One

First, I need to get my web skills back on point for SpineFITyoga.com (SFY). Leaving Arizona for Alaska, figuring out what I want to do here, and then how to do it, took a great deal of time and study. It still takes time and study, but this is one of these “it is what it is” things. But that took considerable focus away from SFY’s web development. The SFY exercise program, being only 5 minutes, was easy to keep up, and I have this healthy addiction to being fit. It helps that the exercise science and nutrition behind SFY, is most definitely my thing, is interesting, and in some ways fun to do. So regardless of what emergencies befall the Earth, I’m going to keep reading papers on improving fitness, performance, and injury rehab. This part I’m not sure is an entirely healthy addiction, but it’s certainly of benefit for those who just do SFY. However, computer coding, keeping up with new software developments? Eh. And it doesn’t help that I find computer skills not just boring but eventually non-sustainable. Still, we need them for now, which is I think a crux of our time; continuing to function in the present, while preparing for a radically different future. 

In the time off, not only have I gotten out of practice with web design, but all the software has been updated, replaced, or done away with, and while the changes I believe will make the SFY website better, it’s not just that I’m rusty, but also that work flows are very different. So SFY is still up and running, everyone should do it, and the program itself is great, but there are major updates I want to make in how to present it. As well as some adjustments as to what I think makes for the optimal diet synergized with the 5-minute exercise program. 

The good news is that as I’m forcing myself to get used to the new software, it’s becoming more pleasant, so I’m hoping this continues in one of Fredrickson’s “onward and upward spirals.”

So motivation one for ChadReilly.com is to have a place to practice and get better at web design/development. I can then apply that presentation to SFY and help make people fit, attractive, and pain free. All good things.

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Two

I have a lot to say to friends, family, and anyone interested, that’s completely unrelated to SFY. When I was sitting at home in 2020 during the COVID-19 lockdown I got to reading some new (to me) subjects. One book led to another and soon I came to the “best selling environmental book of all time,” The Limits to Growth, 1972 [free full text]. It’s funny, the bad kind of funny, that this team of very good researchers, at MIT no less, used the then new computing power combined with dynamic systems theory to more or less predict the collapse of global-industrial-civilization, to begin somewhere around 2025-2050 under business-as-usual scenarios. However, this was only if steps were not taken to avert it. Well, fast-forward about 50 years and steps were not taken to avert it, and it’s 2025 as I write this.

Limits to Growth was exceptionally well written and very well lays things in layman’s terms. I highly recommend everyone read it for themselves before judging anything I say, one way or the other. I would also suggest you read the book, before you read critiques, then you’ll be able to see that the critics, mostly economists and their parrots, were almost invariably liars about what’s in the book. The lying worked, the Limits authors were popularly marginalized, without being wrong. 

The results of Limits to Growth have been revised twice, most recently in 2004 by the original authors with no substantial change to the outcomes. Since then independent researchers have overwhelmingly confirmed the results of the business as usual scenario. Most recently, in November of 2023 with the Recalibration of Limits to Growth… [also free] with updated data. The updated data predicted global civilization would likely start to have its wheels come off sometime between 2024 and 2030 due to resource shortages, only later followed by climate change/disruption.

I read that paper in early 2024, and was like, “ok wow, that’s basically now.” The quote on the timing of collapse is 2nd paragraph in section 4.3, or page 97, 4th paragraph of the PDF if you wish to read for yourself, which I suggest.

Also so you know, these dates are best estimates, not prophecies, so if events happen before (that option is gone) or after, it doesn’t completely falsify the teller. In fact the original Limits to Growth books go out of their way to say these aren’t meant to be predictions but scenarios, dependent on uncertain information. However, newer estimates are using ever more certain information and ultimately corroborating the business as usual estimate. I would add that in Aesop’s Fable, the Boy Who Cried Wolf, the wolf did come. 

Also, flashback to 2020 and previous reading, Phoenix, Arizona, was not only ground zero for global warming but Arizona was rated (though not in so clear of words) the least sustainable state in the union by the Global Footprint Network. And it was therefore in my estimation the worst place in the USA to be when the wheels come off.

My house was paid off. I had all kinds of equity, but I figured when everyone else realized what I realized, I wouldn’t be selling my home at all, I would be abandoning it. So motivation two of this site is to present data in such a way as to prevent my friends and family in Arizona from dying in some inevitable heat wave, or worse, financially ruin. 

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Three

If I am wrong, I would really like to know it, because impending collapse (via resource shortage, ecologic damage, or global warming), isn’t the happiest subject, and I would go back to partying with my friends in AZ, world travel, and other forms of conspicuous consumption… However, I’m going to need someone to show me based on facts, reason, and logic, and not some acquiescence into a better afterlife, transformation of the human spirit, or sketch future technologies. 

It is interesting that long before my switch was flipped, I knew fossil fuel supplies were limited, and in theory they would eventually run out, but I always thought that was off in some distant future, that environmentalists were alarmist, and that wind, solar, or whatever, were indeed clean tech, and would scale up. And we’d all just have electric or fusion fueled cars that probably flew. Seems none of that’s true, except the running out of gas part.

I was a surprisingly well educated clueless moron. I had a Master’s degree! So I think there is much to say about not being too much of a specialist, so as to miss out on important aspects of a broader awareness, for which impending civilization and ecologic collapse are kind of big things to miss. And surprisingly obvious with hindsight. 

Unfortunately, it turns out not only is the new tech not cutting it, but is further worsening the planet. It’s a very troubling situation where the short term solutions only worsen the long term problem. And the long term problems aren’t so long term anymore, but are bumping up on us here and now.

I suppose we could all place our bets on some supernatural end times like Ragnarok, but wouldn’t the joke be on you to plan for the “end of the world” and just get another civilization collapse instead? 

Anyway, whether we are approaching Ragnarok or civilization collapse, it’s probably better if you are strong and healthy, so I still advise everyone to do SpineFITyoga.com. All my friends and family get a free lifetime (grid-time?) membership if they ask. I expect in a post-collapse world, more muscle and less orthopedic injuries will have survival value, and probably both gyms and therapy clinics will be closed.

So how’s that for a full circle?

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