Elon Musk Wants Me Fired. The People of San Francisco Want Him Taxed.
Seeing progressive policies succeed in San Francisco, the billionaire class is now waging a war against working people.
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san-franciscoEditor's Notes: No longer part of us
While they may still technically be Jewish due to their parentage or conversion, while they may lead superficially Jewish lives, we can no longer consider them part of Klal Yisrael.
bleak
SF's D9 Supervisor Race Takes Big Turn - Beyond Chron
Hernandez makes D9 Supe race a tossup
What Happened to San Francisco, Really?
It depends on which tech bro, city official, billionaire investor, grassroots activist, or Michelin-starred restaurateur you ask.
Nine years ago, when HBO premièred the series “Silicon Valley,” a deadpan comedy lampooning the Bay Area’s life-style blandishments and hapless global power, the city seemed to exist in a helium balloon, floating ever upward. Now the same place is viewed as an emblem of American collapse.
The change has been unsettling because the city’s broad project is widely shared. Since the end of the industrial period, the main path of the U.S. metropolis has been what’s often called urban renewal
Urbanists had already begun to circulate a paper by the economist Stijn Van Nieuwerburgh that traced a post-pandemic spiral of collapsing retail and declining safety leading to less public revenue and fewer public services—what he called an “urban doom loop.”
the city, whose early industry harvested outlying gold, silver, and timber as the heart of what the architectural historian Gray Brechin has called the “imperial” West Coast, remains the fifth-largest metropolitan economy in the global Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
“We have two dominant shades of blue—progressives and moderates,” he said, pointing at a slide. “Now, a San Francisco moderate would be considered liberal anywhere else, and a San Francisco progressive would be considered super far left anywhere else. In San Francisco, they’re both Democrats. But they spar as if they were opposing political parties.”
not really true; SF 'moderates' would be republicans on any issue except a handful of social issues.
From 2021 to 2022, San Francisco spent seventy-six million dollars on drug-treatment programs; its homelessness budget was nearly seven hundred million dollars. (New York City’s was $1.4 billion, for about ten times the urban population.)
But after living through their own pandemic challenges, people had what Bransten calls “compassion fatigue.”
“We have an understaffed police department,” Matt Dorsey, the supervisor for the South of Market section of downtown, said, citing a shortfall of seven hundred officers. Dorsey, a former police-department spokesperson
Last year, a magistrate judge filed a temporary injunction declaring that, until San Francisco met its deficit of shelter beds, law enforcement couldn’t compel anyone who was involuntarily unhoused to move off the street. The rule, which was intended to encourage construction, riled the retail and hospitality trades. “We’ve got to take the handcuffs off the cops so that they can help these people get up off the sidewalks,” Brian Sheehy, who has opened a series of popular bars downtown in the past twenty years, told me. “San Francisco has to get back to being a destination.”
This year, the mayor’s office signalled that it was emphasizing an enforcement philosophy (the idea that drug use is a crime) rather than relying, as it had in the past, on a harm-reduction philosophy (the idea that addiction is a disease).
“When I walk by a luxury hotel downtown and I see four police officers standing there—just standing there, for hours—and then I walk four blocks away, to the Tenderloin, where I have a merchant who’s, like, ‘Why is there no beat cop walking around here?,’ I would challenge any leader to look that merchant in the eye and say, ‘Oh, it’s because we have too few police officers,’ ” Preston told me. In the spring, he commissioned an audit of the police budget; it is pending. “I mean, we still fund, for millions of dollars, a mounted horse unit.” He looked at me incredulously. “We just bought a new horse! In San Francisco! A dense urban city!”
Workplaces in the industry were transitioning to a model known as A.I. First. “A.I. First means you turn to A.I. before you talk to a human. A.I. First means you turn to an A.I. before you hire. If the A.I. doesn’t do it, you build it. If you can’t build it, then you hire someone.” He added, “That is a precursor of what’s going to happen to corporate America.” The downtown of the future, then, will be a smaller, tighter, less worker-oriented place.
A lot of it is perception,” the mayor, London Breed, told me one day. “The feeling of ‘I don’t know if something is going to happen to me.’ ” We were sitting in her office, a wood-panelled sanctum deep in City Hall; a placard on her desk read “WHAT WOULD BEYONCÉ DO?” “It’s what people are seeing on the Internet,” she added.
GrowSF is not the only nonprofit with center-left politics to have cropped up recently.
The Techno-Optimist Manifesto | Andreessen Horowitz
We are told that technology is on the brink of ruining everything. But we are being lied to, and the truth is so much better. Marc Andreessen presents his techno-optimist vision for the future.
