It's such an off timeline, where Israel can commit de facto genocide and there is no nato bombing like there was in Yugoslavia, and the USA, defenders of Ukraine's sovereignty, kidnap a state's leader and try to murder another state's leader, neither of which were a threat to the USA.
The board of peace means nothing, the USA cannot be trusted since it is a lapdog of Israel (did Epstein have something on somebody), and the president of peace starts his own war, hoping to outdo previous presidents in unprovoked murder and destruction.
All of the above gives Russia political ammunition to justify its SMO, and encourages China to step up its hopes to bring Taiwan back to the family.
And we have been told that AI and climate change are the biggest threats to humanity, ffs.
Back in the day, in the 90s, I was taught that software is twice as hard to debug and maintain as it is to write, so you need to write it half as smart as you think you are.
Now that we have coding assistants and so-called AI, 'software developers' are prompting code that far exceeds their abilities.
The piper will need to be paid, one way or another.
The brand you chose for daily consumption advertises "3X MORE CAFFEINE - NEVER SLEEP AGAIN."
In this instance I would honestly say that this choice of coffee, with so much caffeine, is a large contributor for why you had such a withdrawal. Your body probably ended up with a dependence to some degree because that's so much caffeine that it can't sorta just ignore it or manage around it.
More moderate consumption is more tolerable and often doesn't produce the same negative effects after you stop, though for some people it still does.
It's probably fine to have a coffee when you're craving it, couple times a week. Perhaps stick to a typical bean rather than nuclear-grade like you're used to? :P
Since no one has spoken about matcha yet, I am here to provide my two cents and my experience with caffeine and matcha.
Caffeine does benefit people with certain forms of brain chemistry, and for folks like me, it definitely helps. I used to have double or triple espressos several times a day, and on other days, I would go for cold brews and similar drinks. I've spent years doing it. While it helped me immensely focus and get work done, it also put me on a fast track, I guess. It's probably not a good thing to keep going with. Somewhere it felt like it was putting extra mental load on me than usual.
Again, this doesn't apply to everybody. Recently, I stumbled upon matcha. It's not the entry-level matcha or matcha mixed with a lot of additives like sugar or cream; it's just matcha with milk or an alternative milk like oat milk or almond milk, etc. It has a surprisingly nice effect.
It's almost like the same effect as caffeine, but without making me feel jittery. At the same time, I'm also able to achieve the focus I used to get with coffee. I recommend that you folks start out and try it out and see if matcha helps you as well. Just make sure you buy ceremonial grade, which is available at a decent price on Amazon. It's ridiculously, crazily overpriced in stores like Safeway and Whole Foods, though.
It is the L-theanine that works its magic in matcha. Too much can cause some nausea or diarrhea, but consuming it two or three times a day in moderate amounts can go a long way for many people. It also doesn't have any other side effects and is a good drink in general. Beyond that, there are other alternatives like chamomile tea, passionflower tea, etc. Some of them work for some people, while others don’t. It's up to you to keep trying and cycling between these wonderful gifts that nature has provided.
How the tea leaves were grown and processed is a better guide than ceremonial grade which is a marketing term, not something you'd see in JP. I tend to switch between tea, coffee, yerba mate, and tisanes (rooibos, herbal). I've been favoring the focused energy of tea for workouts lately, coffee energy flames out faster imo. From my calcs, tea is a better deal per serving than coffee. Climate change is going to hit coffee and mate particularly hard so enjoy it while it lasts.
How did it work out for you? I tried so hard to get into Red Rooibos tea and it didn't seem to produce any effects for me ( and I also blame myself for it because I was drinking a ton of other things with it at that time)
It does, but the L-Theanine has an almost neutralising effect on the more jittery and frenetic aspects that caffeine can bring. It leaves you feeling what I would describe as more focused and calm, rather than alert and anxious
For me coffee is all about the taste. I'm having my coffee lab with two grinders, a V60, a scale, and Cafelat Robot to brew the best possible coffee I can get. We have multiple good coffee roasters in our city, and I'm mostly getting very light roasts with lots of complex sugars in the bean. I drink two cups a day: one filter coffee in the morning and one espresso after lunch.
I can't imagine drinking bad coffee only for the caffeine.
You can drink good coffee for the caffeine, too. I think anyone (not necessarily saying that's you) saying it's only about the taste and has nothing to do with caffeine is fooling themselves. The reason you were able to trick yourself into liking this bitter stuff is because it gets reinforced with caffeine.
I drink my morning cup of decaf every day because I like the taste. I've always drunk decaf, as I never liked the caffeine buzz. I guess maybe you could argue I'm still doing it for the small amount of residual caffeine. But if I skip it for several days, it doesn't effect my mood or energy level in any way I can detect.
I quit too. I’ve since found on random days where I do have a coffee I feel slightly numb to everything so can procure more physical effort, but I slightly shake uncontrollably and also have worse sleeps. So I almost never have a coffee (or caffeine).
I've had that once (caffeine withdrawal headaches), we had mediocre coffee at the office for ages, then they got a new contract and we got these Italian real bean grinding things. I uh, had double espressos a few times a day.
