Category: News

Why Is a Tech Executive Installing Security Cameras Around San Francisco?

It sounds sinister. A soft-spoken cryptocurrency mogul is paying for a private network of high-definition security cameras around the city. Zoom in and you can see the finest details: the sticker on a cellphone, the make of a backpack, the color of someone’s eyes.

But in San Francisco, a city with a decades-long anti-authority streak, from hippies and pioneering gay rights activists to the techno-utopian libertarians and ultra-progressives of today, the crypto mogul has found a surprisingly receptive audience.

Here’s why: While violent crime is not high in the city, property crime is a constant headache. Anyone who lives here knows you shouldn’t leave anything — not a pile of change, not a scarf — in a parked car. Tourists visiting the city’s vistas like Twin Peaks or the famously windy Lombard Street are easy marks. The city government has struggled to solve the problem.

Come on, anyone who has seen the 1992 film Kuffs over and over (which might only be me) knows there’s already a thing that San Francisco can use that’s not exactly police: San Francisco Patrol Special Police.

San Francisco Patrol Special Police is a neighborhood police force authorized in San Francisco’s City Charter but not part of the San Francisco Police Department. They are non-sworn private patrol persons, appointed and regulated by the San Francisco Police Commission after an initial background review by the San Francisco Police Department. They are assigned to, or purchase, a specific area, or beat and charge private clients hourly rates for a variety of services.

The force has been in operation since 1847 during the California Gold Rush. By current City Code the force provides patrols on the streets of San Francisco as well as at fixed locations, and also provides a range of other safety services as requested by private clients.

The San Francisco Patrol Special Police is one of the oldest law enforcement agencies in the United States and credited for the first modern U.S. adaption of the Community policing concept.

Probably too much like actual police for right thinking people. Best to just install hackable cameras whose watchers are unknown and unknowable instead.

(Link via Althouse.)

LinkedIn users ditch polite networking for real talk on U.S. race and inequity

Yeah, I saw that the professional social network suddenly resembled every other social network with everyone suddenly reposting and giving up twinkies to approved thoughts.

Kinda like my Facebook feed but with fewer ads for t-shirts and otters.

Link via my LinkedIn feed, where someone uptwinkied someone else saying he was inspired by politics overrunning his feed.

I would be remiss to pass along all the latest Man hospitalized with ‘significant injuries’ after encounter with mother otter at Northern California national park:

After an encounter with a river otter sent a man to a hospital, officials at Lassen Volcanic National Park in Northern California are warning people to stay out of the water at a popular lake.

The man was swimming in Manzanita Lake on June 25 when he was bitten by a female river otter, park spokesman Kevin Sweeney told The Times on Tuesday. The man was hospitalized with “significant injuries,” including scratches and puncture wounds that caused bleeding, but they did not appear to be life threatening, Sweeney said.

(Link via Knuckledraggin.)

What’s the deal with the Facebook fascination for otters? I have no idea, but Facebook keeps putting ads for otter-loving t-shirts and home decor in my feed. So I might as well go with it.

Out of the Wild: State moves Stampede Trail ‘magic bus’:

The state of Alaska moved a notorious tourist attraction — often known just as “the bus” — from the Stampede Trail on the west side of the Teklanika River on Thursday.

The bus has long been a destination for pilgrims enamored with the book and subsequent movie “Into The Wild.” Some people have died making that journey to the bus. The Alaska Department of Natural Resources called it a “deadly attraction.”

“After studying the issue closely, prioritizing public safety and considering a variety of alternatives, we decided it was best to remove the bus from its location on the Stampede Trail,” Commissioner Corri A. Feige said in a press release. “We’re fortunate the Alaska Army National Guard could do the job as a training mission to practice airlifting vehicles, at no cost to the public or additional cost to the state.”

As you might know, gentle reader, I hated that book when I read it last year.

Weird, huh, with all the statues toppled that anger me, and I see this symbol removed and think, “Good riddance to bad rubbish.”

Because I’m a hypocrite.

choosing the local mall as the location for the protest for someone who died in police custody hopefully won’t go wrong.

I have not gotten into high dudgeon about President Trump’s executive order on social media “censorship” because my understanding of the situation is that Internet Service Providers and forums have long been covered under special rules that treat them like a utility rather than a content provider (or newspaper/television station) that gave them immunity from lawsuits for the content passing through their systems, and that because they’re starting to “monitor” and “fact check” their users’ content, they’re acting more like a publisher than a mere conduit for information.

Which is why when I saw this piece in the New York Post, Mark Zuckerberg criticizes Twitter for fact-checking Trump, I thought, Yeah, Zuckerberg knows what’s at stake here, and he does not want his company subject to those lawsuits.

But the new executive order came down, and now Zuckerberg has to go on the offense against it, which yields stories like Mark Zuckerberg says social media censorship not the ‘right reflex’, and my response is Yeah, it’s not censorship. Do what you want. Cut off who you want. But recognize that you’re now subject to the liability rules that other publishers are.

That’s what I thought. Hindrocket at Powerline, an actual attorney, seems to interpret it the same way. I guess he goes by his real name now, but I’m an old school blogger.

Would you dine with mannequins -in the name of social distancing?

Restaurants are having to cut back on the number of people allowed inside due to social distancing and guidelines from local and state leaders.

One dining establishment uses unique stand-ins for customers to sit next to instead of an empty table.

I didn’t have to go to a national news segment to know it. I mentioned that my beautiful wife and I went to dinner on Friday. The restaurant had removed the tables in the middle of the floor and told us to sit on the same side of the booth so that people sitting in the next booth on the same side would be six feet apart (but we were so early that the other booths were not yet in use).

For the bar seating, though, instead of removing stools, they put mannequins every other seat or so. Which did trigger my uncanny valley response sometimes.

