MetaGrrrl – Hello. My name is Dinah Sanders. I've been blogging for over twenty years. I'm a web geek and writer. I like it that way.

So Much For There Being Any Corporate Good Guys

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.”

Election Slate March 2024

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 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/month per person out on the street where they cost the SF $5000/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.

WheelTotes and Tote-Totes, an SFMTA fanfic

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!)

Carl and the cookie and the Web

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.

A white man with brown hair and round wire-rim glasses looks at the camera with a suppressed smile. A cluttered office is visible in the background." title="A white man with brown hair and round wire-rim glasses looks at the camera with a suppressed smile. A cluttered office is visible in the background.

( 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.

Screenshot of a bright red page with blue links, black navigation (both in a typewriter font), and the name of the site in block yellow type with the O as a target and the W, R, and D in yellow circles with the letter in red. There are three images at quirky angles on the page: a gold glitter CNN log, a blued black-and-white image of a person in a porkpie hat with a pink sign saying Manic Love, and a confusing image of people with the white caption VideoFest Berlin. There's a 1995 copyright statement right on the page almost as big as the navigation statement on the bottom right and a big blue 'Powered by Silicon Graphics' in the center bottom below that." title="Screenshot of a bright red page with blue links, black navigation (both in a typewriter font), and the name of the site in block yellow type with the O as a target and the W, R, and D in yellow circles with the letter in red. There are three images at quirky angles on the page: a gold glitter CNN log, a blued black-and-white image of a person in a porkpie hat with a pink sign saying Manic Love, and a confusing image of people with the white caption VideoFest Berlin. There's a 1995 copyright statement right on the page almost as big as the navigation statement on the bottom right and a big blue 'Powered by Silicon Graphics' in the center bottom below that.

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”.

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.)

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."

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))

Carl Steadman, viewed from the side, wearing only boxer shorts and short socks, elbows on knees, looking at the camera with half-lidded eyes. He is a fairly skinny, not muscled, white boy. It’s simultaneously awkward and sexy.

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.

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 $2.00 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.

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!

Screenshot of Wikipedia entry for Carl Steadman updated to use the cookie as his picture.

Busy Year

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.

Musings on the changing nature of (social) media

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.

Here. Now.

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.

Joining Mastodon and Getting a Calm Setup

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.

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.

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:

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!

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.

The social media tide rolls in and out

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:

Twitter alert: "An update to your data-sharing settings. The control you have over what information Twitter shares with its business partners has changed. Specifically, your ability to control mobile app advertising measurements has been removed, but you can control wheter to share some non-public data to improve Twitter's marketing activities on other sites and apps. These changes, which help Twitter to continue operating as a free service, are reflected now in your settings."

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.

Election Slate November 2022

Governor: Gavin Newsom
I continue to be pleased with his work as Governor over a very turbulent period. With the challenges of climate change growing ever more intrusive, I want to see as self-sufficient a California as possible. Our economy is the 5th largest in the world and we need as effective a leader as Newsom.

Lieutenant Governor: Eleni Kounalakis
Seems to be doing a very good job judging by the state of the state.

Secretary of State: Shirley N. Weber
I like the job she’s been doing.

Controller: Malia M. Cohen
I’ve been pleased with her work in San Francisco and she handled the task of Board of Equalization well.

Treasurer: Fiona Ma
Another great, solid, long-term performer in the state’s best interests.

Attorney General: Rob Bonta
Done a good job since appointment, and doing an especially nice job at keeping the public informed; let’s keep him at it.

Insurance Commissioner: Ricardo Lara
Seems to be doing a good job; no compelling reason to disrupt things with a change.

Board of Equalization Member, District 2: Sally J. Lieber
Whether California’s Board of Equalization, the only elected tax board in the country, should exist at all is definitely a question. Certainly we need more protections against money flowing as campaign contributions to someone who may make a judicial decision for the donor. But while it exists we need good people elected to it. Lieber has good endorsements.

United States Senator (both term ending Jan 3, 2029 and remainder of current term): Alex Padilla
Easy choice. He was great as Secretary of State for California and it’s good to have him in the Senate.

