety behind them.

This clarity is the power I have.

Originally published on Medium.

Things I have learned this week regarding a 4-year old’s long curly hair

Antonio Rodriguez Martinez — Wed, 29 May 2024 18:01:30 GMT

One does not brush curly hair because it becomes Mufasa-like. I tried different brush styles before I noticed this.
Detangling curly hair is easiest during the conditioning stage in the shower.
Bath toys help keep the toddler in place (LOL).
After the shampoo and conditioning stage, I can also use a “detangler” to detangle the hair. This saves conditioner, as conditioner is much more expensive.
If I let the hair dry naturally, the waves look beautiful AF. I can also blow-dry, but the texture becomes different. I have to pre-plan this ahead of time so that toddler’s hair has enough time to dry by itself.
I do not like using a ‘leave-on conditioner’ because the hair looks greasy and dirty. I guess this is my personal opinion.
The TV is my best friend for hairstyling, as it keeps the toddler at bay.
Under no circumstances should I pull the hair hard and hurt her, baby girl becomes unmanageable, and I will lose the opportunity to complete the hairstyle.
I must wash her hair after every visit to the pool because if not, it will become dry, messy, and knotted AF.
I suspect I should not wash, shampoo, and condition her hair daily. Not only it’s a ton of work, but it also seems to dry her hair and make her scalp itchy. I’m doing this wash process whenever the hair looks dirty and greasy, which generally takes 2–3 days or an intense park day under the sun.
If I use hair clips or artifacts to keep the hair at bay, I need to make sure these aren’t touching ears or eyes, as the toddler might get annoyed and rip that shit up.
Learning how to make hairstyles is more challenging than I thought. Hubris won’t help you. Take a deep breath and separate ~1 hour for new hairstyles because this shit is hard.
YouTube is my friend for learning tips and tricks about hairstyling.

Sharing is caring. I hope this helps out other dads!

Originally published on Medium.

On Feeling Overpowered

Antonio Rodriguez Martinez — Wed, 29 May 2024 14:41:25 GMT

These days, I’m feeling OP (overpowered)! As I keep practicing the items below, my habits become even more consistent, and it’s easier to follow through with each. It feels like my brain is re-wiring, and it makes sense because my body and mind are changing, and it’s so evident. These are what work for me to feel healthy and genuinely overpowered.

I feel overpowered:

After another completed workout, with entire focus, each set going until failure and without injuries.
After another day without reaction, I only respond by controlling myself, not external influences or stimuli.
I invest quality and conscious time with my children, with complete control and mental health. Every second I spend with them is growth.
After every whole food meal that I prepare, cook, and enjoy, I make these meals with so much love and attention. My body thanks me through speed, strength, and health.
Whenever I finish a book and feel the integration happening, the thoughts, the clarity, and a thousand more questions pop up. This curiosity is growth; I have learned more, and therefore, I have even more questions.
Whenever I can identify that I’m procrastinating, I stop in my tracks and face the immobilization. Effective action is so empowering.
After utilizing effective communication, I express myself with clarity and kindness.
After I can go to bed early and sleep no less than 8 hours, up to 10 hours. What a luxury!

Whenever I invest space, compassion, time, and stillness, sometimes, the best investment for oneself is reading, writing, or doing nothing. Money is not the only thing you can invest in yourself! Listen to a music album. Or play video games. Or play the guitar. Or, again, to do nothing. Invest your time, attention, and energy into improving your life. After grooming up, taking care of my nails, hair, eyes, and hands, brushing and flossing, and maybe dressing up, even if I only have to go to the groceries.

After sharing with others some of my priviledge, without self-sacrificing. After being compassionate and kind with myself or others, perhaps by setting up a boundary or communicating my needs and wants clearly and without holding back.

After avoiding conflict by using kindness or resisting the urge to react violently and accept a tricky situation, restraint is incredible.

As life is so challenging, there s to feel overpowered. The most significant detail I’ve noticed is that quality input equals quality output in everything around and about our lives. Hard work, consistency, and drive pay off significantly. Delaying gratification works. All transformation and evolution have come from places of discomfort. Growth is uncomfortable and requires practice.

As usual, writing these made me aware of all my privileges regarding accessibility, time, money, and resources. Being grateful for these privileges is critical for becoming and staying healthy and kind. Every human being should have all of this, but it does not happen, and I’m aware and can identify this as unjust, but I must accept this, and whenever I can share my privilege, I pledge to do so, and I do. Without self-sacrificing because I am important and I love myself. I love you, but I love myself more, and that’s ok.

Originally published on Medium.

Some Books for Self-Transcendence

Antonio Rodriguez Martinez — Fri, 24 May 2024 00:00:00 GMT

These books have given me the tools and techniques to be a conscious and powerful human being. A stoic whose life is entirely up to myself (or so I think, right?!). My days have intention and focus. My values are reflected in every single decision that I take throughout my day. Walking the talk, I call it.

My favorites have the 🔥 emoji - I feel these books helped me the most.

🔥 Daily Reads, Rain or Shine

These are for nourishing the tri-force: my heart, my soul, and my mind.

Journey to the Heart: Daily Meditations on the Path to Freeing Your Soul by Melody Beattie
The Daily Stoic: 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living by Ryan Holiday
A Calendar of Wisdom: Daily Thoughts to Nourish the Soul by Leo Tolstoy

About/For Life

These are the foundational knowledge that makes my life easy.

🔥 Of Human Freedom by Epictetus
🔥 The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change by Stephen R. Covey
🔥 The Obstacle Is the Way: The Timeless Art of Turning Trials into Triumph by Ryan Holiday
Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones by James Clear
12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos by Jordan B. Peterson
The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene
The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka

About the Self, Myself

From the Atlas of the Heart, which taught me over 60 different feelings and human emotions, to some books about anger and learning how to understand my sources of anger.

