The San Francisco Experience

Science tells us that 95% of the population has implicit biases yet there is only a 16% correlation between the bias and behavior. So is racist, homophobic and misogynistic behavior not principally triggered by implicit bias ? That's what the science says according to Fast Company magazine, but politicians would have us believe otherwise.  

I attended a 5 hour Implicit Bias class sponsored by the San Francisco Police Department - the same one that all sworn and unsworn personnel must take. It was very instructive and some useful takeaways to add to your interpersonal toolkit: the four pillars - Voice, Respect, Neutrality and Trust.  I was very encouraged by the presentation. Listen to my podcast for the full story.

Mass surveillance and totalitarianism are two prominent themes in Orwell's dystopian novel published in 1949. But there are two major mass surveillance systems at play in the world today. In the West, the data mining strategies of the FAANG internet giants with combined market capitalizations of $4.1 trillion dollars, exploit users' personal data for profit. The other system is the Social Credit Report program established by the Chinese Communist Party to reward conforming behaviors and sanction deviant behaviors of its' 1.3 billion people.  Harvard Business School Professor Emerita, Shoshana Zuboff has written a book entitled " The Age of Surveillance Capitalism," which is critical of the US model and it is referenced in this episode.

California's Summer surge in C-19 cases has put the Golden State in the dubious first place position of 452,000 cases versus 412,000 for New York. What went wrong ? Back in March and April, California had an enviably low number of cases versus New York which was being ravaged by the Coronavirus. But a series of missteps in the last two months set California on its current downward track.  Meanwhile, cases in New York are plummeting.

California's Summer surge in Covid 19 cases has given us the dubious honor of having the largest number of infections, 452,000 versus 412,000 for New York.  All of California's good work in the Spring seems to have unraveled starting on Memorial Day weekend, when the current surge took off.  But there are significant differences how California is managing the outbreak versus what New York did in the Spring.