Category: News

SF considers bringing back ‘patrol specials’ from Gold Rush-era amid police shortage:

SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) — Short hundreds of officers, San Francisco is now looking back to a Gold Rush-era idea for a possible staffing solution.

The police commission is hoping a new squad of officers will free up the police department to focus on more serious crimes.

They are called “patrol specials” — security guards with some police training. For a city struggling to get a handle on crime, some government officials say it could be a quick way to add eyes and ears to the streets of San Francisco.

I’m not saying I watched the Christian Slater film a whole bunch–not a Showtime-in-the-trailer bunch–but I saw it in the theaters and then bought it on videocassette and watched it numerous times.

I still have the VHS tape in the Nogglestead video library. Perhaps I will dust it off for old times’ sake.

Man, I wanted to be like Christian Slater in the middle 1990s.

(Link via Wirecutter.)

Your childhood VHS tape collection could be worth a fortune:

If you have a pile of VHS tapes that haven’t been touched since the dawn of digital media, you might be able to make a fortune on them.

Blockbuster video cassettes are obviously a relic of yesteryear, with technology moving from VHS to DVDs and Blu-Ray and now onto streaming — but they’re still popular among some cult cinema collectors.

Many are going for a shocking amount of money on eBay, including classic films such as “Back to the Future” and even newer flicks with a cult following, such as the original “Fast and the Furious.”

However, simply posting a VHS on eBay doesn’t guarantee you’ll get big bucks — the condition must be top-notch.

First of all, if it’s your childhood VHS collection, it’s likely to be Disney films which are worn out. Secondly, the eBay list price is not the eBay sales price.

Also, as an accumulator (not a hoarder), I can tell you that although DVDs are going up to about $5 to $10 per these days, the pop culture stuff and media in your basement will not support your retirement. Even Blake Martinez is learning that Pokemon cards are not as lucrative as professional football.

The article is entitled “Charity contests loss of license office contract” and it’s for subscribers only.

As I have mentioned before, gentle reader, the slang DOV for Department of Motor Vehicles does not apply in Missouri. Drivers’ licenses and automobile registrations go through the Missouri Department of Revenue, and the local offices are, well, localish offices that the Department of Revenue tends to award to charities so they can raise money from them.

Here in Springfield, one such charity (or an independent operating entity working on behalf of the charity) lost one such franchise to a former executive’s organization, and the such charity has sued to get it back.

The charity (or independent charity working on behalf of the charity) runs several other local fee offices for the Missouri Department of Revenue, so it’s not like the rather well known charity, which hosts numerous other fundraisers which attract the glitterati, has lost all its funding. But it wants all its funding.

What does the organization do for the community?

[The charity] began operation in 2000, and sincce that time has distributed $7.9 million in aid.

Sweet Christmas, that must be a typo. That’s less than $350,000 per year in aid.

“These five offices together raised enough money to pay for the entire administration of [the charity],” he said. “It’s a substantial amount.”

Reminds me of the scripted answer we had when I worked in the telemarketing fundraising organization a long time ago. When asked how much of the money in the law enforcement window decal campaign would go to the Missouri Deputy Sheriffs Association, we were to rattle off a list of enumerated administrative costs, such as the equipment, the lease (on a storefront in a strip mall in Hillsboro, Missouri, so not premium real estate), postage, et cetera, et cetera, and the profit-taking on the part of the owner of the operation (redacted), the actual stated purpose of the fundraising received a very small percentage indeed.

A substantial amount. You don’t say.

This makes the cynicism lobe of my brain throb, and it underscores why I choose very small, direct impact charitable organizations. I culled probably two hundred pounds of canned goods from our “just in case” fund for the local food bank today. Not the well-known one with the big painted trucks and glitterati fundraisers. That one gathers money and food by the pallet which it then sells to the local food banks that distribute food to the hungry. I support the one run out of the shotgun shack on the railroad tracks which is only open two days a week because it’s run by volunteers.

Massachusetts teen dies after taking part in social media’s spicy ‘One Chip Challenge’:

A Massachusetts 14-year-old died Friday hours after he participated in the so-called “One Chip Challenge” — a viral social media trend that the teen’s family believes contributed to his sudden death, according to reports.

Harris Wolobah, a sophomore at Doherty Memorial High School in Worcester, consumed an exceedingly spicy Paqui chip at school and quickly developed a stomachache, his mother, Lois, told NBC 10 Boston.

I saw a couple of those, expired, marked down at the local grocery store, so I brought them home. My boys, wise to them because they follow TikTok and Instagram, would have nothing to do with them. So I threw them in the box with other things to go to the local foodbank.

Man, I hope no one got sick from it. Given that it was expired, the food pantry might have just thrown it out. Their policy is generally to put certain expired foodstuffs out, clearly marked, and allow patrons to take them if they want them. So anyone who would have ended up with it would have to have chosen to receive it. But, still.

Also, I wonder if there’s more to the story.

…or someone doesn’t use Oxford commas in headlines.

I know which one I think it is.

At the top of the KY3 home page today:

This weekend on KY3, and hence further down the home page:

Truly, they have a dizzying intellect!

Also, it’s possible the Web/social media team is different from the actual news team.

Amid ‘summer surge’ of new COVID variant — should we be wearing masks?

