reading around the bay

Alas this “How San Francisco’s free rides system can help us understand anarchist theory and the work of the late, great James C Scott” would be a much more compelling read if casual carpool wasn’t essentially dead, killed by the pandemic. (“Can it make a comeback?” “Anyone?”)

Anarchist tips for hanging out with people with kids. 

I am genuinely psyched that Street Spirit is BACK! 

Now, at the end of 2024, we have our newspaper back and are printing 6,000 copies a month. The number of vendors in our program has doubled, from 25 people in March to 49 people in October. This means that a growing number of people are earning income by selling newspapers on their own time, and learning the skills they need to re-enter the workforce. And our vendors are finding success in their own lives as well, with at least two Street Spirit vendors moving into permanent supportive housing this year!

(“Our vendors don’t pay a cent for the copies of Street Spirit we print for them to sell each month. This means 100% of proceeds they earn selling papers go directly into their pockets.” Buy one if you see one, or send them some money, you cowards. Also: Merch.)

Insurrection City: the radical beginnings of Ohlone Park:

Although it may be better known as the home of one of the first dog parks in the United States, Ohlone Park (and, to a lesser extent, the four-and-a-half mile Ohlone Greenway that extends northwest from it) was born out of the tumult of the People’s Park movement.

“Casey Newton’s latest essay on why we should be skeptical of artificial intelligence skeptics/critics is one of the more lazy and intellectually dishonest ones I’ve read in a long while.” See also: Tech: will it save us? 

Century Scale Storage.

Ingrid Burrington’s Perfect Sentences. Immediately subscribe.

During the 2024 election, 60 Minutes revealed, crypto companies donated one-third of all direct corporate contributions to super PACs. 

*Audio* Doomloop dispatch chats with Chesa Boudin and Pamela Price’s comms guy, Ryan Lalonde, about how the recallers won.

“We are committed to bringing the same level of quality and integrity we brought to many cities around the Bay Area” says company whose CEO went to prison last year for bribing San Francisco.  

“here’s an old grad syllabus for example. note the predominance of guest speakers. all of her seminars were structured to minimize the time she spent planning and teaching“: UCLA complit prof who is replacing herself with shitty AI seems like she might not be devoted to pedagogy.

How the ‘Broligarchs’ plan to use Trump and Elon Musk’s Destruction of Government Experiment (DOGE) 

In this house we love and respect Soleil Ho and Point Arena, but is this story California Forever 2.0 as implied or just the usual old kind of investor scum?

The far right taking over small CA towns, though: “his feeling has fueled a population that prides itself on self-sufficiency and living without government intervention, even spawning a secessionist movement to break from the rest of California and create the State of Jefferson.”

Scientists make brussels sprouts real fucking sexy, just like you asked.

Indigenous oyster gardens.

More Oakland budget shit. Related: cops just take as much money as they want.

Weird bad air early in the week, wtf. Also: SF had a tornado warning, wtf, was it climate change?

Prison labor in California: 

The way to understand the firefighting program in California is not just about saving the state money, necessarily. I don’t necessarily know that it does. Prisons are pretty expensive. I think that if the goal was to have prisons to fight fires, there are cheaper ways to do that. But what it does do is integrate the functions of the state to sort of appease lawmakers who are always trying to save small little pockets of money here or there. But also logistically, it’s difficult to attract laborers to a rural area to fight a fire. You have to build them a town. But if you have fire camps all over the state and people who are effectively living outside very cheaply, then you can move them at will. It’s up to you, not up to them. Then you have a lot of power to command sovereignty over a wider space and to deploy labor here and there in emergency situations. When the Oroville Dam spillway collapsed a few years ago, some of the first people on the scene were prisoners of the State of California. And it’s something that you can’t do with wage discipline. So a lot of the power of the state is not just in saving money in these circumstances, but in the power that they hold over prisoners spatially. They can move them without any real consent, under the auspices of a liberal constitution. There’s no other space like this really, outside of immigration law.

Tenant unions are coming. 

Forums.

Prosthetic arm technology is still so limited that I become more disabled when I wear one. 

“American ghost towers. In moneyland, it’s almost impossible for local municipalities like Los Angeles to hold developers accountable.” 

“Throughout me and my mama’s life of homelessness we were always hiding—houseless families have always risked incarceration and separation if we are “seen” in the co-called public. But what was even more full of hypocrisy was the settler lie of “public” itself.” 

This recent SFist and SF Chronicle accounts accounts of the closure of the Bayview RV triage site emphasize that it’s the “most expensive homeless response” in SF history, “deemed a failure and will wind down operations in a few months, after blowing through $15 million and only accommodating about one-fifth of the people it was supposed to” but I feel like the proposed tenants union and lawsuit from occupants (which go unmentioned) probably have a lot more to do with it than those articles are comfortable mentioning.

From January, “Living in Camp Dismal”:

The issues begin with alleged environmental contamination at the site (“Bleak, Toxic Location”) and move to the rat infestation (“rats everywhere … absolutely inadequate pest control. They are eating our vehicle wires.”) and then on to the now two-year delay in providing promised power at the site. The list continues, raising issues with “inedible food served at unsafe temperatures,” alleged Americans with Disabilities Act violations, flooding, and alleged unauthorized seizure of residents’ property. A group of community outreach workers rides through the Bayview Vehicle Triage Center distributing “cold hot dogs” while another person (not shown) takes pictures in a framegrab from a Dec. 19, 2023, video. VTC tenant Ramona Mayon refers to such walkthroughs as “human zoo tours.” One section calls out “human zoo tours” conducted without notice through which officials, the media, religious groups and community outreach workers are escorted through the site to show off the facility.  

Ramona Mayon has a website, pdfs, and even a handbook for surviving the camp listed for 13 dollars.