I generally stay away from the whole "San Francisco has changed, techbros suck (but, c'mon, ugh), the soul of the City is disappearing" whine, even though it's almost impossible to NOT moan about in some way the many aspects of this changing cultural landscape, especially as it morphs from queer refuge to bourgeois fortress.

But today it really really struck me how staid and boring and above all CURATED San Francisco has become.

Of course, I also feel the need to caution myself about the inevitable and natural nostalgia of the more reckless days of my youth, but I can't help but feel like the City was an organism that screamed I AM ALIVE much more convincingly even just 10 years ago, not to mention when I was discovering it 25 years ago as a small-town girl who knew this was a place to which was worth escaping.

Oh how I love Rebecca Solnit.
















Diary: In the Day of the Postman

Where do I begin with this? At the beginning.

In or around June 1995 human character changed again. Or rather, it began to undergo a metamorphosis that is still not complete, but is profound – and troubling, not least because it is hardly noted. When I think about, say, 1995, or whenever the last moment was before most of us were on the internet and had mobile phones, it seems like a hundred years ago.

Now, "our lives have ratings."

The new chatter [of social networking, constant access to email, texting, constant internet access in general] puts us somewhere in between [solitude and communion], assuaging fears of being alone without risking real connection. It is a shallow between two deep zones, a safe spot between the dangers of contact with ourselves, with others.

The older people I know are less affected because they don’t partake so much of new media, or because their habits of mind and time are entrenched. The really young swim like fish through the new media and hardly seem to know that life was ever different. But those of us in the middle feel a sense of loss.

I am one of those in the middle. In 1995, I had just transferred to 4-year university after a trip overseas where I "travel[ed] across the world with almost no contact with the people who loved me, and there was a dizzying freedom, a cool draught of solitude, in that." I remember the fear I had in signing up for a university email account -- my first email account -- and the class I took where the instructor grudgingly asked if we wanted to turn in homework via email, which was met with a resounding "no" from the class and a sigh of relief from the instructor. I remember "dialing up." And yes, now I find myself mourning even as I check my smartphone when the conversation lulls.

It’s hard, now, to be with someone else wholly, uninterruptedly, and it’s hard to be truly alone. The fine art of doing nothing in particular, also known as thinking, or musing, or introspection, or simply moments of being, was part of what happened when you walked from here to there alone, or stared out the train window, or contemplated the road, but the new technologies have flooded those open spaces. Space for free thought is routinely regarded as a void, and filled up with sounds and distractions.

I watched an excellent documentary a few years ago, Walking With Cavemen, about the evolution of man. The thing that has always stuck with me from this program is the idea that it was harnessing fire that propelled our evolution so rapidly. The why is what is so profound. Without fire, we were forced to live in a state of constant fear and hypervigilance to predation. Fire allowed us some sense of protection against those creatures that might make us a meal. It created down-time, introspection, a time to contemplate and think without the constant yoke of fear. A time to dream.

What has happened to our open spaces? We can dream, and this is the world we made?

Right now we need to articulate these subtle things, this richer, more expansive quality of time and attention and connection, to hold onto it. Can we? The alternative is grim, with a grimness that would be hard to explain to someone who’s distracted.

(UPDATE 9/16/2013: The transcript of The Guardian's original interview regarding Cumberbatch's views on Manning, et al has been placed on their site, and though his misguided quotes are still there, this does serve to soften via muddling his position a bit.

What to take away? The internets: never what they seem -- even this -- and designed for hits, full stop. Actors' -- even the smartish ones -- opinions: still generally not a great foundation to base your own views on, and who knows what they're actually thinking, though good on Cumberbatch for recognizing his power and reach, and/or simple need to preserve his reputation in attempting to clarify that he isn't a daft monster. Cumberbatch does truly own the internets, and damn, I wonder how much his publicist makes.

