The other part that's disconcerting is the person who did all this has decided to put his name on the public record in an interview with journalists. After reading through the article I had the feeling this would, in a few years, show up in software / AI ethics courses in university. Is this a form of atonement, whistleblower, or extremely misplaced pride?
The person is the CEO of Gumroad and I sincerely hope it happens to Gumroad the same happening to Tesla. Life too short to give money and tolerate unethical self absorbed aholes
> So far as I know even SF has only ever had one avowed socialist politician
Surely you’ve heard of Dean Preston, the DSA member of the Board of Supervisors who owns a $2.5m house in the city and is also the least pro-housing member on the Board?
While I don’t think housing in SF is socialist, it’s also about as far from neoliberal as is possible, with rent control, zoning and complex environmental review process. These also happen to be the means Dean uses to block development, and has been in place in the city for decades now. Whatever is causing the housing problems in SF at least, it’s not neoliberalism.
Dean Preston's time started just as mine in the city ended, so I'm not entirely familiar, though I'm not sure how you say he's "the least pro-housing member" of the board but then again I'm not too familiar with other board members now. Just scrolling through his Wikipedia:
> Preston authored San Francisco's 2018 Proposition F, which directs the city to establish a universal right to counsel for tenants facing eviction
> Preston and other supervisors rejected the budget cuts and instead approved a $750,000 increase (to the same program which had received 4 million budget cuts from London Breed)
> In April 2020, Preston introduced an ordinance to permanently bar eviction of tenants for failure to pay rent because of issues related to the COVID-19 pandemic.
> Preston again introduced legislation to extend eviction protections in May 2021 as the state-wide eviction moratorium in effect at the time was due to expire.
> In April 2020, Preston co-introduced legislation with Supervisors Matt Haney, Hillary Ronen and Shamann Walton to require Mayor Breed to secure 8,250 hotel rooms to house the homeless during the COVID-19 pandemic
He does seem to oppose "free-market" "solutions" to homelessness, including unfettered development. He does appear socialist in action:
> Preston also introduced two ballot initiatives... Proposition K authorizes the city of San Francisco to build or acquire up to 10,000 units of affordable housing
State housing is socialist.
> Preston successfully proposed in the Board of Supervisors to appropriate $10 million from the funds raised by Proposition I to fund rent relief and $10 million to fund additional affordable housing.
Direct payments in rent relief is a somewhat socialist-aligned thing (would be better to simply cut out the middleman and socialize the property itself) though you're right, whiffs of neoliberal capitalist intervention.
> he fought to secure additional affordable housing funding including $40 million for land acquisition
That is out and out socialist, to have the government buy land to build housing on.
> In October 2021, Preston voted against the construction of a 495-unit apartment complex (one-quarter of which were designated as affordable housing) on a parking lot next to a BART station. Preston said that the construction of the apartment complex on the parking lot was "gentrification."
That is, indeed, super odd.
This person strikes me as absolutely a virtue-signalling, somewhat shallow politician, though I don't know if they're only a performative socialist, they seem to be adopting readily socialist concepts. They seem to be seeking the creation of a public bank, opposed to public transit fare increases, proposed free public transit, and opposed to increased police funding.
Accusations of champagne socialism don't really hold water, there's nothing inherently unsocialist about owning an expensive house (or even being mildly wealthy), especially considering he apparently has owned it since 1999. If he was renting it out, absolutely that would be hypocritical. If there were no billionaires in America, this would be worth more scrutiny. As it stands, it appears it would take several thousand Dean Prestons to make one billionaire, so I'm not really concerned.
> Whatever is causing the housing problems in SF at least, it’s not neoliberalism.
Dean Preston being a socialist or not doesn't really matter in terms of the greater question of whether SF is a neoliberal or socialist government - it's absolutely not a socialist government or comprised of socialist politicians. If Dean Preston and Chesa Boudin are the "most socialist" politicians the city has to offer, then, no.
