A lot of little girls jumping in the dark obsessed with glow sticks. Parents mostly on their phones when they kid wasn't trying to dance with them. I've had worse mornings trying to keep her entertained.
I thought "showing people's license plates - that's a bad idea!" And then I stopped and thought about it - why is that supposed to be a no-no? If somebody posted a picture that included my car's license plate, I can't really imagine what might happen to me. Like, lots more information about me is already online from websites that aggregate phone book data from the 1990s.
I blacked out some of the normal license plates, but I feel like if you choose the license plate SARUMAN it's because you want people to notice and pay attention to it.
Rather, what trouble the databases cause its owner. There have been stories of people called Null who end up receiving bills and fines from poorly-coded automatic authorities.
I can totally understand not blacking out number plates, but if you ever do have a good reason to do it, you should probably do it more thoroughly than the "There is no place like OM" one - I suspect a computer could reconstruct most of it.
You may not be able to look up the government database, no, but there are many, many large private databases from roving photography cars which record license plates in public, and a lot of people, like PIs, have access to them. So if you leave license plates unredacted, there are plenty of people who could hypothetically go and look up all the locations that that license plate has been captured in, and obviously that will often give you their job, relatives/friends' addresses, their home, where they go in their pattern of life, and so on. On a weaker level, if you post it online, you're helping build a de facto such database in public.
Similar to hiding faces: maybe not a big deal, but you can see why it'd be polite.
I don't disagree that there's a chain of circumstances that can occur that mean the license plate being exposed was negative, but it's kind of a long chain! Do we have the same standard elsewhere?
The Hu surely are interesting. They seem to be Genghis Khan fanboys and include overtone singing in their performances. Mongolian officials seemed to like them.
The Hu are the only legit example where I can claim to have "discovered" a band _slightly_ before they broke big (thanks, Youtube algorithm!).
AFAICT (not very far) they haven't taken any particularly controversial stances in terms of currently hot Mongolian political fractures, and they have achieved remarkable cultural power while maintaining their Mongolian identification (compare the early, only partly-Mongolian, NYC-based band Tengger Cavalry); why wouldn't the government like them?
They were so nice to give an english translation along with a video (yuve yuve yu). Something about return of the khanate and great Ghengis. A german band praising Hitler wouldn't be too popular with the government. Maybe they will be in 800 years.
I should imagine _not_ (i.e. re Hitler). Rather different situations in a whole lot of ways, not just timescale, but I would not be at all surprised to find that there are folk bands in Uzbekistan that have positive things to say about Timur; and if such bands were to somehow achieve significant commercial success in the West, they would quite possibly get positive notes from the government (note that Uzbekistan seems to have backslid from the Kruschev-esque post-Karimov thaw of 2016-2018; AFAIK it's still not the cult of personality that it was is Karimov's day).
Incidentally, whatever happened to EvolutionistX? She got banned from Twitter a few years back, and now her blog seems to have fallen silent... Anyone know what she's up to now?
> Neutral description of someone's work in a context normally understood to be laudatory — but they weren't Literally Perfect.
construction. I feel like it become very popular to describe artists around the time we as a society discovered that everyone with values before 2020 was wrong and evil.
Apparently "indigenous elder Zachary RunningWolf" was born Freddie Lee Smith. "During his battle to conquer alcoholism, he discovered his Blackfeet, Warm Springs, and Winnebago ancestry . . . ."
He was convicted of vandalism for, among other things, writing "Bye, bye, evil, evil Jews" on a synagogue.
Scott, that's one of the Berkeley plaques! There's a bunch of those throughout the town, some person put them there; they're all similarly false. A lot of people like to hunt them down and catalogue them -- some prefer to do so individually (and may be kind of annoyed at you just posting a picture of one like that :P ). I learned about them when I visited Berkeley recently and learned that Drake and Eric (uh, I am assuming you know these people, maybe you don't :P ) are both plaque-hunters.
I found one at (not saying where) and sent a picture to Drake before thinking, oops, maybe I shouldn't have done that, but fortunately he managed to not look too closely at it and see where it said it was, so he could look for it himself later. :P
Um, good question. I assume there has to be some big catalogue of all the known ones, but I'm not finding anything on a quick search. Maybe ask Drake or Eric...? Can look/ask more later.
Likewise! At most recent count I think Eric knows of a few more than I do, though we sync our recent discoveries now and then. Happy to share my map, although my personal opinion is that the joy of discovery is more fun than checking them off a list.
I tried to get in on StopElon, thinking that the greatest twist of fate would be becoming rich off of a scam based on hating Elon, but unfortunately its trading volume and price is already ~0. I missed my opportunity until the next time someone combines a crypto scam and whatever they felt like doing anyway.
Oh wow I totally didn't realize that "Stopelon" broke down as "Stop Elon". I thought it was just the word "stop" with some weird arbitrary suffix to turn it into a cryptocurrency...
Comparably, there is, apparently in all seriousness, a manufacturer of bespoke writing implements calling itself Pen Island, and not noticing, or pretending not to notice, the obvious rebracketing implications of its website url: https://penisland.net/
Sadly, I think you might be right. Still, kudos to them for the degree of effort and committment to maintaining a plausibly-denial smutty joke on the internet.
> I spent a while trying to guess whether this was real or a parody. As always in the Bay, it was real. Even DEATHGRAVE.
What does the first one say? I've been staring at it and I still can't read it. I think the letters after the central e are "RATI", but I can't tell what's before it...
"Am I being oversensitive, or is this memorial plaque hinting that John Steinbeck was problematic for writing fiction?"
I wouldn't be at all surprised. That "Bird names for birds" lot who want to get rid of naming birds after humans, particularly horrible racist sexist colonialist imperialist humans, also complained about the one bird named after an African porter by a racist etc. scientist because what was so special about that one guy instead of all the other unnamed Africans, huh?
I'm confused... what's their plan, exactly ? Name birds after other birds, creating a potentially circular reference graph ? Name birds as they'd prefer to be called, i.e. "Tweety-twee" or "ChirpChirpChirp" ? Wouldn't it be easier to just give them all hashcodes ? "I went out birding yesterday morning, and saw a magnificent 0x15798BFC sitting next to a 0xCE55D90A".
Their idea is that if it's, say, a sparrow with red wings and a short beak that eats beetles, you call it the "Red-Winged Short-beaked Beetle-eating Sparrow".
