Charlie's Blog: August 2026

8.16.2026

Zone 2 Training / Exercise As Medicine

DISCLAIMER: I am not a doctor, personal trainer, or healthcare professional. These are just my opinions. Consult a physician before starting any exercise program.

If we could give every individual the right amount of nourishment and exercise, not too little and not too much, we would have found the safest way to health.
HIPPOCRATES

Zone 2 is defined as training at 60-70% of your maximum heart rate. A slow jog or a brisk walk achieves the requirement for Zone 2 training. Experts recommend doing 180 minutes or 3 hours per week of Zone 2 training comprising 60-80% of training volume. Zone 2 training has become the rage among the exercise community, and I can understand why. I believe the human body was designed and optimized for Zone 2 training because it is what you do when you walk or work in the garden. I don't think the human body does well when it goes beyond Zone 2 for long, and it certainly doesn't do well below Zone 2. How do I know this? I've done both. Neither a sedentary nor an intensely aerobic lifestyle were good for me. I hit the sweet spot with a daily walk of an hour at the Zone 2 level.

I think brisk walking and doing manual labor in the yard and garden are the best forms of Zone 2 training. It is virtually impossible to overdo it. This is in contrast to Matt D'Avella's 30 day experiment with Zone 2 training:

I tried zone 2 training for 30 days (what I learned)

One of the things I find annoying about Matt D'Avella is how he can do something for 30 days and learn absolutely nothing. He did this with 10,000 steps and using a dumbphone. After 30 days, he goes back to where he was before like a dog returning to its vomit. These videos represent stunts for clicks. But what I found interesting was Matt's struggle to stay under the threshold for Zone 2 training as he jogged and rode a stationary bicycle. I think if you have to wear a heart rate monitor to remain in Zone 2 then you are doing it wrong. This is why I think walking is the better way to go. Unless you are doing that contorted race walking thing, I don't think you can walk yourself out of Zone 2.

I have really taken to the idea of exercise as medicine. As with any medicine, it comes down to taking the proper dosage. Too little is ineffective while too much is deleterious. This flies in the face of the conventional wisdom that you can never exercise too much. As I pointed out in these two previous blog posts, you can overdo exercise:

The Tragedy of Micah True

How We Got The Extreme Path Of Fitness

I don't know the precise point when exercise becomes too much, but that point exists. People in the marathoner/ultramarathoner category certainly qualify with the evidence of cardiovascular damage and increased risk of colon cancer. I remember reading that the conventional wisdom among doctors in the seventies was that you can overdo running, hurt yourself, and damage your health. The runners of the running boom set out to prove those doctors wrong. After all these decades, I think the running boomers have proven those original doctors right. This is an interesting study:

Dose of Jogging and Long-Term Mortality: The Copenhagen City Heart Study

And here is the interesting bit:

The findings suggest a U-shaped association between all-cause mortality and dose of jogging as calibrated by pace, quantity, and frequency of jogging. Light and moderate joggers have lower mortality than sedentary nonjoggers, whereas strenuous joggers have a mortality rate not statistically different from that of the sedentary group.

It seems that leaving that sweet spot of moderate jogging and going into the strenuous zone decreases lifespan. Basically, an ultramarathoner or a marathoner at an elite level lives no longer than a couch surfer.

Why run? Clearly, you can get the same benefits from walking though it may take more time. The supreme benefit of walking is that it is more pleasant and more gentle on the body. This makes it a more sustainable activity as people tend to stick with things they enjoy instead of hate. This brings us to the knee question.

The conventional wisdom is that running is bad for the knees. Research indicates this is not the case. I think this research is prone to survivorship bias as runners with bad knees tend to give up running and remove themselves from the pool of surviving runners. This leaves the outliers who run without significant damage. What if there was a runner stupid enough to severely damage his knees and keep on running? That runner exists. That runner is David Goggins:

Joe Rogan on Goggins’ Knee Injuries

David Goggins talks about his knee problem

There are some crazy folks out there who admire David Goggins's dedication to running. I just appreciate that the guy has made a human guinea pig out of himself to make my anecdotal point that running is bad for your knees. Then, there is Scott Douglas on the topic:

Nobody Knows How Many Runners Get Injured
And nobody knows what “extreme exercise” means.

