A large part of it is the long term NIMBYism that has plagued the area.(driven by that wealth gap you mention) Bay Area is beautiful to live in, it makes sense why so many choose to settle there, but many people want to restrict that access or make it more difficult.
Compound that over time, and you get what SF is. (The same is happening in other cities like Seattle). It’s heartbreaking that for so long the systemic issues of these places went ignored. From my understanding there is change, but it’s only come once problems like homeless have reached a tipping point instead of the resident preemptively addressing it years/decades ago.
A wealth gap does not cause NIMBY and homeowners protecting their assets is not the reason these people are homeless. No one needs to live in SF. They're homeless because of their continued terrible decisions--something that could potentially be corrected via discipline. But instead, self deprecating behavior is not only condoned, but funded by tax payers.
Homelessness is highest in the areas with the tightest housing markets.
It’s maybe comforting to think that “protecting your assets” isn’t harming anyone else, but there are plenty of places with higher rates of drug abuse than California, yet California has the largest homeless population in the country, followed by Hawaii and Oregon, two states that also have short housing supplies.
You did use “progressive slant” but for others reading this. That slant is just that. A slant. The city had the very opposite of progressive wins in last years city election cycle with quite a few moderates winning. It seems that slant might be wanting these days, our labor wins have seemed to run to the contrary though.
Oh come on, this comes up every single time Seattle gets mentioned. Yes, some of the more "center" candidates won during the last election over "left" candidates but those same "center" candidates would also be considered "far left communist shills" by a large portion of the country at this point.
I'm probably in the "far left communist" camp in a lot of folks mind but it's important to be clear that this type of thing (when talking about the politics of a City, Region, or State) are extremely extremely relative.
Edit: I don't think we're disagreeing to be clear, I'm just tired of this whole "SEATTLE ISN'T PROGRESSIVE ANYMORE" rhetoric. Far right media groups use it as a rallying cry for their movements and I think it's important to recognize that despite things being slightly less progressive than they could be, doesn't mean the city as a whole is suddenly embracing nazi-ism or outright authoritarianism. We've got our issues but becoming a welcoming bastion of hate is not one of them.
Edit 2: Fuck Howard Schultz. His fragile ego and god complex are why we don't have an NBA team too. I view all of this union busting the same way I viewed him after that whole debacle, a megalomaniac who wants people to "believe" he's a savior when in reality he's just another rich dude who wants regular folk to worship him and throws a tantrum if he doesn't get what he wants.
I feel like we are seeing in real time how swing voters and aspirational immigrants set the course of both parties. When Republicans win in 2022 focusing on inflation, crime, and the culture war, what should be the takeaway about “what constituents want?”
The takeaway should be that propaganda and limiting the options to the two worst via gerrymandering, FPP and other broken voting systems results in two options which are fundamentally the same but differ on fear of crime vs paying lip service to diversity. The very fact that you're attempting to lay the blame on swing voters and aspirational immigrants is proof that the system is fundamentally broken and completely uncoupled from the wants or needs of the majority.
Hugely popular measures that actually help the people rather than the rich are rejected bipartisanly at every single level of government in every country where murdoch reigns using the same garbage propaganda whilst privacy is removed, police powers are increased, and trillions of taxpayer dollars are sent to coal and oil barons or arms dealers based on votes taken in the middle of the night.
At a local level the 1% of NIMBYs are listened to over the 70% of people that actually want low carbon, more convenient transport or money to be spent on local parks and activities or increased housing density whilst budgets for the local PD to LARP as a special forces team are doubled without consultation and yet another poor neighborhood is demolished for highways. This happens no matter whether the local pro-facist or shit-light party is in power.
Painting a rainbow or the local indigenous flag on an intersection is completely meaningless when both parties agree to defund and privatise social services (or at the very best one party defunds and sells these things to their buddies for a song while the other party undoes 10% of the damage and pats themselves on the back).
> The takeaway should be that propaganda and limiting the options to the two worst via gerrymandering, FPP and other broken voting systems results in two options which are fundamentally the same but differ on fear of crime vs paying lip service to diversity.
How does “gerrymandering” lead to under 30% of Hispanics approving of Biden?
> The very fact that you're attempting to lay the blame on swing voters and aspirational immigrants is proof that the system is fundamentally broken and completely uncoupled from the wants or needs of the majority.
I’m not “blaming” anyone. I’m asking you to think honestly about what these folks really want, instead of what you wish they want.
