Hacker News: chiefgeek

New comment by chiefgeek in "People Who Can't Picture Anything Are Rewriting the Science of Imagination"

chiefgeek — Mon, 14 Sep 2026 14:54:15 +0000

I do see images when I dream. It can get pretty immersive. Brains are wild.

New comment by chiefgeek in "People who can't picture anything are rewriting the science of imagination"

chiefgeek — Mon, 14 Sep 2026 14:53:28 +0000

Honestly, I’ve done it all. I’ve shot thousands of headshots and portraits and hundreds of events. I’ve not typically been a “conceptual” photographer such as somebody like Art Kane. I started on film and moved to digital in 2003 before I was shooting professionally. I get more of an “idea” in my head, however I don’t “see” a final result. Digital has helped immeasurably to refine my work more quickly. Just as I “know” what a red fire hydrant looks like but I do not “see” an image.

New comment by chiefgeek in "People who can't picture anything are rewriting the science of imagination"

chiefgeek — Mon, 14 Sep 2026 14:49:23 +0000

Yes this. I have, based on a battery of spatial reasoning tests I took years ago, way above average spatial reasoning capabilities. I also notice a lot IRL that others do not, based on anecdotal evidence.

New comment by chiefgeek in "People who can't picture anything are rewriting the science of imagination"

chiefgeek — Mon, 14 Sep 2026 14:28:25 +0000

I’ve worked as a professional photographer for twenty years and I visualize absolutely zero with my eyes closed. It’s only recently that I learned of aphantasia. Even on most psychedelic journeys I don’t have closed eye visuals, NN-DMT being the consistent exception. Everything is more of just a “knowingness”.

New comment by chiefgeek in "Under federal rule, colleges must leave grads better off or lose financial aid"

chiefgeek — Sun, 12 Jul 2026 14:09:07 +0000

I mean, just make students loans dischargeable during bankruptcy for chrissakes. Why doesn’t this get more attention? It’s ridiculous. Sometimes people make bad decisions. I did. And I went through bankruptcy, divorce and foreclose, CONCURRENTLY. it sucked and 17 years later I am a better person for it. Student loans are incredibly predatory in many cases and there is no way out. It is criminal.

New comment by chiefgeek in "Lessons from the Vasa Shipwreck"

chiefgeek — Sun, 12 Jul 2026 14:01:21 +0000

I visited the museum two summers ago and it is really impressive. Even though I had caught some kind of cold and felt terrible, I thoroughly enjoyed my visit. Highly recommend.

New comment by chiefgeek in "Please stop the AI confidence theater"

chiefgeek — Fri, 03 Jul 2026 14:48:08 +0000

Burning Man?

New comment by chiefgeek in "Om"

chiefgeek — Sat, 27 Jun 2026 01:48:08 +0000

Beautiful tribute. Godspeed.

New comment by chiefgeek in "Big Banana Car"

chiefgeek — Fri, 19 Jun 2026 21:00:42 +0000

I bought the ninth Mini Cooper in Illinois in 2002. My former wife got pulled over in Chicago. They just wanted to look at the car.

New comment by chiefgeek in "Flighty Airports"

chiefgeek — Wed, 25 Mar 2026 00:57:04 +0000

Flighty is a great app. I travel a lot and use it all the time to manage my flights. Highly recommend.

New comment by chiefgeek in "Restoring an Xserve G5: When Apple built real servers"

chiefgeek — Sat, 14 Mar 2026 16:13:06 +0000

Love it! I had three of these (can't remember if G4 or G5 - I think G4) at the digital photo lab I ran from 1998-2010. I ended up buying the second one because the first one would randomly freeze. Took two trips to Apple to find a fault in the CDROM drive which caused some errors in the OS installation. Was frustrating as hell! Once that was solved, it and the other three ran for years without much hiccup. Agree that the rack mount installation was a PITA. I also had the XServe RAID fully loaded. I don't even remember what that sucker cost but it was a LOT. Also ran for years and years. Used it for my photo business after I sold down the lab.

New comment by chiefgeek in "Who Watches the Waymos? I do [video]"

chiefgeek — Thu, 25 Dec 2025 04:17:12 +0000

Gave me a new appreciation for the scale of the investment /bet that is being made on transportation of the future.

New comment by chiefgeek in "DMT-induced shifts in criticality correlate with self-dissolution"

chiefgeek — Sat, 29 Nov 2025 16:57:31 +0000

I’ve sat with 5MeO-DMT over a dozen times, always in the form of Bufo flake from the toad. It has been one of the most transformational and healing modality I’ve encountered. I have a low dose Jaguar (synthetic) pen that I use occasionally.

I’ve also used NN from a pen. It gave me a strange body load and intense kaleidoscopic visuals.

New comment by chiefgeek in "Apple Photos app corrupts images"

chiefgeek — Wed, 17 Sep 2025 18:57:17 +0000

This. I work as a professional photographer. Nikon shooter. I only ever import directly from my camera in very rare cases. And when I have a problem importing directly from card to Lightroom, first step is to copy everything to the hard drive and import from there.

New comment by chiefgeek in "What Happens When Clergy Take Psilocybin"

chiefgeek — Mon, 16 Jun 2025 23:58:05 +0000

Yes. Came here to to say this has been done before. It was too much for the Establishment to stomach. Ram Dass, Tim Leary’s associate (Richard Alpert at the time) talks about it here - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ram-dass-here-and-now/...

New comment by chiefgeek in "A new class of materials that can passively harvest water from air"

chiefgeek — Mon, 26 May 2025 20:42:24 +0000

Unless you are Brian “Hairlacher” formerly of the Chicago Bears and shilling hair replacement on Chicago area billboards for years now.

New comment by chiefgeek in "Samsung is paying $350M for audio brands B&W, Denon, Marantz and Polk"

chiefgeek — Thu, 08 May 2025 15:32:34 +0000

Sonus Fabers are amazing. Get a pair of Grand Pianos or even Concertos. They need some power though. 6 ohm

New comment by chiefgeek in "The Death of Daydreaming"

chiefgeek — Mon, 05 May 2025 17:07:38 +0000

Totally agree! I started with the GIANT Legos in the mid 70's then we got the smaller ones. I used to spend hours with about eight different shapes trying to make something interesting. Sort of like the modern Froebel blocks.

New comment by chiefgeek in "The Death of Daydreaming"

chiefgeek — Mon, 05 May 2025 15:01:14 +0000

I've been almost completely off social media (and candy - potentially a larger problem in the past for me) for a month other than to check once or twice a day to see if somebody has messaged me (rarely) and it really has been rather profound to experience life with the lack of regular hits of dopamine. It is such a subtle "drug". I've still been on a computer and surfing the web but not nearly the same amount of time as I was spending on my phone and social. I sat a ten day Vipassana course in 2016 - a profound experience that was at least an order of magnitude more impactful with regard to being off of "screens". There's definitely a cost that accompanies any perceived benefits of social media interaction. As in all things - balance!

New comment by chiefgeek in "Psychedelics are challenging the standard of randomized controlled trials"

chiefgeek — Tue, 04 Jun 2024 16:16:26 +0000

Just curious if you've tried psychedelics?