March Flooding (of the Switchboard)

From the Foster City Police Dept. Facebook page on March 29th:

The FCPD is aware of the large male turkey that has been wandering around Foster City. The turkey is a wild animal. We are asking the community to please refrain from calling the FCPD regarding the turkey.

We appreciate the diligence of our residents.

Thank you, the FCPD

My guess is that "please refrain from calling the FCPD" was the original last sentence, until the PR spokesperson added "We appreciate the diligence of our residents" to mellow the harsh.

There are still Bay Area communities that don't have floods, wildfires, homelessness and rampant crime, and I'm lucky to be living in one that inundates the police switchboard with reports about a loose turkey.

Wallet Impact Fee

The Hawaiian legislature is working on yet another ploy to soak tourists:

A “visitor impact fee” bill that would require any nonresident aged 15 or older to pay for an annual license to visit a state park, beach, forest, hiking trail or other natural area is still alive.

Most tourists will likely pay the $50 for the "annual license," and the overwhelming majority will not use it much since few can afford to visit the Islands more than once a year.

Every attraction which can be easily fenced off, for example Hanauma Bay and Waimea Falls, already charges a steep admissions fee to non-residents, and a general "visitor impact fee" is obviously just a pretext. Existing fees aren't even spent consistently on site maintenance:

Hapuna Beach State Recreation Area has collected more than $1.5 million in fees from visitors, but the fees have not been reinvested into the park.

It's a race between my old home State of Hawaii and my new home State of California to see which can dream up new ways to tax visitors. And they wonder why the convention business is down.

Note: after the break is the full article.

It Started with Racism, but Ending it Would be Racism

Cardi B (CBC photo)

The bottom story of last year: the decade-long cultural obsession with big butts was ending.

Since admiration of large backsides had racist origins, ending this trend should have been a good thing, but alas, dear reader, you are wrong:

After almost a decade of our cultural obsession with twerking, peach emojis and Brazilian butt lifts, 2022 apparently marked the end of the era of the big booty.

On TikTok, users speculated that Kim Kardashian had her butt implants removed (a procedure she never confirmed having in the first place). Cardi B recently shared that she had her own implants removed and cautioned others against getting butt injections. And the New York Post ran a headline that said "Bye-bye booty" and declared that heroin chic was back.

Some critics swiftly shot back, saying that women's bodies should not be reduced to trends. They also pointed out the inherent racism in declaring that a particular physical attribute that many women of colour have naturally is no longer desirable.

If men say that they like a certain physical attribute of women, they're being sexist or racist or both. If they say they don't like it, they're still being sexist and racist.

Guys, keep your traps shut. This advice is no guarantee you'll stay out of trouble, but it will help.

Cold Logic

(Martha Stewart photo)

Your humble blogger always hand-washes dishes with hot water. There's no question that hot, soapy water cuts oils much better than cold. Also, more bacteria are killed, and running the hot water while rinsing reduces grease build-up in the drain.

But heated water is not better than cold when it comes to washing clothes, according to Tide experts:

P&G has sold a line of Tide designed for washing in cold water for almost two decades and still sells that product, called Tide Plus Coldwater Clean. The latest campaign pitches the overall brand as being effective in cold water. The company says it has reformulated Tide over the years to be more effective...

P&G says that cleaning clothes in cold water could save $150 a year on a household’s energy bill, or somewhat less with the high-efficiency washing machines used in about 70% of U.S. households.

A Clorox scientist says warm is more effective than cold:

[Mary Gagliardi] says warmer water is generally the best way to ensure clean clothes, especially in colder climates. Ms. Gagliardi says manufacturers are able to test garment-washing in water as warm as 85 degrees Fahrenheit and define it as a cold-water wash according to levels set by standards organization ASTM International. A warm cycle is around 100 degrees, while hot is 122 degrees, she says.

“If you are in Minnesota right now and your cold-water temperature is 45 degrees, some people are washing in temperatures barely above freezing,” she says. “You are not going to get any cleaning done in 49 degrees.”

I'll stick with what I learned at the kitchen sink when it comes to washing clothes.

Call me clothes-minded, but warm is better.

Fast Track to the Poorhouse

Southbound 101 has a toll lane 5 miles from our house..

FasTrak toll lanes have appeared on the Bay Area's busiest freeways, but the technology isn't up to speed. Penalties and interest pile up on drivers' unpaid balances, and thousands of cars have been put on "registration hold": [bold added]

Unpaid toll debts are surging since the Bay Area has eliminated cash payments on bridges and unfurled a vast web of express lanes.

