[HN Gopher] On Tea and the Art of Doing Nothing
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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.
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