I think birds don't care what they're called, I'm sure any native tribes in the area have their own names, so whatever it's called in English doesn't matter a damn to them, but even before I looked up the founders, I went "this must be a bunch of white young people".
Amusingly, they indulge in self-flagellation (performative? sincere? some from column A and some from column B?) as while it's very terribly bad and wicked of white people to name birds (and plants, and animals, and pretty much every feature of the natural world) with their awful "eponymous and honorific common bird names" because "Eponymous common names are essentially verbal statues" (and, as we all know, Statues Bad), they acknowledge that they too are White People saying what birds should be named:
"Second, the core group of individuals behind BN4B (Jordan, Gabriel, Jess, and Alex) are White. As White folks, for us to say what the new names should be would be perpetuating the very system that we’re trying to raise awareness about and change."
"First, most of the people currently in a traditionally accepted role of determining official common names are White. For White people to determine what actions were problematic enough to warrant a name change is completely inappropriate and perpetuates the very system that BN4B is working to change. White people simply do not have the perspective to decide what is or isn’t harmful."
But if White people don't have the perspective to decide what is or isn't harmful, how can these White people here decide that a particular bird name is harmful?
I bet you had no idea that the birdwatching community was a hotbed of racism badly in need of EDI intervention, yes?
"Main Goals of BN4B:
- Remove all eponymous English common bird names*
*eventually, it’s understood that the names won’t be changed overnight
- Create or modify naming process so it is accountable, Equity-Diversity-Inclusion (EDI) based, and involves all stakeholders
- Raise awareness about the issue, the history of ornithology/nomenclature/historical individuals/etc, and how this issue relates to EDI in the bird community"
"The vast majority of eponymous common names were applied to birds by European and American naturalists during a period of time known as colonialism, when (primarily) European countries subjugated, exploited, and populated territories held by non-white peoples. To legitimize this endeavor, the concept of race as a classification system was developed, and the white “race” and civilization were considered superior to all others. The impacts of colonialism were global, and the false concept of race used to justify colonialism resulted in the reality of racism, a reality which has structured societies, interactions, and even survival ever since.
Eponymous common names are essentially verbal statues. They were made to honor the benefactor in perpetuity, and as such reflect the accomplishments and values that the creator esteemed. We are not bound by either the intention or the regard; we should make decisions about who and what we honor based on our own values, values that create a more equitable world for all. By continuing to use eponymous common bird names, we continue to reference and honor our distressful colonial heritage and the racism that was a direct consequence of this malicious exploitation. This is unacceptable, and we must do better."
I believe this kind of thing is what is referred to as "First World Problems"?
> Their idea is that if it's, say, a sparrow with red wings and a short beak that eats beetles, you call it the "Red-Winged Short-beaked Beetle-eating Sparrow".
This would make all bird names infinitely long.
> First, most of the people currently in a traditionally accepted role of determining official common names are White.
This is a conceptual confusion (I realize it's theirs, not yours) -- you can have a body determining official names, and you can have common names, but there is no one in a role of determining common names, nor can there be.
Indeed, the names would be very long. But at least they wouldn't be racist! Until someone decides that any name in English is racist because English is the language of colonisers, and we should use chirps or caws or something because those truly would be "bird names for birds".
> Until someone decides that any name in English is racist because English is the language of colonisers
Has this not already happened?
I'd have to admit that I tend to be uncomfortable with English words in non-English languages on the personal grounds that they seem inauthentic, which is a different sentiment that just happens to argue for the same goal. 🫤
Every so often I'll ask a (Chinese) friend of mine why all the underwear models in Chinese advertising are white [it's hard to avoid noticing this if you walk around a Chinese mall], and she always responds "only an American would worry about that!"
(She has tried to answer the question itself as well - she says white girls look prettier in underwear than Asian girls do, and the point of advertising is to send the message "you could look like this too if you buy our product!"
But I still get confused, because if white girls look systematically better than Asian girls, then there is no hope of actually achieving your goal of looking as beautiful as the model -- I feel like advertising that gives you an honest idea of what _you_ will look like wearing the product must be more useful??)
"I bet you had no idea that the birdwatching community was a hotbed of racism badly in need of EDI intervention, yes?"
As always, I am surprised by how prescient Scott could be:
"Imagine Moloch looking out over the expanse of the world, eagle-eyed for anything that can turn brother against brother and husband against wife. Finally he decides “YOU KNOW WHAT NOBODY HATES EACH OTHER ABOUT YET? BIRD-WATCHING. LET ME FIND SOME STORY THAT WILL MAKE PEOPLE HATE EACH OTHER OVER BIRD-WATCHING”. And the next day half the world’s newspaper headlines are “Has The Political Correctness Police Taken Over Bird-Watching?” and the other half are “Is Bird-Watching Racist?”.
And then bird-watchers and non-bird-watchers and different sub-groups of bird-watchers hold vitriolic attacks on each other that feed back on each other in a vicious cycle for the next six months, and the whole thing ends in mutual death threats and another previously innocent activity turning into World War I style trench warfare."
I will refrain from further comment because right now I'm mostly going "stupid effin' [redacted] [expunged] [expurgated]".
"One popular suggestion is to call them the “Milky Clouds.”
Excuse me, no! That is Highly Offensive and Problematique! It disparages the vast majority of non-non-human animal folx who are lactose intolerant and has associations as a dogwhistle for white supremacism! We must rename the Milky Way because it was known to many native ways of knowing cultures long before any Western coloniser oppressor naming!
There are plaques like the Institute of Paranormal Research one scattered throughout the Berkeley city limits! I've seen roughly 25 of them, and I wouldn't be surprised if there are over a hundred!
Mephisto is a fine, bland brand of comfy shoes. Founded 1965 in France, first market: Germany. Has a brand-outlet in my provincial town. Why Martin Michaeli called his brand Mephisto? Maybe ...
Due to my priors, I just see a boring sub-par shoe-ad from last century. While many of the other pics freak me out. ;) To rephrase your Friedman review: My overall conclusion is that I am delighted by this fascinating stuff and very much relieved to see it done somewhere very far away from me. - Switzerland waits for you.