Last June, the Bay Area Toll Authority, which oversees the seven state-owned bridges, said it would place over 550,000 drivers’ annual vehicle registration on hold over unsettled debts – with the bulk of registration holds starting this July. The decision ended a pandemic era of lax enforcement and started a renewed crackdown as the toll authority uses DMV holds to recoup tens of millions of dollars in tolls and even more in fines and fees.

One lady, Brenda Angulo, who is not blameless to be sure, ran up late payment penalties more than fourteen times the original charges:

The total Angulo owed to multiple express lane and bridge toll agencies was far worse, climbing to $43,590 made up mostly of late payment fees and other fines, tacked on to her original charges of about $3,000.

...Angulo’s debt underscores a complicated payment system for the growing network of Bay Area express lanes, which charge variable fees depending on the time of day and the length of a driver’s commute. Those lanes can easily whisk cars past traffic jams at a reasonable cost. But they can also lead to financial devastation for those who ignore — or don’t appreciate — how overdue toll debts can explode with late fees.

If a private bill collector behaved as the government does--assess penalties of $40,000 on an original bill of $3,000 and hold hostage a person's method of getting to her job--that collector would be figuratively tarred and feathered on social media as well as in newspapers and TV.

We voted for this draconian system that created a welter of toll roads on top of having the second-highest gas taxes in the nation. If we want someone to blame, we just have to look in the mirror.

Signs of Life

The bulb is on a window sill

The flowers opened on the amaryllis bulb shortly after Christmas. When the petals faded, we pinched off the flowers before they began to seed.

To our surprise (it was our first amaryllis, a gift), the bulb grew another stalk and bloomed again, two weeks in advance of Easter.

Green is everywhere after the heavy rains.

Most people have doffed their masks.

Signs of new life are everywhere.

Buckling Road

We're used to seeing roads rendered impassable by mudslides or sinkholes, but this is the first time your humble blogger has seen mudslides buckle the road like an earthquake:

A mudslide triggered by storms that rocked the Bay Area this week caused some extreme warping and buckling to a road in Novato, officials said.

The slip caused "significant erosion" on the hillside and uncovered a PG&E gas line and possibly created pressure on the North Marin Water District aqueduct that runs from Sonoma County to Marin, the county said in a statement Thursday.

Over the past decade we've learned that we are far from safe from Mother Nature, which is full of dangerous surprises.

Gordon Moore

Leaders of Intel in 1978:  Andy Grove,
Robert Noyce, and Gordon Moore (Chron)

He was the last of the founding fathers of Silicon Valley. Gordon Moore died at the age of 94. He achieved renown for starting Intel, but in the popular consciousness he became famous as the author of Moore's Law: [bold added]

A native San Franciscan, Moore wrote an article for the April 19, 1965, edition of Electronics magazine describing how the number of transistors that could be placed on an integrated circuit had been doubling every two years. His observation that the trend would continue became known as “Moore’s Law.”

Forecasters are lauded if their predictions pan out in the near-term; Moore's Law, to even Gordon Moore's astonishment, has held for over 50 years.

Consumers counted on its continued applicability; if they could live with their computers, television, telephone, etc. for the time being, they knew that a better and cheaper model was coming out next year.

Gordon Moore was a key member of the first generation of tech leaders who brought incalculable riches to the world. R.I.P.

It Won't Make Your Heart Beat Faster

I use the Keurig most days. Time permitting, I
steep the grounds in the "French press" mug.

Coffee is a miracle substance. Its taste is pleasurable, it has documented health benefits, and its stimulative effects are well known (they were the original reason your humble blogger began drinking coffee in the first place.) However, the caffeine in coffee is also a concern for people who are worried about heart problems.

A recent study may reduce that worry.

Coffee consumption doesn’t increase abnormal heartbeats associated with an increased risk of the most common heart rhythm disturbance [atrial fibrillation], according to a new study published Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine. Researchers monitored the hearts, activity and sleep of 100 people without underlying heart conditions over two weeks. They found that the key cardiac risk marker remained about the same for coffee drinkers as it did for non-coffee drinkers.

The coffee drinkers in the study did sleep an average of 35 minutes per night less than non-coffee drinkers, a finding consistent with my own experience. After twelve noon I drink decaf.

Dr. Larry Chinitz, director of the Heart Rhythm Center and co-lead of NYU Langone Heart, said if people are looking to improve their heart health, drinking coffee or staying away from it isn’t likely to be the most critical factor.

He said the kind of lifestyle choices that most people need to make to prevent and control cardiac conditions are much harder than picking up or avoiding that daily cup of coffee.

“People ignore exercise, diet and sleep patterns, and those may be the greatest contributors to cardiovascular disease,” he said.