A Reply to Gabriel Winant - Dissent Magazine
If the aim was really to disarm what Winant describes as the Zionist “grief machine,” then in the days of Hamas’s attack and in the immediate aftermath, many on the left should have tried to avoid confirming Zionists’ worst suspicions—that indifference to Jewish death is rampant throughout the world.
as if supporters of the settler project will act in good faith if we are sufficiently deferential to them
The pose of radical hard-heartedness that Winant and others have struck is disastrous politics.
Yet the greatest failure of Winant’s position is ultimately not strategic—it is moral. Winant writes, “the genuine humane sentiment that it is possible to grieve equally for both sides is, tragically, not true.” I recommend that he experiment by uttering this statement to ordinary people on the street, or maybe repeating it to himself facing a mirror, so that he might come to realize its monstrous meaning.
On Mourning and Statehood: A Response to Joshua Leifer - Dissent Magazine
How to grieve, what meaning to give those tears, is cruelly a political question whether we like it or not.
One way of understanding Israel that I think should not be controversial is to say that it is a machine for the conversion of grief into power. The Zionist dream, born initially from the flames of pogroms and the romantic nationalist aspirations so common to the nineteenth century, became real in the ashes of the Shoah, under the sign “never again.” Commemoration of horrific violence done to Jews, as we all know, is central to what Israel means and the legitimacy that the state holds—the sword and shield in the hands of the Jewish people against reoccurrence. Anyone who has spent time in synagogues anywhere in the world, much less been in Israel for Yom HaShoah or visited Yad Vashem, can recognize this tight linkage between mourning and statehood.
This, on reflection, is a hideous fact. For what it means is that it is not possible to publicly grieve an Israeli Jewish life lost to violence without tithing ideologically to the IDF—whether you like it or not.
Most important for me and also for my brother is that his death won’t be used to kill innocent people. And sadly, my government is using cynically the death of people to just kill—they promised it’s going to bring us security, but of course it’s not security. They always tell us, if we’re going to kill enough Palestinians, it’s going to be better for us. But of course it never brings us peace and it never brings us better lives, it just brings more and more terror and more and more people killed, like my brother. And I don’t want anything to happen to people in Gaza like it happened to my brother, and I’m sure he wouldn’t have either.
But as Katsman observes, it is not up to them. The state will do—already is doing—what it does with Jewish grief: transmute it into violence.
The appetite for the most grotesque images of violence against Israelis is so ravenous—leading to the repetition of dubious claims of mass beheading and rape that have the appearance of blood libels—because the apparatus of state grief runs so hot. It demands raw material. Its power, in turn, is such that the most ringing dissents calling instead for peace and humane mourning for all—like Eric Levitz’s and Joshua Leifer’s—nevertheless resonate only as whimpers of sentiment.
hey are participating, presumably without intent, in a new Red Scare being prepared not against stray callous advocates of Hamas, but against all who defend the right of Palestinians to live, and to live as equals.
There is an unmistakable effort to push the pro-Palestinian left, including the Jewish pro-Palestinian left, beyond the pale by weaponizing grief, yielding such darkly comical scenes as German politicians refusing to speak to Bernie Sanders, whose family died in the Shoah, to mark sufficient deference to Jewish death. Such is the power of the Israeli grief machine: it authorizes Germans to tell Jews that they are mourning wrong.
The significance of this fact is that, in the several days that we spent arguing about whether the left was sufficiently decent about Hamas’s victims, Israel geared up its genocide machine—which it now is releasing. Presumably sometime next week, Western leaders will begin to express concerns, by which time it will be too late.
The genuine humane sentiment that it is possible to grieve equally for those on both sides is, tragically, not true. One side has an enormous grief machine, the best in the world, up and running, feeding on bodies and tears and turning them into bombs. The other is starved for grief.
The Israeli government doesn’t care if you, a principled person, perform your equal grief for all victims: it will gobble up your grief for Jews and use it to make more victims of Palestinians, while your balancing grief for Palestinians will be washed away in the resulting din of violence and repression.
Who can begrudge tears for those lost to violence? Nevertheless, how to grieve, what meaning to give those tears, is cruelly a political question whether we like it or not.
It is a high threshold—and right now, perhaps implausible—to imagine that every shiva might become an occasion to curse the state that has made Jews, of all people, into genocidaires. Nonetheless, it is the one that must be met by we Jews who wish to keep fidelity with the full meaning of “never again.”
On incoherence.
Thinking about political contradictions.
“We’re the side that thinks we should be coherent,” she says, in answer to a question about why we don’t learn from recycled panics past. “Nobody else is burdened by the idea of coherence.”
