Ask HN: What are you doing this weekend?
Hoping to find out about some of your new hobbies and projects. Thanks in advance.
The scary thing about desoxyn is that it's thoroughly unregulated, so you have to watch for impurities or contamination. Especially scary would be fentanyl hotspots, which can happen if the chemical was improperly handled during packaging.
It's a very scary thing to be attempting, and I've actually had the experiment sitting for several months in my kitchen without touching it, due to how slightly alarming the whole prospect is, but my natural curiosity and engineering instinct tends to win in the end, when I feel sufficiently prepared.
So far I've slowly ramped up to a 40mg dose of oral metamphetamine and I'm still not consciously feeling anything that couldn't be attributed to placebo, so I'm starting to consider scraping the current batch, sending it to a lab for an expensive analysis, and potentially trying again a few months from now, if I have the energy for it.
It's a pretty slow-going project since I have to prepare for 12h of potential effects of each dose, and ramp up slowly due to uncertain purity, but the potential payoff of not having horrible executive dysfunction is pretty interesting.
Not going to judge the plan, but please make sure to have a Narcan (naloxone) nearby, familiarize yourself with its use and do the same for any friends/family/neighbors that might be in near proximity of you. If you can’t afford it there are organizations that can provide you one for free or lower cost.
Narcan (naloxone) is a wonderful thing, that I wish was more broadly available. I would still worry that sometimes people are not able to self-administer Narcan, so in addition fentanyl test strips are a very good idea to also have. They're a little false-positive heavy, but that seems better than the alternative.
My understanding is that the production of metamphetamine has increased in quality over time, so that it should be possible to get something reasonably potent with a little trial and error. The idea is to optimize both on cost and size, because if it turns out to be viable as a tool, having to order smaller packages less frequently should contribute to reducing risks.
On point 2, I'm aware of the acetone wash, I think that's definitely worth doing (though it can't wash every impurity). I haven't attempted it yet due to fire safety concerns, and because I see it more as an optimization I can make down the line, if this whole insane experiment turns out to be practically viable as a potential tool in my toolbox.
The production has increased but as far as I know it's fairly easy to make so there's a ton of small mediocre operations making it and also there's always incentives to make it weigh more for cheap.
On a serious note, I'd just like to emphasize how debilitating this condition can be. You can know what you want, know what you need to do to get it, and simply be unable to get going (or keep going), for months, for years... and the only thing you hear from others is how lazy you are and need to work harder.
As a ground-level example, you can have a task on your mind all day, to the point where you can't relax or do anything else productive, but still get nowhere with it.
I had some (limited) success with microdosing LSD, which I tried because I do not tolerate stimulants well. At its peak effectiveness, it became literally impossible to procrastinate because I would just be consciously, excruciatingly aware of trying to avoid a task. The only way to get it off my mind would be to deal with it.
So for a time it was extremely effective for me. Also some nice bonuses were it made me much more friendly and social, and fond of physical exercise.
I stopped for various reasons including the legality, availability, difficulty of dosing correctly, and also it woke me up to some things happening in the world that are very unpleasant to be thinking about on a regular basis. I rather went back to my usual half-asleep state of mind.
>I had some (limited) success with microdosing LSD, which I tried because I do not tolerate stimulants well. At its peak effectiveness, it became literally impossible to procrastinate because I would just be consciously, excruciatingly aware of trying to avoid a task. The only way to get it off my mind would be to deal with it.
This almost exactly matches my experience. I relate completely. A few months ago I spent about 6 hours trying and failing to do some basic everyday life task. As a last resort, in the evening, I took a small threshold amount of a psychedelic. I knew full trips in the past had filled me with determination, so I wanted to see where the lower bound was. Can a smaller push than a full trip get me past the barrier? It did work in the end, but only after a few more hours of trying and 964 lines of notes on why exactly it is that I'm not doing the very thing I want to be doing right now.
For me, psychedelics get me in an emotional mindset where I start caring and being a lot more emotionally involved than normal, eventually filling me with enough emotional determination to can overcome almost any mental barrier. The only problem being that some tasks can't very well be done when you're far from sober, it's not a very functional tool above light doses.
And unfortunately using it like that feels way too much like an unhealthy dependency to me. I could never accept using it as anything more than as a last resort, because psychedelics have so many side effects and changes in perception. If I started depending on tripping to do anything hard, I feel like that would be an addiction, and surrendering a small part of myself to replace it by a chemical.