Scott got injured from running. It was a nasty injury requiring surgery. Here is a telling quotation:

Having one seems kind of important for what might literally be a matter of life and death. Yet if you look through the research on the topic, what counts as extreme exercise is all over the place. Sometimes it’s years of running, sometimes it’s volume or duration, sometimes it’s intensity, sometimes it’s some combination of volume and intensity and duration, sometimes it’s number of marathons and/or ultramarathons and/or triathlons, and so on.

This vagueness just won’t do, given the presumed goal of providing public health guidance. How are we to know if we’re even in the pool of at-risk individuals, much less whether this is something to act upon?

The whole article is worth reading because you see a man forced to consider the possibility that he is overdoing it because he has seriously hurt himself and has some troubling issues with his heart. Faced with the prospect of giving up running, Douglas falls back to the "vagueness" argument you might hear from an alcoholic in denial. How many drinks is too much? Since no one seems able to draw a hard and sharp line on the matter, the extreme is still the way to go. Personally, I would see that line of stitches on my ankle as the hard and sharp line telling me to rethink things.

The problem as I see it is that sedentary people eschew exercise because they believe falsely that they have to train for and run marathons for it to count. Conversely, dedicated runners are too afraid to cut back or give up running in favor of walking as if they are going to miss out on additional benefits like they are forfeiting lottery winnings. These extremes of sedentary and excess overlook the benefits of a moderate program of exercise as recommended by the research and health professionals going back to Hippocrates.

Moderation is not a popular prescription especially in the United States. Americans are peculiarly given to extremism. I think this comes from equating extremism with greatness. Here is Navy SEAL Jocko Willink on the topic:

Accept That Some People are Okay With Being Mediocre

Being "mediocre" is a bad thing. The issue here is that moderation is equated with being mediocre. Jocko says that he sleeps 5.5 hours a night where 8 hours is the moderate amount. Sleep deprivation equals success. Success requires "extreme ownership." Naturally, this sells well to Corporate America (Jocko's clients, Echelon Front) trying to motivate their salaried employees to "greatness." It is strange how this greatness corresponds perfectly with their greed. But I digress. . .

I doubt that Jocko reads Aquinas, Aristotle, or Hippocrates and their call to neither deficiency nor excess. I have personally been on various paths of extremes, and they never end in a good place. I suppose I am now on a path of extreme moderation in all things. Moderation is not mediocrity. It is common sense. Common sense is an endangered species in today's world of extremes, but I know that common sense never dies. It always makes a comeback when people realize their errors. With exercise, a moderate dose is what the doctor ordered.

UPDATE: I came across this great quotation:

Walking five miles a day or more provides the type of low-intensity exercise that yields all the cardiovascular benefits you might expect, but it also has a positive effect on muscles and bones - without the joint-pounding damage caused by running marathons or triathlons.
DAN BUETTNER

I also came across this great YouTube video that gives updated information on the things I've been sharing here at the C-Blog in regard to endurance exercise:

More Exercise = More Plaque

One of the issues with these studies is the lack of information on diet and nutrition. The tragic death of Jim Fixx showed that you can't outrun a bad diet. But from what I have gathered, you can overdo exercise, and extreme exercise does not improve health but damages it. Once again, it comes down to the dosage. Moderate exercise is the way to go.

8.09.2026

Capitulation Strategies

Game over, man!
PRIVATE HICKS, Aliens

At this stage of the game, I am known as a late resistor to new technology. The flip phone I carry on purpose is the biggest sign of my attitude to tech. I am not a Luddite, but I fight the good fight. But you also need to know when to quit. I don't own an 8 track player or a VCR. Those two things represent the sad fact of tech extinction. It happens and will happen again. Here are my strategies for dealing with these extinctions when they come.