Whether neoliberalism is the cause of the homeless problem in SF is another issue entirely. I'd say no, because I believe the homeless problem in SF is not just due to neoliberal failures in the city, but also the state being reactionary america's undesirables dumping ground, and the USA in general going through a critical period of late-stage capitalism that's increasing homelessness all over the country. Even an outright communist politician, should they somehow manage to get elected to a board of supervisors or even mayoral position in SF, can't really do much if the entire rest of the local and state government will immediately throw them under the bus (as happened with Chesa Boudin) or if the local, state, and federal government model itself seriously restricts the legal actions the person can take, guardrails at all levels to ensure the politician always serves neoliberal / conservative capitalist interests.
> It was already solved though (in Singapore and many other places).
I feel like people saying this don’t understand how radical Singapore’s housing solution is. It starts with the government repossessing most of the land in the city to develop housing. I think that’s alone is a non-starter pretty much anywhere in the United States.
It’s also far from perfect - I could for example talk about how construction in Singapore is for the most part only viable because of cheap labor from surrounding country, the ticking time bomb that is the 99 year lease or the fact that prices have slowly but surely ticked up in recent years, far in excess of inflation.
In addition I'd add that homelessness still exists in Singapore, albeit at a very low level, estimated at about 1,000 people out of a population of 6 million. ChannelNewsAsia did a feature on homelessness here a while ago:
Shift the Overton window and propose projects to eminent-domain the shit out of everything everywhere until eminent-domaining just the empty Sears store to put up housing seems more than reasonable.
Really? I find that for some people the only criteria they need for a stance, whichever side they're on, is just to know how to stand so they're opposite the other side.
Between the country that will throw you in jail for posting funny memes comparing the president to a cartoon bear, and the one where the newspapers are literally running headlines asking if the president has significant memory issues [1], I wonder which has more press freedom.
CrossCode runs on HTML5 canvas and nw.js. Not only is the pixel art really good, the game runs incredibly well even on low speced PCs given its unique stack, even though it is fairly demanding since both combat and puzzles requires fairly strict timing.
While I don't think the legislation make sense, I don't think it's not a problem. Here's some statistics:
> Last year, police departments seized at least 25,785 ghost guns nationwide, the Justice Department said recently, and those are just the weapons submitted by police to ATF for tracing, even though they don’t have serial numbers and largely cannot be traced.
> In 2021, the number of guns recovered was 19,344, meaning seizures rose 33 percent the following year. ATF has linked ghost guns to 692 homicides and nonfatal shootings through 2021, including mass killings and school shootings.
> The report found that annual law enforcement seizures of guns without serial numbers [in California] have risen 16-fold over the last decade, going from fewer than 1,300 in the early 2010s to more than 20,000 in both 2021 and 2022. The rise in ghost guns has happened alongside a pandemic-era surge in gun violence in California and the nation as a whole.
Ghostguns meant mostly-home-made a few years ago.Typified by 3d printed guns.
Recently (last 3 years) there has been an attempt at redefinition to include 80% guns (80% of work completed before purchase, end user does >60 min of work to complete it) and normal guns with their SN removed.
So now when someone quotes ghostgun numbers, they're mostly talking about normal guns with SN's removed.
I don't think anyone would really draw a distinction between these two cases as it applies to 3d printers. If the argument is that a tool is now on the market that made what used to be a high-effort activity into a low-effort one where you can now with some YT videos make less traceable guns then honestly, it kinda sucks in a ruining it for the class kinda way, but it actually seems somewhat reasonable to regulate them like firearms. If only so that the police know what doors to knock on if such a gun turns up.
At least where I live, the vast majority "ghost guns" that are getting used for crimes are polymer80 glocks that can be built with just a drill, no 3d printing required.
The majority of ghost gun crime arrests and charges that I’ve seen in various local and nationwide news articles are still polymer80 frames and 80% ar-type lowers, vs. printed frames. I’d estimate only about 10% or less involved printing but is creeping up with p80 taking heat and printing becoming more ubiquitous.
