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Dusseldorf posted:For a good example of NIMBY and "environmentalist" forces working together here in Berkeley they're working to revise the rules to make it harder to build tall buildings downtown. Ehh. The sad thing is, I don't disagree with about 80% of that. More public restrooms, more local and apprentice workers, more affordable housing, and getting rid of the absurd notion that dumping money into a "fund" is somehow equivalent to actually building affordable units are all noble endeavors. These are all relatively minor things that would help out and not really hinder development. There's just about 20% nimby stuff. The parking requirements are dumb, LEED Gold->Platinum can be relatively minor improvements and it isn't insurmountable unlike some claim yet it still shouldn't be an requirement but rather an incentive. I haven't read the language but "family-sized" requirement would probably be really bad.
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May 6, 2014 19:35
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Family Values posted:The people that live in SF and commute to the South Bay are not doing so for lack of housing in the South Bay. They want the 'culture' of SF and are willing to prioritize their entertainment over such considerations as the environmental impact of living 50 miles from work. Yes, but not just the culture. In many ways it's also a status symbol for them in a modern bizzaro world "keeping-up-with-the-jones" because it's also so desirable. I've also met some that sadly think living near "culture" will make them interesting people--it usually doesn't.
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May 21, 2014 16:48
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Leperflesh posted:That's dumb because shootings are almost never random. If you're not in a gang or having a domestic dispute with your gun-toting spouse, your odds of being shot are tiny. Fortunately, the Hayward fault isn't long enough to produce anything over a 7.5 Magnitude  (unless of course it links up with the Rodger Creek fault which isn't proven...). But yes it will still take out a lot of buildings. It's definitely worth noting that the fire damage is really what does the most damage during an earthquake. My earthquake engineering professor at Cal told us a story that there was fire caused by Loma Prieta that came dangerous close to reaching a critical area that could have taken out a lot of SF but they managed to stop it shortly before then.The soft story registry in Berkeley is pretty good but there are a bit flaws. My apartment is technically on there but has been seismically retrofitted; however, one section of the building is above part of the parking lot so it's still listed as a soft story. This shows what sort of expected accelerations that Berkeley would experience for a return period of 475 (10% probably of exceedance in 50 years) which is a typical design criteria on the west coast.  Basically a building's natural frequency is usually (roughly) estimated as 1/(# of Stories). 2-3 story building is pretty vulnerable but 1 story is going to be fine. Assuming it doesn't burn down from something nearby  . But yeah, new buildings in the past 30 years or so are fine. It's the unreinforced masonry buildings that are hosed, which is sadly way too many.Financial District will generally be OK because all the high rises are on piles so if the hydraulic fill liquefies, it'll just 'slosh' past them like stilts. It's the smaller < 5 stories or so buildings founded on mat foundations that will be hosed.  fellow earthquakies. I'm a Geotechnical Engineer but I do liquefaction triggering assessments and hazard calculations.
Xaris fucked around with this message at 02:51 on Jun 3, 2014 |
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Jun 3, 2014 02:30
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Ah, good to know. Yeah. The cascadia subduction zone can really wreck poo poo sand Oregon is woefully unprepared unlike California. I had an assignment in Christchurch working with CDSM stabilization and it was really quite sad. They made a lot of progress but the whole downtown is still quarantined off. I'll upload some pictures if you're interested. Shortly after I left, they had a 100 year flood that just caused massive slope failures due to rapid pore pressure increase and it further wrecked poo poo and a lot of houses. ChCh just can't catch a break 
Xaris fucked around with this message at 03:19 on Jun 3, 2014 |
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Jun 3, 2014 03:17
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etalian posted:Also the state has a really simple to use vote by mail program. Except it requires paying the postage yourself  I need to find a place to drop it off
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Jun 3, 2014 04:56
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ComradeCosmobot posted:Yeah I hope you registered by May 27. Otherwise you cannot vote, as your registration would be received too late. I did. I've had them filled out sitting on my counter for nearly three weeks, I just keep forgetting to buy stamps and it's the principle of the matter. It should really be free but I just looked and my polling place isn't too far so I'll just drop them off there tomorrow.