Taking the time to stress-test my position in accordance with my professed political beliefs – which sounds obvious but is rarer than ever these days – was immediately calming. I could be asked to condemn Hamas until the cows come home but it wouldn’t change the only coherent conclusion according to my political framework: that Palestine must be free. The illegal occupation must end. It is the root of the violence.
Benjamin Netanyahu, the most influential Israeli politician of our times and the country’s longest-tenured prime minister, was so terrified by the prospect of a Palestinian state, he told his party members as recently as 2019 that bolstering and funding Hamas was a key strategy in thwarting that future and dividing the Palestinian population.
To bring up this context, in an age where political incoherence reigns, is to attract accusations of ‘whataboutery’. That term, fittingly, was created in the 1970s by proponents of continued British occupation in Northern Ireland, wishing to dismiss the political arguments for Irish independence on the basis of the methods used by the IRA.
Incoherence is, to me, those who don’t identify as Zionists sharing calls to denounce senseless civilian murder, yet remaining silent on the thousands dead at the hands of the Israeli state - and the conditions that gave rise to their deaths. Incoherence is denying these killings are equivalent, or relevant, to the Hamas attacks. Incoherence is arguing that increased blockades and carpet bombing millions of people will restore security for Israel and save lives.
“We Cannot Cross Until We Carry Each Other”
The editor-in-chief of Jewish Currents on recommitting to our movements in this moment.
That question of how we recuperate this humanity is ultimately an organizing question. People have repeated over and over again over the last few days that you “cannot tell Palestinians how to resist.” To me, it seems there is a very literal dimension to this axiom: They are not asking. Part of what has made the experience of this event feel so different from the status quo—and so different to Palestinians and Jews—comes from the fact that Palestinians were undeniably the actors, for once, not the acted upon. The protagonists of the story. I consider it an enormous failure of our movements that we have not been able to build a vehicle for that kind of reversal in any other way thus far.
There is no formidable political formation that I know of that can hold the political subjectivity of both Jews and Palestinians in this moment without simply attempting to assimilate one into the other. No place where Jews and Palestinians who agree on the basics of Palestinian liberation—right of return, equality, and reparations—are poised to turn the synthesis of these two subjectivities into a coherent strategy.
rt.
sports
Cities Are Spending More to Brutalize Homeless People Than It Would Cost to House Them
Few scenes are as emblematic of the barbarism of American capitalism as the now-routine “sweeps” in which police round up homeless people and destroy their belongings. By some estimates, it would be cheaper to just provide them with housing.
housing
Whose Domain Is It?
The politics of the internet’s domain names
These Prisoners Are Training AI
In high-wage Finland, where clickworkers are rare, one company has discovered a novel labor force—prisoners.
artificial-intelligence
(Engineering) Project Management in Obsidian
How to use your 2nd brain to get the work done
Making Your Mac App’s Data Scriptable · objc.io
objc.io publishes books, videos, and articles on advanced techniques for iOS and macOS development.
technical
Opinion | I’ve always loved tech. Now, I’m a Luddite. You should be one, too.
The clothworkers of the 1800s had the right idea about how the benefits of innovation should be shared.
tech-industry
culture
Effective Altruism Has a Hostile Culture for Women, Critics Say
Seven women connected to effective altruism tell TIME they experienced harassment and worse within the community
She noticed that EA members in the Bay Area seemed to work together, live together, and sleep together, often in polyamorous sexual relationships with complex professional dynamics. Three times in one year, she says, men at informal EA gatherings tried to convince her to join these so-called “polycules.” When Gopalakrishnan said she wasn’t interested, she recalls, they would “shame” her or try to pressure her, casting monogamy as a lifestyle governed by jealousy, and polyamory as a more enlightened and rational approach.
One commenter wrote that her post was “bigoted” against polyamorous people. Another said it would “pollute the epistemic environment,” and argued it was “net-negative for solving the problem.”
One recalled being “groomed” by a powerful man nearly twice her age who argued that “pedophilic relationships” were both perfectly natural and highly educational. Another told TIME a much older EA recruited her to join his polyamorous relationship while she was still in college. A third described an unsettling experience with an influential figure in EA whose role included picking out promising students and funneling them towards highly coveted jobs. After that leader arranged for her to be flown to the U.K. for a job interview, she recalls being surprised to discover that she was expected to stay in his home, not a hotel. When she arrived, she says, “he told me he needed to masturbate before seeing me.”