If you're still wondering about why anyone would care about what someone like Benedict Cumberbatch thinks is at all important: The Banality of Systemic Evil)

Okay, okay.

Giving 26 interviews a day, being thrust into the spotlight because of a starring role in something that tackles extremely complex issues, and being just a plain old human with human vanity and human verbal diarrhea are probably factors. But still, I hate when this happens.

Benedict Cumberbatch: Chelsea Manning Got What She Deserved

Ugh, so disappointing.

But [her] superiors might have been right to say to [her], it’s not your position to be worried about it within the hierarchy of the military organisation, which is why [she] had to be sentenced. [She] took an oath, and [she] broke that oath.

Lesson numero uno, actors: don't open your pie holes when it comes to politics unless you're extremely well-versed in your comprehension of the issue, and your name is Matt Damon.

If they are saving lives, how can we say that’s less important than civil liberties?

Ummmm, maybe I should just stop reading about your opinions and just enjoy the shiny shiny? Oh god, can't. stop. reading.

Isn’t it hypocritical to say, we should know everything about you as a government, but the government can’t know anything about us?

For the reals? Mayday, mayday, hurtling uncontrollably toward becoming un-Batched. Sad panda.

And now a word from our author:

What is heartbreaking about this set of sentences? Aside from the abandonment of the notion that individuals are obligated to the best of their ability to discover and struggle for what is right—especially as they grow up—it’s the contradiction involved in simultaneous claims to sympathy for one’s fellow humans and unthinking deference to authority. With this statement, Cumberbatch leaves us to wonder whether he understands that governments are run by groups of individuals who often use state power for their own underhanded purposes[...]America’s founders accepted a measure of mass insecurity to preserve the personal liberty they knew was essential to democracy and human dignity and happiness. Cumberbatch is not an American, but one could think that the last two-and-a-half centuries of Western fealty to this idea might have made an impression on him.

Thank you for writing what I've been thinking, Alexander Reed Kelly.

I no longer feel like a lone voice, screaming in the darkness.

When You Work at a Nonprofit

There's no point in placing any one gif in this blog post -- they are ALL relevant. *cries*

There have been a few essays and articles posted in the last few months about the second coming of Bay Area tech that are, both separately and together, very interesting indeed.

First, in both timeline and foundation:

Rebecca Solnit's excellent essay on the burgeoning San Francisco dot com environment, for London Review of Books

All this is changing the character of what was once a great city of refuge for dissidents, queers, pacifists and experimentalists. Like so many cities that flourished in the post-industrial era, it has become increasingly unaffordable over the past quarter-century, but still has a host of writers, artists, activists, environmentalists, eccentrics and others who don’t work sixty-hour weeks for corporations– though we may be a relic population. Boomtowns also drive out people who perform essential services for relatively modest salaries, the teachers, firefighters, mechanics and carpenters, along with people who might have time for civic engagement. I look in wonder at the store clerks and dishwashers, wondering how they hang on or how long their commute is. Sometimes the tech workers on their buses seem like bees who belong to a great hive, but the hive isn’t civil society or a city; it’s a corporation.

Onward, to the intersection of this phenomenon with philanthropy and community:

The Bacon Wrapped Economy

More young people have more money in a more concentrated place than perhaps ever before. Old money is being replaced by new, but it's a new kind of new, one that has different values, different habits, and different interests than the previous generation. The very rich have always, to a greater or lesser degree, been guilty of excess, but what's changed is that the Bay Area's new wealth doesn't necessarily have the perspective, the experience, or the commitments of the group it's replacing.

And that brings with it a whole host of disparate side effects: The arts economy, already unstable, has been forced to contend with the twin challenges of changing tastes and new funding models. Entire industries that didn't exist ten years ago are either thriving on venture capital, or thriving on companies that are thriving on it. It is now possible to find a $6 bottle of Miller High Life, a $48 plate of fried chicken, or a $20 BLT in parts of the city that used to be known for their dive bars and taco stands. If, after all, money has always been a means of effecting the world we want to bring about, when a region is flooded with uncommonly rich and uncommonly young people, that world begins to look very different. And we're all living in it, whether we like it or not.

