If anyone has any questions about GrowSF, feel free to ask!
1,635 karma · joined September 30, 2007
Software engineer, San Francisco political operator. ex-{Google, Counsyl, Amazon}.
You can reach me at steven.buss@gmail.com
https://sbuss.substack.com https://sbuss.dev https://twitter.com/sbuss https://github.com/sbuss
[ my public key: https://keybase.io/sbuss; my proof: https://keybase.io/sbuss/sigs/vv9NPn_ZrB0GolQk7eLa92RhAdXBrPmb7YRYKM0MUuI ]
If anyone has any questions about GrowSF, feel free to ask!
The deadline for deciding who could appear on the ballot was yesterday, September 6th, for the November 8th election. So ballots should start getting printed today and mailed to expats some time in the next week. So I think you'll get your ballot mid-to-late September.
We're currently on track to publish the voter guide on October 1st, but I'll see if we can get it up any earlier!
We must elect pro-growth and pro-tech people who can bring competence to government. There's no other way out of this mess.
We'd love your support! https://growsf.org/donate
That's why a4agarwal (https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=a4agarwal) and I started GrowSF — we can build a better city, but only if the tech industry supports pro-growth policies and elected officials.
We'd love your support! https://growsf.org/donate
A trainer is essential for a new lifter. It is easy to hurt yourself, and you need to work on good form for years before it becomes second nature. You will look good (you won't look like a meathead), feel good, and your bones and heart will stay strong into middle age as your peers get fat and unhealthy.
I almost never dream. When I do dream it's fairly lifelike.
I can't visualize anything arousing. When I first learned (at 26!) that my friends can visualize any fantasy at will I was floored. I have zero internal imagery for anything sexual. Have no fantasies.
I can't picture anyone's face. Bodies are only experienced in person. If I can't see it with my eyes, it doesn't exist.
Joining Amazon was the best thing I could have done with my career at that stage in my life. I learned a ton! But the culture does grind you down, especially when your alternatives are much more cushy.
It's well beyond a genetic predisposition, it was a genetic guarantee for me.
I'm taking sertraline (zoloft) now, and the only negatives I'm experiencing are slightly reduced libido and jaw clenching/grinding. I've started occasionally wearing a night guard while sleeping, and not really minding the decreased libido since dating during a global pandemic is outside of my acceptable risk tolerance.
I've also taken Lexapro and had good results with that, too.
The benefits are I was able to actually feel pleasure and enjoy things again. At my worst I was suffering from severe anhedonia -- literally finding no pleasure in any activity. Nothing I previously enjoyed brought any modicum of happiness: not food, not sex, not exercise, not work or side projects. It's a dangerous state to be in because when literally nothing in life brings joy you can slip into destructive choices.
The benefits of feeling better vastly outweighed any minor side effects of antidepressants.
There are some people, especially teenagers, who can become suicidal when taking antidepressants. But it's very rare and your psychiatrist will help you find a drug that doesn't cause those feelings.
If you don't want to do that, at least start donating to local politicians who you agree with, volunteer for them, tell your friends to vote for them. Local races are often won by dozens to hundreds of votes. You can easily swing that. And don't focus on "highest value" work. Door-to-door canvassing is more important than any code you can write.
Also, check out this organization I'm part of: https://techworkers.vote
Aphantasic participants scored significantly lower than control group 2 on all outcomes of the imagery and episodic memory questionnaires (all p < 0.0002, all r > 0.52, all BF10 > 1.42e8) with the exception of the factual memory component of the SAM.
So aphantasics (like myself) do have poor episodic memory.
Paper here: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-65705-7