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intimist's comments
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intimist  ·  3701 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: 9 Things You Should Know About Your Caffeine Habit | Mother Jones

Coffee plantations DO have a negative environmental effect, though. Deforestation, loss of biodiversity, pesticide pollution. Further, the labor consequences aren't rosy either. Farmers sometimes have to sell for less than the cost of production and so they get trapped in a cycle of poverty, and that's just independent farmers. Workers oftentimes don't get paid minimum wage, are forced to work overtime and under deplorable conditions to which they have to bring their children to help reach quotas. And no, coffee will never be attacked the way tobacco is in the United States because it's effects aren't as glaring on the body. I mean, we already know that alcohol isn't exactly the best thing for us and yet the prospect of banning it seems almost ludicrous.

intimist  ·  3703 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: LSD making a comeback as therapeutic drug

Despite the West's ban on psychedelics, other parts and cultures have continued their tradition of using them for a variety of purposes, one among them is as a form of recuperative therapy (healing), another would be as a means for enlightenment. In fact, there's like hundreds of places in Peru where you can partake of Ayahuasca which has been used by the native peoples since forever. It's supposed potency far outweighs that of LSD, and it's effects are apparently life-changing, according to some personal accounts. I dated a guy who was a radical sort of psychologist and he and his colleagues provided the type of therapy this article is talking about. I never did it, though; which I regret now :/

intimist  ·  3704 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: How long does it take you to read a book?

I completely agree with your idea of priming in relation to our capacity to read books. I've found that when one is reading books from either the same genre, the same author or same philosophical inquiry-one reads them much faster because, evidently, one knows what to expect and one has already internalized the internal logic or language. That's why I think it's particularly important to read all of the books one can acquire of an important or preferred philosopher/theorist, since the language can sometimes be vague or imprecise. The more works one reads of said author, the more understanding one will gleam from them, and the quicker one will do so.