We have been to Corsica several times, and there are several ways to travel to Corsica by ferry: We went to Nice, took the afternoon ferry and were in Bastia in the evening. The next time we took the night ferry from Savona and arrived in Bastia the next morning. And we also went to Livorno once, took the early morning ferry and were in Bastia by noon.
From Bastia, we first headed north on a 110 km coastal road with small villages and breathtaking views. First we came to ERBALUNGA with its massive tower on a rock by the sea has a picturesque location. Then we passed Maccinaggio, Cap Corse, Centuri-Port - a small romantic fishing port and center of lobster fishing - and continued via Pino to Nonza.
In NONZA the houses cluster around a rock that rises 160 m from the sea. We walked up to the Tour Pouline - a fortified tower from the 16th century. From there you can see the black beach, which makes a great contrast to the turquoise sea.
After we had explored the north, we drove from Bastia down the whole east coast - we made a stop at Moriani Plage with a beautiful sandy beach - to Porto Vecchio.
PORTO VECCHIO has a fantastic location and has a lively old town: the Genoese fortress from 1539 is situated on a hill. Porto Vecchio is the third largest city of Corsica, besides the flourishing tourism there is still the traditional salt mining and other trades especially in the suburbs. The malaria mosquitoes were wiped out in the 1950s, so that even in this area could be built without further ado. The old town consists of only four longitudinal and ten transverse streets, it is closed to traffic in the summer. At the Place de la République people like to drink their Pastis or Kir in the evening. In the old town there are many restaurants in various price ranges and boutiques partly with typical products of the country.
Many people come to Porto Vecchio for its beautiful beaches. BENEDUTTU PLAGE - a long fine sandy beach with a view of Punta di Chiappa and also of Porto Vecchio. A part of PLAGE CALA ROSSA is occupied by a luxury hotel, therefore the fine beach is accessible only from the western side. PALOMBAGGIA PLAGE with white sand and turquoise calm water - one of the most beautiful beaches of Corsica - is surrounded by red rocks. At ST. GUILIA PLAGE some hotels are settled in the meantime. Thus, the once paradisiacal bay has now become more of a commercial place. But the beach is still wonderfully bright and the water crystal clear. RODINARA PLAGE - a dreamlike round bay - one of the most beautiful of Corsica. Once only a dirt road led to the lagoon. Since a real road was built, this bay is very busy in the season.
From Porto Vecchio we made a tour to COL DE BAVELLA (1218 m high) - an impressive landscape. There are good hiking trails, e.g. to the Cumpudella (Trou de la Bombe), a huge hole in the rock face, where you are rewarded with an incredible view after a scramble. In season, of course, it is very busy there, and the "real" hikers come as early as possible in the morning.
Near the small village of L'Ospedale is the drinking water reservoir BARRAGE DE L'OSPEDALE. From there you can hike up to the 70 m high waterfall Piscia di Gallo - but it is more worthwhile in spring, when there is still enough water.
From Porto Vecchio we went on to BONIVACIO, one of the great attractions in Corsica - despite the many visitors. The upper town, where we stayed, is built on a 60 m high chalk rock plateau and still has a historical structure. We could see all the way to Sardinia from our hotel - it was beautiful weather.
The harbor is at the end of the long, narrow inlet. From there it is best to make a tour on foot. From the fortress walls you have a fantastic view of the city, the coast and the sea and all the way to Sardinia. On the harbor promenade there is a sea aquarium in a natural grotto. The shore road leads to the fishing port and the ferry port,
The upper town is reached through the 16th century Porte de Gênes. From the Jardin des Vestiges one has the most beautiful view over the harbor. It is hard to walk from the lower town to the upper town, because it is quite steep and with many stairs.
The journey continued to the extreme southwest, the land of blood vengeance - still until 1840. SARTÈNE - the "most Corsican of all Corsican towns" - is an interesting old town, which is virtually stuck on a rock. Almost no ray of sunlight reaches the winding narrow streets, and the narrow multi-story houses sometimes have window holes like sinister defense towers. The center of the old town is the Place de la Libération with some restaurants where you can sit outside and enjoy your drink.
From Sartène we drove to PROPRIANO. This place was discovered late by the tourists, there is a nice promenade between the marina and the pier, where it is lively especially in the evening. Propriano is located on the Gulf of Valinco, here the rivers Taravo, Baracci and Rizzanese flow. Right next to the lighthouse is the beautiful beach Plage du Lido.
On a scenic coastal road you drive from Propriano to PUNTO DE CAMPOMARO. Here is still an unspoiled stretch of coast with calm turquoise water and bizarre granite rocks. Above the small village of Campomoro you can see a 16th century watchtower.
AJACCIO is the administrative center and capital of Corse du Sud. The city with its southern flair has a beautiful old town with the citadel and many restaurants and stores. Ajaccio is probably best known as the birthplace of Napoléon, whose statue can be seen at Place Maréchal Foch. In the evening it becomes lively in the alleys of the Genoese old town with many bars and restaurants.
Unfortunately, the citadel can only be visited as part of an organized guided tour. Worth seeing is the church "Notre-Dame-de-la-Miséricorde" with a large dome, where Napoleon I was baptized. There is of course also a Casa Bonaparte. In the new town, you can still find some magnificent houses on the Avenue de Paris or the Cours Grandval, where there are often stores and boutiques.
Northwest of Ajaccio one comes to the POINTE DE LA PATARA. You can easily walk to the Genoese tower from 1608 from the parking lot. From there you have a beautiful view of the Iles Sanguinaires with the lighthouse. From the parking lot you can also make a coastal hike to the north. There are beautiful views of the sea everywhere and you can walk down to the beach at Capo de la Fena to cool off. However, the surf is quite strong.
The view was magnificent on the CHEMIN DES CRÈTES, but it was also very difficult to even find an "entry" to this trail. And besides, the Macchi was partly so dense that you had to be careful not to hurt yourself on the thorny bushes.
Especially in the south of Ajaccio there are beautiful beaches. First of all there is PORTICCIO with its long wide beach. Porticcio is now a large seaside resort with good infrastructure.
Then comes the bay with the long PLAGE D'AGOSTA with a view of the Isolella peninsula. In the next bay there is the fine sandy Plage de Ruppione between rocks with quite high waves.
And then comes my absolute favorite beach with fine light sand and crystal clear water - SOLE E MARE, and I hope that there will not also be larger hotel and apartment buildings there.
A beautiful small lonely sandy bay with calm water can be found at PLAGE DE PORTIGLIOLO. North of Ajaccio are the beaches PlLAGE SCUDO and PLAGE MARINELLO, very popular with the locals because they are not too far from the city.
From Ajaccio you can make an excursion to PORTO POLLO. On the way we went through the mountains, where we "got lost" a few times, because there were no signs, and we could only drive by "feeling". Porto Pollo is located on the Gulf of Valinco and has a fine sandy beach with many picturesque round rocks. In summer, a lot of people come here. At the end of September however many things are already closed or will be closed.
A recommendable tour south of Ajaccio is the ROUTE DES COLS. Over various passes and through the largest eucalyptus forest on the island, you come to the small village of Coti Chiavari, 486 m high, with a pretty little church. From there you also have beautiful views of the mountains to the sea.
On a hiking tour, we headed towards Corte and then to the small village of Cuttoli-Corticchiato, continuing to the idyllically situated hamlet of San Petru at 888 m above sea level. From there we went to the MONTE ARAGNASCU, a somewhat arduous tour in the blazing sun. But we were rewarded with a beautiful view of Ajaccio, the Gulf and the Gravonatal.
In the GRAVONA VALLEY is the village of Bocognano, from where you can also hike well. We came on the poorly signposted "Chemin", whereby we were also surprised by rain.
Interesting was that we were accompanied all the way first by several dogs, then later one remained. When we eventually had enough of the rain and the bad path and walked back, we encountered some wild boars which did not look very "friendly". The dog started barking at them. And indeed, they sought the distance. It looked like the dog was trying to protect us somehow. Down in the village we met the owner of the dog - the older man invited us spontaneously for coffee - and he told us that his dog was often on the way as a "companion" for hikers.
Another hiking tour led us first to the GORGES DE PRUNELLI and to the reservoir Lac de Tolla, which supplies Ajaccio with water. From there we went to the large farming village of Bastelica, the gateway to the high mountains. From here, many hiking trails lead into the mountains and to some waterfalls.
Another excursion we made towards the north over the Col de San Bastiano to the Golf de la Liscia to CARGÈSE. This place with a small harbor is located on the southern slope of a headland. Worth seeing is the Greek church "Eglise greque" from the 19th century with old icons. North of Cargèse are of course again beautiful sandy beaches.
From Ajaccio in the direction of Corte we looked at the CASCADE DU VOILE DE LA MARIÉe, where the water normally plunges 150 m into the depth. It was quite a climb and then, unfortunately, the waterfall didn't even have too much water at the end of September.
Through beautiful pine forests we came towards Corte past the famous PONT DU VECCHIU, built in 1927 by Gustave Eiffel. Until 1999 this was the only connection across the gorge, but now there is a modern bridge.
CORTE has the only university in Corsica with about 4000 students. The old town, rich in tradition, is situated below a rock with an old fortress built in the 11th century. In 1962-83 this fortress was used by the Foreign Legion. From the Belvedère viewpoint near the citadel, there is a beautiful view of the mountains and the surroundings of Corte.
Also worth seeing is Fontaine des Quatre-Canons, a colossal fountain that served as a water supply for the upper town in times of siege. On Cours Paoli you can find restaurants, bakeries and many other stores. On the Cours Patrimonial, there are some arts and crafts stores. The 17th century church Eglise de l'Annonciation is one of the oldest buildings in Corte.
From Corte we drove along a narrow road through a beautiful mountain landscape to the RESTONICA VALLEY, a nature reserve with many Corte pine trees. By car, you can drive to the parking lot at the Bergerie de Grotelle. The ascent to Lake Melo was quite difficult, you had to climb over many large stones, sometimes you didn't know at all how to continue and had to climb back, and so on. After about 2 hours we had made it and were at the Melo mountain lake. After a 30-minute rest in the sun, we then needed for the descent again 2 hours. Because with one of my trekking shoes the sole loosened, and I had to hold them together in a makeshift way with the shoelace...
From Corte we went first through the NIOLA VALLEY with numerous hiking trails. For a long time this area was only accessible by mule trails. Here wild boars ran across our path. You can see them especially in autumn when the chestnuts fall from the trees.
The large village of EVISA is located in the middle of chestnut forests and is a popular destination. Here begins (or ends) the hiking trail through the wild gorge of Spelunca. Through a beautiful mountain landscape and a 14 km long granite gorge we came to the GORGE DE SPELUNCA, an impressive gorge where you can hike very well - either from Evisa or from Ota.
In the small very popular town of PORTO at the mouth of the Porto River, we had a beautiful view of the Genoese Tower, the Gulf and the mountains from our hotel. The angular Genoese Tower on a headland is the landmark of Porto.
From Porto we drove to the CALANCHES DE PIANA, which start 8 km behind Porto. The granite rocks here are eroded by wind and water into the most bizarre shapes. The colors vary depending on the time of day, in the evening for example bright red. From the old mule trail - Sentier Muletier - you have great views of the rock world. There are also other trails - e.g. La Corniche.
Then we drove to PIANA, perched on a 434 m cliff, which can call itself "un des plus beaux villages de France". The only sandy beach in the area is the Plage d'Arone in a beautiful crescent shaped bay with only a few people.
From Porto, the best way to get to CALVI is to take the coastal road, which is very winding but takes you through some beautiful scenery on the Gulf of Porto. From our accommodation in Calvi we had a great view of the fortress and the Gulf of Calvi.
Calvi, the pearl of the north, is a well known and popular vacation center. Very nice are the lively alleys in the lower town and the harbor quays. In the alleys of the lower town and the harbor quay you can stroll nicely and also find restaurants and stores. The church "Sainte Marie Majeure" with a polygonal ground plan is striking. The first Christian chapel on this place was built already in the 4th century, subsequent churches were destroyed several times. The present church was built in 1774. Outside the town on the Gulf of Calvi there is a long narrow sandy beach, the water here gets deeper only slowly - ideal for small children.
The citadel "Bastion Spinchone" is the landmark of the city, you can walk around it on a ring of walls and have beautiful views of the city and the sea. The citadel was built on Roman foundations and is the oldest fortified building in Calvi.
Worth seeing is the church of Saint-Jean-Baptiste in the center of the citadel. Originally built in the 13th century, the church was largely destroyed by the explosion of a powder tower in 1567 and subsequently rebuilt in the Baroque style.
A beautiful beach near Calvi is the Plage d'Argentella, about 1 km long, in the bay of Crovani. You can get to the peninsula on a dirt road. You can make a nice but strenuous hike there. From a parking bay you have a beautiful view of the peninsula.
A nicely situated and rather quiet place is l'ILE-ROUSSEL with a small harbor and the Genoese tower and lighthouse on the peninsula "La Pietra". The village owes its name to this offshore island, which has now been turned into a peninsula by a dam and turns red at sunset.
L'Ile Rousse was laid out in 1765 in a rectangular street pattern around the harbor and is said to have the mildest winter climate in Corsica. In the alleys of the old town of L'Ile-Rousse there are several small shops selling souvenirs, jewelry, clothing, wine, etc. In the Marché Couvert there is a market in the morning. In the surroundings of Ile-Rousse there are many light sandy beaches.
Between Calvi and L'Ile-Rousse in the small village of Algajola there is a very beautiful wide and 1.5 km long beach - PLAGE D'AREGNO. In high summer, the beach is apparently very crowded. When we were there in mid-September, we had the beach to ourselves.
SAINT FLORENT is located in the north of Corsica on the wide bay of the same name - in winter an idyllic fishing village. Since the place is very popular, the population increases tenfold in the summer. A point of attraction for tourists is the large marina. In the center you can find bars, restaurants and many souvenir stores. St. Florent is also called "St. Tropez of the island" because of its special flair. On a panoramic road above Saint Florent one has again and again beautiful views of mountains and sea.
On the way to Bastia you can make a detour to the local mountain of Bastia - the 960 m high SERRA DI PIGNO. On a clear day you have a good panoramic view over both sides of Cap Corse .
BASTIA is the most important port for ferries from the French and Italian mainland and also for freight traffic. Bastia is the biggest commercial and economic center of Corsica with an industrial zone. But Bastia is also a busy center of Corsican everyday life. The Place Saint Nicolas with plane trees and palm trees is 300 meters long and 90 meters wide, making it one of the largest squares in France. The beach Plage Arinella, located south of the city, is very wide and long, but unfortunately not very attractive.
The heart of Bastia's Terra Vecchia district is the horseshoe-shaped Vieux Port with the church of Saint-Jean-Baptiste in the background. Walking north through the narrow streets, you come to the Place de l'Hôtel de Ville, where a market is held on weekends.
Around the dock there are many restaurants in all price ranges. When we are in Bastia, we always have our aperitif at a bistro where we have a nice view of the small harbor and the church.
The citadel was built by Genoese in 1380. There are the magnificently renovated Governor's Palace, the Cathedral of Sainte-Marie-de l'Assomption - a Genoese Baroque building erected in 1604-1619 - and the small chapel Oratoire de la ConfrIère de la Sainte-Croix, where you can see a cross made of black ebony in a side chapel.
The palace was the seat of the Genoese governors between the 15th and 18th centuries, today it houses the Ethnographic Museum.

There are tons of online content on how to buy real estate. Sponsored media articles by developers, brokerage firms, property listing portals, land aggregators and any other entity that has vested interest in primary real estate activity. Interestingly, there is not half as much chatter about how best to sell one’s property. In reality, a significant proportion of home buyers in India are typically upgraders – we recycle our existing old property to buy a new one, either larger in size, at a better location or one with better amenities or combination of these factors.
Research reports estimate that around 3 lakh residential units are transacted in an average year among the top 7 to 8 Indian cities. The thumb rule is primary transactions are typically a third of the overall transaction activity, which could put the number of residential resale transactions anywhere between 5 – 7 lakh homes with a market anywhere between 4 lakh crores to 7 lakh crores, a staggering figure that could amount to over 2% of our GDP. Add tier-2 cities and towns, this number could be 20-30% higher.
Unfortunately, this large market gains low media attention as the only entity with business interest in this resale market is your neighborhood broker. Large real estate brokerage firms prefer to work in the primary market as it is significantly easier for them to leverage the developers’ marketing muscle and generate faster returns on their invested capital, compared to a fragmented resale market where they need to generate all marketing horsepower by themselves.
Market statistics aside, let’s dive right in on what is your best approach as an individual seller in driving a successful resale transaction:

1. Property valuation is not about hearsay anymore. Use the right data points.
2. Package it right. Invest in staging. Take cues from developer show flats.
3. Use services of home-flipping/ resale assistance companies if you're upgrading
4. Be present during buyer viewings. Take a proactive role to explain prospective buyers rationale for the asking valuation.

Detailed thoughts shared in the post-
https://indiaproperty.substack.com/p/maximizing-gains-in-reselling-your

Hey y'all, it's your boy here to talk about SHIB and why we should all be paying attention. Now, I know what you're thinking: "Oh great, another meme coin that's gonna crash and burn." But hear me out, this one's got some real potential.
First off, let's talk about the burn rate. As I mentioned earlier, SHIB has a burn mechanism that decreases the total supply of coins over time. And get this, if we could increase the burn rate to 15% per month, we could see SHIB pop to more than just $1. That's right, if we all move at the same time and start burning our coins, we could see the price skyrocket overnight.
But how do we increase the burn rate to 15%? It's simple: we all need to start burning our coins. If we coordinate our efforts and all start burning our coins at the same time, we could drive the burn rate up and cause the price to soar.
Let's do the math here. If just 1 million people burned 10% of their SHIB coins, that would be 400 billion coins burned. That's a huge decrease in supply, which could cause the demand for SHIB to skyrocket. And if the demand goes up, the price goes up too.
But let's talk about the potential gains here. If you were to invest just $100 in SHIB and it hit $1, you'd be looking at a 10,000% return on your investment. That's not a typo, folks. Ten. Thousand. Percent. and at todays investment you would make no joke 9 mill.
And here's the kicker: banks like SVD have failed us in the past, but they might just be the key to SHIB's success. If SHIB starts to gain momentum and banks start to take notice, they could start investing in it too. This influx of investment would only drive the price up further.
And let's not forget about the failing American dollar. People are starting to lose faith in traditional currencies and are looking for alternatives. That's where SHIB comes in. If we can rally behind this new currency and start burning our coins, we could start a gold rush unlike anything we've ever seen before.
In conclusion, SHIB has the potential to be more than just a meme coin. With a coordinated effort to increase the burn rate and a growing distrust in traditional currencies, we could see SHIB's price skyrocket overnight.
The current US national debt is over $28 trillion. That's trillion with a T. And it's only getting bigger every year.
Now, let's take a look at the US money supply. The total amount of US dollars in circulation is around $20 trillion. But get this: the Federal Reserve has been printing more money like crazy to keep up with the debt. In fact, the money supply has increased by over 30% in just the past year alone.
So what does this all mean? It means that the value of the US dollar is slowly but surely decreasing. When there's too much money in circulation, it loses its value. And when people start to lose faith in a currency, they look for alternatives.
Enter cryptocurrency. With the rise of Bitcoin, Ethereum, and other popular coins, people are starting to turn to crypto as a way to protect their wealth from the declining value of the dollar. In fact, some financial experts are predicting that crypto could replace traditional currencies altogether in the next decade or two.
So there you have it. With the government's out-of-control spending and the rapid increase in the money supply, it's only a matter of time before people start rushing to crypto as a safer alternative.
Here's a basic equation that shows the potential for increased adoption of cryptocurrency in the event of a US dollar collapse:
X + Y = Z
Where:

• X represents the total amount of US dollars in circulation
• Y represents the total value of assets held by banks that have failed (e.g. Lehman Brothers, Washington Mutual, etc.)
• Z represents the potential amount of capital that could flow into the cryptocurrency market in the event of a USD collapse

Now, let's assume that the US dollar collapses and banks begin to fail. If we use some rough estimates, we can see just how much capital could potentially flow into the cryptocurrency market:

• X = $20 trillion (the total amount of US dollars in circulation)
• Y = $2.1 trillion (the total value of assets held by banks that have failed since the 2008 financial crisis)

When we add these values together, we get:

• Z = $22.1 trillion

That's a massive amount of potential capital that could flow into the cryptocurrency market in the event of a USD collapse. And when you consider that the total market cap of all cryptocurrencies combined is currently around $2 trillion, you can see just how much of an impact this could have. again you can re run the numbers on your own as I just did this with my quant friend really quick for a speculative analysis on how major cash could pump this price overnight (none of this is financial advice so yea) also I could see this every day becoming a reality because lets face it US is mad dumb idk how we are literly ok with killing our economy just to seem strong for a month and then we gotta pump more usd. anyways feedback would be great and if people could check our math to thx!