AKA, coffin nail number nine in my nonprofit career. I definitely saw this happening when I left my last nonprofit job -- the money is there, but the focus, priorities, and commitment of the donors are way less grounded in reality. I get that in the best of worlds this can also possibly make some nonprofits be a bit more accountable, and can possibly make the arts more dynamic, but what I'm actually seeing are the unsustainable side effects: fickle, less committed support in exchange for moving mountains, and shallow donors unaware of the issues that are important to vulnerable communities made up of folks who are definitely not bringing in a $2000+/week paycheck.

And lastly:

Oakland Ranks Number 11 on List of Best Cities for Tech Start-Ups

Here it comes.

Okay, so as much as I find start-up culture and tech drones and $25 cocktails somewhat sad, I continue to be torn by this type of stuff. On one hand, Oakland needs the tax base and has benefitted in many ways (still more so peripherally) from tech. And cities are living organisms -- always changing, growing, adjusting -- with the consequential growing pains, so why not? But is this stuff going to fix public schools? Save our community libraries? Lower crime rates? Or just get us more people in $100 hoodies gushing about how edgy Oakland is at their $40 brunch served by an ex-Oaklander who now commutes from El Sobrante? I fear we'll get folks who don't value or even SEE anyone else but folks like themselves.

But sooner or later, everyone has to live in the world they've created: "...now I can make a billion dollars building a cool photo app or targeting ads to people more effectively. And that is a problem: More and more people in tech are making huge amounts of money, and people aren't curing cancer because it's not an attractive thing to do."

We can dream, and this is the world we made?

I know it seems like I'm always posting about wife-beaters and sexual predators when it comes to privacy and civil rights, so let me say again, for real, it's not because of sympathy.

As a society, we knee-jerk when it comes to anything about these two button-pushing populations. We will sacrifice anything -- with nary a glance at how it may pan out in the long run -- ostensibly to protect ourselves, and that's what I find troubling.

So it was with interest that I have been following the match.com plan to check their user lists against sex offender registries, in the wake of a lawsuit against the company by a woman who says she was assaulted by a "match." All kinds of wrong, and the stellar Electronic Frontier Foundation (love them so much) says it best:

Sexual Predators, Please Check Here: Match.com’s Deeply Flawed Plan to Screen for Sex Offenders

I've heard people say, "if you don't like the policies, just don't use match (or FB, or insert-social-media-site-here)" but whether these policies are misguided, panic-induced, or actually well thought out ways for companies and the guvmint to work their way into your life, they have implications far beyond simply stringing up those we find distasteful "for the children" blah blah blah, and far beyond sites you just decide not to use.

I hate to be a killjoy, but OMFG.

"Starbucks' 31 Ounce "Trenta" Cup Size Set for US Debut

The new cups will be introduced Tuesday in 14 states: Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Hawaii, Nevada and Arizona.

Ummmm...

Most Obese US States

Sure, they're supposed to be for "iced beverages such as coffee, tea, or [sugar-filled] lemonade" but you know hella frappuccinos are going to be ladled into those things. Meh.

Ugh, one step forward for civil rights, and then two steps back, courtesy of the myopic sheep of California.

No Refuge For Domestic Violence Perpetrators

[California] Assemblywoman Fiona Ma, a San Francisco Democrat, has pushed for an online registry of men and women convicted of domestic violence. But her effort has gone nowhere because of concerns it would lead to reprisals or could mistakenly put innocent people on the danger list...Ma says she'll try again but will need support from her critics.

aaaaaaannnnnnd...

No Halloween for Sex Offenders

...the Tulare County (of course) Board of Supervisors has passed a new measure banning sex offenders from decorating for Halloween or answering the door for trick-or-treaters...Public Defender Michael Sheltzer has raised concerns about the legality of the bill under state law and the First Amendment. After all, these people have served their time...

