I thought he was a shoo-in for Trevor Noah on the Daily Show, but . . . This New Yorker piece is really something.

https://www.newyorker.com/news/annals-of-communications/hasan-minhajs-emotional-truths

Shame. I like a lot of his stuff, although he's always struck me as fairly attention-seeking. Guess that wasn't far off.

So this is a thing that is apparently happening.

Tropical Storm Hilary intensified into a full-blown hurricane over the eastern Pacific Ocean on Thursday, and the National Hurricane Center is warning that as the system moves to the northwest, Baja California and portions of the southwestern United States could see “significant impacts” this weekend and into early next week.

Confidence in the storm’s track is increasing, though the path could still shift in coming days. There’s also uncertainty in the storm’s overall strength and timing.

...

In the latest forecast, Hilary’s center is projected to approach land in central or northern Baja California as a hurricane on Sunday and weaken to a tropical storm as it moves over northern Baja. The system is predicted to continue to lose strength as it nears California, moving into cooler waters and a cooler air mass. On the current track, the system will push into Southern California near the San Diego-Imperial county line at 6 a.m. Monday.

https://www.sfgate.com/weather/article/map-shows-hurricane-hilary-probable-storm-track-18301569.php

Who had Californian hurricane on their bingo card this year?

Sound of Freedom is beating Mission Impossible domestically.

Jason Aldean is #1 on Billboard.

Barbie is going to easily blast through $1 billion. It's doing Infinity War numbers.

So this was all a good use of time.

So . . . since it's apparently common understanding that animals are psychic and know the good humans from the bad . . .

Does someone want to explain what the six year-old did to deserve it? Or nah?

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/florida-dog-attack-leaves-6-year-old-boy-dead/

I know people don't care about anti-AAPI stuff unless it can be pinned on Trump, but as someone with a lot of AAPI nieces and nephews, the anti-Asian environment in the Bay Area bothers me. And it bothers me more when my own side seems studiously and concretely set on ignoring it.

A man who was found guilty of lighting UC Berkeley students on fire at a boba shop near the Cal campus in 2020 has been released from custody without prison time or probation after agreeing to participate in a diversion program for veterans, court records show.

In late April, according to records reviewed by The Berkeley Scanner, Brandon McGlone was convicted of multiple felonies in connection with the boba shop attack as well as felony assault and gun charges from a separate domestic violence case.

https://www.berkeleyscanner.com/2023/05/20/uc-berkeley-crime/berkeley-boba-shop-attack-man-released-diversion-program/

Musk is a fuckstick - I don't think that's too arguable.

But space flight is something to be encouraged and cheered.

Human advancement is a good thing.

Let's not cheer failure in advancement because the man I don't like on Twitter is poopy.

Hatred like that is dumb and eats reason from the inside out.

This is huge news here. All my timelines are blown up and local media are all over it (lots of friends in tech).

Bob Lee, the chief product officer at MobileCoin, was killed in a fatal stabbing in San Francisco. On Tuesday morning, at 2:35 a.m., the San Francisco Police Department responded to a report of a stabbing near the 300 block of Main Street in SoMa. He was taken to a hospital but succumbed to his injuries.

Shortly after, NBC Bay Area reported that the victim of the stabbing was Bob Lee, 43. MobileCoin confirmed the information in a statement sent to Bloomberg and ABC7 News.

Before joining MobileCoin, Bob Lee worked at Google for the first few years of Android, focusing on core library development. He then joined Square, the payment company that later became Block, to develop its Android app. He became the company’s first CTO and also created Cash App.

Bob Lee, also known as ‘Crazy Bob,’ was an investor in tech startups as well. According to his LinkedIn profile, he invested in SpaceX, Clubhouse, Tile, Figma, Faire, Orchid, Addressable, Nana, Ticket Fairy, Gowalla, Asha, SiPhox, Netswitch, Found and others

.

https://techcrunch.com/2023/04/05/bob-lee-creator-of-cash-app-and-former-cto-of-square-stabbed-to-death/

With the debate about crime in SF, and the influence of tech in the region, this is going to be a thing.

“They’re showing pornography? That’s terrible! Where?!”

Feels like.

Have been rummaging through various books and essays about American economic evolution in the 1800s and came across this bit written in 1840.

"We are not ignorant of the fact, that the merchant, who is literally the
common carrier and exchange dealer, performs a useful service, and is therefore
entitled to a portion of the proceeds of labor. But make all necessary deductions
on his account, and then ask what portion of the remainder is retained, either in
kind or in its equivalent, in the hands of the original producer, the workingman?
All over the world this fact stares us in the face, the workingman is poor and
depressed, while a large portion of the non-workingmen, in the sense we now
use the term, are wealthy. It may be laid down as a general rule, with but few
exceptions, that men are rewarded in an inverse ratio to the amount of actual
service they perform"

Glad America eventually sorted that right out.

This is kind of interesting, and I'd be curious what people here thought.

I'm taking a pre-law class on constitutional rights and minorities this semester. Mainly for fun and because I find the topic interesting. Plus, sometimes you just need something different from dissecting sheep eyes.

Over the weekend, I needed to finish up a midterm paper. It mainly concerned itself with selective incorporation - the practice of the Supreme Court to only gradually apply the Bill of Rights to the states over the 100 or so years after the 14th Amendment passed. Also, a lot of commentary on Hugo Black. If you do not know what Justice Hugo Black's whole deal is, I highly recommend reading up on the man. He's fascinating.

Anyway, my professor has opinions. A lot of them. I'm an AOC type progressive, and a lot of the time even I'm thinking, "Ok, slow down." Spams our inboxes often with a lot of articles with the most partisan ideological positions - if you were ever thinking you were going to write a paper supporting originalism or textualism or talking about how Scalia wasn't such a bad guy - don't. The man might actually stroke out.

Suffice to say, Clarence Thomas is not his favorite person. At all. He's had a running commentary about the Justice all semester long. While I share the professor's legal outlook (loose constructionist, living Constitution), it's been bothering me just how over the top partisan he is and how he pushes relentlessly for only his own political views. I would never write a paper disagreeing with him and feel comfortable about how that grade would turn out.

So his lectures are video taped. I was going through a few of them while writing my paper to ensure I had covered all the bases before turning it in. And there it was: "We all know Justice Thomas is just a big double-stuffed oreo . . ."

Again, this professor is a white man. And a professor. Who is ostensibly teaching critical thinking skills about the law (he's not - he's just straight up advocating his ideology - but let's pretend).

I'm not really ok with this. I kind of want to say something to the administration. It's on video online, so it's not even my word against his he said it. He even laughingly says a few moments later, "Don't get me fired," so he at least knows on some level it's not great. But he also felt ok enough with it to leave it in his video lecture anyone can access online. He says all kinds of things that are fine on Twitter, but maybe not if you're teaching students (his comments about Christians are epic and ongoing. I think my favorite was, "They don't really believe in Jesus anyway" ).

So I'm mulling this over. After a pretty heavy stream of partisanship, the oreo comment is where I literally stopped, got my partner, and showed it to him. I'd been mentioning this professor to him for months, and that was my, "You have to see this shit" moment. I was . . . not shocked. Just didn't see it going that far or blatantly.

I don't want him fired - I don't care that much, and I'm not a pre-law student. But I don't think this is even kind of ok, and it feels like a straw for me about how he's been teaching the entire class all semester and his relentless spam and commentary promoting his own political views.

I'm curious to know how people here would go about this. I have a 4.0 GPA and am not inclined to risk it, so confronting him isn't something that's going to happen.

Would you say something to administration?