Interestingly, the Bible clearly says God’s New Earth (Jerusalem) will be ruled by children. Greta Thunberg represents this new generation, striving to promote and sustain life on our planet. Here, I share my notes on her most recent (February 2023) work The Climate Book, with the hope in my heart that her voice will be carried far. *[My own Christian perspective is weaved into her scientific outlook.]
To begin, Carbon Dioxide (C02) is a basic building block of life, some of which has been stored underground from plants from long ago. Over 2 million years ago, too much C02 caused a mass extinction. Afterwards, trees were virtually gone. It took millions of years for Earth's biosphere and life to recover.
People have been farming for over 10,000 years, depleting the nutrients of the land. Between 1945 and 2000, the number of people tripled. Since the 1990s, we have dumped more climate changing toxins into our environment than throughout all of human history. We consume more, due to this “great acceleration.” In the 20th century, people accelerated their use of fossils fuels.
The science is solid. The great acceleration occurred with the industrial revolution. We have filled our oceans with plastics, and are destabilizing our own ecosystem. This is like sawing off the branch we are sitting on!
Nature cycles carbon, but global warming can be exacerbated by the release of carbon from the soil due to warming. We have knocked the natural balance off, due to our use of stored fuels and our own carbon emissions. Since the industrial revolution, our economy is reliant upon fossil fuels and non-sustainable practices.
We must rebalance our planet by controlling our own behaviors and emissions. If we continue with current practices, we will warm our planet by 4 degrees by the end of this century.
What will this be like? Extreme heat waves will occur yearly, along with drought and famine. Sea ice will disappear, revealing more of the ocean.
Climate change directly causes the death of coral reefs, and if they collapse they will also take with them millions of ocean species. We may be causing the 6th extinction. Coral reefs become bleached due to warmer waters as their colorful algae is expelled, threatening over 30% of ocean species. Right now, three billion people rely upon our oceans for food. We need to farm our oceans sustainably (such as for seaweed). Fishermen are currently exploiting 90% of available fisheries. One billion people depend on fish for omega-3 fatty acids and more.
Why don’t more people care? Many do not perceive a threat because it is slow and complicated. We have exploited and distanced ourselves from Nature. Even our religions have promoted the false notion that this world is to be devalued, and we are separated from our Creator. Many feel a void, with no God within. Many try to fill this emptiness with ceaseless products. Our entire worldview and our daily habits must change.
Today 20% of California’s power use goes toward providing water. We can take better measures, like drawing from ocean water.
Factory and human waste is polluting our waters. Riots have broken out, such as in India, over access to water. Who is taking this seriously? The public? The government? It seems almost no one.
Our government could pass new laws, but they do not. People are also self-interested, and rarely act for the social good if it takes from them in any way. This age is characterized by selfishness and greed, as even the Bible warns in Revelation. Tragically and shockingly, the fossil fuel industry is receiving 11 million in subsidies each minute.
The Industrial revolution, rise of science and decrease in religious morality have all compelled these trends forward. We need a new ethic prioritizing life. Religious leaders must support life, not the Death Culture which exalts the self (no matter the consequences).
We are literally obsessed with culture wars that distract us from our common interests in protecting our planet and making future generations possible.
What stands in the way of a sustainable future for human life? Should consumers even have a choice to purchase destructive products, like plastic containers for single-uses? Should meat even be available? If we really took this seriously, what measures would we take, and what laws would our government pass?
One problem is how some lives are valued more than others, and a select few are exploiting and making life impossible for many. Those in power do not tend to question their privilege!
GLORIFICATION OF THE SELF We have convinced ourselves that we deserve our carbon-rich lifestyles. If we remain hedonistic and not prudent, the poorest and most vulnerable to climate change will suffer the most.
And, Christ will judge us based on how the least among us is treated. Do we contemplate this with each plastic bottle we toss out, or plane trip we take? Isn’t living sustainably Christian behavior, reflecting the wisdom of the Holy Spirit and our living God?
Our future grandchildren will pay and suffer for our convenience now. But, we glorify the self. We glorify the pleasure of the individual and freedom to drive our species over a cliff. Many arguments from the ‘other side’ boil down to a call for the freedom to die.
CORRUPT LEADERSHIP Our leaders are taking us over a cliff. George W. Bush pulled out of the Kyoto protocol, given it was not ratified prior to his taking power. He chose to serve corporate interests (even over human life). Bush declared that the American way of life is not negotiable (1992). Since he spoke these words over 30 years ago, our emissions have increased by 60%, creating an existential crisis.
Given such attitudes and priorities, we have a limited carbon budget to spend in the next few years if we wish to avoid the most dire consequences of global warming. We need to raise the cost of carbon, forcing consumers to pay more for products that are heavy in carbon pollution. We also need to change our diets. We must get our priorities straight.
In 2009, corrupt lobbying destroyed an act that would have helped. But the fossil fuel industry, driven by greed, spends billions on disinformation and distraction. They poison public debate with dirty money. Leaders set non-binding targets, then fail to reach the goals. Their true priorities are economic growth and profit. It seems to the public that actions are being taken, but they are not taking serious measures at all.
The richest ten percent contribute 50% of our total C02 emissions. We need to restructure our economy to be sustainable. The idea of infinite growth is not possible on our finite planet.
We are all in the same crisis, but not the same boat. The only hope is in speaking truth to power and adjusting our behaviors accordingly.
CURRENT SITUATION There is about 1 carbon molecule for every 2,000 other molecules in our atmosphere, so carbon is difficult to locate for removal. To stop putting carbon into our air is much cheaper and better than paying for carbon removal later, which would cost trillions upon trillions. Why should we allow companies to continue business as usual, passing cost and problems to future generations?
Climate change is responsible for over 2 trillion in economic costs. Economic damage from climate change will cost over 3x the amount the pandemic cost. For example, insurance rates will rise and the real estate market will suffer due to not being able to sell in coastal and impacted areas.
Worldwide, waste is increasing at an alarming rate and 20% of methane emissions are due to our waste. We need to engage in more intelligent practices. For example, we can compost (which reduces waste in landfills that leads to methane emissions). Composting will also nourish our gardens.
Methane removal, through oxidation, is needed. Half of our methane is produced from human behaviors like cattle agriculture.
C02 is forever, while methane is temporary. Methane is 20-30x more potent in warming our atmosphere than C02, but it dissipates over 40 years while C02 will remain thousands upon thousands of years. C02 is also cumulative.
Given this, we must stop our emissions of greenhouse gases immediately. If we reach zero emissions, it will drastically reduce global warming. Carbon dioxide is at its highest in 2 billion years, due to our behaviors. We are experimenting with our own lives and planet!
Toxins accumulate in sea creatures, damaging the whole ecosystem. C02 enters the blood of fish, affecting acidification. Acidity has already risen 30%, producing hazards for marine life, like for coral reefs and in decreasing calcification in the shells of sea life. Shopping bags can strangle sea animals and their stomachs are found full of microplastics.
The Amazon forest works as a giant air conditioner, cooling our planet. It absorbs C02. But temperatures in the Amazon are increasing and it is getting more dry due to the expansion of farming and deforestation.
Aerosols like smoke and other tiny particles in our air affect our global temperature. Some cool our atmosphere by reflecting the sun, even dropping temperatures by 0.5 percent. Without aerosols, our atmosphere would be hotter. But air pollution is also hazardous, coming from our cars and factories, for example.
Clouds reflect sunlight back into space, but can also insulate heat like a blanket. Reduced clouds over our oceans force the ocean to absorb the sunlight, thus contributing to global warming.
Melting ice caps no longer reflect the sun, leading even to more warming. Our glaciers are melting. The Himalayas provide drinking water to billions, yet will melt by 1/3. We have enough ice to raise our ocean levels the equivalent of a 20 story building. We have already lost the equivalent of Mt. Everest in ice sheets. This melting will lead to coastal devastation for those living near our oceans. Our oceans will rise by a meter by 2100.
Oceans absorb about 90% of the excess heat produced by global warming. While oceans absorb about ¼ of C02, warming produces less absorption. We must enhance our oceans ability to absorb C02. Even a 1.5 degree increase in temperature is a great risk to our future survival. Our weather has extremes, like the freezing waters and the heatwave that killed many in 2021.
Human made climate change has devastating consequences. For example, Hurricane Harvey cost billions and the severity was 15% greater due to human made climate change. Sadly, 20 million people were displaced by flooding in 2020.
Distressingly, we have all witnessed that even minor disruptions in our supply chain are devastating. Thus, climate change must be averted at all costs.
Our temperature has already warmed by 1%, which all reputable science agrees upon. This is already causing damage right now. Heat waves and air pollution lead to heart related and respiratory deaths, not just heat strokes. Millions die per year due to air pollution. The warming climate also triggers diseases like Maleria and will kill millions. These diseases are being seen in areas not seen before.
The increase of C02 in our atmosphere is even making our crops less nutritious. Specifically, soils lack zinc and protein. Zinc deficiency then leads to a reduced immune system. Millions more will have an iron and folate deficiency due to current C02 levels. Iron deficiency leads to premature births.
GOING FORWARD So then, what is our best path forward for survival? We have to stick to a carbon budget per year to reach our goal of only increasing the temperature by 1.5 degrees Celsius. The carbon budget, to stay within the agreements of the Paris accord, will be used up in a few years. But noone seems to be sounding any alarms. Is this because our media is controlled by the elite?
Politicians still respond to mammon ($) with no concern, really, for life. Congressman Manchin singlehandedly rewrote climate legislation in 2021, even with all aware that he has millions invested in fossil fuels, like the influential Koch brothers.
Exxon Mobil has been well aware of the consequences of their actions for decades, yet put forth false discussions into the public sphere. They purposefully stalled for time, which we do not have.
The King of Saudi Arabia has unbelievable wealth and power, but when we move to solar and wind energy power will not be so concentrated. This may lead to a more hopeful and democratic future that serves the actual interests of the people. We need to turn to our Sun. We need to now rely upon energy from heaven, not from hell. It is not that we do not have the money to change. It is that those benefiting from our current Death Economy do not have the will to change.
Many will promote carbon capture technologies, but the reality is hidden. There are only about 20 carbon capture facilities operating right now, some shown to produce more carbon than they capture. We can use fossil fuels only until around 2050, unless technology like carbon capture is seriously invested in (and not just used as a talking point). Many CEOs deflect attention from change right now, promising (like snake oil salesmen) to develop sustainable technology in the future. (Interestingly, blue hydrogen can be made from carbon capture.)
Solving our crisis calls for us putting less demand upon our energy system, such as in consuming less. We need to return to more of a natural, Earth based way of life. Do we all really need to extend our days, with artificial light, past the natural hours of sunlight? Must we eat meat? Wherever there is a roof, there is a potential for a solar panel. Wind parks can also be built in offshore locations, where they are less disruptive.
Green hydrogen is a fuel that leaves only water behind and is usually produced by methane. But it costs more to produce than it makes. Thus, green hydrogen requires an abundance of cheap energy.
Hydropower facilities use water flow to produce energy, while nuclear power splits elements for energy, and produces around 10% of the world’s energy. But, a nuclear power factory that just opened in 2022 took 16 years to open. And, nuclear power can have disastrous consequences and can be the target of terrorism.
Biomass energy creates energy by burning wood or other biological matter. But, it can take hundreds of years for forests to regrow. Thus, we need to slow down this process and aim to stop burning things on Earth for energy.
Geothermal heat takes energy from the Earth's heat, producing around 17% of greenhouse gases. But it is limited in that there are limited planetary hot spots. In air capture measures, carbon is pumped underground, like in BECS. BECS pumps carbon underground and provides electricity from the burning of plant matter, which is cost effective compared to other measures. Enhanced weathering is also a promising technique, such as exposing crushed rocks and minerals to the carbon in the air to facilitate natural processes.
Finally, some promote geoengineering, which is the manipulation of our atmosphere, such as reducing the warming effects of our sun. Some support spraying sun-blocking aerosols or coating ice to protect it. This is actually risky to our ecosystems. Solar engineering is too dangerous, given once the process is started it must continue indefinitely (and political regimes can change). If suddenly stopped, warming will occur to an even greater degree than if no measures were ever taken.
REAL SOLUTIONS Elites consume and produce more than most. Our problems are that of inequality as much as pollution. If the top 10% (financially) only produced the carbon footprint of the bottom 90% of global emitters, 1/3 of carbon would be reduced. Thus, carbon budgets will affect the filthy rich the most. The most wealthy are contributing a shockingly disproportionate amount of pollution. The average person produces 6.5 tons of emissions per year, with the wealthy producing 75 tons.
Rich countries know they are liable for their pollution. They, of course, do not want to focus discussions on responsibility. The global economy could shrink by 18% due to the climate crisis.
We need to reduce emissions, restoring soils and forests. We need to protect our soil from tilling, pesticides and depleted nutrients. We have found that enriching soil with nitrogen has polluted our water. We need new practices. How can we sustainably grow food? How can we facilitate new ideas?
PLANT-BASED DIET We know that as affluence increases, so does meat consumption. But more efficient use of water and land, such as in transitioning to plant-based diets and farms, is our only viable path forward. This would support health of our land, souls and bodies!
Plant-based foods have the lowest impact, while meats can impact our environment over 20x more. Every 50 calories that go into meat (feed) produces 1 calorie as human food. 4x the size of Brazil in land is used for grazing cattle, the greatest use of land (even above forests). And, 20% of gas emissions are due to how we use land, mainly for agriculture. Our current food production also causes 30% of greenhouse gases. We need to shift to a plant-based diet. We can feed our communities using 76% less land. One burger, which gives 10 grams of protein, uses resources like land and water that would provide many more nutritious calories if the same land was instead devoted to vegetable and fruit gardens.
Turning away from meat would not only help us feed more people, it would also help reduce diseases in our bodies and help reduce carbon pollution. Specifically, 350 million tons per year in emissions would be reduced if we shunned meat. Becoming vegetarian is the single most impactful action you can take to help.
We are eating more calories, when we need to consume less. Specifically, we need to reduce pork and beef calories by 80% in wealthy countries. Currently, 1/3 of all food produced is not consumed. We must make smarter use of our land and reduce our food consumption and waste. Humans have directly reduced biodiversity in shaping the land for our purposes, such as in agricultural practices. We farm around 30% of land now. It would take far less land to farm if we stopped using land for food for cows and other “products” for the meat industry.
Given all of this, how can it be that $500 billion in government subsidies go into agriculture that is not sustainable? We need a political and spiritual revolution. We need significant behavioral and technological changes immediately. For example, if we lowered the speed limit, we would save over 5 tons of carbon emissions annually (just in Germany). We also need cities that are efficiently constructed, and need to reduce unnecessary travel. We can use online meetings rather than physically traveling to meetings.
We can also encourage college students to prepare solutions for our problems, instead of preparing for the job market! This kind of free thought would be supported by a Universal Basic Income.
Even in 2021, 95% of transport relies upon oil (including cars, planes and ships). We need to curb the sale of SUVs, which produce great emissions. Why are they so popular? We need to encourage lighter vehicles, banning SUV advertising. We need to wake up!
Renewable energy is now the cheapest form of energy. Renewable energy makes more sense, yet those who have vested interests in fossil fuels do not want change and actively work against change. Still today, 1.446 billion vehicles run on petrol. EVs are a good step, but we really need electric public transit.
We need to outlaw all petrol engine vehicles starting 2025, and more. By 2035, there will be 2 billion private vehicles. We need free public transportation, like trains, trams, busses and ferries.
We also really need to buy less. We can reuse and repair our items and vehicles, rather than buying new things. Americans spend $5,400 per year on impulse purchases, and studies show that more ‘stuff’ does not equate with greater levels of happiness. We can share and borrow items, as a true community. This is also Christian behavior.
We can wear second-hand clothing. The clothing industry fills landfills! Electric bikes are also good alternatives to our current ways. We can buy only energy efficient appliances and can avoid over packaged foods, meat and dairy.
We need to transform our food system and plant green gardens everywhere possible. We need home garden and trees and biodiversity in cemeteries, parks and public areas as well as home backyards.
Biodiversity protects us by removing C02 from the air and purifying our waters. It helps mitigate disease and even protects our health. We need to support biodiverse land because it absorbs more C02. This is a real action we can take.
We also need to let forests grow and stop cutting young trees for wood. Before the Industrial revolution, people burned mostly wood for energy. Industrialization did relieve the deforestation occurring at the beginning of the 19th century by turning to fossil fuel energy instead of wood burning. After the development of coal burning machines, pollution killed more people than we realize. We do have to stop burning fossil fuel.
Today the ability of a forest to store carbon depends on many factors. First, we need to replace trees at the rate carbon would have been captured if wood was not harvested. If a tree is not cut, how much carbon would it capture over its lifetime?
We need to reduce wood harvesting. Specifically, we can harvest from constructed tree farms, but also allow other trees to grow old, to support biodiversity. We need no till farming, a plant based diet, biodiverse forests and more. We need drastic carbon emission cuts now.
We have already reduced the populations of birds, reptiles and insects by 2/3 since the 1970s. Sadly, 60% of all songbirds have disappeared in the last decades.
We are killing our ecosystem. Pollinators (like bees) are dying, thus leading to our deaths due to not being able to eat vegetables (which increases heart disease due to poor diet and high meat consumption).
But, are people even able to respond to new information? Are we able to act on new data? We will see.
Buying less means we do not have to earn as much. Our world will be better and we will feel better. We need to take the status away from consuming products. There are websites devoted to revealing the true carbon footprint of popular products, like: www.ethicalconsumer.com
Profits motivate corporations to distract the public from the truth. We are not told how unhealthy certain common things are, even in the long term. It is not in their interest (they mistakenly think) to be honest and change to a more sustainable economy. Of course, God sees all.
Politicians are short sighted and are not addressing the crisis at all. We need “honesty, integrity and courage” (Greta Thunberg). But, many are still driven by mammon (money) to the point of our death. Many politicians are corrupt, with our blood on their hands. They have the blood of all future children who will never breathe in God's air of life, given lobbying, on their hands. How is lobbying legal? Our government does not work for the people, but for power and mammon. The rich are served and our Death Culture continues, while we continue to consume dead flesh.
Our politicians must lead us in a new direction, no matter if it is aligned with popular public opinion. Politicians need to communicate our true situation and our media needs to direct us to a more healthy future.
“The time for little steps in the right direction is over. We are in a crisis” – Greta.
Promises to become climate neutral by 2050 puts everyone back to sleep. If they really cared, drastic changes would be made right now instead of distracting our focus, according to Greta Thunberg.
“It matters what we say, but it matters even more what we do” - Greta.
We cannot act only nationally, given we are on one planet and are all affected. For example, the pandemic could not be kept to one nation. We must address our crisis as a world, not as isolated nations.
Geopolitical tensions stand in the way of true international negotiations. Nations are driven by a will to power. We need a new base ethic of valuing life and caring about each other (across nations and groups).
We need to work together to address the planetary crisis. Instead, each nation is actually preparing for conflict, based on the finances devoted to building military forces. Our money shows our true priorities.
Greta Thunberg says we need to just simply “tell it like it is.” We need to stand on our moral ground and be open to innovative ideas and solutions. She suggests many ideas for change.
First, we must start treating this climate crisis like a crisis. We must get our priorities straight. We must also admit our economic systems have failed. We need to face reality to be able to create a better world.
The best way to absorb more carbon is to leave forests alone. “A living tree must be valued more than a dead one,” explains Greta Thunberg. Scientists recommend we protect at least 30% of nature. Currently, only 3% of the Earth’s surface is unharmed.
We must spread the facts; 5.9 trillion dollars are spent annually in subsidies for fossil fuels, which is insanity. Do not fly; avoid air travel. The tourist economy is responsible for 8% of our yearly emissions. Instead of subsidies for air travel, we need to pay subsidies to encourage train travel. We can invest in wind and solar power, and scientific advances like farm-free food grown in a laboratory.
Science can shed light on how to nourish our soil and stop depleting it. Thus, we can go forward with science and morality as our guiding forces. The ‘is’ and the ‘ought’ will be complementary.
We need to educate ourselves and become climate activists. We can institute justice through protests and civil disobedience. We need to fight for democracy in non-violent ways. We need new laws to protect us.
Be disruptive. Look for common ground, using love and not hate to shed light into the darkness. Avoid culture wars that only distract us from survival with endless debates. Very simply, we must also buy less and use less. We can also stop purchasing single-use plastics, like bottles for water.
Plastics that are disposable have been available for 20 years, and thus have accumulated in our oceans. Companies that used to offer glass bottles and also clean them have now moved to disposable products and thus have passed on costs to us.
Coca-cola actively acts against legislation that would have them offer reusable bottles again, as they did before single-use plastics. Companies blame consumers for bad habits yet shoot down laws against single-use plastics. The UK is the second highest trash producer, after the US. Most plastic is counted as recycled but is not. It litters deserts and waters, affecting our climate. Transit companies disguise the true origin of waste as it is relentlessly burned in the cover of darkness.
Countries like the UK, US, Japan and Germany export waste to places like Southeast Asia, where it is often burned at night. People now suffer respiratory illness due to these common practices. Plastic produces greenhouse gases, as it is derived from oil.
And, even today, we do not have accurate data on carbon emissions. The Washington Post found that our current path to climate solutions is not even credible nor viable, given the reported numbers are so distorted. Countries report only a fraction of their true emissions, like Sweden, who reported 50 million tons of greenhouse gases when in fact they emit closer to 150 million tons per year. So, even now, only 1/3 of emissions were even included in reports in Sweden. This is seen internationally as well. We need a proper road map, based on data and our moral ground, that we actually follow!
But “Who do you vote for when the politics needed are nowhere to be found?” poignantly asks Greta Thunberg. Even in progressive countries like Sweden, only 10% of ‘recycled’ products are actually recycled. Much is burned, causing further pollution.
So, recycling is a huge greenwashed myth. Most plastic will never be recycled. It is all made so cheaply that it is made to be disposed of. So, plastic litters landfills and our waters, especially in poorer areas. Micro plastics are now everywhere, even inside us. 8 million tons per year of plastic waste is dumped into our oceans.
We can reduce packaging, to start. We need a major system change. Greenpeace is calling for a 50% reduction in plastics in coming years, given our situation.
Specifically, we already also have 40 years of carbon built up in our atmosphere and our C02 emissions are on track to rise 16% in the coming years.
We are set to increase our global temperature, yet the media is not covering this crisis. We cannot negotiate, for we value life itself while those in power prioritize profit; “They speak to flowers in the language of US dollars” says Greta Thunberg.
We need regular press briefings on our climate crisis and many discussions on how to solve our problems. For example, we can institute a #UBI as part of the transition in our economy and as jobs related to fossil fuels diminish.
Communist China is using over 70% of our carbon budget, and still will in 2030. This, while developing countries are affected the greatest by climate issues. How can developing countries move forward in a sustainable way? Capitalism also contributes to our crisis by encouraging increasing GDPs, despite the true costs to our planet. This economic system demands growth. Yet, high income nations do not need more growth. We need a new economic system based on our ecosystem. No current systems lead to life.
We need to educate ourselves. We need both individual and systemic, market change immediately. We must restructure our economy around renewable energy, less meat consumption and less SUVs, for example, to ensure our future. In fact, 80% of energy used in 2019 was still derived from fossil fuels.
Frequent flying and eating meat are some of the most destructive activities an individual can do in terms of the climate crisis. Some have made an oath to never fly and to become vegetarian, given our situation.
We need to phase out private jets, mega yachts and other egregious displays of wealth and status. We can make these displays shameful and not glorify them. We can take public transport and move away from fossil fuel based engines. For example, in Vienna, 60% of people live in community housing.
Should we shame those who live an unsustainable lifestyle? Should we offer softer signals that change is needed, like having our family over for a vegetarian dinner?
We can encourage others to live with less of an environmental impact. As one neighbor gets solar panels, so do others. We can share plant-based recipes. We can participate in social actions and protests.
Government also (on the macro level beyond the individual) needs to lead and set examples for a new way of living, following through with laws. We need to meet the basic survival needs of all humans on our planet with current resources.
The richest 20% need to reduce their consumption to 1/10th of 2015 levels, making room for others basic needs. Christ stood up for the needy and the powerless. But are we too unloving and selfish to survive as a species? What will happen to our souls, as we turn our backs to the most vulnerable?
Psychology has been used to advertise toward people’s deepest desires to inspire their purchases. Ads create (or play upon) a deep need, promising to fill the inner void. Products promise to make us feel better and to lead to our acceptance by our social groups. But, without God, people remain empty inside while landfills overflow.
For example, 73% of textiles (clothing) produced ends up in landfills. Can we start identifying with God, and not by our outer appearance and the latest fashion?
We need to phase out excess for a few, while expanding access to basic resources to all, like healthcare and housing. This is in line with instituting a Universal Basic Income (#UBI) for all, to help people of all identities survive the upcoming transitions on earth.
Our excesses are a clue into inner poverty. Many do not have solid community ties, even if they have material wealth. We are actually happier when we are connected to others, giving and sharing. Our efforts to help others and transition from our selfish society will lead to deep joy, not poverty. We will be blessed as we use our voices and hands to carry forth God’s will.
As a start, we can choose (given our morals) to buy only 3 new pieces of clothing per year, take less trips, rid ourselves of personal vehicles and eat a plant-based diet. What else can we do?
We need the Holy Spirit to guide our souls and hands as we create a new day! We can change if we hold hope, as the eloquent theologian Jurgen Moltmann has shared. We can shift from unhealthy social norms, and these healthy changes will allow all of us to thrive.
We need relationships based on love and reciprocity instead of greed and a will to power. We need less selfishness and more sacrifice for others whom we share with because we actually care. We need to restructure our world based on love, as Christ taught.
When we take action for a sustainable society, we will find new meaning in our daily actions. Our community bonds can grow stronger as we change. And, as sociologist Emile Durkheim found, strong community bonds lead to less suicides. We have the opportunity to promote life and even joy in coming together to change our world for the better!
We do not wish to conserve the world, but create a new one. We need more community control over resources and a guaranteed income for all, regardless of group affiliation. We need energy efficient public housing and to restructure the economy to a more just system. We need to align our economy with our ecosystem as well as our morality. As the brilliant Martin Buber wrote, we need to develop I-thou relationships, based on a recognition of others and not an exploitation of them. Equity and sustainably go hand in hand; there can be no sustainably without equity. Instead of asking who owns land, we need to ask who is responsible for the land. We need a politics of love.
CONCLUSIONS: CARETAKING IS A GREEN JOB! We need to transition to a care-taking society, where all are cared for and treated with love. We need to dismantle the call to endless growth and greed.
“We need to redefine hope and progress, so that these words do not translate to destruction” – Greta.
We need to prioritize people over profits. Green jobs, like caretaking, can be recognized as we turn away from jobs based on over-consumption of unneeded products. Carework is climate work! We need to not only repair our relationship with our planet, but also with each other. We can become a global family.
Solutions involve community actions in helping each other, just as Christ called for. Also, our youth must be a global force of change. We must learn from our mistakes and challenge the status quo and those with interests in the current Death Culture.
Truth, justice and morality are on the side of creating a sustainable future, explains Greta Thunberg. In our Postmodern age, where some claim all views are valid, what is Truth? Both sides of an issue are not equally valid. Survival is not a story with two sides.
We need to end our Death Culture by following the path of love (set by Christ) and carrying out God’s will, for God is Truth. When we recognize this, we will move from the Postmodern Era to the Pre-Utopian Era, as we prepare the ground for God’s New Earth.
Takethejump.org

This is a new writeup for Middlemak (renamed since my previous post). Named for the emphasis on the middle finger and use of the middle-finger-upper-row locations for frequent letters
Link to Layout heatmap

QWLDG JFOU: ASRTP YNEIH ZXCVB KM,./ 

Link to Middlemak GitHub download.
Link to GitHub download Middlemak-AH.
Middlemak has also been created. The same writeup has been posted there.
The main design criteria was:
1) Use the middle-finger-upper-row position. The middle finger is a very strong finger, and the middle-finger-upper-row is a very good location for a common letter.
2) To reduce pinballing by putting most vowels on the right hand and putting most of the frequent consonants on the left hand.
3) Reduce the number of Near Finger Bigrams (NFBs).
4) Improve hand balance.
5) Keep SFB down of course.
6) A secondary design criteria was low ring-to-pinky-rolls. I find this to be an awkward movement.
7) Maintain Qwerty similarity to make it easier to learn.
These are all discussed in more detail below. (I’ll be talking in the context of Colemak for some of it. I don’t mean this to be a hit piece on Colemak, it’s just the best way to frame the items.)

1) Middle-Finger-Upper-Row

The main purpose of this layout is to place 2 common letters on the middle-finger-upper-row. The middle finger is very strong and these are excellent locations that are easy to reach.
When you look at the letter frequency, there are 11 common letters before it takes a big drop off. The first eight letters go on the home row under the fingers. The next question is where do the next 3 letters go. Middlemak’s philosophy is to place 2 on the middle-finger-upper-row, and 1 on the index-finger-upper-row. Colemak places 2 on the centre columns, requiring a lateral movement that many find uncomfortable. Workman has 1 middle-finger-upper-row, 1 ring-finger-upper-row, and 1 index-finger-lower-row, a mixed bag.
L pairs well with R for low SFB. Middlemak places the RL column on the middle finger, which puts the common L on the middle-finger-upper-row.
E and O pair very well for low SFB. Placing EO column on the middle finger puts the very common O on the middle-finger-upper-row.
Using the middle finger also unloads the index fingers. The index fingers can get very busy with 6-7 letters compared with the other letters 3, especially when multiple frequent letters are put on them. I’ll give the distance stats in “Excessive amounts of stats” section far below which shows the drastic difference.
(I’ll skip discussing D here, it’s in “Excessive amounts of detail”. I also cover the R position more there.)

2) Pinballing

I wrote about pinballing in length here. The short of it is that there is an incredibly strong interaction between vowels and the consonants, with 75% of all bigrams between vowels and consonants. PInballing can happen when a lot of vowels and consonants arn put on the same hand, the hand movement will pinball back and forth between the vowels and consonants.
I’ll cover Colemak first to outline the issue. Having most of the vowels EOIUY and many frequent consonants of NHLMKJ on the right hand leads to a pinballing problem. I call this the NHLMKJ wall, it’s a wall of consonants that the vowels pinball off of
To reduce pinballing Middlemak does two things:
First Middlemak moves L off the vowel hand and to the consonant hand. This (and moving H) reduces the wall to NMFPJ which is much, much lower frequency for movements to pinball off of. Or if the word starts with NMFPJ, it’s again much lower frequency.
Second it moves H to the pinky. H is a very unique letter because it’s almost always followed by a vowel. Moving H to the pinky means it almost always gives an inside roll. After the vowel, it generally continues to the consonants NMFPJ continuing the inside roll, or it alternates to the other hand. Rarely goes back to H. Generally only after the third letter can it start to pinball back to the vowels or back to H.
Combined, this reduces pinballing and increases alternating. It’s not entirely alternating, Middlemak still has rolls because it has N, H, and MKFJ. For N I find the rolls to be comfortable, likely because N is on the home row.

3) Near Finger Bigrams, NFB

NFB are bigrams that are on adjacent fingers. Too many or an uncomfortable arrangement can be an issue. NFB and pinballing are separate issues: NFB is the smaller pattern of adjacent fingers, pinballing is the much larger pattern of pinballing between all vowels and constants.
I’ll cover Colemak first again to highlight the issue. On Colemak there are extremely common NFBs with HE and LE/EL. (There is also NE/EN, but I find the HE and EL/LE to be awkward because L and H are not on the home row.)
Pretty much all E bigrams are fairly high. I think you want to move common consonants away from E to reduce NFBs. For Middlemak, that means moving them away from the EO column.
Middlemak drastically reduces the NFBs by moving the common letters L and H off the adjacent index finger. The replacements of F and Y have dramatically lower NFBs with E and O. I wanted to keep Colemak’s K there since this doesn’t have many bigrams with E and O.
Looking at other layouts: Workman still has high NFB with L and E. Colemak-DH maintains L and H next to E. Many find the new HE roll to be more comfortable but it’s still a ton of NFB, and LE/EL is still there. MTGAP moved practically all letters away from its E and O and instead put punctuation there, a very good solution.
Middlemak does create some NFB with O placement. Namely OF, ON, and OM. However OF and ON are very comfortable, having the middle finger extended up feels pretty comfortable. OM is ok, and it’s the least common of those 3. The OM scissor-gram is a bit more common than I'd like, but it feels ok. This is about the best location for a scissor-gram too, with the long-middle-finger up and the curl-index-finger down being able to handle it fairly well. (Just to mention Colemak’s EL/LE, not exactly a scissor-gram, I find is bad since the shorter index finger has to reach up and the middle finger is so long it’s already curled just to be on the home row.)
Overall, Middlemak moving common consonants away from E drastically lowers the number of NFBs and takes away a ton of awkward movements. Visually, I think you can see this pretty easily in the heatmaps.
(You can extend this concept to fingers further away, to include Colemaks HI, LI, etc. This can be valid, but for here I’ll focus on adjacent fingers.)

4) Hand balance

Hand balance is a difficult topic. The two most obvious metrics for hand dominance are 1) the frequency of the letters, and 2) the distance the fingers have to travel (which is different from frequency because you don't travel to the home-row). But any pinballing from having too many vowels and consonants on the same hand doesn’t show up in those numbers. Having said all that, I’m going to look at frequency and distance.

Keyboard	Vowel Hand	Dominant Hand	Hand Balance ratio based on Frequency	Hand Balance ratio based on Distance	Hand Balance ratio based on Frequency and Distance	Corrected comparison number for left hand dominant
MTGAP	Left	Right	1.00	1.43	1.43
Workman	Right	Left	0.97	0.82	0.80	1.26
Norman	n/a	Right	0.93	1.27	1.19
Colemak	Right	Right	1.14	1.15	1.32
Middlemak	Right	Right	1.05	1.06	1.11
Semimak	Right	Right	1.15	1.30	1.49
Dvorak	Left	Right	1.23	1.86	2.30
QWERTY	n/a	Left	0.77	1.06	0.82	1.22

Notes: Ratio >1 indicates right hand dominant, <1 indicates left hand dominant. The hand balance ratios are based on each hand's frequency/distance, right hand divided by left hand. E.g. Middlemak: 51.2% right hand frequency divided by 48.8% left hand frequency equals 1.05. Colemak: 53.2% right hand frequency divided by 46.7% left hand frequency equals 1.14. Hand Balance ratio based on Frequency and Distance is a simple multiplication of the two ratios. I did this because having more frequency and more movement on the same hand amplifies the hand dominance. Or if one hand has more frequency and the other hand has more movement, that would mitigate it to some degree. This is by no means the most definitive way to look at it, but it's what I've managed to come up with. The "Corrected comparison number for left hand dominant" is a hard math thing to explain (that I hope I'm right about anyway). E.g. for Workman listing 0.80 gives the wrong impression the hand dominance is equivalent to 1.2 (20%). But it's actually 1.26 (26%), obtained from 1/0.796=1.26.
Middlemak is more balanced on both frequency and distance. When both are considered, it really adds up to being more balanced. Middlemak combined balance ratio is 1.11, compared to Colemak’s 1.32 or Workman’s 1.26.
Ratios can change quite quickly because both the numerator and the denominator (in this case, the left and right hand) can go in opposite directions. Moving L to the other hand does exactly this - changing both the numerator and denominator, and it changes both the frequency and the distance. So that one move really helps to balance out the hands.
(I’ll add the full data in “Excessive amounts of stats” for both frequency and distance, broken down to hands and fingers. The individual finger load is quite interesting too.)