🔥 Atlas of the Heart: Mapping Meaningful Connection and the Language of Human Experience by Brené Brown
🔥 Your Erroneous Zones by Wayne W. Dyer
🔥 Meditations by Marcus Aurelius
Why Does He Do That? Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men by Lundy Bancroft
Anger: Taming the Beast by Reneau Z. Peurifoy
No More Mr. Nice Guy by Robert A. Glover

About the Human Brain/Behavioral

From how I communicate to understanding the human brain, parenting, and my children, and therefore understanding myself.

🔥 Nonviolent Communication by Marshall B. Rosenberg
🔥 101 Essays That Will Change The Way You Think by Brianna Wiest
Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman
Attached: The New Science of Adult Attachment and How It Can Help You Find - and Keep - Love by Amir Levine, Rachel Heller
The Whole-Brain Child: Revolutionary Strategies to Nurture Your Child’s Developing Mind by Daniel J. Siegel, Tina Payne Bryson
No-Drama Discipline: The Whole-Brain Way to Calm the Chaos and Nurture Your Child’s Developing Mind by Daniel J. Siegel, Tina Payne Bryson
The Grown-Up’s Guide to Teenage Humans: How to Decode Their Behavior, Develop Trust, and Raise a Respectable Adult by Josh Shipp
The Five Love Languages: How to Express Heartfelt Commitment to Your Mate by Gary Chapman

Sharing is caring! Good luck!

This post was originally published on Medium.

On Limits, Growth, and the Meaning of My Life

Antonio Rodriguez Martinez — Tue, 14 May 2024 00:00:00 GMT

I notice I can keep tearing and rebuilding muscle and mass. Mentally, I can keep reading, learning, letting go, and creating new ideas and paradigm shifts. Disciplined and through practice, I kill my ego to love more and be kinder and compassionate more fully. I practice feeling and connecting with my understandings and biases to feel more profound feelings, lately sadness, joy, intention, desire, grief, whatever I need to feel.

Sometimes I feel lost; then I notice that my intellect can be the biggest asshole because I can be content with what I have in front of me by changing my thoughts. I can be still, eat fruit, play with my children, do nothing, and feel peace and love. I can just let go of expectations; I can let go. My thoughts can ultimately enhance or destroy me. My habits can be made and unmade, and my daily life changes with them. Everything is genuinely up to me — up to us.

So, what are my limits? Where am I going? I have not figured it out fully yet, but I will find out. My quest for strength, meaning, consciousness, body, heart, soul, spirit, peace, and love is taking me deeply into myself and has changed me so much. I run the risk of sounding greedy, but I suspect that I want it all; I want everything. A year ago, my life was 100% different from what it is today, and I’m proud of myself and who I am today — by action and habits, not by words, ideas, or intellect. I’m pleased and deeply in love with my life and with exploring compassion, kindness, empathy, boundaries, and giving without expectations. I’m proud to be able to model this power for my children and anybody around me.

And lately, I’ve noticed that the meaning of life is not something you ask others; it’s something you ask yourself — it’s something to be asked to yourself, and the answer is as much mine as it is yours — food for thought.

This post was originally published on Medium.

Reflections From a Tough Weekend

Antonio Rodriguez Martinez — Tue, 14 May 2024 00:00:00 GMT

I wrote this on April 10, 2023, to regulate painful emotions.

My brain and senses bombarded me this weekend, and today our brain is processing all this noise. These are the ideas:

We are going through some loneliness, and it fucking hurts. Cry it out. I know that my life is my responsibility. We can only reap what we sow. Be better.
I’m going through a deep self-inflicted wound in the heart, and I’m trying not to bleed out emotionally. Feel and process it.
The strongest beings we know are ultra-kind. Be kind to yourself and others around you. Be strong.
Waking up from my emotional coma felt hard, but; today feels harder. Be stronger. Weekly therapy with humility and honesty is helping us the most.
The near future will take up a totality of your power and energy. Let’s get ready for this. Go to bed early. Keep up with the wholefoods.
All of this is to gain a present and future without emotional abuse. I need to do this. I need to stop the generational bleeding. I need to prevent any additional bruising and unhealthy conflict. I need to use my strength to get away from all of these toxic relationships.
My wounds are healing, and my will is stubborn, but I am alone walking this path. I’m atoning for my past inaction and letting others control my life. Fuck.

Even when I am telling this person explicitly and with simple words, explaining the what, why, and when of what I think is emotional abuse, you seem to choose to be blind and shut me down. It’s so hurtful, but I will get through this. Your mouth says you love me, but your actions tell me I don’t matter — you won’t even acknowledge how I feel. Your actions are deafening.

There’s nothing as hurtful as talking candidly and openly about how I feel and what matters to me with your emotional abuser. They will tell you it’s the other way around. They will tell you how you are projecting. They will tell you how nothing you are making makes sense. They will tell you your therapist doesn’t know jack shit and that all the help you have, all the effort, and all the work you have put in are worthless. These fucking takers will take and take and take and take until there’s nothing left of you. How can these emotional vampires lack such self-awareness? When will you stop taking?! Please stop; I need myself.

You got this. One day at a time.

This post was originally published on Medium.

Notes on Respect

Antonio Rodriguez Martinez — Tue, 07 May 2024 00:00:00 GMT

The respect people have treated me since becoming healthy is staggering to me. I feel that I went from being a ghost, somebody who just coasted through life behind the scenes, eyes glued to the ground, always smiling to appear content, docile, and pleasing, to be truthful to my wants and needs and recognized and respected by the people who interact around and with me, whether they like me or not. Respect, to me, is this mutual energy or aura that says, hey, I will treat you with consideration and kindness, even if I disagree with you, and be treated with reciprocity. That energy says, “I will give this my best, whatever it is,” in every interaction. Even in conflict, beware; people will be aware and act accordingly. People understand this and reciprocate in form. It’s beautiful and inspiring. Look for any dictionary definition of ‘respect’ and see how powerful this concept is!