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Jun 3, 2014 05:02
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Yeah, to register. I've had the ballot for three weeks quote:You may drop off your voted Vote-by-Mail Ballot at any of the following locations (your ballot must be sealed inside the yellow return envelope):
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Jun 3, 2014 05:14
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Yeah, I didn't really pay attention to when the Top Two thing started but holy poo poo it's retarded. Also, whoever says their vote doesn't count... 1 vote
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Jun 4, 2014 18:51
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Man, gently caress republicans. Yessss, let's prop up loving driving and parking instead of public transit despite rising costs! (Yeah, I know it was because it got 'dropped', but inaction is still an action). This has kind of hosed me over this year since I was spending ~$180/month on transit quote:The IRS Pre-tax limits for the calendar year 2013 are $245 for work-related parking expenses and $245 for public transportation and vanpool expenses. Xaris fucked around with this message at 16:32 on Jun 5, 2014 |
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Jun 5, 2014 16:27
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etalian posted:He also had lots of trips to China and also stayed in 5 star hotels to the tune of $50,000 dollars a year. Honestly, it's not. There are a lot of great bars, food, buildings, cost of living is cheap, lot of great fresh local produce, and Tahoe is a jump away. As far as California cities, I liked living in Davis and Sacramento. But it's rather car centric and gets really loving hot in the summer/fall and I don't like the heat 
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Jun 10, 2014 02:29
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AYC posted:Davis? Car-centric? Are you sure that you lived in the same city I do? No, Sac. Davis owned
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Jun 10, 2014 03:10
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Yeah there is sadly a lot of corruption when it comes to government agencies of any sort. See FCC leaders being in bed with Comcast/Verizon and getting jobs there, visa versa. Bay Bridge is going to be alright, it's pretty overengineered but there is still going to be a lot of expensive repairs going on from lowest-bid/corruption type poo poo work but it won't really compromise the safety of the bridge.
Xaris fucked around with this message at 18:52 on Jun 10, 2014 |
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Jun 10, 2014 18:49
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Big K of Justice posted:I'm in Novato near the old freight line, they redid the level crossings near me. I work over in the presido, and commute down which isn't as bad as people here told me. Novato is an ok place, nice school district and I'm walking distance to a few places downtown for shopping which is nice. Enough people from work live here we carpool almost every day. Yeah, I grew up all over Sonoma (Healdsburg, Windsor, Guerneville, & Cotati) and used to commute to Petaluma, Santa Rosa and San Rafael (and sometimes SF) a lot in nearly every direction. It's not bad once you get the traffic patterns down. Novato is nice, I knew some people from SRJC there and it's a pretty good place to live and close to everything. SMART is going to be a bit of a boondoggle because it's going to be expensive and very time consuming if you want to get to SF. You'll have to pay ~$6-10 x 2 for the train, then wait around for the ferry and another $6.25 x 2, and then that will still only take you to the Ferry Building. The first phase doesn't even take you to Larkspur so you'd have to get off at San Rafael and then wait for a connecting bus to take you the Ferry and ugh. Phase 1 is going to be a clusterfuck and it's going to be held up by opponents who will say "look it doesn't work! nobody is using it!" and then phase 2 will probably get delayed due to funding. It'd be nice to have the option to get between cities without driving, but most of the jobs are not really centralized with a kinda poor bus system so I'm not seeing much use of it for commute purposes.
