Related Recs

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Diet Coke (as a nootropic)

Very powerful. People don’t want to hear this, but the results speak for themselves. I drink this for MEDICAL reasons. The taste (which is superior to regular coke and also Coke Zero) is just a bonus—goes down crisp without any syrupy stickiness. You see, aspartame , is made up of two amino acids, aspartic acid and phenylalanine. There are a bunch of studies (of dubious quality) showing that phenylalanine is good for focus, mood, restlessness, stuff like that. They should be giving Diet Coke to poorly behaved children instead of methylphenidate.  https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4777504/ https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/0165178185900241 They sell phenylalanine supplements on Amazon but why take those pills when you can get a perfect blend of aspartame (which is totally safe) and caffeine to balance your mood and help you get into a state of highly enhanced focus and verbal fluency. It’s no wonder why Donald Trump, Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, and other rich and powerful guys—that people hate for being too rich and powerful—all drink like 7-8 Diet Cokes every day.

@matthewdavis

STAFF

Oct 7, 2024

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Coke Zero

Where do I even start with this crazy girl?! I filmed my show Overcompensating (coming soon to Amazon :)) this Summer in Toronto and NOTHING hit like a CZ! Coming back to the states has been devastating just for the sheer lack of Coke Zero at restaurants. Diet Coke is LOVELY… but there’s something about little miss CZ. I think there’s less aspartame? Don’t tell me I won’t look it up and I don’t wanna know! They have FOUNTAIN Coke Zero at the Cinemark in North Hollywood. I took down a big gulp of it the other night while my boyfriend fell asleep next to me in a reclining chair watching Gladiator 2. That’s a dream night for me! 

@benito-skinner

Feb 20, 2025

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Diet coke

I literally drink it like water. I have no clue how much is too much— and i don’t really care

@magdilettante

Dec 15, 2024

Top Recs from @alex-kazemi

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Lorde’s Lyrics

I don’t think pop music has historically ever had a moment like her “Girl, So Confusing” remix verse. It’s not a joke. It’s a triumph for literature. Everyone remembers where they were the first time they heard it. This was a serious revolution and took us out of her usual fever dreaminess of controlled poetic syntax (which I love) , to just unmasked, raw, chaotic feminine brutality and I don’t think we appreciate the prose switch-up enough. I also have said “let’s work it out on the remix?” to many people I’ve fought with since the song dropped. Sometimes I even write a verse mimicking the song taking accountability of what I’ve done and I send it to who I’m in a conflict with, it actually helps! I’m obsessed with the new singles off her upcoming album Virgin and I’m already studying the cadence of epigrams like ‘MDMA in the back garden’,. I’m someone who struggles with severe summer depression, which is taboo in the world of seasonal sadists but taking my discman for a walk by the ocean as “The Path” starts up on my (files purchased on ITunes!) burnt CD-R copy of ‘Solar Power’ is nature’s SSRI. Suck on that, Saint John’s Wort.

@alex-kazemi

Jun 13, 2025

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Blackberry Bold 9900

I write in fragments, and I’m constantly jotting down ideas all day long and what has been great is turning a Blackberry Bold into an offline word processor. I use the built in software and export my writing into a .docx and then put it on my computer via USB. Then I plug my notes into Scrivener.  I’m a huge nerd about collecting offline-writing tech (shout out to Freewrite!) and it makes the rush of putting together a novel which I call the ‘incubation process’, a lot for more chaotic and fun.  I consider writing to be like a scavenger hunt with your own brain and I feel like if you see your mind as a search engine, you can pull up a lot of insane ideas by just trusting your inner web browser. 

@alex-kazemi

Jun 13, 2025

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Region Free DVD Players

The reason I got a region free DVD player in my mid 20s was because I wanted to own a European copy of the Leonardo Dicaprio Gen X deep-cut/full of lore movie Don’s Plum. If you can sometimes save the money, you spend on vaping, events, weed, alcohol, drugs or whatever to buy rare out of print DVDs (even bootlegs sometimes) that are locked to Japan, Australia, UK, whatever isn’t North American. Do it, you’ll never regret it. The delayed gratification of waiting weeks for a DVD that is available to stream right now on some scary illegal link that has 300 pop ups to come in the mail may not make sense to a lot of people but I really appreciate the movie more, and having the association of the whole experience of having to track it down vs just getting it right now makes it so fun. I own a lot of rare TV series box sets from the 90s/2000s that never got released in North America, and are impossible to find online. Join me, you can live this lifestyle too!

@alex-kazemi

Jun 13, 2025