What I Spend

[Scott 2]

Shouldn't need the phone! I remember using NFC

I'll have to try. I'm not easily embarrassed, but it feels pretty dumb when the watch doesn't work. Like who's this dork, holding everyone back with their nerdery???

On the flip side, when it works, everything feels so seamless. There's definitely appeal to an LTE enabled watch anyways, for connected bike rides or runs, without a phone.

I'm still learning to trust availability of tap to pay, even with the phone. I've got my wallet along as backup at any new merchant.

Cash, lol...

I reserve cash for private party transactions, where I'll get a better price. Also cannabis. Otherwise, it's annoying to get, count, keep track of etc. I don't get 2% back on the transaction. The purchase isn't automatically logged for my budgeting. Some places are cashless. The credit card gives me consumer protections too.

While I'd originally hoped cash would offer consumer privacy, I think that ship has sailed. License plate readers in lots, tracking via cameras and mac addresses in stores. My actions are already the merchant's data.

A digital wallet improves on the credit card. Every merchant automatically gets a unique transaction token, instead of disclosing your card number. It's also faster than getting the credit card out and putting it away. Yeah Google gets my transaction, but I bet they were going to anyway.

Moving to a watch simplifies that further. Get nothing out, pay hands free. Removed from the wrist, the watch immediately relocks payment abilities.

I admittedly only have a couple in person transactions a week. So I'm not sure it's worth having the lock on my watch day to day. But I do like nerding out with a new toy.


The barriers I'm finding, suggest this is the early adopter end of digital tooling. For instance, I couldn't trivially transfer my audiobook m4b files. A great player isn't available either. The audible app is recent and minimally featured.

If I want Chat GPT integration, I'd have to download a wrapper app and potentially provide my own API key. With all the trade offs that implies. I imagine Google will replace the assistant with Gemini soon enough though.

It does look to me like a disruptive innovation space, where all other wearables will be superceded by Apple (WatchOS) and Google (WearOS, used by Samsung too). Maybe the Garmin hardware will hold an extreme endurance niche, but that's about it.

My used $130 watch has 32 gigs of storage and 2 gigs of RAM. That's a lot of potential. While currently a phone is needed to administer the watch, I could see that changing. This watch already does more than most dumb phones.

Imagine it as the network connected brains for a pair of AR glasses. That doesn't feel very far off.

[theanimal]

I think it's a stretch to say privacy option has sailed with regards to cash, especially for ERErs. MAC tracking is avoidable by not logging into Wi-FI or needing to carry a phone everywhere. License plate readers don't disclose what you're buying, only where you've been, and only apply to those travelling in cars. Amazon has proved that you can track people's purchases via cameras in their stores, but again that's presuming you go to one of those stores. For anyone who gets the bulk of their food via their own production, local markets, or alternative means, this isn't a factor. Cash back doesn't mean much when your annual spending is around 1 JAFI.

Those practices and others certainly make it a lot more difficult to be private, but are very different than deliberately sharing information and giving up privacy by using a credit card, rewards card, digital wallet or similar.

This book is an excellent overview of the topic and also the broader money system at large. viewtopic.php?t=12456

Perhaps I missed it, but what spurred this transition in mindset for you? I remember reading about your efforts to maintain privacy and decouple from these services. It now seems like you're going in the exact opposite direction. No judgment, just curious.

[Scott 2]

Perhaps I missed it, but what spurred this transition in mindset for you? I remember reading about your efforts to maintain privacy and decouple from these services. It now seems like you're going in the exact opposite direction. No judgment, just curious.

After trying, I don't think it's feasible to both engage in modern society and keep privacy. Even small businesses are forced to use large corporate services. They can unwittingly be the worst offenders. The low bid institutions treat data as currency, using it to supplement revenues. Entire industries are then forced that direction, leaving no consumer choice.

Given the state of corporate information security, we also have to assume any generated data will eventually be breached. We've got medical groups run by venture capitalists. Zero chance all necessary safe guards are in place. Never mind that they're also actively selling that information. Maybes it's anonymized somehow, but re-identification is just an extra layer of inference.

After seeing how well chat GPT, with safe guards, will dox semi public figures - the aggregation tools clearly already exist. The type of work Snowden publicized has surely matured in parallel, so comprehensive databases are available too.

Meta made news for crawling libgen in training their AI models. Book piracy, ooh. I bet that's far from where they stopped though. The race is who can aggregate the most data, and it's winner take all. Heck, I recently had Chat GPT quote me to answer my question, linking back to a post from here. How spooky is that?

