I mean, you have your answer right there. It’s not like Harvard is a particularly untrustworthy source for diet recommendations.

Why are you doubting the number? If you feel fine and don’t want to change, don’t. Everybody is different and has different needs, and you might just need less, but anyone reputable is going to give the same rough range.

“a drink” contains roughly the same amount of alcohol regardless of type, so a daiquiri should get you about as inebriated as a beer.
Some caveats: since drunk people drink more, some places have specials earlier in the evening or on some drinks where you can make it a double for no or low upcharge. That glass now has two drinks in it.
Some drinks are easier to drink fast, which makes you feel the effects faster and stronger, so you might perceive yourself to be “more drunk”, even though it’s really just hitting you all at once. Delicious sugary drinks that mask the alcohol flavor are notorious for that.

It takes about an hour to process a drink; sugary drinks will inevitably give you an upset stomach; water and food help keep your stomach settled ; you’ll have a better time not having a drink you could have and feeling good than having a drink your shouldn’t have and feeling gross, so if in doubt say nah.

You’ll be fine with one with a meal with someone you know. A second is probably fine in the circumstances but more than that is iffy.

I think the most alive you could be would then be some manner of homeless drug addict. You have no power over your life, so no notion of what any day will look like.

This quote kinda rubs me the wrong way because it treats predictability the same as banality.
If you want a job where you never know what the day is going to look like, work for a poorly managed company. You never know what you’re going to be doing, sometimes the project you’re working on one day is cancelled without warning and now people are mad at you for not having been working on the new priority for the past month. Sometimes you go in and you work 36 hours straight without warning because someone else messed up and your boss doesn’t give a shit who’s responsible and you’re the one who knows how to fix it, so fix it or fuck off. Better hope you don’t have a family or you’re going to have to make choices.

Knowing what you’re going to do tomorrow is just having work of any consequence. Food service knows what they’re doing tomorrow. So does a CEO, a software developer at a competent business, or a project manager. I can think of very few jobs whose scope of work is limited to a day, and is so variable that you just don’t know what you’ll be doing. Temp? Personal assistant to an eccentric actor? (Not the manager type assistant, they need to know the schedule. The one that buys coffee, six turtles and a pair of roller skates and doesn’t actually exist).

I could just be dead inside because I know that tomorrow is going to go a particular way that I like.