mastodon
4.6.6
Lawyer, writer.
Today's ironic hovering ghost is James Tiptree, Jr.
https://bsky.app/profile/ryanlcooper.com/post/3mnrss6faed2r
"DEEP THOUGHT: I speak of none, but the computer that is to come after me... whose merest operational parameters I am not worthy to calculate..."
This finds especially direct connections among advocates and investors seeking more anti-homeless laws, more private prisons, and more forced labor and/or "treatment": https://homelesslaw.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Cicero-Research-Memo.pdf
Thinking how "computer" long ago meant a woman who ran calculations by hand under orders. Until the women who did that work came up with other approaches.
Here in San Francisco, every time I go to Costco I'm surrounded by AI ad billboards feeding the fantasy of oddly steely yet obedient women who will take care of the awkward fiddly bits in jobs mapped out by the implied customer, a big-picture thinker.
Funny how the awkward fiddly bits are always the important part.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/history-human-computers-180972202/
A volunteer chia plant started growing in a pot on our porch in San Francisco a few years ago. This year's stalks produced a half-teaspoon of chia seed, shown in that first photo below. Second image is a closeup of our same homegrown chia seeds using a GoMicro lens clip for phones that they used to sell at the Exploratorium. Third image is commercial chia seed from the package for comparison. Stunning how many plants' whole yield we eat for breakfast every morning.
Fellow San Franciscans:
This is a mayor of a major city, obviously not ours, weeping in public for the lost lives of two people who died unhoused in her city.
"At any rate, spring is here ... and they can’t stop you enjoying it."
G. Orwell, "Some Thoughts on the Common Toad," 1946.
San Francisco looking more Besźel than usual this evening.
The site of Compton's Cafeteria joined the National Register of Historic Places on January 27, 2025.
https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/sf-transgender-historic-landmark-20154723.php
Worth remembering what happened in Hood River, Oregon in 1944 and the public shock and amends that followed.
https://encyclopedia.densho.org/Hood_River_incident/
@lydiaschoch@mastodon.social
The generated image at this link is still my personal image of John Mastodon.
Or maybe the "Rainbird" guy in Jonathan Raban's *Passage to Juneau*.
@MBridegam@mastodon.social
Golden Gate Park Panhandle: someone has planted daffodils (or similar) in the hollow of a sawn-limb scar on a very old eucalyptus. #hellascape
Freelon Street
Kind of love this wildstyle grisaille on Freelon Street, South of Market.
Thanks! Yes, the wings do look reddish toward the back but I haven't seen them open.
This is a better picture taken later -- with increased number of eggs and more translucent eggs under the abdomen.
Because all the news is terrible, can anybody help identify this moth seen laying eggs on a window near San Francisco?
Image: broad-bodied moth photographed from inside a glass window. It has folded wings patterned in kind of grayscale leopard spots. Next to it is a cluster of about 100 fresh-looking white eggs placed side by side, each adhering to the window.