Attempt to hide, and now the absence of data stands out. Maybe that's more suspicious. Even if someone's really careful, it's only a matter of time before technology outpaces them. This sounds like conspiracy thinking, but I'm fairly confident it's an educated assessment of where we're at.


Take device tracking as an example - simply having Bluetooth or Wi-Fi on is enough to follow a computer, even if it doesn't connect to the network. With features like find my phone, even powering down isn't enough. Certainty would require carry in a tested faraday bag.

Forgo the devices? Well now you can't scan the QR code to complete the mandatory vaccine consent form at Walgreens. The only pharmacy your insurer still allows. Maybe you can't opt out, because your employer requires proof of that vaccine. Life becomes very inconvenient.

And realistically, if the Walgreens security system isn't already doing facial tracking, it will. There's too much profit to be made - A B testing consumer foot traffic across the worldwide network of stores. The device doesn't matter long term anyways.


So, I decided the best option is leaning into digital augmentation. Understand the playing field and work the system as it develops, to the best of my abilities. Opting out isn't viable, but gaining first mover advantage and outcompeting my neighbor probably is.

Understanding also helps to inoculate. I can strategically decline some interactions, such as shopping Amazon for physical goods. Though they do have a monopoly on some digital products, like specific audiobooks.

And even that is likely temporary. I'd replaced Google as my phone's OS vendor, for instance. Only to learn corporate security policy for my contracting required a non rooted Android or Apple device. And a Microsoft account. Oh, AWS too! So it's lean in or forgo that income.


I picked up the recommendation for cloud money here a few years ago, even passed it on:

viewtopic.php?p=273190#p273190

I agree it's a good read.


I very much wanted privacy to be a thing. I've settled for security. Does protecting my data align with a corporation's profit interest? That's probably the best I can hope for.

[delay]

I'm still learning to trust availability of tap to pay, even with the phone. I've got my wallet along as backup at any new merchant.

If it's any help, I've never seen swiping a physical card work where a watch or phone or ring didn't. It's both NFC, and NFC is stone age technology at this point.

When I experiment with payment methods I pretend to be poor, so it looks like I'm trying various sources of money. That is actually common and people sympathize. Perhaps not entirely honest, but works smoothly, and leaves the cashier and other people in the queue feeling good.

[Scott 2]

When I experiment with payment methods I pretend to be poor

Tried watch tap to pay, with my phone off. It worked great. Thanks. I always look poor, haha.


Used the self checkout at Meijer. In light of my early posting - they flagged my order for review 4 times. Each instance included a teenager shamelessly reviewing the video and digging through bags to verify. Privacy is dead. What a horrible job.

[Scott 2]

This morning I used my watch to check sleep tracking. Then I paid for an Rx pickup. Followed by a gym session, where I used it to monitor heart rate, guide and log all lifting, play an audio book, switch to music, and text my wife back. I forgot to feed the cat, lol.

My phone was touched to scan in at the gym, and that's about it. Pretty solid return on the time investment. The watch technology would support access, but the gym does not.

The only things left to solve are making my calendar notifications pass through, and maybe getting Samsung Health to pull workout time and calories from Health Connect. I'm confident Hevy is logging it there.


Safe to say this is replacing my Garmin. Since Wear OS is android at the core, one less OS on my life. Two sacrifices:

1. The cadence meter on my bike won't sync, since it uses ANT+. I've done enough 90rpm sessions on the exercise bike that I don't lose much here. I know what it feels like to spin vs. grind.

2. Battery life. All those cool features come at the expense of daily charging. That's a non issue in my lifestyle, but I could see it as a real problem for someone mobile. Especially if extended duration GPS tracking was important.

For me, it's currently not. If I got back into long bike rides, I'd probably get a decent bike computer instead.


I'm happy with the success. Quite a deal for $130.

[Scott 2]

Further progress on the watch. I solved notification pass through and Samsung Health sync with Hevy, via Health Connect. So the activity stats are finally accurate. Figuring out the permissions and sync intervals was annoying, but I eventually got it. Dunno how much I care about the activity stats, but it looked like they feed into sleep scoring.

So lately my focus has shifted to two areas. Sleep and lifting. I'll break down only sleep now, lifting later.


1. Sleep quality. The watch is the best sleep tracker I've had access to. I'm paying attention to:

1.1 Sleep consistency (rest / wake times)
1.2 Sleep duration - 8 hours allocated, tends to end up closer to 7.
1.3 Number of sleep cycles - 4 seems to feel best, I'm most commonly 3, sometimes 2.
1.4 Deep sleep duration - Using 1 hour as a target thredhold. Infrequently met. When it's sub 30-minutes, I feel tired
1.5 REM sleep duration - Using 2 hours as a target threshold. Infrequently met. Sub 1 hour, I feel tired.