Kinda true. But the owner's names hint to why he went for a name with "M". ;)
Also: here, 'Mephisto' as one of Satan's names is known MAINLY by Goethe's FAUST; in which Mephisto is sophisticated, smart and kinda fun - not really more evil than most insurance-salespeople (those are wicked, no doubt). Name was also used for a brand of chess-computers: In 1981 the Mephisto II had 2+16 KB RAM+ROM, an ELO of 1450 and a price tag of 500 Mark - inflation adjusted: 500€ https://www.schachcomputer.info/wiki/index.php/Mephisto_II
Ah, the finer points of demonology! Sure, M. is usu. just a demon. Otoh: Collins has it as: "Mephistopheles in American English (ˌmɛfəˈstɑfəˌliz)
a devil in medieval legend and later literary and operatic works, to whom Faust, or Faustus, sells his soul for knowledge and power - Also Meˈphisto (məˈfɪstoʊ)
Now, assuming Satan and "the devil" are interchangeable (in everyday-usage only, ofc) - and "a devil" with "the devil", if only one appears (as in Faust) - the over-simplification seemed okayish. Also: https://www.thesaurus.com/browse/devil Plus: There are no true synonyms, anyway. Now, to the real question: did he turn the lady into a shoe?
Some might be most familiar with the name from Liszt's Mephisto Waltzes - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mephisto_Waltzes - ostensibly named on the basis of being program music inspired by the Faust story, but presumably you still need to sell your soul to the devil in order to be able play them.
In spring 2018 I visited UC Berkeley for a PhD program admissions tour. It happened to be International Women's Day and there was an interesting-sounding event at a bookstore called Revolution Books.
Turns out it was those Bob Avakian people. They were really weird, but at least I got some tasty cookies.
Would be a little funny if we got right up to the cusp of building misaligned ASI, with all of the rationalists' calm warnings falling on deaf ears, only for the Marxists to sweep in at the last minute and save humanity by accidentally breaking everything again.
I don't think it is. I think the thin blue line flag has only one blue stripe (in the middle), but that one looks like it has at least two blue stripes at the bottom. I don't know what it is though.
"Cash for your Warhol" is from Somerville, MA originally. The stickers are all over the place in the Boston area, with a variety of taglines. (Some of my favorites: "No provenance, no problem!" and "When they go low, we go high!") I've looked for them further afield but haven't seen any in the wild, so it was a nice surprise to see it show up on ACX.
FWIW, the "we don't dial 911" thing is probably almost the opposite of suicidal. It's a gun-culture saying that basically means, "We don't need to call the cops. We're armed and willing. Fuck around and find out."
I was not familiar with the slogan, but my first read on it was "We don't dial 911 [because we handle intruders ourselves]". I am not a typical Oakland resident, but I don't think the phrasing is particularly weird.
Even if it was an ill-advised anti-police statement, I don't know that burglars would necessarily believe it. Sometimes people will dial 911 even if that is not The Sort Of Person They Are, just like sometimes people will have premarital sex or accidentally misdirect a job application from someone they personally hate.
When an apparently schizophrenic homeless woman visited my parents' house late at night once, my mother was concerned that calling the police on her might result in her being hurt, but ultimately called the police anyway because we couldn't find any other way to get her to leave.
(1) I definitely would hire that plumber to unblock my pipes
(2) I had to look up Pecan Resist and now I wish our tame Marxist was still around to do a critique on co-option by capitalism; it's pure opportunism with a very thin glaze of social activism. A Ben and Jerry ice cream from 2018, and not even a new formulation, just a re-branding of an existing product, but anything marketed as anti-Trump will serve to pry the nickels out of the hands of the idiot young:
"Ben & Jerry’s is launching a new flavor, Pecan Resist, which the company made to promote activism in the U.S.
...A quick note for flavor-watchers: Pecan Resist was previously called New York Super Fudge Chunk.
...Bay Area artist and activist Favianna Rodriguez designed the Pecan Resist pint. The carton reads, "Welcome to the resistance. Together, Pecan Resist!...We celebrate the diversity of our glorious nation & raise our spoons in solidarity for all Americans. Take a stand & join those on the front lines.”
Am I objecting to the ice cream itself? No, I too enjoy the sweet and indeed over-sugared taste of successful capitalism. But my God, Bay Area people, you need James Connolly if you're going to be sincere in your socialism:
(3) "We don't dial 911" but we do have a security system/alarm in place, because even here we are not totally, completely stupid
(4) That Elon Musk artwork is... something else. I'm sort of impressed and sort of intimidated
(5) Transgender District? Meh. I'm much more interested in the building beside the flags, with the bronze lettering on the walls - a poem? a speech? "and miracles appear in the " - what's the rest of it? what is that building?
(6) "You are your ID" - oh, I'd like to have a full and frank exchange of views on that one! Though not with the poor minions operating the public-facing role of "sorry, we need your passport", they don't get to set things like that
(7) EA versus the Salvation Army? I'm betting on the Sallies to win that one pulling up 😁 As GKC points out, where is the EA brass band with the big bass drum?
"And there is this difference between the matter of aims and the matter of methods, that to judge of the aims of a thing like the Salvation Army is very difficult, to judge of their ritual and atmosphere very easy. No one, perhaps, but a sociologist can see whether General Booth’s housing scheme is right. But any healthy person can see that banging brass cymbals together must be right. A page of statistics, a plan of model dwellings, anything which is rational, is always difficult for the lay mind. But the thing which is irrational any one can understand. That is why religion came so early into the world and spread so far, while science came so late into the world and has not spread at all. History unanimously attests the fact that it is only mysticism which stands the smallest chance of being understanded of the people. Common sense has to be kept as an esoteric secret in the dark temple of culture. And so while the philanthropy of the Salvationists and its genuineness may be a reasonable matter for the discussion of the doctors, there can be no doubt about the genuineness of their brass bands, for a brass band is purely spiritual, and seeks only to quicken the internal life. The object of philanthropy is to do good; the object of religion is to be good, if only for a moment, amid a crash of brass."
"Ordinary people dislike the delicate modern work, not because it is good or because it is bad, but because it is not the thing that they asked for. If, for instance, you find them pent in sterile streets and hungering for adventure and a violent secrecy, and if you then give them their choice between “A Study in Scarlet,” a good detective story, and “The Autobiography of Mark Rutherford,” a good psychological monologue, no doubt they will prefer “A Study in Scarlet.” But they will not do so because “The Autobiography of Mark Rutherford” is a very good monologue, but because it is evidently a very poor detective story. They will be indifferent to “Les Aveugles,” not because it is good drama, but because it is bad melodrama. They do not like good introspective sonnets; but neither do they like bad introspective sonnets, of which there are many. When they walk behind the brass of the Salvation Army band, instead of listening to harmonies at Queen’s Hall, it is always assumed that they prefer bad music. But it may be merely that they prefer military music, music marching down the open street, and that if Dan Godfrey’s band could be smitten with salvation and lead them they would like that even better. And while they might easily get more satisfaction out of a screaming article in The War Cry than out of a page of Emerson about the Oversoul, this would not be because the page of Emerson is another and superior kind of literature. It would be because the page of Emerson is another (and inferior) kind of religion."