United States Representative, District 11: Nancy Pelosi
In the primaries I was still in the same place I was two years prior on this. Pelosi served us very well in getting through four years of Trump/Pence/GOP policies without losing more ground than we did. Do I agree with her on everything? No. Is she as effective as anyone could be as Speaker of the House right now could be? Yes. Is there an obvious experienced next choice for Speaker of the House if she doesn’t remain in office? No. We need her insider savvy holding the line and taking the heat as we weather the next two years. (Also, it gives the progressives we’ve elected time to build a little more seniority and have a little bit better chance of important committee positions in any upward shuffle.) When the choice is Pelosi or a Republican, then I’m even more strongly in favor of Pelosi.

State Assembly Member, District 17: Matt Haney
I was impressed by Haney through the primary campaign, and am not a Campos fan.

Judicial positions: Yes
Judicial elections are bad. Judges should not be in the business of campaigning, raising money, and so forth; they should be appointed to life terms by the political branches, removable for cause. But here we are nonetheless. In California, justices of the Supreme Court and Courts of Appeal are appointed by the Governor, with periodic referenda on whether to “retain” them. Justices are almost always retained. Between 1934 and 1986, no justice ever failed his or her retention vote. In 1986, three justices of the Supreme Court were voted out (arguably) because of their principled opposition to the death penalty. No Justice has failed a retention vote since then. So, vote yes on retaining appellate judges! The fact that there’s a vote at all is bad, but the least we can do is vote “yes.” Especially for Goodwin Liu who will be excellent.

Superintendent of Public Instruction: Tony K. Thurmond
I’m glad I voted for Thurmond before and will do so again. Great endorsements. I first was drawn to him by his commitment to quality public school education and teaching critical thinking rather than a “teach the test” approach.

Member, Board of Education:
Member, Community College Board:
I’m neither a student nor a parent. Based on the candidate statements for BoE, I’m leaning Ann Hsu, Lainie Motamedi, and Lisa Weissman-Ward mainly because of the Scott Weiner endorsement.
Likewise for CCB, I’m voting for Thea Selby, whom I’ve supported in the past, and leaning John Rizzo because of the Scott Weiner endorsement and Murrell Green because of the Eleni Kounalakis endorsement and a strong candidate statement.
(I live in Dean Preston’s district and consider his endorsements a negative point for a candidate; he has not been a great advocate for the neighborhood and did some cruddy campaign stuff in the past when he first ran.)

Assessor-Recorder: Joaquín Torres
Seems to be doing fine.

District Attorney: Brooke Jenkins
Doing fine and good endorsements.

Public Defender: Mano Raju
Doing fine and hard to argue with that list of endorsements.

State Propositions
1 CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT TO REPRODUCTIVE FREEDOM: YES
Enshrine the right to abortion as a personal decision in the state constitution.
Planned Parenthood, NARAL, ACLU, California Medical Association, American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, League of Women Voters, and CA Democratic Party are in favor. Opponents (Republicans, California Conference of Catholic Bishops, Knights of Columbus, other abortion foes) say it’ll cost a bunch of money but current analysis is it will have no direct fiscal effects to the state.

26 ALLOWS IN-PERSON ROULETTE, DICE GAMES, SPORTS WAGERING ON TRIBAL LANDS: NO
Would legalize a bunch of sports betting at California American Indian casinos and racetracks. and tax it at 10%. Opposed by Republicans, existing casinos and racetracks, but also by SF Chronicle, LA Times, and Mercury News and East Bay Times Editorial Boards. There’s apparently been a bunch of lawsuit issues around sports betting and online gambling (see prop 27), and the funds this generates can fluctuate in ways that are risky for local government.
I’m not a big fan of gambling as a government revenue source—it’s exploitative in a way that other recreation isn’t. The immediate negative impact of this is probably going to be on existing card clubs. The long-term impact is probably going to be more money flowing into gambling as business and encouraging more gambling generally, which I don’t think is great for society.

27 ALLOWS ONLINE AND MOBILE SPORTS WAGERING OUTSIDE TRIBAL LANDS: NO
As above, but online which reaches even more people, even more easily, and even more likely to reach those to vulnerable to the harms of gambling. Seems to be an out-of-state gambling corporations power grab. The veneer on this one is funds for relieving homelessness, but best case likely would be less than $500 million per year with regulatory costs in the tens of millions. Opposed by the Democratic, Republican, and Peace and Freedom parties, which tells ya something.

