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Californias - by Simon Sarris - The Map is Mostly Water

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The first time I went out to Silicon Valley, or California for that matter, or anywhere at all west of New York state, was after college. A company cold called me for an interview. If you searched the internet at the time, it happened to look like I knew the most about HTML canvas, and maybe it was true.1 The company founder was surprised I had never seen the America beyond New England, so in addition to a flight and a hotel, he offered me a rental car for several days. They wanted me to fall in love, I think, with something out there, without knowing what that might be. It wasn’t a bad strategy. The driving itself had a visceral effect. Abdominal, actually. Some turns in California are impossible in New Hampshire. They are too tight and too fast, as you take them you can feel your gut react, how if only there was ice, this would be it. If you are from New Hampshire, mentally the car slides right off the road. Of course there was no ice on the roads there, even though it was February b

The first time I went out to Silicon Valley, or California for that matter, or anywhere at all west of New York state, was after college. A company cold called me for an interview. If you searched the internet at the time, it happened to look like I knew the most about HTML canvas, and maybe it was true.1 The company founder was surprised I had never seen the America beyond New England, so in addition to a flight and a hotel, he offered me a rental car for several days. They wanted me to fall in love I think, with something out there, without knowing exactly what that might be. It wasn’t a…

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