I mentioned ‘becoming healthy; let me define what I mean by this. By healthy, I mean I’m confident and truthful to myself and my values. I value physical strength and agility, so I’ve dedicated at least 10 weekly hours to training. I value mental acuity and self-awareness, so I’ve dedicated years of therapy, studying, meditation, self-regulation practices, and many more to develop my emotional regulation and intelligence. I value kindness, so I treat people accordingly and treat myself with compassion so that I can treat others with heart. And please, do not make the mistake of thinking that kindness is softness or weakness. No. I can kindly ask you to fuck off if I need to. Still, I will show the proper and proportionate levels of cordiality and energy. And on top of that, the cherry on top, I could very much tell you to fuck off with this. Still, I can very much fuck with you on that, not on this, because I’m well aware of how multidimensional we all are. We are all in this together. Respect is something to be practiced and applied in our daily lives; you do it, or you don’t- being disrespectful is genuinely not an option. Golden rule and all.

I am so flawed, too, but my efforts are now seen and met with energy, enthusiasm, and possibly real emotions and ideas or candid feedback. My confidence is seen now. Or not, and that’s ok too. Self-respect and reciprocity change every interaction and enable our confidence to try repeatedly and keep learning and improving, making mistakes, and learning with dignity and awareness. Respect also means apologizing, accepting responsibility, and understanding our part in all of this.

Active listening is yet another thing to be mindful of, as well as how important it is to give attention to those we want attention from. Respect is action, just as love is. How can you say you respect someone without practicing active listening to them? Actively listening to someone is how you show this respect. I’m feeling that, and it’s glorious. Growing up, I felt and thought my parents did not award this to me, and experiencing it now as an adult is like a new horizon or confidence where I can share my ideas; some will be met with disdain, others with positivity, but the efforts from somebody else to go into my ideas and digest, and try to understand, and possibly converse about it, it’s just so lovely. Respect makes it all possible.

All in all, I hear so much noise about respect, but in this society where integrity is lacking, our media and government lie, bloat, obscure, and manipulate us; there’s nowhere to go and see actual respect being practiced. It’s up to us to gain that respect, apply it, reciprocate it, and model it. And being on the receiving end is so refreshing and awe-inspiring.

Food for thought.

This post was originally published on Medium.

Notes On Self-Control

Antonio Rodriguez Martinez — Mon, 06 May 2024 00:00:00 GMT

Self-control and curiosity are vessels for growth and peace. This world wants everything from us: our health, our attention, our wealth, and our time. It’s such a hassle, and it’s hard. But hope is not lost; on the contrary, that epiphany moment one realizes that all one has to do is plant our feet, relax our arms, and take a deep breath, then another one, and another one, and as we ground ourselves in ourselves, and our emotions regulate. The clarity seeps in, and we can understand what is wanted for us and what is required from us to take the next step, do nothing, or utter the next words within the boundaries of our values.

Slowing down gives us the ability to steer correctly. Self-control moments allow us to become consistent with this value-based decision-making, and curiosity lets us understand ourselves, the whys and hows.

I feel hungry; am I starving? I just had a box of these snacks. What is going on with me? Why I’m feeling hungry? Why? Why? But why? Oh, I’m actually bored. I’m so angry at Betty. Why? Why? Why? But why? I’m incensed, but not at Betty; I’m sore because I was not firm on setting my boundaries and applying them. I need these new basketball shoes, I’m headed to the mall. Wizards, do you really want more sneakers? Look in the closet; you have many shoes that ball hard. But they don’t have a grip. Why? Why? Could you play outside with these? Yeah, just not inside. Ah, ok, are there cheaper alternatives? Can you hit the outlets? Why? Why? So yes, you can get the more affordable options. Do I go out and get wasted with my friends? Why? Why? What is it that you want to achieve? Why? Why? Oh, I can go out with my friends, but I don’t have to get blacked out drunk. I can stay in now thinking about this with a calmer mind.

Impulsivity is interesting. We could harness it to become much more joyful and spontaneous, but if we don’t shoulder-check these impulses first, they will hinder our growth and become our antagonizers. The practice of self-control, the curiosity and understanding of oneself’s impulses and desires, and the knowledge of what the world wants from us let us become disciplined in this value-based decision-making, where we act according to what is actually essential for us.

Surprisingly (is it?), value-based decision-making makes me feel free, happy, joyful, insufferable, effective, and improved. The discipline it takes to be this way also makes me feel powerful. We are so powerful; we just have to practice and take our power with our bare hearts, minds, and consciousness.

This post was originally published on Medium.

Note to Self: On Being a Conscious Parent

Antonio Rodriguez Martinez — Sun, 05 May 2024 00:00:00 GMT

It finally clicked for me that being a mindful parent implies I have to model the behaviors I want my offspring to possess. Suppose I want my children to be excellent and happy. In that case, I must practice excellence and work to be a balanced and fulfilled individual. We set the tone! It’s not the other way around — children learn everything from scratch!

TLDR: Doing, not lecturing, will install habits and inclinations in our children. Maturity will, in time, activate these habits, behaviors, and tendencies, positive or negative. In other words, what we do, not what we lecture, dramatically echoes what we get from our children.

It will also be time, self-discipline, and maturity that start these model behaviors. It doesn’t matter how often we repeat a lecture. I won’t be the emotional manipulation and blackmail. Discipline is not nasty nor disrespectful. It’s probable that some of you, like me, associate discipline with punishment. And being a “good parent” with speeches and “tough love.” But that’s not tough love; your offspring fear or comply to avoid you just like we did at their age! Children are here learning everything from scratch, and it’s from us that they are taking their initial and most significant library of knowledge. The children will have these experiences in their library, but it will be up to them to load, understand and use them in their timing and way. Individuals will do their own thing! Right?! You want to do your own thing, no?!

