Ideas on Git, Built to Evolve

Who I Am

I’m John Call. I studied Electrical Engineering at Utah State University — a wildly diverse field I’m passionate about. As I was finishing my undergraduate degree in 2019, I had a stroke that dramatically altered my trajectory.

I’ve spent the years since navigating a constellation of chronic health conditions — some diagnosed, some still being investigated. These conditions limit my energy and cognitive capacity in ways that aren’t always predictable. That means this blog won’t release new articles on a regular schedule, but as time and energy permit. Some posts take me months to finish.

Those constraints shape how I work. I’ve learned to approach my health challenges the way I approach engineering problems — systematically, with data and iteration. It doesn’t always work, but it’s helped me build systems that let me function within my limitations and still produce work I care about.

A Letter Sparked This Site

In April 2025, I sent a letter to one of my senators about the state of healthcare in America. It was a letter I’d spent considerable time crafting — researched, structured, and deeply personal. But as I was preparing to publish it online and share it more broadly, I caught a mistake in one of my sources.

The error was minor, but it was enough to make me pause.

If I was going to share this message publicly, I needed to correct that mistake. And more importantly, I needed to do it honestly — in a way that didn’t try to erase the fact that a mistake had happened.

That’s what sparked this entire site.

The Ethics of Revision

I mess things up. Often. But honest thinking cannot happen without the freedom to make mistakes — iteration makes them worthwhile.

I write blog posts the way I write code: expecting them to be updated. My beliefs are provisional — they earn their place by withstanding time, pressure, and scrutiny. If a belief matters, it should adapt to new information.

This site reflects that. It gives me the freedom to revise old posts as my thinking evolves — without erasing what came before. I wouldn’t want to mislead others by failing to correct myself — or by burying those corrections in a separate post, disconnected from the original mistake. That would be intellectually dishonest: refusing to revise a belief when the evidence changes.

That’s why I built this system with Git at its core instead of using something like WordPress. I wanted infrastructure that lets me correct mistakes and acknowledge them. Every blog post lives in a public GitHub repository, complete with version history and commit messages explaining every edit.

These posts will evolve. Revisions aren’t arbitrary — they correct mistakes, improve clarity, or refine reasoning. If you’re curious what changed and why, the full history is there.

A Note on Transparency

I write under my own name, knowing some of what I publish here is more opinionated than what you’d typically find in a professional portfolio. But my perspective carries weight precisely because it’s rooted in lived experience — navigating healthcare systems, managing chronic illness, and watching policy decisions play out at ground level. Abstracting that into something impersonal would strip away what makes it valuable.

I hold myself to professional standards: clear reasoning, intellectual honesty, and good faith engagement. But I also believe in being straightforward about what I care about and why. If that shapes how someone views my work, I can live with that.

What You’ll Find Here

This site started with a letter I needed to get right. But it’s grown into something broader.

You’ll find policy essays arguing for healthcare reform. Technical writeups documenting projects I’ve built. Occasionally, something unhinged — like the time I got so frustrated with my luck in a board game that I overengineered a proof of how absurd it was.

The common thread: I approach problems systematically, whether I’m analyzing healthcare policy, engineering technical solutions, or proving statistical improbability. I build things, investigate how systems work or fail, and document what I learn.

The range is wide because my interests are wide. When it comes to controversial topics, I’m deliberate about what’s worth the risk of publishing.

My blog’s foundation is this: I write in public, and I revise in public. Posts evolve as my thinking does, and the version history shows exactly what changed and why. No need to take my word for anything — check the sources, see how the ideas evolved, come to your own conclusions.