Much of the US media is captured, so virtually nothing is fed back to us Americans. This also builds on top of US gunboat diplomacy going all the way back to the Monroe Doctrine. Keeping Americans ignorant allows our government and corporations a free hand in foreign affairs. The limited information allowed through is heavily sanitized and depicts US actions as the Good Guys attacked by the Evil X, which is why so many of our wars start with a ship "under attack" (USS Maine, RMS Lusitania, Gulf of Tonkin incident), or supposed WMDs (Iran, Iraq)
A great example is the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor. Ask any American and they can call up all kinds of minute details about the attack. However if you ask them about the US trade embargoes and blockades against Japan in the months leading up to the attack, the vast majority of Americans will draw a blank. That is on purpose.
When stuff does break through to us, raw and unfiltered, most will react with horror. The self image of Americans as the Good Guys cracks. This happened in the Viet-Nam conflict when journalists had a free hand to show what was happening. Massive protests and a near mutiny by the US Army caused the Pentagon to get far more involved in how wars are presented in future conflicts. More recently Americans were so horrified when they witnessed the Israeli genocide after October 7th that it completely inverted both public sentiment and support for Israel, causing the forced sale of TikTok to Oracle and under US control to clamp down on the coverage.
I find it hard to look at the actions of the Japanese and the Americans in the late 1930s and come away with any other impression than that the Americans were the good guys.
I'm not saying Japan was good, and this isn't a callout to you. I'm arguing that the erasure of US brutality in China and the Philippines, as well as Gunboat Diplomacy on Japan itself, is why we can see ourselves as the Good Guys. This erasure is part of Manufacturing Consent. Its better to abandon the temptation to moralize the sides in war and see it as Great Power competition.
First we have US [Commodore Perry] who, in 1854, used gunboat diplomacy in Nagasaki harbor to end Japan's isolation and open it up for trade. This would snowball into the Meiji restoration, which ended the Shogunate, and an Emperor that rapidly modernized Japan's economy and military to prevent foreign domination that China was experiencing at that time.
Three decades prior to Japan's invasion of China, and a decade before Japan seized Korea, the United States and other Great Powers were suppressing the Boxer Rebellion as part of China's [Century of Humiliation] to exploit China for themselves. In addition the US, after it seized the Philippines from Spain, spent several years brutally putting down the native independence movent [p-h war]. Americans aren't taught this history, and fear of that brutality of American reprisals influenced the Japanese against surrendering during WW2.
Speaking of the Philippines, its seizure by the US and other Spanish territories after the Spanish-American war as well as the annexation of Hawaii alarmed Japan. They saw US and other imperial powers as rapidly encroaching on Japanese sphere of influence, in particular the decades of 1890s-1900s. Japan saw all of this and didn't want to be the next China. Japan also saw all of East Asia was it's sphere of influence as a Japanese mirror of the Monroe Doctrine and the western imperial powers as both a tacit threat and competition.
The US wasn't interested in helping China against Japan out of a moral duty, but protecting US interests against a rising Japanese Empire, in addition to British, French, and Dutch colonies in the Far East. The tipping point for Japan was when the US embargoed Oil and ship-grade Steel (as well as other strategic commodities and economic sanctions) from Japan throughout 1941, which led to Japan planning to seize more territory in SE Asia. To support these annexations, Japan had to push the US out of the Philippines, and to do that they attacked Pearl Harbor as a way to buy Japan time to take and hold territory before Americans could respond.
I mention all of this because Americans aren't taught this yet so much of our history hinges on these events.
There's a substantial population of most countries who feel that everyone else on the planet is somehow inferior. Basic nationalism. One of the big achievements of the 20th century was reducing that so it might be below 50% in many places.
However, that's not the same as "enemy". That's a more confrontational level. It's that particular branch of the far right which has recently risen to prominence. Ironically, in a lot of different countries.
The republican population and the foolish minded people who want to be centrists have led to this situation of democrats and republican politicians acting out this way. More than 50% hopefully don't feel that way. I don't
One solution is to get rid of anonymity online, enforce validation of identity. Every human only gets 1 account. And then we still ban people that use AI.
Might take a bit but eventually we'll have filtered out all the grifters.
Getting rid of anonymity is in time going to lead to getting rid of the platform, so do it if you're feeling suicidal. People seek real anonymity for good reason. Not everything should follow them in life or for life.
I've been wondering too, what the solution would be. IF the bots were actually helpful, I wouldn't care, but they always push an agenda, create noise, or derail discussions instead.
For now maybe all forums should require some bloody swearing in each comment to at least prove you've got some damn human borne annoyance in you? It might even work against the big players for a little bit, because they have an incentive to have their LLMs not swearing. The monetary reward is after all in sounding professional.
Easy enough for any groups to overcome of course, but at least it'd be amusing for a while. Just watching the swear-farms getting set up in lower paid countries, mistakes being made by the large companies when using the "swearing enabled" models and all that.
It can crank proof of work schemes to maximum, something like you need to burn 15-20 minutes 16 core cpu to post a single comment. It will be infuriating for users, but not cheap for bots
The board of peace means nothing, the USA cannot be trusted since it is a lapdog of Israel (did Epstein have something on somebody), and the president of peace starts his own war, hoping to outdo previous presidents in unprovoked murder and destruction.
All of the above gives Russia political ammunition to justify its SMO, and encourages China to step up its hopes to bring Taiwan back to the family.
And we have been told that AI and climate change are the biggest threats to humanity, ffs.
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