1. The Kindle/ebooks

I have already written about this one. Amazon has bricked their old pre-2012 devices to try and force people like me to buy a new device to be similarly bricked at a future date. Long before this, my wife convinced me to eschew paying for ebooks and buy physical books instead because she knew where it was all going to end. She was right. If you can't hold it in your hand, you don't own it.

I have capitulated on this and only buy physical books now. You can't brick physical books. As for my Kindle, it will keep working as long as I don't factory reset it. I can still use it, but I can't add to it without jailbreaking it. As for a battery swap, I am not going to waste my time on this. When it dies, I will bury the thing along with my regrets over buying it. We had a good run.

2. OAB TV

I have already written about my TV issues. Basically, my over-the-air broadcast dumb TV gave up the ghost. I was scheming to avoid buying a smart TV and getting another dumb TV. I am against smart TVs, Roku, paid streaming services, etc. Then, I heard about ATSC 3.0 which is a scheme by television broadcasters to go to a new standard that allows them to encrypt their broadcasts and demand a fee to watch the programs. Why would I ever pay for this?

I realize now that free broadcast TV is mortally wounded. Why waste money on a new set that I am never going to watch? My capitulation strategy was to buy a portable DVD player and return to watching physical media again. The wife enjoys free streaming content on Pluto, Tubi, YouTube, and Internet Archive. We do not pay for streaming subscription services like Netflix. For the DVD player, we have collected old movies and TV shows. We have more content than time to watch this stuff. I am also not a big fan of visual content as it fatigues my damaged brain.

I recommend that people measure how much they watch or could watch against what is available to possibly watch. They should have a meter for this like a water meter or an electric meter. The reality is that there is more content in existence now than you could ever consume in your lifetime. This is why I cut out cable TV over a decade ago in favor of OAB TV. As you can see, the empire strikes back later with streaming and ATSC 3.0.

Yes, the content today is atrocious and not worth watching. You aren't missing anything. But once in awhile, they make something good. I just buy the DVD. I don't have a capitulation strategy for the end of DVDs.

When I run out of stuff to watch, I will reconsider my resistance. That day is a long way off. As for ATSC 3.0, I expect it to fail spectacularly, but the damage will be irreversible.

Charlie's TV Issues

3. Blogger

I know that no Google service lasts forever. I learned this with the end of the beloved Google Reader. My capitulation strategy was to go to Feedly and Inoreader. I also learned to restrict myself to the free limit of the RSS readers and to subscribe to email newsletters to keep posted on my favorite sites. That was my capitulation strategy for that.

Blogger is how I publish to the world. I don't use social media or Substack. When Blogger ends, I will write longhand in notebooks that I have stored for this inevitability. I don't care so much about being read. I just know that I have to write. People wrote before the internet. They wrote longhand and with typewriters. Some were published while others were not. I have to remind myself that I am a writer. Being a blogger is a matter of publishing. Returning to absolute obscurity is something I would actually like. Whatever happens, I will keep scratching the writing itch.

4. The flip phone

I don't know how long I can keep using a flip phone. I hate smartphones, but the day is coming like with 8 track players when that option will vanish. I am fighting it hard, but I can't guarantee victory.

I hate the form factor of a smartphone, but they have some models that fold like my flip phone. They are expensive and not quite there yet. But I am inclined in that direction. The thing has to fold and fit in my shirt pocket. I am old and crusty like that.

I also hate the distracting nature of smartphones, but I have learned from the digital minimalism and dumbphone reddits that you can dumb down a smartphone to essential features. I would certainly do that. I recommend it to anyone who can't make the jump to a full dumbphone but still want to get their lives back.

