Weekly Retro #4

I just finished my long (45 minutes) Peloton ride for the week, showered, and am now writing this entry from the couch watching a VOD of streamer Day9 playing Mewgenics, the latest game from Edmund McMillen and Tyler Glaiel. Mewgenics was originally announced in 2012, and I honestly thought it was vaporware until previews started hitting my YouTube feed. I’ve been playing the game a bit myself this week, and it’s fascinating watching someone like Day9, famous for his real-time strategy career, make very different decisions than I’ve been.

Earlier this week border czar Tom Homan declared that operation Metro Surge was ending in Minnesota. I am in a solid “I’ll believe it when I see it” mode, and I think that’s where most Minnesotans are. This administration has consistently lied about their intentions, behaviors, and actions, so words just aren’t enough at this point. Homan has tossed around words like drawdown, and keeping a “small” security force in the state. I’d like to know precisely what small means and also learn what conditions were agreed to by Governor Walz, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, and local police forces that led to the administration making this decision.

I kept my Peloton streak going and am now up to 45 days in a row of biking, meditating, stretching, and—new this week—strength training. Yesterday, I did a 10-minute bodyweight strength class that included a circuit of squats, pushups, burpees, and every muscle in my body hurts. That just means I need to do more of them I suppose. As for rides this week I subbed in a HIIT class instead of a Powerzone ride for one of my three rides. It was intense, but manageable. According to the app my average power rose by 7% over the last two weeks.

Somewhat related, I feel like the pain in my chest has lessened a bit. It has always been a hard to pinpoint, non-specific pain, which in turn makes it hard to say if it’s gotten better, but I think it has. Who’s to say if that’s due to the daily dose of Pepcid I’ve been taking or just healing over time. Either way, I’ll keep taking the Pepcid as prescribed and check in with my doctor in a few weeks.

While I was writing this, a friend messaged me about getting together to play some Sorcery: Contested Realm. That’s the TCG I’ve been wanting to get to a store to play. He’s built a cube for it and wants to try it out. We’ve planned on meeting up this weekend to play. It’s not quite in the spirit of my goal of playing more games in person with people I don’t know, but it’s a step in the right direction. I think he does play more regularly with a group of local players, so maybe this will be my way in to that community.

I spent a fair amount of time this week setting up a new Matrix server to replace the Discord server I’ve been running for my friend group for about 5 years now. Discord recently announced some changes they’ll be making soon around age verification that don’t sit well with me, and thankfully many others. Ideally, Discord would roll back these changes, but that seems unlikely. So I did some research, found a Matrix hosting company, and paid to have a server set up and hosted. You don’t need to go that route. There are large public servers that are joinable with a matrix.org account, and you can self host as well. I didn’t want to host or manage a server so I went with a paid option.

Matrix is not a 1:1 Discord replacement, but I was able to set up a “Space” which is equivalent to a Discord server, and “rooms” that match the various channels in our Discord server. It took me a bit to understand some of the Matrix nuances like that space and room nomenclature, as well as how being fully encrypted impacts conversation threads, but I think I’ve got a workable solution. A few friends have created Matrix accounts and moved over, but I think we’re all in wait and see mode, hoping Discord does the right thing here.

As a federated alternative to Discord, Matrix appeals to me, but like replacing Twitter with Mastodon or Bluesky, I think ultimately it’s going to leave communities worse off due to fragmentation. It’s one thing to migrate my small friend group to a new service, but I don’t see the really large communities moving any time soon. I’m in a few video game and tabletop Discord servers, and sadly I haven’t even seen discussions about moving in any of them. I’ll have to make a decision about how much or little I’ll continue to use Discord even if my friend group does fully migrate.

Things I enjoyed this week

Published on February 15, 2026