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That's not the effect of weed. That's the effect of socialism. People who smoke weed too much lack the energy to screw up their lives so badly they become homeless.

Socialism is the result of too many lazy people without morals. People lacking energy and motivation to go to work to support themselves end up voting for socialism so that they can live for "free" off the backs of hard working people paying all the taxes necessary for the gov't to give out free shit.

In fiscal 2013-14, San Francisco handed out 3.3 million needles at a cost of $400,397. Two years later, it handed out 4.45 million needles at a cost of $523,363.

That's because people have had less withheld throughout the year. Your refund doesn't tell the whole story in what your total taxes were. In truth, only about 9% of wage-earners will have a higher (total annual) tax bill.

https://www.sfchronicle.com/bu...

Also, the state with a huge budget surplus.

Acres burned were dropping until the 1990s (when climate change was, you know, happening). Then harvesting of timber in California dropped dramatically in the mid 1990s, and we see an uptick in fire coverage - mainly driven by California.

Coincidence or causation? Well, given that California has a record amount of dead trees out there, it's not a big leap to say that reduced harvesting is a problem. And given that lots of people in CA believe logging dead trees is bad, we shouldn't be surprised at the fuel - and subsequent fire - increase happens.

THAT is how you cite your argument. Simple, see?

I know a couple landlords, and in their city, they describe property assessment as a big, corrupt game. The tax assessor always over-assesses. Property owners are compelled to fight the unreasonable assessment, generally using property lawyers. The tax fee is then reduced. The lawyers get paid, and donate heavily to the reelection campaigns of the tax officials.

Apple must contest, but the question is whether they should make an absurd lowball claim or a realistic one. I would say that depends on how reasonable the tax assessors are in Cupertino.

By the way, the article the summary linked is just tripe. The original article is here: https://www.sfchronicle.com/bu...

If they had done any research they would have found out that the community benefit district for that area, a local government agency, had renamed the area to the East Cut over a year ago.
They spend tax money on advertising it and probably went to google to get the name to reflect what the city wanted.
This was not some sudden change caused by google, nor an example of how google is a final arbitrator of names.
it is just another daily example of how the new york times is worth for journalism and its only value is in wiping down the street of San Francisco.

https://www.sfchronicle.com/ba...

San Francisco already spends over $40k per homeless person per year. Citation (There are roughly 6,000 homeless people in SF).

If Govirnment spending would have fixed the problem, certainly twice the poverty line per homeless person is sufficient. Those are just city dollars. That doesn't include the county, the state, or the federal government programs and services these guys have access to.

We know most of it is spent on cronyism, contracts to businesses their friends own, and misappropriation. Otherwise, you could just cut checks and they could rent apartments 3 or 4 to a housing unit, literally anywhere else in the country.

Given our current embarrassment we call a support system, I'd rather just cut all of these programs, and all of the entitlements, all of them, and just start a minimum income via a negative income tax.

Democrats won't have that. They want the pork-barrel buffet of these "entitlements" so they can rip it off. For shame.

I can't speak for all of America, but Crime on BART is real and rising. Gangs of people come to a platform, rob everyone, beat the few who resist, then run away before police arrive. Sometimes they board trains, too. It's not a very good situation.

One way justice system.

Rather depressing since sometimes reality likes to assert itself in extremely unpleasant ways. . .

Agreed.

California has areas with serious problems with affordable housing.

And that literally has nothing to do with the cost of the houses themselves but rather their scarce availability.

Not so. California's housing prices are a huge part of their affordable housing problem. In the booming tech cities, housing prices have gone up so much that minimum wage workers can't afford to live in the city they work in.

Here’s how many minimum-wage hours it takes to afford a two-bed in SF
Low-wage jobs are plentiful in S.F., but where can you live?
I tried living on an $8 per hour salary in San Francisco and it was a disaster

This is required for the basic habitability of our planet.