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Jun 29, 2014 00:06
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Papercut posted:If they want to light a fire, fine anyone with a green lawn. This whole "if water is running into the street" thing is ridiculous. Yeah, it's pretty stupid. I don't understand why they don't do a tiered billing system like they do for power. I.e. Tier 1 is a reasonable amount that is calculated for a family of ~2-3 for dishes, toilets, showers, drinking, Tier 2 is 3-4. Then gallons spent after that start costing a lot more. It would then encourage people to stay lower and none of this bullshit "20% reduction!" where some people have already reduced all they can. (i.e. PG&E) 
Xaris fucked around with this message at 19:41 on Jul 17, 2014 |
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Jul 17, 2014 19:25
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FCKGW posted:Their website is all sorts of fantastic. This is from before the Six Californias initiative when they tried to go it alone. They've been trying to succeed since 1941 actually. Yeah it's mostly a bunch of crazies up there. Pretty much everywhere north of Sacramento up until Eugene (except Ashland) is full of drunk and/or methed-out crazy assholes
Xaris fucked around with this message at 06:34 on Jul 19, 2014 |
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Jul 19, 2014 06:31
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Hey some non-profits did a cool thing and bought some housing in the Mission that people were going to get evicted from http://blog.sfgate.com/inthemission/2015/08/06/sf-buys-six-buildings-keeping-artists-and-others-in-place/ quote:Two longtime residents and artists as well as tenants in 18 other units will be able to stay in rent-controlled apartments thanks to two non-profits buying six buildings from a landlord who decided to back away from evicting tenants and instead sell the buildings to the city. Lets read the comments quote:Win win? Taxpayers just got foot the bill here, how much did we pay for these trashy buildings? Watch out for those slip and fall lawsuit next, oh the agony reading at the bar....  quote:Rent control like the dinosaur must die, the City is expensive, my wife and I who rented for ten years finally had to pull the plug and move out, it's just not worth the struggle. quote:NON PROFITS are the worst organizations out there. They take tax payer monies and spend it at will. I never give anything to any organizations. The middle class is screwed again paying for these rent controlled apartments. quote:If renters want to have a say about their home they can buy their own, just like the rest of us. You do have to save and watch your pennies instead of just acting entitled. Give it a try. quote:Instead of becoming a world class city, SF continues down the road the road to perpetual ghettoization. quote:I think everybody understands the pain and issues around evictions… but, hey welcome to life! Renters are renting, not owning. It’s not the same. There is no right to live in SF, plenty of affordable housing is available in other parts of the Bay Area. It’s neither fair nor rational to subsidize a few lucky ones while others have to move away. :jerryseinfeldgettingupandwalkingout.gif:
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Aug 7, 2015 23:42
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withak posted:"loving renters are relying on laws to keep their cost of living artificially low! Aye Not only those those, but recent residents who are not so subtley getting mad about all the people who've lived here for decades being able to stay because "They don't right to live here!! It's ruining my world class fun-playground for me!! Why don't they just move away??" Also gently caress SFGate holy poo poo.
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Aug 7, 2015 23:55
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TildeATH posted:They're doing us a favor. There's nothing worse than a person who has lived in SF for more than 15 years. Those (usually) aren't the actual insufferable people 
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Aug 8, 2015 18:43
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Papercut posted:The vast majority of comments on SFGate are not from San Franciscans or even likely Californians. Just by being SF, the articles are used as clickbait on all of the worst of conservative internet forums/sites. It's like 99% trolls. Fair point. News articles always attract the worst conservative retards in existance. Even Berkeleyside gets a fair amount of them and usually its them being angry at the reporters for not mentioning race in some crime article or something stupid.
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Aug 8, 2015 20:13
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Bip Roberts posted:Same with Berkeleyside. They really are. It's almost non-stop bitching about ~~~~PENSION!~~~~, "black" people comitting too many crimes!, homeless people making the downtown bad!, infrastructure is failing!, city taxes are TOO HIGH (ignoring the irony of the previous) and if you bring up Prop 13 w/r/t infrastructure failing they just go and on about loving pensions. It's infuriating. Like it's local enough that it doesn't get linked to conservative poo poo, so you think it would be better but no, it's not.