The sleep stage durations might be the most meaningful metrics. Everything has to be good, for them to be good.


2. Sleep behaviors. What I'm working:

2.1 Stopping food and liquids earlier. Food's easy. I like my evening tea or seltzer though. 3h seems like a minimum, 4 might be better. This is to reduce waking for the bathroom.

2.2 Mindfulness immediately before bed. 5 minutes each of breathwork and meditation. The watch has a breathing app - current counts are 5 in, 7 hold, 8 out. I'd like a setting for hold after exhale too, but that's not present. Then I use the timer for a 5 minute meditation on nothing. Mindfulness was suggested by the Samsung sleep coaching. It's a good transition away from my screens, aiding in sleep consistency. Qualitatively - maybe I fall asleep faster. I haven't seen much indication it changes sleep stages.

2.3 Less screens in the evening. I struggle with this. I know it's better to disconnect, but I don't like to. I've at least reduced exciting video games close to bed.

2.4 I'm also running the Samsung sleep coaching. It's encouraged me to get out of bed ASAP in the morning, which is positive. The other advice has been meh - eat breakfast, avoid naps, avoid caffeine after 5pm, avoid eating before bed. I don't struggle with that stuff.

2.5 Untested - cooler sleep temperature. I think there's promise in a colder bed, but I haven't invested in a bed cooler. House temperature isn't going lower. My wife's already doing everything she can to stay warm.


3. Sleep supports. This is a queue of chemical interventions:

3.1 Hydroxyzine - 10mg, before bed. Prescription antihistamine, taken on nights I'll struggle to fall asleep. Prescribed by my psychiatrist, in consideration of anxiety. One try so far. It knocked me out. Deep and REM sleep broke their thresholds. However - while I was functional the next day, I felt heavy. Everything I did was up to standard, but the feeling was a trade off. I also ended up napping that day. Interestingly, the following night's sleep also behaved as though I was still drugged. Half life is ~24h, so not entirely unexpected. 10mg pills are tiny but _maybe_ I could split them.

This does feel like a keeper, for the 2-3 times a month anxiety or late sensory overload will disrupt my sleep consistency. Those events tend to cascade through several days, so preventing the cycle feels worthwhile. I'm not terribly upset about a second night with extra REM and deep sleep.

3.2 Magnesium Glycinate - Untested, will be near term. Taken 30 minutes before bed, might start around 250mg. Can be used chronically. May improve deep sleep duration.

3.3 Melatonin - Untested. 0.5mg to 1mg, several hours before bed. Can aid sleep consistency, maybe duration. Unclear that it would help sleep stage thresholds. Might not be a good idea to use nightly.


The medium term plan is a refined set of patterns, supported by shifts against the tracker baseline. Dunno if I'll keep up nightly wear past that. There's something to be said for ongoing metrics, but the price of cognitive load deserves consideration.

[Scott 2]

The Linux on a Chromebook experiment is fully closed. I wiped the laptop and gave it away. My phone docked to a monitor won. I choose it over my Linux desktop around half the time.


Money is doing its thing. I'm tracking to offset discretionary spending with credit card / bank account churning. Well ahead, even. Now that I'm not chasing Jevons paradox, my wants are few. Monthly gym membership and phone service. Maybe I'd get a Switch 2, but no luck so far. It's not like I'm short on games anyway. The Switch is still fun.

Food spending is trending down. Barring extreme inflation, I think the year is going to be well under. Too good to go scratches the variety itch I was meeting with Cook Unity meals. I planned to eat out more, but it's too much hassle.

Investments are relatively stable. The bonds and international positions are doing their thing. There's argument around strength of the US dollar and my metric being denominated in such. But I'm holding steady and seeing what happens.


Sleep experiments are ongoing. Notable:

1. Got sick, everything fell apart. The tracker quantified nights with 4-6 hours of actual sleep, despite 8-9 hours trying to sleep. No deep sleep, minimal REM sleep, lots of waking time, etc. Not much I could do, but I used the feedback to take things easy during my day. In the past, I'd power through.

2. Hydroxyzine the night before an anxious day worked great. Full night's sleep, score in the mid 80's. Half life is pretty slow though, so the following day was a bit sedated. I ended up in bed extremely early and got another full night's sleep, with a mid-80's score. That included 2+ hours of deep sleep, which I've never seen.