You are dismissing an entirely valid line of thinking. In this specific case, the real goal is to make houses energy efficient, or carbon-neutral, or something like that. There's many ways to do that other than solar panels. Maybe someone wants to use a geothermal energy system, or a wind turbine. Or maybe they don't want to connect to the grid at all. Maybe they want to use a passive cooling design and a green roof. Often times regulations that tell people *how* to solve the problem are really corporations trying to use the regulations to steer people toward their products. Like requiring a particular safety valve, that only one company has a patent on. This prevents other companies from innovating by developing similar products.

And mainstream America doesn't even want to tell Californians how to live,

False. You know who claims to represent "mainstream America" ? A certain authoritarian President who is on record as demanding the California, the despised and despicable state of the nebulous, "non-mainstream America"
is the enemy that must be cozened into doing the right thing for its own good. Even a claim they had millions of illegal voters because oh wait, that dope lost big in California.

It's "mainstream America" that keeps insisting on putting their anti-environmental(see Scott Pruitt's EPA), welfare reform(POWA), coercive criminal justice(1994 Crime Bill, anti-Marijuana legalization), and anti-immigration agenda(see Jeff Sessions), anti-same sex rights (DOMA) as the one and only true righteous path, and if you don't remember, try reading.

Sorry, but believe it or not, when you have endorsed a guy shouting on a podium how he's going to boss everybody around, both within the nation and outside it, you have a problem with people not believing you when you try to claim otherwise.

Remember, some of us know about P. T. Barnum. You can only fool people for so long before they smell a rat.

And boy do you reek.

The car appears to be a Ford Fusion (probably hybrid).

Is that your professional opinion? Because anyone who has been on Mill Ave in Tempe at night knows that Uber drives Volvo SUVs.

Why exactly do you think it didn't stop? This photo would suggest it did, where did you hear that it kept driving, and for how long?

The rest of the sentence was more baseless assumption, specifically, you're assuming the vehicle (or a driver) was able to see the person, and also able to react in time. But no, she was "invisible", let's go with that. Sorry if I don't want to respond to all of your baseless assumptions.

Since this is so full of assumptions, let's start with evidence.

This story shows the stopped vehicle, with damage to the right side. The sign in the photo looks like this sign. Despite articles claiming she was walking in a median, it looks like she was on the right sidewalk, especially considering the right-side damage on the car and the fact that the driver said it "happened in a flash" and that he only became aware of the collision because of the sound. If you look south in the direction where the car was coming from, there's a tree there covering part of the sidewalk. I'm going to assume that's where the woman was, maybe in the grassy area near the bench trying to cross the street to the median and ran or rode her bike off the sidewalk directly into the path of the car, which based on the picture looks like it was entering the right turn lane. The Tempe police chief, Sylvia Moir said this:

From viewing the videos, “it’s very clear it would have been difficult to avoid this collision in any kind of mode (autonomous or human-driven) based on how she came from the shadows right into the roadway,” Moir said.

So, from the evidence I'm looking at, and acknowledging that I haven't seen the video, it sounds like this woman came from behind a tree into the roadway and directly in the path of the car, with the driver first becoming aware that she was there when he heard the impact.

Now, what conclusions are you going to make about the capabilities of the sensor array, cameras, and software of the car? The driver himself says he never saw her - are you going to continue to assert that a human would have performed any differently? Could the driver have even seen the woman from behind the tree from 150 yards away like you keep saying?

If you want me to go look at the current state of that tree I can, I'll even check for recent marks where it may have been trimmed over the last day or two. I can tell you that, based on my own experience, the east side of the street right there does not receive heavy foot traffic at 10pm at night. The only destination is that theater, and it's on the other side of the street.

OK, your turn. Tell me all about how a person definitely would have seen her from 150 yards out and how the car lacks sensors and cameras.

https://sf.streetsblog.org/201... https://www.sfchronicle.com/ba...