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Aug 9, 2015 01:47
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computer parts posted:It becomes an issue when you force out poor people so rich people can live there instead. Those poor people should just go somewhere else!! If the freemarket says they can't live here, then they should move!!! How about Oklahoma or Detroit? It's cheap there! Why do they so entitled and feel like its a human right to stay in their home, it's NOT!! Why must poor people ruin my world-class city and prevent it from becoming the best possible city ever? They're ruining it for the rest of us
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Aug 9, 2015 04:47
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Liberals has often wept over the fate of the aborigines of this city and rent control has long been busily employed in devising means to avert it, but its progress has never for a moment been arrested, and one by one have many working natives disappeared from the earth. … But true rent control reconciles the mind to these vicissitudes as it does to the extinction of one generation to make room for another. ... Rent control could not wish to see this city restored to the condition in which it was found by our forefathers. What good man would prefer a city covered with poors and ranged by a few thousand savages to our extensive rich playground, studded with coffee shops, indoor mini-golf, and prosperous farm to table restaurants, embellished with all the improvements which technology can devise or industry execute, occupied by more than 800,000 happy people, and filled with all the blessings of liberty, civilization, and technology? Andrew Jackson did nothing wrong and we need a modern day Andrew Jackson to re-open the trail of happiness
Xaris fucked around with this message at 05:06 on Aug 9, 2015 |
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Aug 9, 2015 04:55
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Woah woah woah no. That's too extreme. Even Jackson didn't want to kill indians. We just want them to relocate to someplace cheaper like the freemarket says they should, like Oklahoma. I hear it's nice over there. Is that too much to ask for?
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Aug 9, 2015 06:10
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Cicero posted:Nah I'm sure it has some relatively safe neighborhoods, but a lot of bay area goons seem to have a very different idea of what constitutes safe than I do. Which neighborhoods were you talking about? NOBE  
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Aug 13, 2015 17:34
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Kobayashi posted:KQED is trying to name names and it's great. Put these assholes up against the wall. http://www.insidebayarea.com/data/ci_28974747/database-east-bay-mud-excessive-water-users?source=pkg Much to no one's surprise, it's all you're standard rear end in a top hat sociopaths from Danville and Alamo, with some Orindians thrown in for good measure
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Oct 17, 2015 21:02
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Sydin posted:I'd imagine that no matter what the state claimed to be the eminent domain pricetag, PG&E as well as the other power companies would disagree, and it would be tied up in court for years, if not the better part of a decade. Pretty much. It's a neat idea but just insanely stupid. SMUD is loving great, and I know EBMUD has talked about setting up their own division as an energy utility although I think currently they just sell their current power generation to PGE. Probably the better way to approach is to allocate funds to create state power facilities to generate power and provide funding to municipalities (like EBMUD or SFPUC) to utilize those and/or generate their own, and distribute power to their residents as an alternative. And then just let PGE and poo poo fall by the wasteside as overpriced awful companies they are because everyone would probably switch in a heartbeat if they had an option. E: One problem is PG&E has a lot of prime dam locations already (especially in the Sierras). I suppose you could more selectively eminent domain those although that'd still get insanely messy. Xaris fucked around with this message at 23:04 on Nov 5, 2015 |
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Nov 5, 2015 22:42
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Litany Unheard posted:Hooray for the parental notification failing! I get tired of voting that down time and again. Jesus gently caress I think I've voted no on that bullshit like at least every other year, if not yearly. You think they would not waste their time when it's obvious it's not going to pass.
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Dec 16, 2015 03:44
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Yep. Generally pissing off a lot of people when it comes to commute and who just want to get home and unwind (or get to work), most of whom probably agree with the sentiment, is not a good tactic. Especially a sole transportation artery. I guarentee the anti-vax blocking didn't make anyone go "hrmm you know those anti-vaxeers have got a good point as I'm sitting here stuck because of them. Maybe we shouldn't vaccinate kids, it's bad!" and just made more people hate them and consider them fringe nutjobs than they already did. Another example of backfiring was the last BART strike which really pissed off a lot and anti-union sentiment went way on the rise (of course part of that was media) , but ultimately it did more to hurt unions more than anything else--even from diehard democrats.
