221–230 of 312 posts
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The utopia created by hackers on this very site
Every action is political and ignoring that reality is how many of these problems are created in the first place. This is why many tech workers "hate politics", they hate having to be responsible for their actions.
People working to fix the problems: https://yimbyaction.org - get involved!
So the only solution is a even higher population density?
* A desirable place to live
* No growth
* Affordable
And for growth, you get to pick a mix of growing out, in and up. San Francisco proper obviously can't sprawl, so it needs to grow in and up. And the surrounding suburbs need to start doing their part too.
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Having lived here for 20 years, I can say things are a great deal better than they were before the Downtown tech explosion that happened 10 years ago. Market was filled with pushers you would only now only see on 6th St, and I literally saw a drive-by shooting (resulting in murder) on Mission at 19th (Beauty Bar). Both of those things are unthinkable today. I feel like people are forgetting how bad things use to be.…
I lived there ten years ago, too. You’re remembering selectively. Yes, the Mission has gentrified and mid-market is a bit cleaner. But now there are widespread homeless camps, and open defecation and needles (formerly isolated to certain neighborhoods) are everywhere. And it’s not as if the Mission crime has gone away - it’s just further south now. Property crime is up; even in SOMA, broken car windows were an occasi…
Having lived in SF for a number of years now, I 100% agree that SF is just dystopian as hell. Trash everywhere downtown, human feces/needles/smell of urine all over downtown & SOMA, depressing mix of aggressive and zombie-like homeless, very few kids/families, very few minorities (especially African-Americans), barely functioning public transportation system, high rents forcing six-figure earners to live with 2 roomm…
How is it that so much aggressive political rhetoric related to race and the tech industry is coming from this area if there are very few African Americans there in the first place? I live in Atlanta where the minority population is much higher all around and I don't get the sense at all that there's rampant racism or discrimination. Is this problem unique to the Bay Area or is this largely white guilt?
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I have to wonder... Do all the southern racists hide it less... Or are there so many blatant racists that the coy ones are a lot harder to detect? I'm sure there are plenty of racists everywhere, but I do find it hard to believe that there aren't more percentage-wise in the south.
I think you're asking the wrong question with the "more" or "less" type thinking. My own view is that everyone is prejudiced. But people are different. Some are prejudiced and loud mouthed. Some are prejudiced and liars. Some are prejudiced and just quiet. But everyone is prejudiced, so does it matter if one is more loud than the other? I mean, if you go into a room full of pregnant high school girls, sure, some are…
The difference is what you do with it. If you treat someone poorly because of your prejudice about their skin color instead of giving them a fair chance, then you're racist.
But I questioned if the feeling that "everywhere is equally racist" is valid, or if the south is actually still more racist, but all the loud racists make it harder to spot the quiet ones, compared to an area that's filled with quiet racists instead.
It doesn't matter if they say the racist thought out loud and then act on it, or they just act on it. Both things are racist. Magicians use misdirection to hide what they're really doing, and I'm suggesting that quiet racists in the south hide their activities by letting the loud racists take all the attention.
That said, I've lived in the south all my life and heard plenty of racism of many different kinds. I lived in Cali for 1.5 yrs and didn't hear much at all, and because I'm white I didn't experience much, either.
The only incident that I recall was being told that I walked through a neighborhood that was very dangerous to white people. I didn't feel threatened, and I don't even think I saw any people there. But I was told later that I should never walk there again, for my own safety. To this day, I don't actually know if that neighborhood really was dangerous to white people, or if the white person I was talking to was just being prejudiced.
However, I did notice that while people talked nicely and smiled, people weren't actually being any friendlier than back where I was raised. They were just hiding things better.
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I think you're asking the wrong question with the "more" or "less" type thinking. My own view is that everyone is prejudiced. But people are different. Some are prejudiced and loud mouthed. Some are prejudiced and liars. Some are prejudiced and just quiet. But everyone is prejudiced, so does it matter if one is more loud than the other? I mean, if you go into a room full of pregnant high school girls, sure, some are…
Some are "negatively" prejudiced (racists), some are positively prejudiced (~progressives). Very few people in my experience are able to think about this topic in a purely rational and non-emotional manner.
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A black friend of mine lived in Savanah, ATL, NYC and in the Midwest. She said that you find just as many racists everywhere, but she “appreciates” the (urban) Southern racists ones more because they don’t try to hide, so she knows where she stands.
I have to wonder... Do all the southern racists hide it less... Or are there so many blatant racists that the coy ones are a lot harder to detect? I'm sure there are plenty of racists everywhere, but I do find it hard to believe that there aren't more percentage-wise in the south.
Isn't that statement prejudiced and discriminatory toward people living in the South? You're doing exactly what it is you're accusing and entire geographic region of doing.
Why do you think there are more racists in the South? Why do racists believe what they do? I suspect the answer is the same to both those questions.
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I have to wonder... Do all the southern racists hide it less... Or are there so many blatant racists that the coy ones are a lot harder to detect? I'm sure there are plenty of racists everywhere, but I do find it hard to believe that there aren't more percentage-wise in the south.
I'm from the south, lived all over in urban and rural areas. Urban areas were the most racist (seemingly out of fear in most instances) by far. It's not overt either; the passive-aggressive stuff is real. Rural area racists seemed to be just uneducated/full of bad info on the most part, but also more vocal. I've also encountered more racists in the northeast than anywhere else (maybe they think I am too because of my…
This the most unexceptional, unoriginal wrong talking point that always comes up in these conversations. I've heard it my entire life growing up in the south, and it constantly betrays the OP's actual experiences when dealing with this matter.
It's a southern apology. And a really dumb one at that, fueled by a bitter "us vs. them" mentality ripe everywhere in the south.
There is absolutely no data point supporting this position. Not one. People who live in cities and metro areas are consistently significantly less racist than people who grow up in homogeneous communities, especially compounded if that community is a rural one. What fits both of those criteria? Generally the south.
I've lived in New York City for about 25 years in three different boroughs, and as as a member of the "arty bohemian gentrifier" class I was in transitional low-income areas and things like occasional street crime, gunshots and stuff like that were not unusual. But only once did I actually see two street people start a knife fight on a subway train and it was during one of my probably less than five short visits to S…
maybe 1/2 of my friends from college live in SF. I have a huge social network here. Objectively the city is not awesome, but I can't imagine moving somewhere else and starting from scratch. Lots of tech workers are in this situation IMO.
It's weird that technology oriented people see code/IT in terms of infrastructure, but too little from a city as such. I'm living in Vienna, Austria which is a city consistently rated to be in the top 5 most livable cities by multiple independent evaluations. How did that happen? A strong sense of ownership and infrastructure thinking over a _century_. Just to mention the obvious, property prices do not exist in a va…
It also helps that Vienna's population has been basically flat for many years. By contrast the prior #1 most liveable city - Melbourne - has grown from 2 million 30 years ago to 5 million currently, forecast to get to 8 million by 2050, all due to mass immigration. Livability has fallen directly in line with population growth. I've lived in a lot of cities around the world and think there is a 'sweet spot' population…