jwz

In yet another betrayal of the city's Vision Zero and Transit First commitments, Mayor Lurie clears Waymo, Lyft, Uber to turn Market Street back into a traffic sewer:

"The mayor's escalation of his plan to add even more cars to Market Street while cutting Muni service will hurt public transit riders and downtown recovery alike," said Dylan Fabris, community and policy manager at San Francisco Transit Riders. "If the mayor wants to be taken seriously on his commitment to help Muni's -- and San Francisco's -- recovery, he should be looking for ways to get cars out of the way of transit rather than inviting luxury chauffeurs into the heart of our city's transit network." [...]

"Bringing cars back to Market Street won't solve downtown's problems, but it will make Muni slower for transit riders and the street less safe for everyone who walks and bikes," said Robin Pam, executive director of Streets For All San Francisco. "Market Street could be San Francisco's grand boulevard again, but to get there we have to look to the future for solutions, not the past."

"Over the years, there have been so many cyclist injuries and fatalities due to people driving carelessly on Market Street. The mayor likely has no knowledge of the lives lost over the decades and why Market Street became car-free in the first place," said Paul Valdez, main organizer of Ride of Silence San Francisco. "Any future cyclist injuries or deaths will be on his hands."

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San Francisco parks officials have requested the removal of the massive Vaillancourt Fountain from Embarcadero Plaza:

If the commission votes to deaccession it, the sculpture will no longer be part of San Francisco's Civic Art Collection, in which case it would either be destroyed or offered back to the artist who created it, Armand Vaillancourt, or even a private collector. Either party would have to cover the cost of its removal. [...]

Initial renderings did not include the fountain, prompting an outcry from preservationists who want the sculpture, opened in 1972, to remain. Those concerns even brought a visit from Vaillancourt, now 95, from his home in Canada to San Francisco in May to argue for its restoration and preservation.

"This survived a 7.1 earthquake with no damage, not a scratch, but they never took care of it," he told the Chronicle during the June visit. "There's nothing wrong with it except the dirt." [...]

At a community outreach meeting in July, Project Manager Eoanna Goodwin told the audience that it was impractical to keep the fountain, a statement that moved the artist's daughter, Oceania Vaillancourt, who lives in San Francisco, to tears.

The letter sent Monday was the written follow-up to that determination. "The current location, scale, and orientation of the fountain fragment the plaza, hinder sightlines, and constrain circulation and event programming," read the letter. "The scale of the fountain is incompatible with the open lawn and gathering spaces envisioned in the new design."

The new design, pictured to the right is... a bunch of food trucks.

How novel.

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Eddie Kim:

On Wednesday, federal agents escalated their approach. The language and behavior was more aggressive and, in many cases, preemptive. Several protesters were thrown to the ground. Some people were pepper-sprayed without provocation.

One of those people was me. [...]

Some officers kept protesters at a literal arm's length, but there was little apparent conflict until a lone ICE agent grabbed a protester's bike and attempted to yank it from them, despite the protester doing nothing other than walking alongside the agent.

Noticing the unprovoked struggle for the bike, I walked up with my camera up and my press identification visible. In a literal second, the agent pulled out his pepper gel, sprayed the protester next to me, and then shot a stream straight into my eyes. [...]

What happened to me, the cyclist protester, and others is a sign that individual federal agents are now willing to proactively employ brute force against people who are not attacking them or even entering their personal space.

I was not able to get any identifying info or badge numbers from any federal agent on the ground. The man who sprayed me walked away, unconcerned about the outcome, off to continue his job removing people from the streets of our city.

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Putin's bodyguards collect his poop when he travels abroad and carry it back to Russia.

Ex-BBC journalist Farida Rustamova backed up their claims, saying a source told her that this has been practised since Putin first assumed power in 1999. Dailybeast: ...the poop briefcase travels abroad with the Russian delegation to ensure that their leader's feces do not fall into the wrong hands. Human waste carries genetic and lifestyle information that could reveal intimate details about Putin's health. Out of an abundance of caution, the feces is collected, deposited in said briefcase, and returned to the motherland. Reddit (comment): Putin on the Shitz.

When he eats like Marc Andreessen, they refer to the poopcase as "the nuclear football".

But the important question here is, which other oligarchs do this? I want to know that people like Marca and Thiel and Bezos and Koch see it as a status indicator to have to shit in a bucket every time they are off the grounds of the Compound.

I need this. I need them to be shitting in buckets all the time, "out of an abundance of caution."

