Technically… yes

I eventually quit, I finally cold Turkey’d it, I combined it with quiting nicotine.

I’ve tried to quit many times in the past, but this time has been the longest at 5 months or so

The advice I have: Don’t plan to quit, at some point you’ll have the impulse to quit after it weighs on your head for a while, that’s when you just lean into it - in the spur of the moment, toss your stuff or put it away someplace that’s annoying to get it back out of. Be as fast about this as possible as to not give time to the little voice that says “one more”: catch your brain off guard.

Then importantly, ensure to not substitute your habit with something else, like binge snacking or another drug - just accept that you’re gonna be uncomfortable - and embrace the discomfort - potentially make use of a fidget toy - but I found success in just destroying the habit rather than replacing/redirecting it. It took a couple weeks before it no longer was on my mind.

Finally: don’t beat yourself up if it takes a couple attempts to break the habit, each time I quit I got better at quiting.

It took a few weeks before I felt like it was all out of my system, and I started feeling healthier and better and more productive and more myself, and now I actually decline weed when offered because I like my sobriety. Mama Ganja taught me a lot, and she’s taught me all she can, and no I have moved on.

It stems from a conflict of need and want from what I understand.

The need for a national id and the refusal of the citizens for a national id. There was a lot of controversy about the SSN because it could be used as an id and the people didn’t want that being so privacy conscious, so they made the numbering system simple and that card fragile to show and dissuade that it isn’t a good id to get the SS passed.

But of course, there’s still a want/need for some kind of unified id across the nation - so it was used anyway

And thus we have a terrible id system: flimsy, deterministic, and mostly-unchangable

If you know the social security number of someone born in your hospital in the same day, it’s likely your ssn’s are right next to each other and could be guessed

At this point, I don’t think there would be much resistance to a national id, and it would be great for an update that is both securely random, and changeable so that leaking your SSN isn’t such a crazy risk, having it in a laminated card with a chip and electronic signature even better.

Some advice that has taken me over a decade to learn myself:

There are no rules, the titles are made up, the responsibilities and requirements do no matter.

Get what you can from your job, and once you get something do your Best even if that best sucks, and stay until you have gotten what you want out of the job, or realize you can’t or don’t want to do it anymore, and then start again doing something else.

Don’t ever limit yourself thinking you need to “level up” or something needs to get unlocked.

Learn by doing, try your best, you will make things that suck sometimes, but as you do more and more you should be making things better.

Or, it’s because whoever is doing this hates freedom of information and historical evidence. There’s a long list of powerful people and governments who have the resources and will to carry out these attacks.

Cyber warfare is real, and the Internet archive is a museum and library of culture and truth. It provides evidence and context to our past.

As in conventional war, it is valuable to the amoral to destroy culture and truth in order to control it. Many would like to kill that to supplant it with their version of events that can’t be refuted with evidence.

I haven’t been paying attention, what was the original drama there?

It sounds like good things have come out of it with a more community aligned governance, and nixOS is very interesting tech that could solve some of my headaches with Linux

What an apt comparison

Plants respond and react stressfully to being cut and chewed and digested.

To ignore this is just as bad as ignoring the plight of animals.

You don’t have to be thankful for the food that you eat and sacrifice for your life, but I will. If you are vegan then you are already aware of some of this plight of life, especially the cruelty of factory farm animals, but I ask you to expand your mind to the plight of all living things.

I know that when I thank my food, especially fresh plants, that I can feel a warmth of gratefulness radiate from my stomach. I recommend you try it with your next salad and when you are at your garden.

I want my animals, plants, fungi, bacteria, and all life that I interact with to live happy and fulfilling lives.

The ones I eat to continue my happy and fulfilling life I am especially grateful for.

It will be a constant struggle to ensure my food and all life I interact with is happy and fulfilled, and to reflect deeply on what I can change and improve when it is not.

Humans are uniquely capable to manage and ensure quality of life for ecosystems . The water, the soil, the air, the plants, the fungi, the animals. We can choose the well trotted path to exploit, or we can choose the harder path to heal and maintain.

My solution is to operate a homestead where I can ensure the food I eat and use have a quality happy fulfilling life, and a simple swift painless transfer of life to me and those I can provide for.

Plants and fungi are alive too.

The only way to stop killing, is to stop living.

The solution is to be mindful of our food, to respect it’s life, be thankful in its death.

What I eat, I sacrifice to me, and it lives on through me.

Starting with a simple idea that could theoretically be completed by a simple task, but as you implement it, reality complicates and sends you off on many deviations from the original straight and narrow path.

Yak shaving could be required and unknown at the beginning, or it could be a lack of discipline leading to scope creep - often it’s both

The famous Malcolm in the middle scene for ref: https://youtu.be/AbSehcT19u0?si=Pchmbf3509l1CbeQ - but the term was originally coined from elsewhere: https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/yak_shaving