MetaGrrrl

Crazy amounts of money continue to be spent in San Francisco to shift the city rightward. We saw it in March with the purge of progressives on the Democratic County Central Committee after a heavily funded campaign by moderates under the ‘Democrats for Change’ slate.

Astroturf (fake grassroots) groups like GrowSF, TogetherSF, StopCrimeSF, Neighbors for a Better SF (backed by a Republican mega-donor), Families for a Vibrant SF, and Committee to Fix SF Government which supported that targeted purge in March continue now to promote a tough-on-crime (reduced oversight, pro-cop), centralized-power, billionaire-friendly agenda.

The strong connection between this anti-progressive investment and London Breed is one more factor reinforcing my withdrawal of support for her as Mayor; she was great for the first year of the pandemic and her policies saved lives, but she’s no longer the same Mayor she was then, and she hasn’t been for a few years.

To hold onto any progressive policies in SF we need to lean left. I will strategically be voting right of my actual politics for President of the U.S. so we can avoid fascism, but I’ll be strategically voting left in SF to offset the centrist push here. At least at the local level we have ranked choice. (See, for example, the Ranked Choice Voting Strategy in the SF League of Pissed Off Voters’s guide: https://www.theleaguesf.org)

San Francisco’s problems are primarily ones of extreme income and opportunity inequality, compounded by some corruption, cronyism, and over-complicated government. The solution to these issues is not an infusion of more big-money backed candidates, nor the centralization of more power under the mayor. You can’t bully people out of poverty, so the solution is not ‘tough on crime’ policies we already have learned do not work. We need more people and policies which measure and create sustainable progress, not photo ops without follow-through. Our choice of mayor, in particular, will set the course ahead.

We can’t afford to be single-issue voters in 2024; sometimes we will need to support a candidate as the best overall option, even when it goes against our usual strongest position. We live in a difficult time and all we can do is the best we can under the circumstances.

State Ballot Propositions

See: https://voterguide.sos.ca.gov/propositions/

YES – Prop 2, Public Education Facilities Bond Measure
"AUTHORIZES BONDS FOR PUBLIC SCHOOL AND COMMUNITY COLLEGE FACILITIES. LEGISLATIVE STATUTE." Put on the ballot by the legislature.
Supported by SF Dems and SF League of Pissed Off Voters.
Who’s opposed? The Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association of course, who always oppose us kickstarting big things.
Spending money on schools pays back in the general economy; this is a no brainer.

YES YES YES – Prop 3, Right to Marry and Repeal Proposition 8 Amendment (2024)"CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT TO MARRIAGE. LEGISLATIVE CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT." Put on the ballot by the legislature. Removes language in California Constitution stating that marriage is only between a man and a woman. Proposition 3 does not change California’s laws regarding age requirements for marriage or the number of people in a marriage.
Supported by SF Dems and SF League of Pissed Off Voters.
Opposed by anti-queer, anti-trans, anti-equality, Evangelical Christian groups, of course.

YES – Prop 4, Parks, Environment, Energy, and Water Bond Measure (2024) "AUTHORIZES BONDS FOR SAFE DRINKING WATER, WILDFIRE PREVENTION, AND PROTECTING COMMUNITIES AND NATURAL LANDS FROM CLIMATE RISKS. LEGISLATIVE STATUTE." Put on the ballot by the legislature.
Supported by SF Dems and SF League of Pissed Off Voters.
Who’s opposed? The Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association of course.

YES – Prop 5, Lower Supermajority Requirement to 55% for Local Bond Measures to Fund Housing and Public Infrastructure Amendment (2024) "ALLOWS LOCAL BONDS FOR AFFORDABLE HOUSING AND PUBLIC INFRASTRUCTURE WITH 55% VOTER APPROVAL. LEGISLATIVE CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT." Put on the ballot by the legislature. This will lower the threshold for municipalities from 66.67 percent to 55 percent when voting on bonds financing housing and infrastructure projects.
Supported by SF Dems and SF League of Pissed Off Voters.
Who’s opposed? The Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, as expected.

YES YES YES – Prop 6, Remove Involuntary Servitude as Punishment for Crime Amendment (2024) "ELIMINATES CONSTITUTIONAL PROVISION ALLOWING INVOLUNTARY SERVITUDE FOR INCARCERATED PERSONS. LEGISLATIVE CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT." Put on the Ballot by the Legislature.
Supported by SF Dems and SF League of Pissed Off Voters.
No argument against Proposition 6 was submitted.
Yes, let’s end slavery in California, please.

YES – Prop 32, 18ドル Minimum Wage Initiative (2024) "RAISES MINIMUM WAGE. INITIATIVE STATUTE" Put on the Ballot by Petition Signatures.
Supported by SF Dems and SF League of Pissed Off Voters.
Opposed by California Chamber of Commerce, California Restaurant Association, and California Grocers Association.
The last state minimum wage increase was signed by Governor Jerry Brown; this is way overdue. And that a salary of only 36ドルK a year before taxes. You know what prices are like and what trying to live on 3ドルK a month would be like. This is targeting a demographic that needs public safety net benefits, which they might need just a little less with a decent wage.

YES* – Prop 33, Prohibit State Limitations on Local Rent Control Initiative (2024) "EXPANDS LOCAL GOVERNMENTS’ AUTHORITY TO ENACT RENT CONTROL ON RESIDENTIAL PROPERTY. INITIATIVE STATUTE." Put on the Ballot by Petition Signatures.
Repeals Costa-Hawkins Rental Housing Act of 1995, which currently prohibits local ordinances limiting initial residential rental rates for new tenants or rent increases for existing tenants in certain residential properties. This allows local governments to expand rent control, so you can see why there’s a lot of big money throwing around Fear Uncertainty Doubt misinformation about it.
Supported by SF Dems and SF League of Pissed Off Voters.
Opposed by landlord lobby group SF Apartment Association, along with lots of other landlord and real estate groups, and GrowSF.
Useful statement on this by SF League of Pissed Off Voters: "It’s becoming clearer and clearer that the private market has no plan for financing housing without the promise that rents will go up. Housing is seen as a sound investment for Wall Street instead of a human right for everybody. We have to shift our thinking about the housing crisis from one of regulation to one of financing, and specifically a form of financing that protects tenant stability and promises rents will actually come down. This will require innovative financing like public revenue bonds, which SF is currently pioneering. If there’s revenue for housing production, the builders will build it.”
*Addendum Oct 8th: You may want to consider this warning about Prop 33 being weaponized against new building and thus making housing availability and therefore cost even worse: https://peterates.com/props-1124/#prop33 I’m unconvinced and will still vote yes. Personally I think the impact of climate change disasters is going to be increased demand for new housing, both from California-internal and U.S.-internal climate migrants and to rebuild after destructive events. That’s going to lead to a lot of change, and along with a weakening of the viability of the “anti-growth” position for locations which are less climate change vulnerable, one effect I’d expect is that the government will increasingly be getting into the housing business.

So I got to this part of the ballot and thought WTF? There is so much drama in the pro/con comments on Prop 33 and 34! SF League of Pissed Off Voters explains:
"In a stunning example of ‘ugh, why do we have to vote on this shit?’ Prop 34 is a targeted attack on the political activities of the AIDS Healthcare Foundation. Prop 34 would require them to spend 98% of revenue on patient care (AHF is not named in the prop, but the only organization that fits the text’s description is AHF). Reading between the lines, this is a blatant attempt by the CA Apartment Association to raise even more money to sink this ballot’s Prop 33 Rent Control Expansion, which the AHF is backing–and funding.
Under its President Michael Weinstein, AHF has contributed millions of dollars to local and state ballot measures over the years. There has been some controversy around their political positions and their confusing opposition to PrEP. We certainly haven’t always agreed with them, and there’s obviously some merit to the argument that healthcare dollars should be spent on healthcare, not politics.
But we’re not on board with confusing and expensive ballot measures targeting exactly one person, especially when it’s Big Landlords bullying a rent control champion. Vote No on Prop 34!"

NO NO NO – Prop 34, Require Certain Participants in Medi-Cal Rx Program to Spend 98% of Revenues on Patient Care Initiative (2024) "RESTRICTS SPENDING OF PRESCRIPTION DRUG REVENUES BY CERTAIN HEALTH CARE PROVIDERS. INITIATIVE STATUTE." Put on the Ballot by Petition Signatures.
Supported by GrowSF.
Opposed by SF League of Pissed Off Voters.
Only statewide ballot measure omitted from their recommendations list by SF Dems.

YES – Prop 35, Managed Care Organization Tax Authorization Initiative (2024) "PROVIDES PERMANENT FUNDING FOR MEDI-CAL HEALTH CARE SERVICES. INITIATIVE STATUTE." Put on the Ballot by Petition Signatures. Makes permanent the existing tax on managed health care insurance plans, which, if approved by the federal government, provides revenues to pay for Medi-Cal health care services.
Supported by SF Dems and SF League of Pissed Off Voters.
No argument against Proposition 35 was submitted.
There’s background on this one in the Pissed Off Voters’ Guide https://www.theleaguesf.org; short version: there’s arguments on both sides about how to make sure money meant for Medi-Cal goes to Medi-Cal, but Prop. 35 passing will help the lowest income folks.

