Focus Determines Reality came online in April 2004 when I purchased yawnbox.com for sharing philosophy and poems to my friends and family online. In 2025, after having moved to the Netherlands, I moved my blog to yawnbox.eu.

Over the years I've transitioned to publishing about privacy, cyber security, and open source software to help people with useful education. It makes me very happy to be a student and then teach these interesting topics for free. Instead of trying to publish many articles, I keep a small amount up-to-date as technology and knowledge changes.

I reject surveillance capitalism. I don't know how many people read my blog. Based on direct engagement online and offline, I know that "How to Use an iPad as a Secure Calling and Messaging Device" is probably the most popular article. It's controversial.

About yawnbox

I'm a European Union resident, Dutch immigrant, and US citizen. I'm passionate about ethics and the internet. I work in human rights helping run Emerald Onion. For money, I work in the financial industry as a freelance zero trust network security engineer, and I'm a freelance photojournalist. I'm a European law student studying cyber security and data protection. I'm queer and autistic.

I'm passionate about many things: my partner, family and friends, science, veganism, the internet, blogging, the fediverse (including disobey.net), solarpunk, sailing, off-grid engineering, permaculture, hacker spaces and conferences, cooking, coffee, matcha, swimming, yoga, sci-fi, anime, massages, raves, electronic and contemporary classical music, trains, bicycles, camping, and learning in general.