[HN Gopher] On Tea and the Art of Doing Nothing ___________________________________________________________________ On Tea and the Art of Doing Nothing Author : vitabenes Score : 30 points Date : 2022-08-28 14:17 UTC (1 days ago) (HTM) web link (thomasjbevan.substack.com) (TXT) w3m dump (thomasjbevan.substack.com) | ketanmaheshwari wrote: | The author surely means taking occasional breaks that involve | just tea and doing nothing else. Otherwise how does one earn a | living and support their dependents while doing nothing as much | as they love it? | balentio wrote: | There are whole parties just for tea... | throwaway1777 wrote: | Truly a strange article, like the author has never tried | breakfast tea which has almost as much caffeine as coffee and | will definitely keep you awake... | neaden wrote: | To nitpick breakfast tea isn't a type of tea. There is English | Breakfast Tea which is a specific blend of black tea and | spices. Black tea usually have 50 mg of caffeine per cup, | roughly half what coffee has. Oolong, Green, and White tea all | have even less. Yerba Mate has more caffeine but that is a | different plant than true tea. | n4r9 wrote: | In my experience it keeps you awake but it doesn't give the | same kind of productive buzz that coffee does. I think this is | to do with not just the caffeine but the general combination of | other chemicals, such as l-theanine. | QuercusMax wrote: | I recently had to drive 5 hours on very little sleep, and I | only had tea available. I had to stop at a gas station to get | coffee because the tea wasn't cutting it, even at triple | strength. | | T will stop me from being able to fall asleep, but it does | not keep me alert in the same way that coffee does. | coldtea wrote: | His point wasn't as much about the caffeine content, as about | the culture. | | Besides, breakfast tea doesn't have anywhere near "almost as | much" caffeine as coffee. At best 45-50mg on average. Coffee | starts 20-30 mg above that and the sky is the limit with a | large latte or cold brew. | zwieback wrote: | Came here to say that - I just checked, my preferred breakfast | tea (Brooke Bond Red Label) has 60 vs. coffee 95 so definitely | in the ball park. I always thought it was like a quarter of | coffee. | coldtea wrote: | > _60 vs. coffee 95 so definitely in the ball park_ | | It's only "in the ballpark" if you used to think it was a | quarter. Otherwise, it's a whooping 60% more... | throwaway1777 wrote: | Drink a second cup. | arrosenberg wrote: | My man has never had Scottish Breakfast tea. I have never been | more jittery than after a cup of that stuff. | barrucadu wrote: | Er, what? This article seems to be starting from a weird premise. | Even the very first sentence, "It is a rare person who can do | nothing- purely and without guilt- especially in our current | culture of busywork." I can't relate to. Is it really so uncommon | for someone to just do nothing... or does the author just | surround themselves with such people? | | Also, this: | | > I suspect this is why from China and Japan to here in the UK, | slow and elaborate practises have formed over centuries around | the proper way to drink tea. Rituals that the takeaway cup and | drink-at-the-desk culture have been unable to entirely erase. | | Is comparing apples to oranges. You could easily flip the drinks, | and make a point about how the ritual of brewing coffee, taking a | cup out to your garden, and drinking it in the sun, is more | relaxing than the UK office culture of making (and offering to | make) cups of tea which are then consumed at your desk. | davzie wrote: | You sound awfully offended at not agreeing with someone on the | internet. I assume you must be in your early twenties because | to be able to sustain such an attitude would likely lead to an | extraordinarily high blood pressure that could send you to an | early grave. | | Have a bath and relax. | chanandler_bong wrote: | The author obviously has never been to the UK. _Nothing_ happens | without tea. Sure, coffee is commonplace, even dominant in some | realms, but tea is life. | | Have a plumber in to fix a leak, or an electrician to look at a | wonky switch? Without the offer and supply of copious cuppas, | you'll be lucky if you don't drown/get electrocuted after the job | is "done". | vram22 wrote: | gerdesj wrote: | Are you sure you actually read the article (this