28 PROVIDES ADDITIONAL FUNDING FOR ARTS AND MUSIC EDUCATION IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS: Yes
Sets a minimum source of annual funding for K-12 arts and music education funding. Nobody is opposing this. Gotta love seeing “If you are aware of any opponents or opposing arguments, please send an email with a link to editor@ballotpedia.org”!
Edited to add: One argument I’ve since heard is that this set-aside is fine while the state has lots of money but could lead to tough choices if finances get tight. I personally don’t think that risk is high enough to offset the benefits of the continuity of funding, the employment that comes with that funding, and the creative and inspiring education which kids really need. I’m still a Yes.

29 REQUIRES ON-SITE LICENSED MEDICAL PROFESSIONAL AT KIDNEY DIALYSIS CLINICS AND ESTABLISHES OTHER STATE REQUIREMENTS: NO, for the third time, NO
Back every other year with a crappy proposition, apparently, here’s SEIU-UHW spending about $8 million to try through government mandate to get the big dialysis clinic companies to change their processes and staffing. No other state requires a doctor on site, the patients who come to clinics already have a physician they work with, and this isn’t a matter for the ballot, particularly when there isn’t evidence the current arrangement has harmed patients.

30 PROVIDES FUNDING FOR PROGRAMS TO REDUCE AIR POLLUTION AND PREVENT WILDFIRES BY INCREASING TAX ON PERSONAL INCOME OVER $2 MILLION: YES
Great list of endorsements from firefighters, medical professionals, clean air advocates and other environmentalists. This impacts 0.2% of California taxpayers—that’s 1 in 500, because we’re a rich state. The rich here, as elsewhere, have benefitted from the same economy that helped create climate change and they’re rich enough to pay 1.75% more on the extra money they earn beyond the first $2 million (which should be enough for anyone). Note that Lyft has spent $35 million in support of this, leading Gov. Newsom to oppose it; but even though the state is doing a lot, we need to do more to decarbonize the state and it’s worth it even if Lyft benefits in the short term. LA Times Editorial Board opposes saying “Proposition 30 would push the top-earner rate to 15.05%, which is much higher than other states, most of which have income tax rates in the single digits” as if the other states have it right. I don’t think so, I don’t think we tax the rich enough and climate change is the most pressing problem we have, so let’s get that money to do something about it fast. The clock is running out on being able to make these changes.

31 REFERENDUM ON 2020 LAW THAT WOULD PROHIBIT THE RETAIL SALE OF CERTAIN FLAVORED TOBACCO PRODUCTS: YES
We do not need candy tobacco any more than we need candy asbestos. Will it cost Phillip Morris, ITG, R.J. Reynolds, Swedish Match, and American Snuff money? You know it must because they’ve shelled out nearly $21 million trying to get people to vote no. Big doners in support are Michael Bloomberg, Kaiser Foundation Health Plan, American Cancer and Heart and Lung Associations. Fuck the cancer profiteers; vote YES.

City and County Propositions
A Retirement Funding: YES
Tidy up retirement security for people who retired before late 1996. Rubberstamp by electorate on unanimous Board of Supervisors action. No opposition.

B Adjustments to Sanitation and Streets Department Affiliation: YES
Move Department of Sanitation and Streets back under DPW after vote to move it out to a separate department in Nov 2020. (That vote also created a separate oversight commission, which yes on B does not eliminate.) This streamlines government staffing and therefore costs to the tune of around $2.5 million a year ongoing, possibly more. Supported by the mayor, city administrator and lots of the board of supes, but opposed by sanitation workers’ union and related workers. I gotta say, I haven’t seen an improvement in the state of our streets in the past year, so having additional bureaucracy doesn’t appear to be an approach that’s actually creating results. Better to save the money and lean into not having corruption in that department. The opposition arguments are basically all the same argument with a different “we are the [workers] who [do dirty job]” phrasing. There isn’t a nuanced opposition to this which suggests the diverse support is more valid.

C Homelessness Oversight Commission: YES
Creates an oversight committee for the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing. Minimal fiscal impact. Rubberstamp by electorate on unanimous Board of Supervisors action. Opposed by Republicans and, in an odd combo, SF YIMBY. The latter is concerned it will slow down action and diffuse accountability, but if there were real worries there I don’t think we’d see an unanimous Board of Supes vote, so I stay Yes on this.