5) SFB

The SFB of this layout is still pretty low, but it does come out a tad higher than Colemak’s. I’ve debated how to show this and decided to go with the full nuclear information. Data is from Mayzner revisited in millions (which only has letter bigrams and doesn’t have punctuation data, that’s what the 0’s are).

Keyboard	Total SFB	Left hand SFB	Right hand SFB	L Pinky	L Ring	L Middle	L Index	R Index	R Middle	R Ring	R Pinky
QWERTY	185,270	125,920	59,350	1,105	1,661	54,502	68,651	34,166	3,970	21,214	0
Workman	78,147	29,268	48,878	1,105	3,712	2,806	21,645	27,338	5,037	16,503	0
Dvorak	70,570	28,306	42,264	0	31	0	28,275	12,142	16,265	8,229	5,629
Middlemak	44,698	25,806	18,892	1,105	1,661	2,716	20,323	12,415	3,134	3,343	0
Colemak	39,023	23,336	15,687	1,105	1,267	639	20,323	9,831	5,037	819	0
MTGAP	34,151	14,550	19,601	1,147	339	3,134	9,931	4,629	8,633	5,071	1,267

Notes: This is with index finger pressing C location, how I think most people type. Adding in punctuation the numbers would be higher, I expect they would increase by similar absolute amounts.
For Middlemak: You can see it’s not all that much of an increase in SFB from Colemak. Overall the numbers are low considering it keeps many Qwerty aspects.
On the left hand: The middle finger goes up with R and L. This was to allow more consonants on the left hand and use of the middle-finger-upper-row. I think the middle finger being a strong finger and comfortable reach can handle these quite well. The index finger is the same as Colemak.
On the right hand: The right index goes up a little bit, mostly with NY and MY. They aren’t as high as you may think. But the Y SFBs and adding in NK/KN, NF, etc, they do add up a little. It’s not all that much but it is more. I think it’s still easily manageable. NY is actually not all that common, for example it’s actually less common than EU/UE. (The exact Mayzner numbers are: NY/YN is 2,761 / 373. Compared to EU/UE is 878 / 4,158. MY/YM is 1,753 / 668.) The middle finger actually goes down, EO/OE is very low. The ring finger goes up a bit with UI/IU being more common than Colemak’s IY/YI.
If you want overall percentages (index finger pressing C), Middlemak comes in at 2.078%, vs Colemak’s 1.815%, vs Workmans 3.053%, vs Qwerty’s 6.264%.
Colemak really did a good job finding low SFB pairings of SF, DT, NHL, RW, and IY. So changing 3 of those pairings does come at a cost. But it’s really not much and it’s done so that Middlemak can put more frequent letters to better spots, reduce pinballing, and reduce NFB. I think the SFB is in the same realm as Colemak, it’s still pretty low.

Ortho SFB

Keyboard	Total SFB	Left hand SFB	Right hand SFB	L Pinky	L Ring	L Middle	L Index	R Index	R Middle	R Ring	R Pinky
QWERTY	195,687	136,337	59,350	1,105	1,661	86,462	47,108	34,166	3,970	21,214	0
Workman	79,561	30,682	48,878	1,105	3,712	8,206	17,659	27,338	5,037	16,503	0
Dvorak	70,365	28,101	42,264	0	31	1,591	26,480	12,142	16,265	8,229	5,629
Middlemak	42,816	23,924	18,892	1,105	1,661	14,888	6,270	12,415	3,134	3,343	0
Colemak	30,032	14,345	15,687	1,105	1,267	5,702	6,270	9,831	5,037	819	0
MTGAP	34,151	14,550	19,601	1,147	339	3,134	9,931	4,629	8,633	5,071	1,267

Notes: This is with the middle finger pressing C location, “proper” or ortho style. Same data as above.
Middlemak on Ortho actually comes in just a tad lower, but Colemak takes a bigger dip.
This basically moves most of the SFB from the index finger to the middle finger. On Middlemak, ortho takes out CT on the index finger and puts in CR and CL on the middle finger, which is only a tad lower. On Colemak, ortho takes out CT and puts in SC which is much lower.
I think it still works well. The middle finger is a strong finger and can cover most of these well. The one issue is that CL which is a two row jump.
I’ll break down the full Mayzner numbers:
First the index finger pressing CT/TC is 12,998 / 737. This is what ortho removes.
Middlemak Ortho puts in CRC which is 4,214 / 3,423. And puts in CL / LC which is 4,202 / 333. In percentages, CR is 32% of CT, RC is 26% of CT, and CL is 32% of CT. Adding it all up and including all the others (CP, CG, etc), Middlemak Ortho comes in at 87% of CT+TC. Just a tad lower.
Colemak Ortho puts in CS/SC, which is 644 / 4,363. CF/ FC is pretty much nill. In percentages, SC is 34% of CT. Adding it all up and including the others, Colemak Ortho comes in at 36% of CT+TC. A big dip.
If you want overall percentages (middle finger pressing C, Ortho style), Middlemak comes in at 2.16%, vs Colemak’s 1.669%, vs Workman’s 3.147%, vs Qwerty’s 6.575%. This is from Colemak-DH analyzer which says Middlemak ortho increases, as opposed to what I found that Middlemak ortho decreases SFB. I think it comes down to the data set used.

6) Low ring-to-pinky rolls. And the amazing inside roll from H.

A secondary design goal was to decrease the awkward ring-to-pinky roll. Middlemak greatly reduces this roll.
On the left hand: Middlemak’s ring-to-pinky outside roll of SA and WA is actually pretty low. SA is actually the lowest bigram of the common consonants to A. So SA and WA comes out to be a good design. Compared to Colemak, Middlemak’s SA outside roll is far less common than Colemak’s RA. (The exact Mayzner in millions are: Middlemak’s SA is 6,147. Colemak’s RA is 19,333. WA is the same for both at 10,865.)
On the right hand: Middlmak’s ring-to-pinky roll of IH and UH is very low. Vs Colemak: IO is very common and even YO is pretty common. (The exact numbers are Middlemak’s IH is 59, UH is 30. Vs Colemak’s IO 23,542, YO is 4,227.)
This next bit isn’t even a secondary design goal, but it’s worth mentioning: On the right hand, outside rolls from any of the fingers to the pinky H are very low. The common letters that come before H are usually TH, CH, WH, SH, and GH. All of those are on the opposite left hand. Doing the math, 97% of the letters before H are on the left hand. H on the pinky gives an amazing inside roll almost all the time.
Also worth mentioning is I think this also de-emphasizes the pinky a bit. First it limits the ring-to-pinky rolls. Second, the frequency of H is much lower than Colemak’s O. Third, the bigram HH is virtually nill, vs Colemak’s OO which is pretty common. None of these are massive, but I think they add up to de-emphasizing the pinky a bit.

7) Qwerty similarity.

Last but not least, this maintains Qwerty similarity to make it easier to learn.
First, this maintains the bottom row (except N) and maintains Q, W, A, and S. Many letters move on the same finger, including T, G, N, Y, J .
Second, this “keeps” the ASRT order. People learning Colemak commonly say that R and S are reversed. Technically it’s not because R was never on the middle finger to begin with. But it seems to be reversed in the brain. I think it’s two things. First ASRT keeps it in the same order, with R between S and T, even if R changes fingers. Second, I wonder how many people alt-fingered R typing in Qwerty, either all the time or for the RT bigram.
(I've also wondered if, for example, patterns like the very common ION simply being easier to type would make this faster to learn. I’m not certain about that though.)
Comparing layouts:

• Middlemak: 10 letters stay in their original spot and 16 move, with 5 letters moving on the same finger and 11 letters switching fingers.
  
• Colemak: 10 letters stay in their original spot and 16 move, with 4 letters moving on the same finger and 12 letters switching fingers.
  
• Colemak-DH: 5 letters stay in their original spot and 21 move, with 6 letters moving on the same finger and 15 letters switching fingers.
  
• Workman: 6 letters stay in their original spot and 20 move, with 8 letters moving on the same finger and 12 letters switching fingers.
  

*Not accounting for punctuation changes.
Considering letters swapping on the same finger, this has fewer changes than Colemak. And I think “keeping” the ASRT order will make it even easier to adopt than the numbers suggest.
(I hope people don’t think that I’m overly focused on keeping S in the Qwerty location just because. For this layout, it does work better with ASRT, I address it in more detail in excessive amount of details.)

Downsides

1) There is a slight increase in SFB compared to Colemak. But overall I think SFB is still low.
2) There are a handful of NFB with R: BR, GR, PR, etc. Same with L and BL. This isn’t enough to change the home row to ARST. There is more below but ASRT has lower SFB, lower ring-to-pinky rolls, and is easier to learn. Also note these are much, much lower than the extremely high NFB that Colemak has with HE, LE, etc, (to solve those I paid L and R together).
3) I wanted a less common letter in the G location (Qwerty T location). I really tried to put a less common letter there, but it simply didn’t work.
4) I mention this above but to add more: The OM scissor-gram is a bit more common than I'd like. This is a limitation of keeping Qwerty similarity (the M) and wanting to put O on the upper-row-middle-finger. (MTGAP has a good design on this. It paired its EO with a lot of punctuation on the index finger to reduce NFBs.)

Conclusion

I'm really happy with this layout. I think it is a great combination of pretty low SFB, good use of the strong middle-finger-upper-row position, reduced NFB and pinballing, keeping Qwerty similarity, and easy to transition to.
Honestly I’m surprised no one else has stumbled on this arrangement, since many people have taken to trying to fix Colemak’s issues and keep Qwerty similarity.

Some nice rolls and combinations

Although this increases alternating, there are still plenty of rolls left. Some I want to mention:
HE is very easy.
LD feels very good.
OU feels very comfortable.
OF/FO is very common and feels very good.
IO and ION are very nice rolls.
This maintains the nice IEN roll.
IOU is a redirect, but overall feels pretty ok.
YOU has a lateral move, but feels comfortable.
OU+LD together to make OULD feels good.
The very common TH, THE, and THE_ feel very nice not having to move the fingers off the home row.

Vs Colemak and Vs Colemak-DH

I made Middlemak to try to solve the problems I found with Colemak. I think all the items came out above, but as a bit of a summary and to include Colemak-DH.
Colemak:
1) Colemak has an issue with high lateral movement with D and H. You see this especially with H and its NFBs, but D isn’t the best either.
2) Colemak’s right index finger is overworked. It just has too much to do with N, H, and L.
3) Colemak has a pinballing issue due to placing most vowels and many common consonants on the same hand.
4) Colemak has a ton of NFB with EL/LE and HE.
5) Colemak has a hand balance issue. It places a lot of emphasis on the right hand with the vowels and several common consonants. (Hand dominance and pinballing are technically separate items.)
6) Colemak’s awkward ring-to-pinky rolls. Notably IO, YO (especially when typing YOU), and also RA on the right hand.
7) Not exactly a direct issue with Colemak, but Middlemak is easier to learn coming from Qwerty. Many new users want to ‘keep’ the order of ASRT instead of ‘reversing’ S and R.
Middlemak is a pretty low increase in SFBs and it fixes those issues.
Colemak DH:
Colemak-DH solves 1) the lateral movements. But it doesn’t solve 2) the right index finger overwork, 3) the pinballing, 4) the NFBs 5) the hand balance, 6) the awkward ring-to-pinky rolls, and 7) coming from Qwerty it’s pretty much a full change layout, taking out ease of transition. This also means common shortcuts move. They are still accessible, but they move (paste is the same. Undo, cut, and copy move.)

Option: Swap A and H

This gives:

QWLDG JFOU: HSRTP YNEIA ZXCVB KM,./ 

The good: This is good if you want to put all the vowels and most consonants on opposite hands. Overall this increases alternating. This mostly comes from moving A to the right hand because A pairs a lot with the L, R, S, T, etc. This is the biggest appeal if you find those uncomfortable. Moving H actually decreases alternating because there’s a high bigram with TH (you can test your own comfortability on that. Don’t forget capitalized Th is common.) Excessive details: Middlemak A has 41% of bigrams on the opposite hand, swapping gives 65%. Middlemak H has 58% of bigrams on the opposite hand, swapping gives 51% (again, mostly because of TH). Overall, middlemak A+H has 48% on the opposite hand, swapping gives 59%.
The neutral: On the left hand, the ring-to-pinky outside roll of SH is slightly higher, but in a similar range. Data from Mayzner is SH is 8,889, and original is SA is 6,147. Changing WA to WH is practically identical.
The bad: On both the right and left hand, the all-fingers-to-pinky outside roll is higher. On the left hand, it’s because TH is very common. On the right hand, it takes away the remarkable inside roll of H and adds in a moderate number of all-fingers-to-A bigrams with EA, IA, NA, MA, etc, (OA is actually low). Notably, the ring-to-pinky outside roll is higher with IA and UA coming in at 8,072 and 3,844, vs original IH and UH of 59 and 30.
The complicated: This option decreases the pinky-to-all-fingers rolls inside rolls on both hands. It increases the all-fingers-to-pinky rolls outside rolls. The overall sum of inside rolls plus outside rolls is lower. In short: this option lowers inside rolls, increases outside rolls, with an overall sum that is lower.
Basically stick to the original if you want to lower ring-to-pinky movement, lower outside rolls, and easier to learn. Overall I put this as a decent option if someone wants to maximize alternating without going to a full change layout.

Excessive amount of stats

This section has details on distance reductions, hand balance based on frequency, hand balance based on distance, and raw distance numbers. I'm going to give lots of charts to cover all the details. Those that want to know all the details or those that like to analyze will find this interesting, but others don’t have to read.

Distance reduction from Qwerty

Keyboard	Distance	Distance	Distance
	(km)	(miles)	(% reduction from Qwerty)
MTGAP	2.592	1.611	46.3%
Workman	2.613	1.624	45.9%
Norman	2.615	1.625	45.9%
Colemak	2.616	1.625	45.8%
Middlemak	2.710	1.684	43.9%
Semimak	2.739	1.702	43.3%
Dvorak	2.813	1.748	41.8%
QWERTY	4.829	3.001	0%

*Source: 62 page / 31k word compilation. Left index used to press Qwerty C location. Includes punctuation.
Middlemak’s distance reduction is good, most alt keyboards are in the same range. It’s a tad worse on distance than some others because putting O off the home row increases distance, with the O being more frequent. (MTGAP puts O off the home row, but has all the punctuation on the diagonals to decrease distance.)

All Finger Distances

This is the raw distance travelled in metres. Percentages rely on the total distance travelled, which changes between layouts so it's not comparable. Note that distance is different from frequency. The fingers don't move for the home row, the distance travelled is to the other letters.

Keyboard	L Pinky	L Ring	L Middle	L Index	R Index	R Middle	R Ring	R Pinky	L Total	R Total	Total
MTGAP	293	116	413	246	667	320	219	318	1068 m	1524 m	2592 m
Workman	123	232	330	753	505	200	146	325	1437 m	1176 m	2613 m
Norman	127	127	223	674	525	377	244	319	1150 m	1465 m	2615 m
Colemak	130	127	116	842	747	200	141	315	1214 m	1402 m	2616 m
Middlemak	134	127	207	847	440	460	189	306	1314 m	1396 m	2710 m
Semimak	238	237	326	390	506	200	450	393	1191 m	1549 m	2739 m
Dvorak	205	54	34	692	753	285	395	396	984 m	1829 m	2813 m
QWERTY	130	127	670	1413	1169	452	450	418	2340 m	2489 m	4829 m

*All distances in metres. Same source as table above.
First, you can see Qwerty’s distances are extremely high. All the alternatives make big reductions.
Notice that the index fingers move way more than the other fingers.
Middlemak balances this out decently and moves more distance to both middle fingers. The left index finger is still a bit high because it has D off the home row (this brings it back to the discussion of where does the 11th letter go). Middlemak’s left index is slightly higher than Colemak’s even though they have the same letters because the row stagger technically puts D on a slight diagonal. A technicality really.
The right index finger is low, a good feature that the index finger next to the vowels doesn’t have to travel much. Compared to Colemak, Middlemak’s movement is 41% lower than Colemaks.

Zoom in on index fingers

Keyboard	Distance	Distance	Total	Index Finger % of total distance
	L Index	R Index	L+R Index	L+R Index
MTGAP	246	667	913 m	35%
Workman	753	505	1259 m	48%
Norman	674	525	1200 m	46%
Colemak	842	747	1589 m	61%
Middlemak	847	440	1287 m	47%
Semimak	390	506	896 m	33%
Dvorak	692	753	1445 m	51%
QWERTY	1413	1169	2582 m	53%

Here you can really see how much work the index fingers do. Middlemak’s sum of the index fingers is nice and low.
You can also look at the percentage of travel with the index finger. Middlemak’s is down at 47% - meaning the index fingers are responsible for 47% of all the distance travelled. On Colemak the index fingers account for 61% the distance travelled, quite a big difference relatively. Workman and Norman are close to Middlemak. MTGAP and Semimak are very low. Dvorak and Qwerty percentages are a bit deceiving though - the higher index finger distances are hidden by the higher total amount of distance.
So even when Middlemak’s left index finger doesn’t have a reduction in distance, the total index finger distance is significantly reduced.

Hand Balance based on Distance

This is the distance in percentages for all the fingers (unlike the raw distances in metres above) so that I can add them up to look at hand balance.

Keyboard	Left hand	Right hand	Hand Balance Ratio	L Pinky	L Ring	L Middle	L Index	R Index	R Middle	R Ring	R Pinky
MTGAP	41.2*	58.8	1.43	11.3	4.5	15.9	9.5	25.7	12.3	8.4	12.3
Workman	55.0	45.0*	0.82	4.7	8.9	12.6	28.8	19.3	7.6	5.6	12.5
Norman	44.0	56.0	1.27	4.8	4.8	8.5	25.8	20.1	14.4	9.3	12.2
Colemak	46.4	53.6*	1.15	5.0	4.8	4.4	32.2	28.6	7.6	5.4	12.0
Middlemak	48.5	51.5*	1.06	5.0	4.7	7.6	31.2	16.3	17.0	7.0	11.3
Semimak	43.5	56.5*	1.30	8.7	8.7	11.9	14.2	18.5	7.3	16.4	14.4
Dvorak	35.0*	65.0	1.86	7.3	1.9	1.2	24.6	26.8	10.1	14.0	14.1
QWERTY	48.5	51.5	1.06	2.7	2.6	13.9	29.3	24.2	9.4	9.3	8.7

Notes: * indicates vowel hand (Norman and Qwerty are mixed enough that there is no clear vowel hand). The ratio between the hands can change quite quickly, so I think that highlights the differences between the layouts better. Ratio >1 indicates right hand dominant, <1 indicates left hand dominant.
I think the raw distances are better for comparison between layouts, but some people like percentages. I used this mostly to calculate hand balance.
You can see Middlemak spreads out the work. The pinkies are low, ring fingers are reasonable, middle takes on more, and the indexes have most of the distances.

Hand Balance based on Frequency

Now we’re shifting to frequency. You can see the data for all the fingers, this is enlightening on its own. I also add them up to look at the hand balance.

Keyboard	Left hand	Right hand	Hand Balance Ratio	L Pinky	L Ring	L Middle	L Index	R Index	R Middle	R Ring	R Pinky
MTGAP	49.9*	50.0	1.00	10.8	8.4	18.8	11.9	16.3	14.5	9.8	9.4
Workman	50.7	49.3*	0.97	9.3	10.1	11.1	20.2	15.2	14.9	9.7	9.5
Norman	51.7	48.3	0.93	9.3	8.3	15.4	18.7	15.2	13.2	11.8	8.1
Colemak	46.7	53.2*	1.14	9.4	7.7	8.2	21.4	19.4	14.9	9.1	9.8
Middlemak	48.8	51.2*	1.05	9.4	8.3	9.7	21.4	13.7	19.6	9.9	8.0
Semimak	46.6	53.4*	1.15	9.7	10.1	11.8	15.0	12.2	14.9	15.6	10.7
Dvorak	44.8*	55.3	1.23	10.3	8.1	12.2	14.2	17.2	13.4	13.0	11.7
QWERTY	56.5	43.5	0.77	9.4	8.3	15.4	23.4	18.8	8.4	11.8	4.5

* indicates vowel hand (Norman and Qwerty are mixed enough that there is no vowel hand). Ratio of >1 indicates right hand dominant, <1 indicates left hand dominant.
The ratio between the hands can change quite quickly, so I think that highlights the differences between the layouts better than the percentages. I know it doesn't add up to 100%, the analyzer is doing some rounding or something behind the scenes, I'm not going to round any further.
E is so common that it bumps up any finger it’s on.
Middlemak’s left middle finger takes on a bit more work. The left index is still high because of D. The right index is notably lower taking off common letters. The right middle takes on more of the work with O. And the right pinky is lower too with the H there.

Hand Balance Distance + Frequency

This is the same chart that was above, just for a summary.

Keyboard	Dominant Hand	Hand Balance ratio based on Frequency	Hand Balance ratio based on Distance	Hand Balance ratio based on Frequency and Distance	Corrected comparison number for left hand dominant
MTGAP	Right	1.00	1.43	1.43
Workman	Left	0.97	0.82	0.80	1.26
Norman	Right	0.93	1.27	1.19
Colemak	Right	1.14	1.15	1.32
Middlemak	Right	1.05	1.06	1.11
Semimak	Right	1.15	1.30	1.49
Dvorak	Right	1.23	1.86	2.30
QWERTY	Left	0.77	1.06	0.82	1.22

1 indicates right hand dominant, <1 indicates left hand dominant. Hand Balance ratio based on Frequency and Distance is a simple multiplication of the two.

Frequency-off-home-row (F.O.H.R.)

At the risk of too much information, another way to look at this is the frequency that’s off-home-row. I.e. the frequency that is not under the fingers.
Distances weigh the keys differently, while frequency-off-home-row levels that field. This should be read in conjunction with distance. Neither is better than the other, it’s just a different measurement.

Keyboard	L Pinky	L Ring	L Middle	L Index	R Index	R Middle	R Ring	R Pinky	L+R Index	Index FOHR as % of All fingers FOHR
MTGAP	4.0	2.0	7.2	4.1	10.8	5.8	3.6	3.8	14.9%	36%
Workman	1.5	3.9	5.6	11.5	8.8	3.3	2.5	2.7	20.3%	51%
Norman	1.5	2.1	3.8	10.0	8.8	6.4	4.6	2.6	18.8%	47%
Colemak	1.6	2.1	2.0	12.7	13.0	3.3	2.3	2.6	25.7%	65%
Middlemak	1.6	2.1	4.1	12.7	7.3	8.0	3.1	2.5	20.0%	48%
Semimak	3.5	4.5	5.4	6.3	8.4	3.3	7.8	3.9	14.7%	34%
Dvorak	2.5	0.9	0.6	11.7	11.7	4.7	6.6	5.5	23.4%	53%
QWERTY	1.6	2.1	11.6	21.4	18.6	7.5	7.8	4.5	40.0%	53%

I did this after noticing, on Colemak, that my right index finger moves off the home row a lot. For Colemak the left index finger has more distance, but the right index finger has more frequency-off-home-row. The long distance to B on the left hand skews the distance travelled.
The effect is similar on most of the layouts: FOHR tones down the left hand dominance and bumps up the right hand dominance. With Colemak the frequency of H and L is enough to actually flip them. This is more noticeable with layouts that keep Qwerty’s B (which is just frequent enough to skew things), layouts that change the letter to a less common one shift less.
Also insightful is “Index FOHR as % of All fingers FOHR”. It shows that on Middlemak the index fingers do 48% of all frequency-off-home-row, quite reasonable. Whereas on Colemak the index fingers have 65% of all frequency-off-home-row, very high. Workman is just a tad higher with the index fingers doing 51% of frequency-off-home-row. Dvorak’s and Qwerty’s 53% for index fingers is a bit deceiving though, it appears low but that's because the overall total FOHR is much higher.
This is similar to “Zoom in on the index fingers”, but this shows an even greater difference between Middlemak and Colemak. This shows Middlemak at 48% and Colemak at 65% based on index finger % of total FOHR. Recall Middlemaks was 47% and Colemaks was 61% based on index finger % of total distance. Same thing, when the distances to the diagonals are levelled out, the frequency stands out.

Excessive amount of detail on letters

You really don’t need to read this, mostly if you have any lingering or specific Q on specific letters.

D position and why not curl?

Back to the discussion of there being 11 common letters: Where to place that 11th letter is difficult, it’s either the ring finger or index finger. Many find the ring finger to not be very dexterous for such a frequent letter. So putting D on the index finger with T works very well for low SFB.
Why not the middle row? First, I think most people find it easier to reach up and down rather than laterally. Second, it works very well with the LD roll.
Why not the bottom row? I want to leave the bottom row the same as Qwerty for easy adoption and to leave the shortcuts of undo=cut-copy-paste the same. I also think C and M (the curl locations) are already near perfect frequencies for those locations. Those are the middle of the pack frequencies, which are perfect for the index fingers - which cover 6 to 7 letters.
I previously said that I’m not a fan of Colemak’s L position, which is the same upper-row-index-finger. But Colemak’s L has a ton of NFBs with the vowels, especially with E but also with all the other vowels. Looking at the whole hand, 62% of Colemak’s L bigrams are on the same hand. I think that’s a big source of discomfort. But with Middlemak’s D, only 22% of bigrams are on the same hand. So Middlemak has far lower same-hand-gymnastics.

The R and L position

I’m sure the R and S location will attract attention, so I’ll discuss it more here.
If you want to skip this, the main factor is that R and L pair well together. Better than S and L. That means the RL column goes on the middle finger. R being more common goes on the home row, and L goes on the middle-finger-upper-row which is a strong location.
[First note that Colemak had to go with ARST because of F on the middle-finger-upper-row. The SFB of RF/FR is more common than SF/FS.]

ASRT, making a RL column

The pros of ASRT is it gives fewer SFB, with LRL being less than half as common as SL/LS. It also gives fewer ring-to-pinky-rolls with SA being far less common than Colemak’s RA. It also makes it much easier to learn from Qwerty.
The cons is that the R position leads to more NFB with the index finger. Most of these feel ok but RD, GR, BR are not so good. These aren’t super common, but they are there. PR gives the commonly disliked lateral NFB, but I think it’s relatively ok for the frequency - it’s not super common. RS creates an outside roll, but I’d rather have the RS on Middlemak’s middle-to-ring fingers than Colemak’s RA on the ring-to-pinky fingers. Colemak’s RA is much more common than Middlemak’s RS too.

ARST, making a SL column

The pros of ARST is that it gives an inside roll of RS. It also separates R from the NFB letters on the index finger, which do add up. However, I’m trying to resolve the NFBs of Colemak’s right hand H and L with E which is a magnitude larger, in addition to the pinballing that it creates which requires moving L.
The cons with ARST is that it gives more SFB. It’s not huge, but it is there. It also gives a lot of ring-to-pinky outside rolls with RA. And finally this makes it much harder to learn coming from Qwerty.