(2) The (attempted) pun didn't parse at all for me. Who the hell pronounces pecan as "we can"?
(4) The Elon GOAT statue was delivered by flatbed to Tesla HQ in Austin with considerable pomp and media hype. To his everlasting credit Musk did not publicly acknowledge or take receipt of the statue, and it eventually left the way it came.
'Fellow Co-Founder Ashley Sansalone said the idea came to them last year.
“It was an evening joke that kind of just came to fruition,” he said.
They asked sculptor Kevin Stone, based in British Columbia, Canada, to make the sculpture in an attempt to get Mr Musk to tweet about it and gain notoriety for their cryptocurrency.
“Elon tweeting us would legitimize the token,” Mr Sansalone, 40, said.'
I can't believe how cheap manicures/pedicures and day hire of a van/trailer thingy big enough to move a small flat are (in relation to minimum wage). I thought Bay Area was super expensive for America.
Just a late, late note: Naadam is a cashmere company with Mongolian connections. (The name "naadam" means the summer games here.) "We are goat people" is not the best slogan in that line; my favorite is that of Gobi Cashmere, "From goat to coat." It probably wouldn't fly in the US, but it goes over well in Mongolia, and it gets used as a quaint section heading in papers and reports on cashmere in Mongolia. https://naadam.co/pages/aboutus
I was visiting in July and I definitely took my kid to that baby rave.
How was it?
A lot of little girls jumping in the dark obsessed with glow sticks. Parents mostly on their phones when they kid wasn't trying to dance with them. I've had worse mornings trying to keep her entertained.
I thought "showing people's license plates - that's a bad idea!" And then I stopped and thought about it - why is that supposed to be a no-no? If somebody posted a picture that included my car's license plate, I can't really imagine what might happen to me. Like, lots more information about me is already online from websites that aggregate phone book data from the 1990s.
I blacked out some of the normal license plates, but I feel like if you choose the license plate SARUMAN it's because you want people to notice and pay attention to it.
There's a motorcycle I see occasionally with the license plate NULL; I always wonder what sort of trouble its owner causes databases.
Rather, what trouble the databases cause its owner. There have been stories of people called Null who end up receiving bills and fines from poorly-coded automatic authorities.
Obligatory xkcd https://xkcd.com/327/
https://xkcd.com/1105/
Not sure if it's the same guy, but this is a great story about the dangers of NULL license plates https://www.wired.com/story/null-license-plate-landed-one-hacker-ticket-hell/
I can totally understand not blacking out number plates, but if you ever do have a good reason to do it, you should probably do it more thoroughly than the "There is no place like OM" one - I suspect a computer could reconstruct most of it.
You may not be able to look up the government database, no, but there are many, many large private databases from roving photography cars which record license plates in public, and a lot of people, like PIs, have access to them. So if you leave license plates unredacted, there are plenty of people who could hypothetically go and look up all the locations that that license plate has been captured in, and obviously that will often give you their job, relatives/friends' addresses, their home, where they go in their pattern of life, and so on. On a weaker level, if you post it online, you're helping build a de facto such database in public.
Similar to hiding faces: maybe not a big deal, but you can see why it'd be polite.
I don't disagree that there's a chain of circumstances that can occur that mean the license plate being exposed was negative, but it's kind of a long chain! Do we have the same standard elsewhere?
Kaiser and Swindells must be a spinoff of that famed law firm, Dewey, Cheatham & Howe
A very old firm, indeed.
Sioux, Grabbit, and Runne, surely.
And the British branch of Messrs. Sue, Grabbit and Runne.
There's a sign for that firm in Harvard Square, it's pretty famous.
The Neo-Assyrian empire nod was unexpected
Definitely betrays a recency bias in which "problematic" statues get taken down, haha.
I’d take Robert E. Lee over Ashurbanipal any day
Quite so. Although, it would be nice to get a statue of Ea-nāṣir. Just for fun.
Made of low-quality copper, of course.
To be fair, the US doesn't exactly have a large Babylonian population to be offended.
I really liked that one, especially coming after the hunk of concrete building (where the shadows on its surface at least gave it some interest).
That's public art done well 😀 I expect someone is going to complain about it because it's Problematic in some way.
Does talking to that statue lead to the Helm of Oreyn Bearclaw?
https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Morrowind:Assurdirapal
My favorite of the bunch. According to Wikipedia it was even made by an actual Assyrian sculptor.
Unfair to Sargon, Hammurabi, and Gilgamesh, really. Why's he get a statue when he was a jerk and said my haircut makes me look like a Mohenjo-Daran?
Looking forward to the abbreviated two-chapter HU version of unsong
What's the secret of theodicy? Hundred Universes
Hu has a claim to be the pronoun of God. It's the Arabic for "he", and chanted by dervishes in reference to Allah.
Related: In hebrew she is he and he is who and who is me.
And we are all together?
> It's the Arabic for "he"
Is this true given the pronunciation that the cult sign specifies, /hju/ ("same as 'hue' ")?
Performed by the Mongolian folk-metal group The Hu (granted, far too mainstream for The Bay).
The Hu surely are interesting. They seem to be Genghis Khan fanboys and include overtone singing in their performances. Mongolian officials seemed to like them.
The Hu are the only legit example where I can claim to have "discovered" a band _slightly_ before they broke big (thanks, Youtube algorithm!).
AFAICT (not very far) they haven't taken any particularly controversial stances in terms of currently hot Mongolian political fractures, and they have achieved remarkable cultural power while maintaining their Mongolian identification (compare the early, only partly-Mongolian, NYC-based band Tengger Cavalry); why wouldn't the government like them?
They were so nice to give an english translation along with a video (yuve yuve yu). Something about return of the khanate and great Ghengis. A german band praising Hitler wouldn't be too popular with the government. Maybe they will be in 800 years.