"After all, these people have served their time." Are we to believe that your civil rights are different after you have done your time? This is a slippery slope we are treading.

Now, before everyone gets their panties in a knot thinking that I have sympathy for sex offenders and wife-beaters, this is actually what I think: 1) some humans are vile, ignorant creatures who jump to wild conclusions about everything, want to blame everyone but themselves for their predicaments, and live in fear-filled boxes, all the while refusing to parent their own children lest they be blamed for screwing them up, and 2) civil rights are civil rights.

Besides the fact that I had an 18 year old friend in high school who had to ridiculously register as a child predator for having sex with his 16 year old girlfriend because her parents needed someone to suffer for the shame they felt, I also recognize that when we start chipping away at the civil rights of true undesirables (read: real child rapists, men who beat women, the Westboro Baptist Church, etc.), it is just a small skip-jump to trampling on someone's rights because oh, say, a community doesn't like child-free couples, or single moms, or people who aren't white or heterosexual. Or people who are JUST LIKE YOU.

My friend Brian just posted this on Facebook; we'd be wise to remember it.

The privacy and dignity of our citizens are being whittled away by sometimes imperceptible steps. Taken individually, each step may be of little consequence. But when viewed as a whole, there begins to emerge a society quite unlike any we have seen -- a society in which government may intrude into the secret regions of a person's life.

William O. Douglas

Heads up holiday travelers...














...or anyone who is frustrated with what seems like ineffectual airport security screenings, or concerned with intrusions on their privacy.

Do I Have The Right To Refuse This Search?

I believe what we have here is the beginning of the end of complacency. It is now apparent to me that in the haste to ensure compliance with procedures that are inconsistent if not inarticulable, TSA has hastened the likelihood of failure. If we do not insist that TSA work to create articulable policies that make sense, procedures that are explicit and consistent and training that supports both, then we are complicit in what will inevitably be an ultimate compromise of TSA.

By virtue of even minimal experience with TSA screenings, that's something that I think most every traveler suspects, but this former Assistant Police Chief's personal experience with the clear lack of training -- as well as incompetence and lassitude around supervisory chain of responsibility -- when it comes to the actual screening of potential terrorist threats is absolutely, well, terrifying.

That compromise may come in the form of terrorist attack, or it may come in the form of a collapse of public support. Either or both are inevitable. Either or both are preventable.

Safe travels, keep your eyes open, and remember that the airport is not a Constitution-free zone!

The single best thing I've read about the healthcare reform shitstorm happening right now in the U.S. of A.

Wow! Free stuff outside our building!



















Um, NO.

You've got to be kidding me.

This has got to be a joke. Or an ironic Dadaist art project for some super-jaded art students. Right?

Okay, am so over it. Thanks for the patience.

That poor kid.

Mail Goggles Might Prevent Email Regrets

If you're the kind of person who types tipsy and regrets it in the morning, Google's "Mail Goggles," a new test-phase feature in the free Gmail service, might save you some angst.

The Goggles can kick in late at night on weekends. The feature requires you to solve a few easy math problems in short order before hitting "send." If your logical thinking skills are intact, Google is betting you're sober enough to work out the repercussions of sending that screed you just drafted.

And if you can't multiply two times five, you'll probably thank Google in the morning.











[Y]ou can set up Mail Goggles to protect you from yourself at other emotionally vulnerable times — before your morning coffee, for example, or right after "Grey's Anatomy."

Once enabled, you can adjust when Mail Goggles is active in Settings.





I understand why relying on a computer program to pinch hit for someone's lack of common sense, foresight, and discretion is attractive in this, our godforsaken 21st century, but I also think of it as another notch in the belt of the infantilization of our culture.