I'm trying to explore other potential solutions that would work better for infrequent to semi-frequent use, even if I know I can always as a hail mary resort to psychedelics, and if nothing else worked that should get me to guilt trip myself into having the determination to attempt anything that needs doing.
(Then again, some forms of diabetes can be "cured" (removing the need for external insulin) by a ketogenic diet. Then again you could say the diet is also an "external factor"...)
There seems to be this cultural issue around mental health problems, this stigma associated with them. You wouldn't tell someone in a wheelchair they just need to try harder to get up the stairs! But with brains that's basically what most people say.
On the other hand, neuroplasticity is real and it is amazing. The Woman Who Changed Her Brain is a great book on this subject. A lot of people get attached to a label that describes their current limitations and keep themselves in that box forever.
I was able to significantly increase my Conscientiousness (organization and work ethic) by consciously transforming my self-image. (ADHD can be very loosely defined as a pathologically low level of conscientiousness.)
This worked surprisingly well but it did require a constant level of effort to keep up the act, because I wad quite literally using my acting skills to be a person without ADHD. Same hardware, different software!
Yes, that's where I'm conflicted. At the same time that I try to pretend using psychedelics for ADHD would be an addiction, I'm actively seeking metamphetamine instead. Which doesn't exactly have a reputation as a non-addictive healthy substance to be self-medicating with.. I can see the idea that medication is medication and shouldn't be stigmatized.
Still, I think I feel that way because I can make a reasonable point about side-effects and how much therapeutic benefit I get vs impairment, in my personal experience. LSD is pretty effective, but for me (and this might not generalize) it works best when it's a full introspective trip where I'm going to have amplified emotions. Which is also where I'm most impaired and least able to interact with the rest of the world. If I compare that with the effects of stimulants for ADHD, at least in expectations they seem like a much more functional thing to be on, on a frequent or even daily basis.
Though I admit if microdosing works for some people, then that seems potentially just as good a medication, too.
>There seems to be this cultural issue around mental health problems, this stigma associated with them. You wouldn't tell someone in a wheelchair they just need to try harder to get up the stairs! But with brains that's basically what most people say.
For a long time I used to have had some strong bias against using any external help, instead just trying harder or trying to better myself through sheer force of will. I instinctively never liked the idea of depending on any medication, like it was a crutch. I was wrong, but I think there's still a bit of that instinct resisting treatment. You're completely right about the stigma existing, too.
I'll have to read The Woman Who Changed Her Brain. I've found one sort of mental trick that helps me get things done, but it's about getting into a mindspace where I have to admit to myself that procrastinating is wrong/makes no sense, until that forces me reject the wrongness out of a weird childish sense of right and wrong manifesting as determination. Probably no one else can relate to that part :) It borders on guilt-tripping or emotionally manipulating myself, and I'm only half happy with exploring that idea further.
Trying to transform your self-image sounds like a whole other thing, that's a really interesting idea! I feel like a small part of me would hate that, because that feels dangerously close to 'lying' to myself (which my childish intuitive sense of right and wrong frowns upon pretty strongly). But on the other hand I can absolutely see how that'd be effective. Self image is a powerful thing, and there's something about the mindset I'm in that completely changes how much difficulty I'll have starting things.
I'll definitely try to apply that idea, of acting like someone who might think differently and see themselves differently. I feel like I've spend many hours circling the problem, but I still haven't found some effective way of getting from a mindset where I'm facing strong mental barriers to a mindset where things are easier. But I have all the time in the world to try, so, thank you for sharing that idea =)
So after I did a personality test and realized that my repeated failures in life were likely the result of my 0th percentile ( ! ) conscientiousness (which the test humorously explained as "if you were one of 100 people in a room, 99 people would be more conscientious than you") I decided I either had to do something about it, or continue to suffer stupidly.
So I decided I would become conscientious through sheer force of will. But I realized that my entire identity was holding myself back. It felt like "not me" to act hardworking and well-organized, because I had become attached to the idea of not being that way. I'd be pretending to be "someone else".
So using this "parallel universe" version of me, that is highly conscientious, was a loophole. I imagined that our timelines were coming closer together until they merged and we became the same person. (I later learned that visualizing an ideal form (eg. a deity) and merging with it (to absorb its qualities) is used in the tantra tradition!)
From then on it still took constant conscious effort (in fact, that "constant vigilance" is actually a big part of conscientiousness--you don't let anything slip under the radar) but it was much easier after that powerful intention and visualization.
