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espresso_enigma's comments

espresso_enigma | 4 years ago | on: Caffeine and theanine exert opposite effects on attention (2017)

re. Modafinil, I heard it mentioned by a reputable programmer on twitter and decided to try it. I used it regularly for several years, and it was extremely useful in helping with focus and staying on task. I feel like it helped me in a breakthrough phase of my career. The problem I found was that I could only tolerate it 2-3 times per week over the long term. Any more than that, and the edgy/anxious/irritable side effects would build up to intolerable levels. Not to mention I was buying from questionable sources online, figuring it would be too difficult to talk a doctor into prescribing me some.

Eventually though I worried about the quality of the batched I was getting online and stopped taking it altogether. But I still really struggled with focus on a daily basis and started to wonder if what I was really doing was self medicating for undiagnosed ADHD. Thinking back on my life it did sort of fit. Though I am a "successful" developer and I'm doing fairly well at life, it has always felt like I had to struggle and fight a lot more than the average person just go get through the day and stay on task. So I talked to a doctor, tried ritalin and adderall and have settled on a low dose adderall routine that really works for me. It helps tremendously with focus and motivation, and if I am diligent about maintaining a good diet/exercise/sleep schedule, the side effects are very manageable with daily use. I still think about the modafinil days, because those were good times, and it was fun to have that all day I'm on fire feeling. Adderall is nice, but I can tell that if I upped my dose to get into the realm of intense focus that Modafinil used to give me, I would also be getting pretty "high" and the comedown side effects would probably be more unpleasant.

espresso_enigma | 6 years ago | on: Life expectancy in the U.S. is declining for middle-aged people of all groups

These are diseases of despair. The financial inequality in this country is literally killing us. Sure there are other mental illness issues, there always are, and always will be. But this inequality is the root of the issues causing the . declining life expectancy. If the average person can't feel somewhat secure in their life, like they aren't completely struggling and beat down just making ends meet, if we are living one paycheck away from homelessness or bankruptcy, buried in debt from student loans, medical bills, credit card debt, mortgage etc... Most people can barely stay afloat, let along save for retirement, and have time to actually feel relaxed and able to enjoy their lives. What do we expect from this situation? A healthy society?

espresso_enigma | 6 years ago | on: 8chan goes dark after hardware provider discontinues service

Is this really about freedom of speech though? We toss that around a lot, but as a law or constitutional right free speech does not exist if your website is hosted on a private company's service.

But then, how does free speech apply to the internet? Unless you have servers in your closet, your site will always be hosted on someone else's servers, and even then it will be delivered through networks owned by private companies, etc...

Anyway, Cloudflare's blog post on this (which is really worth reading in full) is what made me think of this:

> We continue to feel incredibly uncomfortable about playing the role of content arbiter and do not plan to exercise it often. Some have wrongly speculated this is due to some conception of the United States' First Amendment. That is incorrect. First, we are a private company and not bound by the First Amendment. Second, the vast majority of our customers, and more than 50% of our revenue, comes from outside the United States where the First Amendment and similarly libertarian freedom of speech protections do not apply. The only relevance of the First Amendment in this case and others is that it allows us to choose who we do and do not do business with; it does not obligate us to do business with everyone. https://blog.cloudflare.com/terminating-service-for-8chan/

espresso_enigma | 9 years ago | on: Semantic UI

As one would expect with a fully featured framework, it does add some weight. I have a basic form project I'm working on that just uses some basic styling and components that I hand coded and the production JS and CSS (after gzip) are ~70k and ~2k respectively.

After including Semantic UI and dropping an example form component in, it jumped up to ~140k JS and ~93k CSS.

espresso_enigma | 9 years ago | on: A casino magnate is spending millions to fight legal marijuana in three states

No, I don't think any and all experiences under the influence of pot should be dismissed as meaningless.

In my experience, occasional use of high quality weed has been very beneficial. It gives me a chance to step outside my normal routines of daily thinking and self talk for a few hours, and just look around and experience reality in a different way, which in turn reduces stress, improves mood, and makes music sound great and food taste amazing. The improved mood and stress reduction last long after the experience for me.

Of course getting high all the time probably is not good for you generally. Like any drug, it can easily be misused and overused. But that doesn't mean all experiences with it for everyone are meaningless.

espresso_enigma | 10 years ago | on: European Parliament Says Snowden Should Be Welcomed in Europe

I doubt Snowden would be foolish enough to set foot anywhere in Europe, no matter what they say. I'd be willing to bet the CIA has people all over Europe that would be smacking their lips, not to mention the US would probably have extradition leverage that it doesn't have with Russia.
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