The last thing is tactile buttons. I like buttons. I liked the old Blackberry devices for this reason alone, and I was sad to see them go down like they did. I hate tapping on touchscreen devices. This is why I use a Chromebook or a PC over an iPad or Android tablet device. Give me my buttons and keys!

I love my flip phone, and I pray that option never goes away. Seeing them experience a resurgence in popularity gives me hope that I never have to capitulate on this one. But I have a plan.

5. Terrestrial radio

This is the one that I think about the least because I think terrestrial radio has staying power. It has survived SirusXM satellite radio and the iPod. The only challenge now is in car streaming or using streaming over a smartphone. The simple fact is that people love turning on the radio especially during the morning and evening commutes. I don't see that going away.

AM radio might die. It was already dying when FM caught on, but it found new life with talk radio. People don't like static on the radio. Steely Dan even made a song about it. I live with the static because I am a radio nerd. I have heard stories about digital on the AM dial, but I think that idea is DOA as no one has gone out to get HD Radios for the digital offerings on the FM dial. I know I didn't get one.

Like with the OAB TV thing, the secret dream is to get listeners to pay some kind of subscription fee for the content they are getting now for free. They can try, and they will fail. I don't have a capitulation strategy for the end of terrestrial radio. I reckon I will enjoy the silence.

Conclusion

Those are my capitulation strategies for the end of some of my preferred tech options. What I have learned is that the only mistake is to give up the fight early. This is what I did with my iPod and my Kindle. I went with the new thing that didn't last. The answer to those disasters was to dial it back to the older and better options which were the Walkman and the physical book. As for the 8 track and the VCR, I didn't miss them when they went extinct. I stopped buying vinyl when cassettes came out, but I am happy to see that those two formats are still surviving. The bottom line is to never be hasty on these things. You have time which can be decades before you have to throw in the towel. You're not beaten until you're beaten.

8.02.2026

Q & A 3

Do something even if it's wrong.
ANDREW LOURA
 
Do I need an intro for these Q & A posts? Not really. You know the program by now. Here is the third edition.

Q: What do you think of the trend of fake trends?

A: The short answer is that journalists have run out of things to report. A fake trend is where you have what amounts to a human interest story like someone still writing with a manual typewriter or still using a flip phone in a world full of smartphones or eating a vegan diet and then conflating that into some popular thing picking up steam and taking over the world. The problem is that it isn't true. They are lying about something that is interesting for the moment but amounts to absolutely nothing. Why not let it be a human interest story? Why lie about it being a bigger deal than what it is?

Q: Is Medjugorje legit?

A: I don't think so, and I don't waste my time on the "apparitions" there. I think some grifters have made a nice little industry for themselves with this thing, and the dirty hierarchy tolerates it because I suspect they get a cut of the action. This is one of the things that needs to be cleared out with the next purge.

Q: What happened to the Blue Collar Ph.D.?

A: The Blue Collar Ph.D. began as an idea on a cocktail napkin while having a discussion with a welder who spent half of each year fully employed and the other half unemployed relative to the demands for his skills. I mentioned to him a fellow from my welding class in high school who was great at welding but decided to learn tool and die making after leaving high school. The combination of being a welder and a machinist greatly expanded his employability. That was the genesis of the idea behind the Blue Collar Ph.D.

I wondered to myself what would happen if someone decided against going to college but spent that same amount of time compiling a basket of blue collar skills. I thought this would be cheaper, better, and more lucrative than getting a typically worthless degree from State U.

I made a drawing on the napkin of a full portfolio of skills that resembled an investment portfolio. Each section was like an asset class. Instead of cash, stocks, bonds, and metals, I put down equipment operation, industrial skills, construction, and automotive. Welding was under the industrial skills set while carpentry was under the construction skills. Imagine a plumber with a CDL who could also weld and build a deck for the back of your home and work on your car. That guy will always have a job somewhere.