NO NO NO – Prop 36, Drug and Theft Crime Penalties and Treatment-Mandated Felonies Initiative (2024) "ALLOWS FELONY CHARGES AND INCREASES SENTENCES FOR CERTAIN DRUG AND THEFT CRIMES. INITIATIVE STATUTE." Put on the Ballot by Petition Signatures.
Attempts to crack down on organized retail theft, and would allow people convicted of certain drug or theft crimes to face longer prison sentences. It also creates a new crime category, a "treatment-mandated felony," which would have charged individuals attend treatment or serve prison time.
Supported by GrowSF.
Opposed by SF Dems and SF League of Pissed Off Voters.
This is an attempt to make an end run around Prop 47 from 10 years ago when we were trying to reduce terrible prison overcrowding. Vote No. Mass incarceration didn’t work before and it won’t work now; forcing people into treatment doesn’t work; and we already don’t have nearly enough treatment beds; this is a counterproductive waste of resources.

San Francisco Measures

See https://voterguide.sfelections.org/local-ballot-measures

Note: TogetherSF is working on a massive project to shift San Francisco to the right. Learn more about their plans here: https://missionlocal.org/2024/09/togethersf-wants-structural-change-in-city-hall-internal-doc-shows-its-just-beginning/ They intend to push a politics of anger. They are working on "growing an engaged and enraged base" and seek to "grow and sustain [a] movement of community dissatisfaction." It is a regressive, divisive plan and—as you see when you start to dig into Measure D—one attempting to centralize power and reduce oversight and community involvement.
They do support some reasonable measures and candidates, but when you see their name, start looking more closely before you give your support.

YES – Measure A, Bond Measure (2024) "Schools Improvement and Safety Bond". Placed on ballot by Board of Education unanimous vote.
Supported by the 10 (of 11) school board candidates that attended the forum Mission Local reported on 9/21, also by GrowSF, SF Dems, and SF League of Pissed Off Voters.
Opposed by the Libertarians because "taxes, quelle horreur!" and (they say on fiscal oversight grounds) by landlord lobby group San Francisco Apartment Association.

YES – Measure B, Community Health and Medical Facilities Bond Measure (2024) "Community Health and Medical Facilities, Street Safety, Public Spaces, and Shelter to Reduce Homelessness Bond". Placed on ballot Board of Supervisors unanimous vote.
Supported by London Breed AND Aaron Peskin, and a huge range of others across the Democratic / progressive spectrum, including GrowSF and SF Dems. Supported by SF League of Pissed Off Voters.
Opposed by landlord lobby group SF Apartment Association and by the Briones Society (a GOP group trying to revive the Republican party but oppose Trump).

YES YES YES – Measure C, Inspector General Amendment (2024) "Inspector General" Placed on ballot by Board of Education unanimous vote.
At the board level, Prop. C was wildly popular; Supervisors Ahsha Safai, Hillary Ronen, Dean Preston, Connie Chan and Matt Dorsey all signed on as co-sponsors. It’s got a good variety of other elected official supporters, past and present, and the SF League of Pissed Off Voters.
Opposed by GrowSF and TogetherSF Action, and the new SF Dem Party (which has a bunch of folks from those groups). Also by GOP-rebranding group The Briones Society, and by Larry Marso, Esq, who’s the ballot guide gadfly Republican taking up the mantle of Terrance Faulkner.
Good coverage from this by Mission Local:
“The consolidation of power into the role of an inspector general is the whole point of Prop. C, says Harrington, who was city controller from 1991 to 2008. The distributed powers held by all these different agencies clearly isn’t getting the job done at the moment.
The Ethics Commission is also not equipped to audit anyone’s finances, adds former Ethics Commissioner Paul Melbostad. Its primary role is to protect whistleblowers in city government, not audit entire city departments.”
https://missionlocal.org/2024/09/whos-afraid-of-the-inspector-general-peskin-pushes-anti-corruption-reform-measure/

NO! NO! NO! – Measure D, City Commissions and Mayoral Authority Amendment (2024) "City Commissions and Mayoral Authority". Placed on ballot by initiative petition.
Supported by TogetherSF (who funded all the arguments in favor in the voter pamphlet), GrowSF, and SF Dems.
Opposed by SF League of Pissed Off Voters, the Bar Association of San Francisco, many small business associations, many arts associations, many neighborhood associations, many youth organizations, many unions, and a long long list of other people heavily involved in SF government and organizational leadership.
Would dramatically restructure San Francisco government by limiting the number of city commissions to half the current number and expanding mayoral power. Note that it would also "Allow the Mayor to appoint, without Board review, at least two-thirds of the members of reauthorized, restructured or new commissions, and some retained commissions." It’s a huge power grab and eliminates checks and balances.
This is by far the most expensive contest in SF this ballot. It was brought by TogetherSF. Note: TogetherSF is a charter-reform effort to remake city government, part of a multi-year plan for the public pressure group backed by billionaire venture capitalist Michael Moritz. Allied group: Neighbors For A Better San Francisco. VC Alfred Lin, of Sequoia Capital like Moritz, is also heavily backing Prop. D. The Prop. D campaign is also all tangled up with Mark Farrell, in a way which appears to be violating campaign finance laws.

YES YES YES – Measure E, City Commissions Task Force Amendment (2024) “Creating a Task Force to Recommend Changing, Eliminating, or Combining City Commissions". Placed on the ballot by a 7 to 4 vote of the Board of Supervisors.
Supported by the broad band of folks who oppose Measure D and SF League of Pissed Off Voters.
Opposed by gadfly Republican Larry Marso, GrowSF, various other conservative voices in SF, and some of the new DCCC voices (but I repeat myself) who tilted this to a ‘no’ in the SF Dems voter guide. Paid arguments against funded by TogetherSF.
Counter proposal for city reform.

NO – Measure F, Police Staffing and Deferred Retirement Amendment (2024) "Police Staffing and Deferred Retirement". Placed on the ballot by a 8 to 3 vote of the Board of Supervisors.
Supported by cops including Sheriff Miyamoto; also by tech and London Breed ally VC Ron Conway (as well as Breed herself). Also supported by GrowSF, Bilal Mahmood and Scotty Jacobs. Supported by SF Dems. Surprisingly also supported by Aaron Peskin.
Opposed by ACLU, Dean Preston, several other supes, and SF League of Pissed Off Voters. Core of opposition is that this proposal was already tried and didn’t actually solve staffing.
A significantly costly measure which financially benefits police by allowing double-dipping on salaries and pensions (and reduces reporting frequency to Police Commission), but which supporters say is intended to be a time-limited plan to solve the current short-staffing issues.
Spending ineffectual money on SFPD sounds like a bad plan to me. There are more effective ways to improve quality of life for San Franciscans, particularly when facing a deficit.

YES – Measure G, Rental Subsidies Amendment (2024) "Funding Rental Subsidies for Affordable Housing Developments Serving Low Income Seniors, Families, and Persons with Disabilities". Placed on ballot Board of Supervisors unanimous vote.
Supported by both Mayor Breed and Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin, which is a good indicator of something having the necessary broad backing to be effective.
Supported by a great list of SF housing and assistance organizations, also by SF Dems and SF League of Pissed Off Voters.
Opposed by gadfly Republican Larry Marso and GrowSF.

NO – Measure H, Firefighter Retirement Benefits Amendment (2024) "Retirement Benefits for Firefighters" Placed on ballot by Board of Supes voting 10 to 0 (1 excused).
This changes the retirement age for firefighters hired after 2011 from 58 to 55 (as it is for those hired before 2012). It would increase costs significantly through fiscal year 2040-2041, and we’re having no trouble recruiting or retaining firefighters.
Supported by GrowSF, SF Dems.
Opposed by Libertarians. and SF League of Pissed Off Voters.
I wavered hard on this and came down on the side of fiscal practicality. The estimated 21ドル million a year this would add to the budget by 2040 would affect funding for other city services. Firefighters are nice and do a hard and dangerous job, but this is not necessary right now.

YES – Measure I, Nurses and 911 Operators Retirement Benefits Amendment (2024) "Retirement Benefits for Nurses and 911 Operators". Placed on ballot Board of Supervisors unanimous vote.
Supported by SEIU 1021, Ahsha Safaí, GrowSF, SF Dems. Casually supported ("Sure") by SF League of Pissed Off Voters.
Opposed by Libertarians who suggest that people who do these jobs get paid too much already and it’s just "answering the phones". (There’s the usual Libertarian stew here of magical "I’m fine at the moment, so that’s true for all people and in the future" thinking, the sociopathic eugenics of passivity around public services, and the thinly veiled misogyny of discounting the value of emotional labor. Sometimes reading the ballot arguments is aggravating.)
Theoretically this will help fill the shortage of 911 operators and Registered Nurses who work for the city on a per diem basis by allowing them, respectively, to contribute more improving their pension benefits, or to access the benefits at all.

YES – Measure J, Children and Youth Programs Amendment (2024) "Funding Programs Serving Children, Youth, and Families". Placed on ballot Board of Supervisors unanimous vote.
Supported by GrowSF, SF Dems, and SF League of Pissed Off Voters.
No opposition listed.
This is a rubber stamp to a set-aside from the General Fund and fixes some bureaucratic categorization in the budget.