The Taxman Cometh for Them, Too

American influencers should be grateful they only have
the IRS to deal with. Influencer Viya was ordered to pay
1.34 billion yuan ($210 million) in back taxes, late fees
and fines to Chinese authorities. (Time - 12/21/21)

I sympathize with people's tax problems (unless they are committing fraud) but I have a hard time getting worked up over this one:

If an influencer receives a free, unsolicited product from a company, and there’s no agreement to promote it, do they still have to pay income tax?

It all boils down to intent. Accountants will want to know more about the influencer’s relationship to the brand, or how many free items they get, or how they use them.

“The way I see it, it’s all income,” said Lynne Fuentes, managing partner at Fuentes & Angel CPAs and president of the New York State Society of CPAs. “And influencers should be keeping track of it.”

Accountants said the more transparent influencers are with their tax preparers, the easier it is to figure out what’s taxable and what’s not.

"Social influencers" seek fame in order to attract money and merchandise from businesses, who hope that the influencers' use of their wares will induce their followers to buy them.

Successful influencers will get unsolicited free merch, maybe a lot of it. Setting up a system to administer the stuff was a foreseeable consequence of success, and influencers should just deal with it.

Note: Actors, musicians, athletes, etc., for whom becoming an influencer was a secondary consequence of what made them famous have had to struggle with this gift-merch issue long before the internet was invented. For them I do have sympathy.

There's Still Plenty of Dough in Silicon Valley

One-hundred-twenty-five dollars and 90 cents?
If it was $125 per pound I might have bought some.

After last year's opening crowds had checked out its price-to-value proposition, I wasn't optimistic about Eataly's long-term chances.

That is why I didn't go into marketing: nine months later it was still going strong.

On Sunday afternoon we ordered sandwiches, pizza slices, and desserts from the first-floor vendors and shopped for imported foodstuffs on the third floor.

All told, we got out of there having spent less than $200, and no, we didn't buy any Wagyu beef.

[Update - 10PM: Valley Fair in San Jose adds merchants, hits record sales and visits]

Westfield Valley Fair in San Jose has begun to attract visitors and retail activity at levels that top the big shopping mall’s activity even prior to the outbreak of the coronavirus.

After the opening of the popular Eataly Italian food hall, the retail complex is preparing for the opening of other high-profile merchants.

Decarbonising the Gut

(Image from katygastro.com)

"Good" gut bacteria can multiply faster by starving them of carbon.

The Yale team...found that the beneficial gut bacterium Bacteroides thetaiotaomicron responded to starvation for carbon — a main building block for all cells — by sequestering a portion of the molecules for an essential transcription factor within a membrane-less compartment...

An awareness of these membrane-less compartments actually goes back a hundred years, [Yale geneticist Eduardo] Groisman said. [Postdoctoral fellow Aimilia] Krypotou’s key insight, he said, was to deduce novel properties for the bacterial transcription factor — termed Rho — based on the extra region. Sequestration of the transcription factor takes place by a process known as liquid-liquid phase separation, a ubiquitous phenomenon present in a wide variety of cells including those of humans.

My college roommates who were going to medical school said that molecular biology was their toughest course, and the preceding paragraph is an example of the concepts they had to deal with. Far be it from this non-STEM major to understand bacterial transcription and membrane-less compartments, but I am able to figure out from the article that if one is starving in general, then one is starving for carbon.

The bottom line is that this research provides yet another reason--gut health--to go on a fasting diet.

The Father Brother Encourages

Under an exchange program with the Church of Our Savior in Mill Valley, its rector, the Reverend Brother Richard Edward Elmer, was our priest today.

Father Elmer, or as he jokingly referred to himself "Father Brother," is a member of the Brotherhood of Saint Gregory (BSG), a community of friars in the Episcopal Church. The BSG calls its members to service and prayer, and because it is the season of Lent, Father Elmer focused on the "Daily Office", that is, the services of Morning, Noonday, Evening, and Compline prayer, all of which may be found in the 1979 Book of Common Prayer.

Pre-1979, Episcopal services alternated between Holy Communion and Morning Prayer. Beginning in 1979 Holy Communion has been the norm nearly every Sunday. The morning prayer service, in fact the BCP itself, is used infrequently in the modern Episcopal Church.

Father Elmer encouraged us to engage with as many parts of the Daily Office that we can. If we don't have a prayer book at home, the Daily Office may conveniently be found online.

His words struck a chord. The time may be right to give it a try.

Catalyzing the Decision

Our Asian-American nephew is departing for Yokohama after living his entire life in the U.S. His wife, a Japanese national, and their two children have already moved. He is prepping their San Jose house for sale and wrapping up projects for work.

For his birthday dinner we took him to Gyu-Kaku, a Japanese barbecue restaurant in San Mateo. It was a bittersweet celebration, and there was laughter and a few tears while the beer flowed and a variety of meats were grilled.

The night ended happily with promises to stay in touch and even make a serious attempt to visit each other.