Verdict: ASRT, RL column

None of these are huge deal breakers for one or the other. I went with lower SFB, lower ring-to-pinky rolls, and much easier to learn. At the cost of some NFB on the index finger and inside roll of RS.
(If someone comes from Colemak and wants ARST, they can. It's not a humongous downside to do that. Mostly the more common RA ring-to-pinky roll and slightly more SFB of SD/DS.)
(This layout truly does work better with ASRT. If it didn’t work, I would have changed it. For example, I wanted to keep G on its Qwerty location but it’s better to move it, so I didn’t shy away from changes.)

P and G location

It’s better to move G than keep it in its Qwerty location.
P and G are pretty much the same frequency, so it doesn’t matter in that sense.
P has a SFB with T, and it has common bigrams of PR, SP, and even PA. Those work better with P on the middle row. There is PL, but the ones above outweigh it.
G has a bigram with NG. With N on the opposite hand, that means G can go on the worse diagonal spot. There is GR, but PR is far more common.

O location

O and E together give very low SFB. This is a great opportunity to put them together. The strong middle finger only has 3 keys, so it can handle two very frequent letters.

U, Y and F locations

U works pretty well with I, the SFB are reasonably low. This location also creates a nice OU and YOU roll.
Y goes to the index finger, which actually works pretty well. I broke down the numbers in SFB section.
F goes to the right hand index finger, because putting P or G on the right hand gives too many SFB with M and N. The F location works quite well for both moderate frequency and low SFB. It has a lot of NFB with OF/FO, so placing it next to O makes a comfortable roll.

This is a new writeup for Middlemak (Posted before, but there's a new name for those interested). Named for the emphasis on the middle finger and use of the middle-finger-upper-row locations for frequent letters
Link to Layout heatmap

QWLDG JFOU: ASRTP YNEIH ZXCVB KM,./ 

Link to Middlemak GitHub download.
Link to GitHub download Middlemak-AH.
Middlemak has also been created. The same writeup has been posted there.
The main design criteria was:
1) Use the middle-finger-upper-row position. The middle finger is a very strong finger, and the middle-finger-upper-row is a very good location for a common letter.
2) To reduce pinballing by putting most vowels on the right hand and putting most of the frequent consonants on the left hand.
3) Reduce the number of Near Finger Bigrams (NFBs).
4) Improve hand balance.
5) Keep SFB down of course.
6) A secondary design criteria was low ring-to-pinky-rolls. I find this to be an awkward movement.
7) Maintain Qwerty similarity to make it easier to learn.
These are all discussed in more detail below. (I’ll be talking in the context of Colemak for some of it. I don’t mean this to be a hit piece on Colemak, it’s just the best way to frame the items.)

1) Middle-Finger-Upper-Row

The main purpose of this layout is to place 2 common letters on the middle-finger-upper-row. The middle finger is very strong and these are excellent locations that are easy to reach.
When you look at the letter frequency, there are 11 common letters before it takes a big drop off. The first eight letters go on the home row under the fingers. The next question is where do the next 3 letters go. Middlemak’s philosophy is to place 2 on the middle-finger-upper-row, and 1 on the index-finger-upper-row. Colemak places 2 on the centre columns, requiring a lateral movement that many find uncomfortable. Workman has 1 middle-finger-upper-row, 1 ring-finger-upper-row, and 1 index-finger-lower-row, a mixed bag.
L pairs well with R for low SFB. Middlemak places the RL column on the middle finger, which puts the common L on the middle-finger-upper-row.
E and O pair very well for low SFB. Placing EO column on the middle finger puts the very common O on the middle-finger-upper-row.
Using the middle finger also unloads the index fingers. The index fingers can get very busy with 6-7 letters compared with the other letters 3, especially when multiple frequent letters are put on them. I’ll give the distance stats in “Excessive amounts of stats” section far below which shows the drastic difference.
(I’ll skip discussing D here, it’s in “Excessive amounts of detail”. I also cover the R position more there.)

2) Pinballing

I wrote about pinballing in length here. The short of it is that there is an incredibly strong interaction between vowels and the consonants, with 75% of all bigrams between vowels and consonants. PInballing can happen when a lot of vowels and consonants arn put on the same hand, the hand movement will pinball back and forth between the vowels and consonants.
I’ll cover Colemak first to outline the issue. Having most of the vowels EOIUY and many frequent consonants of NHLMKJ on the right hand leads to a pinballing problem. I call this the NHLMKJ wall, it’s a wall of consonants that the vowels pinball off of
To reduce pinballing Middlemak does two things:
First Middlemak moves L off the vowel hand and to the consonant hand. This (and moving H) reduces the wall to NMFPJ which is much, much lower frequency for movements to pinball off of. Or if the word starts with NMFPJ, it’s again much lower frequency.
Second it moves H to the pinky. H is a very unique letter because it’s almost always followed by a vowel. Moving H to the pinky means it almost always gives an inside roll. After the vowel, it generally continues to the consonants NMFPJ continuing the inside roll, or it alternates to the other hand. Rarely goes back to H. Generally only after the third letter can it start to pinball back to the vowels or back to H.
Combined, this reduces pinballing and increases alternating. It’s not entirely alternating, Middlemak still has rolls because it has N, H, and MKFJ. For N I find the rolls to be comfortable, likely because N is on the home row.

3) Near Finger Bigrams, NFB

NFB are bigrams that are on adjacent fingers. Too many or an uncomfortable arrangement can be an issue. NFB and pinballing are separate issues: NFB is the smaller pattern of adjacent fingers, pinballing is the much larger pattern of pinballing between all vowels and constants.
I’ll cover Colemak first again to highlight the issue. On Colemak there are extremely common NFBs with HE and LE/EL. (There is also NE/EN, but I find the HE and EL/LE to be awkward because L and H are not on the home row.)
Pretty much all E bigrams are fairly high. I think you want to move common consonants away from E to reduce NFBs. For Middlemak, that means moving them away from the EO column.
Middlemak drastically reduces the NFBs by moving the common letters L and H off the adjacent index finger. The replacements of F and Y have dramatically lower NFBs with E and O. I wanted to keep Colemak’s K there since this doesn’t have many bigrams with E and O.
Looking at other layouts: Workman still has high NFB with L and E. Colemak-DH maintains L and H next to E. Many find the new HE roll to be more comfortable but it’s still a ton of NFB, and LE/EL is still there. MTGAP moved practically all letters away from its E and O and instead put punctuation there, a very good solution.
Middlemak does create some NFB with O placement. Namely OF, ON, and OM. However OF and ON are very comfortable, having the middle finger extended up feels pretty comfortable. OM is ok, and it’s the least common of those 3. The OM scissor-gram is a bit more common than I'd like, but it feels ok. This is about the best location for a scissor-gram too, with the long-middle-finger up and the curl-index-finger down being able to handle it fairly well. (Just to mention Colemak’s EL/LE, not exactly a scissor-gram, I find is bad since the shorter index finger has to reach up and the middle finger is so long it’s already curled just to be on the home row.)
Overall, Middlemak moving common consonants away from E drastically lowers the number of NFBs and takes away a ton of awkward movements. Visually, I think you can see this pretty easily in the heatmaps.
(You can extend this concept to fingers further away, to include Colemaks HI, LI, etc. This can be valid, but for here I’ll focus on adjacent fingers.)

4) Hand balance

Hand balance is a difficult topic. The two most obvious metrics for hand dominance are 1) the frequency of the letters, and 2) the distance the fingers have to travel (which is different from frequency because you don't travel to the home-row). But any pinballing from having too many vowels and consonants on the same hand doesn’t show up in those numbers. Having said all that, I’m going to look at frequency and distance.

Keyboard	Vowel Hand	Dominant Hand	Hand Balance ratio based on Frequency	Hand Balance ratio based on Distance	Hand Balance ratio based on Frequency and Distance	Corrected comparison number for left hand dominant
MTGAP	Left	Right	1.00	1.43	1.43
Workman	Right	Left	0.97	0.82	0.80	1.26
Norman	n/a	Right	0.93	1.27	1.19
Colemak	Right	Right	1.14	1.15	1.32
Middlemak	Right	Right	1.05	1.06	1.11
Semimak	Right	Right	1.15	1.30	1.49
Dvorak	Left	Right	1.23	1.86	2.30
QWERTY	n/a	Left	0.77	1.06	0.82	1.22

Notes: Ratio >1 indicates right hand dominant, <1 indicates left hand dominant. The hand balance ratios are based on each hand's frequency/distance, right hand divided by left hand. E.g. Middlemak: 51.2% right hand frequency divided by 48.8% left hand frequency equals 1.05. Colemak: 53.2% right hand frequency divided by 46.7% left hand frequency equals 1.14. Hand Balance ratio based on Frequency and Distance is a simple multiplication of the two ratios. I did this because having more frequency and more movement on the same hand amplifies the hand dominance. Or if one hand has more frequency and the other hand has more movement, that would mitigate it to some degree. This is by no means the most definitive way to look at it, but it's what I've managed to come up with. The "Corrected comparison number for left hand dominant" is a hard math thing to explain (that I hope I'm right about anyway). E.g. for Workman listing 0.80 gives the wrong impression the hand dominance is equivalent to 1.2 (20%). But it's actually 1.26 (26%), obtained from 1/0.796=1.26.
Middlemak is more balanced on both frequency and distance. When both are considered, it really adds up to being more balanced. Middlemak combined balance ratio is 1.11, compared to Colemak’s 1.32 or Workman’s 1.26.
Ratios can change quite quickly because both the numerator and the denominator (in this case, the left and right hand) can go in opposite directions. Moving L to the other hand does exactly this - changing both the numerator and denominator, and it changes both the frequency and the distance. So that one move really helps to balance out the hands.
(I’ll add the full data in “Excessive amounts of stats” for both frequency and distance, broken down to hands and fingers. The individual finger load is quite interesting too.)

5) SFB

The SFB of this layout is still pretty low, but it does come out a tad higher than Colemak’s. I’ve debated how to show this and decided to go with the full nuclear information. Data is from Mayzner revisited in millions (which only has letter bigrams and doesn’t have punctuation data, that’s what the 0’s are).

Keyboard	Total SFB	Left hand SFB	Right hand SFB	L Pinky	L Ring	L Middle	L Index	R Index	R Middle	R Ring	R Pinky
QWERTY	185,270	125,920	59,350	1,105	1,661	54,502	68,651	34,166	3,970	21,214	0
Workman	78,147	29,268	48,878	1,105	3,712	2,806	21,645	27,338	5,037	16,503	0
Dvorak	70,570	28,306	42,264	0	31	0	28,275	12,142	16,265	8,229	5,629
Middlemak	44,698	25,806	18,892	1,105	1,661	2,716	20,323	12,415	3,134	3,343	0
Colemak	39,023	23,336	15,687	1,105	1,267	639	20,323	9,831	5,037	819	0
MTGAP	34,151	14,550	19,601	1,147	339	3,134	9,931	4,629	8,633	5,071	1,267

Notes: This is with index finger pressing C location, how I think most people type. Adding in punctuation the numbers would be higher, I expect they would increase by similar absolute amounts.
For Middlemak: You can see it’s not all that much of an increase in SFB from Colemak. Overall the numbers are low considering it keeps many Qwerty aspects.
On the left hand: The middle finger goes up with R and L. This was to allow more consonants on the left hand and use of the middle-finger-upper-row. I think the middle finger being a strong finger and comfortable reach can handle these quite well. The index finger is the same as Colemak.
On the right hand: The right index goes up a little bit, mostly with NY and MY. They aren’t as high as you may think. But the Y SFBs and adding in NK/KN, NF, etc, they do add up a little. It’s not all that much but it is more. I think it’s still easily manageable. NY is actually not all that common, for example it’s actually less common than EU/UE. (The exact Mayzner numbers are: NY/YN is 2,761 / 373. Compared to EU/UE is 878 / 4,158. MY/YM is 1,753 / 668.) The middle finger actually goes down, EO/OE is very low. The ring finger goes up a bit with UI/IU being more common than Colemak’s IY/YI.
If you want overall percentages (index finger pressing C), Middlemak comes in at 2.078%, vs Colemak’s 1.815%, vs Workmans 3.053%, vs Qwerty’s 6.264%.
Colemak really did a good job finding low SFB pairings of SF, DT, NHL, RW, and IY. So changing 3 of those pairings does come at a cost. But it’s really not much and it’s done so that Middlemak can put more frequent letters to better spots, reduce pinballing, and reduce NFB. I think the SFB is in the same realm as Colemak, it’s still pretty low.

Ortho SFB

Keyboard	Total SFB	Left hand SFB	Right hand SFB	L Pinky	L Ring	L Middle	L Index	R Index	R Middle	R Ring	R Pinky
QWERTY	195,687	136,337	59,350	1,105	1,661	86,462	47,108	34,166	3,970	21,214	0
Workman	79,561	30,682	48,878	1,105	3,712	8,206	17,659	27,338	5,037	16,503	0
Dvorak	70,365	28,101	42,264	0	31	1,591	26,480	12,142	16,265	8,229	5,629
Middlemak	42,816	23,924	18,892	1,105	1,661	14,888	6,270	12,415	3,134	3,343	0
Colemak	30,032	14,345	15,687	1,105	1,267	5,702	6,270	9,831	5,037	819	0
MTGAP	34,151	14,550	19,601	1,147	339	3,134	9,931	4,629	8,633	5,071	1,267

Notes: This is with the middle finger pressing C location, “proper” or ortho style. Same data as above.
Middlemak on Ortho actually comes in just a tad lower, but Colemak takes a bigger dip.
This basically moves most of the SFB from the index finger to the middle finger. On Middlemak, ortho takes out CT on the index finger and puts in CR and CL on the middle finger, which is only a tad lower. On Colemak, ortho takes out CT and puts in SC which is much lower.
I think it still works well. The middle finger is a strong finger and can cover most of these well. The one issue is that CL which is a two row jump.
I’ll break down the full Mayzner numbers:
First the index finger pressing CT/TC is 12,998 / 737. This is what ortho removes.
Middlemak Ortho puts in CRC which is 4,214 / 3,423. And puts in CL / LC which is 4,202 / 333. In percentages, CR is 32% of CT, RC is 26% of CT, and CL is 32% of CT. Adding it all up and including all the others (CP, CG, etc), Middlemak Ortho comes in at 87% of CT+TC. Just a tad lower.
Colemak Ortho puts in CS/SC, which is 644 / 4,363. CF/ FC is pretty much nill. In percentages, SC is 34% of CT. Adding it all up and including the others, Colemak Ortho comes in at 36% of CT+TC. A big dip.
If you want overall percentages (middle finger pressing C, Ortho style), Middlemak comes in at 2.16%, vs Colemak’s 1.669%, vs Workman’s 3.147%, vs Qwerty’s 6.575%. This is from Colemak-DH analyzer which says Middlemak ortho increases, as opposed to what I found that Middlemak ortho decreases SFB. I think it comes down to the data set used.

6) Low ring-to-pinky rolls. And the amazing inside roll from H.

A secondary design goal was to decrease the awkward ring-to-pinky roll. Middlemak greatly reduces this roll.
On the left hand: Middlemak’s ring-to-pinky outside roll of SA and WA is actually pretty low. SA is actually the lowest bigram of the common consonants to A. So SA and WA comes out to be a good design. Compared to Colemak, Middlemak’s SA outside roll is far less common than Colemak’s RA. (The exact Mayzner in millions are: Middlemak’s SA is 6,147. Colemak’s RA is 19,333. WA is the same for both at 10,865.)
On the right hand: Middlmak’s ring-to-pinky roll of IH and UH is very low. Vs Colemak: IO is very common and even YO is pretty common. (The exact numbers are Middlemak’s IH is 59, UH is 30. Vs Colemak’s IO 23,542, YO is 4,227.)
This next bit isn’t even a secondary design goal, but it’s worth mentioning: On the right hand, outside rolls from any of the fingers to the pinky H are very low. The common letters that come before H are usually TH, CH, WH, SH, and GH. All of those are on the opposite left hand. Doing the math, 97% of the letters before H are on the left hand. H on the pinky gives an amazing inside roll almost all the time.
Also worth mentioning is I think this also de-emphasizes the pinky a bit. First it limits the ring-to-pinky rolls. Second, the frequency of H is much lower than Colemak’s O. Third, the bigram HH is virtually nill, vs Colemak’s OO which is pretty common. None of these are massive, but I think they add up to de-emphasizing the pinky a bit.

7) Qwerty similarity.

Last but not least, this maintains Qwerty similarity to make it easier to learn.
First, this maintains the bottom row (except N) and maintains Q, W, A, and S. Many letters move on the same finger, including T, G, N, Y, J .
Second, this “keeps” the ASRT order. People learning Colemak commonly say that R and S are reversed. Technically it’s not because R was never on the middle finger to begin with. But it seems to be reversed in the brain. I think it’s two things. First ASRT keeps it in the same order, with R between S and T, even if R changes fingers. Second, I wonder how many people alt-fingered R typing in Qwerty, either all the time or for the RT bigram.
(I've also wondered if, for example, patterns like the very common ION simply being easier to type would make this faster to learn. I’m not certain about that though.)
Comparing layouts:

• Middlemak: 10 letters stay in their original spot and 16 move, with 5 letters moving on the same finger and 11 letters switching fingers.
  
• Colemak: 10 letters stay in their original spot and 16 move, with 4 letters moving on the same finger and 12 letters switching fingers.
  
• Colemak-DH: 5 letters stay in their original spot and 21 move, with 6 letters moving on the same finger and 15 letters switching fingers.
  
• Workman: 6 letters stay in their original spot and 20 move, with 8 letters moving on the same finger and 12 letters switching fingers.
  

*Not accounting for punctuation changes.
Considering letters swapping on the same finger, this has fewer changes than Colemak. And I think “keeping” the ASRT order will make it even easier to adopt than the numbers suggest.
(I hope people don’t think that I’m overly focused on keeping S in the Qwerty location just because. For this layout, it does work better with ASRT, I address it in more detail in excessive amount of details.)

Downsides

1) There is a slight increase in SFB compared to Colemak. But overall I think SFB is still low.
2) There are a handful of NFB with R: BR, GR, PR, etc. Same with L and BL. This isn’t enough to change the home row to ARST. There is more below but ASRT has lower SFB, lower ring-to-pinky rolls, and is easier to learn. Also note these are much, much lower than the extremely high NFB that Colemak has with HE, LE, etc, (to solve those I paid L and R together).
3) I wanted a less common letter in the G location (Qwerty T location). I really tried to put a less common letter there, but it simply didn’t work.
4) I mention this above but to add more: The OM scissor-gram is a bit more common than I'd like. This is a limitation of keeping Qwerty similarity (the M) and wanting to put O on the upper-row-middle-finger. (MTGAP has a good design on this. It paired its EO with a lot of punctuation on the index finger to reduce NFBs.)

Conclusion

I'm really happy with this layout. I think it is a great combination of pretty low SFB, good use of the strong middle-finger-upper-row position, reduced NFB and pinballing, keeping Qwerty similarity, and easy to transition to.
Honestly I’m surprised no one else has stumbled on this arrangement, since many people have taken to trying to fix Colemak’s issues and keep Qwerty similarity.

Some nice rolls and combinations

Although this increases alternating, there are still plenty of rolls left. Some I want to mention:
HE is very easy.
LD feels very good.
OU feels very comfortable.
OF/FO is very common and feels very good.
IO and ION are very nice rolls.
This maintains the nice IEN roll.
IOU is a redirect, but overall feels pretty ok.
YOU has a lateral move, but feels comfortable.
OU+LD together to make OULD feels good.
The very common TH, THE, and THE_ feel very nice not having to move the fingers off the home row.

Vs Colemak and Vs Colemak-DH

I made Middlemak to try to solve the problems I found with Colemak. I think all the items came out above, but as a bit of a summary and to include Colemak-DH.
Colemak:
1) Colemak has an issue with high lateral movement with D and H. You see this especially with H and its NFBs, but D isn’t the best either.
2) Colemak’s right index finger is overworked. It just has too much to do with N, H, and L.
3) Colemak has a pinballing issue due to placing most vowels and many common consonants on the same hand.
4) Colemak has a ton of NFB with EL/LE and HE.
5) Colemak has a hand balance issue. It places a lot of emphasis on the right hand with the vowels and several common consonants. (Hand dominance and pinballing are technically separate items.)
6) Colemak’s awkward ring-to-pinky rolls. Notably IO, YO (especially when typing YOU), and also RA on the right hand.
7) Not exactly a direct issue with Colemak, but Middlemak is easier to learn coming from Qwerty. Many new users want to ‘keep’ the order of ASRT instead of ‘reversing’ S and R.
Middlemak is a pretty low increase in SFBs and it fixes those issues.
Colemak DH:
Colemak-DH solves 1) the lateral movements. But it doesn’t solve 2) the right index finger overwork, 3) the pinballing, 4) the NFBs 5) the hand balance, 6) the awkward ring-to-pinky rolls, and 7) coming from Qwerty it’s pretty much a full change layout, taking out ease of transition. This also means common shortcuts move. They are still accessible, but they move (paste is the same. Undo, cut, and copy move.)

Option: Swap A and H

This gives:

QWLDG JFOU: HSRTP YNEIA ZXCVB KM,./ 

The good: This is good if you want to put all the vowels and most consonants on opposite hands. Overall this increases alternating. This mostly comes from moving A to the right hand because A pairs a lot with the L, R, S, T, etc. This is the biggest appeal if you find those uncomfortable. Moving H actually decreases alternating because there’s a high bigram with TH (you can test your own comfortability on that. Don’t forget capitalized Th is common.) Excessive details: Middlemak A has 41% of bigrams on the opposite hand, swapping gives 65%. Middlemak H has 58% of bigrams on the opposite hand, swapping gives 51% (again, mostly because of TH). Overall, middlemak A+H has 48% on the opposite hand, swapping gives 59%.
The neutral: On the left hand, the ring-to-pinky outside roll of SH is slightly higher, but in a similar range. Data from Mayzner is SH is 8,889, and original is SA is 6,147. Changing WA to WH is practically identical.
The bad: On both the right and left hand, the all-fingers-to-pinky outside roll is higher. On the left hand, it’s because TH is very common. On the right hand, it takes away the remarkable inside roll of H and adds in a moderate number of all-fingers-to-A bigrams with EA, IA, NA, MA, etc, (OA is actually low). Notably, the ring-to-pinky outside roll is higher with IA and UA coming in at 8,072 and 3,844, vs original IH and UH of 59 and 30.
The complicated: This option decreases the pinky-to-all-fingers rolls inside rolls on both hands. It increases the all-fingers-to-pinky rolls outside rolls. The overall sum of inside rolls plus outside rolls is lower. In short: this option lowers inside rolls, increases outside rolls, with an overall sum that is lower.
Basically stick to the original if you want to lower ring-to-pinky movement, lower outside rolls, and easier to learn. Overall I put this as a decent option if someone wants to maximize alternating without going to a full change layout.

Excessive amount of stats

This section has details on distance reductions, hand balance based on frequency, hand balance based on distance, and raw distance numbers. I'm going to give lots of charts to cover all the details. Those that want to know all the details or those that like to analyze will find this interesting, but others don’t have to read.

Distance reduction from Qwerty

Keyboard	Distance	Distance	Distance
	(km)	(miles)	(% reduction from Qwerty)
MTGAP	2.592	1.611	46.3%
Workman	2.613	1.624	45.9%
Norman	2.615	1.625	45.9%
Colemak	2.616	1.625	45.8%
Middlemak	2.710	1.684	43.9%
Semimak	2.739	1.702	43.3%
Dvorak	2.813	1.748	41.8%
QWERTY	4.829	3.001	0%

*Source: 62 page / 31k word compilation. Left index used to press Qwerty C location. Includes punctuation.
Middlemak’s distance reduction is good, most alt keyboards are in the same range. It’s a tad worse on distance than some others because putting O off the home row increases distance, with the O being more frequent. (MTGAP puts O off the home row, but has all the punctuation on the diagonals to decrease distance.)

All Finger Distances

This is the raw distance travelled in metres. Percentages rely on the total distance travelled, which changes between layouts so it's not comparable. Note that distance is different from frequency. The fingers don't move for the home row, the distance travelled is to the other letters.

Keyboard	L Pinky	L Ring	L Middle	L Index	R Index	R Middle	R Ring	R Pinky	L Total	R Total	Total
MTGAP	293	116	413	246	667	320	219	318	1068 m	1524 m	2592 m
Workman	123	232	330	753	505	200	146	325	1437 m	1176 m	2613 m
Norman	127	127	223	674	525	377	244	319	1150 m	1465 m	2615 m
Colemak	130	127	116	842	747	200	141	315	1214 m	1402 m	2616 m
Middlemak	134	127	207	847	440	460	189	306	1314 m	1396 m	2710 m
Semimak	238	237	326	390	506	200	450	393	1191 m	1549 m	2739 m
Dvorak	205	54	34	692	753	285	395	396	984 m	1829 m	2813 m
QWERTY	130	127	670	1413	1169	452	450	418	2340 m	2489 m	4829 m

*All distances in metres. Same source as table above.
First, you can see Qwerty’s distances are extremely high. All the alternatives make big reductions.
Notice that the index fingers move way more than the other fingers.
Middlemak balances this out decently and moves more distance to both middle fingers. The left index finger is still a bit high because it has D off the home row (this brings it back to the discussion of where does the 11th letter go). Middlemak’s left index is slightly higher than Colemak’s even though they have the same letters because the row stagger technically puts D on a slight diagonal. A technicality really.
The right index finger is low, a good feature that the index finger next to the vowels doesn’t have to travel much. Compared to Colemak, Middlemak’s movement is 41% lower than Colemaks.

Zoom in on index fingers

Keyboard	Distance	Distance	Total	Index Finger % of total distance
	L Index	R Index	L+R Index	L+R Index
MTGAP	246	667	913 m	35%
Workman	753	505	1259 m	48%
Norman	674	525	1200 m	46%
Colemak	842	747	1589 m	61%
Middlemak	847	440	1287 m	47%
Semimak	390	506	896 m	33%
Dvorak	692	753	1445 m	51%
QWERTY	1413	1169	2582 m	53%

Here you can really see how much work the index fingers do. Middlemak’s sum of the index fingers is nice and low.
You can also look at the percentage of travel with the index finger. Middlemak’s is down at 47% - meaning the index fingers are responsible for 47% of all the distance travelled. On Colemak the index fingers account for 61% the distance travelled, quite a big difference relatively. Workman and Norman are close to Middlemak. MTGAP and Semimak are very low. Dvorak and Qwerty percentages are a bit deceiving though - the higher index finger distances are hidden by the higher total amount of distance.
So even when Middlemak’s left index finger doesn’t have a reduction in distance, the total index finger distance is significantly reduced.

Hand Balance based on Distance

This is the distance in percentages for all the fingers (unlike the raw distances in metres above) so that I can add them up to look at hand balance.

Keyboard	Left hand	Right hand	Hand Balance Ratio	L Pinky	L Ring	L Middle	L Index	R Index	R Middle	R Ring	R Pinky
MTGAP	41.2*	58.8	1.43	11.3	4.5	15.9	9.5	25.7	12.3	8.4	12.3
Workman	55.0	45.0*	0.82	4.7	8.9	12.6	28.8	19.3	7.6	5.6	12.5
Norman	44.0	56.0	1.27	4.8	4.8	8.5	25.8	20.1	14.4	9.3	12.2
Colemak	46.4	53.6*	1.15	5.0	4.8	4.4	32.2	28.6	7.6	5.4	12.0
Middlemak	48.5	51.5*	1.06	5.0	4.7	7.6	31.2	16.3	17.0	7.0	11.3
Semimak	43.5	56.5*	1.30	8.7	8.7	11.9	14.2	18.5	7.3	16.4	14.4
Dvorak	35.0*	65.0	1.86	7.3	1.9	1.2	24.6	26.8	10.1	14.0	14.1
QWERTY	48.5	51.5	1.06	2.7	2.6	13.9	29.3	24.2	9.4	9.3	8.7

Notes: * indicates vowel hand (Norman and Qwerty are mixed enough that there is no clear vowel hand). The ratio between the hands can change quite quickly, so I think that highlights the differences between the layouts better. Ratio >1 indicates right hand dominant, <1 indicates left hand dominant.
I think the raw distances are better for comparison between layouts, but some people like percentages. I used this mostly to calculate hand balance.
You can see Middlemak spreads out the work. The pinkies are low, ring fingers are reasonable, middle takes on more, and the indexes have most of the distances.