YES – Measure K, Close Upper Great Highway to Private Vehicles and Establish Public Open Recreation Space Measure (2024) "Permanently Closing the Upper Great Highway to Private Vehicles to Establish a Public Open Recreation Space". This got to the ballot as a proposed ordinance from Supervisors Dorsey, Engardio, Mandelman, Melgar, and Preston.
Supported by London Breed, Ahssha Safaí, Nancy Pelosi, environmental groups, and many local neighborhood and business groups. Also by SF Dems, SF League of Pissed Off Voters, and (somewhat to my surprise) GrowSF.
Opposed by landlord lobby group San Francisco Apartment Association, Mark Farrell, Daniel Lurie, Aaron Peskin, Republican Richie Greenberg, and NIMBY groups (complete with fear of hypothetical homeless encampments taking over).
The weekend closure pilot ends next year, but it was enough to show it does not have major impacts on traffic even without improvements that could be made under a permanent change. The Upper Great Highway is already closed up to 65 days every year due to blowing sand; this is not a vital roadway. Let’s have another great park which activates the west of the city the way the removal of the Embarcadero Freeway did the east, and which gives us opportunities for climate change mitigation.

YES – Measure L, Transportation Network Companies and Autonomous Vehicle Businesses Tax Measure (2024) "Additional Business Tax on Transportation Network Companies and Autonomous Vehicle Businesses to Fund Public Transportation". Placed on ballot by initiative petition.
Supported by transportation activists including Chris Arvin and Cyrus Hall, and lots of progressives, neighborhood groups, kids groups, climate activists, disability activists, SF Dems, SF League of Pissed Off Voters, and Transport Workers Union Local 250A (Muni Operators).
Opposed by Uber and Lyft (of course), GrowSF, TogetherSF, SF Chamber of Commerce, and other groups seeking a more conservative SF.
Note: poison pill in prop M could nullify prop L, so read notes on M and make a plan.

Blank or YES – Measure M, Changes to Business Taxes Measure (2024) "Changes to Business Taxes". Placed on ballot by initiative petition.
Co-sponsored by Peskin and Breed which is impressive.
Supported by Instacart, Google, Airbnb, Hotel Council of SF, GrowSF, SF Dems. A consensus measure crafted and backed by every last vestige of political San Francisco — and opposed by gadfly Republican Larry Marso.
"Strategic ‘No Endorsement’" by SF League of Pissed Off Voters because of the poison pill for Measure L if it gets fewer votes than Measure M. We hope both pass, but L with more support. They both need 50% of the vote.
Would heavily shift the tax structure from payroll taxes to "gross receipts," a tax on the business a company does in this city. Which also reduces incentive for companies to leave SF. Prop. M alters the definition of a small business exempt from gross receipts taxes from a company doing about 2ドル million in yearly revenue to one grossing 5ドル million. The controller estimates that 88 percent of San Francisco restaurants will be exempt, and 50 percent of retailers currently on the hook for gross receipts taxes will suddenly find themselves off of it.
Useful article from Mission Local: https://missionlocal.org/2024/09/san-francisco-tax-proposition-m/

NO – Measure N, First Responder Student Loans and Training Reimbursement Measure (2024). "First Responder Student Loan and Training Reimbursement Fund". Placed on ballot by Board of Supes voting 6 to 4 (1 excused).
Supported by San Francisco Deputy Sheriffs PAC and many supes including Preston. When the sheriffs and the guy the attack ads say is trying to defund the police line up on something, it’s probably a safe bet. Also by GrowSF and SF Dems.
Opposed by gadfly Republican Larry Marso and ("empty gesture") by SF League of Pissed Off Voters.
Would create an empty public fund for the city to collect donations to reimburse student-loan payments for certain employees, like police officers, firefighters, sheriff’s deputies and 911 dispatchers. The measure would not put any money into the fund; it would just create it so the city can accept private donations for student-loan assistance.
Enough with the vibes-only measures! This could have been a Board of Supervisors ordinance.

YES YES YES – Measure O, Local Reproductive Healthcare Including Abortion Policies Initiative (2024) "Supporting Reproductive Rights". Placed on the ballot as a proposed ordinance from Mayor Breed.
Supported by most of our local elected officials 💖 and a big variety of organizations, including GrowSF and SF Dems and SF League of Pissed Off Voters.
Opposed by Pro-Life San Francisco, a group which apparently exists.
Would do a lot to make abortions and emergency contraception more findable and improve zoning to allow more reproductive health clinics. Would also prohibit city officials from providing info to other states or feds about use of abortion, contraception, IVF, pregnancy testing. And would authorize the Department of Public Health to post signs outside limited services pregnancy centers to inform the public that those facilities do not provide abortions or emergency contraception or offer referrals for these services; these signs would also indicate where to obtain these services.
When we think about the risk of a Trump presidency, this is the kind of safety and sanctuary we need to be strengthening. A slam dunk YES.

Candidates

See https://voterguide.sfelections.org/candidate-information

President and Vice President
Kamala D. Harris
Tim Walz

United States Senator (term ending January 3, 2031) and (remainder of the current term ending January 3, 2025)
Adam B. Schiff

United States Representative, District 11
Nancy Pelosi
She still gets it; and we got Harris as the candidate. And she endorsed Dean Preston, reaching out a hand to lift up progressive elected officials in SF. We sure don’t have to like everything about her to find her very useful for holding back the conservatives...

State Senator, District 11
Scott Wiener
Endorsed by SF Dems and GrowSF.
I do not like how much money he’s getting from the real estate industry, but I also think you don’t get a lot of cheap old housing stock until you have a lot of housing stock at all. I’m still a supporter.

State Assembly Member, District 17
Matt Haney (or leave blank)
Endorsed by SF Dems and GrowSF.
I like his legislative record. I’m not happy about him cozying up to anti-progressive forces in SF.

Board of Education
4 seats up for election.
1) Matt Alexander
Endorsed by SF League of Pissed Off Voters.
Only one with board experience, plus was a teacher. Progressive and practical, and a champion for racial equity and evidence-based curricula decisions.
2) Virginia Cheung
Previously a director at Wu Yee Children’s Services; her son goes to Alice Fong Yu Alternative School (K-8), the nation’s first Chinese-immersion public school.
Endorsed by SF League of Pissed Off Voters.
3) Jaime Huling
Endorsed by San Francisco Democratic Party, United Educators of San Francisco, GrowSF, TogetherSF Action, and (to my surprise in combo with those last two) SF League of Pissed Off Voters.
Former deputy city attorney.
I’m not enthused about some of that backing, particularly TogetherSF, but she really does have a broad spectrum of support which we can hope will translate to a balanced approach in a difficult year as the district avoids state takeover.
4) Maddy Krantz
College student; recent grad of Abraham Lincoln High School.
I like seeing recent student representation in the mix.
(Definite NO candidates: Parag Gupta, John Jersin, Supryia Marie Ray are all TogetherSF candidates. Ann Hsu: Racist comments drama two years ago. Started a private school in 2023. Supports police assigned in schools. Anti-progressive. School board recall activist. Lawrence Lem Lee was also in the whole anti-progressive school board recall drama.)

Community College Board
Alan Wong, and only Alan Wong
(following the logic here: https://www.theleaguesf.org/#CityCollegeBoard)

BART Board of Directors, District 9
Edward Wright
Endorsed by SF League of Pissed Off Voters. "A dedicated activist who knows his way around a budget".
Transportation advocate; good understanding and rider perspective. Former Chief of Staff for supe Gordon Mar.

Mayor of San Francisco
Ranked Choice Voting
1) Aaron Peskin
Sole-endorsed by SEIU 1021 and SF League of Pissed Off Voters.
He’s left of me on lots of things—less so as time goes by, though—and I wish he didn’t go NIMBY quite so often on housing, but I gotta agree with the SF League of Pissed Off Voters here: "Honestly, Peskin’s the only grownup in the race. In a field where most candidates are jockeying to be the most conservative, and exploiting the city’s very real and heartbreaking problems to score points, Aaron is running a campaign built on hope and recovery. His campaign platform is music to our ears: finance affordable housing for working San Franciscans, expand rent control, lift up San Francisco’s neighborhoods, and implement real solutions to homelessness that will actually address the reasons we got here."
Peskin is experienced, effective, and has turned that towards his own past issues with being harsh with department heads, got sober several years back, and is ready for this role. Adding to that is his readiness to take on corruption; Prop C is his work.
When the right-wing PACs have an "anyone but Peskin" ranked-choice strategy, it’s time for liberals to put him first.
2) London Breed
Supported by Michael Bloomberg’s big money. Endorsed by SF Dems.
Opposed by: Anti-Breed PAC from SF Deputy Sheriff’s Assoc.
As I said in my intro, I’m no longer a Breed supporter, but she’s better by far than Farrell and unlike Lurie she’ll be termed out soon. Though she’s got lots of cronyism and corruption problems, she does at least understand civic administration, as we saw in the first year of the pandemic.
3) Daniel Lurie
Endorsed by new SF Republican group The Briones Society over Farrell, which tells ya something. Also those two are top picks for SF GOP.
Levi Strauss heir, spending crazy amounts of money trying to win this race. Also getting lots of money from VC Garrison Mason Morfit (on Salesforce board of directors, other wealthy donors, and his deep-pocketed family including a million from his mom, Mimi Haas. No government experience?! And he thinks he can run a complex city hall? And more than half the money raised for Prop. E to reduce oversight over the police, allow cops to use surveillance cameras and drones more easily, and expand the situations where the cops can conduct car chases was raised by Lurie.
(Definitely NOT Farrell or Safaí, who just endorsed Farrell.)

