Waking up everyday and drinking monster energy drink followed by Diet Coke in theory should have some effect on your brain. Does abstaining from them have any effect on your HRT?
I completely quit coffee and energy drinks (I'd still drink jasmine and peppermint tea) for a few months last year. No effect on HRT. I did experience an increased emotional depth which I suspect should have happened independent of what hormones I was taking (wow; this caffiene shit makes me agitated, who knew)
I learnt it the hard way that not everyone appreciates the beauty of our cosmic insignificance. Most people are fully immersed in this tiny world we built and I sometimes envy them.
The central fallacy is that size has to do with significance. It is a huge non sequitur and grist for the deepity mill to conclude that just because Earth is tiny in comparison to the Universe in terms of size that it must therefore be insignificant.
Is life, specifically intelligent life, signiant on a cosmic scale?
If so there’s a strong chance that Earth is the most significant place in the galaxy at least. It’s possible we’ll screw ourselves up before we make it to other star systems, but of we do manage self sustaining interstellar ships then within a cosmically tiny amount of time humans, or the evolved dwacwndents, will occupy every star in this galaxy.
Maybe that’s common, maybe that’s insignificant on a universal scale, maybe reaching the level of development humans have is quite common, but it’s quite possible that Earth is, or will be, very significant on a galactic scale if nothing else.
Maybe. Maybe not. We really just don’t know. If sentient life is vanishingly rare on a cosmic scale then there would some significance to Earth (currently). But it is otherwise pretty insignificant.
Even if we’re significant on a galactic scale, that’s a long way from cosmic significance. Even our galaxy is pretty insignificant on that scale.
People here flippantly conclude whether something is significant or insignificant without defining what significance is and how to determine it. Question begging and bad assumptions abound.
"Pale blue dot" talk is ultimately an intellectually vacuous appeal to confusion and emotion. It strives to seem profound, but it only manages to approximate a silly deepity.
I think it does. It’s not proof that this place is insignificant, but the fact that it’s just a tiny dot in an unimaginably vast universe is strongly suggestive.
Compare with a hypothetical universe consisting of a million-kilometer-diameter crystal sphere with the Earth at its center. Again not proof, but absent any further information, one would reasonably conclude that Earth is much more significant in that universe.
Dunno. The crystal sphere wouldn’t tell me anything. If I’m the kind of life form that requires such sphere in order to evolve in the first place, then of course I’d observe such a sphere around my planet— otherwise I wouldn’t be there to observe anything!
If I lived on such a planet, I might say, well, I’d need a big sun-like outer gas giant in order to prove we’re significant. As it is, we’re just a little crystal sphere in a huge universe.
What he was saying is if the total universe was merely a few million kilometers, the earth would form a much larger and non-trivial portion of it compared to the vast size of the observable universe in real life.
There is no cosmic perspective. There's only my perspective, your perspective, and so on. Perhaps there are alien perspectives, and from their perspective, their world is very significant.
When you talk about significance, you have to bring in considerations of value and worth. And at that point, you have to bring in the individual. Significance is only significant to someone.
That's not the point at issue. And it is also entirely possible to have independent grounds on which to judge significance other than "this is my neighborhood" (which, btw, may very well be a very legitimate basis for judging significance).
A good place to begin is to define significance and to identify and explain what causes something to be significant.
My problem with these immersed people of this world is that it’s like being residents of a terrarium, entirely at the mercy of the Lord to keep the A/C on. We need few people to wonder what is out there - who is maintaining the terrarium temperature?
It might be that a lot of people just aren't well enough primed to appreciate the pale blue dot as it isn't recognizable enough.
This is why, despite current controversy and how fun it is to mock Katy Perry, space tourism is so important, particularly when it gets to the point of Low Earth Orbit.
Being able to see the whole entire planet in detail right out the window apparently has quite the psychological effect.
Maybe we really are so insignificant that ultimately it doesn't matter. So, we might as well make the most of the time we have here!
Speaking for myself... Some of us care about this little spec of dust, so we try to challenge those who want to destroy the planet. We like making cool stuff, building little empires, and also making our communities fun and thriving!
We didn't build this world though. If anything it built us. And everywhere we look there's depth to it, whether we contemplate the stars, the worlds inside ourselves, or mundane earth events like a glance over clinked glasses when you fell in love...
Here's some Borges:
"Tennyson said that if we could understand a single flower we would know who we are and what the world is. Perhaps he meant that there is no deed, however so humble, which does not implicate universal history and the infinite concatenation of causes and effects. Perhaps he meant that the visible world is implicit, in its entirety, in each manifestation, just as, in the same way, will, according to Schopenhauer, is implicit, in its entirety, in each individual.
Dissociation and viewing your existence as nothing is not beautiful and it's definitely not honorable. Our existence is the realest we're going to get. Your life is 100% of your universe dawg, act like it.
Space is barely even real to us earth critters lol
Ok, why are you acting like you're contradicting OP when the two viewpoints necessarily go together?
If the rest of the universe cares about us, we need to live our lives for the rest of the universe. If we're cosmically insignificant, then what's here and now is what matters, and what we have to live for.