So yeah, as parents, we can only control our behavior and habits and hope to influence by leading and making our children feel safe, cared for and nurtured, fed, protected, and understood. We do not have to comply with their every whim or agree with them because we are different people, individuals, and universes.

Some of you may tell me, “Pretty fucking obvious, no?” hah, I thought the same, but it’s not the same to know as to integrate and to look within yourself to see if you are walking the talk.

It’s hard as fuck to accept this because one has to become vulnerable and let go of the ego. It was for me, at least. That behavior I don’t like about my eldest, oh shit, that’s my behavior; I have to clean that up. Leggo my ego, dude. It is I who installed this unhealthy habit and behavior, I who has to accept this, and I, the parent, who has to break through and destroy this unhealthy habit by putting in work and doing (or not doing the harmful thing).

Will I put in the work? It’s up to you, dude (remember, I’m talking to myself); until you change, your children won’t have that positive programming, even if that’s all you TALK about. STOP TALKING. START DOING. BEING A CONSCIOUS PARENT IS ABOUT ACTING IN THE INTEREST OF YOUR CHILDREN.

Truth be told, I “knew” all of that stuff. I had read the books OK. I had heard it before a hundred times too. But it is only now that I can recognize within myself which are these healthy parent behaviors and which are unhealthy or questionable. “Now I have kids, and I can’t live my life the same way as before because not only have my responsibilities changed, but also I am influencing so much, whether I like it or not, this other human being that unwillingly was summoned into this world” And along with these ideas also comes the questions, “What are my core values, and What do I value?” But these are topics for other brain meltdowns.

So, in conclusion, why is it so natural for me to wake up early and cook for the family? Ah, because that’s what my mom did for me, making me feel loved. That’s what I have known most of my life as a child. Why is it so fun for me to work? Ah, because my dad was nuts about work, I got that work ethic from him — he enjoys trying to perfect whatever skill or craft he’s doing. So why am I (was) such a sourpuss? Ah, that’s probably my dad’s influence too.

Food for thought.

This post was originally published on Medium.

Some Notes on Overcoming Emotional Pain

Antonio Rodriguez Martinez — Wed, 01 May 2024 00:00:00 GMT

I’ve been through tons of emotional and physical pain this last weekend. Being away from my daughter physically hurts my chest, it seems. Somatization? Possibly. I had to accept — which was the source of my hurt — that this is my responsibility, this is the result of my actions and my inactions, and I’m accountable for what is my life today. So I radically accept it and make myself responsible for what happens right in this instant and next. Let’s get it. These are challenges we will surpass; I tell myself this every day. I have that power, and I’m making it happen — so far.

It hurt; I felt like a failure like I lost a 10-year battle and spent hours thinking and overthinking in the shower, hot water, cold water, crying, letting it all out, “like a baby.” It felt so good. It’s a pain that sheds weaker emotional skin and generates new character traits. I’m noticing these changes in my behavior. Sometimes these changes I’m applying daily result in a hug, a compliment, or some pretty cool and random experience.

The way I see it now, I regret living life the way I did, and in that sense, I’m grateful for these teachings, which led me to be who I am today. Regret is a good teacher, along with understanding the value of humility and learning from one’s mistakes, this combination makes you so powerful, or so I’ve learned recently. The more I learn about power and strength, the more I understand that kindness and restraint are the most demanding power to master. The ultimate strength is kindness.

How do I practice these values, you ask? I limit my scope of activities and set myself some guardrails and rules. Now I’m focusing only on a few things and values so that I don’t have too much on my plate:

working (income generation)
sleeping at least 8 hours a day (energy generation)
exercising (health)
homemade cooking (health)
therapy (health)
playing basketball (socialization & health)
parenting my son (love)
co-parenting my daughter (love)
reading (learning)
relaxing (regeneration)

The way I see it, I’ve been told time heals all wounds, so I will only focus on these things and stay healthy and focused on spending my time according to my values. Accountability is a power that we all have. The ability to own how we live our lives, make decisions, procrastinate, lie, cheat, whatever it is that you do, you are responsible and are responsible for what happens to you and from you. Understanding this and being aware of this responsibility is a gift — this power. I didn’t know about it until recently, and I regret it, so I’m making up for it — hopefully, I’m not being that extreme with myself. It’s a painful process but worth it. So I guess that the “no pain, no pain” quote is legit. Anyways… I imagine I will get used to it eventually, but I’m sure co-parenting will kick my ass.

This post was originally published on Medium.

The Definition and Practice of My Core Values Make Me Free

Antonio Rodriguez Martinez — Mon, 29 Apr 2024 13:22:16 GMT

Only after defining my core values was I able to understand my morality and how truthful I was with myself.

This truthfulness is what I call mental and emotional health.

The better I practice and exercise my core values, the healthier I feel mentally and emotionally because I am truthful about what I value and how I want to live. Practicing my values makes me feel free, bringing me into situations where I consistently feel joy because I’m doing as I please. I’m doing what I want, ultimately!

Therefore, practicing integrity brings me joy.

Originally published on Medium.

Transforming My Life Through the Application of What I Value

Antonio Rodriguez Martinez — Sun, 28 Apr 2024 00:00:00 GMT

Warning: The following essay is a lengthy humblebrag! Close your browser tab now if you are unable to experience freudenfreude. Close your browser tab now if you do not want to take responsibility for your life and are hurt when others can do so.

