I've been dealing with something new of late—oh such previous joys this newfound 42 has become! It has all the symptoms of a temporomandibular joint disorder. Hey, at least that rogue of mysterious pain on the bottom of my foot has vanished.

It happened about 1 or 2 weeks ago. I was talking with my head turned and I suddenly heard a pop and felt and ever brief excruciating zing of pain where my jaw connects to my head. Since then, I've popped it maybe 5 times total with no pain, but I've had a near ever-present soreness/sensitivity all along my left jaw line with various levels of intensity. Generally, I ignore it but other times it clamors maddeningly for attention. Sometimes, I'll take naproxen sodium...admittedly, I'm just not a fan of taking medicine.

Who knows where the injury came from: some say it comes from teeth grinding and stress. While I've caught myself a time or two grinding my teeth as I slept—which I have since began wearing the same type of mouthguard I wore in martial arts, I haven't felt any more stress than I typically experience, but as one of the main treatments I've found is stress management, well... BOY HOWDY am I ready to go with that! It parallels my initiative to add more meditation into my daily life. Some say to cut back on coffee, but C'MON, we both know that's a bunch of malarkey!

If I may borrow from BRCC: "Coffee, or die!"

For all of my fist shaking about FitBit in recent memory, I return to the platform for its sleep and heart tracking. Perhaps, it's a microcosm of my emerging stance on tech…

Look, we know that our lives are the products of tech: our movements are tracked and interests tallied. The great thing about me is that I provide freely the things I like on this website. Maybe I don't say I never use toothpaste because I know what it does to a CD and prefer replacing it with mouthwash as I brush, but, even if a firm knew that about me, to what end does it matter?

In a world of billions, we're invisible among the aggregates. Does it really matter that the location is tracked of a societal nonfactor—well, beyond the flutters of a butterfly…maybe with the further development of tech, AI could predict the effects of butterflies which raises all sorts of philosophical questions regarding our facade of free will…ultimately, however, the individual does not matter.

In the context of an authoritarian regime, sure, problems run amuck with tech, although there's a tendency with tech proliferation that things open up—or at least the better ideas are best served shared.

If I don't go along with 21st century tech, what is the alternative? Adopt a 19th century lifestyle? That only works in a 19th century world, so, you gotta go way back. And chances are, if you want to live that way, you're gonna have to live in a rainforest somewhere in South America. Since I am no George of the Jungle, I am here. Ignoring, easing off, or just tactically applying tech only hamstrings my life in the 21st century. And honestly, I'm fully on board with human augmentation, whether genome engineering or tech integration, so it's not like I'm shaking my cane and missing the good ol' days when light bulbs were hot to the touch.

Now, I do think there's a place for better customization of content aggregation. It's why I'm currently not consuming social or news medias. They are not curated for optimal maximization of my individual interests; rather, medias seem to indicate a modification of my interests from decentralization to one's that centralized. Not cool, bruh. We had that sort of thing in the 20th century, but they were not targeted ads and instead came off as jolting interruptions and never achieved the polarization of today. In contrast to modern politicking, E.T.'s Reese's Pieces product placement are rather benign.

Of course, this is a simple take on where we are today. The price drop of publishing since Gutenberg factors more on this polarization, that as we puff our chest out, we confuse value with our capacity to technically reach a mass audience at zero cost and do not recognize our assembly line of pulp plopping directly into a trash bin—unless you're a pop star who doesn't even write her own lyrics or a guy who plays with a ball all day.

I suppose I'm being harsh. In their own way, these video-killed-the-radio-star giants gotta achieve product differentiation to reach critical mass to capture or create a market blah blah blah…they beat their competition to reach whatever platform they stand upon and you gotta give props, right?

And for people who don't have fame / wealth / talent, I can understand their valuing those whom do have that, just like I value those with knowledge and the processes thereof. But, it's likely a rational oversimplification.

If I were to sum this all up, I bristle with the subjugation of the mind. My fear is that tech, as an amoral application, is programmed for control, because let's face it, it's what we do as people. We have a tendency to rule minds to either flip the switch on or keep the switch off; maintain status quo or innovate; and stay in power or achieve critical mass and revolt. Unfortunately, instead of a yin-yang natural move toward what is the difficult-to-define optimal state, people prefer inorganic straight-line destruction.

As a better solution in the context of scaling away from imperfect knowledge, I'd lean toward societal homeostasis, that we, like the market, ultimately self-correct. And while the market fluctuates wildly, it does trend upward, even despite momentary crashes.

So, I return to tech integration, because while I'm miffed by some of the behavior of the actors involved, I have faith that one day we'll roll back from our computers to realize what we do sucks. So, don't do that.

Yesterday, after an unexplained two-day delay beyond the "out for delivery" post and after a call to FedEx, I received my order from Black Rifle Coffee Company. And while all the shipping hassle of my Saturday, July 4th's order, on Friday, July 10th, I enjoyed a noteworthy cup from its Murdered Out extra dark roast. However, I don't think I'll order it again unless BRCC gives its customers the option to choose USPS as a shipper. During the logistical limbo, I had the chance to try out other regional roasters

• Memphis: J. Brooks Coffee Roasters: (1) Onyx and (2) Spirit of Memphis
• Nashville: Drew's Brews: Lost Weekend

Add the 3 bags from BRCC and 3 bags of the above, plus what's already on hand from Pablo's Pride purchased at Sam's Club, it'll be a little bit before I go shopping for whole beans again.

And I'm only drinking 36 oz a day! I'm trying to sqeeze in one more 12 oz, but I'm hitting the ceiling of my 30g total carb allotment.

Speaking of consumption, I am so very far from my past vegan and vegetarian ways. Sure, I love my pork rinds, a holdover from my dad, but, I did something I've never done before: I ate bones (provided freely by a local BBQ shack). In doing so, I felt like I was connecting with my ancestry, a time before tech's obfuscation of identity or even electricity for that matter. It wasn't quite as primal as you might think: after having a crockpot full of pork bones broken down for 24 hours for broth, a lot of the content can crumble in your fingers. The dark marrow tasted a lot like a grainy liver.