D Streamline Approval of Some Affordable Housing (from 80K+ signatures, pushed by YIMBY groups): YES
Fast-tracks multifamily affordable housing and still requires compliance with Planning and Building codes. Also requires certain projects to provide health care benefits to workers and apprenticeship opportunities. Minimal impacts on cost of government. Great endorsements including Habitat for Humanity, Scott Weiner, NorCal Carpenters Union, and SF YIMBY. Concerning opposition from SF Tenants Union, SF Labor Council, and Council of Community Housing Organizations who don’t like its definition of “affordable” and are opposed to building more market rate housing before below market rate. Personally I don’t think it is realistic to expect a ton of new below market rate housing to be build, but that an influx of any housing creates more affordable housing at the bottom of the total housing pool. San Francisco needs 82,000 more units by 2031 to preserve state and federal grants; we need to build and this will increase building.
If D passes with more votes than E, then E has no legal effect.

E Streamline Approval of Some Even More Affordable Housing (Poison pill for measure D; from certain generally anti-building members of Board of Supes in a 7 to 4 vote): NO
Fast-tracks 10+ unit, even more affordable than measure D housing and still requires compliance with Planning and Building codes. Has more requirements than D on compensation, workforce composition, and apprenticeship. Retains veto power of Board of Supervisors which measure D does not. Supported by many very very liberal organizations and individuals. Opposed by YIMBY groups. This promotes a lovely vision of more affordable, targeted to specific worthy groups housing, but suffers from the reality check of what building projects it will actually result in. It’s yet another case where the vision of nearly perfect won’t result in as much good actually resulting in the real world as the compromise with a good chunk of positive requirements. SF extreme liberals—and I chart pretty far left, so these are waaaaay left folks—have a real problem with holding out for ‘perfect or nothing’ and we end up with a lot more nothing.
If E passes with more votes than D, then D has no legal effect.

F Renew Library Preservation Fund For 25 Years: YES
Minimal impact on cost of government, as it just renews existing uses of property tax funds and other city revenues. Rubberstamp by electorate on unanimous Board of Supervisors action. No opposition. Libraries perform an absolutely vital service, even more so in an area like ours with profound income inequality.

G Grants to SF Unified School District: YES
Additional school district money for academic achievement and social/emotional wellness. Programs could include academic tutoring, math and literacy specialists, additional social workers, arts and science programming, or afterschool and summer enrichment. Nice requirements around school/parent/community involvement; it’s not a blank check for the school that gets the grant. Pretty significant fiscal impact, pulling money from General Fund to this allocation to the tune of $11 million next school year, growing to 35 and 45 the following two years, and 60 each year after that through fiscal year 2037-38. Rubberstamp by electorate on unanimous Board of Supervisors action. Widely supported by educators. Opposed by Republicans and anti-tax folks (the Howard Jarvis crowd). School kids got royally screwed by the pandemic; this is the chance to recover from it. We’re a rich city, it’s a solid investment, and it will pay off.

H Streamline Local Election Timing To Even Years, Change Minimum Number Of Signatures To Put Things On Ballot: YES
The election timing thing is a no-brainer; normal things around local office and measures elections don’t move so fast that we can’t do this every other year. Streamlines costs. This would extend the current terms of mayor, sheriff, district attorney, city attorney and treasurer by one year, and I’m fine with that. Currently to qualify for the ballot, a petition must include signatures from San Francisco voters equaling at least 5% of the votes cast for all candidates in the preceding election for mayor. As of July 2022, these petitions require a minimum of 8,979 signatures. That’s a really small percentage of the population to require all of us to research and vote on it. This only changes it to 2% of registered voters in San Francisco, which was 9,948 as of July 2022. Still pretty small, but better, and more tied to potential election participation rather than turnout. (Though it should be noted this will likely increase turnout.) Opposed by Ritchie Greenberg because it “undermines our democratic norms” and by other Republicans because the ballot in those years would be too long and voters would have to think too hard. Six ballot cards! Instead of the 5 we have this election. Oh the pearl clutching! Supported by pretty much everybody else.

