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 began publishing more 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.