> Hugely popular measures that actually help the people rather than the rich are rejected bipartisanly at every single level of government in every country where murdoch reigns using the same garbage propaganda whilst privacy is removed, police powers are increased, and trillions of taxpayer dollars are sent to coal and oil barons or arms dealers based on votes taken in the middle of the night.
Asians, the fastest growing minority group, were instrumental in recalling Chesa Boudin in SF, supporting it by larger margins than anybody else.
> At a local level the 1% of NIMBYs are listened to over the 70% of people that actually want low carbon, more convenient transport
This is urbanist fantasy. Most people, especially aspirational immigrants, don’t meaningfully care about “low carbon.” Most want a suburban house with a pool. As incomes among Hispanics improves, for example, pickup truck sales are skyrocketing in that demographic.
Drought has always been part of the American west. The distinction here is the frequency & intensity of # of drought days. Those are increasing due to us pumping GHG into our atmosphere.
The ecosystem in the west has adapted to drought, but they never adapted for a sudden increase in drought in only a few decades (not long enough for evolution to create useful adaptations on a large scale to speciate) + a competing species reducing total avail land and taking up water supply.
I think the reference might be that some versions of suffering focused ethics entails positions like antinatalism in the short term, and the extinction of suffering capable life as a great good in the long term.
considering the great amount of miserable, unworthy lives (factory farmed animals, heavily abused and tortured humans, etc) that exist and will likely exist even in some amount in even the "utopian" far future, it's reasonable for someone who doesn't think this all this can be counterweighed by any amount of pleasurable lives to consider permanent extinction as good.
and of course in the short term, suffering focused ethics may entail antinatalism as your children can't suffer, be abused, abuse animals, eat factory farmed meat if you just don't have children.
There isn’t, but that change is slow & constantly challenged. Any progress towards protecting the Earth, our environment, and our resources are extremely hard fought, sometimes poorly-implemented, or at risk of being revoked when the government changed hands.
It is difficult not to blame industry because they profit off continued pollution & resource exploitation. The markets have a larger short term incentive to maintain the status quo
>or at risk of being revoked when the government changed hands.
This is happening now. Everyone is focused on getting to "net-zero" and switching to natural gas as a "transition" to cleaner, more sustainable energy sources. This has resulted in nuclear/coal going offline and being switched out for natural gas and natural gas prices shooting up like crazy, then war breaks out and natural gas imports are at risk and people still need power, so policy makers turn to "well maybe its time to switch the nuclear power plant back on?".
When things shift such that the short-term incentives shift away from the push towards the sustainable, renewable direction then it goes back the other way and it can and will happen.
So most federal conservatives. Who are career politicians. Want to get rid of career politicians? After doing nothing to get rid of career politicians their whole career?
This doesn’t track. No politician from either side wants to limit themselves out of a job.
I recently moved from a conservative state to a liberal one. The government at the former was far more controlling then my new home. I’ve never understood this argument. Conservatives are just as invested in intervening in our lives. See recent legislation limiting medical access, voting rights, environmental protections in the Southeastern US.
In my new home. I have better access to medical care, the outdoors are better funded, voting is simple and easy.
Both parties want control over the populace. The idea one party is advocating for more “liberty” is a reductive way of viewing politics
These vectors contain a number of indicator genes, such as antibiotic resistance, so you can use the antibiotic to kill the bacteria that didn't take up your vector.
The vectors have a prepared insertion site to take your gene, that's right in the middle of another gene that produces a colored product.
If the your resultant bacteria produces the colored product, you know you gene didn't make it into the insertion site or it would have broken that gene.
There's vast catalogues of this stuff.
Then when you want to do full genetic sequence to see where your gene has inserted, that's pretty much automated for you.
If your experience is anything like mine, once you start searching for this, google ads is going to lure you into the rabbit hole with offers to 'automate your agrigenomic high throughput whole sequence workflow' and 'rapid de novo genome assembly'
Some of the stuff google is trying to sell me, seems only slightly more non-fictional than 'mystery flesh pit national park', which is of course a searchable phrase.
Compound that over time, and you get what SF is. (The same is happening in other cities like Seattle). It’s heartbreaking that for so long the systemic issues of these places went ignored. From my understanding there is change, but it’s only come once problems like homeless have reached a tipping point instead of the resident preemptively addressing it years/decades ago.