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Wild Pigs Turn 'Neon Blue' in California:

Game hunters have found startlingly 'neon blue' flesh inside of wild pigs in California, triggering advisory statements on potential contamination. "I'm not talking about a little blue," said Dan Burton, owner of a wildlife control company. "I'm talking about neon blue, blueberry blue."

An investigation by local authorities found the dramatic color change was caused by rodenticide poisoning and has issued a warning across the Monterey County area. This poison is often sold dyed for identification, and its use has been highly restricted in California since 2024. [...]

A popular rodent control in agriculture, diphacinone is a first generation rodenticide that acts as an anticoagulant, causing severe internal bleeding.

Predators, including humans, who eat an animal poisoned with the toxin can become ill themselves; while the chemical breaks down faster than second generation rodenticides, diphacinone remains active in the dead animal's tissues for some time, even if cooked. [...]

The CDFW is urging anyone who encounters blue animals or other abnormalities to report them to the Wildlife Health Lab.

So many previouslies:

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Omni Consumer Products, Delta City:

Why am I the only one in the news media who seems a bit concerned that a crypto billionaire is housing the city's new high-tech police surveillance unit in his downtown building?

Mayor Daniel Lurie announced in June that Chris Larsen has donated $9.4 million to allow the Real Time Investigation Center to operate in Ripple Labs San Francisco headquarters. [...] The RTIC is also funded by Larsen's San Francisco Police Community Fund and billionaire Michael Mortiz's Crankstart Foundation.

In other words: The high-tech unit of SFPD is funded almost entirely by two tech billionaires, and the surveillance systems it operates will be housed in one of those billionaires' offices.

This is another big step in the privatization of San Francisco policing and the overall move by Lurie to rely on voluntary gifts from the very rich instead of taxes and democratic budgeting by elected officials to fund services in San Francisco.

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Teslas spontaneously combust on car carrier:

A car hauler transporting several Teslas caught fire while traveling southbound on Interstate 5 just north of Balboa Boulevard on Saturday evening, shutting down southbound lanes for about seven hours, according to the California Highway Patrol. [...]

As the closure extended into Saturday night, the closure became more than just a typical traffic delay for many motorists. The CHP traffic management website reported that some vehicles were running out of gas while trying to wait it out.

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Pinko Joe:

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The time is now, the day is here, ATTACK! ATTACK! ATTACK!

From reports of pro-AI people on LinkedIn who attended a pro-AI business meetup at a coworking space in Portland, Oregon, anti-AI protesters showed up outside who threw eggs and paint at cars there and distributed pamphlets which read: BUTLERIAN JIHAD AGAINST AI [...]

It should be noted that the majority of the pro-AI people who started posting about this on LinkedIn are founders of or work for a startup called Mebot which claims to offer technology to "share your personal AI clone with the world" and create a "digital twin" which you can expose to the public instead of, well, your own human self.

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Nobody will sell fiber internet to DNA Lounge. But it turns out that the condo building next-door-plus-one has Google Fiber. So I got our neighbor who lives there to put us in touch with their service rep.

Twelve emails later:

Them: Let's schedule a time to meet in person on site to discuss our services! Me: Can we just do this by email? I only need to know two things:

• If DNA Lounge had an ethernet drop in [REDACTED]'s garage, right next to your existing router, will you sell us service?
• If yes, what bandwidth and what's the cost?

Them: I just looked up your address and we don't offer service at that location. Me: Right, I know that, please re-read what I asked. Them: So we can activate a connection for you at [address] and you would have to run the cable to wherever you want that connection to be at. You might need to call an IT contact for that but I can activate the line of service for you. Me: Great! How much will the service cost and what bandwidth can we expect? Them: I just consulted this with my tech team and unfortunately they said this option will not work. The issue is going over another building and the distance between will be too far for signal. Me: Dude it's ethernet and it's literally 50 feet, what are you talking about? Them: Ok, [misspelled my name], I will submit the order for you and will have the connection activated. Kindly fill out this info for me to create the Work Order for you to sign for the new line of service. Me: Great, thanks!
[ starts the process of getting permission to drill through some walls ] Them: [ 10 minutes later ]
I'm including my upper management into this email. We got back info that we will not be able to sign up new service for a unit that is not connected to [address]. It comes down to it not being legal for us to do the connection. Me: Oh for fuck's sake.

Well thanks for nothing, I'm glad I didn't let you rope me into a useless on-site visit.

Good luck with that whole "we hate taking customers' money" thing.

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