Supervisor, District 5
Dean Preston
Endorsed by Aaron Peskin and SF League of Pissed Off Voters.
MissionLocal: "the city’s most progressive elected politician". Hugely committed to tenants’ rights and great on practical solutions to difficult problems of a city with our huge income inequality. Very effective.
I was not a fan when he first ran against our district supervisor, local girl London Breed and stayed pissed at him about that attempt to oust a very competent black woman through her continuing to show that skill as president of the Board of Supes, Interim Mayor (until Mark Farrell shoved her out of the way to grab the spotlight and the title; so tacky, so much misogynoir), and in her early work as Mayor getting us through 2020. But she slid further into the machine, the corruption started to appear, and Preston chugged away doing good work wherever he landed. I do think he made a mistake in that one race, but I made a mistake writing him off completely. He’s a good supervisor and we should keep him on the job. I’m now a strong Yes for Preston, particularly over his competition.
(Why not Mahmood, with his diverse endorsements? A month or so ago, before I was digging into things, I didn’t think he was that bad: ‘not my first choice, but OK’; since then it’s become clear that he’s allied with the overall movement to push SF more conservative. His attack ads against Dean Preston are just gross, messy ‘Fear Uncertainty Doubt’ exaggerations. He was going to be my ranked second choice, but no way now. Looijen is long on vibes, short on legitimate track record—well, and negative on that performative Algebra in middle schools nonsense. Scott Jacobs is Mark Farrell Jr and opposes rent control.)

City Attorney
David Chiu
Supported by GrowSF and SF Dems (but no serious opposition)
Not happy about his amicus brief giving fuel to a bad Supreme Court ruling on homeless encampment sweeps. Also now pushing back for SF’s ability to dump sewage in the bay and ocean, which could lead to a weakening of the Clean Water Act; which is sure not great. Otherwise he’s been a good City Attorney as far as I can tell.

District Attorney
Ryan Khojasteh
Endorsed by SF League of Pissed Off Voters.
Opposed by Scotty Jacobs, and other centrists.
Endorsed by Dean Preston "Over the past two years, I have been concerned with the hyper-partisanship of the current district attorney, the over-charging of peaceful protestors, and other highly problematic decisions of the city’s top prosecutor. I believe Ryan would lead the District Attorney’s office with integrity, professionalism, and a spirit of collaboration. I also appreciate that Ryan is deeply committed to implementing policies that will address recidivism and prioritize violence prevention, which will help make us safer."
His focus is on rehabilitation not punishment. We know the latter is ineffective, corrupt, racist; let’s lean back into an approach rooted in good progressive values and the community collaboration that actually works to reduce crime.

Sheriff
leave blank
That office needs cleaning up and Miyamoto hasn’t been doing it.

Treasurer
Jose Cisneros
Supported by GrowSF, SF Dems (but no serious opposition). Endorsed by SF League of Pissed Off Voters.
Here’s hoping he’ll be able to get us a public bank!

So I just found out that WordPress / Automattic is preparing to sell user data to Midjourney and OpenAI. So it seems that unless I opt out, my creative work will be sold for AI training. Sold by the company I already PAY to host my websites.

If it was opt in I’d be sad because it’s another sign of the open web caving in as it gets strip mined for AI generated content.

I’d be sad because it’s a sign that the web is becoming a place where it’s not safe to share your creativity or be yourself because there’s someone looking to make a buck off of you, with no concern for the impact of that on you or on the viability of creative work in general.

I am sad about those things, but I’m also really angry, disgusted, and frustrated.

As Derek Powazek said, “The death of the open independent web has been predicted many times, but the tidal wave of AI garbage, plus people removing their content from the open web to avoid getting used by AI, plus the decades-old trend away from websites toward apps and controlled platforms, plus the festering rot of Google’s search quality, really has me wondering if I will witness the birth and death of the web in my lifetime.”

PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: JOSEPH R. BIDEN JR.
Choose among the candidates we have and create momentum against the high-polling candidate you least want.
Would I prefer a younger, more liberal candidate than Biden? Yes. Is Trump’s coalition a serious threat to democracy, marginalized groups, bodily rights for women, progress against climate change, and on and on? Yes.
I’m throwing my vote onto the Biden side of the scale; sometimes you’ve got to take the strategic move. Also, Biden is pretty good on many policies; though deeply disappointing on Gaza and I’ll keep calling the White House pushing on this issue among others like calling for opposition to the so-called ‘Kids Online Safety Act’. (Biden’s also possibly the shortest path to a biracial woman of color as President. I wish she was less cozy with cops, but I like Harris well enough.)

I like mithriltabby (Max Kaehn)’s argument: “the best move available is to get Biden elected and push the downballot toward better policies; in the process of holding his coalition together, Biden will then support them.”

MEMBER, DEMOCRATIC COUNTY CENTRAL COMMITTEE (CHOOSE 14): GALLOTTA, HARDY, AVALOS, JEREMY LEE, CHUNG, CHRISTENSEN, BELL, BERRY, VELASQUEZ, NGUYEN, SIMPSON, OCHOA, ROSSELLI, MARTINEZ
There is a big money move to shift SF and our DCCC to the right. Astroturf (fake grassroots) groups like GrowSF, TogetherSF, StopCrimeSF, Neighbors for a Better SF (backed by a Republican mega-donor), Families for a Vibrant SF, and Committee to Fix SF Government are pushing a tough-on-crime (reduced oversight, pro-cop), tough-on-drugs (testing before care), billionaire-friendly agenda.

The strong connection between this anti-progressive investment and London Breed is one more factor reinforcing my withdrawal of support for her as Mayor; she was great for the first year of the pandemic and her policies saved lives, but she’s no longer the same Mayor she was then.

To be clear, I’m not as progressive as some of the folks I’m voting for, but I am left of the ones the big money is trying to get elected to the DCCC.

While Jane Kim is on the SF League of Pissed Off Voters slate and I generally agree with their slate this time around, I will not be voting for her. I was not pleased with her behavior on the Board of Supes after Mayor Lee’s death, her support of building moratoriums, and her attempts to spin Scott Weiner as a corporate tool (doing tremendous disservice to his work). I will instead vote for union organizer Christopher Christensen. (I found a 2020 response to Pissed Off Voters survey that puts him a bit more progressive than me, which is fine. Yeah, I’m probably not happy with his building position either, but I like his union cred.)

UNITED STATES SENATOR: BARBARA LEE
I’d be happy with Barbara Lee or Katie Porter, and not unhappy about Adam Schiff, but I’m voting Lee in the primary as part of my ‘Biden at the top of the ticket, progressive downballot’ approach. Note that you need to vote twice, once for the next term and once for the remainder of the current term.

UNITED STATES REPRESENTATIVE, DISTRICT 11: NANCY PELOSI
With frustration that she hasn’t blessed a successor and that there isn’t a serious elected official alternative, I’ll vote for Pelosi. (We don’t trade the Speaker of the House for someone who hasn’t held significant office; that’s just strategically bad.)

STATE SENATOR, DISTRICT 11: SCOTT WIENER
I’m very happy with Wiener’s service as an elected official. Glad to keep supporting him, and hoping for this long time work on housing to continue. (Though I am annoyed to see him listed on one of the many mailers that came in my mail as a supporter of SF Prop E, the cop oversight reduction measure. Will bring that up next time I’m calling on an issue.)

STATE ASSEMBLYMEMBER, DISTRICT 17: MATT HANEY
Happy with Haney’s work.

JUDGE OF THE SUPERIOR COURT, SEAT #1 & #13: MICHAEL BEGERT & PATRICK THOMPSON
These existing judges do not need to be removed and particularly not for more conservative judges backed by fake grassroots organizations like SF Women for Common Sense Government. The only thing I can find online about them is that Mary Jung mentioned forming the group in an anti-sex work opinion piece in the Examiner in 2016. She was then chairwoman of the DCCC and director of government and community relations for the SF Association of Realtors. More recently she was chair of the recall campaign against Chesa Boudin. Allegedly retired after that, but…

State Proposition 1, MONEY FOR BEHAVIORAL HEALTH SERVICES AND TREATMENT BEDS: YES
This is what we’ve been asking for to help get folks with serious challenges off the street. Is it perfect? No. Is that OK? Yes.

SF Proposition A, MONEY FOR AFFORDABLE HOUSING: YES!
Housing, housing, housing!

SF Proposition B, MINIMUM POLICE STAFFING/COP TAX: NO
The specifics of departmental staffing should not be a voter question. And if crime drops, why would we want to be paying for a minimum number of cops that is difficult to change? This seems expensive and just a ploy to entrench police power, so I was surprised to see the usual line-up scrambled to both sides on it. The GOP is against it and so are the Pissed Off Voters, as is Mayor Breed. On the Board of Supes, Peskin, Chan, and Safai support it as does Assemblymember Haney. Had to look at this one pretty closely. The Controller’s Statement is helpful, and I was decided by this note in it: “This proposed amendment is not in compliance with a non-binding, voter-adopted city policy regarding set-asides. The policy seeks to limit set-asides which reduce General Fund dollars that could otherwise be allocated by the Mayor and the Board of Supervisors in the annual budget process.” This only got on the ballot with a 6-to-5 vote of the Supes, so I think we kick it back for a closer to unanimous good plan.