The flaw in the Blue Collar Ph.D. idea is the atrophy of skills from disuse. I employed the idea at my workplace by diversifying my skill set with cross training. The problem came with the desire of management to force you into specialization. They wanted you to do one thing well not do three or four things competently. This specialization increased productivity but also increased risk. When someone called in sick, they had no one to fill that hole except yours truly. Management optimized for the best scenario. I prepared for the worst case scenario. Needless to say, I won that bet time and time again because shit happens.

I made it my goal to "complete" the Blue Collar Ph.D., but those plans ended with my accident. The Achilles heel of that strategy is that every job depends upon your good health and functioning. I don't have a strategy for being old, sick, and injured. But if you are able bodied, I highly recommend the Blue Collar Ph.D. as a strategy for always being employable. Being consistently employed is better than being lucratively employed on an inconsistent basis.

Q: What dumbphone do you recommend?

A: I am not wedded to any particular brand of phone, but I am wedded to a particular type of phone. This would be a robust flip phone like the Kyocera DuraXV I got from Verizon. It cost me 300 bones which is pricey for a dumbphone, but I have to use a phone that will last and take a beating. My last phone lasted 7 years which is about 40 bucks per year. It was still working and could go on indefinitely except for new batteries. But it was 3G and outlasted the network. I expect my current phone to do the same.

The reason I recommend a flip phone over a candy bar phone or touchscreen phone is to prevent the dreaded butt dial. I switched to a flip phone in the aughts because of the butt dial. I was surprised that smartphones brought it back. Additionally, the clam shell design helps make the phone more robust and resistant to damage. Plus, it is very satisfying to close at the end of a call.

I am not a fan of the hybrid dumbphone/smartphone. Some new flip phones have apps preloaded like Facebook and allow you to use a web browser. This runs counter to using a dumbphone for digital minimalism. I like the basic functions of voice and text. I like having a calculator on the phone which represents the "app" I use the most. But I keep it as dumb as possible.

Q: Why do they build ugly churches now?

A: The architecture of a church makes a theological statement. Churches of a Calvinist/Puritan strain tend towards the plain. Traditional Roman Catholic churches tend towards the ornate and beautiful. Then, Vatican II and the Novus Ordo happened which diminished belief in the Real Presence. That's when Catholic churches began to look like converted Pizza Huts. I expect them to install drive thru windows any day now.

Q: What is up with analog?

A: This question is inspired by the Andrew Loura YouTube channel. This young man has a real affinity for manual typewriters, paper notebooks, physical books, and analog clocks. Yet, he uses a smartphone and confesses to being addicted to the thing. I am a 55-year-old Gen Xer who uses a mix of analog and digital solutions. I have always done this. I am typing this on a Chromebook from notes written in pencil on the back of a piece of paper I salvaged from junk mail. The thing I find annoying with this newfound love of analog is that these young people think they have discovered something new and secret. They haven't.

Sometimes, the analog option is the best option. Other times, the digital option is the best option. There's nothing like a power outage to make you appreciate the analog options.

Q: Who was your favorite Beatle?

A: I have an appreciation for the underrated Ringo Starr, but I believe Paul McCartney was the real genius behind the Beatles. I have never liked John Lennon, and I think he was a despicable human being. I will never understand why people revered him as some kind of hero.

Q: Are you on Ozempic?

A: I lost a lot of weight over the past year which has certainly lead to rumors of me being on Ozempic or dying of cancer. The real story is that I have been in chronic pain in my legs from my poor walking gait and chronic nausea from overstimulation of my damaged brain. Pain and nausea have killed my appetite for food. I don't recommend this as a weight loss strategy.

I don't have a positive opinion of drugs like Ozempic. They are expensive, come with side effects, and require you to remain on them for the rest of your life. I would rather change my lifestyle than be on those drugs. I am committed to being full natty.

Q: Who is your favorite country singer?

A: Waylon Jennings. For a country singer, he knew how to rock.