I should imagine _not_ (i.e. re Hitler). Rather different situations in a whole lot of ways, not just timescale, but I would not be at all surprised to find that there are folk bands in Uzbekistan that have positive things to say about Timur; and if such bands were to somehow achieve significant commercial success in the West, they would quite possibly get positive notes from the government (note that Uzbekistan seems to have backslid from the Kruschev-esque post-Karimov thaw of 2016-2018; AFAIK it's still not the cult of personality that it was is Karimov's day).
“ A german band praising Hitler wouldn't be too popular with the government.”
The difference is that Mongolia isn’t sorry.
https://evolutionistx.wordpress.com/2017/09/11/mongolia-isnt-sorry/
Incidentally, whatever happened to EvolutionistX? She got banned from Twitter a few years back, and now her blog seems to have fallen silent... Anyone know what she's up to now?
Bob Avakian still exists?
there's something really beautiful about the
> Neutral description of someone's work in a context normally understood to be laudatory — but they weren't Literally Perfect.
construction. I feel like it become very popular to describe artists around the time we as a society discovered that everyone with values before 2020 was wrong and evil.
I take extreme offense at your implication that people between 2020 and November 2023 were not literally Hitler.
We already know Literally Hitler Part Deux is coming in 2024, so all of us are already damned:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/11/17/trump-2024-newsletter/
I've seen the Cash for Warhols sticker around here (RI); the phone number has a Boston area code, so I'm guessing it's local
Apparently "indigenous elder Zachary RunningWolf" was born Freddie Lee Smith. "During his battle to conquer alcoholism, he discovered his Blackfeet, Warm Springs, and Winnebago ancestry . . . ."
He was convicted of vandalism for, among other things, writing "Bye, bye, evil, evil Jews" on a synagogue.
No surprises there.
> I checked and this is all false.
Scott, that's one of the Berkeley plaques! There's a bunch of those throughout the town, some person put them there; they're all similarly false. A lot of people like to hunt them down and catalogue them -- some prefer to do so individually (and may be kind of annoyed at you just posting a picture of one like that :P ). I learned about them when I visited Berkeley recently and learned that Drake and Eric (uh, I am assuming you know these people, maybe you don't :P ) are both plaque-hunters.
I found one at (not saying where) and sent a picture to Drake before thinking, oops, maybe I shouldn't have done that, but fortunately he managed to not look too closely at it and see where it said it was, so he could look for it himself later. :P
Harry I knew you were gonna have stuff to say on at least one of these things
I didn't know this was a thing, is there somewhere I can read more?
Um, good question. I assume there has to be some big catalogue of all the known ones, but I'm not finding anything on a quick search. Maybe ask Drake or Eric...? Can look/ask more later.
Yup, feel free to reach out! (I think you have my contact info.)
I have intentionally not looked for a public catalogue, though I have my own catalogue of 25-ish plaques (joint work with Drake, as Sniffnoy said).
Likewise! At most recent count I think Eric knows of a few more than I do, though we sync our recent discoveries now and then. Happy to share my map, although my personal opinion is that the joy of discovery is more fun than checking them off a list.
You probably already tried googling, but there’s at least a short article with more examples:
https://www.berkeleyside.org/2019/08/28/who-is-putting-these-mysterious-medallions-around-berkeley
I tried to get in on StopElon, thinking that the greatest twist of fate would be becoming rich off of a scam based on hating Elon, but unfortunately its trading volume and price is already ~0. I missed my opportunity until the next time someone combines a crypto scam and whatever they felt like doing anyway.
Oh wow I totally didn't realize that "Stopelon" broke down as "Stop Elon". I thought it was just the word "stop" with some weird arbitrary suffix to turn it into a cryptocurrency...
My brain parsed it as Stope Ion at first. Apparently, these are a new kind of ions?
Like the name of the game "runescape", which my brain parses into "run! escape!"
Comparably, there is, apparently in all seriousness, a manufacturer of bespoke writing implements calling itself Pen Island, and not noticing, or pretending not to notice, the obvious rebracketing implications of its website url: https://penisland.net/
I think that's a joke site. (Read the wood and plastic pages carefully, and note that no actual products are shown anywhere.)
Sadly, I think you might be right. Still, kudos to them for the degree of effort and committment to maintaining a plausibly-denial smutty joke on the internet.
> I spent a while trying to guess whether this was real or a parody. As always in the Bay, it was real. Even DEATHGRAVE.
What does the first one say? I've been staring at it and I still can't read it. I think the letters after the central e are "RATI", but I can't tell what's before it...
Cliterati?
Aha! Thanks. (Also, hi Elena! :) )
Um... hi Sniffnoy? Do I know you by a different name?
Oh hi yes it's Harry Altman sorry. :) Of course on the internet I use a handle as per custom but it's not a secret, so. :P
Our beautiful region....
If we didn't have social media, we would immediately invent it.
What's up with the U-Haul? A lot of U-Hauls have signs like that. This one's for pykrete, for those curious.
Still, though, bless the person who came up with the idea for those signs. The world is in dire need of more wonder and those signs do the job well.
"Am I being oversensitive, or is this memorial plaque hinting that John Steinbeck was problematic for writing fiction?"
I wouldn't be at all surprised. That "Bird names for birds" lot who want to get rid of naming birds after humans, particularly horrible racist sexist colonialist imperialist humans, also complained about the one bird named after an African porter by a racist etc. scientist because what was so special about that one guy instead of all the other unnamed Africans, huh?
And in case you think I'm joking:
https://birdnamesforbirds.wordpress.com/historical-profiles/profiles-a-z/klaas/
Damned if you do, damned if you don't, eh?
The most powerful gift that social media has given humanity is the gift of discovering increasingly bizarre hills to die on.
Steinbeck claimed that there was a conspiracy to falsely accuse him of rape, which means that he's far right.
I'm confused... what's their plan, exactly ? Name birds after other birds, creating a potentially circular reference graph ? Name birds as they'd prefer to be called, i.e. "Tweety-twee" or "ChirpChirpChirp" ? Wouldn't it be easier to just give them all hashcodes ? "I went out birding yesterday morning, and saw a magnificent 0x15798BFC sitting next to a 0xCE55D90A".
Their idea is that if it's, say, a sparrow with red wings and a short beak that eats beetles, you call it the "Red-Winged Short-beaked Beetle-eating Sparrow".
I think birds don't care what they're called, I'm sure any native tribes in the area have their own names, so whatever it's called in English doesn't matter a damn to them, but even before I looked up the founders, I went "this must be a bunch of white young people".