Have a program take care of your drunken, slobbery lack of self control, and pretty soon you won't be able to control yourself when you're just in need of coffee or the traffic was bad on the way to work. And if you're so damaged you write shitty emails while at the same time forgetting simple math, you need consequences just so you can learn from them, and maybe gain some self-respect, you big baby!

Hey, I'm not all fascist, pull yourself up by your bootstraps bitch about this. I recognize that people are human, not machines. Part of being human is about making mistakes and forgiveness. So what if you send the occasional less than wonderful email when you're vulnerable? But, on the same token, being human is also about weeding out folks in your life who are perpetually less than wonderful. I need the rash and unfiltered populace as my yardstick!

Anyway, please, people, take some responsibility for yourselves. Man up!

I really can't stand the writing of the author of this article (so much so I'm not naming him for any further free publicity), but I do like the subject matter.

So, what are your greatest rock and roll myths? (And I just have to say, haha, Robert Plant, you card.)

I was quite surprised that the first one that popped into my mind -- the old school yarn of a Bowie/Jagger affair -- didn't make the cut. Glamorous myth, or glamorous truth?

But I must agree: that "half-eaten backstage deli tray by a moth-eaten couch under the green glow of fluorescent lights" is truly the sad, sad backstage reality that kills the glamorous rock and roll backstage fantasy.

Though, in my case, it was more like cheap alcoholic leftovers in a plastic bus tub -- filled now with more water than ice -- sitting by a moth-eaten couch in a room with one window, being scavenged by a local tambourine player/record store clerk and his coked-up friends. Leftovers that were also being offered to me by a roadie who may have been thinking of me as a sexytime prospect. Oy vey.

I'm still disappointed from that complete nosedive of my backstage fantasy!

This Freakonomics post -- which postulates that the ever-widening gap between the rich and poor is a myth -- is quite frankly, ridiculous.

When people talk about inequality, they tend to focus exclusively on the income part of the equation. According to all our measures, the gap in income between the rich and the poor has been growing. What Broda and Romalis quite convincingly demonstrate, however, is that the prices of goods that poor people tend to consume have fallen sharply relative to the prices of goods that rich people consume. Consequently, when you measure the true buying power of the rich and the poor, inequality grew only one-third as fast as economists previously thought it did — or maybe didn’t grow at all.

The post goes on to state that the poor have that which cannot be named to thank for this glorious world where economic gaps are shortened or even eliminated by the fact cheap crap is so cheap, while the rich still have inflation to contend with when buying yachts or country club memberships.

Wow.

Then there are the comments! Going by the relative insanity of the post's premise, I suppose this could be valid:

I was watching a youtube video of Warren Buffet speaking to a group of university students. He said to them that really there’s not much difference between what they can consume and what he does, except for the fact that he can travel more.

I think the real gap between the middle-class and the uber rich is really not all that much. It’s a nicer house, car, more travel and financial security. But many of what I regard as the most important items are the same: mobile phones, computers, internet speed, roads and time don’t really have that much variation anymore.

Warren Buffet drinks the same coke I do, watches the same movie and tv shows and only has 24hrs in a day. Except for a jet and some fancy friends there’s probably never been a time in the world where the standard of living of the median before of America is so close to that of the richest person.

A stunted worldview which, to me, is in part the sad, sad result of tech-libertarianism. Something I see every day here in the Bay, and a rant for another day.

More important and true, but still not quite hitting the mark for me:

I am beginning to fear that quality is becoming synonymous with luxury. While the rich can afford quality goods that will last a long time and retain resale value, the poor are doing little better than “renting” goods, which quickly wear out and require replacement, or buying good that exact a high external cost on their health or time. In either case the long term advantage will be to the wealthy who can continue to invest in their future, while the poor will continue to have all of their income drained away.

Somebody needs to do a study on the effect of diminished quality of the new globalized goods and see if there really are positive benefits or if we as a nation have found another way to extract a short term savings at a high long term cost.