But I was able to mostly focus on the food and the company.

But not in a good way: Two Missouri hairstylists may have exposed 147 people to coronavirus

Although it’s way up on the east side of town (from our perspective), we have taken our boys there for a haircut a time or two, but not recently.

Although my beautiful wife and I did celebrate our wedding anniversary at a restaurant in the same plaza on Friday.

I mused to my son whilst we were out running errands yesterday, if they (society, the government, so many theys, but just because I say they doesn’t mean I’m paranoid in saying it), if they want you to wear a mask because you might spread germs to someone else, when does it stop? This has happened since you were born and will happen until you die (and perhaps beyond). So when should people stop wearing masks? Later.

NBA says it is talking with Disney about resuming season:

The NBA is in talks with The Walt Disney Company on a single-site scenario for a resumption of play in Central Florida in late July, the clearest sign yet that the league believes the season can continue amid the coronavirus pandemic.

The National Basketball Players Association is also part of the talks with Disney, the league said Saturday. Games would be held at the ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex, a massive campus on the Disney property near Orlando.

Well, I guess not; the secret basketball court under the Matterhorn is at Disneyland in California.

DEEP BREATH Don’t wear face masks if you have lung conditions like asthma, say experts

I am starting to think that one of the amalgamation of unnamed experts that the journalists use in their reporting will someday write the complete works of Shakespeare.

We do get so many pronouncements from ‘experts,’ and they are not always consistent.

Postal Service to review package delivery fees as Trump influence grows:

Weeks before a Republican donor and top White House ally becomes postmaster general, the U.S. Postal Service has begun a review of its package delivery contracts and lost its second-highest executive, which will leave its board of governors without any officials who predate President Trump.

The moves, confirmed by six people with knowledge of the Postal Service’s inner workings but not authorized to speak publicly, underscore how Trump is moving closer to reshaping an independent agency he has dubbed “a joke.”

The Postal Service in recent weeks has sought bids from consulting firms to reassess what it charges companies such as Amazon, UPS and FedEx to deliver products on their behalf — often in the “last mile” between a post office and a customer’s home. Higher package rates would cost shippers and online retailers billions of dollars, potentially spurring them to invest in their own distribution networks instead of relying on the Postal Service.

I heard a radio spot on Thursday telling people to call Congress to stop this sanity. At the very end, it says it’s paid for by the Package Coalition, and I said aloud to the radio, “You mean Amazon.”

Which is true:

“While we are on the subject, it is reported that the US Post Office will lose US$1.50 on average for each package it delivers for Amazon. That amounts to Billions of Dollars. The Failing NY Times reports that ‘the size of the company’s lobbying staff has ballooned,’” he [President Trump] had said in a tweet.

In reaction, Amazon teamed up with retailers like Walmart, Target, and other small businesses to form The Package Coalition, a lobbying group aimed at ensuring they continue to get the cheapest possible rates for shipping their products through the USPS.

So, basically, profitable companies derive some of that profit shipping through the taxpayer-subsidized USPS, which is losing money and, apparently, should continue to do so to keep profits high.

I’m kind of glad I am the last person in the country who listens to radio.

Baby ‘Murder’: One month-old baby dies as man, 26, and woman, 24, arrested for murder.
Body in Bag: Man & woman ‘caught with human torso in case as other body parts found nearby’

Well, I guess these really aren’t jobs for Miss Marple.

Also:

Tube Squeezed: Sadiq Khan ‘blackmails’ Boris with threat to cut Tube unless he gets £2bn

You can tell the ‘crisis’ is coming to a close when the elected officials greatest concern is getting more money. See also Port Authority asks for $3B bailout amid COVID-19 crisis.

Police officer shot near I-44 and Elm in Webster Groves, suspect dead

This was about 1.3 miles as the Freightliner flies from my house in Old Trees. However, it sounds like it was on the Interstate itself, so it’s not like I could say that I pushed my baby past that very spot, although we did go through the very ornate underpass many times thirteen years ago.

At a mile away right beside the highway, we wouldn’t even have heard it if we were on the front porch swing. Which we had, by the way, and we used it despite the highway.

5 lucky elk hunters will have some competition — a mountain lion.

Unfortunately, this looks to be the limit on the elk hunting licenses that Missouri will give out this year with a side story that the Department of Conservation has found evidence of a mountain lion taking an elk without a license at all.

But I would watch five men with a gun stalking an elk whilst a mountain lion stalks all of them.

Well, no, because that might be gory and bad for one or more of the men involved.

But I would certainly get a blog post out of it.

This one.

Hy-Vee to limit meat purchases at all locations

I’m glad I saw this before going to the grocery store later. It will give me the opportunity to buy meat. Of course, I’ve been buying, cooking, and freezing extra meat during the current unpleasantness anyway. So if I buy four today, four tomorrow, and four the next day, I’ll make out all right.

Just kidding. I don’t tend to shop at Hy-Vee that often. So I’ll be able to clean out my local grocery for an extra day or two until they follow suit.

I mean, who wants to run out of meat half way to Proxima Centauri? Not me, brother.

UPDATE: Apparently, Kroger-themed stores, too.

UPDATE 2: My local grocery has also implemented a limit of 5 meat items; however, that is the fresh meat section, where the meat is purportedly cut in the store. The processed lunch meat, sausage, and bacon section has no limit. So, yeah, I bought some extra.

Sometime in 2021, perhaps May or June, medical suppliers will take millions of masks and protective gear, overproduced in the summer and autumn of 2020 by every medical producer, textile mill, and specialty t-shirt shop who offered masks with your favorite team or slogan on them, and stored for almost a year in vast warehouses, and bury them in a great landfill as though they were unsold copies of E.T. for the Atari 2600.