Hand Balance based on Frequency

Now we’re shifting to frequency. You can see the data for all the fingers, this is enlightening on its own. I also add them up to look at the hand balance.

Keyboard	Left hand	Right hand	Hand Balance Ratio	L Pinky	L Ring	L Middle	L Index	R Index	R Middle	R Ring	R Pinky
MTGAP	49.9*	50.0	1.00	10.8	8.4	18.8	11.9	16.3	14.5	9.8	9.4
Workman	50.7	49.3*	0.97	9.3	10.1	11.1	20.2	15.2	14.9	9.7	9.5
Norman	51.7	48.3	0.93	9.3	8.3	15.4	18.7	15.2	13.2	11.8	8.1
Colemak	46.7	53.2*	1.14	9.4	7.7	8.2	21.4	19.4	14.9	9.1	9.8
Middlemak	48.8	51.2*	1.05	9.4	8.3	9.7	21.4	13.7	19.6	9.9	8.0
Semimak	46.6	53.4*	1.15	9.7	10.1	11.8	15.0	12.2	14.9	15.6	10.7
Dvorak	44.8*	55.3	1.23	10.3	8.1	12.2	14.2	17.2	13.4	13.0	11.7
QWERTY	56.5	43.5	0.77	9.4	8.3	15.4	23.4	18.8	8.4	11.8	4.5

* indicates vowel hand (Norman and Qwerty are mixed enough that there is no vowel hand). Ratio of >1 indicates right hand dominant, <1 indicates left hand dominant.
The ratio between the hands can change quite quickly, so I think that highlights the differences between the layouts better than the percentages. I know it doesn't add up to 100%, the analyzer is doing some rounding or something behind the scenes, I'm not going to round any further.
E is so common that it bumps up any finger it’s on.
Middlemak’s left middle finger takes on a bit more work. The left index is still high because of D. The right index is notably lower taking off common letters. The right middle takes on more of the work with O. And the right pinky is lower too with the H there.

Hand Balance Distance + Frequency

This is the same chart that was above, just for a summary.

Keyboard	Dominant Hand	Hand Balance ratio based on Frequency	Hand Balance ratio based on Distance	Hand Balance ratio based on Frequency and Distance	Corrected comparison number for left hand dominant
MTGAP	Right	1.00	1.43	1.43
Workman	Left	0.97	0.82	0.80	1.26
Norman	Right	0.93	1.27	1.19
Colemak	Right	1.14	1.15	1.32
Middlemak	Right	1.05	1.06	1.11
Semimak	Right	1.15	1.30	1.49
Dvorak	Right	1.23	1.86	2.30
QWERTY	Left	0.77	1.06	0.82	1.22

1 indicates right hand dominant, <1 indicates left hand dominant. Hand Balance ratio based on Frequency and Distance is a simple multiplication of the two.

Frequency-off-home-row (F.O.H.R.)

At the risk of too much information, another way to look at this is the frequency that’s off-home-row. I.e. the frequency that is not under the fingers.
Distances weigh the keys differently, while frequency-off-home-row levels that field. This should be read in conjunction with distance. Neither is better than the other, it’s just a different measurement.

Keyboard	L Pinky	L Ring	L Middle	L Index	R Index	R Middle	R Ring	R Pinky	L+R Index	Index FOHR as % of All fingers FOHR
MTGAP	4.0	2.0	7.2	4.1	10.8	5.8	3.6	3.8	14.9%	36%
Workman	1.5	3.9	5.6	11.5	8.8	3.3	2.5	2.7	20.3%	51%
Norman	1.5	2.1	3.8	10.0	8.8	6.4	4.6	2.6	18.8%	47%
Colemak	1.6	2.1	2.0	12.7	13.0	3.3	2.3	2.6	25.7%	65%
Middlemak	1.6	2.1	4.1	12.7	7.3	8.0	3.1	2.5	20.0%	48%
Semimak	3.5	4.5	5.4	6.3	8.4	3.3	7.8	3.9	14.7%	34%
Dvorak	2.5	0.9	0.6	11.7	11.7	4.7	6.6	5.5	23.4%	53%
QWERTY	1.6	2.1	11.6	21.4	18.6	7.5	7.8	4.5	40.0%	53%

I did this after noticing, on Colemak, that my right index finger moves off the home row a lot. For Colemak the left index finger has more distance, but the right index finger has more frequency-off-home-row. The long distance to B on the left hand skews the distance travelled.
The effect is similar on most of the layouts: FOHR tones down the left hand dominance and bumps up the right hand dominance. With Colemak the frequency of H and L is enough to actually flip them. This is more noticeable with layouts that keep Qwerty’s B (which is just frequent enough to skew things), layouts that change the letter to a less common one shift less.
Also insightful is “Index FOHR as % of All fingers FOHR”. It shows that on Middlemak the index fingers do 48% of all frequency-off-home-row, quite reasonable. Whereas on Colemak the index fingers have 65% of all frequency-off-home-row, very high. Workman is just a tad higher with the index fingers doing 51% of frequency-off-home-row. Dvorak’s and Qwerty’s 53% for index fingers is a bit deceiving though, it appears low but that's because the overall total FOHR is much higher.
This is similar to “Zoom in on the index fingers”, but this shows an even greater difference between Middlemak and Colemak. This shows Middlemak at 48% and Colemak at 65% based on index finger % of total FOHR. Recall Middlemaks was 47% and Colemaks was 61% based on index finger % of total distance. Same thing, when the distances to the diagonals are levelled out, the frequency stands out.

Excessive amount of detail on letters

You really don’t need to read this, mostly if you have any lingering or specific Q on specific letters.

D position and why not curl?

Back to the discussion of there being 11 common letters: Where to place that 11th letter is difficult, it’s either the ring finger or index finger. Many find the ring finger to not be very dexterous for such a frequent letter. So putting D on the index finger with T works very well for low SFB.
Why not the middle row? First, I think most people find it easier to reach up and down rather than laterally. Second, it works very well with the LD roll.
Why not the bottom row? I want to leave the bottom row the same as Qwerty for easy adoption and to leave the shortcuts of undo=cut-copy-paste the same. I also think C and M (the curl locations) are already near perfect frequencies for those locations. Those are the middle of the pack frequencies, which are perfect for the index fingers - which cover 6 to 7 letters.
I previously said that I’m not a fan of Colemak’s L position, which is the same upper-row-index-finger. But Colemak’s L has a ton of NFBs with the vowels, especially with E but also with all the other vowels. Looking at the whole hand, 62% of Colemak’s L bigrams are on the same hand. I think that’s a big source of discomfort. But with Middlemak’s D, only 22% of bigrams are on the same hand. So Middlemak has far lower same-hand-gymnastics.

The R and L position

I’m sure the R and S location will attract attention, so I’ll discuss it more here.
If you want to skip this, the main factor is that R and L pair well together. Better than S and L. That means the RL column goes on the middle finger. R being more common goes on the home row, and L goes on the middle-finger-upper-row which is a strong location.
[First note that Colemak had to go with ARST because of F on the middle-finger-upper-row. The SFB of RF/FR is more common than SF/FS.]

ASRT, making a RL column

The pros of ASRT is it gives fewer SFB, with LRL being less than half as common as SL/LS. It also gives fewer ring-to-pinky-rolls with SA being far less common than Colemak’s RA. It also makes it much easier to learn from Qwerty.
The cons is that the R position leads to more NFB with the index finger. Most of these feel ok but RD, GR, BR are not so good. These aren’t super common, but they are there. PR gives the commonly disliked lateral NFB, but I think it’s relatively ok for the frequency - it’s not super common. RS creates an outside roll, but I’d rather have the RS on Middlemak’s middle-to-ring fingers than Colemak’s RA on the ring-to-pinky fingers. Colemak’s RA is much more common than Middlemak’s RS too.

ARST, making a SL column

The pros of ARST is that it gives an inside roll of RS. It also separates R from the NFB letters on the index finger, which do add up. However, I’m trying to resolve the NFBs of Colemak’s right hand H and L with E which is a magnitude larger, in addition to the pinballing that it creates which requires moving L.
The cons with ARST is that it gives more SFB. It’s not huge, but it is there. It also gives a lot of ring-to-pinky outside rolls with RA. And finally this makes it much harder to learn coming from Qwerty.

Verdict: ASRT, RL column

None of these are huge deal breakers for one or the other. I went with lower SFB, lower ring-to-pinky rolls, and much easier to learn. At the cost of some NFB on the index finger and inside roll of RS.
(If someone comes from Colemak and wants ARST, they can. It's not a humongous downside to do that. Mostly the more common RA ring-to-pinky roll and slightly more SFB of SD/DS.)
(This layout truly does work better with ASRT. If it didn’t work, I would have changed it. For example, I wanted to keep G on its Qwerty location but it’s better to move it, so I didn’t shy away from changes.)

P and G location

It’s better to move G than keep it in its Qwerty location.
P and G are pretty much the same frequency, so it doesn’t matter in that sense.
P has a SFB with T, and it has common bigrams of PR, SP, and even PA. Those work better with P on the middle row. There is PL, but the ones above outweigh it.
G has a bigram with NG. With N on the opposite hand, that means G can go on the worse diagonal spot. There is GR, but PR is far more common.

O location

O and E together give very low SFB. This is a great opportunity to put them together. The strong middle finger only has 3 keys, so it can handle two very frequent letters.

U, Y and F locations

U works pretty well with I, the SFB are reasonably low. This location also creates a nice OU and YOU roll.
Y goes to the index finger, which actually works pretty well. I broke down the numbers in SFB section.
F goes to the right hand index finger, because putting P or G on the right hand gives too many SFB with M and N. The F location works quite well for both moderate frequency and low SFB. It has a lot of NFB with OF/FO, so placing it next to O makes a comfortable roll.

Named for the emphasis on the middle finger and use of the middle-finger-upper-row locations for frequent letters
Link to Layout heatmap

QWLDG JFOU: ASRTP YNEIH ZXCVB KM,./ 

Link to Middlemak GitHub download.
Link to GitHub download Middlemak-AH.
Middlemak is also up for easy sub to get to.
The main design criteria was:
1) Use the middle-finger-upper-row position. The middle finger is a very strong finger, and the middle-finger-upper-row is a very good location for a common letter.
2) To reduce pinballing by putting most vowels on the right hand and putting most of the frequent consonants on the left hand.
3) Reduce the number of Near Finger Bigrams (NFBs).
4) Improve hand balance.
5) Keep SFB down of course.
6) A secondary design criteria was low ring-to-pinky-rolls. I find this to be an awkward movement.
7) Maintain Qwerty similarity to make it easier to learn.
These are all discussed in more detail below. (I’ll be talking in the context of Colemak for some of it. I don’t mean this to be a hit piece on Colemak, it’s just the best way to frame the items.)

1) Middle-Finger-Upper-Row

The main purpose of this layout is to place 2 common letters on the middle-finger-upper-row. The middle finger is very strong and these are excellent locations that are easy to reach.
When you look at the letter frequency, there are 11 common letters before it takes a big drop off. The first eight letters go on the home row under the fingers. The next question is where do the next 3 letters go. Middlemak’s philosophy is to place 2 on the middle-finger-upper-row, and 1 on the index-finger-upper-row. Colemak places 2 on the centre columns, requiring a lateral movement that many find uncomfortable. Workman has 1 middle-finger-upper-row, 1 ring-finger-upper-row, and 1 index-finger-lower-row, a mixed bag.
L pairs well with R for low SFB. Middlemak places the RL column on the middle finger, which puts the common L on the middle-finger-upper-row.
E and O pair very well for low SFB. Placing EO column on the middle finger puts the very common O on the middle-finger-upper-row.
Using the middle finger also unloads the index fingers. The index fingers can get very busy with 6-7 letters compared with the other letters 3, especially when multiple frequent letters are put on them. I’ll give the distance stats in “Excessive amounts of stats” section far below which shows the drastic difference.
(I’ll skip discussing D here, it’s in “Excessive amounts of detail”. I also cover the R position more there.)

2) Pinballing

I wrote about pinballing in length here. The short of it is that there is an incredibly strong interaction between vowels and the consonants, with 75% of all bigrams between vowels and consonants. PInballing can happen when a lot of vowels and consonants arn put on the same hand, the hand movement will pinball back and forth between the vowels and consonants.
I’ll cover Colemak first to outline the issue. Having most of the vowels EOIUY and many frequent consonants of NHLMKJ on the right hand leads to a pinballing problem. I call this the NHLMKJ wall, it’s a wall of consonants that the vowels pinball off of
To reduce pinballing Middlemak does two things:
First Middlemak moves L off the vowel hand and to the consonant hand. This (and moving H) reduces the wall to NMFPJ which is much, much lower frequency for movements to pinball off of. Or if the word starts with NMFPJ, it’s again much lower frequency.
Second it moves H to the pinky. H is a very unique letter because it’s almost always followed by a vowel. Moving H to the pinky means it almost always gives an inside roll. After the vowel, it generally continues to the consonants NMFPJ continuing the inside roll, or it alternates to the other hand. Rarely goes back to H. Generally only after the third letter can it start to pinball back to the vowels or back to H.
Combined, this reduces pinballing and increases alternating. It’s not entirely alternating, Middlemak still has rolls because it has N, H, and MKFJ. For N I find the rolls to be comfortable, likely because N is on the home row.

3) Near Finger Bigrams, NFB

NFB are bigrams that are on adjacent fingers. Too many or an uncomfortable arrangement can be an issue. NFB and pinballing are separate issues: NFB is the smaller pattern of adjacent fingers, pinballing is the much larger pattern of pinballing between all vowels and constants.
I’ll cover Colemak first again to highlight the issue. On Colemak there are extremely common NFBs with HE and LE/EL. (There is also NE/EN, but I find the HE and EL/LE to be awkward because L and H are not on the home row.)
Pretty much all E bigrams are fairly high. I think you want to move common consonants away from E to reduce NFBs. For Middlemak, that means moving them away from the EO column.
Middlemak drastically reduces the NFBs by moving the common letters L and H off the adjacent index finger. The replacements of F and Y have dramatically lower NFBs with E and O. I wanted to keep Colemak’s K there since this doesn’t have many bigrams with E and O.
Looking at other layouts: Workman still has high NFB with L and E. Colemak-DH maintains L and H next to E. Many find the new HE roll to be more comfortable but it’s still a ton of NFB, and LE/EL is still there. MTGAP moved practically all letters away from its E and O and instead put punctuation there, a very good solution.
Middlemak does create some NFB with O placement. Namely OF, ON, and OM. However OF and ON are very comfortable, having the middle finger extended up feels pretty comfortable. OM is ok, and it’s the least common of those 3. The OM scissor-gram is a bit more common than I'd like, but it feels ok. This is about the best location for a scissor-gram too, with the long-middle-finger up and the curl-index-finger down being able to handle it fairly well. (Just to mention Colemak’s EL/LE, not exactly a scissor-gram, I find is bad since the shorter index finger has to reach up and the middle finger is so long it’s already curled just to be on the home row.)
Overall, Middlemak moving common consonants away from E drastically lowers the number of NFBs and takes away a ton of awkward movements. Visually, I think you can see this pretty easily in the heatmaps.
(You can extend this concept to fingers further away, to include Colemaks HI, LI, etc. This can be valid, but for here I’ll focus on adjacent fingers.)

4) Hand balance

Hand balance is a difficult topic. The two most obvious metrics for hand dominance are 1) the frequency of the letters, and 2) the distance the fingers have to travel (which is different from frequency because you don't travel to the home-row). But any pinballing from having too many vowels and consonants on the same hand doesn’t show up in those numbers. Having said all that, I’m going to look at frequency and distance.

Keyboard	Vowel Hand	Dominant Hand	Hand Balance ratio based on Frequency	Hand Balance ratio based on Distance	Hand Balance ratio based on Frequency and Distance	Corrected comparison number for left hand dominant
MTGAP	Left	Right	1.00	1.43	1.43
Workman	Right	Left	0.97	0.82	0.80	1.26
Norman	n/a	Right	0.93	1.27	1.19
Colemak	Right	Right	1.14	1.15	1.32
Middlemak	Right	Right	1.05	1.06	1.11
Semimak	Right	Right	1.15	1.30	1.49
Dvorak	Left	Right	1.23	1.86	2.30
QWERTY	n/a	Left	0.77	1.06	0.82	1.22

Notes: Ratio >1 indicates right hand dominant, <1 indicates left hand dominant. The hand balance ratios are based on each hand's frequency/distance, right hand divided by left hand. E.g. Middlemak: 51.2% right hand frequency divided by 48.8% left hand frequency equals 1.05. Colemak: 53.2% right hand frequency divided by 46.7% left hand frequency equals 1.14. Hand Balance ratio based on Frequency and Distance is a simple multiplication of the two ratios. I did this because having more frequency and more movement on the same hand amplifies the hand dominance. Or if one hand has more frequency and the other hand has more movement, that would mitigate it to some degree. This is by no means the most definitive way to look at it, but it's what I've managed to come up with. The "Corrected comparison number for left hand dominant" is a hard math thing to explain (that I hope I'm right about anyway). E.g. for Workman listing 0.80 gives the wrong impression the hand dominance is equivalent to 1.2 (20%). But it's actually 1.26 (26%), obtained from 1/0.796=1.26.
Middlemak is more balanced on both frequency and distance. When both are considered, it really adds up to being more balanced. Middlemak combined balance ratio is 1.11, compared to Colemak’s 1.32 or Workman’s 1.26.
Ratios can change quite quickly because both the numerator and the denominator (in this case, the left and right hand) can go in opposite directions. Moving L to the other hand does exactly this - changing both the numerator and denominator, and it changes both the frequency and the distance. So that one move really helps to balance out the hands.
(I’ll add the full data in “Excessive amounts of stats” for both frequency and distance, broken down to hands and fingers. The individual finger load is quite interesting too.)

5) SFB

The SFB of this layout is still pretty low, but it does come out a tad higher than Colemak’s. I’ve debated how to show this and decided to go with the full nuclear information. Data is from Mayzner revisited in millions (which only has letter bigrams and doesn’t have punctuation data, that’s what the 0’s are).

Keyboard	Total SFB	Left hand SFB	Right hand SFB	L Pinky	L Ring	L Middle	L Index	R Index	R Middle	R Ring	R Pinky
QWERTY	185,270	125,920	59,350	1,105	1,661	54,502	68,651	34,166	3,970	21,214	0
Workman	78,147	29,268	48,878	1,105	3,712	2,806	21,645	27,338	5,037	16,503	0
Dvorak	70,570	28,306	42,264	0	31	0	28,275	12,142	16,265	8,229	5,629
Middlemak	44,698	25,806	18,892	1,105	1,661	2,716	20,323	12,415	3,134	3,343	0
Colemak	39,023	23,336	15,687	1,105	1,267	639	20,323	9,831	5,037	819	0
MTGAP	34,151	14,550	19,601	1,147	339	3,134	9,931	4,629	8,633	5,071	1,267

Notes: This is with index finger pressing C location, how I think most people type. Adding in punctuation the numbers would be higher, I expect they would increase by similar absolute amounts.
For Middlemak: You can see it’s not all that much of an increase in SFB from Colemak. Overall the numbers are low considering it keeps many Qwerty aspects.
On the left hand: The middle finger goes up with R and L. This was to allow more consonants on the left hand and use of the middle-finger-upper-row. I think the middle finger being a strong finger and comfortable reach can handle these quite well. The index finger is the same as Colemak.
On the right hand: The right index goes up a little bit, mostly with NY and MY. They aren’t as high as you may think. But the Y SFBs and adding in NK/KN, NF, etc, they do add up a little. It’s not all that much but it is more. I think it’s still easily manageable. NY is actually not all that common, for example it’s actually less common than EU/UE. (The exact Mayzner numbers are: NY/YN is 2,761 / 373. Compared to EU/UE is 878 / 4,158. MY/YM is 1,753 / 668.) The middle finger actually goes down, EO/OE is very low. The ring finger goes up a bit with UI/IU being more common than Colemak’s IY/YI.
If you want overall percentages (index finger pressing C), Middlemak comes in at 2.078%, vs Colemak’s 1.815%, vs Workmans 3.053%, vs Qwerty’s 6.264%.
Colemak really did a good job finding low SFB pairings of SF, DT, NHL, RW, and IY. So changing 3 of those pairings does come at a cost. But it’s really not much and it’s done so that Middlemak can put more frequent letters to better spots, reduce pinballing, and reduce NFB. I think the SFB is in the same realm as Colemak, it’s still pretty low.

Ortho SFB

Keyboard	Total SFB	Left hand SFB	Right hand SFB	L Pinky	L Ring	L Middle	L Index	R Index	R Middle	R Ring	R Pinky
QWERTY	195,687	136,337	59,350	1,105	1,661	86,462	47,108	34,166	3,970	21,214	0
Workman	79,561	30,682	48,878	1,105	3,712	8,206	17,659	27,338	5,037	16,503	0
Dvorak	70,365	28,101	42,264	0	31	1,591	26,480	12,142	16,265	8,229	5,629
Middlemak	42,816	23,924	18,892	1,105	1,661	14,888	6,270	12,415	3,134	3,343	0
Colemak	30,032	14,345	15,687	1,105	1,267	5,702	6,270	9,831	5,037	819	0
MTGAP	34,151	14,550	19,601	1,147	339	3,134	9,931	4,629	8,633	5,071	1,267

Notes: This is with the middle finger pressing C location, “proper” or ortho style. Same data as above.
Middlemak on Ortho actually comes in just a tad lower, but Colemak takes a bigger dip.
This basically moves most of the SFB from the index finger to the middle finger. On Middlemak, ortho takes out CT on the index finger and puts in CR and CL on the middle finger, which is only a tad lower. On Colemak, ortho takes out CT and puts in SC which is much lower.
I think it still works well. The middle finger is a strong finger and can cover most of these well. The one issue is that CL which is a two row jump.
I’ll break down the full Mayzner numbers:
First the index finger pressing CT/TC is 12,998 / 737. This is what ortho removes.
Middlemak Ortho puts in CRC which is 4,214 / 3,423. And puts in CL / LC which is 4,202 / 333. In percentages, CR is 32% of CT, RC is 26% of CT, and CL is 32% of CT. Adding it all up and including all the others (CP, CG, etc), Middlemak Ortho comes in at 87% of CT+TC. Just a tad lower.
Colemak Ortho puts in CS/SC, which is 644 / 4,363. CF/ FC is pretty much nill. In percentages, SC is 34% of CT. Adding it all up and including the others, Colemak Ortho comes in at 36% of CT+TC. A big dip.
If you want overall percentages (middle finger pressing C, Ortho style), Middlemak comes in at 2.16%, vs Colemak’s 1.669%, vs Workman’s 3.147%, vs Qwerty’s 6.575%. This is from Colemak-DH analyzer which says Middlemak ortho increases, as opposed to what I found that Middlemak ortho decreases SFB. I think it comes down to the data set used.

6) Low ring-to-pinky rolls. And the amazing inside roll from H.

A secondary design goal was to decrease the awkward ring-to-pinky roll. Middlemak greatly reduces this roll.
On the left hand: Middlemak’s ring-to-pinky outside roll of SA and WA is actually pretty low. SA is actually the lowest bigram of the common consonants to A. So SA and WA comes out to be a good design. Compared to Colemak, Middlemak’s SA outside roll is far less common than Colemak’s RA. (The exact Mayzner in millions are: Middlemak’s SA is 6,147. Colemak’s RA is 19,333. WA is the same for both at 10,865.)
On the right hand: Middlmak’s ring-to-pinky roll of IH and UH is very low. Vs Colemak: IO is very common and even YO is pretty common. (The exact numbers are Middlemak’s IH is 59, UH is 30. Vs Colemak’s IO 23,542, YO is 4,227.)
This next bit isn’t even a secondary design goal, but it’s worth mentioning: On the right hand, outside rolls from any of the fingers to the pinky H are very low. The common letters that come before H are usually TH, CH, WH, SH, and GH. All of those are on the opposite left hand. Doing the math, 97% of the letters before H are on the left hand. H on the pinky gives an amazing inside roll almost all the time.
Also worth mentioning is I think this also de-emphasizes the pinky a bit. First it limits the ring-to-pinky rolls. Second, the frequency of H is much lower than Colemak’s O. Third, the bigram HH is virtually nill, vs Colemak’s OO which is pretty common. None of these are massive, but I think they add up to de-emphasizing the pinky a bit.

7) Qwerty similarity.

Last but not least, this maintains Qwerty similarity to make it easier to learn.
First, this maintains the bottom row (except N) and maintains Q, W, A, and S. Many letters move on the same finger, including T, G, N, Y, J .
Second, this “keeps” the ASRT order. People learning Colemak commonly say that R and S are reversed. Technically it’s not because R was never on the middle finger to begin with. But it seems to be reversed in the brain. I think it’s two things. First ASRT keeps it in the same order, with R between S and T, even if R changes fingers. Second, I wonder how many people alt-fingered R typing in Qwerty, either all the time or for the RT bigram.
(I've also wondered if, for example, patterns like the very common ION simply being easier to type would make this faster to learn. I’m not certain about that though.)
Comparing layouts:

• Middlemak: 10 letters stay in their original spot and 16 move, with 5 letters moving on the same finger and 11 letters switching fingers.
  
• Colemak: 10 letters stay in their original spot and 16 move, with 4 letters moving on the same finger and 12 letters switching fingers.
  
• Colemak-DH: 5 letters stay in their original spot and 21 move, with 6 letters moving on the same finger and 15 letters switching fingers.
  
• Workman: 6 letters stay in their original spot and 20 move, with 8 letters moving on the same finger and 12 letters switching fingers.
  

*Not accounting for punctuation changes.
Considering letters swapping on the same finger, this has fewer changes than Colemak. And I think “keeping” the ASRT order will make it even easier to adopt than the numbers suggest.
(I hope people don’t think that I’m overly focused on keeping S in the Qwerty location just because. For this layout, it does work better with ASRT, I address it in more detail in excessive amount of details.)

Downsides

1) There is a slight increase in SFB compared to Colemak. But overall I think SFB is still low.
2) There are a handful of NFB with R: BR, GR, PR, etc. Same with L and BL. This isn’t enough to change the home row to ARST. There is more below but ASRT has lower SFB, lower ring-to-pinky rolls, and is easier to learn. Also note these are much, much lower than the extremely high NFB that Colemak has with HE, LE, etc, (to solve those I paid L and R together).
3) I wanted a less common letter in the G location (Qwerty T location). I really tried to put a less common letter there, but it simply didn’t work.
4) I mention this above but to add more: The OM scissor-gram is a bit more common than I'd like. This is a limitation of keeping Qwerty similarity (the M) and wanting to put O on the upper-row-middle-finger. (MTGAP has a good design on this. It paired its EO with a lot of punctuation on the index finger to reduce NFBs.)

Conclusion

I'm really happy with this layout. I think it is a great combination of pretty low SFB, good use of the strong middle-finger-upper-row position, reduced NFB and pinballing, keeping Qwerty similarity, and easy to transition to.
Honestly I’m surprised no one else has stumbled on this arrangement, since many people have taken to trying to fix Colemak’s issues and keep Qwerty similarity.

Some nice rolls and combinations

Although this increases alternating, there are still plenty of rolls left. Some I want to mention:
HE is very easy.
LD feels very good.
OU feels very comfortable.
OF/FO is very common and feels very good.
IO and ION are very nice rolls.
This maintains the nice IEN roll.
IOU is a redirect, but overall feels pretty ok.
YOU has a lateral move, but feels comfortable.
OU+LD together to make OULD feels good.
The very common TH, THE, and THE_ feel very nice not having to move the fingers off the home row.