Digging a multi-billion dollar tunnel for a few thousand daily riders that would have easily been served on improved buss service. It is of course delayed and massively over budget. In the meantime the real need was for transit up and down the peninsula. The tech companies you seem to harbor ill will against quickly put together their own mass transit, bus service in a few months had thousands of daily riders on a relatively fast, efficient, clean and safe service.

Likewise Uber/Lyft and others filled the gap when municipal taxi commissions and municipal mass transit failed at their jobs. I'm no fan of the ridehailing apps, but they exist based on government's failures.

But the guy they quoted in the article already had a public sector job.

Here is the article cited: https://www.fastcompany.com/40498626/instacart-workers-are-striking-over-wages-reportedly-as-low-as-1-an-hour. There is only one "guy quoted," and the quote is "some shoppers are being paid less than the federal minimum wage, like a Jackson, Miss., worker who put in a 19-hour week in Jackson, Mississippi, that paid out $37.75 (roughly $2/hour)." No mention of a job in the public sector.

Here is the second article cited http://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/Instacart-workers-plan-Sunday-Monday-strike-12366805.php. Two Instacart workers are quoted. Neither mentions a job in the public sector.

Here is the third article cited, the ars technical article: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/11/some-instacart-workers-to-strike-over-pay-that-can-be-as-low-as-1-per-hour/. Ah-- at last-- Six people were quoted, and three more people's wages were listed (but they weren't quoted directly). ONE of the many people quoted was the guy who said he had a civil service job.

So it's a little disingenuous to say "the" guy they quoted in "the" article.

So. What you meant to say was ONE of the large number of people quoted in the three articles cited also had a full-time job.

Yes, we know But, you know, there's someplace between "California" and "Papua New Guinea" that still works well and isn't taxed to death.

Well, California works quite well, so they're not taxed to death, sorry for breaking the news to you.

San Francisco's city budget is about the size of Tennessee's state budget. At what point do we realize that something just isn't right about this?

Hmm, now?

I mean, 9 billion versus 37 billion. That's only off by 4. And not even comparable, since the budget of the state of Tennessee isn't covering the same things that San Francisco's city budget is. A lot of what San Francisco the city does is also done at the city and county level in Tennessee.

So bad enough you totally bullshitted on the numbers, you're bullshitting on the funding principles.

We have roads, sewer, a police force, schools, etc. They're paid for with a state sales tax that's 9.25%, about what CA pays. But we don't have a state income tax. We realize that we don't need it.

Much of the expenditures for police in Tennessee is paid for with property taxes. As are schools but well, courts are hearing if it's underfunded.. And the state just passed an increase in its gas tax to pay for roads.

I'm sorry you don't know how things work, but that you don't know is quite detrimental to your own ability to communicate your ideas.

CA's tax structure is maniacal, and the wealthy people who set this up have no idea how badly they're screwing the middle and lower classes.

Yet you have demonstrated no knowledge about your OWN state's funding or taxes, let alone another one's.

Apparently...

And for some crazy irony, my captcha is: STRESS

I don't believe you are sitting there waiting for scripts 7 days a week. Or maybe I do. Is you title sr computer operator?

I have a regular job that pays the bill and I have my own company. It's not unusual for entrepreneurs to work seven days a week. I'm currently running a script pinging systems while listening in to a conference call at my bill-paying job.

[...] you are a fat fuck who has a chin on his chin [...]

That picture was taken four years ago and I didn't start my 1,500-calorie diet until recently. There two types of people on Slashdot: the ones who see my picture and come back with "you are a fat fuck", and everyone else.

I bet when someone gets stuck next to you on a plane they ask to be moved.

I never had that problem. I'm heavy but I'm not wide enough to pay for an extra seat.

The fact that you went to a comic book event to see captain kirk actually proves my point about you socializing on slashdot.