I’ve only seen a couple of headlines on the new Covid strain and did not click through because I’m not a particular Covidophile, but apparently someone has gotten the word out–perhaps on cable news or something–because both of the times I’ve been to Sam’s Club or the grocery store this week, I’ve seen people wearing masks again.

Not many, but someone has heard the huntsman’s horn and is again obeying.

Best-selling crime novelist Lee Goldberg shares footage of terrifying real-life raid on $2.8M home: ‘My fiction is coming true’

It doesn’t pay to be rich in California these days, either.

In the olden days, we used to say you’d “flipped it” when you scored enough points on a video game to overrun its maximum score and start over at 0. I remember spending more than one afternoon playing Asteroids on an Atari 2600 to accomplish this feat. Time was slower in the 1980s, or the days were longer, but playing a repetitive game for hours just to see the score restart as though you’d just started playing–try to explain that to a young person today.

It looks like television meteorologists have done something similar.

The temperatures–no, sorry, the invented temperatures of the “heat index”–will be so hot this weekend that they have gone to the opposite side of the rainbow, from the red to the violet, where they will presumably at 120 degrees or so move into the blue like it was cold.

Although to be honest, it has not gotten to 120 degrees that I recall. Over 110 a time or two. But never all the way back to blue.

Where is Samuel L. Jackson when you need him?

Passengers traveling with Iraqi Airways from Dubai to Baghdad were left roaring mad after their flight was delayed because of a bear that had broken out of its crate in the cargo hold.

Wait, no: The film is Cocaine Bears on a Plane.

It cannot miss.

How four Wisconsin women made Forbes’ list of the richest self-made women in America:

Four Wisconsin businesswomen were named to Forbes’ 2023 list of the 100 richest self-made women in America, alongside international superstars like Taylor Swift, Kim Kardashian and Beyoncé.

Real businesswomen compared to pop tarts. Businesses who build/sell things are just like celebrities who…. well, I guess two of the three sing.

As I saw the headline, I tried to guess the companies the women founded/run, and I only got two of four (ABC Supply and Epic Systems). I had forgotten that ULine was based in Wisconsin and is credited to self-making its current owner (both the woman running Uline founded the business with their husbands, so self-made diminishes the contributions of their husbands). I also guessed Trek bikes would be on the list, but I guess not.

Still, to compare people doing real work with mere entertainers diminishes them.

Electric Utility Peak Warnings issued for customers across Southwest, Mo.:

Multiple utilities across southwest Missouri issued electric utility peak warnings due to the heat.

No, the problems stem from malinformed Missouri voters who passed a constitutional amendment, what, fifteen years ago that mandates power companies produce 8% of their power from “renewable” sources and federal clean air regulations that forces power companies to shut down functioning power plants.

In the conspiracy lobe of my brain, I do wonder if they want to curtail your energy use and minimize your air conditioning to convince you that global warming is real and increasing.

World has hottest day ever recorded by humans

That’s the headline on a slug that the Springfield Business Journal has for a link to a Quartz article about how some group of prognosticators has massaged data to indicate that CLIMATE CHANGE IS REAL!!!! The Springfield Business Journal headline would seem to indicate something else has measured the temperatures on Earth, but the Quartz article makes no such claims, nor does it offer perspective on different climates over the aeons.

But the fact remains that it relies on data starting in 1880ish, and the 140 years of data collected with varied instruments in varied locations still only accounts for a very small percentage of human history and an immeasurably small percentage of the planet’s existence.

But Trust the Scientismists.

Why there’s a fake coyote on duty at Nathanael Greene Park in Springfield, Mo.:

Park administrators recently placed a coyote decoy on the peninsula in Lake Drummond. That’s the site of a new mosaic sundial.

They hope the decoy will keep Canada Geese from leaving droppings behind that could stain the newly poured concrete. Park workers say they weighed several factors when choosing which coyote to deploy.

* * * *

Park administrators ask you to do your part to keep the area free of geese by leaving the decoy alone.

#HasTheCoyoteBeenStolenYet?

In a post on the likelihood of a hot civil war, Animal says:

A second civil war would be catastrophic. It would be fought not on distant fields, not by massive armies maneuvering against each other in open country. It will be fought in the streets, in the towns, amongst us in ways no other war has touched us since the Revolution, and if similar conflicts are any indication – see not only Bosnia but also the Spanish Civil War – it will result in hatreds that will last generations.

As I have mentioned before, here in the Ozarks, it was house-to-house and family-to-family raiding during the Late Unpleasantness. And some of the locals still have a kind of respect for Quintrill’s Raiders.

So I have imagination enough to know how that might go.

(Yes, I do read the rule 5 posts for the articles.)

Unsurprisingly, the answer the journalist presents is a mixture of racism and modern loneliness of immigrants.

However, gentle reader, one with historical perspective might point out that Aryans where proto-Persian/Indians from way, way back in history who conquered India and placed themselves, with their lighter skin tones, at the top of the heap and established what would become the caste system in India. As the young man in question has a lighter complexion and immigrated to the United States with his family, he might have been of those upper classes in India who might have looked down on other Indians. I’m not going to actually ascribe motives to him (or posit that he might be a fed like all the cool kids are).

But I am bogged down in the India book in The Story of Civilization (the Our Oriental Heritage volume), and this history is fresh in my mind.

Never is the question “How do other nations/ethnographies treat those of other nations/races/ethnographies?” Because that answer would be worse than the West and especially Americans do.