Vs Colemak and Vs Colemak-DH

I made Middlemak to try to solve the problems I found with Colemak. I think all the items came out above, but as a bit of a summary and to include Colemak-DH.
Colemak:
1) Colemak has an issue with high lateral movement with D and H. You see this especially with H and its NFBs, but D isn’t the best either.
2) Colemak’s right index finger is overworked. It just has too much to do with N, H, and L.
3) Colemak has a pinballing issue due to placing most vowels and many common consonants on the same hand.
4) Colemak has a ton of NFB with EL/LE and HE.
5) Colemak has a hand balance issue. It places a lot of emphasis on the right hand with the vowels and several common consonants. (Hand dominance and pinballing are technically separate items.)
6) Colemak’s awkward ring-to-pinky rolls. Notably IO, YO (especially when typing YOU), and also RA on the right hand.
7) Not exactly a direct issue with Colemak, but Middlemak is easier to learn coming from Qwerty. Many new users want to ‘keep’ the order of ASRT instead of ‘reversing’ S and R.
Middlemak is a pretty low increase in SFBs and it fixes those issues.
Colemak DH:
Colemak-DH solves 1) the lateral movements. But it doesn’t solve 2) the right index finger overwork, 3) the pinballing, 4) the NFBs 5) the hand balance, 6) the awkward ring-to-pinky rolls, and 7) coming from Qwerty it’s pretty much a full change layout, taking out ease of transition. This also means common shortcuts move. They are still accessible, but they move (paste is the same. Undo, cut, and copy move.)

Option: Swap A and H

This gives:

QWLDG JFOU: HSRTP YNEIA ZXCVB KM,./ 

The good: This is good if you want to put all the vowels and most consonants on opposite hands. Overall this increases alternating. This mostly comes from moving A to the right hand because A pairs a lot with the L, R, S, T, etc. This is the biggest appeal if you find those uncomfortable. Moving H actually decreases alternating because there’s a high bigram with TH (you can test your own comfortability on that. Don’t forget capitalized Th is common.) Excessive details: Middlemak A has 41% of bigrams on the opposite hand, swapping gives 65%. Middlemak H has 58% of bigrams on the opposite hand, swapping gives 51% (again, mostly because of TH). Overall, middlemak A+H has 48% on the opposite hand, swapping gives 59%.
The neutral: On the left hand, the ring-to-pinky outside roll of SH is slightly higher, but in a similar range. Data from Mayzner is SH is 8,889, and original is SA is 6,147. Changing WA to WH is practically identical.
The bad: On both the right and left hand, the all-fingers-to-pinky outside roll is higher. On the left hand, it’s because TH is very common. On the right hand, it takes away the remarkable inside roll of H and adds in a moderate number of all-fingers-to-A bigrams with EA, IA, NA, MA, etc, (OA is actually low). Notably, the ring-to-pinky outside roll is higher with IA and UA coming in at 8,072 and 3,844, vs original IH and UH of 59 and 30.
The complicated: This option decreases the pinky-to-all-fingers rolls inside rolls on both hands. It increases the all-fingers-to-pinky rolls outside rolls. The overall sum of inside rolls plus outside rolls is lower. In short: this option lowers inside rolls, increases outside rolls, with an overall sum that is lower.
Basically stick to the original if you want to lower ring-to-pinky movement, lower outside rolls, and easier to learn. Overall I put this as a decent option if someone wants to maximize alternating without going to a full change layout.

Excessive amount of stats

This section has details on distance reductions, hand balance based on frequency, hand balance based on distance, and raw distance numbers. I'm going to give lots of charts to cover all the details. Those that want to know all the details or those that like to analyze will find this interesting, but others don’t have to read.

Distance reduction from Qwerty

Keyboard	Distance	Distance	Distance
	(km)	(miles)	(% reduction from Qwerty)
MTGAP	2.592	1.611	46.3%
Workman	2.613	1.624	45.9%
Norman	2.615	1.625	45.9%
Colemak	2.616	1.625	45.8%
Middlemak	2.710	1.684	43.9%
Semimak	2.739	1.702	43.3%
Dvorak	2.813	1.748	41.8%
QWERTY	4.829	3.001	0%

*Source: 62 page / 31k word compilation. Left index used to press Qwerty C location. Includes punctuation.
Middlemak’s distance reduction is good, most alt keyboards are in the same range. It’s a tad worse on distance than some others because putting O off the home row increases distance, with the O being more frequent. (MTGAP puts O off the home row, but has all the punctuation on the diagonals to decrease distance.)

All Finger Distances

This is the raw distance travelled in metres. Percentages rely on the total distance travelled, which changes between layouts so it's not comparable. Note that distance is different from frequency. The fingers don't move for the home row, the distance travelled is to the other letters.

Keyboard	L Pinky	L Ring	L Middle	L Index	R Index	R Middle	R Ring	R Pinky	L Total	R Total	Total
MTGAP	293	116	413	246	667	320	219	318	1068 m	1524 m	2592 m
Workman	123	232	330	753	505	200	146	325	1437 m	1176 m	2613 m
Norman	127	127	223	674	525	377	244	319	1150 m	1465 m	2615 m
Colemak	130	127	116	842	747	200	141	315	1214 m	1402 m	2616 m
Middlemak	134	127	207	847	440	460	189	306	1314 m	1396 m	2710 m
Semimak	238	237	326	390	506	200	450	393	1191 m	1549 m	2739 m
Dvorak	205	54	34	692	753	285	395	396	984 m	1829 m	2813 m
QWERTY	130	127	670	1413	1169	452	450	418	2340 m	2489 m	4829 m

*All distances in metres. Same source as table above.
First, you can see Qwerty’s distances are extremely high. All the alternatives make big reductions.
Notice that the index fingers move way more than the other fingers.
Middlemak balances this out decently and moves more distance to both middle fingers. The left index finger is still a bit high because it has D off the home row (this brings it back to the discussion of where does the 11th letter go). Middlemak’s left index is slightly higher than Colemak’s even though they have the same letters because the row stagger technically puts D on a slight diagonal. A technicality really.
The right index finger is low, a good feature that the index finger next to the vowels doesn’t have to travel much. Compared to Colemak, Middlemak’s movement is 41% lower than Colemaks.

Zoom in on index fingers

Keyboard	Distance	Distance	Total	Index Finger % of total distance
	L Index	R Index	L+R Index	L+R Index
MTGAP	246	667	913 m	35%
Workman	753	505	1259 m	48%
Norman	674	525	1200 m	46%
Colemak	842	747	1589 m	61%
Middlemak	847	440	1287 m	47%
Semimak	390	506	896 m	33%
Dvorak	692	753	1445 m	51%
QWERTY	1413	1169	2582 m	53%

Here you can really see how much work the index fingers do. Middlemak’s sum of the index fingers is nice and low.
You can also look at the percentage of travel with the index finger. Middlemak’s is down at 47% - meaning the index fingers are responsible for 47% of all the distance travelled. On Colemak the index fingers account for 61% the distance travelled, quite a big difference relatively. Workman and Norman are close to Middlemak. MTGAP and Semimak are very low. Dvorak and Qwerty percentages are a bit deceiving though - the higher index finger distances are hidden by the higher total amount of distance.
So even when Middlemak’s left index finger doesn’t have a reduction in distance, the total index finger distance is significantly reduced.

Hand Balance based on Distance

This is the distance in percentages for all the fingers (unlike the raw distances in metres above) so that I can add them up to look at hand balance.

Keyboard	Left hand	Right hand	Hand Balance Ratio	L Pinky	L Ring	L Middle	L Index	R Index	R Middle	R Ring	R Pinky
MTGAP	41.2*	58.8	1.43	11.3	4.5	15.9	9.5	25.7	12.3	8.4	12.3
Workman	55.0	45.0*	0.82	4.7	8.9	12.6	28.8	19.3	7.6	5.6	12.5
Norman	44.0	56.0	1.27	4.8	4.8	8.5	25.8	20.1	14.4	9.3	12.2
Colemak	46.4	53.6*	1.15	5.0	4.8	4.4	32.2	28.6	7.6	5.4	12.0
Middlemak	48.5	51.5*	1.06	5.0	4.7	7.6	31.2	16.3	17.0	7.0	11.3
Semimak	43.5	56.5*	1.30	8.7	8.7	11.9	14.2	18.5	7.3	16.4	14.4
Dvorak	35.0*	65.0	1.86	7.3	1.9	1.2	24.6	26.8	10.1	14.0	14.1
QWERTY	48.5	51.5	1.06	2.7	2.6	13.9	29.3	24.2	9.4	9.3	8.7

Notes: * indicates vowel hand (Norman and Qwerty are mixed enough that there is no clear vowel hand). The ratio between the hands can change quite quickly, so I think that highlights the differences between the layouts better. Ratio >1 indicates right hand dominant, <1 indicates left hand dominant.
I think the raw distances are better for comparison between layouts, but some people like percentages. I used this mostly to calculate hand balance.
You can see Middlemak spreads out the work. The pinkies are low, ring fingers are reasonable, middle takes on more, and the indexes have most of the distances.

Hand Balance based on Frequency

Now we’re shifting to frequency. You can see the data for all the fingers, this is enlightening on its own. I also add them up to look at the hand balance.

Keyboard	Left hand	Right hand	Hand Balance Ratio	L Pinky	L Ring	L Middle	L Index	R Index	R Middle	R Ring	R Pinky
MTGAP	49.9*	50.0	1.00	10.8	8.4	18.8	11.9	16.3	14.5	9.8	9.4
Workman	50.7	49.3*	0.97	9.3	10.1	11.1	20.2	15.2	14.9	9.7	9.5
Norman	51.7	48.3	0.93	9.3	8.3	15.4	18.7	15.2	13.2	11.8	8.1
Colemak	46.7	53.2*	1.14	9.4	7.7	8.2	21.4	19.4	14.9	9.1	9.8
Middlemak	48.8	51.2*	1.05	9.4	8.3	9.7	21.4	13.7	19.6	9.9	8.0
Semimak	46.6	53.4*	1.15	9.7	10.1	11.8	15.0	12.2	14.9	15.6	10.7
Dvorak	44.8*	55.3	1.23	10.3	8.1	12.2	14.2	17.2	13.4	13.0	11.7
QWERTY	56.5	43.5	0.77	9.4	8.3	15.4	23.4	18.8	8.4	11.8	4.5

* indicates vowel hand (Norman and Qwerty are mixed enough that there is no vowel hand). Ratio of >1 indicates right hand dominant, <1 indicates left hand dominant.
The ratio between the hands can change quite quickly, so I think that highlights the differences between the layouts better than the percentages. I know it doesn't add up to 100%, the analyzer is doing some rounding or something behind the scenes, I'm not going to round any further.
E is so common that it bumps up any finger it’s on.
Middlemak’s left middle finger takes on a bit more work. The left index is still high because of D. The right index is notably lower taking off common letters. The right middle takes on more of the work with O. And the right pinky is lower too with the H there.

Hand Balance Distance + Frequency

This is the same chart that was above, just for a summary.

Keyboard	Dominant Hand	Hand Balance ratio based on Frequency	Hand Balance ratio based on Distance	Hand Balance ratio based on Frequency and Distance	Corrected comparison number for left hand dominant
MTGAP	Right	1.00	1.43	1.43
Workman	Left	0.97	0.82	0.80	1.26
Norman	Right	0.93	1.27	1.19
Colemak	Right	1.14	1.15	1.32
Middlemak	Right	1.05	1.06	1.11
Semimak	Right	1.15	1.30	1.49
Dvorak	Right	1.23	1.86	2.30
QWERTY	Left	0.77	1.06	0.82	1.22

1 indicates right hand dominant, <1 indicates left hand dominant. Hand Balance ratio based on Frequency and Distance is a simple multiplication of the two.

Frequency-off-home-row (F.O.H.R.)

At the risk of too much information, another way to look at this is the frequency that’s off-home-row. I.e. the frequency that is not under the fingers.
Distances weigh the keys differently, while frequency-off-home-row levels that field. This should be read in conjunction with distance. Neither is better than the other, it’s just a different measurement.

Keyboard	L Pinky	L Ring	L Middle	L Index	R Index	R Middle	R Ring	R Pinky	L+R Index	Index FOHR as % of All fingers FOHR
MTGAP	4.0	2.0	7.2	4.1	10.8	5.8	3.6	3.8	14.9%	36%
Workman	1.5	3.9	5.6	11.5	8.8	3.3	2.5	2.7	20.3%	51%
Norman	1.5	2.1	3.8	10.0	8.8	6.4	4.6	2.6	18.8%	47%
Colemak	1.6	2.1	2.0	12.7	13.0	3.3	2.3	2.6	25.7%	65%
Middlemak	1.6	2.1	4.1	12.7	7.3	8.0	3.1	2.5	20.0%	48%
Semimak	3.5	4.5	5.4	6.3	8.4	3.3	7.8	3.9	14.7%	34%
Dvorak	2.5	0.9	0.6	11.7	11.7	4.7	6.6	5.5	23.4%	53%
QWERTY	1.6	2.1	11.6	21.4	18.6	7.5	7.8	4.5	40.0%	53%

I did this after noticing, on Colemak, that my right index finger moves off the home row a lot. For Colemak the left index finger has more distance, but the right index finger has more frequency-off-home-row. The long distance to B on the left hand skews the distance travelled.
The effect is similar on most of the layouts: FOHR tones down the left hand dominance and bumps up the right hand dominance. With Colemak the frequency of H and L is enough to actually flip them. This is more noticeable with layouts that keep Qwerty’s B (which is just frequent enough to skew things), layouts that change the letter to a less common one shift less.
Also insightful is “Index FOHR as % of All fingers FOHR”. It shows that on Middlemak the index fingers do 48% of all frequency-off-home-row, quite reasonable. Whereas on Colemak the index fingers have 65% of all frequency-off-home-row, very high. Workman is just a tad higher with the index fingers doing 51% of frequency-off-home-row. Dvorak’s and Qwerty’s 53% for index fingers is a bit deceiving though, it appears low but that's because the overall total FOHR is much higher.
This is similar to “Zoom in on the index fingers”, but this shows an even greater difference between Middlemak and Colemak. This shows Middlemak at 48% and Colemak at 65% based on index finger % of total FOHR. Recall Middlemaks was 47% and Colemaks was 61% based on index finger % of total distance. Same thing, when the distances to the diagonals are levelled out, the frequency stands out.

Excessive amount of detail on letters

You really don’t need to read this, mostly if you have any lingering or specific Q on specific letters.

D position and why not curl?

Back to the discussion of there being 11 common letters: Where to place that 11th letter is difficult, it’s either the ring finger or index finger. Many find the ring finger to not be very dexterous for such a frequent letter. So putting D on the index finger with T works very well for low SFB.
Why not the middle row? First, I think most people find it easier to reach up and down rather than laterally. Second, it works very well with the LD roll.
Why not the bottom row? I want to leave the bottom row the same as Qwerty for easy adoption and to leave the shortcuts of undo=cut-copy-paste the same. I also think C and M (the curl locations) are already near perfect frequencies for those locations. Those are the middle of the pack frequencies, which are perfect for the index fingers - which cover 6 to 7 letters.
I previously said that I’m not a fan of Colemak’s L position, which is the same upper-row-index-finger. But Colemak’s L has a ton of NFBs with the vowels, especially with E but also with all the other vowels. Looking at the whole hand, 62% of Colemak’s L bigrams are on the same hand. I think that’s a big source of discomfort. But with Middlemak’s D, only 22% of bigrams are on the same hand. So Middlemak has far lower same-hand-gymnastics.

The R and L position

I’m sure the R and S location will attract attention, so I’ll discuss it more here.
If you want to skip this, the main factor is that R and L pair well together. Better than S and L. That means the RL column goes on the middle finger. R being more common goes on the home row, and L goes on the middle-finger-upper-row which is a strong location.
[First note that Colemak had to go with ARST because of F on the middle-finger-upper-row. The SFB of RF/FR is more common than SF/FS.]

ASRT, making a RL column

The pros of ASRT is it gives fewer SFB, with LRL being less than half as common as SL/LS. It also gives fewer ring-to-pinky-rolls with SA being far less common than Colemak’s RA. It also makes it much easier to learn from Qwerty.
The cons is that the R position leads to more NFB with the index finger. Most of these feel ok but RD, GR, BR are not so good. These aren’t super common, but they are there. PR gives the commonly disliked lateral NFB, but I think it’s relatively ok for the frequency - it’s not super common. RS creates an outside roll, but I’d rather have the RS on Middlemak’s middle-to-ring fingers than Colemak’s RA on the ring-to-pinky fingers. Colemak’s RA is much more common than Middlemak’s RS too.

ARST, making a SL column

The pros of ARST is that it gives an inside roll of RS. It also separates R from the NFB letters on the index finger, which do add up. However, I’m trying to resolve the NFBs of Colemak’s right hand H and L with E which is a magnitude larger, in addition to the pinballing that it creates which requires moving L.
The cons with ARST is that it gives more SFB. It’s not huge, but it is there. It also gives a lot of ring-to-pinky outside rolls with RA. And finally this makes it much harder to learn coming from Qwerty.

Verdict: ASRT, RL column

None of these are huge deal breakers for one or the other. I went with lower SFB, lower ring-to-pinky rolls, and much easier to learn. At the cost of some NFB on the index finger and inside roll of RS.
(If someone comes from Colemak and wants ARST, they can. It's not a humongous downside to do that. Mostly the more common RA ring-to-pinky roll and slightly more SFB of SD/DS.)
(This layout truly does work better with ASRT. If it didn’t work, I would have changed it. For example, I wanted to keep G on its Qwerty location but it’s better to move it, so I didn’t shy away from changes.)

P and G location

It’s better to move G than keep it in its Qwerty location.
P and G are pretty much the same frequency, so it doesn’t matter in that sense.
P has a SFB with T, and it has common bigrams of PR, SP, and even PA. Those work better with P on the middle row. There is PL, but the ones above outweigh it.
G has a bigram with NG. With N on the opposite hand, that means G can go on the worse diagonal spot. There is GR, but PR is far more common.

O location

O and E together give very low SFB. This is a great opportunity to put them together. The strong middle finger only has 3 keys, so it can handle two very frequent letters.

U, Y and F locations

U works pretty well with I, the SFB are reasonably low. This location also creates a nice OU and YOU roll.
Y goes to the index finger, which actually works pretty well. I broke down the numbers in SFB section.
F goes to the right hand index finger, because putting P or G on the right hand gives too many SFB with M and N. The F location works quite well for both moderate frequency and low SFB. It has a lot of NFB with OF/FO, so placing it next to O makes a comfortable roll.

Artist: VA Title: Beatport Top 100 Downloads April 2023 Genre: House, Deep House, Tech House, Techno (Peak Time / Driving), Melodic House & Techno, Minimal / Deep Tech, Nu Disco / Disco, Funky / Groove / Jackin’ House, Dance / Electro Pop, Bass House, Progressive House, Drum & Bass Release Date: 2023-04-01 Quality: FLAC
Tracklist: 1. Fred again.., Skrillex, Four Tet – Baby again.. (Original Mix) (5:19) 2. GENESI (ITA) – Everything You Have Done (Meduza Edit Extended) (5:39) 3. Westend, Noizu, NoMe – Push To Start (feat. NoMe) (Original Mix) (5:31) 4. MK, Dom Dolla – Rhyme Dust (Extended) (5:30) 5. Audio Bullys, Michael Bibi, KinAhau – Different Side (Original Mix) (5:32) 6. John Summit, Hayla – Where You Are (Extended Mix) (5:10) 7. Joshwa – Bass Go Boom (Extended) (6:28) 8. Jimi Jules – My City’s On Fire (Anyma & Cassian Extended Remix) (Original Mix) (5:12) 9. Future, Swedish House Mafia, Fred again.. – Turn On The Lights again.. (feat. Future) [Anyma Remix] (Extended) (5:01) 10. Anyma (ofc) – Explore Your Future (Extended Version) (5:09) 11. Jamie Jones – Lose My Mind (Extended Mix) (7:00) 12. Calvin Harris, Ellie Goulding – Miracle (Original Mix) (4:55) 13. Bart Skils – Roll the Dice (Original Mix) (6:08) 14. Larse – A Part Of (Riva Starr Extended Saturn Mix) (5:47) 15. Chris Avantgarde, Anyma (ofc) – Eternity (Extended Mix) (5:20) 16. Green Velvet, Chris Lake – Deceiver (VIP) (Extended Mix) (6:28) 17. Adriatique, Eynka – Beyond Us (Hatshepsut Extended Version) (5:23) 18. Andrew Meller – Born Slippy (Luca Morris Extended Remix) (6:40) 19. Vintage Culture, Meca, Bhaskar, The Vic – Tina (Extended) (5:34) 20. Joshwa – Magalenha (Extended Mix) (6:30) 21. Enrico Sangiuliano, Charlotte De Witte – Reflection (6:46) 22. Claptone – Euphoria (Extended Mix) (5:24) 23. Toxinate – Nope (Original Mix) (3:43) 24. Joshwa – Supersonic (Extended) (6:35) 25. Adam Port, Monolink – Point Of No Return (Extended Mix) (6:34) 26. Dualities, Solar State, Gia Koka – Crazy In Love – Extended Mix (3:31) 27. Mau P – Gimme That Bounce (Original Mix) (5:21) 28. Layo & Bushwacka!, Paul Woolford – Love Story (vs Finally) (Paul Woolford 2023 Extended Remix) (5:41) 29. Fideles, CamelPhat, Be No Rain – Night After Night (CamelPhat Remix) (6:58) 30. Space 92 – Gravity (Original Mix) (6:05) 31. Anyma (ofc) – The Answer (Extended Version) (6:27) 32. ACRAZE – Take Me Away (Extended Mix) (5:22) 33. Stereo Express – Rise Of The 2nd Sun (Original Mix) (7:05) 34. Turno – Killer (Original Mix) (3:40) 35. Coi Leray, David Guetta – Players (David Guetta Remix – Extended) (4:09) 36. El Chuape, Hugel, Ryan Arnold – Pa Lante (Extended Mix) (4:21) 37. Skrillex, Missy Elliott, Mr. Oizo – RATATA (Original Mix) (2:06) 38. Bruno Furlan – Bongoloco (Extended) (4:48) 39. Volen Sentir, Makebo – Alchemist (Original Mix) (8:35) 40. Odd Mob – LEFT TO RIGHT (Subsonic Remix) (4:05) 41. Kim English, Schak – Moving All Around (Jumpin’) (John Summit Remix) (5:33) 42. Block & Crown, Lissat – Gimme A Bloody Mary (Original Mix) (5:24) 43. Eats Everything, Shezar – Get Up (Extended Mix) (6:36) 44. Mha Iri – Never Go Back to Sleep (Original Mix) (5:50) 45. A’Studio, Polina – SOS (feat. Polina) (Skylark Remix – Nic Fanciulli Extended Edit) (6:40) 46. Wax Motif, Riordan – La Samba (Original Mix) (4:27) 47. Argy, Goom Gum – Pantheon (Extended Mix) (6:22) 48. ANOTR, Abel Balder – Relax My Eyes (Original Mix) (6:36) 49. Jerome Robins, Sinner & James – You’re Not Alone (Sinner & James Remix) (6:09) 50. Pickle – Crank That (Extended Mix) (4:40) 51. Dateless – Geekin (Extended) (7:04) 52. Latmun – Just Play (Original Mix) (5:44) 53. DJ Zinc – Super Sharp Shooter (TI & DMinds ‘Run In The Jungle’ Remix) (4:02) 54. MEDUZA, Eli & Fur – Pegasus (Extended Mix) (6:06) 55. Supermode, 1991 – Tell Me Why (1991 Remix) (4:04) 56. Layton Giordani – Life Moves Fast (Original Mix) (6:27) 57. David Guetta, Marten Hørger – The Freaks (Extended Mix) (6:09) 58. HI-LO – PURA VIDA (Wehbba Remix) (5:31) 59. Denney – Lies (Gorge & Nick Curly Extended Remix) (6:10) 60. MANT, Todd Edwards – Provenance (Original Mix) (6:41) 61. HUGEL, Nfasis – Como Shakira (Extended Mix) (4:53) 62. Nari, Steve Tosi – Stayin’ da Club (Original Mix) (4:39) 63. Supermode – Tell Me Why (MEDUZA Extended Remix) (8:28) 64. Bootie Brown, Tame Impala, Gorillaz – New Gold (feat. Tame Impala and Bootie Brown) (Dom Dolla Remix Extended) (6:03) 65. Basstripper – Ricochet (Original Mix) (3:45) 66. Joyhauser – Wasted (Original Mix) (6:05) 67. D.O.D – Set Me Free (Extended Mix) (4:41) 68. Creeds – Push Up (Original Mix) (4:00) 69. Oscar Barila – Miles (Original Mix) (5:04) 70. Gorgon City – Voodoo (Extended Mix) (6:16) 71. Martin Ikin – Oscill8 (Extended Mix) (5:16) 72. Volac – Energy (Extended Mix) (5:04) 73. Kevin McKay, Pupa Nas T, Denise Belfon – Work (Extended Mix) (5:48) 74. Low Steppa – The Feeling (Original Mix) (6:52) 75. Dombresky – IRLY (I Really Love You) (Extended Mix) (5:23) 76. Robbie Doherty – It’s My Beat (Extended Mix) (6:33) 77. Sota – Wait For Me (Original Mix) (3:07) 78. Volen Sentir, Makebo – Into The Stars (Original Mix) (7:00) 79. TECH IT DEEP – Maria Maria (Extended Mix) (6:09) 80. Hannah Laing – Get Busy (Extended) (5:57) 81. Dope Ammo, Benny Page, Cat Mctigue – I Need Your Loving (Bladerunner Remix) (5:36) 82. Yet More – Erotic Trip (Original Mix) (5:32) 83. Kanine – Take Me Up (Original Mix) (3:35) 84. TC – Tap Ho (Formula Remix) (4:18) 85. Space 92 – Cooper (Original Mix) (5:56) 86. Ryan Nichols – Insane (Extended Mix) (5:27) 87. Sub Focus, ACO – Vibration (One More Time) (Original Mix) (4:02) 88. Something Good, Yotto – Rhythm (Of The Night) (Extended Mix) (6:35) 89. Josh Wink – Higher State Of Consciousness (Damian Lazarus Re Shape) (6:12) 90. Kevin de Vries – Pegasus (Original Mix) (6:52) 91. Ragie Ban – My Bank (Original Mix) (6:16) 92. Eden Shalev – Papi (Bhabi) (Original Mix) (5:46) 93. Darmon, Eran Hersh, BLONDISH, Madonna – Sorry (with Madonna) (Original Mix) (4:55) 94. Lil Wayne, SIDEPIECE – A Milli (SIDEPIECE Extended Mix) (3:30) 95. Francis Mercier, Idd Aziz, Nitefreak – Kamili (Extended) (6:26) 96. Biscits – House All The Time (Extended Mix) (5:16) 97. Young Marco – What You Say (Extended) (5:16) 98. Bob Musella – Baby Hot Stuff (Original Mix) (5:32) 99. Fred again.., The Blessed Madonna – Marea (we’ve lost dancing) (Original Mix) (4:45) 100. th;en – London (Original Mix) (6:42)
​
https://specialfordjs.org/house/68907-beatport-top-100-downloads-april-2023.html