SF Proposition C, TAX BREAKS FOR COMMERCIAL TO RESIDENTIAL DEVELOPERS: NO!
There’s an icky loophole in this one: “Proposition C would authorize the Board to amend, reduce, suspend or repeal the transfer tax without voter approval.” We voted in 2020 to increase the property transfer tax on luxury properties sold for over 10ドル million; this creates a way for a pro-real estate Board of Supes to override the will of the voters. Nope! (It is supported by GrowSF, who are funded by anti-progressive tech execs and investors like Ron Conway and Garry Tan.)

SF Proposition D, TIGHTEN CITY ETHICS RULES: YES!
Minimal costs for reduced risk of corruption in local government. These are not controversial changes, so this is an easy Yes.

SF Proposition E, WEAKEN POLICE OVERSIGHT/ADD WARRANTLESS POLICE SURVEILLANCE POWERS: NO!
Remove citizen oversight of SFPD? Let them implement new surveillance tech without Commission or Board approval? Hell no! There is so much bullshit in this one, and that it’s coming from Mayor Breed is worth noting for November when we vote her out. (Yeah, I voted her in, but a lot has changed, especially her rightward shift.)

Worth noting for context that the supposedly interested in social and economic justice Alice B. Toklas LGBTQ Democratic Club is supporting both E and C, also the moderate DCCC candidates backed by big money; progressive-sounding isn’t necessarily progressive slate-ing.

SF Proposition F, INEFFECTUAL COERCIVE DRUG SCREENING FOR POOREST IN SF: NO!
This isn’t just cruel, it’s stupid and expensive. It would almost certainly increase homelessness, forcing some housed people on SF’s adult assistance program which costs 712ドル/month per person out on the street where they cost the SF 5000ドル/month per person. And we’re short on staff and rehab beds as it is, so this isn’t going to solve anything. It’s tough-on-users posturing (which research shows does not reduce substance abuse) by the Mayor and it’s a bad proposition.

SF Proposition G, TELL TEACHERS HOW TO TEACH MATH: NO
This should not be on the damn ballot. “Proposition G would make it City policy to encourage the School District to offer Algebra 1 to students by their eighth-grade year”. Note that the city has no legal authority over the school district, and the district has already committed to bring Algebra back to 8th grade and met about it yesterday. This is a weird effort by astroturf groups to stir up anger against public education. (More detail on this is available in the Pissed Off Voter Guide.)

Additional context:

• The Guardian: “Inside tech billionaires’ push to reshape San Francisco politics: ‘a hostile takeover’”
• Mission Local: “BigMoneySF: Explore the major players paying out to remake San Francisco”
• Mission Local: “BigMoneySF: What do new advocacy groups really want?”
• San Francisco Chronicle: “Chesa Boudin recall caps 50 years of activism for former S.F. Democratic chair”
  
  And noting that Mary Jung’s still doing political podcasts as recently as a few weeks ago. Haven’t listened yet. Seems like she’s still pro-Democrat, just probably a lot more moderate than me.

Posted this on Mastodon this morning.

Watching the #SanFrancisco MTA meeting yesterday led me to #NearFuture visions of a different kind of #Transportation #Infrastructure. A woman spoke eloquently (around a language barrier) about how important cars are to the very smallest of businesspeople, those who start businesses that require their car to bring their tools other places. Repair workers is what stuck in my mind, but I’m sure there are others. She called for a mixed environment—yes to walking, yes to buses and trolleys and trains, and yes to vehicles that allow someone to bring their business to their customers. She’s right; it is how immigrants and low-income folks are able to start to support themselves with work like that.

In the wee hours last night I awoke and could not get back to sleep, deliciously imagining an alternative to cars and having cascading realizations of little changes it could make to daily life. It’s just one idea and we need lots, but it excites me to think of what my city could be like if small cargo could experience something like the kind of opportunity expansion that bike -> ebike gives.

The challenge is living in small apartments or crowded shared housing and not having room to park a cargo bike, let alone something as big as the smallest cars.

The first half of what I’m imagining is smaller than a wheelchair, more like a dolly loaded with milk crates. It’s modular, repairable, and electric. When turned off, it lowers down off its wheels and forms a stable tower; ideal for holding tools, or groceries, or other small but heavy loads.

Let’s call it a wheeltote.

Because wheeltotes are electric, like an e-bike they allow people who aren’t as strong to do more. Because wheeltotes aren’t bigger than a wheelchair, they can make use of and encourage the creation of more wheelchair-accessible spaces and accommodations.

But by themselves, though good, wheeltotes don’t solve the local-trips car problem.

The second half of the idea is a small vehicle designed to accommodate either wheeltotes or wheelchairs. It too is electric and designed for repair and long term, hard-working use. It is a transit vehicle of a different kind. It can hold a driver; a passenger in the adjacent seat; and the back has flexible spaces each of which accommodates a wheelchair, or a wheeltote and a passenger in a fold-down seat or two passengers in fold-down seats.

Let’s call it a tote-tote.

Because tote-totes can carry people, wheelchairs, and wheeltotes, each tote-tote meets many needs and can fill in for other modes of transportation.
Because tote-totes aren’t personal vehicles, but transit vehicles, a single tote-tote can serve many more uses per day.

Imagine a city which uses tote-totes. Imagine San Francisco with tote-totes.

Anne repairs washing machines and lives in the southwest part of the city, in a big Lake Merced apartment tower. A basement parking level in Anne’s building has been converted into a tote-tote charging hub. One morning, Anne confirms an appointment with a client in the Outer Sunset and schedules a tote-tote to drive there. Anne sets their trip to ‘rideshare’ mode so that it will be free to them. In the basement, the green light on an available tote-tote changes to amber.

While Anne puts on their jacket and prepares to roll their wheeltote to the elevator, another building resident Bette is already heading out to school at SF State University. She checks her best transit options and is matched with Anne’s rideshare trip. Because Bette uses a wheelchair, in the basement one of the boarding area tote-totes changes its light from green to amber and the formerly assigned tote-tote farther away in the garage goes back to green. When Bette comes out of the elevator, her assigned tote-tote detects her approach, lights up and swings open its main door. Like the wheeltotes, tote-totes lower to the ground when parked, so Bette is able to drive her wheelchair right inside.

As Anne comes down the elevator they meet a neighbor, Chris, who is on their way to work downtown. Chris normally takes a bus to BART, but Anne mentions they’re heading out in rideshare mode and shares the route with Chris using their phones. Chris’s phone proposes a dropoff at the Muni M train, Chris approves it, and joins the ride, paying a transit fare. The two emerge from the elevator and see Bette settling into the tote-tote right there, and Anne sees on their phone it is their assigned vehicle. Chris hops into the passenger seat and Anne parks their wheeltote beside Bette and it locks into place, stable for the journey.

Anne drives the tote-tote along neighborhood streets to let Bette out by the SFSU library. Del is waiting at the stop there and the amber light on the tote-tote blinks for her as it approaches, indicating her transit routing match. Bette rolls out, Del steps in and folds down the seat, and leans her cane against her knee as she holds a safety rail on the wall. A couple minutes later the tote-tote arrives at Muni, having navigated to the middle of busy 19^th Street to the new tote-tote dropoff point at the south end of the platform.

No one else is waiting for a ride, so Anne waves farewell to Chris and Del after they get out, and heads north, through the Sunset. Since trolley-buses are frequent along this route there is no one who has been waiting 10 minutes, so Anne is not instructed to pick up any more passengers. Though tote-totes move slower than cars, they are prioritized in traffic lanes like other transit, so the trip takes no longer than it would have in the old days and now that there are fewer cars on the road it is a lot more pleasant. Also, it is free to Anne since they drove rideshare.

Anne parks the tote-tote at a dedicated tote-totes spot on their client’s block where the curb has been removed for wheeled access. They activate their wheeltote which unlatches it from the tote-tote wall, its battery now topped up, and roll it out, tapping on their phone to indicate they’ve completed their trip; the tote-tote’s light turns green. Their client’s old house has front steps, but Anne sees in their notes that the back door has had a ramp added, so they roll down the old driveway admiring the vegetable garden now occupying most of it. Their client comes out of their home office—the converted garage—and welcomes them.

Soon the tote-tote’s green light turns to amber again as a neighbor, Grandma E, reserves it. She rolls up on her mobility scooter and parks it in the farthest back spot in the tote-tote so she has room to get off it inside. Using the hand rails which extend above the wheeltote parking latches, she makes her way from the scooter to the driver’s seat. It’s not a long drive—just under two miles—and California Street is now beautifully updated for tote-totes and transit. She is happy to see so many families out on bikes and the parklets busy even on a weekday morning. Her destination is a medical center which also has a tote-tote charging hub. It’s busy there too this morning and though she has a place to park where she can get out with her scooter—all tote-tote parking is designed for this—she can’t easily roll to plug in the charger. She taps her disability waiver on her phone and avoids a ‘left unplugged’ fee.