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Jan 19, 2016 07:40
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Cicero posted:I'm actually thinking about moving to Munich, and one thing that is awesome about Germany is how well-developed the rail systems are. There's a medium-sized city, Augsburg (~275k people) about 35 miles away from Munich, measuring from central train stations. That's about 50% further than going from Concord North to Embarcadero, which takes ~50 minutes on BART, while Augsburg to Munich is about half an hour. It's really sad how bad transit is in California. FCKGW posted:CA Senate approved raising the smoking age to 21 and also regulating e-cigs the same as tobacco products, banning them in certain locations and restricing the sale and advertisement of them.
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Mar 10, 2016 22:08
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King Hong Kong posted:Yeah that map is totally fictional. The 1961 plan was much more restrained than it even with the extensions to Palo Alto and San Rafael. Yep. This is the real 1961 map (it did change a few times so there's a few variations, later ones showing southbay as "planned" which is ultimately what we got). We did get pretty much most of it.  Real biggest loss is that we will never never ever get a train though north SF (which is utterly abysmally serviced by muni buses instead), and even further to north bay in our life times. It's very possible and likely we'll at least see the south bay as envisioned sometime in our lives (even if it's 25+ years out I can see it happening though I'll be pretty drat close to being dead by then).
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May 2, 2016 01:55
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ComradeCosmobot posted:Just a reminder how much money is being spent on HSR and it's still not going to fulfill phase one in its entirety for another 13 years... If it even gets enough funding to do it that quickly. Pretty much. I wouldn't be surprised to see that slip further and the whole system might not be done for perhaps twice as long. The phase 2 SF Central Subway project began planning back in 2002 and it's now getting close to operational in 2019. Even if BART started just preliminary planning phase of a second transbay tube right now, it might not even be completed until 2030, and maybe more realistically since they aren't, we might not get one until 2040.
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May 2, 2016 18:50
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amuayse posted:Question: How does Cali deal with homeless? I live in Hawaii, which is the homeless capital of the US and we don't really have any vagrancy laws. We don't. There are usually laws like no sleeping in your car (dumb) or other park curfew stuff and some cities go further with anti homeless laws. But really most California cities ship or subtlety encourage them over here to SF/Berkeley/Oakland so they don't have to deal with them, and we in turn mostly just rough em up and kick em around the city depending on if it's convenient to hide them for events but mostly let them go around doing whatever, or occasionally shoot them if they look minority. Quite a few are beyond mentally ill and need help (probably involuntary) and others are heading that direction but not that far gone. A lot could be helped or prevented by a well funded+maintained public housing projects instead of alleys, but there's a not insignificant that are beyond that levels. We do spend hundreds of millions on lovely results though! Thanks Reagan
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May 6, 2016 19:50
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Triglav posted:It took years to finalize and build a water desalination plant in San Diego because fish might get hurt and sick by its intake tubes and concentrated reject, so it doesn't surprise me there's a bunch of legal property, right of way, noise, and environmental hurdles to building a rail line. Pretty much. Every single project will get tied up in courts, appeals, more appeals, and a whole bunch of other poo poo that will just keep getting thrown at any project from every angle. Eminent domain is hugely contentious and costly with I'm sure legal fights out the wazoo for every drat piece, and of course anti-rail groups tossing as much "environmental" lawsuits to kill/delay it the best they can. It's a bit sad that environmental impact regulation is mostly just used to derail (  ) any sort of construction ever.e: Here was a good article http://www.eastbayexpress.com/oakland/how-an-environmental-law-is-harming-the-environment/Content?oid=3487489 Xaris fucked around with this message at 22:24 on May 22, 2016 |
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May 22, 2016 21:17
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stone cold posted:http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-ucla-shooting-20160601-snap-story.html I miss college but gently caress finals
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Jun 1, 2016 23:47
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Craptacular! posted:As someone who supported the redistricting committee years ago to un-gridlock the legislature and make the state more competitive, I find Assembly District 4's layout to be weird as hell. All three candidates seem to be from the Sacramento/Davis area, yet the district goes as far west as into Sonoma County and ripping about half a suburban community from the rest of it's wine country neighbors to be represented by these people from the Sacramento valley. Eh. The only weird thing about AD4 is how it just extends and sucks up Rohnert Park which doesn't make sense nor fair at all (I grew up Santa Rosa so it's definitely weird to me). Sounds like just a population-grabbing thing there. It really should just stop around 29 and stop by Clearlake. Most of the general area outside that is almost same-y lowish population farmland and there is pretty strong similar economic/interest aggregation for the rest of it which makes sense. I think in general it' been successful but of course some things will slip through the cracks.
