riverlong

This was my experience as well. I had little in the way of actual withdrawal symptoms. My dependence was mostly psychological or cultural.

Anecdotally, I think it's really interesting that people have radically different biological responses to caffeine. I have friends who drink much less than I did, but are hardcore dependent. I know people who get real headaches and jitters from tiny cups of coffee. I wonder if this heterogeneity is the case for many stimulants, or if there's something special and unusual about caffeine.

Part of it might be that coffee is very aesthetically trendy. A cup looks good, and lends itself well to photography. Lots of cafes are really beautifully designed. It's a cool vibe, just by association.

Absolutely, I totally agree in general.

For coffee culture in particular it's strange, because what's the aspiration? To drink lots of coffee? Great, but I struggle to find a higher purpose in that.

In coffee culture, there's some common sense of belonging and easy identification with others -- drinking lots of coffee is like being a fan of a popular sports team. It makes for an easy catchphrase and set of jokes that can go on T-Shirts or Tinder bios. It's an easy way to create a persona, and stereotype yourself a little for others to feel like they get you more easily -- "that's Jay, he's 6 feet tall, loves coffee and flying kites, rides a motorcycle". But, at least to me, it felt like a bland or uninteresting thing to advertise about myself.

If it hadn't been for COVID-19, which was a logistically unbelievably stressful time, I would've probably purchased a coffee maker. (There was a coffee machine in my building that I used frequently, but the building made it inaccessible due to perceived COVID contamination risks.) But dealing with tons of COVID fallout, that just didn't make it to the top of my priority list.

I use the word "addict" loosely -- I'm not sure how much real chemical dependency there was, I didn't have much in the way of withdrawal symptoms. I have anecdotally observed that people have radically different biological responses to and dependencies on caffeine. I think my "addiction" was mostly cultural.

Sugar definitely induces crashes, but caffeine by itself does as well. My flirtations with coffee/sugar monstrosities were temporary; I mostly drank espresso-based drinks without sugar or sweeteners.

Hey, I think I've fixed it. Want to try again?

Hey, thank you for pointing it out! I've hidden the Feed from the navigation bar for the moment. It's probably an issue with the Jekyll template that I'm using -- I've been trying to fix it. (As a stopgap, I do also post updates on my twitter.)

Hell, I don't think anyone really understands fractions until they've taken Elementary Set Theory and constructed the reals, and I don't think anyone really understands high-school trig until they've taken real analysis, etc.

It's a great feeling to come back to the "simple" topics from early in school, and to realize how much rich knowledge they communicate, and the level of detail that really sits underneath them.

I'm seeing lots of comments about national security-style concerns, and framing this in terms of the recent India-China skirmishes. That all makes sense.

Where I think a lot of folks are missing the point is that this is also a tremendous boost to local Indian entrepreneurship. One of the really clever aspects of China's Great Firewall is that it keeps out international competition, which would crush local startups. By banning more advanced, foreign competitors, India gives its local entrepreneurs a chance to grow hugely successful domestic apps, which can then compete internationally.

I don't see why -- he's pretty consistent, and it's interesting to see his framing/narrative evolve.

Great read and stunning web design (short of the small italics in the abstract that are a little harder to read). A beautiful first post, certainly.

I'm curious -- Roam Research appears to have won over a lot of folks with this kind of need recently. You didn't list Roam among the prior art -- do you think it's not really relevant? I can certainly see Roam eventually including cross-platform bookmarking/archiving, etc.

By the way, I think you should also take a look at Archive Box, which is very much in this direction: https://archivebox.io/