After Grandma E enters the building, a young person waiting for their relative to finish with an appointment comes out for some fresh air and notices the blinking red light on the tote-tote. They scan the tote-tote with their phone, attach the charger, and receive a transit credit.

Before long, five hospital workers come off shift together and the one that lives the farthest away—Farid—reserves the tote-tote, then rideshares to the others’ phones. They pay an ordinary transit fare and the driver is free. Settling into the driver, passenger, and three of the fold-down seats, they set out. The tote-tote is routed diagonally across the city for its many dropoffs. Upon reaching home in the Bayview, Farid extends his trip to a shopping center a mile away. He parks in front of his house, indicates on his phone that this is a short stop so that his current trip remains active, and fetches his own empty wheeltote from inside. Farid plans to take advantage of the bigger selection at the larger market, knowing that the wheeltote will be doing the work of carrying the groceries home.

As Farid leaves the tote-tote and ends his trip, its light turning to green again, Gina comes out of the market with her empty wheeltote. She’s just finished her tamale deliveries after an early morning in a community kitchen resulting in a fully packed wheeltote which she navigated through a series of rides on trolley-buses and in other tote-totes. She lives near a tote-tote service hub and usually takes advantage of the transit credit offered for returning a tote-tote there. Scheduling her trip, she is directed to this tote-tote and drives it north to a few blocks from her home in the Mission.

It is not even noon and already this tote-tote has served ten people today. At the service hub, MTA workers check on it. No problems reported with this one, so it’s been a while since it was prioritized for either cleaning or a service check. It gets a routine checkup and a full cleaning (during which it is charged up). By early afternoon it’s ready to head out to service again. A worker moves it to the available lot and soon its light changes once again from green to amber.

(Please tag with #WheelTote or #ToteTote if you have stories, art, or other ideas to add!)

It’s Friday and time for a story of the old Web, one man, and a cookie. A cookie which I still have almost 24 years later.

Once upon a time there was a guy named Carl Steadman.

( Picture of Carl is a still from the documentary ‘Home Page’ by Doug Block, which you can watch here.)

#InternetHistory #TheWeb #CarlSteadman #Celebrity #Sarcasm #CulturalCriticism #Ephemera

Carl was (and I presume remains) complicated, wry, and elusive. 


One of his professional claims to fame is that he was the Production Director for HotWired, the first commercial online magazine. HotWired was garish in visual style (thank goodness for that injection of mayhem) and hugely influential.

The Web would be very different without HotWired having existed, for good and ill. It gave a lot of us weirdos hope of making something totally new and leaving society’s garbage behind.

It was also a commercial site, giving us the first banner ad on the Internet, and was among the first sites to try behavioral targeting. It laid the seeds of our downfall, as self-deluded as we of the early Web were ourselves.

Turns out the hell of a good universe next door, was just a more controllable, monitorable, and monetizeable version of here. The Web certainly did change the world, it just didn’t transform it the way we thought it would. 



( Seems like Hotwired is basically lost as a site, but you can get some sense of it from the various references from the Wikipedia article. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HotWired )

Whether Carl fully parsed the path we were on, I’m not sure, but he certainly mocked the starry-eyed visionaries of the Web as much as the fools who didn’t see the impact it was going to have on society.

He co-founded the late, great Suck.com, a pop-culture commentary site with the motto, “A fish, a barrel, and a smoking gun”.

Whether Carl fully parsed the path we were on, I’m not sure, but he certainly mocked the starry-eyed visionaries of the Web as much as the fools who didn’t see the impact it was going to have on society.

He co-founded the late, great Suck.com, a pop-culture commentary site with the motto, “A fish, a barrel, and a smoking gun”.

Among his writings, there he was in 1995 dunking on Marc Andreessen and advocating for Tax the Rich. Here’s a taste, but this is not the cookie I’m talking about.

( A smattering of Carl columns are linked from this archived page and you can read some other bits of Suck from here, thanks to the Internet Archive’s preservation. There was also a gathering of the founders on the site’s 20th anniversary at XOXO.

He of course had his own site with extremely pithy posts.

(Does the timeline get Twitter without the history of bloggers of this brevity? I think not.)

[画像:Screenshot of simple, left-aligned, black text reading: 97.11.21 please, don't think of me as a "netmogul." consider me a "conceptual artist."]

[画像:Screenshot of simple, left-aligned, black text reading: 97.12.03 what does the copyright symbol mean, if every work is protected by copyright, whether or not it uses the copyright symbol? it's superfluous, an artifact. herein lies the opportunity: infuse the symbol with a new meaning, one appropriate for the times, something hip, modern and up-to- date. and so, I'm taking it. from now on, when you see a c in a circle, think carl. ]

He carried himself with such winking assurance of his charm that others were ready to jump in and soon we had Ready! Steadman Go!, the "semi-official page of carl worship" (from The Dramaqueens (Ben and Mena Trott, creators of Movable Type)) and The Divining of Carl Steadman (from Riotgrrl (Nikki Douglas))

Sometime in or before February 1998 Carl decided to declare himself a microstar. He claimed internet celebrity before much of the country even knew what the hell the Internet was.

And then, on November 11, 1999, he announced the availability of the Carl Cookie.

[画像:Screenshot of simple, left-aligned, black text reading: 99.11.11 Episode 8: C is for Carl Cookie "So what are you really selling?" "What do you mean? These are cookies." "C'mon. You're obviously not just selling baked goods, however wholesome and delicious. Where's the upside in that? There's got to be some other product you're promoting." "Besides me, you mean? This isn't some sort of extended teaser campaign. Cookies can be a very lucrative business. Look at the Girl Scouts." "The Girl Scouts don't sell cookies with your big head plastered all over them." I pick up another bubble mailer and drop a cookie inside. "Maybe it's time they did." The "Your Pal, Carl" cookie. Cookiejet technology transforms your favorite microstar into the newest taste sensation. 3.33" x 2.67". Because we all need a pal. Buy one for 2ドル.00 cheap from Carlmart (Unfortunately, my "strategic partner," Bigstep - Visa and Mastercard cheerfully accepted! - only lets you write so much catalog copy. Il bring it up with Beebe. But rest assured: although the text description may be abbreviated, | guarantee you'll receive the full Carl cookie experience with each order.) ]

I ordered two. And ate one of them.

[画像:Screenshot of blog post. I'm eating Carl. The question when consuming a MicroStar is "Where to begin?" I started with his perfect hair. And then I bit the [dot] com right off him. I plan to eat him quite slowly ending with the grin which shall remain some time after the rest of him is gone. Carl says: "eat me". ]

But I saved the other. Here it is.

Would you like this piece of the history of the Web?

This post appeared this evening as a thread on Mastodon. For a limited time you can submit your application to receive this cookie as a single reply to that thread.

p.s. Carl’s Wikipedia entry weirdly didn’t have a picture.
Fixed!

A lot has happened since I last posted, some sad, some good. My focus has been on my family and taking good care of myself, and I’ve done well at both of those—something it was often hard for me to balance. My dear mother died of colon cancer, as we knew was coming but hoped wouldn’t come so fast. Thanks to California’s death with dignity laws she didn’t suffer and was able to die at home as she wanted. Great support from palliative care doctors, hospice, the UCSF Willed Body Program, and the rest of my family. Good life, good death.

I’ve spent a lot of time at my parents’ house working on whittling it down from a ‘big place crammed with all sorts of interesting old stuff’ to something that’s easier for my dad to maintain (with a few helpers he has coming in) and easier for us to finishing emptying when he sells the place sometime in the next few years. So. Much. Stuff. It looks a lot less crowded than it did and there are almost no ‘mystery zone’ spots left, but there is still weeks of work to be done to sort through the remaining closet, tiny attic, drawers, cupboards. At least the house is only about a quarter century old so there isn’t the kind of deep accumulation some places have. But stuff from older houses did get moved here, which makes it a mixed blessing; not 47 old jam jars and piles of dusty folded paper bags (a pain but easy to recycle), and instead dense shoebox-sized clots of old family papers that need to be looked through one by one. Some treasures in there, some “why did anyone save this?”, some cringy awfulness (some thought in the 1920s that a birthday card with someone in blackface was OK; yikes), some poignant puzzlers (my grandfather’s bronzed baby shoes). It’s slow emotional, dusty labor, but at least I’m now on the “what’s left?” side rather than the “where do I start?” side of the job.

My efforts to reduce my stress have been paying off and my rare disease seems to be going into remission. I’m tapering my immunosuppressant medication and that’s going well, which is good because COVID numbers are rising again (as anyone could have predicted; wtf, CDC?). Not going to change my behavior much but I’m less anxious, which makes my overall health and well-being better.

Game design for Our Magic continues to go very well. The player rules are now working with no major changes needed in recent testing. On to polishing up the little bits, continued testing, and creating the GM’s guide.

My conversion of the focus of my living room from “sit on a couch facing a screen” to a space for playing games went extremely well and I’m now enjoying weekly sessions of Rangers of Shadow Deep with my pal Lance. More variety in games to come…

My wee jungle of houseplants has now grown to my goal size, with an arc of little and big pots filling the curve of the bay window in the living room and a clustered jungle visible from my desk in the dimmer back room. There are a few varieties I may add if I see them, but they’re icing on the cake.