Amusingly, they indulge in self-flagellation (performative? sincere? some from column A and some from column B?) as while it's very terribly bad and wicked of white people to name birds (and plants, and animals, and pretty much every feature of the natural world) with their awful "eponymous and honorific common bird names" because "Eponymous common names are essentially verbal statues" (and, as we all know, Statues Bad), they acknowledge that they too are White People saying what birds should be named:
"Second, the core group of individuals behind BN4B (Jordan, Gabriel, Jess, and Alex) are White. As White folks, for us to say what the new names should be would be perpetuating the very system that we’re trying to raise awareness about and change."
"First, most of the people currently in a traditionally accepted role of determining official common names are White. For White people to determine what actions were problematic enough to warrant a name change is completely inappropriate and perpetuates the very system that BN4B is working to change. White people simply do not have the perspective to decide what is or isn’t harmful."
But if White people don't have the perspective to decide what is or isn't harmful, how can these White people here decide that a particular bird name is harmful?
I bet you had no idea that the birdwatching community was a hotbed of racism badly in need of EDI intervention, yes?
"Main Goals of BN4B:
- Remove all eponymous English common bird names*
*eventually, it’s understood that the names won’t be changed overnight
- Create or modify naming process so it is accountable, Equity-Diversity-Inclusion (EDI) based, and involves all stakeholders
- Raise awareness about the issue, the history of ornithology/nomenclature/historical individuals/etc, and how this issue relates to EDI in the bird community"
"The vast majority of eponymous common names were applied to birds by European and American naturalists during a period of time known as colonialism, when (primarily) European countries subjugated, exploited, and populated territories held by non-white peoples. To legitimize this endeavor, the concept of race as a classification system was developed, and the white “race” and civilization were considered superior to all others. The impacts of colonialism were global, and the false concept of race used to justify colonialism resulted in the reality of racism, a reality which has structured societies, interactions, and even survival ever since.
Eponymous common names are essentially verbal statues. They were made to honor the benefactor in perpetuity, and as such reflect the accomplishments and values that the creator esteemed. We are not bound by either the intention or the regard; we should make decisions about who and what we honor based on our own values, values that create a more equitable world for all. By continuing to use eponymous common bird names, we continue to reference and honor our distressful colonial heritage and the racism that was a direct consequence of this malicious exploitation. This is unacceptable, and we must do better."
I believe this kind of thing is what is referred to as "First World Problems"?
> Their idea is that if it's, say, a sparrow with red wings and a short beak that eats beetles, you call it the "Red-Winged Short-beaked Beetle-eating Sparrow".
This would make all bird names infinitely long.
> First, most of the people currently in a traditionally accepted role of determining official common names are White.
This is a conceptual confusion (I realize it's theirs, not yours) -- you can have a body determining official names, and you can have common names, but there is no one in a role of determining common names, nor can there be.
Indeed, the names would be very long. But at least they wouldn't be racist! Until someone decides that any name in English is racist because English is the language of colonisers, and we should use chirps or caws or something because those truly would be "bird names for birds".
> Until someone decides that any name in English is racist because English is the language of colonisers
Has this not already happened?
I'd have to admit that I tend to be uncomfortable with English words in non-English languages on the personal grounds that they seem inauthentic, which is a different sentiment that just happens to argue for the same goal. 🫤
Every so often I'll ask a (Chinese) friend of mine why all the underwear models in Chinese advertising are white [it's hard to avoid noticing this if you walk around a Chinese mall], and she always responds "only an American would worry about that!"
(She has tried to answer the question itself as well - she says white girls look prettier in underwear than Asian girls do, and the point of advertising is to send the message "you could look like this too if you buy our product!"
But I still get confused, because if white girls look systematically better than Asian girls, then there is no hope of actually achieving your goal of looking as beautiful as the model -- I feel like advertising that gives you an honest idea of what _you_ will look like wearing the product must be more useful??)
"I bet you had no idea that the birdwatching community was a hotbed of racism badly in need of EDI intervention, yes?"
As always, I am surprised by how prescient Scott could be:
"Imagine Moloch looking out over the expanse of the world, eagle-eyed for anything that can turn brother against brother and husband against wife. Finally he decides “YOU KNOW WHAT NOBODY HATES EACH OTHER ABOUT YET? BIRD-WATCHING. LET ME FIND SOME STORY THAT WILL MAKE PEOPLE HATE EACH OTHER OVER BIRD-WATCHING”. And the next day half the world’s newspaper headlines are “Has The Political Correctness Police Taken Over Bird-Watching?” and the other half are “Is Bird-Watching Racist?”.
And then bird-watchers and non-bird-watchers and different sub-groups of bird-watchers hold vitriolic attacks on each other that feed back on each other in a vicious cycle for the next six months, and the whole thing ends in mutual death threats and another previously innocent activity turning into World War I style trench warfare."
(from https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/17/the-toxoplasma-of-rage/)
Just saw the news about the movement to rename the Magellanic Clouds. Think big.
And that's not a joke.
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/astronomers-renaming-magellanic-clouds
I will refrain from further comment because right now I'm mostly going "stupid effin' [redacted] [expunged] [expurgated]".
"One popular suggestion is to call them the “Milky Clouds.”
Excuse me, no! That is Highly Offensive and Problematique! It disparages the vast majority of non-non-human animal folx who are lactose intolerant and has associations as a dogwhistle for white supremacism! We must rename the Milky Way because it was known to many native ways of knowing cultures long before any Western coloniser oppressor naming!
"Gluten-free clouds". You're welcome.
There are plaques like the Institute of Paranormal Research one scattered throughout the Berkeley city limits! I've seen roughly 25 of them, and I wouldn't be surprised if there are over a hundred!
Mephisto is a fine, bland brand of comfy shoes. Founded 1965 in France, first market: Germany. Has a brand-outlet in my provincial town. Why Martin Michaeli called his brand Mephisto? Maybe ...
https://www.mephisto.com/en/brand/history
I think it was the combination of the name and the woman who looks like she's been turned into a shoe.
Due to my priors, I just see a boring sub-par shoe-ad from last century. While many of the other pics freak me out. ;) To rephrase your Friedman review: My overall conclusion is that I am delighted by this fascinating stuff and very much relieved to see it done somewhere very far away from me. - Switzerland waits for you.
That link doesn't explain anything! Why would you name your shoe conpany after the devil?