Four years ago, something clicked when my wife told me she was pregnant. I had struggled with my mental health for years but was too comfortable to do anything about it; however, that night *click*, I broke through myself and finally accepted with Humility that I had to start facing my inaction, and it was scary as fuck. I’m so thankful for my wife and daughter, who unknowingly gifted me with that moment of incredible inspiration and reflection — wizardry, magic. The Understanding that my life results from my actions and that my efforts will directly influence our child’s life. That night I also gathered the maturity to acknowledge that so far, through most of my last years, I had stood by like a lifeless NPC (non-player character), fumbling through a river of bland decisions and reactions, floating in what I felt was inertia and complacency.

A simple list and check of my daily habits reflected this, and I was on a mission to change it. I started working out and helping out more around the house. Still, my emotional reactions hindered my performance and my family’s satisfaction. “Something’s off,” I remember thinking one day, walking up and down a flight of stairs in our old apartment. Overall, the book Atomic Habits helped me to set up infrastructure in my mind, get organized, and start replacing unhealthy habits with healthy habits. I’ve always been task-oriented, so the serotonin gratification of completing a healthy habit was something I enjoyed. I have replaced side quests in video games with completing healthy habits (tasks) in real life. I’m a fucking nerd. I’ll be a dad soon. I have survived and conquered domestic violence. And now, I will become healthier by changing my daily habits. And during the process, I learned that I valued: Efficiency, Home, Understanding, Learning, Responsibility, Self-discipline, and Usefulness — important values but kinda imbalanced by themselves, as reflected in my interactions with family members and my emotional reactions.

At some point after my miraculous revelation and some weeks of subsequent work on habit changing, my stepson, who used to call me “dad” and now calls me “stepdad” because I’m a fucking idiot — a story for another day — looked at me and pointed out that I had no clue of what I was doing. I remember that day I reacted openly and humbly — not the norm as I would become defensive- and we had a remarkable conversation. It hurt as fuck but guess what? He was 100% correct on the things he pointed out. I was finally able to use empathy and understand him. He told me that I was already a parent, his parent and that I was flawed at it. Holy fucking shit. *click click click click* I have now unlocked the power of Humility and Understanding. I may want to be the most outstanding parent of all time, but I have been such an inconsistent parent. Ouch, it hurts. Accountability hurts AF (at first, anyways, then it’s easy AF). At that moment, shame and regret fell on me like lava spilling over my entire body — my nerves were on lockdown. It was so tough that I couldn’t stand and landed hard on my knees. The NPC is on its knees. Somehow crying helped me feel better so I could feel another wave of shame and pain as soon as possible — like a workout set. At the same time, my internal monologue kept understanding why “you are not the man you think you are Wizards.” Do note that his honest words are fundamental for me for this self-reflection process to start. At that moment, I learned I value him and his opinion of me so much and that being vulnerable with him is helpful. I’m safe — this hurts, but it’s necessary. Honest communication is essential for close and healthy relationships to grow. Who would’ve thought? During our conversation, our eldest told me, eye to eye, “You need to get therapy to deal with your trauma and stop dumping it on us.” *click click click click click click click* I’m being given one truth so actual, for free, and with such compassion. Life-changing stuff. Let’s do better — my mind shifted. I will no longer be an NPC. “I will get therapy. I will get better. Watch,” I told my family; I remember. And I did. That night in bed, something inside me had ripped like a torn muscle stabbing your nerves with so much pain and suffering — my heart was on fire, from lifeless NPC to suffering NPC. Some values mingled with my grief, and I was able to identify them quickly:

Authenticity (Who Am I?)
Responsibility (I Need to Do Better)
Forgiveness (I need to forgive myself for being flawed, it’s OK) - Learning (I will have to learn a ton of things)
Humility (Shut up and start learning — you gotta relearn how to be a man and parent from this point forward)
Truth (You don’t have it, and that’s it, you need to experience it every time)
Understanding (Empathy)
Vulnerability (Necessary for growth and closer personal relationships)

Through these cycles, I’ve learned that we can grow so much from suffering and pain. I’m learning because I’m coming out of these bouts with improved stability and with provable clarity and drive. My daily habits are changing. It’s like I’m using my wizard powers to transmute suffering and pain through self-reflection and crying — like an exercise for emotional growth. Crying from the heart, without reservations, feels like I’m healing, like when the muscle rips doing weights so that it can heal stronger. Who would’ve thought? Adaptability. Use that pain and make some magic out of it. Confidence. I can do this, but I need to get help. In my case, our son made it very easy for me. I knew what I had to do, and I did just that. I subscribed to weekly therapy sessions immediately. NPCs go around scripted and being inconsequential. I was done with that and got the help I needed — a coach in my corner. I’m about to become my own person, which will be glorious.

A “Do Better” used to hurt me and made me cry in anger letting my wild mind react and get the best of who I want to be — oh, the injustice. The world made me do it. After months of weekly therapy, I made “Do Better” my motto. I own it now. Why? Because therapy forces you to be honest with yourself, open up, and be vulnerable with this professional trying to dissect your behavior and thoughts so that he may guide you into living a healthier and more fulfilling life.

I want to mention something right away. I believe that if you go to a therapist and lack honesty, you will be wasting your money. Luckily, I want to be an honest person. Our eldest’s honesty aided me so much. Being honest is inexpensive, too; it’s liberating, it’s adventurous. It’s lazy. It lets me own integrity and accountability. Plus, I don’t have to think about the webs of lies and make-believe nonsense that we tell ourselves to keep going on when we are unhappy, complacent, procrastinating, or unethical. Through therapy, I noticed that I lied frequently. More frequently than I would’ve liked to admit. This changes once you own up to this if that’s what you want. See, that’s the important thing that I’ve noticed. All of these items only work for you if you value them. If you value honesty, you will push through. If not, your actions will show quickly. Am I getting through? Understanding that which you value will change your life.

Actions that reflect what I value make me feel fulfilled. With that fulfillment comes happiness and many other emotions. Activities or experiences that are contrary to my values make me feel questionable. And through learning how I think and the amalgam of human emotions, I can manage them efficiently in milliseconds — no lag. This is the power of therapy, and practicing what I learn in treatment gives me. I am no longer an NPC. I am now a maker and doer of ideas and things. Creator of healthy and positive environments for my family and myself —work in progress.

