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- Alcohol ruined my day today.
- The thing I dislike the most about alcohol is that it ruins both sleep that night and the next day.
- To counter that, I started drinking early (which was 5ish), hoping to close early. However, I ended up drinking 4 cocktails, each containing 3 shots of tequila and Cointreau overall, watched random YouTube videos until 11, slept badly and now I feel this day is fucked.
- In addition to starting early, think a new constraint I should add is to limit to no more than 2 drinks.
- Initially, it may sound severe because I won’t feel drunk at all but the situation should hopefully improve.
- Another benefit I foresee is that this will allow me to continue enjoying alcohol and not make me consider stopping altogether.
- An alternative is to quit cold turkey and completely.
- Blowout:
- Ukraine and Russia:
- Ukraine and Europe were uncomfortably dependent on Russia for their energy needs. When Russia annexed Crimea, which was probably part of Ukraine, US could only apply sanctions against Putin and his associates because it didn’t want to military get involved.
- Exxon though undermined the sanctions and used legal loopholes to continue doing business with Russia. Money more important than everything else.
- Tax cuts for the industry in Oklahoma.
- There was a new billionaire in Oklahoma. He spoke in favor of tax breaks: if they were removed, he will be incentivized to lower production and that will indirectly impact America’s vision of energy independence.
- The state was low on money to spend on child education, freeways etc. But the industry argued that the short-term increase in revenue, if tax cuts were removed, would be small compared to the long-term decrease in revenue caused by lesser incentives.
- Eventually, money prevailed and tax cuts were cut back just a little. Surprisingly, the cuts were made practically permanent.
- There is more of the same in the next few chapters.
- More stories of corruption and evil play from Russia. For example, Putin stole another company that was doing well but not sharing profits etc. with the state. Russia also, probably accidentally, shot down a civilian plane of 300(?) people but didn’t take responsibility.
- In Oklahoma, rate of earthquake went up in correlation to horizontal fracking. However, there was tussle between the industry and state-governed geology department because the former would hurt if the truth were to come out.
- Ukraine and Russia:
- Hike.
- We don’t hike a lot since we had our kid. With him traveling to India these days, I pushed myself to go on one today afternoon even though I was a little groggy after last night’s alcohol.
- I chose Lime Kiln trail: moderately difficult, 5.2 miles roundtrip and a ~45 min drive from home. It wasn’t particularly beautiful but I appreciated getting close to nature (away from electronic devices).
- I slipped and fell twice! It still hurts, causing me to limp sometimes.
- I’ve been using 9-10 year old hiking shoes that I bought back in Noida when I went for a Himalayan trek. I guess it’s time to buy new shoes now.