isn't /. don't | you know): | | "I suspect this is why from China and Japan to here in the UK, | slow and elaborate practises have formed over centuries around | the proper way to drink tea." | | The author is a Brit, ie one of us. | | We own a built in coffee machine that does bean to cup - I | insist on an Italian standard type blend (but wifey is starting | to chafe about that - we'll see, ie I'll change it eventually) | - 75% Arabica and 25% Robusta. | | We also drink an absolute shit load of black tea. Nothing fancy | because all black tea is roughly the same. I use to work in a | tea plant in Hampshire (UK) many years ago so I have a fair | idea about the stuff. We generally go for Yorkshire for no | particular reason. | | Tea is superb on a hot day and we have had quite a few | recently. I have no idea why it works so well but when it is | 40C+ outside then why not reach for a 90C cup of tea? | skyyler wrote: | >Nothing fancy because all black tea is roughly the same | | Please, please, please, please try some good Chinese teas | some time. | thunkle wrote: | I've been extremely sensitive to caffeine and so coffee doesn't | work for me. Recently I've been enjoying the ritual of preparing | white tea from one of those hard tea disks. I have a special tea | knife that lets me pry away layers, I then put them in a small | tea pot (8oz) do a first rinse, and add the specific water temp | and the specific time. I've found the ritual itself to be quite | tactile and pleasing and the caffeine to not be too overpowering. | It's a lovely way to wake up or take a work break. | PuppyTailWags wrote: | If you enjoy white tea in cakes you may consider aging your | white tea cakes in humidified bins. They get deeper and richer | in flavor as they age that way, but the humidity is important. | tuatoru wrote: | TIL about the existence of white tea. Thank you! | | Fun fact: "White tea may have first appeared in English | publication in 1876, where it was categorized as a black tea, | ..." | | So white can be black sometimes! | | 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_tea | steadicat wrote: | White tea is actually closer to black tea than the name | implies. Because - unlike green tea - it is not steamed to | stop the oxidation process, it oxides naturally as it dries. | This puts it somewhere between green tea and black tea in | terms of oxidation (which is also where oolong is BTW[1]). | Some oolongs and white teas - if brewed similarly - are very | very close to black tea in terms of flavor. | | [1] The technical difference between oolong and white is | simply that white is processed naturally, whereas oolong has | more "steps" (oxidation, drying, steaming, etc.). The steps | can be manipulated to give the tea a different character. | Oolongs are often roasted, for example. | cercatrova wrote: | Unfortunately even tea is too caffeine intense for me so I've | been sticking to decaffeinated coffee. A factoid, the color of | a tea does not relate to its caffeine content. | Entinel wrote: | There is still a world of tea for people that are caffeine | sensitive. I find a lot of jasmine teas are light on | caffeine, cha hua is tea made from the flowers of the tea | plant and that is barely caffeinated and if that is still too | much there is always rooibos, honeybush, and other herbals. | sammalloy wrote: | Came here to put in a good word for rooibos. When I went | through a caffeine-free phase for several years, it was my | go to drink. It also makes fantastic iced tea. | wwilim wrote: | Tea is better for planning and thinking alone, coffee is better | for repetitive work once you've planned it out with tea, and for | discussing things with others. | | That being said, coffee is essential in the morning for low blood | pressure people. Tea doesn't quite start the engine up the same | way - clearing and waking up the brain is no use if the heart is | still at 50 bpm and the eyelids are as heavy as the Iron Curtain. | lawrenceyan wrote: | Has anyone done work on genetically engineering tea for higher | caffeine content? I imagine there'd be a decent business for tea | with coffee-bean caffeine level parity. | aaaaaaaaaaab wrote: | >Paul Erdos once famously said that 'a mathematician is a device | for turning coffee into theorems'. | | Wrong. It was Alfred Renyi. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-08-29 23:00 UTC)