To you. I find a great amount of beauty in appreciating how small and unlikely our existence is - in how important it is to us, and how unimportant it is to the rest of the entire universe.
I'm left-handed, so I like fast-drying ink. I prefer a thin, but dark line. Here are some of the pens I like using.
1. Pentel Energel needlepoints 0.5 (BLN75 or the BLN105); refills fit a Lamy Tipo. It's a great everyday pen.
2. Zebra Sarasa 0.5 - lots of variations of this pen with lots of pretty ink colors and cute body styles. I would use it more, if it were available in local shops. I don't order stationery.
I tried the often lauded Pilot G2, but wasn't a fan. It often would smear.
Do you have issues with other rollerball pens? I’m also left-handed, and really struggle with them (especially the G2). My issues seem to be that when I’m pushing the point across the paper, rather than pulling it across like a right-hander would do, they often dry up and there’s no ink coming out.
I like how quick drying gel pens are, but I haven’t been able to write with them consistently. If that happens to you with other rollerballs, I’ll give that Pentel Energel a try.
I had the same issue with the G2. I've always noticed some skipping with rollerballs, but none were as bad as the G2. It was astonishingly hard to write with.
The Energels and Sarasas are the best pens I've found: affordable, nice to use, reliable, and refills fit a variety of pen bodies. If there's skipping, wiping off the tip of the pen to remove any grime resolves it.
In case it's helpful: I place my hand under the text I'm writing, aka "underwriting" and use light to medium pressure.
If you're looking for something slightly more mass-market but with the best writing experience I've seen out of such a pen, try the Pilot G-2 gel roller pen, preferably with a wider tip size (say, .7mm). Very smooth writing experience and good grips – the only downside is how much pen cartridges are very conspicuously less filled than they could be, and perhaps the lack of weight.
Having gone through a pen collecting phase, i think you need to give some details.
1. A budget.
2. Writing preferences and handedness.
3. Preferred writing surface/media.
4. Body type
For 2, that would include:
a) tip type - rollerball, ballpoint, fountain, or 'marker'.
b) tip size/diameter (essentially contact surface area) e.g. 0.17mm-1.0+mm
c) 'ink' type - gel etc.
Handedness matters mostly because left handers typically want the fastest drying ink.
Writing surface (paper) is important because it can drastically change how a pen writes (especially for fountain pens).
The body type might include approx. thickness (compared to an average pencil maybe), body material (metal, plastic, wood), contoured grip (yes/no, material?), and retractability.
If you don't know any of those, I would say just try to define what quality would mean to you.
As someone who always carries a pen in my pocket when I leave the house, I've come to find this one surprisingly important. Retractable pens have a habit of accidentally engaging and scribbling over the pocket fabric. I exclusively use capped pens for my daily carries now.
> left handers typically want the fastest drying ink.
My favorite pen is the Uniball Vision Micro. Not the "Elite" model, but the base model sometimes called the "Eye" in some regions.
I've been using these for maybe 14 years? And I've got three dozen more in my desk cause you never know when something you like is gonna get discontinued.
I’m a fountain pen user (helped me tremendously with RSI), but the Pilot VP <F> is my daily driver for note taking — it’s retractable. Other frequently used pens: Kaweco Sport (Brass) <F> as a pocket pen and a Pilot Custom 823 <M> for letters / sit down writing.
These are all excellent fountain pens! I'll add the Lamy 2000 (Fine nib) to the list, as it's my personal favorite and is what I use all day every day. And I happen to also use a Pilot Custom 823 (Medium nib) for journaling every morning. Nothing beats a nice fountain pen with quality ink and paper. Speaking of inks, I've found Rohrer & Klingner's Schreibtinte Verdigris to be wonderful in the Lamy 2000, and lately I've been using Noodler's Sequoia Green for the Pilot Custom 823.
OK OK, let's get serious. My personal favorite : Lamy 2000 fine nib inked with Rohrer & Klinger Dokumentus. Most times to complement it there's at least one Parker 51 as a quick note taking pen / highlighter (puts out way more ink, so some cheaper papers don't really work with it) and one or two Montblancs (mostly inked with Rohrers Salix) just for the fun of it.
I haven't quite settled down on paper though. Rhodia wire-bound dotted A5 has the best quality paper, but I sorely miss the flexibility of free leaf notes. Latest discovery - Muji's A5 binder. It's a Japanese 20-holes-per-A5 spacing, so fairly rare in the EU. Also, the Muji's default paper isn't great for some wetter fountain pens... but hopefully I'll figure some way to make it work.
I like the Sharpie pens. I assumed they would be terrible but I actually like them. Ballpoints frequently just stop writing. I'm not clever enough for fountain pens. The Sharpie pen is just a tiny, stiff marker that seems willing to put out ink without any fuss.
Speaking as a kidney transplant recipient it is most certainly not a walk in the park. I mean that literally; I cannot walk in the park without taking precautions against covid/influenza and my increased risk of skin cancer...
It depends on the QoL improvement factor you assign to self-satisfaction I suppose? Just multiply that by the expected number of years left in their life.
The article incorrectly states orange is derived from the Sanskrit word Narang नारङ्ग, but this word itself is a loan word from proto Dravidian (ancestor of Tamil) நாரம் (nāram)