In other words, weekly therapy has me working on learning what I value. What I enjoy. What makes me happy. What makes me sad. What are the things I’m feeling and understanding why and how can I manage them. It’s like getting freaking superpowers. Holy shit. I went from Understanding and using a daily vocabulary of 2–5 human emotions to learning and understanding around 60 human emotions and experiences through my quest for mental health and balance. My speech, mind, feelings, responses, and thoughts are all scrambled each week in therapy to feel better, atoning for my past and present grievances and planting the day’s grain of sand of improvement and learning. It’s chaotic, and it’s beautiful, and it’s mine. This is my life, and now I have a coach in my corner. As I align with my values through hard work, the environment around me gets shaped to my liking. I have stopped trying to control others; I can only control my thoughts and actions. I can only control what I can control; everything else is outside or excluded from my bad valuables. This radical acceptance is fundamental to being free from the judgment of others and focusing on being oneself with openness, candidly, and self-express without regret. Clear communication is the key to healthy relationships at work, school, home, romantic stuff, team sports, and everywhere you want to thrive, man. Nobody can get at it alone!

Therapy is teaching me to nurture peace and harmony by applying empathy and cognitive reframing within myself first so that I can share all the positive everything with others around me.

Therapy is also complimenting my physical training. It’s definitely a Chicken and Egg situation. Now that I value strength and movement and my habits are showing this, I feel therapy is even more manageable, and as time passes by, it feels like my brain is feeding my emotions, and my feelings are feeding how I think (managed with techniques I’ve learned through the years of behavioral therapy and cognitive reframing) and how I feel is supporting my training and the training is nurturing my soul with metric tons of confidence, and the cycle goes on. From NPC to living creature. From a certified weakling and closeted bully to an involved human being, present and conscious, ripped to shreds, that trains and works hard for oneself. For myself. Living is about experiences and doing things. And if one loves oneself, one will do things for oneself. Hard things. Easy things. I value and love myself, so I wash my teeth, floss them, and train hard to keep a healthy body and mind. Stay away from lies to keep my conscience clear and straightforward. Express my needs clearly. Setup boundaries. Cut down on the noise. Therapy gives me the path; I have to take action. I value action.

Anyway, that is more or less my origin story. Now…

I want to be such an involved parent. I need so much energy to provide what I want to deliver. I want to be able to keep up with them until I draw my last breath. My power keeps growing, and so do my duties and feelings of fulfillment. Each week, my body comes closer to our end goal of looking like Garou from One Punch Man, and our temperament more and more like an earlier Vegeta — who is clearly in therapy but unhappy about having to share too much deep intimacy with other non-Saiyan adults.

Having a beef with myself for being so fucking acquiescent these last 15 years is also a great motivator and valuable tool. I felt like an NPC, and we are steadily and consistently (~4 years now) chipping away at our goals and taking control of our lives with all of this bottled-up frustration and anger and turning the suffering and pain into sweat, blood, and tears so that we can destroy and heal, stronger. So we are getting there, and learning, comprehending, openly discussing, and acting on what we value is the fuel driving this sweet transformation. Changing habit by habit, improving every day. Resting. Slowing down and being patient.

Not everything about our journey is peaches, honey, and cream. As I shift my energy, concentration, and time toward myself, I naturally neglect responsibilities less aligned with the type of man I wish to become. With this neglect comes some hurt and suffering for others around me. I take full Responsibility for this and communicate and express carefully to mitigate. I am aware, so I can be accountable and remediate. Thankfully, so far, no children have been harmed during the creation of our current condition; they are benefiting the most from this positive human being that is cultivating skills, tasty and healthy food, financial healthiness, and strength to provide them with whatever they need and require.

When I started weekly therapy a year ago, I chose the following 33 Values as my guiding principles: Accountability, Adaptability, Authenticity, Balance, Confidence, Cooperation, Efficiency, Financial Stability, Forgiveness, Fun, Gratitude, Growth, Harmony, Health, Home, Honesty, Humility, Humor, Independence, Integrity, Joy, Kindness, Learning, Love, Parenthood, Patience, Responsibility, Self-discipline, Self- expression, Truth, Understanding, Usefulness, Vulnerability. I have marked in bold what I believe my core values are.

Yo Wizards, why on Earth did you pick 33 Core Values? I don’t know; I seriously thought this was who I wanted to be.

After selecting these values and discussing them with my therapist and family, I then went into self-reflection mode and asked myself the following questions:

Are my daily habits reflecting this? Hell, no, they did not.
How much do I have to change to evolve on this list? A lot.
Are you willing and able to commit to whatever changes we decide so that we may evolve on this list? I need to; I need to improve for myself and our children.
Can you list the habits that must be added to align with your values? Yes. Listed.
Can you list the habits that need removal to better align with your values? Yes. Listed.
Can you list the habits that need improvement to align with your values? Yes. Listed.

Do notice that answering the above questions truthfully requires naked Accountability, Authenticity, Honesty, Humility, Integrity, Responsibility, Truth, and Vulnerability. But if done honestly (and continuously), the payment for this exercise would be that you know who you want to be and can list a plan of action for your days. It’s a way to create a continuous improvement plan. This is how I want to spend my days. These are the things that don’t make me feel positive about myself. These are the people I spend the most time with and the activities that consume much of my energy. So this is who I am and what I need to become to feel fulfilled with my life and align with my values.

Habits that we have removed since learning more about our Values:

We are no longer waking up and lingering on the phone
We have stopped drinking alcoholic beverages.
We have stopped eating processed food like Brand cereals, candy with nonsense ingredients, and others.
We have stopped doing “retail therapy.” and locked down on our discretionary spending.
We have stopped reacting. We now take our time to respond to external stimuli.