3. My follow through on turning off the screens and practicing mindfulness before bed is terrible. It's boring. So boring. I dunno if I can make the behavior sticky.

4. I started the magnesium glycinate, just before getting sick. It's either positive or neutral. Not a strong effect. I dropped it while sick, in the interest of minimizing variables. I'll re-introduce it soon. That's delayed any experiments with Melatonin.

5. I'm exploring using one a day a week for deliberate rest. Like take a cannabis edible and let the world fall away style. First try last week, lead to a lot of sleep. Couple naps during the day, deep night's sleep that evening. I was carrying a deficit from being sick, but am curious. Making the time to rest an entire day is hugely annoying. Which, I suppose is the point of deliberate prioritization.

[jacob]

... practicing mindfulness before bed is terrible. It's boring. So boring. I dunno if I can make the behavior sticky.

Suggest practicing while walking, albeit in a route that's not overly distracting in terms of pedestrians, cars, and things to stumble over. This also makes it possible to recenter the focus on e.g. steps (perhaps even a particular sensation of the step) instead of just breathing. As a side-effect, you'll get exercise and long distance locomotion does have some meditative aspects. My favorite walks have long straight asphalt paths with few little traffic.

[Scott 2]

Suggest practicing while walking, albeit in a route that's not overly distracting...

You're pointing straight at the flaw in my motivations. Walking meditation assumes the goal to be mindfulness, rather than maxing a sleep score. I don't know that I'm so enlightened. I have a ceiling to my capacity, and I've visited that place many times. Without using it as an escape from anxiety, the drive to return is much weaker. The sleep score is motivated by gamification of biology, as much as an interest in health.

Though - the weed gummy kicked in while I was walking Waterfall Glen. That did bring me to the present. A rich depth opened in the forest. Time slowed down. The past and future faded away. It was more psychoactive than I expected. Maybe one adds to your mindfulness experience?

[delay]

Thanks for sharing your journey! It reads like your mind is trying to force your body into a desirable sleep pattern using medicine and forced behaviors. This sounds like you're trying to be the best employee.

Given that you're FI, I wonder what's the point? Why listen to what your sleep tracker says instead of how you feel? Why not let your body sleep when and how it wants to?

[ertyu]

Alternative suggestions:

For sleeping: make shit up in your head. I have a "mental novel" I entertain myself with before sleep, while in line, etc. As opposed to a real actual novel one is writing, this one doesn't have to concern itself with plot holes - and if you forget some tangent you went on yesterday, nbd. One could argue this slides into escapism and maladaptive daydreaming, which I won't argue. It does put me to sleep, though. (It does provide both engagement and mindless entertainment, on the one hand, but without the blue light, and on the other, iddy fantasizing might not be particularly useful but it beats worry/rumination/racing thoughts and other such that some people have going on. Good for harm reduction even if it's not the most useful mental activity. Well - if one wanted to make it useful, one could go Jungian on it, I suppose).

For OMG IT'S FUCKING BORING - the traditional advice here is, turn it on the boredom. What's the boredom like? Where is it? How about the craving for sth engaging - what is "sth engaging" like in terms of your inner state? What is the aversion to BOREDOM like? Etc.

[jacob]

The sleep score is motivated by gamification of biology, as much as an interest in health.

This begets the question of whether you play to win or play to get better. Not necessarily the same thing. For example, I once had a fitbit that also measures some kind of sleep score. That fitbit was based on a pulse counter and an accelerometer like then one in the Wii nunchuks. It became clear that the algorithm that determined my sleep score had something to do with whether the accelerometer triggered a threshold when I turned over in bed. Once that became clear, I figured out how to turn over less as well as slower to avoid triggering the instrument. Did my sleep score improve? Yes!! Did I sleep better? No. Did I win the game?

The fascination du jour seems to be about grip strength. People with higher grip strength live longer. I'll bet 10:1 that there are now people frantically training their grip because they ass-backwards believe it will make them live longer. Just like there are people practicing balancing acts because they believe it makes them biologically younger. However, ... something-something about Goodhart's Law and correlation/=causation.

One of the topics on a recent ERE march was "but why are we actually doing this?" with the focus on keeping in shape. For example, why are we keeping up an exhausting gym schedule if all we do with it is to win random burpee competitions, outrun 20yos, and have visible muscle tone? Isn't that a rather low ROI when the process of working out at the required level of intensity generally feels dreadful?

The general conclusion is that insofar an activity is not pursued for its own sake, there better be something else that's worthwhile. What's the worthwhile thing here? Or is playing around with manipulating physiological data points and seeing what you can see and/or influence enough? (Like the explanation for climbing Mt Everest being "because it's there"?)