Though for some reason after upload the first 12-ish seconds of playback are frozen for me. You can skip forward a bit for some rock-prowling action.
Because I flew across the planet to attend my friend's wedding, who I met on an open source conference, the OpenStack summit, many years ago.
At the early ages of my career I thought of any kind of tech gathering as a necessary forum to show off, be competitive, demonstrate how much one (individual) excel, and becomes superior to others. I definitely wasn't at the right spot with this toxic mindset.
I became a regular attendee and speaker and trainer on the summits, and made good connections who eventually became close friends. The community, and especially these people taught me how to be a better person, and showed me that one can maintain professional integrity while still having a more open, more friendly, more helpful mindset.
Thanks for this, community! And best wishes, Jay!
Also, workout & cleaning. Sorry for being off-topic.
If only airline prices were more affordable, I'd be speaking in-person rather than online.
P.S. I like this Ask HN already. Will this get posted every week?
Break a leg!
It would be cool to see it here as well :)
The twist in the tale is that he finished Year 12 in 2020, a year in which we spent a fair portion of our life in lock-down due to COVID. We're finally catching up on the backlog of things we had planned!
Sometimes, I get in my head that I haven't gotten further in life. Building a career, getting a doctorate, buying a house, finding a surrogate to have kids... So I started taking Saturday mornings to celebrate the little things that make me happy.
It encourages you to walk/run/bike all the roads in a town/city/county and it tracks the percentage.
It’s a fun and creative way to go see parts of your area you wouldn’t otherwise. I’ve used it to walk 97% of the miles in Berkeley and seen so many funky little areas. I also really enjoy how much it has increased my walking over the last few years.
I also been binging People Do Nothing on Netflix. Really good.
Once I tie up the loose ends on getting the GPS and orientation data, I'll start on one of the other data types I plan to work with. Not sure which one will come next, but some of the things queued up to do include:
- integrating one or more webcams for visual processing
- integrating one or more microphones for auditory processing
- integrating a thermocouple interface board to allow it to sense the ambient temperature. Will probably actually do two of these and use one thermocouple to measure the temperature inside the "body" of the system.
- considering also adding a light sensor to sense ambient light levels, a proximity sensor, a barometric pressure sensor, and possibly some other miscellaneous stuff. But the big ones I wanted to start with were the position/orientation stuff, and vision and audio.
I also need to replace the amplifier I use to drive the speakers used for audio output. In the current configuration I get some unwanted hum when then box is running on wall current, and the amp isn't really powerful enough anyway.
Outside of all that, I am trying to get back to cycling 40 miles a week, and right now I'm sitting at 25 miles of MTB'ing for the week, so I need to go out for a road ride tonight, or tomorrow and try to pick up the final 15 miles I need.
And, of course, I'll watch the Dolphins / Bills game tomorrow. #PHINSUP
We learned a lot of Pinewood Derby science from this video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-RjJtO51ykY
Today, I went to a British Museum exhibit with my partner.
Tomorrow, I'm going on a 12 mile hike in Surrey with some friends.
Tomorrow, I'm planning to visit a lake on the other end of the city again (should be flush with all the recent rain) and do some shopping on the way back.
Polishing my new Electron app which is a data viewer for the time-series data that my companies products produce.
Spinning up another side project with Tauri/Rust as a background data collector service.
1. I've had 3 different managers this year, which makes it almost impossible to get a promo I've been chasing for 18 months.
2. I hit an equity cliff so I'm getting less shares per cycle now than I was before - essentially a compensation cut even though my responsibilities have grown.
3. I want to get back into SRE-type roles, I've been in management for a bit and I don't think it's for me.
#livingthedream
It's a double 18" reflex cabinet I designed myself. I'm using 18mm birch plywood. I'm doing some finishing bits this weekend:
* Soldering the connectors, the drivers will be wired in series and are 8 ohm so the box will be 16 ohm. My soldering skills are trash so it looks terrible.
* Final sanding
* Oiling
Next weekend will be mounting drivers and handles and hopefully testing :)
To help me prep for my Fantasy Hockey Draft next week!
Around noon, once it gets a bit warmer, I'll go with the family on a hike to see the fall foliage.
A scrimmage each day. A big BBQ dinner tonight. Some alumni activities as well.
My Dad joined my wife and I, so we get some time with him as well.
It’s my first time here, and with the cooler weather it’s quickly becoming one of my favorite show venues.
Oh, and I might play same Avalon/Secret Hitler with some classmates.