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Jun 6, 2016 19:41
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The Wiggly Wizard posted:I would support it if it started at $0 and went up. I agree that taking steps to protect the bay and its watershed is good. Overall I'm not disappointed that it passed but I think there were better ways to fund it. I get what you're saying in theory and I agree for the theory--like a flat $1k parcel tax would be very lovely & regressive but it's only a fraction of that in reality. Just like sales tax should be eliminated and have a higher progressive income tax, and eliminate prop 13 and put in tiered progressive % property tax that goes up on value. But really it's $12 a year on parcel tax is nothing, and no one who owns a home in the bay area is too poor to afford that (and they could just sell it for like $700k - 3 million)
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Jun 9, 2016 19:29
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Trabisnikof posted:Anyone want to actually post in-flow out-flow trends by race/income in Fremont or are we just going to anecdote and race/class-bait each other to death? http://www.bayareacensus.ca.gov/cities/Fremont.htm Census data from 1960 to 2010. Afaik nothing tracks movement per se but definitely trivalley area (Lafayette, walnut creek, Danville, Pleasanton, Livermore, Dublin) was predominately "white flight" (irrespective for reasons tho prolly lot of cheap housing with "low crime"/"better schools" was a big factor you'll have heard) in the late 70s to early 90s as they left Oakland and such for cheaper homes and poo poo like that. You can see their population exploding in the 80s to 90s Fremont doesn't seem to be a real case for it other than just less white population growth than others, at least not until 200s and that's probably just changing demographics as a trend. Oakland was definitely a big example as about 100k whites left each decade between 60s->70s->80s. Tho that's been reversing a bit and they lost almost 50k of their African American population between 2000 and 2010. 2020 census will be VERY interesting to see. Xaris fucked around with this message at 23:46 on Jul 3, 2016 |
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Jul 3, 2016 23:37
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Rah! posted:Fremont white population, 1960: 98.3% To be fair you have to look at the total number of people. You're comparing a population of 40k to 214k and it's true that by 2010, there was a decrease in total, it's also common in all cities as olds die. Fremont retained about the same white population until the end of 2000 and it was mostly other segments grew much faster. Sure it's an example but a very minor tangential example and isn't really a great example compared to Oakland. Also lol at Walnut Creek http://www.bayareacensus.ca.gov/cities/WalnutCreek.htm
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Jul 4, 2016 00:22
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Alec Eiffel posted:loving people are petitioning to get a veggie burger option on the In-N-Out menu. It's called the loving grilled cheese, people. It's everything but the meat. I've been ordering the grilled cheese for 13 years, ever since I became a vegetarian–eat it too, motherfuckers. My girlfriend gets that for that reason, but it would be nice to give people an option that isn't just bread and cheese (we still rarely go there except on road trip and need to pull off a freeway for a quick bite). As long as it's just not a lovely frozen bocca burger though which is what a lot of places do but eh better than nothing.
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Sep 23, 2016 01:03
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The Wiggly Wizard posted:I didn't tune in for this episode, but KQED Forum owns. Forum is basically the only thing worth listening to NPR anymore. God drat the rest of their programming has really gotten lovely.
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Sep 27, 2016 22:46
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