Nice solution!

Out of curiosity to the OP, did you use an AI to tweak/refine the text? It contains a lot of similar writing patterns as some read-aloud 4chan greentext/copypaste YouTube channels, especially liberal use of whimsical similes: "like it's 2000 and I'm downloading a JPEG on dial-up" "starting to feel like cosmic punishment" "like it's protecting nuclear launch codes", and jocular asides: " -- exposed to British weather, coated in a mysterious film of protein shake and regret, probably being livestreamed to TikTok by someone's ring doorbell -- ".

So I started to wonder if my AI-radar was spot on, or is that style of writing something people naturally do – because I wouldn't bother, but then again, I don't run a blog that people actually read.