501–510 of 832 posts
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People sometimes use major airport codes as shorthand for a city or the metropolitan region the airport serves.
From my experience doing so is a good way of coming across as a douche tech-bro (“yeah, I’m so cool I use code names”). Particularly when the comprehensible way would be to write SF rather than SFO.
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Other comments mention that it's more visible in cities, but I'd like to add that "abject inequity and poverty" are national problems that cities cannot solve individually. Rural areas are given disproportionate political power in our national elections while cities go underrepresented. So national problems that affect cities go ignored.
If rural areas are given disproportionate political power, why can't political parties that feel this disadvantage do better in those areas? Why change the rules of the game instead of winning it?
A democrat could have genuinely good policy that would make an enormous difference for a lot of republican voters. But stances on social issues like gay marriage, gun control, etc, will make them unviable as a candidate. If they switch and support these issues, then they'll lose their primary.
Is the SF Bay Area the worst managed "successful" economic urban area in the world ? It performs pretty badly on public transport, safety, affordability & sanitation. All its pros seem to exist despite the management, and not because of it. (Universities, Jobs, Weather, Nature) I thought Greater Seattle was badly managed, but it has been funding light rail, missing middle-housing and recently started reversing the cr…
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We have an access road that was sized for utility trucks. We had to widen it slightly because of obscure California regulations. Widening it didn’t cost $1.7M. However, the cost per linear foot was within a factor of two of buying a line of Tesla Model 3s. This is in an unincorporated (rural) area, on a farm. The work lasted one rainstorm before needing extensive repairs. I’m completely unsurprised that building a hu…
Litigation is the enemy here. I’ve been in this from top to bottom and it’s always legal precedents that fuck everything up. Governing bodies, be they local or regulatory, are forced to broadly interpret legal precedent established in high profile situations, or small, specific legal settlements which have occurred at a local level. Lawyers then take this case law and work with bureaucrats to craft regulations and or…
> San Francisco, which is struggling with a troubling homelessness and public-defecation crisis, needs more public toilets. The irony in this statement, given the reasons why this toilet costs so much, is absolutely unreal. I had to check the date on this article to make sure it wasn't an old April's Fools skit or something, but it seems red tape and NIMBYism have escalated to such a degree in SF that (a) securing bu…
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this is a very a different sort of "bussing", it is state wide allocation of section 8 housing. they're not bussing people if they don't have section 8 already. Massachusetts does the same thing but from Boston to places like Fall River. Homeless are being bussed to SF without any housing arrangements.
At the end of the day we have more people coming into our community of who don't feel inclined to contribute to it. The pedantic semantics of the difference is immaterial to my peers and neighbors.
In contrast the tiny city of Zürich Switzerland has 106 public toilet facilities. [1] Some are staffed, some cost money to use and some are open 247. Does my tax money pay for this, yes, I have used them and I am glad they exist. The maintenance of these 106 facilities cost around 6,895,000 CHF (~USD) per year. Around 40% of that is staffing costs and 23% is rent to 3rd parties. Yearly investment in upgrades etc. is…
Probably one of the best choices of my live was moving out of S.F to Switzerland five years ago, the culture here is a lot less focused on virtue signaling and way more focused on working, being respectful about no making a lot of noise on your house and public transport, actually having good incentives and culture about recycling and the washing machine, ultra safe place in general. It only took me about a year of a…
I knew someone in S.F. who married a woman from Switzerland roughly 5 years ago and moved out there...did you work at a software consulting company in S.F.?
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If the SF local government were to substantially change, particular political party officials would be out of a job, because the city is run by one party, and is in fact the breeding ground of a lot of major national politicians from that party. People should think about this when they go to vote, because several SF politicians are attempting to potentially run for president and other national positions. One of them…
> is in fact the breeding ground of a lot of major national politicians from that party. Really? If Newsom runs for president, despite being somewhat moderate, he's going to have problems because Republican attack ads will frame him as the former mayor of the most liberal city in the country while showing pics of the TL in the background.
> San Francisco, which is struggling with a troubling homelessness and public-defecation crisis, needs more public toilets. The irony in this statement, given the reasons why this toilet costs so much, is absolutely unreal. I had to check the date on this article to make sure it wasn't an old April's Fools skit or something, but it seems red tape and NIMBYism have escalated to such a degree in SF that (a) securing bu…
Is this the real SF experience? Or is it media hype? I’m completely unfamiliar with the city. My only experience of America is staying in Atlanta for 6 months during an exchange program, but that was years back. Some of the stories of bureaucratic meddling and political corruption sound like something I’d see back home in India. Always had this impression that America was above that.
SF has problems. The recent FBI investigation that nabbed Mohammed Nuru and the city's own investigation that nabbed Hui have helped a lot because it has reminded the rats that consequences exist. It's all just rumor but that seems to have damped down on corruption quite a bit.
That said... for the life of the average person there is not as much impact. I don't need to bribe anyone to get something done. I recently installed solar and batteries and we got permits, inspection, and approval including variances for some placement issues. It was all wrapped up within two months. Another example: I've reported problems via the 311 app and the tickets were fixed. One was a burned out and broken light in a playground bathroom (replaced the next week). Another was a water leak on O'Shaughnessy Blvd that took about 3 months to resolve because no department could figure out what line was leaking or who owned it with lots of finger-pointing... but ultimately the 311 people stayed on the ticket, figured it out, and the city fixed the leak.
Corruption tends to happen on large projects or city contracts. Part of it has to do with public project bidding laws that don't allow for reputation to be considered. There's a gaggle of CA contractors who are experts at submitting low bids, then jacking the cost with change orders and delays. They keep winning contracts because they often submit the lowest bid. Sometimes things that seem way overpriced are that way for good reason... like buying rights to the land, digging up the street to run new plumbing which may require relocating other massive utilities, and so on. Other times you have things like the new outdoor trash can design where DPW employees treated it like a fun vanity project instead of buying an off-the-shelf design... resulting in vastly inflated costs. It's possible someone in DPW took a bribe but it's also possible they just didn't care about cost.
The tl;dr: No. Corruption and political meddling in SF doesn't come within an order of magnitude of India... especially not for the average citizen who can usually access relevant government services within reasonable times at the scheduled rates. That said there's more of it than average involving large projects, but recent arrests have helped.
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I think I'd take my chances with the sidewalk than risk a startups new self cleaning censor. Literally a shit storm
All the toilets in Paris self-clean between users. You don't need the sensor to work not to get sprayed, just to exit the toilet when a voice says "EXIT THE TOILET NOW, THE SELF CLEANING PROCESS IS ABOUT TO BEGIN.