September San Francisco Weather is Always a Tossup
It never fails. In San Francisco in early September we get a few days of Indian Summer. People get all excited and head to the beach. The skies are clear. The sun is shining. The light is turning to that autumn golden. The swell is gentle. The winds light. Two-year-old’s can frolic by the shore in the sand. Everyone thinks that the long slog of summer fog is over. Time and time again it seems just a teaser as the nice days are followed by a few weeks of grim cold, wind and fog.
The weekend of September 19th, 2026 was just that sort of time. The entire Bay Area was betting on warm weather. There were a zillion events planned. Street fairs, Flower Piano, Music Festivals at Treasure Island, Lowrider Fests. It seemed like by mid-day it hovered around sixty-two and a cold wind blew from the northwest. Such is the fate of San Francisco weather in September.
In a few weeks we will be in October and the forecast does look good. Hardly Strictly Bluegrass festival will be going on in Golden Gate Park the first weekend in October but anything can happen.
Lyft Bicycle Racks and the End of Your Business
I love bicycles. I ride a bicycle. I commuted to work for decades on a bicycle. Riding a bike to work was often was the best part of my day. If you want to change the world, that Victorian invention, the bicycle is one solution that has many benefits. Often people assume that anything associated with bicycles is a good thing.
While I have taken a Lyft bicycle for a spin (was surprised how expensive the rental was and how crappy the bike rode), I have noticed that wherever the city of San Francisco allows Lyft to install a rack of their bikes, businesses nearby suffer. Historic Deli’s close (think Lucca’s on 22nd). Shops close. Restaurants become vacant. Lyft has taken over often two parking spots for their bike racks. Once again San Francisco bends over for big tech.
San Francisco has more than 12,000 public bike parking spaces across the city from over 6,000 public bike racks, alongside approximately 275 Lyft Bay Wheels bike-share station locations.
– https://www.sfmta.com/blog/bikeshare-pricing-frequently-asked-questions-faq
The deal that was cut with Lyft was a one-time $300,000 deal in 2019. This deal was written so it funded San Francisco to install common bike parking stations – the U-bar bike parking spots. All fine and dandy but let’s do some math.
Generally it is $2.50 an hour to park at a meter so barring no tickets, the City collects $20 a day from a parking spot. There are 260 weekdays in a year so conceivably the City collects $5200 a year from a single metered parking spot. In six years that is $31,000 for a single parking spot. This is a low-ball and does not even consider parking tickets. There are over 200 Lyft bike station in San Francisco. It does seem that whomever made this deal underbid. In the last six years San Francisco could have been collecting at least $6,240,000 from Lyft! Perhaps twice as much as their bike racks often take up two parking spaces.
THE MATH:
2.50 * 8 = $20
20 * 260 = $5200
6 * 5200 = $31,000
31,000 * 200 = $6,240,000
So instead of $300,000 the City should be getting over a million dollars a year from Lyft. The reason I bring this up is that a parking spot is a public space. Giving it away to a tech corporation at a reduced rate (think Twitter tax break) is simply unfair to other businesses. With often everything in this city decided by a referendum, it is odd that this was never voted on. Once again, San Francisco shows itself in progressive garb that is essentially a sort of tech libertarianism. Whenever I hear a journalist say that San Franisco is the most liberal or progressive city in the United States, I just roll my eyes.
California Billionaires Can Afford a 5% Tax They Presently Hardly Pay Any Taxes
It is not unusual, seeing as how much billionaire money is in politics these days that here in San Francisco the billionaires are sending us mailers at least weekly telling everyone to vote no on Preposition 40. It this 5% wealth tax on billionaires. Of course billionaires are not going to want this tax. For years the wealthy have figured out how to dodge taxes. Presently many of the billionaires pay no taxes at all or if they do it is actually less than 1% of their income! See: Zuckerberg pays hardly any taxes is but one examples. Most of us humans pay around 25% of our hard earned money to the government. I make residuals on digital music and even that is automatically taxed at 24%.
It is time to make the billionaires pay something. One arguments against the Proposition 40 is that it simple perpetuates our broken system whereby our healthcare is owned by insurance companies and that it is a big giveaway to these companies. Hello??? The entire financial world is based on insurance companies. Another argument is that the billionaires will move to Florida. I say good riddance! Enjoy the hurricanes!!!
VOTE YES ON PROPOSITION 40 – TAX THE BILLIONAIRES. THEY WILL STILLL HAVE THEIR YACHTS AND ISLANDS IN HAWAII
Your Computer is Now Thinking
In the 1960s TV show Get Smart there is a computer – the ARDVARC – the Automated Reciprocal Data Verifier and Reaction Computer. In the show Max asks the computer a question. Lights flash. Some clicking sounds are heard. Eventually the computer spits out a three-by-five inch card with the answer. Of course the computer was “thinking.”
On the internet (and Smart TV’s), in order to let the user know that something is actually happening when you click on something or go to a page you see a spinning icon or “indicator.” Often times in the background is an API request to calling up information from another server. The indicator would often say “loading…”
Now, instead of “loading…” the indicators often say “thinking…” I am not sure when this happened but surely with the advent of AI. There is probably someone in tech that can tell you the exact day when they changed “loading” to “thinking” and the marketing meeting when this decision was made. Language is a powerful thing that over time controls our perception of reality and the world. The anthropomorphization of computers is at an all-time high and really out of control. In actuality computers are really still just “loading…”
Those are my rants for today and remember – think for yourself!
“What a waste it is to lose one’s mind. Or not to have a mind is being very wasteful. How true that is.”
– Vice President Dan Quayle
