You're right in that there is much less variety amongst decaf coffee options, but there are a few good single origins out there.
BlendIn's Los Nogales typica is outstanding. It's the bean that convinced me to go full-decaf two years ago. (I drink caffeinated coffee now.)
Manhattan Coffee Roasters also has El Vergel, which is a good single origin with a dark, chocolatey taste profile. Great as a pour-over or as an espresso.
One Line Coffee in Columbus, OH also has a great decaf single origin. They deliver!
But, yeah, most decaf options are meh at best and pretty bad on average. Starbucks, of all places, has a reliable decaf roast that's alright and consistent.
Finally! A topic that I can directly contribute to!
I quit caffeinated coffee two years ago. A roaster nearby me came out with a decaf single origin that was so good, it not only convinced me that I don't need caf'ed coffee anymore, but it also won the 2024 US Brewers Cup.
During that time, I was also changing my sleep schedule as part of CBTi therapy I was undergoing to fix (or, more accurately, quell) a bout of sleep insomnia. The schedule was "wake up at 05:00 every day, including weekends and holidays."
The standard two weeks of caffeine "hangover" were pretty brutal, but the sleep improvements and lessen jitter were indisputable.
What was equally indisputable were my pronounced bouts of sadness/despair and, consequently, my strengthened desire to be alone. (I, like our cats, tend to want to be alone when something's wrong.) My drive and motivation to work also nosedived. Getting into anything, especially anything mundane, was a real challenge, even after changing my work environment and morning routine.
My ability to even _think_ was compromised. Putting together sentences and recalling phrases was harder. (The ability to do my job, motivation notwithstanding, wasn't affected, though.)
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A new Saturday morning routine helped me connect the dots.
One of my favorite coffee shops opened up in my town recently. They have this coffee drink that is just the absolute best, and the shop itself is very cozy and great for reading. It was only natural that I'd eventually start my Saturday and, now, Sunday mornings there.
That coffee drink is caffeinated, and they didn't have a decaf option. I didn't care. Like the decaf bean that got me started on this whole kick, this was the only drink that I'd make an exception for.
Without fail, I'd be a COMPLETELY DIFFERENT PERSON about 20-30 minutes after finishing that drink.
Happier. Much happier. Talkative. Eager to work. Basically I'd become my old self again.
A shot of espresso did the same thing. It kept me sharp on long road trips and was (is) a fantastic pre-workout for my two hour heavy lifting days.
Coffee basically masked what, I now think, are symptoms of a minor depression. Which adds up: my work experience post-COVID is much worse than it was pre-COVID, the proliferation of AI has really taken a toll on me, and lots of stuff about the world just _feels_ worse.
I now drink caffeine sparingly with tapered draw downs, i.e. 2 cups on Monday, 1 on Tuesday, none on Wednesday and Thursday, 1 on Friday and 2 on Saturday and Sunday. I'm also selective about how I get my caffeine. I don't want to lose the sharpening effect it has or get dependent enough on it to need mountains of the stuff to chase the same benefits. (I know that my baseline will increase, since that's how drugs work.) Like other posters have said, I avoid caffeiene after 14:00, though I'll break this rule if I'm going to be out late, as caffeine has a ~6hr half-life.
Nonetheless, I'm really thankful for the two years of abstinence from it, as it finally convinced me that therapy for _just this_ might be worthwhile.
(My sleep has remained much improved. I no longer get up at 05:00 --- I am 10,000% convinced that I am NOT a morning person --- but I haven't had nearly as much trouble falling and staying asleep. CBTi helped tons, and I recommend it to anyone and everyone struggling with sleep --- after getting a sleep study, of course!)
I completely believe it. The critical paths in critical software operated by every major company or governmental entity that you deal with were written in COBOL/Fortran/Progress and run on IBM mainframes (hence why they are still a tech titan and will probably remain so for the foreseeable future). And they aren't moving away any time soon because they are too important to fail.
Things that are largely or entirely done on mainframes today:
- Airlines: ticket reservations, crew management, route planning, critical flight operations, some parts of traffic control
- Banking: money movement, loan origination (though some of this has moved off over the years), account management (most of the slick frontends you use on the daily are just wrappers around mainframe programs)
- Government: So much state government stuff (licenses/registrations, tax systems)
I haven't personally done a lot of work on the mainframe, but as I understand it, they are still unbelievably robust machines that are extremely redundant and reliable and still have unmatched uptime guarantees.
This is very similar to Tesla's FSD adoption in my mind.
For some (me), it's amazing because I use the technology often despite its inaccuracies. Put another way, it's valuable enough to mitigate its flaws.
For many others, it's on a spectrum between "use it sometimes but disengage any time it does something I wouldn't do" and "never use it" depending on how much control they want over their car.
In my case, I'm totally fine handing driving off to AI (more like ML + computer vision) most times but am not okay handing off my brain to AI (LLMs) because it makes too many mistakes and the work I'd need to do to spot-check them is about the same as I'd need to put in to do the thing myself.
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