Habits that we have grown since learning more about our Values:

We now wake up at 5:30 AM. We spring out of bed without hesitation for personal hygiene and cook breakfast and lunch for the children to take to school (Parenthood, Accountability, Responsibility, Self- discipline)
We are now exercising ~15 hours a week. ~10 hours of strength and endurance training. ~2.5 hour of flexibility and mobility and ~2.5 hours of basketball or jogging
We cook and eat whole foods (protein, fruits, vegetables) multiple times daily.
We have started saving 20% of our income.
We are sleeping at least 8 hours each night.
We are now spending any time we have available for leisure with our children as a priority.
We now manage our emotions through therapeutic exercises such as writing, grounding, meditation, and mindfulness.
We are now taking cold plunges regularly to assist with physical recovery.
We are now setting up concrete and achievable boundaries and expressing them appropriately with kindness and firmness to their recipients.
We are now video gaming for less than 4 hours per week. Don’t miss it because we are now playing basketball in real life!
We are now accepting Responsibility like hotcakes for multiple situations. Any interaction with us means we are 50% responsible for half of the exchange — this acceptance is empowering! And with the blessing of Responsibility, we can now self-reflect diligently and hammer down anything that needs to be processed. The queue of issues and baggage becomes lighter with less load with every session. We are now kinder and more conscious about using compassion and empathy.
We now express ourselves freely throughout the day, especially at home or with close people.
We are now dancing to the beat of music whenever it comes up.
We are now practicing kindness to ourselves by not feeling shame for other people’s comments. Only I have permission to shame myself. We do laundry chores every other day to keep clothing, towers, and bed sheets organized and available.
We are now picking up the children’s room to model the behaviors we want, and it becomes imprinted on their developing brains. When they are ready to do these themselves, we are confident they will.
We are now reading one book at a time versus having 5–10 open book projects simultaneously.
We are now actively listening more and with an improved attention span.
We are attacking chores and responsibilities with haste, contrasting our previous procrastinative tendencies.
We can now identify what an anxious thought is.
We are aware of our conscious and unconscious biases now and act accordingly.

Am I being true to my core values? You bet! Does this make me an excellent person? I have no clue, but I see direct and indirect benefits for myself and my children. I will keep going and keep learning about life, its experience, and how to value it even more. And another truth of mine now is that I’m so happy. Feeling powerful makes me happy; I value strength, determination, and accomplishing challenging tasks. The exercise and emotional work might be me running away from further complications and issues yet to be discovered in therapy. Still, today I have the confidence and the drive to keep grinding and working on myself with kindness, compassion, and persistence.

Sometimes I might be going overboard or doing too much. Still, I will keep going as long as my children are safe and healthy, feel comfortable at home, and react favorably to my improvements and evolution. Abs shredded and arms of still so that I may cook with love, play hoops, and be young with our children. Selfishly, today I am still determining what my limit is. But I intend to find out. Plus Ultra.

Changing is possible. I am changing, and if you knew and saw my evolution closely, you would trust that the path is simple and that healing your inner child through therapy and compassion is possible. Loving oneself through actions. And seriously, whoever tells you you cannot change is shitting in your mouth without remorse. Fuck those people. You got this!

Power is achievable if you put your mind, body, and soul (and time) into it; I am living this.

And last but not least, I have to admit that I possess so much privilege in our society; I can afford therapy and time to think, read, write, and work on myself. Most of us can’t even afford the time or the economic means to do so. This is so fucked up and is why we are so broken down as a society and even more reason to work even harder in yourself and love yourself — accepting yourself as is. I could not accept myself as I was because I was imbalanced and unfulfilled. I admit it. I had to transform because I hated that NPC dude; now, I accept myself with open arms because my actions align with what I value. I wish our governments, systems, and powers that would be aligned to values that benefit us directly and indirectly. I wish I could do more, like Garou or Saitama. Dreams are nice.

Food for thought.

This article was originally published on Medium. I’m sharing it here as part of my journey of self-reflection and growth, hoping it might resonate with others on a similar path.

Why Creating a Life Statement Has Helped Me So Much

Antonio Rodriguez Martinez — Sat, 27 Apr 2024 08:50:00 GMT

Found this interesting note in my archives: When our daughter, now 1-year-old, was born, I endured many rough patches when self-reflection was not kind to me. I thought I was a family- centric and “family first” man for most of my adult life. However, through the newly added responsibilities of having a baby, I noticed that my professional work and individual leisure activities were where I was putting in the most effort and hours. I was not being a parent or a family- centric man. The gap between my thoughts and actions was evident and shook me to my core. Do I value my books and games more than my family? I didn’t think so. What is going on with me then?

Before our baby girl, I had time to waste; now, I had to choose. Whenever I made these decisions, were they according to my values or to my leisure? Did they align with the man I thought I was? Baby girl made this evident, and thus came my self-esteem issues.

But not all was lost. I’m a good man, I thought to myself. I have to put in the hours. But who am I? If this one thing is not as I thought it was, what other things are not as I think they are? Self-reflection (and therapy) for the win.

I couldn’t figure it out, and I spiraled and struggled. At work, I had a very demanding boss who verbally belittled everybody adjacent to the product we were creating. This behavior deepened my self-doubt, this “holy fuck; I don’t know if I’m even good at this,” and so forth and deeper down the rabbit hole. Until I couldn’t fall anymore, and I told myself, this needs to stop; let’s find out who we are and what life we really want to live. This was the prompt: align your expenditure of energy and time with your values.