Because naming a footware brand after a fatal neurological disease spread by cannibalism has already been done https://www.kurufootwear.com/ ? :-)
Kinda true. But the owner's names hint to why he went for a name with "M". ;)
Also: here, 'Mephisto' as one of Satan's names is known MAINLY by Goethe's FAUST; in which Mephisto is sophisticated, smart and kinda fun - not really more evil than most insurance-salespeople (those are wicked, no doubt). Name was also used for a brand of chess-computers: In 1981 the Mephisto II had 2+16 KB RAM+ROM, an ELO of 1450 and a price tag of 500 Mark - inflation adjusted: 500€ https://www.schachcomputer.info/wiki/index.php/Mephisto_II
Hm, I wouldn't know "Mephisto" as one of Satan's names at all; I'd assume it was short for Mephistopheles.
Ah, the finer points of demonology! Sure, M. is usu. just a demon. Otoh: Collins has it as: "Mephistopheles in American English (ˌmɛfəˈstɑfəˌliz)
a devil in medieval legend and later literary and operatic works, to whom Faust, or Faustus, sells his soul for knowledge and power - Also Meˈphisto (məˈfɪstoʊ)
Word origin: Ger, earlier Miphostophiles < ? Hebrew: mēphtz, destroyer + tōphḗl, liar "
Now, assuming Satan and "the devil" are interchangeable (in everyday-usage only, ofc) - and "a devil" with "the devil", if only one appears (as in Faust) - the over-simplification seemed okayish. Also: https://www.thesaurus.com/browse/devil Plus: There are no true synonyms, anyway. Now, to the real question: did he turn the lady into a shoe?
I am the spirit that negates.
And rightly so, for all that comes to be
Deserves to perish wretchedly;
‘Twere better nothing would begin.
Thus everything that your terms, sin,
Destruction, evil represent—
That is my proper element.
Some might be most familiar with the name from Liszt's Mephisto Waltzes - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mephisto_Waltzes - ostensibly named on the basis of being program music inspired by the Faust story, but presumably you still need to sell your soul to the devil in order to be able play them.
Yesssss. I went to the Eck temple in Ghana many years ago. So fun to say Hu.
https://www.eck-ghana.org/
In spring 2018 I visited UC Berkeley for a PhD program admissions tour. It happened to be International Women's Day and there was an interesting-sounding event at a bookstore called Revolution Books.
Turns out it was those Bob Avakian people. They were really weird, but at least I got some tasty cookies.
I feel as though I've read through a photo journal from another planet. Suburban life must be doing me dirty.
Wait, so what did the skubb turn out to be?
I actually know this one! It's an Ikea product, set of storage boxes.
Oh! Huh.
Yes, the Skubbs are shown in the photograph.
Weirdly, Ikea gives the same name to a bunch of similarly-constructed but very differently sized boxes.
Anyone else start involuntarily singing "found a puma, found a puma, found a puuuma last niiight..." under their breath?
I get the feeling that everybody is protesting a bit too much with the anti capitalist thing in the centre of US techno capitalism.
Would be a little funny if we got right up to the cusp of building misaligned ASI, with all of the rationalists' calm warnings falling on deaf ears, only for the Marxists to sweep in at the last minute and save humanity by accidentally breaking everything again.
Really appreciate the thin blue line flag next to the gay/trans/furry pride flags. Some true inclusivity and tolerance in that house.
I don't think it is. I think the thin blue line flag has only one blue stripe (in the middle), but that one looks like it has at least two blue stripes at the bottom. I don't know what it is though.
Oh rats, you're right. I think it's actually the "leather pride flag", which is much less funny.
San Francisco is where I found my favorite graffiti in the 1970s: Gravity Sucks. It's profound.
But Nuke the Gay Whales covers more D.E.I., and is often preferred by libertarians.
Re the airport photo:
The Krellcial question is: Are there monsters of the (government-issued, photo) ID? :-)
"Cash for your Warhol" is from Somerville, MA originally. The stickers are all over the place in the Boston area, with a variety of taglines. (Some of my favorites: "No provenance, no problem!" and "When they go low, we go high!") I've looked for them further afield but haven't seen any in the wild, so it was a nice surprise to see it show up on ACX.
There's an associated website (www.cashforyourwarhol.com) and there was even briefly a pop-up Cash For Your Warhol store in Cambridge (https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/an-afternoon-at-bostons-newest-parody-storefront-cash-for-your-warhol).
I was curious about the anti-robot art gallery and googled it; seems to have been in Utah instead (and is now closed down).
FWIW, the "we don't dial 911" thing is probably almost the opposite of suicidal. It's a gun-culture saying that basically means, "We don't need to call the cops. We're armed and willing. Fuck around and find out."
Ohhhhh, that makes more sense. I thought it was an ill-advised anti-police statement.
I hope no robbers have the same misconception as me.
I was not familiar with the slogan, but my first read on it was "We don't dial 911 [because we handle intruders ourselves]". I am not a typical Oakland resident, but I don't think the phrasing is particularly weird.
Even if it was an ill-advised anti-police statement, I don't know that burglars would necessarily believe it. Sometimes people will dial 911 even if that is not The Sort Of Person They Are, just like sometimes people will have premarital sex or accidentally misdirect a job application from someone they personally hate.
When an apparently schizophrenic homeless woman visited my parents' house late at night once, my mother was concerned that calling the police on her might result in her being hurt, but ultimately called the police anyway because we couldn't find any other way to get her to leave.
Given it's in the Bay Area, it might still be an ill-advised anti-police statement. Only one way to find out!
Reactions at random:
(1) I definitely would hire that plumber to unblock my pipes
(2) I had to look up Pecan Resist and now I wish our tame Marxist was still around to do a critique on co-option by capitalism; it's pure opportunism with a very thin glaze of social activism. A Ben and Jerry ice cream from 2018, and not even a new formulation, just a re-branding of an existing product, but anything marketed as anti-Trump will serve to pry the nickels out of the hands of the idiot young:
"Ben & Jerry’s is launching a new flavor, Pecan Resist, which the company made to promote activism in the U.S.
...A quick note for flavor-watchers: Pecan Resist was previously called New York Super Fudge Chunk.
...Bay Area artist and activist Favianna Rodriguez designed the Pecan Resist pint. The carton reads, "Welcome to the resistance. Together, Pecan Resist!...We celebrate the diversity of our glorious nation & raise our spoons in solidarity for all Americans. Take a stand & join those on the front lines.”