I also saw astronaut Buzz Aldrin's presentation on going to Mars.

http://www.sfchronicle.com/science/article/Astronaut-Buzz-Aldrin-champions-science-during-11092087.php

But when the majority of H1-Bs requests in 2015 coming from Infosys, Tata, Wipro, Accenture, IBM & Deloitte I fail to see how any company like Google and Microsoft are benefiting from H1-Bs which still seems strange since they're leadership is the one lobbying loudest in congress for them. Especially since they've all been yelling for Coding Schools and STEM education at the same time.

Import the cheapest labor possible, it's 80%+ from India, and they're disposable. The American Dream.

"A company who has refused to follow state and city laws for years is ignoring more laws."

...in a city which itself ignores the law.

You mean how to build an economic powerhouse that pisses away billions,
http://www.sfchronicle.com/pol...

destroys affordable housing, forcing the poor to live in tent cities,
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...

and is hugely racist
http://www.thetoptens.com/most...

Why the hell would we want the folks in that state to have the ability to override the popular vote in the other 49 states, when they can't even get their own state into the democratic socialist utopia they're trying to make?

California has very serious financial problems:

http://www.sfchronicle.com/pol...

These are worsened by the outflux of people from California:

http://knowmore.washingtonpost...

In fact, without its massive illegal population, California would be losing several congressional seats (which is why Californian politicians love illegals so much).

Combined with these little buggers it doesn't help the situation

You ain't wrong there, buddy. That's another issue, in addition to my other post.

http://www.sfchronicle.com/bay...

For example, we can all see that homelessness is a problem in SF, but we mostly ignore it. There are only 7,000 homeless people in SF, amongst a population of a million. If each of us gave a dollar a day, the problem would be easily solved. But when was the last time you gave a dollar to a homeless person? Not very often, if you're average.

San Francisco spent $241 million on homeless services in 2015, or about $0.82 per day per person. As far as I can tell there is still a big homeless problem, and officials admit they are not able to track the results.

Are you saying that $241 million per year is not enough but $294 million would miraculously solve the problem?

San Francisco has done just that, moving nearly 12,000 into free housing. Problem is, they still have the same number of homeless. And now the expense and burden of free housing for 12,000 people.

Funny that the outhouse is calling someone else full of shit... Over the last 12 years SF has moved 12,000 homeless into permanent shelters - and STILL has the same number of homeless. So you still have the same homeless problem, but now have an additional 12,000 in free housing. Hurray!

And you still have the same number of people shitting in the streets...

It's been tried in SF. If my memory is correct, the city spends around $60,000 per homeless person per year trying to help them (the current year's homeless budget is $241 million http://www.sfchronicle.com/bay...). In many cases, when they were simply given homes they then proceeded to trash them and make them uninhabitable (ie condemned). They were then back on the street again, and more money had to be spent making the home liveable again.

The issue is that the homeless in SF are either mentally ill, addicts, or both. You can give them homes, but if you don't treat the underlying issue you're just throwing the money (and homes) away. But when treatment is a requirement for housing, they walk away and go back to living on the street. So what's the solution?

Many of the people simply don't want help and would rather live on the street. Just the other week, one homeless guy who camps in the doorway of my building drank all day until he passed out. An ambulance was called, he fought them, but they ended up restraining him and taking him to the hospital. Two days later he was back again. The following day he was again passed out and unresponsive in the street, and the ambulance came again. Repeat a few days later. It happens a few times a week with several people, and this is just in front of my building across the bridge in the Oakland/Berkeley area. San Francisco is worse. I can't count the number of times I've seen people shooting up. So do you force these people into rehab? Arrest them? What's the solution? Simply giving them a home won't work.

Well, I don’t think much about how to make MUNI better. I mostly ride bicycle everywhere. More bike lanes, and bike lanes that are separated by physical barriers against cars, would be good. Oh, how I hate dodging cars on Folsom, as they cross the bike lane to turn right or deliver something.

The Van Ness BRT is a decent start, but I would really prefer if they got fast vehicles that didn’t put out so much noise and soot. Preferably electric. They need more tunnels and more routes where mass transit is not delayed by car traffic. They could also run small buses during low-traffic times, instead of chugging those empty monsters across my window at midnight every night.