This is where a “Mission Statement” document changed my life…

A simple text document, “Mission Statement,” changed my life. This document explains to a fictional audience who I am. This document outlines my core values, secondary values, my paradigms, and my ideals. Anybody who picks it up, and looks at my behavior, should see no gap between potential and actual entities. I should see no gap between what I write and want versus how I behave and respond. This document, of course, is not meant to be read by anybody. Still, one and oneself should take full responsibility for implementing whichever habits one needs to succeed in living a life true to oneself and oneself values. It’s tough, but this is the starting point. Defining the outline of who you are will help you wake the fuck up.

In creating and updating this document, I self-reflect on my actions and, whenever appropriate, identify values and paradigms I wanted but wasn’t implementing via action. And this creates further action. For example, if I want to be a family man, which tactics do I have to commit to, how many hours, and what activities? The same goes for a statement like “I am love for those around me. Especially my wife”. How are my actions supporting this statement?

Again, this document is not meant to be shared. Instead, it’s a document for self-reflection and accountability for yourself. For clarification. For goal setting. So that I can stop lying or manipulating myself and become active; action is, thoughts aren’t. It’s a call to action!

This article was originally published on Medium. I’m sharing it here as part of my journey of self-reflection and growth, hoping it might resonate with others on a similar path.

On Self-Discovery, Self-Awareness, Value-Based Living

Antonio Rodriguez Martinez — Mon, 25 Mar 2024 14:15:00 GMT

At the end of March, an intrusive thought hit me hard: “Wow, you’re such a loser; you have no pictures to share.” This moment wasn’t just startling—it was a sobering reminder of how quickly negative self-talk can undermine years of intentional inner work. Four years of therapy, countless hours of reflection, and a commitment to healthier mental paradigms hadn’t prevented this destructive thought from appearing. It humbled me profoundly, reminding me that the journey of self-awareness and integration never truly ends. Confronting the ego is an ongoing battle; nourishing the soul, a daily necessity.

Responding to this negativity, I consciously combated my inner critic. I mentally reviewed my “March 2024”—rich with cherished moments, nourishing meals, playful FaceTime calls, profound conversations, tough lessons, and valuable challenges. As I revisited these memories, a powerful shift occurred. A seemingly negative thought had sparked an illuminating exercise in mindfulness, guiding me deeper into self-awareness and intentionality. Living consciously means continually digesting and integrating experiences, reclaiming personal power from autopilot anxieties and self-doubt. If you’ve found yourself in similar mental traps, I urge you to pause, reflect deeply, and reclaim your inner narrative. Your greatest battle is always within—between the person you are and the person you’re becoming.

Another revelation struck me at a metal concert, standing solo amid the roaring crowd, music blaring, exhaustion creeping in. I asked myself, “Why am I here?” Initially, the superficial response was that I needed to socialize. Yet this answer felt empty, prompting deeper questioning. As I stood in contemplative silence near the mosh pit, I interrogated my true motivations, probing beneath surface-level reasoning to uncover my core values.

The revelation was simple yet powerful: I wasn’t seeking superficial connections—I craved joy, genuine experiences, and deepened bonds. Recently, I’ve intentionally scaled back efforts in pursuing fleeting friendships or superficial interactions. Instead, I’ve redirected my energy toward my children, my inner growth, and strengthening existing meaningful relationships. Realizing this has allowed me to reshape my decisions consciously and align my outings with my true values. For instance, when my friend Pablo visited Orlando to play with his math rock band, my intention was crystal clear: I was there for joy, friendship, and the authentic connection we’ve nurtured through the years.

A friend shared a poignant insight recently: “There’s no such thing as ‘a long time ago.’ There’s only memories that mean something and memories that don’t.” Reflecting on this wisdom, I recognize a clear distinction in my own experiences—those aligned with my core values crystallize into treasured memories, while misaligned experiences transform into invaluable lessons.

Remember: every experience has the potential to become meaningful if we approach life intentionally. Choose wisely.

Notes

Front Row to the End of the World

The end of the world

Forever

“Cyber-Samurai”

The next Leonarda

The damage comes in chunks

Bruce Wayne, no mask

Who tells them no

Panda and Wolf: Two Vaults to Map a Person

I had to start over

Honesty is part of the structure

Panda: write first, decide when it matters

Wolf: my professional reasoning, with a different contract

The part I have not tested

How far I want to take it

What the models said

What it costs

I want this in your hands

Redefining God

I. The living room

II. What I saw at school, and at home

III. Puerto Rico, 1512

IV. Puerto Rico, 1899

V. The same idea, in bigger rooms

VI. How God kept dying for me

VII. Defining love, and testing the book

VIII. What I’d put in God’s place

IX. Back to the living room

Sources

Briefly, on the Tao

Footnotes

Forging the 'Stronghand' Terminal — September 2026 Update

What this machine actually turned out to be

The setup that’s actually here

The cockpit moved up a layer

What I’d tell the guy who wrote the first post

Captured, Not Pathetic

I Didn't Start Cooking for Love

What Phrases Did Your Dad Install On You?

El Trickle Down Sí Llegó

$4.99 for green onions

The story they sold us

The money moved up

What actually came down

Cipayos

Normalized at every table

The only exit

Be the floor

Presenting Vastitas Omniparens

What this name is

How I found it

What the words mean

What we know and what we don't

Why being small is a gift

Why I call her she

How to use it

References

Latin and language

Lucretius, Vergil, and recovery

Totality and the physical world

Senses and the limits of knowing

Birth and fertility

If God Had Gentle Parented Us

It Isn't Too Much Pressure

Happiness Is Moments

"Crimson Desert" Game Review

Combat and Movement

Exploration Is the Reason

The Quests Are Repetitive, and I Have a Suggestion

On Pacing, A Self-Critique

The Variety of Moments Saves It

The Story Worked Better Than I Expected

What I Left on the Table

Customization and Role-Play

Systems on Systems

Audio

Technical Performance

The Ending

What I Want Next

Strategy A: Rewrite History (`git reset`)

Strategy B: Preserve History (`git revert`)