All the discardia at my parents’ place has both inspired me at home and cut into my energy for it here. I’ve inherited a few things that have prompted getting rid of other stuff to make room, but mostly the flow of items here has been highly selective. What it’s led to is optimizing the spaces for things I’m keeping and clustering the things I’m not. There’s a zone at the edge of my office / craft space about 6′ x 1.5′ x 3′ which is almost all outbound items, from a little hazmat box of dead batteries (a hassle to get rid of since our neighborhood Walgreens closed and there’s no drop point anymore) to my old cassette tapes to family photos that need to be passed on once I’ve scanned or photographed the ones I want a copy of. It is a daily presence of To Do, but also No Rush.

In the digital realm I continue to put away and make private old posts from when I was sharing my life story on my blog. No longer interested in putting out that much stuff for the bots to scrape.

Easter pictures of my cousin and I looking around my grandparents’ yard in the central valley for hidden eggs—maybe actual, maybe plastic. I’m wearing a sleeveless shirt, something I almost never do as an adult, and knee length socks, something I still do even on fairly hot days. Put it away with a smile.

A photo that was a mystery to my mother and over a decade ago, never to be solved. Unknown location, clearly me, my mom, her mom, but who’s that little boy in yellow PJs or some sort of jumpsuit? Why are we in the bathroom? Why are my mother and I wearing dark polyester garments with dense patterns? Oh well that I can answer: it was the early 1970s. Tuck away that mystery, unsolved.

A picture of me on vacation to my grandparents’ visiting Storyland in Fresno, sitting in the shade of a chapel with “stained glass” windows with all kinds of animals, no doubt pleasing to small Dinah. I’m wearing a short sleeveless dress so it must be hot weather and, as my mother wrote when I asked her for a guess at date some years ago, before I’d “have found a way to avoid wearing something that bright-colored!”. Maybe between eight and eleven years old. I came back around to bright colors later, but I still do love me some muted tones. Writing this now in a deep olive green, black, tan, and rose gold outfit. 😄 Recalling hours and hours of happiness and fascination looking at pictures of animals and playing with plastic animals, I feel the connection to small Dinah. She would have loved the dog miniatures I painted in the last week. Carefully putting this image away with love.

A well loved image in my family: me in the stegosaurus costume my mother (amazingly) made for me when I said that’s what I wanted to be for Halloween. It was velour with corduroy plates and spikes. Why I decided the perfect pose was drinking from a champagne coupe, I now have no idea. Foreshadowing of my cocktail nerdery 3+ decades later? This costume did double-duty as a dragon, but to me it was first and foremost a stegosaurus. I’ve got this one in my random desktop images; it doesn’t need to published to the world; into the virtual drawer it goes.

My cousin and I in front of a Christmas tree, in that era when she’d grown a bunch and I hardly at all. Two months apart and she’s a foot taller than me. We are admiring a kazoo shaped like a bugle. I have no doubts mayhem ensued, almost certainly including a rendition by my mother of ‘When the Saints Go Marching In’. She could really rip on the kazoo with all those trilled sounds. Rest in peace, mum; you were your own second line when you wanted to get wild. ❤️

Another year in the blog, put away. A year ago in the world I was enjoying weeks not radically different from this one, preparing for helping out a parent in the weeks to come. Then it was assisting with chemo visits, now with the great sorting of the stuff. During both, grateful for the time we have and have had, and so damn lucky to get to enjoy lulls between the work.

Woke up thinking about how different Mastodon feels (even now as its culture has shifted a bit from what I was seeing a year ago) compared to other social media.

Other, generally shareholder-value-focused, services hold you in not only through natural human desire to avoid hassle, but through intentional design. The walls of the walled garden ideally look nice, but they will be raised if people start to wander.

Here we can the landscape around us & inviting other places we might be.

When we can see where we are & compare it to other places / ways of doing, we are subtly reminded to consider “Is this how I like it best? Is there a better way of doing this? How might I want my ‘this’ to change? Should I change my current ‘this’ or move to a different ‘this’?”

Open networks invite the questions:
“How can this provide more fully for individual people here?”
“How can we learn from each other?”
“How can we assist each other in making our days better?”

This gentle, constant slope toward “better for people” (rather than “better for extractable financial profit”) which is makes me deeply excited about Mastodon and the Fediverse as a force for human good, for Earthly good.

I know from living it that gently, consistently asking “How could this be more awesome?”—the perpetual upgrade of Discardia—is life-changing, and has the capacity to be world-changing.

I know the little changes add up, and the more of them we make, the happier we get.

This thinking is happening against a backdrop of watching Twitter get so much worse, but seeing people I admire still pouring out their creativity into that broken vessel.

I’m watching CNN shifting from its flawed but functional shape to another clickbait site, with weak or non-existent journalistic decision-making. Breathless articles that ask no hard questions. Sensational headlines. It worries me because CNN wormed its way onto TVs in public spaces as “neutral” but it grows ever less so.

It feels as if rather than trying to get viewers who wouldn’t have watched Fox News or read conspiracy websites to do that, are having their normal interfaces turn into propaganda and radicalization channels. That if they (we) just sit there and do nothing, they’ll (we’ll) start to see a different, scarier, world than they used to. That their growing fear / sense of being wronged will prime them for authoritarianism.

So how do we work against that?

How do we help shift people away from media that grows increasingly harmful to them & the world?

We make that not be the place where the best stuff is happening.

Make that not be the place where much of any good stuff is happening.

Stop posting on Twitter.
If you’re financially dependent somehow or otherwise constrained & can’t stop, then post there later. Put up your content on Mastodon & your own website first. Then link to it from Twitter.

#PrioritizeMastodonContent

How do we help shift people away from shoddy journalism & authoritarian-empowering news sites?

Ask the obvious questions the journalists didn’t ask. Ask journalists why they didn’t ask those questions. Put the pressure on for the media to do better.

Link to good articles with smart questions & praise them for it.

If sharing shoddy articles, contextualize the shoddiness in the first post, not with just snark but with the big unasked question. Ideally link to a better article.

Wield their past, better journalistic performance against papers & websites & journalists. Call them on slipping standards:
“I’m frustrated why you aren’t bringing the kind of rigor you brought to your articles in the past to this latest work. Why didn’t you ask X? You say Y, but that’s from their press release, & other sources say that isn’t true. I know you can do better; it’s why I started reading you.”

Point out when things are getting worse. Don’t let bad ‘new normal’s go unnoticed.

I am feeling simultaneously hopeful for the web, as Twitter stumbles and the Fediverse blossoms, and sorrowful, as hate and targeted abuse rise. It makes me want to gather my online skirts closer around me, to give fewer places for ill-meaning others to tug at me.

But also I am a Discardian, and it doesn’t take unpleasantness to make me want to bid farewell to (or honor, package up, and put away in private) something that no longer serves me in the present.

I’m closing up the oldest posts. Pictures of me as a muddy kid, a sandy beach-exploring kid. Turtlenecks and corduroy pants or lightweight denim. Off-brand Keds style shoes with my toes about to grow through the front. Long tangled hair. Bangs chopped to reveal my face. Out in all weather, making up stories, looking at the interesting things in the world.

Happy granddaughter in the above-ground swimming pool in the hot central valley summertime. Using wading pools as pool floats in the bigger pool. With an older girl I vaguely recall, from next door maybe.

Back at home with my cousin holding stiffly still for a photograph, interrupted in our play. Bare knees, tan as I ever get. Sun-lightened hair from playing outdoors. Standing in planter dirt, probably a future planting around the pond fixture my parents built. A big truck toy of which I have no memory, and two playhorses of which I have many. The chair that still is in use at my parents’ dining table brought outside, perhaps for a grown-up to keep an eye on the kids. I love the ordinary kidness of us in this picture.

Camping with Grandma and Grandpa. Again with my cousin, both of us with our long straight hair, but in this my bangs are brushed aside. A shaggy little elfin child, next to my more average sized cousin. She snacks, I read, Grandma gazes at us, affection and tiredness. All of us wear extra layers against the cool day. Grandma has a knit cap and stripey jeans. I can almost smell the dusty ground of a campsite under redwood trees. Ah and that’s not a fur trim on my coat, it’s one of my pet rats. Was this a day trip? or did I actually take a rat camping? Sweet indulgent family. Perhaps Grandma’s expression is about the rat; probably not her favorite pet.

Maybe the same trip, me my mother, my grandmother. The making of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Me watching, drinking from a tin cup. My mother’s hair long and straight, falling in front of her face as she looks down.

A summer month long ago, memories only anchored to that point in time by old photos. Distant, pleasant enough, but slippery and distant.

I wrap them in virtual tissue and pack them away. I live here, now.

Fast forward to the fall of that year. A truly lovely picture of most of the family, only adequate of Grandma, and possibly one of the worst pictures of me. It’s like child Dinah as played by Will Ferrell or something. Perhaps I’d just eaten my weight in pie. I’m not sure a single one of us is wearing something we’d wear today—ah, the 1970s—except perhaps my cousin who looks completely cute and whose sunny personality shines through so clearly in this picture. The picture of a group of ancestors behind my grandparents hangs in my parents’ house today. I can’t speak to those forebears, but I got lucky with my family. Most people in this picture were gathered for Thanksgiving this year too.