Am I objecting to the ice cream itself? No, I too enjoy the sweet and indeed over-sugared taste of successful capitalism. But my God, Bay Area people, you need James Connolly if you're going to be sincere in your socialism:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CjOR06QWgAEOwBC.jpg:large
And Jim Larkin:
https://labour.ie/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/Foundation-hero01.jpg
(3) "We don't dial 911" but we do have a security system/alarm in place, because even here we are not totally, completely stupid
(4) That Elon Musk artwork is... something else. I'm sort of impressed and sort of intimidated
(5) Transgender District? Meh. I'm much more interested in the building beside the flags, with the bronze lettering on the walls - a poem? a speech? "and miracles appear in the " - what's the rest of it? what is that building?
(6) "You are your ID" - oh, I'd like to have a full and frank exchange of views on that one! Though not with the poor minions operating the public-facing role of "sorry, we need your passport", they don't get to set things like that
(7) EA versus the Salvation Army? I'm betting on the Sallies to win that one pulling up 😁 As GKC points out, where is the EA brass band with the big bass drum?
"And there is this difference between the matter of aims and the matter of methods, that to judge of the aims of a thing like the Salvation Army is very difficult, to judge of their ritual and atmosphere very easy. No one, perhaps, but a sociologist can see whether General Booth’s housing scheme is right. But any healthy person can see that banging brass cymbals together must be right. A page of statistics, a plan of model dwellings, anything which is rational, is always difficult for the lay mind. But the thing which is irrational any one can understand. That is why religion came so early into the world and spread so far, while science came so late into the world and has not spread at all. History unanimously attests the fact that it is only mysticism which stands the smallest chance of being understanded of the people. Common sense has to be kept as an esoteric secret in the dark temple of culture. And so while the philanthropy of the Salvationists and its genuineness may be a reasonable matter for the discussion of the doctors, there can be no doubt about the genuineness of their brass bands, for a brass band is purely spiritual, and seeks only to quicken the internal life. The object of philanthropy is to do good; the object of religion is to be good, if only for a moment, amid a crash of brass."
"Ordinary people dislike the delicate modern work, not because it is good or because it is bad, but because it is not the thing that they asked for. If, for instance, you find them pent in sterile streets and hungering for adventure and a violent secrecy, and if you then give them their choice between “A Study in Scarlet,” a good detective story, and “The Autobiography of Mark Rutherford,” a good psychological monologue, no doubt they will prefer “A Study in Scarlet.” But they will not do so because “The Autobiography of Mark Rutherford” is a very good monologue, but because it is evidently a very poor detective story. They will be indifferent to “Les Aveugles,” not because it is good drama, but because it is bad melodrama. They do not like good introspective sonnets; but neither do they like bad introspective sonnets, of which there are many. When they walk behind the brass of the Salvation Army band, instead of listening to harmonies at Queen’s Hall, it is always assumed that they prefer bad music. But it may be merely that they prefer military music, music marching down the open street, and that if Dan Godfrey’s band could be smitten with salvation and lead them they would like that even better. And while they might easily get more satisfaction out of a screaming article in The War Cry than out of a page of Emerson about the Oversoul, this would not be because the page of Emerson is another and superior kind of literature. It would be because the page of Emerson is another (and inferior) kind of religion."
Some times Chesterton is ridiculous, but that is about the best putdown of Emerson I've ever seen (and quite deserved).
(2) The (attempted) pun didn't parse at all for me. Who the hell pronounces pecan as "we can"?
(4) The Elon GOAT statue was delivered by flatbed to Tesla HQ in Austin with considerable pomp and media hype. To his everlasting credit Musk did not publicly acknowledge or take receipt of the statue, and it eventually left the way it came.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/elon-musk-goat-statue-tesla-austin-b2234416.html
'Fellow Co-Founder Ashley Sansalone said the idea came to them last year.
“It was an evening joke that kind of just came to fruition,” he said.
They asked sculptor Kevin Stone, based in British Columbia, Canada, to make the sculpture in an attempt to get Mr Musk to tweet about it and gain notoriety for their cryptocurrency.
“Elon tweeting us would legitimize the token,” Mr Sansalone, 40, said.'
Peak crypto cringe.
> I spent a while trying to guess whether this was real or a parody. As always in the Bay, it was real. Even DEATHGRAVE.
I see that you strategically positioned this comment before the "Found puma" notice.
> Am I being oversensitive, or is this memorial plaque hinting that John Steinbeck was problematic for writing fiction?
That's a weird one. I don't know who would want to send that message, but I don't see another way to interpret the plaque either.
> "50 photos from the world's weirdest metro area"
> first photo is a bumper sticker from Greater Boston
;)
Yes, Geoff's project which started over 10 years ago... full story here: https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2023/12/4/cash-for-your-warhol/
Huh, I think I missed you getting married. Congrats.
Seen in the crap British version of the Bay.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/131810703@N02/19532827240/in/album-72157655914551371/
https://www.flickr.com/photos/131810703@N02/25724200524/in/album-72157655914551371/
https://www.flickr.com/photos/131810703@N02/26303104326/in/album-72157655914551371/
https://www.flickr.com/photos/131810703@N02/19720848305/in/album-72157655914551371/
https://www.flickr.com/photos/131810703@N02/19723779421/in/album-72157655503434558/
https://www.flickr.com/photos/131810703@N02/19531135628/in/album-72157655503434558/
https://www.flickr.com/photos/131810703@N02/22013930649/in/album-72157655503434558/
https://www.flickr.com/photos/131810703@N02/25276452545/in/album-72157655503434558/
https://www.flickr.com/photos/131810703@N02/53353270621/in/dateposted-public/
https://www.flickr.com/photos/131810703@N02/53352395422/in/dateposted-public/
Nobody remembers the second openly gay major league baseball player whose raised hand, after a home run, led to the invention of the high five.
I can't believe how cheap manicures/pedicures and day hire of a van/trailer thingy big enough to move a small flat are (in relation to minimum wage). I thought Bay Area was super expensive for America.
Just a late, late note: Naadam is a cashmere company with Mongolian connections. (The name "naadam" means the summer games here.) "We are goat people" is not the best slogan in that line; my favorite is that of Gobi Cashmere, "From goat to coat." It probably wouldn't fly in the US, but it goes over well in Mongolia, and it gets used as a quaint section heading in papers and reports on cashmere in Mongolia. https://naadam.co/pages/aboutus
Does anyone else see a Moai in that "warmest and human-scale building"?
https://news.artnet.com/art-world/easter-island-head-bodies-293799#:~:text=Easter%20Island%20statues%20below.