Q: Should the Legionaries of Christ be abolished?

A: This question comes courtesy of Taylor Marshall:

Should the Legionaries of Christ be Abolished?

On this issue, I am 100% in agreement with Taylor Marshall. The LC and Regnum Christi need to be gone. Why does the Church allow them to continue? That's ea$y to an$wer. When they get done abolishing the LC and RC, they need to get rid of Opus Dei as well. Cults should have no place in the Roman Catholic Church.

Q: Should I get a CB radio that has FM?

A: I wouldn't waste my money on getting a new CB radio that has FM capability. No one is talking on FM in the USA. Sideband is a must IMHO, and you should try and get a radio that has SSB capabilities. FM is not a negative, and I would buy one if I was buying a new radio. But I don't need a new radio. The simple fact is that CB radio makers wanted to sell their European radios to the American market without having to eliminate the FM for the sake of the FCC. I don't see that as a bad thing. Just know that tuning on FM will bring you a lot of dead air.

Q: What do you make of people who own second homes and vacation homes?

A: I don't think very highly of them. I remember a fellow who I respected very much until I learned that he had a second home at the beach for vacationing. I still respect him, but that respect dropped a few notches. The same applies to the various wealthy Boomers I know who have beach houses, lake houses, mountain cabins, condos, and on and on. I know folks who can't even afford a single home for their families, but these Boomers are living it up owning homes that are vacant for most of the year.

I am not against wealth, and I am not against leisure. I am against self-indulgence and waste. These vacation getaways are a self-indulgent waste. Modesty requires living not only within your means but refraining from lavish living. The reality is that the vacation home is a vanity meant to flaunt one's status and wealth. For the rest of us, we stay at Motel 6. We'll leave the light on for you.

Q: What is your view of TRT?

A: TRT stands for testosterone replacement therapy, but it amounts to a shine job on what I consider to be steroids. Some famous folks who look amazing are using TRT. Other amazing looking folks are not on TRT but prefer to go full natty. I think long term use of steroids is bad for your health. I'd rather be skinny and old than good looking and dead.

Q: Where did the "C." logo come from?

A: When I began using the internet, various services allowed you to create an avatar. Most people used a picture of their face like on Facebook or Twitter X. I didn't want to do this, so I decided I needed to make a personal brand to put in the place of an avatar.

A brand comes from searing a mark into the hide of a cow to show ownership. In the real world, I show ownership of a thing by putting my initial on it. I definitely do this with a styrofoam cup of coffee. I also use the initial for engraving on tools or writing with a Sharpie marker or paint pen. Most of the time, my full name is good, but this becomes difficult on the side of a wrench. That is where the use of the initial comes from.

I wanted a more stylish logo for online stuff, but I am not an artist. I chose to use the Courier font in bold to type the initial. This allows me to reproduce my logo at will with just a keyboard. It is less Nike Swoosh and more New Balance "N." The dot is to distinguish me from organizations that use a C logo like the Chicago Bears and the Chicago Cubs. If I ever become famous, it will make for a quick autograph. I doubt that day will ever come. It is also handy to sign emails to let my people know that it didn't come from a spambot.

Q: Where did the Noble Peasants come from?

A: Noble Peasants is the title of the blog my wife started and who is known there as Mrs. Peasant. I am Mr. Peasant. The inspiration comes from the Angelus painting on the top of the blog and also hangs in our living room above the fireplace just like the one on The Andy Griffith Show.

I use the peasant term for people who live a lifestyle of voluntary poverty. People who choose minimalism are known as minimalists, but I was fishing around for a term for those of us who have similar aims to the minimalists. "Voluntary peasant" fit the bill. It frees us from the OCD nature of the minimalist aesthetic and allows us to wear eclectic items from the thrift store.

I have run out of questions to answer for this edition of the Q & A. That is my outro for this one. I will have a new edition when I get some new questions. Stay tuned, Gentle Reader.
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