My major problem, in terms of user experience, is that I must budget 1 hour of time per transfer to get anywhere. When I’m going between residential neighborhoods, this frequently means I should budget 2 hours to reach my destination. The city is only about 10 miles across. It shouldn’t take 2 hours.

Families need $200,000 to live comfortably in S.F..

Simple solution: Live in Oakland, and take BART to work.
Another solution: If you make $100k, live with a partner that also makes $100k.

Sure, you can put the savings toward a good set of body armor you'll need to handle the barrage of gunfire that will invariably greet you each morning on your walk to the nearest train station!

Families need $200,000 to live comfortably in S.F..

Simple solution: Live in Oakland, and take BART to work.
Another solution: If you make $100k, live with a partner that also makes $100k.

Funny you should mention that. See, from what I've seen, most techies in the Bay area are underpaid.

Families need $200,000 to live comfortably in S.F..

When I see averages of $135K for developers, I just think a lot of techies don't have a clue. And it explains why the companies out there prefer 20 somethings: they're too stupid to know better.

Sure you can live out there cheaper - if you want to rent a basement room in some old lady's house or commute an hour or so one way.

I'd love to move back home (Berkeley) but no one is willing to more than triple my salary so I can keep up my lifestyle: $80K in Metro Atlanta is like $300K out there. A 68% increase in pay doesn't compensate for a 300% increase in living costs.

Land transactions on the water have fallen off a cliff so to speak,

In California, literally.

She states in her original post that she lives far enough out in the East bay that her daily commute via public transit is $5+ each way. $10/day * 5 days a week * 4 weeks comes to at least $200 a month for transportation alone. Your rental search may have turned up a few $800/month apartments but generally those are either reserved for low income, or get you a small walk-in-closet sized bedroom in a house with 5+ roommates. Most listings on those sites are outdated and no longer available the day after they're posted and have 20-30 people fighting over them. Typical rent in Emeryville is about $1400 for a small studio, increasing by at least $100 annually. I just moved from there, precisely because it's that insane. It's pretty much impossible to find anything unless you're an exec or engineer making six figures. Another option is Oakland, but anywhere in Oakland you're looking at drug dealers and homeless heckling you as soon as you get near public transportation, and weekly shootings near your apartment. Bay area is hell on earth unless you're among the privileged six-figure crowd. #formerengineer

I have to wonder how much of the increase is due to the AirBNB effect.
http://www.sfchronicle.com/air...

I think this affects any major city now reducing the supply of apartments for rent / purchase and thus driving up rental and purchasing rates.

Talking to the police in order to secure my freedom inherently depends on an expectation of fair dealing by the police. That is why your argument against silence relies on an assertion that, as a matter of fact, institutional racism, sexism and homophobia do not exist, since if they do there can be no expectation of fair dealing.

If you really do need evidence to the contrary, then know that even in San Francisco, police arrested blacks for marijuana possession over four times as frequently as other races (past tense because SFPD recently stopped booking misdemeanor marijuana charges), even though they are a small minority in the city and use rates are higher among whites. In other Bay Area counties the problem is even more severe.

The Empire is reorganizing.

Marin movie mogul George Lucas said Tuesday he is consolidating four companies bearing his name into a single entity, Lucasfilm Ltd.

Lucas, whose first five "Star Wars" movies grossed a reported $2.1 billion, currently scatters 2,000 special-effects specialists, video game designers and other workers at four companies around Marin County: special-effects shop Lucas Digital, gamemaker LucasArts Entertainment, the lucrative Lucas Licensing and Lucasfilm. Most of those employees will relocate to a planned Digital Arts Center in San Francisco's Presidio in late 2005, according to Lucasfilm spokeswoman Lynn Hale.

In a statement on Tuesday, Lucas, who raced to fortune and fame with "American Graffiti" in 1973, laid out his company's plans to integrate operations.

