Why Your Morning Coffee Isn't Working(unless you are Marc Andreessen)
Most energy drinks just dump caffeine in your system to block adenosine. You feel alert for a bit, then your cortisol spikes and you crash. Not ideal.
Better move: pair caffeine with L-theanine. It promotes alpha-wave activity, which means you get the boost without feeling like you're vibrating. Matcha does this naturally: slower uptake, fewer jitters, steadier focus throughout the day.
Here's what actually helps:
Citicoline keeps your attention sharp
Bacopa helps with memory (takes a few weeks to kick in)
Lion's mane supports nerve growth (still early research, but promising)
Rhodiola and cordyceps help you handle stress without frying your nervous system
Add some turmeric and vitamin C to deal with oxidative stress. B-vitamins keep your cells running...
The best ready-made formulation I've found which achieves this and more is Magic Mind, it packs all of this into one shot (matcha, L-theanine, nootropics, adaptogens, the complete package). It's designed for mental performance without the crash or the pill fatigue.
4 attachment styles you need to know (the good news is these templates can shift over time):
Secure: Gets upset when parent leaves but expresses happiness when they return, confident the caregiver is available, good at exploring novel environments
Anxious avoidant: No distress on separation, some tendency to approach caregiver when they return but no expression of joy
Anxious ambivalent/resistant: Shows distress even before separation, very clingy and difficult to comfort when caregiver returns
Disorganized: Don’t know how to react to separation, manifest behaviors not observed in other situations
"I think there are a lot of Republicans that say, 'Well, these are my principles and therefore I'm going to lose in a principled way.' And I think that's pathetic." – Joe
He admires that the administration is fighting to win, and wants to do it in as principled a way as possible, but we have to...
Elon is the most alpha?
Joe is willing to go three or four standard deviations too hard in terms of working, pushing people, being bold, cutting nonsense
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Whatever habit you’re trying to build, scale it down to something that takes 2 minutes or less
Want to read 30 books a year? Start by reading one page
Want to do yoga 4x a week? Start by just taking out your yoga mat
Sounds stupid but this is how you master showing up
A habit must be established before it can be improved
Never miss twice
This is the most important rule that nobody follows
Missing once is a mistake. Missing twice is the start of a new habit
If you skip the gym on Saturday, DO NOT skip on Sunday
If you eat like crap on Monday, get back on track Tuesday
The habit isn’t about perfection, it’s about not letting one slip turn into a spiral
The upstream habits that matter most
Sleep. If you’re not sleeping well, everything else is 10x harder
Movement. Doesn’t have to be CrossFit, just move your body daily
Reading. Almost every successful person reads constantly
Writing is similar (forces you to clarify your thinking)
You can have vague thoughts floating around in your head, but when you try to write them down, you realize you don’t actually know what you’re talking about
Use your chronotype to stack the deck
Morning (0-8 hours after waking): High dopamine, norepinephrine, epinephrine. Your system is action-oriented. Put your hardest habits here
Afternoon (9-15 hours after waking): Dopamine tapers, serotonin rises. Good for learning, practicing skills, lighter habits
Evening (16+ hours): This is when neuroplasticity happens, when your brain consolidates habits from the day. Protect your sleep here or all your daytime effort goes to waste
The supernatural is real according to Dale Allison: “Levitation, reincarnation, near-death experiences, remote viewing. Not only do these events happen, they are well documented. Not only that, but they are well documented by secular, serious scholars and scientists.” – Johnathan paraphrasing Dale
If you’re talking to a diehard materialist, he recommends two books: Irreducible Mind (empirical approach) edited by Edward Kelly, and All Things Are Full of Gods by David Bentley Hart (philosophical approach)
He says if you read those two books and you’re still a materialist, he can’t help you
Terminal lucidity is when patients with dementia or brain cancer who haven’t communicated for 6 months or a year wake up right before they die and are perfectly normal with memories and can converse
The numbers on terminal lucidity:
A study of 45 Canadian hospice volunteers found 33% witnessed the phenomena
A study at a Korean teaching hospital found 6 instances in 338 deaths
A hospice in New Zealand found 6 cases in 100 deaths
About 10% of patients with dementia display terminal lucidity according to Alexander Batthyany from the Victor Frankl Institute in Vienna
Meta studies done in the 90s by statisticians said ESP experiments are statistically significant
They included the file drawer phenomenon (experiments that weren’t reported because they failed) and it still came out significant
Most metanormal phenomena don’t show up well in the lab, that’s just not where they show up
But even the small subset that shows up in labs, there’s stuff there…
The modern form of skepticism, materialism, and atheism came from Protestants
Protestants accepted the Catholic belief that miracles authenticate your faith but Roman Catholicism was full of miracles (Eucharistic miracles, visions of Mary, healings with relics…)
So Protestants had to reject all Roman Catholic miracles, centuries of stories (cessationism)
Protestant skepticism feeds into the Enlightenment, there’s a direct genealogy
David Hume’s skepticism didn’t come out of the blue, he actually read John Locke who was a cessationist who read Protestant treatises
Protestantism rejected ghosts because for Catholics they could be somebody in purgatory, but for Protestants when you die you went to heaven or hell so you weren’t around
If you’re seeing a dead relative it’s demonic or something’s wrong with you
Kids who go through puberty faster age more rapidly even later in life at a cellular level
The age of puberty has been falling for as long as we've kept data, every generation hits it earlier
The seven deadly sins run in families
The seven deadly sins (wrath, envy, lust, greed, sloth) run in families through genes
If you have a biological parent addicted to alcohol (even if they never raised you), you're more likely to have many sexual partners and be arrested for violent crime
Three dimensions of destructive behavior
When people chronically do something despite negative consequences, there are usually three dimensions at play:
Sensation seeking (I want it and I want a lot of it)
Disinhibition (I can't stop myself)
Antagonism or callousness (I know this hurts others but I don't care)
Empathy shifts to victims
Once somebody is harmed, our empathy shifts completely to the victim in a way that can overrule our care about what caused the perpetrator's behavior
"Bad luck doesn't negate responsibility. It might not have been my fault, but it's still my responsibility. But holding people accountable doesn't have to mean making someone suffer." – Dr. Harden