[Scott 2]

Given that you're FI, I wonder what's the point? Why listen to what your sleep tracker says instead of how you feel? Why not let your body sleep when and how it wants to?

I took this approach the first few years of retirement. I'll consistently short myself by an hour or two of sleep, to say nothing of sleep quality. There's always a better offer available. The end result is to spend many days tired, taking less out of more hours awake.

Since I've been using my latest tracker, there's been a single night where I exceeded the 9 hour upper limit. It was by 19 minutes. I was on a sleep deficit and drugged. There are so many things I want to do more than sleep. I might wake up 90 minutes early, get excited about the workout I have planned, then race out of bed way too early. Or stay up gaming until 3am, literally shaking off the sleep as I fight to keep going.

That's what I want to do.


Meanwhile quality sleep furthers my immediate term priorities. All physical goals. Greater mental acuity. Temperament. Being well rested is an enormous luxury. One of the best perks of owning your time. Longer term - I think it's one of the most health promoting factors we control. Especially as it relates to mental acuity with aging.

My hope is to establish a refined behavioral baseline, that I can draw upon when times are hard. So maybe my "worst" sleep starts to look like my "best" sleep of a year ago. The tracker provides a trivially objective feedback mechanism. Especially with my access to stimulant medication, how my body feels is not a reliable indicator.

[Scott 2]

Alternative suggestions:

For sleeping: make shit up in your head...

For OMG IT'S FUCKING BORING - the traditional advice here is, turn it on the boredom

My imagination doesn't really work like that. I can dig deeply into what I believe is. I don't create net new. I find it hard staying engaged with most fiction, even.

Maybe I'll try wallowing in the boredom. That does sound extra boring, lol.

[delay]

I'll consistently short myself by an hour or two of sleep, to say nothing of sleep quality. There's always a better offer available.

Thanks for your reply. That's interesting, I'm certainly never short of sleep when I listen to my body.

What do you mean by "better offer"? An alternative to sleep that causes you to delay sleep?

[Scott 2]

Thanks for your reply. That's interesting, I'm certainly never short of sleep when I listen to my body.

What do you mean by "better offer"? An alternative to sleep that causes you to delay sleep?

Yes, something I'd rather do in the moment, than go to sleep.

[delay]

Yes, something I'd rather do in the moment, than go to sleep.

Aha. Then it seems to me you are not listening to your body, but following your mind's desire.

The mind is just the planning or predictive organ of the body. In a proper balance, the mind serves the body with plans, and overrules the body when there is an urgent need. It sounds to me like you have the balance off, and your mind is overruling your body for wants instead of needs.

I let my body rule sleep. When my body yawns, I listen. If there's no need to stay awake, I go to bed.

[Scott 2]

you have the balance off, and your mind is overruling your body for wants instead of needs.

Yes, accurate. This is a feature of my autism - poor interoception. I do not intuitively read my body's signals - physical or emotional. I'm not very good at feelings - alexithymia. I'm especially bad surveying sensations in the moment - alexisomia.

With careful type II thinking, I can use pattern recognition to pretend these features work. It's an expensive masking exercise though. The type I thinking translation layer is largely absent. The experiences still pass through my body, but I'm often not consciously aware of them.

I spent decades locked at high level of anxiety, convinced I was completely calm. I'd chase relief through intensive focus on hobbies like yoga or whisky, unaware that my underlying motivation was entirely escape from the anxiety.

Using an external sensor to provide the biofeedback is dramatically more effective. With data I can construct patterns that accommodate my bodily needs. I can then use ritual and metrics to compensate for the missing signaling.


The interoceptive skills are only mildly trainable. Like I'm really good at guessing my heart rate. But I'll never automatically pause to check on it. Once my mind locks in, my body ceases to exist. I'm effectively a brain in a jar. An external stimulus is needed to break the cycle.

[delay]

The interoceptive skills are only mildly trainable.

Perhaps they are, but they are worth training! Something like the tarot is a helpful tool. The process of the tarot forces your thoughts into random subjects and patterns, and some of those resonate with your body. I think that's what you call "introceptive skills" and other people call the spirit or the soul.

For example, for me to lose weight, the key was not what I eat or how much, but when I eat. It's completely irrational yet it works. I can rationalize it afterwards, but how I got there was by submitting to randomness or the irrational.

In my experience Asian style meditation (emptying the mind), health measurements (using a number to represent the body) or medicine (forcing the body with chemicals) inhibit "introceptive skills".

Best of luck and I look forward to reading how your sleep journey unfolds!