I Cars On JFK Drive and Great Highway: NO
Got on ballot by signature drive. There are legitimate disability access concerns yes, but the new dedicated ADA space parking lot and the coming additional accessible shuttles (adding to the current every-15-minutes shuttle) are solving those issues, as well as the reduced traffic making things much more accessible for all. Measure I will also block the Ocean Beach Climate Change Adaptation Plan, which is just not okay. And it will mess up the lovely alternate weekend use of the Great Highway for non-cars. This is an end run around a two year public process that resulted in a workable compromise plan. Also probably will cost as much as $80 million in increased project costs to change the existing compromise plan. Some disability groups but by no means all, some museum groups, and some neighborhood groups, as well as driving advocates are in favor. SF YIMBY is opposed as are lots of of environmental groups, walking and biking groups, and SF Democratic party.

J People On JFK Drive: YES
This preserves the open spaces added during the pandemic on portions of JFK Drive and certain connector streets in Golden Gate Park, keeping them free from private cars seven days a week. The Mayor, Board of Supes, parks and green space fans, SF Democratic Party, waling and biking advocates, Scott Weiner, health care professionals, Honey Mahogany, nearby small businessfolk, SPUR, Church of 8 Wheels, YIMBY folks, etc. etc.are in favor. The folks who support I are opposed.

L Continue Half-Cent Sales Tax; Transportation Funding: YES
Continue the existing sales tax to pay for transportation projects another 30 years. Rubberstamp by electorate on unanimous Board of Supervisors action. No opposition other than anti-Muni gadfly David Pilpel and local anti-taxation/anti-government folks including of course Quentin L. Kopp.

M Tax Mostly-Vacant Residential Units In Three+ Unit Buildings: YES
Note that this isn’t an empty home tax as it exempts single family homes and duplexes, but it does incentivize getting people into existing housing or at least making some money from it to build new housing. This got to the ballot by petition. SF YIMBY is in favor, not because it will make a huge difference (brings in about $20 million annually since it probably affects about 8,000 not 40,000 units), but because it does something anti-development policymakers spend a lot of energy on and lets the focus move ahead to the real challenge of housing affordability not vacancy. Supported by SF Democratic Party, some housing access advocates, lots of local elected officials, diverse community groups, SF Tenants Union and related organizations, some labor unions, and the Coalition on Homelessness. Opposed by the SF Apartment Association and other landlords, and of course the anti-tax Howard Jarvis folks.

N Public Parking Under Music Concourse In Golden Gate Park Managed By Rec And Park Commission: YES
Placed on the ballot by Mayor Breed because the existing parking is expensive and sits vacant much of the year. Even with some subsidizing of parking for visitors, the City Controller says this may reduce government costs as it could allow refinancing existing debt. Walking advocates, neighborhood groups, SF Democratic Party, and SF YIMBY are in favor. No opposition.

O Additional Parcel Tax To Help Fund City College: Yes
This would not apply to those that don’t have to pay standard property taxes (e.g. certain non-profits) or to those in which one or more owners is 65 that fiscal year. Cheapest increase (one residential unit or for a duplex; or non-residential under 5,000 square feet) is $150 for 2023. Highest is non-residential over 100,000 square feet at $4,000.
This is opposed by Mayor Breed, Supervisors Peskin and Stefani, and (strange bedfellows) public conservative and anti-taxxer Quentin Kopp, on the grounds that a lot of money has already gone to City College, the school has had lots of problems, and there isn’t even a plan for spending the funds. Lots of large apartment landlords and realtors are also opposed (the latter apparently most incensed by the idea that commercial real estate will be “taxed like a taxpayer’s home!” I don’t think they workshopped that to see how it sounds from the outside.)
It’s supported by Board of Supes President Shamann Walton, the City College Faculty and Staff unions, Firefighters Local union 798 (because City College has fire training programs), and many diverse other individuals and groups including lots of educators.
I do see the reasons for a No, but I think there are stronger arguments for continuing to invest in City College as a vital tool in helping address income inequality in San Francisco. City College is a much needed ladder to help people have greater ability to earn a living.

Reduce your front-door distractions!
Once you’ve filled out and mailed or dropped off your ballot, put your “I voted!” sticker on a piece of paper and tuck it under the edge of your doorbell. Saves you from folks pointlessly coming to the door trying to swing your vote.

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