"During the past 10 years, my companies have functioned relatively independent of each other. We have decided to bring these entities together. . . . This new structure will make it easier for our diverse talents to work as a team."

Simultaneously with news of the reorganization, Lucas announced the departure of Lucasfilm President Gordon Radley, who said in a prepared statement that he is leaving to pursue unspecified opportunities.

Lucasfilm's chief financial officer, Micheline Chau, appears to be the rising star in the organization, as Lucas promoted her to chief operating officer, charged with overseeing the new, unified company.

No mention was made of any layoffs from restructuring.

Privately held Lucasfilm is usually guarded when commenting about internal matters and keeps a relatively low profile between mega-projects such as "Star Wars" and "Indiana Jones" films. The company appears to be repositioning itself for the time, two or three years off, when the sixth and last of the "Star Wars" movies rolls into cineplexes.

The reorganization comes at a time when Lucasfilm faces some formidable competitors in the digital entertainment realm. Among them are Japan's powerhouse Sony Corp., struggling but massive AOL Time Warner and the animation specialists at Pixar Inc., a company that Lucas sold some time ago to Apple Computer Inc. CEO Steve Jobs. Pixar has subsequently earned critical and commercial success with its sophisticated use of supple computer animation.

"We're definitely looking to the future," Hale said. "It's a good time to do it. It's going to be a unified and diverse entertainment company."

Hale said the semi-autonomous structure of Lucas companies such as Industrial Light & Magic, which does contract work on a variety of Hollywood movies, has worked well in the past, but future needs require fewer barriers to collaboration.

"I think it did work. It built a success in various fields," she said. "We're a stronger company than we've ever been."

Gaile Daikoku, an entertainment analyst for GartnerG2, a research firm, said that cost-cutting could have been one factor behind the reorganization plan. Rolling all the units under one umbrella could eliminate duplicated efforts between the various units and reduce costs, especially in the administrative area.

Daikoku also said the change may be aimed at making it easier for clients to do business with Lucasfilm. For example, she said Fox, which is working with Lucasfilm on "Star Wars," may have had to call people at each of Lucas' several companies to discuss licensing of video games, toys and home video. Under a new organization, the job would be accomplished with one phone call, she said.

"You want to make it one face for the company versus five," Daikoku said.

Prior to Tuesday's announcement, Lucas had made some moves to reorganize his corporate ventures, which together racked up revenue of $1.5 billion in 2001, according to an estimate by Forbes magazine. Last May, for example, Lucas sold off THX, his sound design company, for an unspecified sum, to investors including Creative Labs.

Tim Schafer, a video game designer for LucasArts who left Lucas in 2000 after 10 years to start his own video game company, San Francisco's Double Fine Productions, said the Lucas reorganization might be smart from a creative,

as well as a business, standpoint.

"We used to wish there was more cooperation between Industrial Light & Magic and games, and now maybe there will be," Schafer said. "We used to gripe in the old days that we really could use some of ILM's resources."

Lucasfilm has two future features under development, according to Hale, who didn't offer firm release dates for them. Lucas's old film-school pal, Steven Spielberg, will direct the fourth "Indiana Jones" movie, with Harrison Ford reprising his role as the swashbuckling archaeologist, Hale said.

Meanwhile, Lucas himself is writing the sixth and, he says, concluding "Star Wars" movie, which he will also direct.
Lucasfilm Ltd. at a glance

Headquarters: San Rafael

Chairman and CEO: George Lucas

Workforce: 2,000

2001 revenue: $1.5 billion

Current projects: Building the $300 million Letterman Digital Arts Center at the Presidio, which will house 2,500 employees. Working on final chapter of the "Star Wars" series and another "Indiana Jones" movie, starring Harrison Ford and directed by Steven Spielberg.

Chronicle staff writer Verne Kopytoff contributed to this report. / E-mail David Armstrong at davidarmstrong@sfchronicle.com.

Be sure and email Wesley Morris, author of this fine article, and let him know what you think.