Yes, the fact that Joe Schmoe can buy 20 pairs of crappy plastic shoes for the price of one pair of Italian leather loafers does not negate the fact that those loafers will most likely last longer than the combined lifespan of those 20 pairs of crappy plastic shoes. Nevermind how buying this cheap crap directly correlates to a warped conspicuous consumption, poverty-style, as well as commodity fetishism -- the latter being what I see as the hallmark of our increasingly ignorant, unapologetically selfish society.

But, while I do care about the steaming dump load that is cheap goods, even cheaper expectations, and the resulting cheapening of life that is defining the existence of a large portion of our world, this isn't my biggest issue with this post. The reason why I find this post so sad is thus: today I had a conversation with some friends about caring for our aging parents. We all have parents in different economic strata -- anywhere from "under" class to "capitalist" class. The only one of us not worried about how to take care of Mom and Dad is the friend with capitalist class parents. Also ironic and telling, given the subject matter of my post -- this friend majored in economics.

Healthcare. Quality, access, ability to pay. That is the vast in-equalizer, and it is a crime to write any paper or conduct any study on the gap between the rich and poor and come to any sort of conclusion that would care to be taken seriously without presenting that crucial factor.

In Houston, a Texan protesting amnesty for illegal immigrants argues that anyone who can't master English doesn't deserve to live in America.

Ugh. God forbid I should ever agree with off the deep end Debra Saunders, but her article lambasting $200,000+ earners who lambasted her for calling them rich is creating that (albeit, tiny) snowball in hell.

They see only what other people have and they do not have. They do not see what they have, but others do not. They apparently do not notice the people with whom they work every day who live on less. They are not chastened by SFGate.com commenters who were appalled that anyone would complain that he could not buy a home or put aside any savings on a measly $200,000-plus a year.

And these SFGate.com commenters pretty much say it all for me:

Okay, first off, I am in the family of three making under 50K a year category. If we made another $20K-150K a year it could all go to savings. I am sorry, but I see you guys out there with the $1000 strollers (when you could buy one for $10), the $4 Lattes (when you could make your own for 50 cents), the $100 pairs of jeans, the $100+ diaper bags... You think you are struggling, but what it really is is that we have been taught to hyper consume. And yeah, I know I am unlikely to be able to buy a home in the Bay Area, but that is no longer part of the middle class experience here in the Bay Area.

The clincher:

$200k per year IS rich, where you CHOOSE to live and HOW to spend it is a different matter, but it IS rich.

I grew up solidly working class, no fronting. I also grew up with a sense of need vs. want, and to value quality vs. quantity/keeping up with the Jones' (thanks Mom and Dad!). I have lived in the Bay Area -- one of the most "hyper-consumer" places in the world -- for 8 years. Most of the time, my honey has been in grad school (oh glorious graduation in December!), so we have never made enough to live more than paycheck to paycheck, yet we still vacation and eat organic and go to shows and aren't freezing in a cardboard box. We also drive a car from the 80s (when we drive) and live in a studio apartment, our idea of good meal out is usually under $30, and I would never spend $100 on jeans. Choices, baby.

I don't disparage people who make $200,000 a year and then make the choice to have a new car or eat at a fancy restaurant or buy the $100 jeans. I take extreme offense, however, at said person calling themselves working class (even middle class) or "struggling." Bitch, please. Pull your head out.

I have a good friend who lived on $7-9 an hour in Oakland for many years. She lived in a cooperative house, didn't own a car, and shopped at the thrift store. Girl saved a big chunk of change, put tens of thousands away in her retirement account, and still bought quality clothes and organic food.

Good choices can augment sparse economic reality, but nothing makes someone who earns $200,000+ a year struggle but ignorance.

Tibet, Taiwan, China's unapologetic eff-you to the international community by shielding Sudan from the UN Security Council, and all other politics aside -- at the end of the day, who says protest can't be both powerful and well-designed, and simply elegant in its message?

Wow.