The faded yellows of an old photo can’t hide the incredibly bright and busy patterns of the long dresses made for my step-sister and I by my grandmother as Christmas presents. For some reason in this photo of us posing in the dresses, I am wearing galoshes. Perhaps we just pulled these high-collared long-skirted garments on over our run-to-the-park-and-play clothes? Old car behind us, I think a decade older than the era, but I don’t know cars, but the van immediately behind is the 1948 bakery truck my parents got and never quite brought to its full envisioned glory. It made a nice playroom though, even when it was parked on a gravel area in our back lot before they finally sold it years later.

Sometime in the early 70s a family photo of us all with long hair and hippy-ish clothes visiting Golden Gate Park. One of the few with me and my two step-siblings. Not sure if they were living at our place or it was just an outing. Funny to think I live in San Francisco now, have lived here for two decades. Another decade and I’ll have been an SF resident longer than my mother was old in this picture. Time is such a rubberband, so distant often, and then some little thing will contract it right up with vivid proximity.

But the elastic begins to lose its springiness with time. The photographs sometimes bring things back, yet often emphasize the distance. Nothing wrong with the distance. Let it go, let it go.

Here. Now.

I’m so happy I got into Mastodon years ago and have found a way to use it that keeps me happily engaged with interesting new stuff and connected to my friends without becoming overwhelmed. Here’s my advice on how to get started and optimize your experience.

Come on over to Mastodon! It’s lovely!

Mastodon is part of the Fediverse of federated servers that can share messages, but have their own rules. A server is kind of like a service provider; like how you get your mobile phone from one company but can call people who get theirs from different companies.

Right now there are not that many open servers to choose from because so many new people have arrived at once and some of them are very specialized communities, but that will quickly change.

When you join, I recommend setting things up using your computer rather than a phone or tablet, just because it’s a little easier to get familiar with things on the bigger screen.

Sign up using joinmastodon.org ‘s Create Account button.
(You can get the app later if you want, but it works fine in current browsers.)

You’ll then see a list of servers that are accepting new members.
Pick your server by looking at their about page and expanding their Server Rules section. For example, here’s Mas.to
https://mas.to/about
I don’t know this server from personal experience, but here are the clues to me that it might be a good one to join:

• I can see on the upper left that there are thousands of active users. That means that it is being well-enough administered to keep people there. (It is easy to take your follow/followed list to a different server later; you just leave behind your old posts. So if people aren’t leaving, that’s a good sign.) A server with fewer than 500 or 1000 users may not have gone through its growing pains yet, so you may want to keep looking.

• The rules look good! This is the kind of community environment I want to be in.
“No discrimination, including (but not limited to) racism, sexism, homophobia or transphobia.
No explicit (NSFW) content without content warnings and/or sensitive media markers. Explicit content must not be used in user avatars or header images.
No harassment of other users on this or other servers.
No content illegal in the following countries: United Kingdom, Germany
No incitement of violence or promotion of violent ideologies.
No disinformation regarding public health issues or political/military campaigns.
No spam. This includes commercial advertising, promotional campaigns, and SEO.”

If you like what you see, click the ‘Create Account’ button on the upper right of their about page. 🙂

If you have trouble, give it a few more days. There are lots of new arrivals and all the server administrators are scrambling to expand their capacity, so it’s not always running as quickly as usual, but that will be a brief problem and well worth all the nice new folks coming in.

Once you’re in your account, I recommend experimenting with the ‘Advanced Web Interface’; it’s not that advanced, it just gives you multiple columns which is a great way to find your interests and have them part of your default view. (⚙️Preferences > Appearance > ☑️Enable advanced web interface )

With that view you’ll start out with your Home column. That shows posts from everyone you follow and their “boosts”. That timeline is chronological, not based on an algorithm moving things around and adding advertising.

Boosts are like Twitter’s retweets—they share something to your followers and help that post show up in the Explore view—but you can’t add text on top of the share or “quotetweet”. (That is an intentional design choice to prevent people “hate sharing”.)

In Mastodon, you can also ⭐️Like, which shows up in the poster’s notifications and lets them know you liked something, but doesn’t otherwise affect anything.

No one’s posts are searchable on Mastodon—people can’t go hunting for someone to hassle using keywords like they can on Twitter—but hashtags are searchable. And when you search for a hashtag, the results will show up as a new column.
Click the slider controls icon and you can pin that column to your display.

[画像:Screenshot from the top of a Mastodon column. Top shows the hashtag—#BirdWatching—along with a back arrow, a person icon with a plus sign on it (to follow this hashtag in your Home column), and an icon of some horizontal slider bars. Below that is "+ Pin". The latest post for this hashtag is below and shows a user icon, their display name, their user name in the format @UserName@ServerName), a globe icon to show this came from another server not local, 1h indicating it was from about an hour ago, and the post itself. The post says "Had the great privilege of hanging out with some White-winged Choughs at Uni of Newcastle Callaghan campus. These highly social birds are fun to watch as they interact in their little group! #birds #BirdWatching #WildOz" and two pictures of gray birds with pink mouths and yellow eyes, whose wings reveal white feathers when they spread them.]

Now you don’t have to search for it again, but instead when you go to your Mastodon account you’ll find all your birdy interests right there!

Notice how the person who posted that example, cytokine_storm, has the rest of their address starting out with something that isn’t my server, mastodon.social, but instead is “@aus.s…”. That’s because hashtags pass around between all the servers of the Fediverse. You don’t have to find the server where the birdwatchers are, you just have to watch the #birdwatching hashtag and their posts will come to you.

It gets even better because once you’ve pinned a search result into a column, you can further refine what that column displays. Say I want to see posts about #gardening. Here’s the column when I first pin it and expand the controls by clicking that little sliders icon.

[画像:A pinned Mastodon column for the #gardening hashtag expanded to show options for the column. Switches: "Include additional tags for this column" and "Local only". Below that is "x Unpin" to remove the column and arrow controls to move it left and right in your display of columns. The posts shown below both have many hashtags and are people introducing themselves.]

Notice how people are listing the hashtag in their introductions. That’s nice, but say I actually want to skip most of those. I can turn on “Include additional tags for this column” and it changes to this:

[画像:The same top information for the column pinned to show #gardening, now with the "Include additional tags for this column" switch turned on. Three new text boxes are displayed. 'Any of these', 'All of these', and 'None of these', each with "Enter hashtags..."]

I can do lots of fine tuning with these controls!

[画像:The same controls now altered to have #Mosstodon and #LichenSubscribe in the 'Any of these' box and #Introduction in the 'None of these' box. The posts at the top of the column have changed, with the #Introduction hashtagged ones not shown. The most recent one is now a post from someone about a vintage botanical print with that pretty illustration and the second says "Any websites or advice from people who know about #permaculture #gardening #rewilding & #mycology?"]

There’s still lots of growing pains with Mastodon and the Fediverse, but so much less social pain than Twitter. It’s clear that this is a much healthier way to do social media.

One of my big projects this week was updating the privacy, advertising, and linked apps settings in my Twitter accounts to the most private and secure option. Some I’d already done, but some new sharing had slipped by me and defaulted to opt-in (grrr 😠). I’m very glad to have done so, even staying up later than planned on Thursday night to finish the last two. Friday when I logged in I was greeted by this:

The downhill slide is faster than I expected, and, based on the whistle-blowing-adjacent leaks coming out of Twitter as they fire key people and others walk out, the collapse is going to be dire and possibly complete. I thought Twitter would continue to degrade and there would be a bleed off of users and brands, but this is dramatic. There are 1 million more people using Mastodon today than there were on October 27th.

I had six Twitter accounts. Two were inactive, one no longer used, one never used. Two were rarely used, FeralHistorian and Discardia. The deactivation process has been initiated on these, though I have to wonder if Twitter as a platform will even survive long enough for that 30 day process to complete. Two were used more often, but still not much at all since 2018, MetaGrrrl and Bibulous. Yesterday I requested a new export to archive anything on those since 2018. I wonder when and if that will complete. There isn’t much to lose so I’m not stressing over it.

Once I have my exports, I will deactivate those accounts as well. Entirely deleting content from the web is not my general approach, but Twitter is a toxic space and want no further part of it. Yes, this probably means someone will do something dreadful with those usernames eventually, but as we’ve seen this week, Twitter identity has been made a mockery and we all just need to get better at verifying legitimacy of sources, especially when they say something surprising, uncharacteristic, or dramatic.

As I go, I want to salute the good things that Twitter brought over the years, particularly its role in tearing off the blinders from comfortable liberals like me about how extreme and real and currently occurring systemic racism, misogyny, and anti-LGBTIA+ activity is. Grateful too for the random loveliness of Twittering shepherds, snarky museums, and all the other smiles, inspirations, and insights over the years.

I joined Twitter in September 2006. I have a vague memory of sharing a cab from the airport to SXSW with Ev in March 2007, when he was still very involved. I used it a lot and many folks I was interacting with in the early years are still folks I’m interacting with on Mastodon now.

I guess 12 active years plus 4 occasional checkins years is a pretty good run for using a particular web service.