jwz

I feel these monkeys were not living their best lives. They have all the diseases.

We are continuing to look for the one monkey that is still on the loose. A wreck occurred on I59. This was a truck carrying Rehsus monkeys from Tulane University. The monkeys are approximately 40lbs, they are aggressive to humans and they require PPE to handle. The monkeys carry hepatitis C, herpes, and COVID. [...]

There are 3 monkeys still on the loose after the officials from Tulane were able to get inside the truck and get a correct count. [...]

All but one of the escaped monkeys have been destroyed.

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I had a great idea for December Cyberdelia, which was to do a screening of the Star Wars Holiday Special, the whole thing, commercials and all, because even people who have "seen" it probably haven't made it to the end, and definitely not while drunk in a nightclub.

But then someone wisely pointed out:

1. There is probably no entity in the world willing to sell us a license to screen this;
2. It's possible that nobody even knows who the copyright holder is any more (CBS? Lucas? Disney?)
3. Despite all that, being even Star Wars-adjacent means that any attempt at an unlicensed screening would cause the sky to blacken with lawyers.

This is why we can't have nice things.

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Needed to use this extremely specific tool today.

Previously.

Yo, check it. 5pm today.
Peewee Herman Plaza.

Joe Eskenazi:

It's great for the people of San Francisco that the president has capriciously decided to unsend the troops he capriciously decided to send. But the real story here is, per the president's summation of his discussion with Lurie on social media, that the Commander-in-Chief is overtly stating that he is basing a domestic military deployment upon what local "friends of mine" (billionaire CEOs Jensen Huang of Nvidia and local boy [ed: Hawaii resident] Marc Benioff of Salesforce) lobbied him to do. Trump also noted that Lurie asked him "very nicely" not to establish a military beachhead in San Francisco.

All for the good. But what if Huang and Benioff had been in the mood for a military parade and called for sending in the troops? What if Lurie had been less polite? [...]

There are only so many turns of phrase you can employ: This is just a profoundly fucked-up way to lead a country. It's like dealing with King George or a warlord out of the Dark Ages.

Mission Local has been live-blogging the siege of Coast Guard Island, among other things.

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Dean Preston with a catalog of how Danny Bluejeans and his techbro chums really fucking suck at governing:

With a new majority on the Board of Supervisors, along with control over the Mayor's and District Attorney's Offices, the school board, and the local Democratic County Central Committee, political power in San Francisco has been consolidated in the hands of so-called "moderates" funded by and friendly to the interests of the tech and real estate industries. Put in the language of our political moment, San Francisco's halls of power are awash with Abundance. Not coincidentally, San Franciscans are suffering more than ever in just about every measurable way, and City Hall is simply ignoring their plight. [...]

San Franciscans are highly preoccupied with Trump's shocking and constant attacks on democracy, ICE raids disappearing of our neighbors, and exacerbation of the two-year-long genocide in Gaza. Mayor Lurie barely acknowledges these issues. In contrast to big city mayors like Boston Mayor Michelle Wu, Oakland Mayor Barbara Lee, and Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, Lurie refuses to take a stand against ICE kidnappings and his police department won't even protect those who do. Outrageously, SFPD's stated position is that its priority is to protect ICE agents from protestors.

This is a stunning lack of leadership for a Democratic mayor in a sanctuary city widely considered to be the nation's progressive heartland, at the precise moment when American fascism begs confrontation. But even more squarely on the plate of San Francisco's current leaders is the fact that local economic conditions have rapidly deteriorated for the city's working people and poor in the short time since they came into power.

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I will never forgive Marc Benioff for making me side with Ron Conway.

Mr. Conway did not come away satisfied that Mr. Benioff had reflected on the dangers posed by the Trump administration or the impact of his remarks.

"I have expressed candidly to you, repeatedly, in recent days, that I am shocked and disappointed by your comments calling for an unwanted invasion of San Francisco by federal troops," Mr. Conway wrote in the email, "and by your willful ignorance and detachment from the impacts of the ICE immigration raids of families with NO criminal record." [...]

"Your obsession with and constant annual threats to move Dreamforce to Las Vegas is ironic, since it is a fact that Las Vegas has a higher rate of violent crime than San Francisco," Mr. Conway wrote. "San Francisco does not need a federal invasion because you don't like paying for extra security for Dreamforce."

How much does Salesforce pay to SFPD? Less than you'd think:

Following an uproar, Benioff backpedaled on his call to send in the troops, saying he only wanted to aid San Francisco's understaffed police force. He also added that Salesforce paid for an additional 200 off-duty law-enforcement officers to essentially work Dreamforce security.

But how much does Salesforce pay? The amount the company spent on San Francisco officers was about $1 million in overtime costs over the past 18 months, according to invoices obtained in a public records request.

Last year, Salesforce grossed just shy of $35 billion. That $1 million outlay represents 0.02 percent of the company's net income of $4.1 billion.

The payments were made through the city's 10(b) program, in which private employers can hire off-duty officers as security. Between 2018 and 2023, Salesforce was a top-five employer of off-duty San Francisco cops, paying for 30,911 hours of overtime work. That's more than Target, Safeway or Bank of America but less than Lululemon, the Giants or the No. 1 10(b) employer, Walgreen's. [...]

But Benioff bemoaning current private security costs puzzled law-enforcement sources, who noted that Salesforce has been staffed by a host of San Francisco police officers for years. These hefty deployments, including SWAT teams, counter-sniper teams, plainclothes officers and roaming and fixed-post patrol officers, came whether the department was fully staffed or, as in the present, understaffed. [...]

Officers Mission Local spoke with rejected the notion of bringing in the National Guard -- which, by law, cannot undertake the duties of local police.

"A local cop is beholden to the rules and regulations of the city they work for," said one. He is not ordered to "'go grab Brown people' or 'go beat up hippies.'"

But his allegiance to Mr. Trump goes much further:

Screenshots of internal documents and communications obtained by The New York Times show that Salesforce has pitched Immigration and Customs Enforcement on using the company’s artificial intelligence capabilities to help ICE staff up as Mr. Trump expands immigration raids and deportations around the country.

Surely now people will stop with this "good billionaire" bullshit. There are no good billionaires. It is a mathematical impossibility. If they were good people they would not be billionaires. We're probably only 18 months away from Taylor Swift going off about "blood and soil".

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(It's cool, I'm sure that meant something completely different in 1937.)

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(NOTE: If you are about to "Well Actually" at me about this in some way, please be advised that I do not give the slightest shit.)

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Brian McFadden:

Mick:

You ever think to yourself "but I am just one person, what can I do to make a difference?"

It turns out that "wear an inflatable frog costume and go downtown" is actually a really reasonable answer.

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