This is sort of a broad post with many facets and I don't have a TLDR. I was in a high-control "spiritual" group from age 21-30 and am having some challenges readjusting to many of the "realities" of life. I don't know where to go to for help and would greatly appreciate outside perspectives.
I'm starting my 2nd year as an apprentice plumber after finishing first in my trade school (once I decided to leave said group).
I believe that one of the triggers for addictive/self-destructive behavior is trying to avoid challenging emotions. I struggle with binge eating maybe 50% of evenings and I live with my mother. She has been wonderfully supportive since I decided to make my own decisions in life and doesn't charge me rent, never will and will allow me to stay as long as I want to.
Last year I paid off $7,000 of credit card debt and maxed my new Roth IRA. The year before I paid $6,000 of delinquent capital gains tax. All these debts were due to squandering an inheritance from my grandfather due to me having a good heart, being gullible perhaps and not having any financial literacy until I decided that personal sovereignty was very important to me.
Anyways, living with my mother has allowed me to save a little money, but I'm not happy with the emotional/social dynamic. I don't want to speculate too much, but I think I reject the kind of love my mother wants to give me. She's getting better about seeing me as an adult, but still does things like trying to speak for me to others while in my presence, kind of normal mothering stuff for a little boy, I guess. She's retired and I think sort of has a tendency to live vicariously through others. I don't think it's healthy and so I don't really talk about my life much or communicate much with her at all. I respect her, but we're into different things and frankly, as adults, don't have a lot of common interests, which is fine. Me living with her is putting a fair strain on both of us I think, but she'll never ask me to leave.
We don't eat together for various reasons. Partially it's scheduling, she's more into snacking and I don't like talking while eating. Also, although I don't show it outwardly, I think I get triggered by her questions. I feel like I'm being interrogated and as an adult, I don't owe her any answers.
I think one of my triggers for binge eating is feeling trapped and not in control of my life. I'm wondering if living on my own will help me to "man up" for lack of a better phrase and just make my life work. I've lived alone and with roommates before in many different situations. However I also struggled with binge eating/drinking while living alone in situations where I didn't feel in control, or I didn't like my life circumstances, such as my boss being my landlord, etc. I did learn some independence even though I was in a cult lol. I was told what part of the work to go to, what country to go to, then left and forgotten about. I had to find odd jobs with limited handman/farm skills and couldn't make any commitments. I had to make it work.
I'm hedging my bets that being more independent will help me to overcome my self-destructive habits. Frankly, I've struggled with food addiction before I even got involved in the high-control group. I'm not overweight and am actually very fit, but you know when you have a problem.
I haven't confessed this to anyone in my life, but I started seeing a therapist a couple months ago and have talked about using food to cope. I have a good relationship with some of my family members but I guess I just don't want sympathy. There was a time maybe 12-13 years ago I had a major eczema issue with my skin, lived with my mother and told my sisters I wasn't interested in going to see a Western medical practitioner. Frankly, the crying, begging and emotional strain of having people care about me with good intentions can be a lot to bear. It doesn't always make things better.
I have hobbies, but I don't fully express myself and my interests around my mother and family members. I'm hoping that living on my own (even with roommates), I can focus on increasing my earning potential, work occasional side jobs and focus on my hobbies (singing, Spanish language, martial arts, yoga, etc.) and that this purpose will help me to face uncomfortable emotions and not rely on coping in negative ways.
I'd like to move out of the house and keep reworking my budget, but it's tough. I currently make $21.50/hr. but if I go to another company, I may be taking a pay cut. Although currently, I don't have any benefit package from my job and with a different company, I'd have a package. I currently have about $21,000 in a HYSA that is a combination of an emergency fund and new catruck savings.
I drive a Toyota Solara with 246,000 miles that's been well-cared for. I just put in a new alternator and new tires. Part of my hesitation in leaving my company and current city is that I don't know how much longer this car will last. I don't want to be somewhere I don't know anybody and have to deal with towing a scrap car, potentially missing work at a new company, getting a rental car and finding something reliable with Uber's and whatnot. I don't necessarily NEED a truck but am looking at everything from Tundras to Rangers because it will help me keep options open for weekend side jobs and also to move living situations if I need to.
At my current job, I'm not getting the best training (but it's okay and I can make it work), but I have a company van, they may have given me a little too early (7 months in). So, if my personal car breaks down on a weekend while I have a work van and I'm living with my mother, it's not a huge deal. Problem is, I live in a HCOL area, but I could probably find a roommate and keep my housing/utility costs under $850/mo.
My credit is 694 and I don't want to have a car loan that is less than 91.5% paid off while potentially needing to have a landlord run my credit. 694 should be fine for an apartment, but not if I add a mostly unpaid car loan.
My buddy's mother and her partner have a mother-in-law suite they are trying to rent out in a major city 1 hour away from me. They would charge below market value and there is a good plumbing company in the area I would try to get in with. They are known for having a wonderful paid training program (they actually subcontract out their training). I'd likely take a pay cut but get benefits I'm currently paying for myself (dental, health, retirement). I would probably be someone's helper for 2-6 months before getting my own work vehicle. This is an option.
I guess there's a part of me that feels bad to leave my current company. There is sideways and upward mobility, I have enough say (due to my work ethic and intellect) that I can mostly work with who I want to. They took a chance on me, pay me decently (started me at $20 and now got an additional $1.50 after 10 months) and they make a decent effort to teach me stuff. Problem is they aren't organized with how they bill jobs, among other thing. Some jobs are time and materials, some things are flat rate, some things are a total toss up and some are charity for the church, which takes money out of the employees pockets. At the risk of sounding like I'm slandering them, a good few of the guys are pot heads and even smoke at work. Warnings have been given, but nobody gets fired. If you splash too much water out of a small puddle, I guess you're only left with mud. But I still believe that a company should have standards. Small family company and management doesn't really command respect. We lose money on efficiency and productivity. Guys 6 years in still don't know how to solder and make what I make, some less. One of our lead plumbers makes $.50 an hour more than I do.
So my point is that I could do okay if I stayed in this city with my current job, for now, but I wouldn't be relying on being around people with a growth mindset. I would be relying on my own drive, which is fickle. I'm driven, but I feel like I'm also influenced by my environment. If I stay here, I'd continue seeing my therapist, but if I move to the larger city with arguably the better company, I'd probably find another therapist and would also have access to a couple different men's groups, but nothing like Overeaters Anonymous or Smart Recovery. There are options though for help if I need it, more so in the larger city.
I'll add that my former cult is based out of the larger city with these opportunities. They aren't like a major Church, but are low-key, Christian-influenced Andean Shamanic type people who are followers of someone very charismatic with a few allegations of sexual harassment, although nothing is concrete so far (I think). If I moved there, I may run into the people I left who I was very close to for 9 years. Wouldn't be a big deal I don't think, but I might have to face that.
Budget: $2,900 monthly net income
$693 food (inflated due to not feeling comfortable in my mom's kitchen to cook healthy/cheap)
$541 IRA contributions
$150 catruck savings
$100 gas
$80 clothes/shoe allowance
$80 counseling copayments
$70 health insurance
$70 Verizon bill
$55 car maintenance
$50 supplements
$35 dental insurance
$25 cleaning/maintenance
That leaves me with $951 for rent/utilities, but perhaps more. My food spending should go down substantially if I live alone, but it might not go down if I have to share a kitchen with someone.
I get bonuses at work but don't build my budget around that or anything I make from side jobs.
My mother has decided to pay my car insurance and I won't necessarily complain about that.
Currently Reading:
"The Four Agreements" Don Miguel Ruiz
"Break the Binge Eating Cycle" Sylvana Siskov
The last thing I'll add is that I'm learning to enjoy taking ice baths and am trying to pursue difficult things in order to build up my discipline. If you've read all that, thank you and I hope you can offer some insight that maybe I'm missing. Also, if there's another sub I should post this expression, suggestions are welcome and appreciated. Have a great weekend!

This is sort of a broad post with many facets and I don't have a TLDR. I was in a high-control "spiritual" group from age 21-30 and am having some challenges readjusting to many of the "realities" of life. I don't know where to go to for help and would greatly appreciate outside perspectives.
I'm starting my 2nd year as an apprentice plumber after finishing first in my trade school (once I decided to leave said group).
I believe that one of the triggers for addictive/self-destructive behavior is trying to avoid challenging emotions. I struggle with binge eating maybe 50% of evenings and I live with my mother. She has been wonderfully supportive since I decided to make my own decisions in life and doesn't charge me rent, never will and will allow me to stay as long as I want to.
Last year I paid off $7,000 of credit card debt and maxed my new Roth IRA. The year before I paid $6,000 of delinquent capital gains tax. All these debts were due to squandering an inheritance from my grandfather due to me having a good heart, being gullible perhaps and not having any financial literacy until I decided that personal sovereignty was very important to me.
Anyways, living with my mother has allowed me to save a little money, but I'm not happy with the emotional/social dynamic. I don't want to speculate too much, but I think I reject the kind of love my mother wants to give me. She's getting better about seeing me as an adult, but still does things like trying to speak for me to others while in my presence, kind of normal mothering stuff for a little boy, I guess. She's retired and I think sort of has a tendency to live vicariously through others. I don't think it's healthy and so I don't really talk about my life much or communicate much with her at all. I respect her, but we're into different things and frankly, as adults, don't have a lot of common interests, which is fine. Me living with her is putting a fair strain on both of us I think, but she'll never ask me to leave.
We don't eat together for various reasons. Partially it's scheduling, she's more into snacking and I don't like talking while eating. Also, although I don't show it outwardly, I think I get triggered by her questions. I feel like I'm being interrogated and as an adult, I don't owe her any answers.
I think one of my triggers for binge eating is feeling trapped and not in control of my life. I'm wondering if living on my own will help me to "man up" for lack of a better phrase and just make my life work. I've lived alone and with roommates before in many different situations. However I also struggled with binge eating/drinking while living alone in situations where I didn't feel in control, or I didn't like my life circumstances, such as my boss being my landlord, etc. I did learn some independence even though I was in a cult lol. I was told what part of the work to go to, what country to go to, then left and forgotten about. I had to find odd jobs with limited handman/farm skills and couldn't make any commitments. I had to make it work.
I'm hedging my bets that being more independent will help me to overcome my self-destructive habits. Frankly, I've struggled with food addiction before I even got involved in the high-control group. I'm not overweight and am actually very fit, but you know when you have a problem.
I haven't confessed this to anyone in my life, but I started seeing a therapist a couple months ago and have talked about using food to cope. I have a good relationship with some of my family members but I guess I just don't want sympathy. There was a time maybe 12-13 years ago I had a major eczema issue with my skin, lived with my mother and told my sisters I wasn't interested in going to see a Western medical practitioner. Frankly, the crying, begging and emotional strain of having people care about me with good intentions can be a lot to bear. It doesn't always make things better.
I have hobbies, but I don't fully express myself and my interests around my mother and family members. I'm hoping that living on my own (even with roommates), I can focus on increasing my earning potential, work occasional side jobs and focus on my hobbies (singing, Spanish language, martial arts, yoga, etc.) and that this purpose will help me to face uncomfortable emotions and not rely on coping in negative ways.
I'd like to move out of the house and keep reworking my budget, but it's tough. I currently make $21.50/hr. but if I go to another company, I may be taking a pay cut. Although currently, I don't have any benefit package from my job and with a different company, I'd have a package. I currently have about $21,000 in a HYSA that is a combination of an emergency fund and new catruck savings.
I drive a Toyota Solara with 246,000 miles that's been well-cared for. I just put in a new alternator and new tires. Part of my hesitation in leaving my company and current city is that I don't know how much longer this car will last. I don't want to be somewhere I don't know anybody and have to deal with towing a scrap car, potentially missing work at a new company, getting a rental car and finding something reliable with Uber's and whatnot. I don't necessarily NEED a truck but am looking at everything from Tundras to Rangers because it will help me keep options open for weekend side jobs and also to move living situations if I need to.
At my current job, I'm not getting the best training (but it's okay and I can make it work), but I have a company van, they may have given me a little too early (7 months in). So, if my personal car breaks down on a weekend while I have a work van and I'm living with my mother, it's not a huge deal. Problem is, I live in a HCOL area, but I could probably find a roommate and keep my housing/utility costs under $850/mo.
My credit is 694 and I don't want to have a car loan that is less than 91.5% paid off while potentially needing to have a landlord run my credit. 694 should be fine for an apartment, but not if I add a mostly unpaid car loan.
My buddy's mother and her partner have a mother-in-law suite they are trying to rent out in a major city 1 hour away from me. They would charge below market value and there is a good plumbing company in the area I would try to get in with. They are known for having a wonderful paid training program (they actually subcontract out their training). I'd likely take a pay cut but get benefits I'm currently paying for myself (dental, health, retirement). I would probably be someone's helper for 2-6 months before getting my own work vehicle. This is an option.
I guess there's a part of me that feels bad to leave my current company. There is sideways and upward mobility, I have enough say (due to my work ethic and intellect) that I can mostly work with who I want to. They took a chance on me, pay me decently (started me at $20 and now got an additional $1.50 after 10 months) and they make a decent effort to teach me stuff. Problem is they aren't organized with how they bill jobs, among other thing. Some jobs are time and materials, some things are flat rate, some things are a total toss up and some are charity for the church, which takes money out of the employees pockets. At the risk of sounding like I'm slandering them, a good few of the guys are pot heads and even smoke at work. Warnings have been given, but nobody gets fired. If you splash too much water out of a small puddle, I guess you're only left with mud. But I still believe that a company should have standards. Small family company and management doesn't really command respect. We lose money on efficiency and productivity. Guys 6 years in still don't know how to solder and make what I make, some less. One of our lead plumbers makes $.50 an hour more than I do.
So my point is that I could do okay if I stayed in this city with my current job, for now, but I wouldn't be relying on being around people with a growth mindset. I would be relying on my own drive, which is fickle. I'm driven, but I feel like I'm also influenced by my environment. If I stay here, I'd continue seeing my therapist, but if I move to the larger city with arguably the better company, I'd probably find another therapist and would also have access to a couple different men's groups, but nothing like Overeaters Anonymous or Smart Recovery. There are options though for help if I need it, more so in the larger city.
I'll add that my former cult is based out of the larger city with these opportunities. They aren't like a major Church, but are low-key, Christian-influenced Andean Shamanic type people who are followers of someone very charismatic with a few allegations of sexual harassment, although nothing is concrete so far (I think). If I moved there, I may run into the people I left who I was very close to for 9 years. Wouldn't be a big deal I don't think, but I might have to face that.
Budget: $2,900 monthly net income
$693 food (inflated due to not feeling comfortable in my mom's kitchen to cook healthy/cheap)
$541 IRA contributions
$150 catruck savings
$100 gas
$80 clothes/shoe allowance
$80 counseling copayments
$70 health insurance
$70 Verizon bill
$55 car maintenance
$50 supplements
$35 dental insurance
$25 cleaning/maintenance
That leaves me with $951 for rent/utilities, but perhaps more. My food spending should go down substantially if I live alone, but it might not go down if I have to share a kitchen with someone.
I get bonuses at work but don't build my budget around that or anything I make from side jobs.
My mother has decided to pay my car insurance and I won't necessarily complain about that.
Currently Reading:
"The Four Agreements" Don Miguel Ruiz
"Break the Binge Eating Cycle" Sylvana Siskov
The last thing I'll add is that I'm learning to enjoy taking ice baths and am trying to pursue difficult things in order to build up my discipline. If you've read all that, thank you and I hope you can offer some insight that maybe I'm missing. Also, if there's another sub I should post this expression, suggestions are welcome and appreciated. Have a great weekend!

This is sort of a broad post with many facets and I don't have a TLDR. I was in a high-control "spiritual" group from age 21-30 and am having some challenges readjusting to many of the "realities" of life. I don't know where to go to for help and would greatly appreciate outside perspectives.
I'm starting my 2nd year as an apprentice plumber after finishing first in my trade school (once I decided to leave said group).
I believe that one of the triggers for addictive/self-destructive behavior is trying to avoid challenging emotions. I struggle with binge eating maybe 50% of evenings and I live with my mother. She has been wonderfully supportive since I decided to make my own decisions in life and doesn't charge me rent, never will and will allow me to stay as long as I want to.
Last year I paid off $7,000 of credit card debt and maxed my new Roth IRA. The year before I paid $6,000 of delinquent capital gains tax. All these debts were due to squandering an inheritance from my grandfather due to me having a good heart, being gullible perhaps and not having any financial literacy until I decided that personal sovereignty was very important to me.
Anyways, living with my mother has allowed me to save a little money, but I'm not happy with the emotional/social dynamic. I don't want to speculate too much, but I think I reject the kind of love my mother wants to give me. She's getting better about seeing me as an adult, but still does things like trying to speak for me to others while in my presence, kind of normal mothering stuff for a little boy, I guess. She's retired and I think sort of has a tendency to live vicariously through others. I don't think it's healthy and so I don't really talk about my life much or communicate much with her at all. I respect her, but we're into different things and frankly, as adults, don't have a lot of common interests, which is fine. Me living with her is putting a fair strain on both of us I think, but she'll never ask me to leave.
We don't eat together for various reasons. Partially it's scheduling, she's more into snacking and I don't like talking while eating. Also, although I don't show it outwardly, I think I get triggered by her questions. I feel like I'm being interrogated and as an adult, I don't owe her any answers.
I think one of my triggers for binge eating is feeling trapped and not in control of my life. I'm wondering if living on my own will help me to "man up" for lack of a better phrase and just make my life work. I've lived alone and with roommates before in many different situations. However I also struggled with binge eating/drinking while living alone in situations where I didn't feel in control, or I didn't like my life circumstances, such as my boss being my landlord, etc. I did learn some independence even though I was in a cult lol. I was told what part of the work to go to, what country to go to, then left and forgotten about. I had to find odd jobs with limited handman/farm skills and couldn't make any commitments. I had to make it work.
I'm hedging my bets that being more independent will help me to overcome my self-destructive habits. Frankly, I've struggled with food addiction before I even got involved in the high-control group. I'm not overweight and am actually very fit, but you know when you have a problem.
I haven't confessed this to anyone in my life, but I started seeing a therapist a couple months ago and have talked about using food to cope. I have a good relationship with some of my family members but I guess I just don't want sympathy. There was a time maybe 12-13 years ago I had a major eczema issue with my skin, lived with my mother and told my sisters I wasn't interested in going to see a Western medical practitioner. Frankly, the crying, begging and emotional strain of having people care about me with good intentions can be a lot to bear. It doesn't always make things better.
I have hobbies, but I don't fully express myself and my interests around my mother and family members. I'm hoping that living on my own (even with roommates), I can focus on increasing my earning potential, work occasional side jobs and focus on my hobbies (singing, Spanish language, martial arts, yoga, etc.) and that this purpose will help me to face uncomfortable emotions and not rely on coping in negative ways.
I'd like to move out of the house and keep reworking my budget, but it's tough. I currently make $21.50/hr. but if I go to another company, I may be taking a pay cut. Although currently, I don't have any benefit package from my job and with a different company, I'd have a package. I currently have about $21,000 in a HYSA that is a combination of an emergency fund and new catruck savings.
I drive a Toyota Solara with 246,000 miles that's been well-cared for. I just put in a new alternator and new tires. Part of my hesitation in leaving my company and current city is that I don't know how much longer this car will last. I don't want to be somewhere I don't know anybody and have to deal with towing a scrap car, potentially missing work at a new company, getting a rental car and finding something reliable with Uber's and whatnot. I don't necessarily NEED a truck but am looking at everything from Tundras to Rangers because it will help me keep options open for weekend side jobs and also to move living situations if I need to.
At my current job, I'm not getting the best training (but it's okay and I can make it work), but I have a company van, they may have given me a little too early (7 months in). So, if my personal car breaks down on a weekend while I have a work van and I'm living with my mother, it's not a huge deal. Problem is, I live in a HCOL area, but I could probably find a roommate and keep my housing/utility costs under $850/mo.
My credit is 694 and I don't want to have a car loan that is less than 91.5% paid off while potentially needing to have a landlord run my credit. 694 should be fine for an apartment, but not if I add a mostly unpaid car loan.
My buddy's mother and her partner have a mother-in-law suite they are trying to rent out in a major city 1 hour away from me. They would charge below market value and there is a good plumbing company in the area I would try to get in with. They are known for having a wonderful paid training program (they actually subcontract out their training). I'd likely take a pay cut but get benefits I'm currently paying for myself (dental, health, retirement). I would probably be someone's helper for 2-6 months before getting my own work vehicle. This is an option.
I guess there's a part of me that feels bad to leave my current company. There is sideways and upward mobility, I have enough say (due to my work ethic and intellect) that I can mostly work with who I want to. They took a chance on me, pay me decently (started me at $20 and now got an additional $1.50 after 10 months) and they make a decent effort to teach me stuff. Problem is they aren't organized with how they bill jobs, among other thing. Some jobs are time and materials, some things are flat rate, some things are a total toss up and some are charity for the church, which takes money out of the employees pockets. At the risk of sounding like I'm slandering them, a good few of the guys are pot heads and even smoke at work. Warnings have been given, but nobody gets fired. If you splash too much water out of a small puddle, I guess you're only left with mud. But I still believe that a company should have standards. Small family company and management doesn't really command respect. We lose money on efficiency and productivity. Guys 6 years in still don't know how to solder and make what I make, some less. One of our lead plumbers makes $.50 an hour more than I do.
So my point is that I could do okay if I stayed in this city with my current job, for now, but I wouldn't be relying on being around people with a growth mindset. I would be relying on my own drive, which is fickle. I'm driven, but I feel like I'm also influenced by my environment. If I stay here, I'd continue seeing my therapist, but if I move to the larger city with arguably the better company, I'd probably find another therapist and would also have access to a couple different men's groups, but nothing like Overeaters Anonymous or Smart Recovery. There are options though for help if I need it, more so in the larger city.
I'll add that my former cult is based out of the larger city with these opportunities. They aren't like a major Church, but are low-key, Christian-influenced Andean Shamanic type people who are followers of someone very charismatic with a few allegations of sexual harassment, although nothing is concrete so far (I think). If I moved there, I may run into the people I left who I was very close to for 9 years. Wouldn't be a big deal I don't think, but I might have to face that.
Budget: $2,900 monthly net income
$693 food (inflated due to not feeling comfortable in my mom's kitchen to cook healthy/cheap)
$541 IRA contributions
$150 catruck savings
$100 gas
$80 clothes/shoe allowance
$80 counseling copayments
$70 health insurance
$70 Verizon bill
$55 car maintenance
$50 supplements
$35 dental insurance
$25 cleaning/maintenance
That leaves me with $951 for rent/utilities, but perhaps more. My food spending should go down substantially if I live alone, but it might not go down if I have to share a kitchen with someone.
I get bonuses at work but don't build my budget around that or anything I make from side jobs.
My mother has decided to pay my car insurance and I won't necessarily complain about that.
Currently Reading:
"The Four Agreements" Don Miguel Ruiz
"Break the Binge Eating Cycle" Sylvana Siskov
The last thing I'll add is that I'm learning to enjoy taking ice baths and am trying to pursue difficult things in order to build up my discipline. If you've read all that, thank you and I hope you can offer some insight that maybe I'm missing. Also, if there's another sub I should post this expression, suggestions are welcome and appreciated. Have a great weekend!

So I live in Pittsburgh PA. Definitely no Amsterdam but if you watch city nerd you’d know we definitely have some parts of the city that are not suburban hellscapes and actually somewhat walkable.
This coworker is from Arlington Texas, and from what I’ve seen, that place is the worst of the worst bottom of the barrel suburban hell. He literally never stops complaining. Some examples are:
“I hate how little Parking lots there are here” “Driving here is so stressful because people are out walking and cycling” “In Texas I’ll drive 30 minutes and go 30 miles here 30 minutes only takes me 15 miles” “There’s not enough fast food and malls here, too many locally owned businesses”(he doesn’t say these exact words but this is basically the gist of what he says) “I hate busses they always get in my way” “I have to drive through the ghetto sometimes and in Texas I never have to”(keep in mind that his usage of the word ghetto is basically any neighborhood that isn’t overwhelmingly rich and white)
And, the one that pissed me off the absolute most: “There’s too many public parks here, in Texas it’s all privately owned. I’d rather be the only one that have to see others”(he’s referring both to recreational parks and state parks here)
And it’s all day with it. He literally told me that he’s a reckless driver and he doesn’t claim to be a good driver. Like idk about you guys but I find it SIGNIFICANTLY less stressful to drive on a city road with people walking and cycling than I do driving on a huge stroad with 60mph car traffic and 3 lanes each way. I have zero desire to go to Texas because every single thing g he says about it makes it sound like the worst place on the planet lmao.

I live and work in PA, I currently work part time making 13.75 on weekdays and 14.75 on weekends. I am also the sole breadwinner for my house because my boyfriend has seizures and is unable to drive for the next five months and public transportation isn't practical in my town. Currently I am applying for a new job that would have me making between $14-$16 an hour 30-36 hr a week but I'm concerned my boyfriend and I will get kicked off of medicaid and food stamps if I make slightly over whatever the income limit is which would put us in even worse financial standing paying for food and health insurance. I can't seem to find an reliable info on what the income limit is for 2 adults.

Background

To understand some concepts I'm going to use, I would invite everyone to listen to this video. It's a reading of "Feeling Is The Secret" by Neville Goddard. You can obviously just get the book as well. It's only 44 pages. I think it happens to be something that works well as listening material for a 30 minute walk or drive. This is introductory material for self-initiation into the mysteries of the ancients. It outlines how one develops intent, after which the subconscious turns this intent into reality (internal reality), after which the self more or less acts automatically (still with conscious choice but an inherent limited capacity) to turn the internal reality into external reality. You may recognize its argument as being similar to popular book "The Secret" by Rhonda Byrne, but Goddard's treatment is far more profound and detailed, and it's only getting started!
I also suggest studying archetypes, which is really just symbolic/abstract psychology. A few avenues: Carl Jung, Jordan Peterson, Tarot cards, ancient pantheons from Scandinavia to Rome to Sumer, "tree of life" myths from Scandinavia to the Jewish Kabbalah, and other similar systems. Also useful are the dualistic concepts of the Chinese Yijing (philosophy of change). Even Plato. Plato’s cave is analogous to the internal reality which we confuse with external reality. It's not literal so much as it is a figurative cave we focus upon instead of coming and observing bare reality, with no ideals or assumptions blocking our view.
I'm going to try to put all of these together and arrive back at the original question of masculinity and the damage currently done.

The Prehistoric Mind

It's beyond the scope of this to fully elucidate the origin of consciousness. Julian Jaynes' "The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind" is the best treatment I know of for this topic. To abbreviate to one of his conclusions, our minds previously worked without conscious thought. The conscious part of the mind just operated entirely automatically. Humans developed conscious thought through the repetitive manipulation of symbols — the beginning of language. In the reality exterior to our minds, we manipulated sound waves and physical symbols to "program" the part of our brain that labels value/importance. This part of the brain becomes conscious when symbolic language is mastered, because one can create internal loops of thought, where feedback from one thought becomes the input for the next thought.
The "fall of man" elucidated in the story of the Garden of Eden with the Tree of Knowledge is a riddle: how did gaining knowledge lead to a fall? The development of consciousness is what split our psyche into two. Previously, the conscious and subconscious were unified as one, albeit in subconscious form. The gain of control — the gain of consciousness — has made us responsible for using this control effectively and for good. This new burden (plus perhaps the poor usage of it from time to time) is "the fall".
The reunification of mind is the never ending quest of conscious, linguistic man. When people say their life is just "missing something". Perhaps they call this "meaning". Perhaps we observe ourselves living a "meaningless" life, and we don't know why or what to do about this. Perhaps we bemoan the concept of spirituality, calling it the superstition of the ancients. Perhaps, just perhaps, this internal quest is the solution to this problem.