The next day he reported a real downer: the catalytic converter was stolen from his Prius after he returned home. The wait for a replacement is at least three months and the cost is at least $2,000, and the schedule for his remaining months in the Bay Area has been severely disrupted.

The silver lining is that the theft of his converter reinforces the rightness of his move. Japan is a better place to raise his kids (who are fluent in both Japanese and English) and safer for the whole family.

Alison Gerken and Amanda
Arguile (Chron photo)

In general the majority of people who do leave the Bay Area are happy they did so. A minority have second thoughts, and a few regret the decision so much that they move back. One couple returned to San Francisco, the experience was the opposite of their rose-colored memories, and they're leaving again. [bold added]

Alison Gerken and her wife, Amanda Arguile, who rejoiced when they got jobs in the veterinary field, bringing them back to San Francisco from Florida and its miserable anti-LGBTQ politics last fall after a three-year break. They missed the freedom, the weather, the beauty, the quirky small businesses and the easy road trips to the redwoods, Napa, Tahoe and Yosemite. They missed their home.

Then reality struck in the form of a swiped catalytic converter, a theft that ended up revealing a surprising amount about their new, old city. The saga that followed the crime reminded them of what’s not working in San Francisco — and convinced them to leave for good...

She was reluctant to drive the car on the neighborhood’s steep hills and ran inside to call the police non-emergency number to report the theft and file a police report online. By the time she got back to her car, it had a street sweeping ticket — one she felt sure would be dismissed if she explained what happened. It wasn’t.

Gerken had the right to further contest the parking ticket at a hearing, but figured the outcome wouldn’t change and her time was more valuable than the $87 fine. So she paid it.

Meanwhile, she learned from the local Toyota dealership that, because so many Prius owners were seeking catalytic converter replacements, the waiting list was months long. [The Chronicle reporter] called San Francisco Toyota on Tuesday morning to ask how long it would take to get a catalytic converter for a 2013 Prius, and the parts department worker who answered the phone let out a long whistle. “Five or six months,” he said...

Finally, she gave up. A few weeks ago, she had Cash for Cars haul it away in exchange for $2,400, far less than its value before the theft...Gerken received six parking tickets and has paid four of them so far.

This is the reality of living in San Francisco:

“We couldn’t wait to leave Florida,” Gerken said. “But coming back, it was this abrupt holy s—. This is bad. We kind of forgot what it was like.”

San Francisco is just as expensive as ever, they said, but the streets are far less lively. Some of their favorite small businesses have closed and are boarded up with plywood. More of their middle-income friends have been priced out, and they have co-workers commuting from as far as Santa Rosa and Oakley.

The streets seem dirtier, they said, and open-air drug dealing seems more prevalent with cops just passing by. They see bodies sprawled on the street and wonder if they should stop to make sure the person is OK. Usually, Gerken said, she keeps walking, but feels awful about it.

Catalytic-converter theft is rampant, there's next to nothing done to stem the tide, and victims like Alison Gerken pile up fines until there's no alternative but to scrap their cars.

Every individual has his breaking point, and life in the Bay Area produces more than its share.

Pig Butchering on LinkedIn

My nine most recent invitations from LinkedIn

Lately I've been receiving regular invitations to connect on LinkedIn. None of these individuals are known to me, nor do we have any shared organizations (schools, businesses) in our histories.

They do have attributes in common with each other: young, female, attractive, and Asian, mostly Chinese and Chinese-American. Yes, these are honey traps. [bold added]

The profile of “Mai Linzheng” is actually one of the millions of fraudulent pages set up on LinkedIn to lure users into scams, often involving cryptocurrency investments and targeting people of Chinese descent all over the world. Scammers like Mai claim affiliation with prestigious schools and companies to boost their credibility before connecting with other users, building a relationship, and laying a financial trap...

This wasn’t the first time [Financial Times columnist Jeff] Li had noticed what he thought were fake LinkedIn accounts. Starting in late 2021, he says, he started seeing profiles with less than a few dozen connections—rare for real LinkedIn users—and with profile photos that were always good-looking men and women, likely stolen from other websites. Most appeared to be of Chinese ethnicity and to live in the United States or Canada.

Scammers involved in this practice, which started as early as 2017 in China, create fake profiles on social media sites or dating sites, connect with victims, build virtual and often romantic relationships, and eventually persuade the victims to transfer over their assets. The scammers themselves came up with the name “pig butchering,” comparing the intensive and long-term process of gaining victims’ trust to raising a pig for slaughter.

Guys, know yourself: if a pretty girl strikes up a conversation with you, it's not because she's interested in a romantic relationship. The saying on Wall Street applies to social media: "Bulls make money, bears make money, pigs get slaughtered."