Some things are going to have to change ‘round here.

Header image: Here’s me on JonathanMH’s couch in Copenhagen in the summer, during a bouldering trip.

I originally was going to call this blog post “Project 2025”, but most people can’t deal with that kind of humour, so let’s just forget about that one, I guess…

Anyway, you might have been wondering what I’ve been up to lately. I haven’t been writing much of anything here on my blog or on Substack, I haven’t been podcasting or streaming and I haven’t been very active on the forum or on social networks. What can I say? It’s been a rather tough year. Mostly, I’ve been incredibly busy, trying to scrape together enough money to survive as a freelance journalist and writer in Germany’s totally fucked economy. Turns out that, when you spent all your money financing wars, inflation can be a real bitch. Who could have possibly foreseen that? It’s not like the government has actual historians on staff, or something. Well, the bottom line for me is that I am very close to going broke and need to work my arse off as well as trying to save money where I can.

I’ve been determined not to have these circumstances impact my my newfound love for sports, however. Over the last two years, I’ve taken up both bouldering and Muay Thai and I’ve been exercising between five and six times a week for about a year now. This naturally has taken its toll on my work schedule. And while all of this (often very challenging) exercise has been incredible for my physical and mental health, it has created a situation in which I can no longer ignore that I need to change my work routine drastically to knit my work-life balance back together.

Getting my ass kicked in Muay Thai training at Gym Kwan in Hamburg.

If you’ve been reading my blog for any significant amount of time, you know that I like to refocus what I’m doing here every once in a while. There have been previous quiet periods (in 2021 and 2023, for example) and I’ve struggled in the past with how to best deal with reader feedback channels (concerning social media, Discord and my own forum). I’ve created newsletters, moved them and eventually shut them down and tried to adapt my podcasting and streaming to what I thought was most important at the time.

The situation in recent months has convinced me that a more drastic step is required this time. Which is why I have spent the last few weeks working on a new plan to restructure my online life.

The Plan™

At the core of the plan is the realisation that I really love writing. While I also enjoy podcasting and streaming a lot, I have recently become convinced that if I had to give up any of these activities, giving up writing would be the hardest. I feel that I am, at my core, a writer, and that writing is most important to me. Therefore, I have decided to consolidate my time in such a way that maximises my ability to write.

“A writer not writing is practically a maniac within himself."
   — F. Scott Fitzgerald

Another cornerstone of my plan is the idea of digital resilience that I have been pursuing for a while now. Therefore, I will move as much content of mine as I can to my own website. Within the current climate of political and cultural division and the accompanying celebration of censorship by many corners of society that were traditionally opposed to it, I feel that self hosting is the best option for anybody who wants to keep their independent voice.

With this in mind, going forward, there will be the following changes:

1. Ending The Private Citizen

I have decided to stop podcasting for the time being. When I started my current podcast, The Private Citizen, I had hoped that I would get the opportunity to have many interesting guests on the show. Sadly, coordinating things like this with other people is a logistical nightmare and the political climate has led many people to fear putting themselves out there in political discussions. Many are opting to instead self-censor and shy away from discussing the kind of serious, society-wide topics I am interested in. Because of this, I all but gave up even looking for guests for the show years ago.

Running a weekly podcast on your own is a huge time commitment and, as it stands, the show does not receive enough monetary contributions to make it worth my while in my current economic situation. I might return to podcasting at another date, but at the moment I have nothing definitive planned and my workload makes it rather unlikely.

2. Consolidating my Writing

Over the past year or two, I’ve become more and more endeared to the ideals of the IndieWeb community. The more our governments lean into censorship and the idea that the existence of mis/dis/malinformation means only accredited people should get to talk freely on the internet, the more it makes me want to pull all of my digital life back to software and servers that I control myself. One big step in this part of the plan is to consolidate all of my long-form writing here on FAB INDUSTRIES.

This means I will shut down all of my various Substack newsletters and move their past issues to this site right here. Moving all of the old issues onto this blog will, naturally, take quite a while, so don’t expect that aspect of the plan to be finished in a few weeks. It will probably take the best part of the coming year.

2.a New Blog Categories

It make it easier to sort through all of this new content on the blog, I am planning to radically simplify its categories. At the moment, I am envisioning to sort all content into the following taxonomy:

• The Editorial Page — Posts about the site itself, like this one
• Black ICE — Posts about information security
• 0xDEADBEEF — Development and hardware hacking
• Maidenless Voyage — Game reviews and commentary
• Columbo’s Raincoat — Posts about movies and TV shows
• Idylls of the King — Posts about music, art and literature
• LCARS — Writings about Star Trek
• Field Notes — Travel, sports and events
• Unfuck the News — Journalism critique and posts about media matters
• Realpolitik — Political and historical analysis
• Every Day Carry — Reviews of gear I like
• Hypetrain — Notifications of upcoming Twitch streams or similar events
• Aperture Priority — Photos, screenshots and artwork

This is another point where you can expect a significant delay in the implementation. It will probably take months to sort all the existing content into these categories.

All of the aforementioned changes will of course affect the site’s top navigation. I plan to use some of the room that will be freed up for a page that lists these categories and makes it easier for readers to figure out what content can be accessed where on the site.

3. Closing the Forum

I have decided to close the forum that I’ve used as a feedback mechanism for this site and also the podcast. In my current financial situation I need to save money where I can and that infrastructure is just too expensive, especially considering it isn’t actually being used that much.

When this blog post goes live, I will already have removed the forum integration on this site and it will have been replaced with an implementation of the Webmention standard. ¹ If you do not want to use that, the comment section lists an email address you can use to send me feedback. I will then convert these emails into webmentions to be embedded on the appropriate page.

4. New Live Streams

I am going to start livestreaming again on Twitch pretty soon. In some of these streams, I will be live while I am researching things or writing something. Some will be to talk about current events. Naturally, I will also start streaming video games again. As of right now, I do not have a fixed schedule for these streams. I want to ease into them first and they’ll have to take a back-seat in the event of me having to do some actual paid work. But I will endeavour to come up with at least something approaching a regular schedule in the next weeks and months.

5. Funding

If you want to help out a struggling freelance journalist, even though he might have just killed your favourite podcast, you will be able to do so via my new Ko-fi page. You can send me one-off contributions of any amount starting at €2 or, for €5 / month recurring, become a subscriber. Active subscribers will be listed on a special page of honour here on the website.

Me in Dubai at the start of 2023, trying out my world-wary writer look.

Feedback Welcome

Well, that’s the entirety of my genius plan. I realise that some of you will probably resent me shutting down The Private Citizen and the forum, but I hope that you’ll now understand my reasoning behind these changes. If this plan works out, I should be able to produce more content for you more consistently and — hopefully — be happier doing it. In the end, that should be better for everyone. And if I can also dig myself a bit out of this financial hole I’m in while I’m at it, I might even keep doing all of this for a long time to come.

However, your feedback is very welcome, as always. Feel free to use the new comment mechanism (see below) to tell me what you think about all of this.