The Linguistic Mind

At a very early stage in one's life, the mind is whole. There are no separate archetypes — just one thing. Over time, the mind divides. At a physical level, the more obvious and significant division is the left/right hemisphere divide. At an archetypal level, it is the father / mother (or simply masculine/feminine) figures and the hero / adversary figures. I believe you can keep going with no real end. Every "figure" or archetype in the mind can be divided into two more, allowing for an infinite variety of models that the self is developed from. Within the father, you can develop the good father, the bad father, the strict but fair father, the hippie but wise father, etc. Same with the variations on the mother. I won't list out all of these variations but instead focus on the first level to really illustrate how this works.
What's actually happening here? I believe the fathemother divide isn't truly based on gender, but the genders do have a typical expertise in one or the other. Based on Goddard's description of the process from visualization to physical reality, there are two major steps:

• the creation of want (deciding what you want and visualizing it before bed)
• the realization of want (the dream-state where the subconscious is trained on the feelings produced before bed).

The creation step is the "masculine" part, which "impregnates" the subconscious with feelings to be realized. The realization step is the "feminine" part, which "births" a "new mind" (or "new life", if we are using reincarnation terminology) when you wake up. Roughly speaking, this implies the conscious part of the mind is "masculine" and the subconscious part of the mind is "feminine". I'll just say this one last time: the genderization of these parts of the mind are firstly symbolic of their role in the creation of the self, and secondly may or may not contain some truth as to how the two genders' minds work slightly differently.
The other dualistic concept is the hero / adversary. As in the Egyptian Osirian tradition, Horus (the hero) is merely a reincarnation of his father (Osiris, the father figure). Thus, the hero is merely the "newborn" conscious mind upon waking up. Given that the conscious self (the ego) can adhere to its predetermined code (from prior training in the subconscious), or it can go against that code, you naturally have a hero vs adversary contrast within the conscious mind. The adversary is simply the self which denies all assumptions, all ideals, all past truths. This is not strictly "bad", although it could be bad in some situations. More commonly, this is merely depicted as mischievousness in myth, and it is very useful, important for things like creativity.
Now, it's time to discuss where we are at as a society and what the real meaning of the memetic trends are.

The Change

The primary symbolic change in western culture is the "bad father" (or toxic masculinity). This has created a dialectic:

• Some people reject the father entirely. The participation trophies, the overprotective parenting, etc — that is acceptance of only the mother.
• Some people embrace the bad father. The "greed is good" ideology, the promoters of the Dark Triad, the growth of criminal and corrupt mindsets — that is acceptance of the bad father.
• Some people don't necessarily embrace the bad father concept, but they take a reactionary stance and reject the mother entirely. If you only embrace the father, you're creating want, but you don't know how to realize it. If you can't dream, the only thing you can do is see physical/existing reality. Thus, you have a sort of physical materialism. This is where materialism comes from: acceptance of only the father (and only the senses which are consciously registered).

This leads to a diminishing amount of people who:

• Still love the father (see masculinity in a good light). This is the idea of positive masculinity, is an expression of the ideal evolutionary game theory solution, which is protective altruism colloquially called "Tit for Tat". This is an expression of a system of thought which has the capacity for forgiveness and punishment, in order to limit the tragedy of the commons in repeated games scenarios (an accurate description of human interaction).
• Embrace the mother as the father (not love the mother as the mother, but who use fatherly love to love the mother). This is the masculine idea of guidance, is a preference for outcome-based morality rather than intent-based morality. This is founded on a belief of reason — actually living according to rational thought rather than the emotional creations of the subconscious. It is the idea that you "walk the dog" rather than letting the dog walk you. You're not really adding anything to the situation if you just love the mother as the mother; randomness + randomness = more randomness.

What all of this really means is our thought processes are fundamentally limited. The "masculine" is the conscious self, the "feminine" is the subconscious. In preferring the subconscious and in turning the conscious into an anti-social beast, we are a ship lost at sea. The conscious self isn't directing the ship towards its rightful destination (truth, virtue, human goodness), and the subconscious isn't able to steer the ship alone. A full human needs both of these parts. Without both, were are in some way inhumane. Barbaric, partial humans.

Historical Origins

It's beyond the scope of this to fully describe the origins of such a cultural shift. However, I will outline a few places to look and draw a loose connection through time. This isn't meant to be a proof, but a roadmap to guide the reader for further research (with personal verification).
There were two distinct types of attacks on authority in the past 500 years.

• One was republican (I will only say this once: "republican" does not mean the Republican political party) in nature, spawning humanist and republican ideals from the Italian renaissance to the American revolution and constitution.
• The other was collectivist in nature, spawning the Reformation, Marxism, and later "cultural Marxism" (or nearly everything you identify with modernist and post-modernist thought, including its latest spawn, wokeism).

These two groups claim to have a common enemy, an authoritarian elite, but their actual philosophies differ greatly.

• Individualism is a core (but not the core) philosophy within republicanism, which is in stark contrast to collectivism. The republicans (from Plato to George Washington) believed in a natural order that must be encouraged through freedoms but tempered by the state, which must be stronger than the strongest cartels in private that would otherwise "rule" the people in a de facto sense (like we have now with state corporatism).
• Collectivism denies any inherent goodness of a natural order (insofar as it is described as a hierarchy), striving for a sort of created equality. It argues the true natural order is equality, and this is only tainted by essentially the inherent "evilness" of humanity, or at bare minimum the negligence of humanity.

As you can see, these two views are diametrically opposed. One views the creative power of humanity as essentially good, albeit flawed. The other views the creative power of humanity as essentially bad. You can see this thoroughly in modern and post-modern art, which acts as a parody to the human condition. It is consumed as the contrived, vain laugh by the very bourgeois that it claims to oppose. This self-hating (or completely out of touch, if they don't realize their own hypocrisy) class of people rules our current society as "the establishment", "the cathedral", "the regime". They are more directly left wing, but they are thoroughly within the right wing and thus represent both choices in our false dialectic of not only our political process, but the morals of our society as a whole.
To return to our cultural shift, the "bad father" arises from an attack by the collectivist schools of thought on all of society for the sins of a small minority. One way of elucidating this is: a few men at the top did some bad things, so all men are bad. It wasn't immediately like this, however. It started with the idea of: "if some Catholic leaders are bad, then all Catholic leaders are" (Reformation). Then, "if some men are unfairly attaining higher status after birth than other men, then all men are essentially cheating themselves from this theoretical 'blank slate' of existence" (Lockean philosophy). Then, "if some corporations (or owners of capital) are out of control, then all of them are" (Marxism). On and on, into the 20th century where we saw arguments by people such as Marcuse to return to a state of primitive sexuality and by feminists to return to a state without even a concept of gender to the latest thoughts, which outright make the claim that men are the enemy of all people, particularly any men which cling to any of the older modalities.
This is a war on human reason, which is a war on human nature itself. Nietzsche saw reason as a fusion of the Apollonian and the Dionysian. There are two equivalent ways of breaking down that terminology, but the intent is the same. Perhaps the Dionysian is the good and pure masculine figure, whereas the Apollonian is the adversary figure, thus making the preference for the Apollonian a sort of highly masculine, bad father-esque philosophy. Perhaps the Apollonian is masculinity as a whole, and Dionysian is the femininity as a whole (albeit depicted as a male Dionysus because, ya know, Greeks). Either way, the point is that you need a balance of these figures. And so, to return to the original quote I used as theme "God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him.", the gist is that an imbalance was created, either by killing a holistic concept of a unified "god" in the self (creating the male vs female dialectic), or by assigning this "god" concept to either the conscious or subconscious part of the mind and killing it. As stated above, the clear meaning of Nietzsche's arguments is the creation of the dialectic, the splitting of the whole, and the imbalancing of the the bicameral mind in everyone.

Background

To understand some concepts I'm going to use, I would invite everyone to listen to this video. It's a reading of "Feeling Is The Secret" by Neville Goddard. You can obviously just get the book as well. It's only 44 pages. I think it happens to be something that works well as listening material for a 30 minute walk or drive. This is introductory material for self-initiation into the mysteries of the ancients. It outlines how one develops intent, after which the subconscious turns this intent into reality (internal reality), after which the self more or less acts automatically (still with conscious choice but an inherent limited capacity) to turn the internal reality into external reality. You may recognize its argument as being similar to popular book "The Secret" by Rhonda Byrne, but Goddard's treatment is far more profound and detailed, and it's only getting started!
I also suggest studying archetypes, which is really just symbolic/abstract psychology. A few avenues: Carl Jung, Jordan Peterson, Tarot cards, ancient pantheons from Scandinavia to Rome to Sumer, "tree of life" myths from Scandinavia to the Jewish Kabbalah, and other similar systems. Also useful are the dualistic concepts of the Chinese Yijing (philosophy of change). Even Plato. Plato’s cave is analogous to the internal reality which we confuse with external reality. It's not literal so much as it is a figurative cave we focus upon instead of coming and observing bare reality, with no ideals or assumptions blocking our view.
I'm going to try to put all of these together and arrive back at the original question of masculinity and the damage currently done.

The Prehistoric Mind

It's beyond the scope of this to fully elucidate the origin of consciousness. Julian Jaynes' "The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind" is the best treatment I know of for this topic. To abbreviate to one of his conclusions, our minds previously worked without conscious thought. The conscious part of the mind just operated entirely automatically. Humans developed conscious thought through the repetitive manipulation of symbols — the beginning of language. In the reality exterior to our minds, we manipulated sound waves and physical symbols to "program" the part of our brain that labels value/importance. This part of the brain becomes conscious when symbolic language is mastered, because one can create internal loops of thought, where feedback from one thought becomes the input for the next thought.
The "fall of man" elucidated in the story of the Garden of Eden with the Tree of Knowledge is a riddle: how did gaining knowledge lead to a fall? The development of consciousness is what split our psyche into two. Previously, the conscious and subconscious were unified as one, albeit in subconscious form. The gain of control — the gain of consciousness — has made us responsible for using this control effectively and for good. This new burden (plus perhaps the poor usage of it from time to time) is "the fall".
The reunification of mind is the never ending quest of conscious, linguistic man. When people say their life is just "missing something". Perhaps they call this "meaning". Perhaps we observe ourselves living a "meaningless" life, and we don't know why or what to do about this. Perhaps we bemoan the concept of spirituality, calling it the superstition of the ancients. Perhaps, just perhaps, this internal quest is the solution to this problem.

The Linguistic Mind

At a very early stage in one's life, the mind is whole. There are no separate archetypes — just one thing. Over time, the mind divides. At a physical level, the more obvious and significant division is the left/right hemisphere divide. At an archetypal level, it is the father / mother (or simply masculine/feminine) figures and the hero / adversary figures. I believe you can keep going with no real end. Every "figure" or archetype in the mind can be divided into two more, allowing for an infinite variety of models that the self is developed from. Within the father, you can develop the good father, the bad father, the strict but fair father, the hippie but wise father, etc. Same with the variations on the mother. I won't list out all of these variations but instead focus on the first level to really illustrate how this works.
What's actually happening here? I believe the fathemother divide isn't truly based on gender, but the genders do have a typical expertise in one or the other. Based on Goddard's description of the process from visualization to physical reality, there are two major steps:

• the creation of want (deciding what you want and visualizing it before bed)
• the realization of want (the dream-state where the subconscious is trained on the feelings produced before bed).

The creation step is the "masculine" part, which "impregnates" the subconscious with feelings to be realized. The realization step is the "feminine" part, which "births" a "new mind" (or "new life", if we are using reincarnation terminology) when you wake up. Roughly speaking, this implies the conscious part of the mind is "masculine" and the subconscious part of the mind is "feminine". I'll just say this one last time: the genderization of these parts of the mind are firstly symbolic of their role in the creation of the self, and secondly may or may not contain some truth as to how the two genders' minds work slightly differently.
The other dualistic concept is the hero / adversary. As in the Egyptian Osirian tradition, Horus (the hero) is merely a reincarnation of his father (Osiris, the father figure). Thus, the hero is merely the "newborn" conscious mind upon waking up. Given that the conscious self (the ego) can adhere to its predetermined code (from prior training in the subconscious), or it can go against that code, you naturally have a hero vs adversary contrast within the conscious mind. The adversary is simply the self which denies all assumptions, all ideals, all past truths. This is not strictly "bad", although it could be bad in some situations. More commonly, this is merely depicted as mischievousness in myth, and it is very useful, important for things like creativity.
Now, it's time to discuss where we are at as a society and what the real meaning of the memetic trends are.

The Change

The primary symbolic change in western culture is the "bad father" (or toxic masculinity). This has created a dialectic:

• Some people reject the father entirely. The participation trophies, the overprotective parenting, etc — that is acceptance of only the mother.
• Some people embrace the bad father. The "greed is good" ideology, the promoters of the Dark Triad, the growth of criminal and corrupt mindsets — that is acceptance of the bad father.
• Some people don't necessarily embrace the bad father concept, but they take a reactionary stance and reject the mother entirely. If you only embrace the father, you're creating want, but you don't know how to realize it. If you can't dream, the only thing you can do is see physical/existing reality. Thus, you have a sort of physical materialism. This is where materialism comes from: acceptance of only the father (and only the senses which are consciously registered).

This leads to a diminishing amount of people who:

• Still love the father (see masculinity in a good light). This is the idea of positive masculinity, is an expression of the ideal evolutionary game theory solution, which is protective altruism colloquially called "Tit for Tat". This is an expression of a system of thought which has the capacity for forgiveness and punishment, in order to limit the tragedy of the commons in repeated games scenarios (an accurate description of human interaction).
• Embrace the mother as the father (not love the mother as the mother, but who use fatherly love to love the mother). This is the masculine idea of guidance, is a preference for outcome-based morality rather than intent-based morality. This is founded on a belief of reason — actually living according to rational thought rather than the emotional creations of the subconscious. It is the idea that you "walk the dog" rather than letting the dog walk you. You're not really adding anything to the situation if you just love the mother as the mother; randomness + randomness = more randomness.

What all of this really means is our thought processes are fundamentally limited. The "masculine" is the conscious self, the "feminine" is the subconscious. In preferring the subconscious and in turning the conscious into an anti-social beast, we are a ship lost at sea. The conscious self isn't directing the ship towards its rightful destination (truth, virtue, human goodness), and the subconscious isn't able to steer the ship alone. A full human needs both of these parts. Without both, were are in some way inhumane. Barbaric, partial humans.

Historical Origins

It's beyond the scope of this to fully describe the origins of such a cultural shift. However, I will outline a few places to look and draw a loose connection through time. This isn't meant to be a proof, but a roadmap to guide the reader for further research (with personal verification).
There were two distinct types of attacks on authority in the past 500 years.

• One was republican (I will only say this once: "republican" does not mean the Republican political party) in nature, spawning humanist and republican ideals from the Italian renaissance to the American revolution and constitution.
• The other was collectivist in nature, spawning the Reformation, Marxism, and later "cultural Marxism" (or nearly everything you identify with modernist and post-modernist thought, including its latest spawn, wokeism).

These two groups claim to have a common enemy, an authoritarian elite, but their actual philosophies differ greatly.

• Individualism is a core (but not the core) philosophy within republicanism, which is in stark contrast to collectivism. The republicans (from Plato to George Washington) believed in a natural order that must be encouraged through freedoms but tempered by the state, which must be stronger than the strongest cartels in private that would otherwise "rule" the people in a de facto sense (like we have now with state corporatism).
• Collectivism denies any inherent goodness of a natural order (insofar as it is described as a hierarchy), striving for a sort of created equality. It argues the true natural order is equality, and this is only tainted by essentially the inherent "evilness" of humanity, or at bare minimum the negligence of humanity.

As you can see, these two views are diametrically opposed. One views the creative power of humanity as essentially good, albeit flawed. The other views the creative power of humanity as essentially bad. You can see this thoroughly in modern and post-modern art, which acts as a parody to the human condition. It is consumed as the contrived, vain laugh by the very bourgeois that it claims to oppose. This self-hating (or completely out of touch, if they don't realize their own hypocrisy) class of people rules our current society as "the establishment", "the cathedral", "the regime". They are more directly left wing, but they are thoroughly within the right wing and thus represent both choices in our false dialectic of not only our political process, but the morals of our society as a whole.
To return to our cultural shift, the "bad father" arises from an attack by the collectivist schools of thought on all of society for the sins of a small minority. One way of elucidating this is: a few men at the top did some bad things, so all men are bad. It wasn't immediately like this, however. It started with the idea of: "if some Catholic leaders are bad, then all Catholic leaders are" (Reformation). Then, "if some men are unfairly attaining higher status after birth than other men, then all men are essentially cheating themselves from this theoretical 'blank slate' of existence" (Lockean philosophy). Then, "if some corporations (or owners of capital) are out of control, then all of them are" (Marxism). On and on, into the 20th century where we saw arguments by people such as Marcuse to return to a state of primitive sexuality and by feminists to return to a state without even a concept of gender to the latest thoughts, which outright make the claim that men are the enemy of all people, particularly any men which cling to any of the older modalities.
This is a war on human reason, which is a war on human nature itself. Nietzsche saw reason as a fusion of the Apollonian and the Dionysian. There are two equivalent ways of breaking down that terminology, but the intent is the same. Perhaps the Dionysian is the good and pure masculine figure, whereas the Apollonian is the adversary figure, thus making the preference for the Apollonian a sort of highly masculine, bad father-esque philosophy. Perhaps the Apollonian is masculinity as a whole, and Dionysian is the femininity as a whole (albeit depicted as a male Dionysus because, ya know, Greeks). Either way, the point is that you need a balance of these figures. And so, to return to the original quote I used as theme "God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him.", the gist is that an imbalance was created, either by killing a holistic concept of a unified "god" in the self (creating the male vs female dialectic), or by assigning this "god" concept to either the conscious or subconscious part of the mind and killing it. As stated above, the clear meaning of Nietzsche's arguments is the creation of the dialectic, the splitting of the whole, and the imbalancing of the the bicameral mind in everyone.

I want to write a response and correction to a previous thread of mine on this sub. I think that, in trying to emphasize a particular aspect of this phenomenon, I completely misrepresented the facts.

Background

To understand some concepts I'm going to use, I would invite everyone to listen to this video. It's a reading of "Feeling Is The Secret" by Neville Goddard. You can obviously just get the book as well. It's only 44 pages. I think it happens to be something that works well as listening material for a 30 minute walk or drive. This is introductory material for self-initiation into the mysteries of the ancients. It outlines how one develops intent, after which the subconscious turns this intent into reality (internal reality), after which the self more or less acts automatically (still with conscious choice but an inherent limited capacity) to turn the internal reality into external reality. You may recognize its argument as being similar to popular book "The Secret" by Rhonda Byrne, but Goddard's treatment is far more profound and detailed, and it's only getting started!
I also suggest studying archetypes, which is really just symbolic/abstract psychology. A few avenues: Carl Jung, Jordan Peterson, Tarot cards, ancient pantheons from Scandinavia to Rome to Sumer, "tree of life" myths from Scandinavia to the Jewish Kabbalah, and other similar systems. Also useful are the dualistic concepts of the Chinese Yijing (philosophy of change). Even Plato. Plato’s cave is analogous to the internal reality which we confuse with external reality. It's not literal so much as it is a figurative cave we focus upon instead of coming and observing bare reality, with no ideals or assumptions blocking our view.
I'm going to try to put all of these together and arrive back at the original question of masculinity and the damage currently done.

The Prehistoric Mind

It's beyond the scope of this to fully elucidate the origin of consciousness. Julian Jaynes' "The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind" is the best treatment I know of for this topic. To abbreviate to one of his conclusions, our minds previously worked without conscious thought. The conscious part of the mind just operated entirely automatically. Humans developed conscious thought through the repetitive manipulation of symbols — the beginning of language. In the reality exterior to our minds, we manipulated sound waves and physical symbols to "program" the part of our brain that labels value/importance. This part of the brain becomes conscious when symbolic language is mastered, because one can create internal loops of thought, where feedback from one thought becomes the input for the next thought.
The "fall of man" elucidated in the story of the Garden of Eden with the Tree of Knowledge is a riddle: how did gaining knowledge lead to a fall? The development of consciousness is what split our psyche into two. Previously, the conscious and subconscious were unified as one, albeit in subconscious form. The gain of control — the gain of consciousness — has made us responsible for using this control effectively and for good. This new burden (plus perhaps the poor usage of it from time to time) is "the fall".
The reunification of mind is the never ending quest of conscious, linguistic man. When people say their life is just "missing something". Perhaps they call this "meaning". Perhaps we observe ourselves living a "meaningless" life, and we don't know why or what to do about this. Perhaps we bemoan the concept of spirituality, calling it the superstition of the ancients. Perhaps, just perhaps, this internal quest is the solution to this problem.

The Linguistic Mind

At a very early stage in one's life, the mind is whole. There are no separate archetypes — just one thing. Over time, the mind divides. At a physical level, the more obvious and significant division is the left/right hemisphere divide. At an archetypal level, it is the father / mother (or simply masculine/feminine) figures and the hero / adversary figures. I believe you can keep going with no real end. Every "figure" or archetype in the mind can be divided into two more, allowing for an infinite variety of models that the self is developed from. Within the father, you can develop the good father, the bad father, the strict but fair father, the hippie but wise father, etc. Same with the variations on the mother. I won't list out all of these variations but instead focus on the first level to really illustrate how this works.
What's actually happening here? I believe the fathemother divide isn't truly based on gender, but the genders do have a typical expertise in one or the other. Based on Goddard's description of the process from visualization to physical reality, there are two major steps:

• the creation of want (deciding what you want and visualizing it before bed)
• the realization of want (the dream-state where the subconscious is trained on the feelings produced before bed).

The creation step is the "masculine" part, which "impregnates" the subconscious with feelings to be realized. The realization step is the "feminine" part, which "births" a "new mind" (or "new life", if we are using reincarnation terminology) when you wake up. Roughly speaking, this implies the conscious part of the mind is "masculine" and the subconscious part of the mind is "feminine". I'll just say this one last time: the genderization of these parts of the mind are firstly symbolic of their role in the creation of the self, and secondly may or may not contain some truth as to how the two genders' minds work slightly differently.
The other dualistic concept is the hero / adversary. As in the Egyptian Osirian tradition, Horus (the hero) is merely a reincarnation of his father (Osiris, the father figure). Thus, the hero is merely the "newborn" conscious mind upon waking up. Given that the conscious self (the ego) can adhere to its predetermined code (from prior training in the subconscious), or it can go against that code, you naturally have a hero vs adversary contrast within the conscious mind. The adversary is simply the self which denies all assumptions, all ideals, all past truths. This is not strictly "bad", although it could be bad in some situations. More commonly, this is merely depicted as mischievousness in myth, and it is very useful, important for things like creativity.
Now, it's time to discuss where we are at as a society and what the real meaning of the memetic trends are.

The Change

The primary symbolic change in western culture is the "bad father" (or toxic masculinity). This has created a dialectic:

• Some people reject the father entirely. The participation trophies, the overprotective parenting, etc — that is acceptance of only the mother.
• Some people embrace the bad father. The "greed is good" ideology, the promoters of the Dark Triad, the growth of criminal and corrupt mindsets — that is acceptance of the bad father.
• Some people don't necessarily embrace the bad father concept, but they take a reactionary stance and reject the mother entirely. If you only embrace the father, you're creating want, but you don't know how to realize it. If you can't dream, the only thing you can do is see physical/existing reality. Thus, you have a sort of physical materialism. This is where materialism comes from: acceptance of only the father (and only the senses which are consciously registered).

This leads to a diminishing amount of people who:

• Still love the father (see masculinity in a good light). This is the idea of positive masculinity, is an expression of the ideal evolutionary game theory solution, which is protective altruism colloquially called "Tit for Tat". This is an expression of a system of thought which has the capacity for forgiveness and punishment, in order to limit the tragedy of the commons in repeated games scenarios (an accurate description of human interaction).
• Embrace the mother as the father (not love the mother as the mother, but who use fatherly love to love the mother). This is the masculine idea of guidance, is a preference for outcome-based morality rather than intent-based morality. This is founded on a belief of reason — actually living according to rational thought rather than the emotional creations of the subconscious. It is the idea that you "walk the dog" rather than letting the dog walk you. You're not really adding anything to the situation if you just love the mother as the mother; randomness + randomness = more randomness.

What all of this really means is our thought processes are fundamentally limited. The "masculine" is the conscious self, the "feminine" is the subconscious. In preferring the subconscious and in turning the conscious into an anti-social beast, we are a ship lost at sea. The conscious self isn't directing the ship towards its rightful destination (truth, virtue, human goodness), and the subconscious isn't able to steer the ship alone. A full human needs both of these parts. Without both, were are in some way inhumane. Barbaric, partial humans.

Historical Origins

It's beyond the scope of this to fully describe the origins of such a cultural shift. However, I will outline a few places to look and draw a loose connection through time. This isn't meant to be a proof, but a roadmap to guide the reader for further research (with personal verification).
There were two distinct types of attacks on authority in the past 500 years.

• One was republican (I will only say this once: "republican" does not mean the Republican political party) in nature, spawning humanist and republican ideals from the Italian renaissance to the American revolution and constitution.
• The other was collectivist in nature, spawning the Reformation, Marxism, and later "cultural Marxism" (or nearly everything you identify with modernist and post-modernist thought, including its latest spawn, wokeism).

These two groups claim to have a common enemy, an authoritarian elite, but their actual philosophies differ greatly.

• Individualism is a core (but not the core) philosophy within republicanism, which is in stark contrast to collectivism. The republicans (from Plato to George Washington) believed in a natural order that must be encouraged through freedoms but tempered by the state, which must be stronger than the strongest cartels in private that would otherwise "rule" the people in a de facto sense (like we have now with state corporatism).
• Collectivism denies any inherent goodness of a natural order (insofar as it is described as a hierarchy), striving for a sort of created equality. It argues the true natural order is equality, and this is only tainted by essentially the inherent "evilness" of humanity, or at bare minimum the negligence of humanity.

As you can see, these two views are diametrically opposed. One views the creative power of humanity as essentially good, albeit flawed. The other views the creative power of humanity as essentially bad. You can see this thoroughly in modern and post-modern art, which acts as a parody to the human condition. It is consumed as the contrived, vain laugh by the very bourgeois that it claims to oppose. This self-hating (or completely out of touch, if they don't realize their own hypocrisy) class of people rules our current society as "the establishment", "the cathedral", "the regime". They are more directly left wing, but they are thoroughly within the right wing and thus represent both choices in our false dialectic of not only our political process, but the morals of our society as a whole.
To return to our cultural shift, the "bad father" arises from an attack by the collectivist schools of thought on all of society for the sins of a small minority. One way of elucidating this is: a few men at the top did some bad things, so all men are bad. It wasn't immediately like this, however. It started with the idea of: "if some Catholic leaders are bad, then all Catholic leaders are" (Reformation). Then, "if some men are unfairly attaining higher status after birth than other men, then all men are essentially cheating themselves from this theoretical 'blank slate' of existence" (Lockean philosophy). Then, "if some corporations (or owners of capital) are out of control, then all of them are" (Marxism). On and on, into the 20th century where we saw arguments by people such as Marcuse to return to a state of primitive sexuality and by feminists to return to a state without even a concept of gender to the latest thoughts, which outright make the claim that men are the enemy of all people, particularly any men which cling to any of the older modalities.
This is a war on human reason, which is a war on human nature itself. Nietzsche saw reason as a fusion of the Apollonian and the Dionysian. There are two equivalent ways of breaking down that terminology, but the intent is the same. Perhaps the Dionysian is the good and pure masculine figure, whereas the Apollonian is the adversary figure, thus making the preference for the Apollonian a sort of highly masculine, bad father-esque philosophy. Perhaps the Apollonian is masculinity as a whole, and Dionysian is the femininity as a whole (albeit depicted as a male Dionysus because, ya know, Greeks). Either way, the point is that you need a balance of these figures. And so, to return to the original quote I used as theme "God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him.", the gist is that an imbalance was created, either by killing a holistic concept of a unified "god" in the self (creating the male vs female dialectic), or by assigning this "god" concept to either the conscious or subconscious part of the mind and killing it. As stated above, the clear meaning of Nietzsche's arguments is the creation of the dialectic, the splitting of the whole, and the imbalancing of the the bicameral mind in everyone.