Don’t put sugar in your tea - don’t drink calories.

If sweetening with artificial sweeteners tastes “bitter”, try a trick: Use packets of multiple types - one “equal”, one sucralose, one stevia, for example. You get the sweetness from each and not enough of the background bitterness (which is different).

That’s the main reason Coke Zero is pretty good as compared to Diet Coke - different formula, but they use two artificial sweeteners and get that affect - sweetness from two sources with half the bitterness (since each is different).

Yes, eliminating an excess of calories is a good way to lose weight. Don’t think this is sarcasm, this is AWESOME and I’m glad that’s all it took for you - or at least that was a good contributing factor.

The only thing I would say: Don’t drink calories. i.e. I assume you meant regular soda and juice you were drinking. Milk is in that category as well.

Coffee, tea, diet soda, crystal light or any packet you put in a bottle of water - look for the things with basically zero calories, and that should be what you drink most of the time.

For those that are worried about things like caffeine being diuretics and dehydrating you: Coffee and tea and diet soda are NEARLY as hydrating as plain water. It’s not a large difference.

If you can drink plain water, great! If you need a bit of flavour to help? That’s also fine - the important bit is not drinking calories.

While most probably would be okay with hydrating more, do be careful:

1. The “eight glasses per day” thing was made up whole cloth
2. The advice I’ve heard is that for MOST people, drink when you are thirsty.

But if you’re trying to figure out what’s wrong because you feel a little bad, or have a headache, or are sleepy, or feel like you might be hungry but think you shouldn’t be, or any number of other situations - drinking a glass of water usually doesn’t hurt, and does sometimes turn out to have been the issue. So it’s rarely terrible advice.

(Unless you’re on dialysis like me and have fluid restrictions) :)

And if you always seem to have music stuck in your head, go research ADHD symptoms, as that is one of many. And if you DO have ADHD, things like ritalin can silence the music. (One of several things I still remember from my first ritalin)

You can also (maybe not on a video call, I suppose) press the space between your top lip and nose and this will also usually quell the sneeze.

Something like 20 years ago now, my pack-a-day wife decided to try a vaper. Not clouds-of-vape, just a pedestrian vaper.

She never went back to cigarettes. She decreased the nicotine and nowadays vapes maybe 2-3 times per day, I think her current level is 6… whatever units of nicotine, it’s not a lot.

I don’t care that she still vapes at that level. If there is anything bad, it’s not much at that rate, so screw it.

Firefox on desktop worked no worries here, but see how this looks - I love archive.ph / archive.today: https://archive.ph/0A6tq

Hiccups? Try taking a moment to close your eyes, focus your attention to the sides of your neck, and remind yourself that you don’t have gills anymore. I read this a few years ago and it mostly works for me - about 80% of the time (not that I get hiccups often). I’ve spread it to others with about ⅔ success, ⅓ failiure.

I’ve read the theory that it’s our brain in a panic because our gills (that we haven’t had for millions of years) aren’t working, so reminding yourself they’re not there helps. At least sometimes, at least some poeple.

The trick is just to pepper them in normal conversation. Otherwise people get too salty about them.

I love seeing this story… it reminds me of 30 years ago when I worked in the telephone industry. Heard about telephone copmanies rolling out service in very very rural areas - running signals over barbed-wire fences because it was too expensive to run dedicated cables. That did degrade the signal, but it worked.

I know it’s a completely different thing entirely, but it just gave me nostalgia remembering hearing about that.

The good folks in the USA have lost faith in the USA. Alas, the bad folks remain in power. heh

It’s worth saying again: Google can fuck itself.

And I generally like Google’s products. But they make plenty of money off of my data to say: Fuck Google.