<p><span class="h-card" translate="no"><a href="https://mastodon.social/@whitequark" class="u-url mention">@<span>whitequark</span></a></span> <span class="h-card" translate="no"><a href="https://hachyderm.io/@fasterthanlime" class="u-url mention">@<span>fasterthanlime</span></a></span> fascinating!</p>

<p><span class="h-card" translate="no"><a href="https://hachyderm.io/@fasterthanlime" class="u-url mention">@<span>fasterthanlime</span></a></span> on second thought &quot;literally no other drug&quot; is wrong in the strictest sense since coffee and tea contain other monoxanthines like theobromine and theophylline, but since they all share a metabolic route (caffeine itself is metabolized to paraxanthine, theophylline, and theobromine, for example) it feels reasonable to group them together</p><p>this paper contains more information on caffeine metabolism, though it&#39;s somewhat dense <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/org/science/article/pii/S1479680524000214" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener" translate="no"><span class="invisible">https://www.</span><span class="ellipsis">sciencedirect.com/org/science/</span><span class="invisible">article/pii/S1479680524000214</span></a></p>

<p><span class="h-card" translate="no"><a href="https://hachyderm.io/@fasterthanlime" class="u-url mention">@<span>fasterthanlime</span></a></span> caffeine is an adenosine antagonist. literally no other drug, to my knowledge, works like that. all of the effects on dopaminergic, etc, pathways are somewhere downstream of that, apparently through a mechanism that involves changes in how calcium is processed on the cellular level. i can&#39;t claim to understand it on any advanced level, but the following paper has an overview and some references that look good: <a href="https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8202818/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener" translate="no"><span class="invisible">https://</span><span class="ellipsis">pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/</span><span class="invisible">PMC8202818/</span></a></p>

<p><span class="h-card" translate="no"><a href="https://mastodon.social/@whitequark" class="u-url mention">@<span>whitequark</span></a></span> &quot;Phew, are there two constant-temperature bodies in a Carnot cycle in here, or is it just me?&quot;</p>

<p><span class="h-card" translate="no"><a href="https://hachyderm.io/@fasterthanlime" class="u-url mention">@<span>fasterthanlime</span></a></span> and then we have the two weird ones. modafinil and caffeine</p><p>nobody really knows how modafinil works, but it&#39;s probably not by directly influencing dopaminergic/noradrenergic pathways. most likely, the wakefulness promoting effect is downstream of it raising levels of histamine (like the inverse of how 1st gen antihistamines make you sleepy); i don&#39;t understand the other effects enough to comment</p><p>(continued)</p>

<p><span class="h-card" translate="no"><a href="https://hachyderm.io/@fasterthanlime" class="u-url mention">@<span>fasterthanlime</span></a></span> ok so, most things we call &quot;stimulant&quot; are dopaminergic (and sometimes noradrenergic) in nature</p><p>amphetamine? monoamine releasing agent that releases, mostly, dopamine and norepinephrine<br />methylphenidate? monoamine reuptake inhibitor, roughly 50/50 share of inhibiting dopamine and norepinephrine uptake<br />bupropion? similar to methylphenidate but slightly weirder<br />all sorts of illegal stimulants like methamphetamine? one of the mechanisms above</p><p>(continued)</p>

<p><span class="h-card" translate="no"><a href="https://hachyderm.io/@fasterthanlime" class="u-url mention">@<span>fasterthanlime</span></a></span> it&#39;s such a weird one though, basically no other stimulant shares the mechanism with caffeine</p>

<p><span class="h-card" translate="no"><a href="https://mastodon.social/@cobratbq" class="u-url mention">@<span>cobratbq</span></a></span> The purpose of the challenge is self-assessment. To be functional at something, I think it helps to have some kind of base set of &quot;working knowledge.&quot;</p><p>As an example, I&#39;ve studied enough jazz piano so that if I were given a never before seen song at a jam session, I could probably play through most of the chords without having to stop and think about it. </p><p>This is somewhat similar. Given a blank editor, do I know enough to just do something?</p>

<p>shout out to one of my fave charts</p><p>(CCM = chocolate cake mix)</p>