WesternWind

Things are not worse than ever. Things are slightly worse after the pandemic, but nowhere as bad as the 70's. Feel free to check the statistics.

Anyway I agree we need to get aggressive, but a lot of folks thinks that means more cops. We spend a hell of a lot on police, but police don't address the root causes of most crimes.

We need to aggressively invest in urban areas with new housing, job opportunities, drug treatment, gang disruption, violence interruption, mental health care, and other meaningful interventions in the cycles and circumstances that lead people to commit crime.

SF's violent crime rate is low compared to most other cities. There's a fair bit of property crime (theft, burglary, etc) though, and drug usage, and that perhaps makes people feel unsafe.

https://www.sfchronicle.com/projects/2022/fixing-san-francis...

The thing is you go to google news, you search Houston violence, which is significantly more dangerous, perhaps the most dangerous big city in the country in terms of violent crime per capita per the above article, and you don't get articles on how terribly violent it is. Houston of course is in a conservative state, SF is a liberal lgbtq+ friendly city where former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is from, so it's fun to act like the city is horrible. The city is not horrible, though the poverty of folks here is making things worse. We aren't building enough housing, wages aren't increasing at the rate that rent is, so we get homeless people, because that's how not being able to afford rent works.

Obviously I don't want there to be any violent crime anywhere, including here in San Francisco. Still it seems far more likely this store is closing for economic reasons unrelated to worker safety. I bet the investor call they do when they release earnings will actually provide a better look at things.

Incidentally we have a pretty good idea of the factors that affect violent crime rates and what to do about it, which is mostly investment in places and people.

https://www.brookings.edu/research/want-to-reduce-violence-i...

I mean it is possible that right wing judges like Matthew Kacsmaryk in Texas will try to ban birth control nationally.

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2022/12/13/23505459/...

Interesting. I currently work for a tiny 6 person non-profit that has a web and mobile app that we provide access to for other non profits to use, and onboarding is a pain point. I reached out, though I suspect we don't have enough funds for the service.

This is true. Docs, re not necessarily considered important features of the product itself but they make a huge difference.

Other things that I pay attention to are built-in integrations with other tools, the ability to import and export data, familiarity to users, similarity to existing tools, tutorials that leave users confident, and documentation with examples of use cases are all similar factors.

They often describe eye color and hair color, which is very rarely pertinent to the plot, but nobody complains about that.

Weird how people love to complain about non straight people existing in stories though.

There's no reason for the delay though. They get you your refund sooner, so they have the past year's data.

I mean, if you make 10k a year your fixed costs leave less money for taxes than if you make 100k or 1m a year, so doing it on a simple percentage of gross income (rather than gross revenue) is likely to accelerate poverty, which is very much picking winners and losers.

Anyway the reason why we have deductions and tax breaks as such a big component is in large part because it is one of the things you don't need 60 senators to pass.

In a lot of countries yes. At the very least the IRS could let you login and see the information they have about your earnings.

Yeah, though the actual pay isn't always enough to easily afford a home in your home state and a place in DC for those who aren't already rich.

Folks with union jobs tend do better then their same industry non union counterparts, in terms of wages, health care, access to sick days, etc.

There is however a third choice, which is government regulation. Unfortunately government regulations can't adapt as quickly as a union can to changes.

Maybe the relatively inflexibility of regulation is what is needed to maintain a minimum necessary commitment to living wages and reasonable benefits though.

There's no time spent dealing with Amazon as a charity, they just cut a check to the charity for however much it is.

The hiring freeze/layoffs, as best I can tell, has been driven by activist hedge funds like TCI and Elliot Managmenet encouraging companies to make big cuts for a short term increase in the bottom line, not by any major actual economic issues for most tech companies.

One was an international charity, and tiny sums definitely matter. 12 cents buys a de-worming pill that helps keep kids free of intestinal parasites for 6 months. $35 bucks plants 20 trees in a village. Their main focus was a brick and wire based stove that prevented unnecessary deaths and blindness by reducing smoke, built locally from local materials for pennies.

Big charities tend to focus on where they can have the most impact. Smaller charities tend to focus on making an impact in a place that needs it.

My current charity work is as as Dev and Technical Consultant for a company that basically helps organizations do online evidence based mentoring and support in both urban and rural communities, using an app they developed. Founded basically by a professor to implement her research, than passed on to a new CEO when it took off. They work with a lot of Big Brothers Big Sisters chapters.

My contract runs out in Feb and I'm not sure what I'm going to do after that, given all the local layoffs. It's not like the stuff I'm working on is at Scale or uses Machine Learning or requires K8 or whatever is going to make some hiring manager's eyes light up now.

I've twice done tech work for charities (the second being my current contract) and this is going to affect some charities, particularly the ones that rely on donors, over others that rely on grant money.

This is the first of three stories available at https://yarchive.net/risks/mongrel.html

Just FYI, San Jose is bigger than San Francisco in terms of population and square miles.

That's not to say that SF might not be more of a major city than SJ, in fact I would say that personally I think it is in terms of culture and history and social impact, but it's at least debatable.

I mean entering into the passport free zone seems like it opens up a lot of opportunities.

Multiple mistakes actually.

They still have incredibly priced decaf if you want it.

yep, and accepting donations are not charging for a product, much like my tipping a bartender isn't paying for a drink.

People ask me about my Pebble fairly regularly. I think they mostly notice the rainbow watch band I have, then realize it doesn't look like a Apple Watch.

This is a good point, that if the Republicans wanted to do this they have had ample opportunity.

As a practical matter, I fear that your thoughts on this are at odds with the actual history of the US, the historical views of people here, and even with what a lot of folks think currently.

Yep, you can download StackOverflow for offline use too

So some people are upset that this happening in an election season, even though they support it?

This was a lawful and thoughtful exercise of presidential power that helps some people convicted of something that really shouldn't be criminalized. It could also potentially help the Democratic Party in the upcoming election.

But if you believe in what the Democratic Party is trying to do for the country, that's not a bad thing. There's no corruption in doing popular things that can help get people in your party elected. That's just good governance and acting according to the will of the voters.

The majority of people in the US, 60%, and even a plurality of Republicans support decriminalizing recreational cannabis federally. The support for medicinal cannabis, possible if Cannabis wasn't scheduled as it currently is, is even higher.

Recreational:

https://www.benzinga.com/markets/cannabis/22/10/29166025/new...

Medical:

https://www.ipsos.com/sites/default/files/ct/news/documents/...

Could you link me to something showing that that's an issue? Because the issues people run into as volunteers that I've hard about tend to be city ordinances, not state or federal food safety requirements.

Further I'm aware of Food Not Bombs winning a case by claiming an expressive first amendment right to share food.

Perhaps that's true, though I tend to think OSHA and equivalent bodies actually know what they are doing.

Still even if they are the same, if more than 1 in 20 workers gets a serious injury at work at any job, I think that's an issue.

It's interesting that he developed tendonitis.

I've read that the rate of injury at amazon jobs is incredibly high, which is not good practice in my view.

Article says amazon rate of serious injury 80% higher than competitors https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-57332390

States often regulate nudity in places that serve alcohol though.

I see a lot of people suggesting services, wanting to be helpful here, when they asked for people to respond on GitHub.

If you have an idea based on your own knowledge of what they asked for,I'd put it there, that will keep them from duplicating effort.