The alleged victim came away with the impression that she was being strongly urged not to report the incident to authorities and remembers a general sense that the accused man’s important career was a focus of the conversations.
effective-altruismProject Update, The First - July 30th, 2023
Back in May 2022, I’ve been reminded of a console that I’ve heard about mostly from its Higan/Ares emulation core. It was 8086-based, an oddity in the console world yet a processor I was already familiar with, as well as one which had a healthy supply of both classic and modern development tools. At the same time, despite selling 3.5 million units, the console did not have a modern homebrew toolchain - one which would allow you to write in C without too much pain and provide useful functionality out of the box; one which would be easy to install and use. It is now July 2023, and I’m happy to report that after a lot of research, hacks, head-scratching and side quests, we’re finally here. In the first project update of hopefully many, let’s talk about where we are so far.
The Wimbledon Experience Is Diligence, Dampness, And Cream | Defector
True to its stereotype, Wimbledon has concentric circles of exclusivity and access, which reveal themselves to me over time, like layers of a white onion.
Once I make a quick visit to the Last 8 Club, a modest hideaway only accessible to players in history who have stood among the last eight in the tournament—semifinalists in a doubles draw or quarterfinalists in a singles draw. In the words of the club's manager, this space is set aside to “offer a sense of belonging to players who have given the public great entertainment on the courts but return later to find themselves a nobody," which makes me think that everyone in there needed a hug.
Whilst Defector would not normally be an outlet that we would consider accrediting, given the award that you have received, and in consultation with ITWA, we would be happy to accredit you for Week 1 of The Championships to give you the opportunity to experience covering the event onsite.
Later in the tournament, an umpire will deliver a maximally Wimbledon admonition to the crowd: "Ladies and gentlemen, please: If you are opening a bottle of Champagne, don't do it as the players are about to serve."
San Francisco's Hottest New Club Is Being on the Block List by This SF Publication
Since relaunching as a nonprofit, The Bold Italic began blocking readers — and even past contributors — at a dizzying speed.
Scenes from the Teen Twitch-Induced Level-Four NYPD Mobilization in Union Square - Hell Gate
We will not pretend to know exactly what caused this, but it happened.
For an Ailing Feinstein, a Fight Over the Family Fortune
As Dianne Feinstein, 90, struggles to function in the Senate, a dispute within her family over control of her late husband’s estate is another difficult chapter at the end of a long career.
The Right-Wing Avant-Garde in American Fiction
Image: Jon Rafman, You Are Standing in an Open Field (Pandemonium), 2020 Unfortunately, I have to report that downtown New York does indeed have a cohesive avant-garde. Here is an insular community, committed to the repulsion of the status quo, that has produced at least one new literary mode. It’s unfortunate, though,
Nameless Feeling — Real Life
Nothing else needs to be said or thought when you can appeal to vibes
While seemingly open-ended and allowing for an infinite recombination of elements, the idea of “vibes” is reductive. It discourages the more difficult work of interpretation and the search for meaning that defines human experience.
As an analytic, vibes don’t connect feelings and consequence; as such, it is symbiotic with passive modes of media consumption.
neural networks behave in ways similar to vibes in capturing patterns in media and culture, online or otherwise. Both serve as perspectives that focus on associations across vast amounts of data or impressions.
These systems can only instrumentalize taste; they turn any expression of self into a reductive data point meant to generate more data at the same level. They presuppose that “liking” just means more “liking” and that is as deep as our desire can be. As with vibes, these metrics carry no context or narrative; they can tell you nothing about how or why something might be desirable, only that they vaguely seem like they might be desirable because they seem similar to other things that are desirable.
Anchor workers scramble for lawyers, money to buy brewery
Anchor workers say parent company Sapporo will take their offer to buy the brewery seriously — if they can come up with a serious offer
Lessons Learned in Ukraine: A Year of Combat, the Legion, and How You Too Can Serve
From Aid to Ops On my first night on contract with the Legion a year ago, we drove 6 hours to the Kharkiv oblast for a 0200hrs rendezvous to participate in a multi-team ambush. I was instructed to pick up an ex-British Royal Marine named Kruger, then get a couple anti-tank and anti-personnel mine
DoorDash Banned Discussing Work Issues, Illegally Fired Activist, NLRB Alleges
DoorDash Inc. illegally prohibited office employees from discussing working conditions and fired one because of their organizing efforts, US labor board prosecutors alleged.
DoorDash also engaged in illegal interrogations and surveillance of employees’ workplace activism, according to the complaint, and terminated an employee because they formed an organization, the Service Desk Analysts group, to address working conditions there.
tech-worker-organizing
How PinkyDoll Mesmerized the Internet
Her TikTok catchphrase, “Ice cream so good,” has become a meme.