Market Street/downtown has been a declining shithole for decades. Other parts of the city are thriving. It’s not one of the most expensive cities in America because of the weather.

Yes, petty theft is a problem, but incarceration didn’t solve it, it just cost the state hundreds of millions to house shoplifters. I don’t have the solution, but clearly effectively decriminalizing theft isn’t it.

Looked at the source’s videos, apparently according to him every city in America is failing rapidly and will be a wasteland by 2024….but then he said America’s economy was over, total collapse imminent 9 months ago….and the auto industry was collapsing, tech sector collapsing, Turkey collapsing, Chicago collapsing, New York collapsing, California collapsing, China collapsing, global shipping collapsing, stock market collapsing.
This guy is ridiculously pessimistic even by my standards….and tends to ignore most of the facts. Booooo.

Yep; southbound 3rd Street, just past 22nd Street in San Francisco--taking you from downtown, where these folk like to ride around, make noise, create donuts, and generally get themselves noticed--the BayView Hunters Point, a historically ghettoized neighborhood.

Totally predictable.

@newtboy,

A company cancelling a multi-billion dollar project means multi-billion dollars not spent on the work of the project, that many jobs out of the economy. Exactly the same as a car manufacturer shutting down for a week, by your logic nothing was lost, the company just stopped spending money for a couple days...

I only support the groups right to protest, and not to illegally block roads or borders. I stand by my wish is for their prompt arrest when illegal blocking roads, borders or places of business.

That said, I believe it also wrong of me to fail to point out that our federal government has continually refused to act as I would wish in promptly shutting down illegal blockades. This is the very first instance were they've shown any interest in a prompt police enforced end, and they've in fact jump much further to invoking a declaration of national emergency so they can also target protesters bank accounts directly and without court orders.

An analogy would be someone that supports arresting people for possession of marijuana. The government then proceeds to only selectively enforce that law, say only acting to make arrests when people are a particular creed or color. It's perfectly consistent to believe the government arrests are wrong and unfair, and to NOT support them, while at the same time still believing the idea of the rule applied fairly being a good idea.

One side is about what I think the line for protest should be:
-I believe the right to protest should be independent of creed or belief, and should only be restricted when actions taken are illegal.(Ideally illegal being defined as impeding on freedoms of others)

By that, the convoy blockade of border or streets should have led to immediate arrests.

In the eye of fairness though, the last two years have already seen at a minimum 3 major protests, that included illegal blockades of work sites and railways and those were ALL allowed to run for weeks and in 2 cases months. The government of the day even tripped over themselves to message their support for the overall causes of the protestors.

In that light, it's wrong to simply ignore the fact that the first protest that is likely to vote conservative is the ONLY one where the government immediately condemns everything about them and feels compelled to intervene urgently.

Churches were literally burning last summer, and our PM's public statements spent most of their time sympathizing with the anger before pleading that burning churches isn't helpful. Where'd all that compassion for folks that you disagree with go when it meant a small number of downtown Ottawa business shutdown and horns honking go. Now our PM invokes terrorizing of the populace.

Trudeau's actions have been distressingly similar to Trump's as the division in our country grows, he's using his words to reach out to the extreme end of his side of the aisle, while tossing gasoline and vitriol onto his opposition. It's making things worse in the worst possible way when we need leaders uniting instead of stoking further division.

Economic disruption of the blockades was similar to the Mohawk blockade of railways about 2 years ago:
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-ottawa-rejects-police-intervention-to-put-an-end-to-blockades/

Similarly, mass lay offs and multi-billions of dollars of goods stuck sitting around waiting to get to the industries needing them.

Since at least 2012 the attempted expansion of an existing pipeline(Trans Mountain) was targeted continuously by blockades. Opposition and resulting delays leading to cost overruns so large that company ultimately halted the multi-billion dollar project.

In terms of dollars being lost, the convoy protest wasn't special. More over, the blockade of the border in Ontario that was causing the real economic damage was dismantled and removed before the 'emergency measures' were enacted. Which is to state, the emergency measures were primarily intended to clear out downtown Ottawa. In downtown Ottawa though, the damages were at minimum as localized as any of the lumber or pipeline blockades mentioned.


Prime Minister Trudeau couldn't be more unequivocal when he was expressing his support for the farmer protests in India and the Floyd protests in the US. Clip if you'd like: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9EaSF6Y0eE

The protests in India absolutely did immensely more harm to India's economy than the convoy here did in Canada. The protests in support of Floyd were again unequivocally more violent than the convoy in Canada.

There really is no basis by which to point to the convoy's actions and find them in any way unique or distinct from multiple other protests within Canada, or ones abroad that have been either given more latitude, or outright embraced and supported.

The distinction as even you can't resist going after, is that their beliefs they are protesting for are stupid and wrong, so no right to protest for them. That isn't how the right to protest within a democracy should be allowed to work.

I also have to point out the 'ethical' argument isn't as cut and dry as you want to make it out either.
-Pipelines bad so blockading is good ignores the fact the same oil gets pumped regardless, it just gets loaded into trucks that burn even more oil to haul it and have a fair greater risk of accidents and spills.
-Defending the rights and lands of Aboriginal peoples(like at Coastal Gas Link site violently attacked with millions in damages while the convoy was being vilified for 'incitement') is anything but obvious. The Wet'suwet'en hereditary leaders made claim to parts of the pipeline route and demanded it be shut down. However, the same Wet'suwet'en people's multiple elected Band Councils signed on with their wishes to proceed with the project. In fact, ALL elected representatives of ALL the Bands with land along the route had ALL signed onto the project and wanting it to proceed. It is in no way obvious that ignoring the will of those other bands to favour the conflicting claims of the hereditary leaders is clearly the most respectful of the people's wishes.

I was in downtown Toronto when this happened... middle of afternoon power drops and I left work... was closest thing to a zombie movie I've ever experienced... luckily I was close to freeway and was on the road so quickly... but looking down off the Gardiner Expressway I could see the city surface streets were just completely packed with cars and electric streetcars blocking up all the uncontrolled intersections... no one could get to the freeway and it was just me driving up there... then later when I had to go back downtown at night to find someone, the freeways had cars that had run out of gas scattered along the sides the whole way there.. unreal.

That's just fantasy. Name ONE TV cop shows that's not PR for the Blues? At best, I hope this clip serves as an instructional video for the IRL cops. At worst, it's pure whitewash.

I pretty much watch any type of TV BUT cops shows except the British ones and the mystery whodunit mini-series like the recent Mare of Easttown.

I'm extremely glad that I live in Canada, and I live in a Toronto suburb, I don't need to fear police officers because I don't see them walking beats on main streets, they're just usually in their cruisers and/or hiding around dark/down-hill intersections to catch speeding cars. But Toronto downtown is another story I think, I see the occational news reports of police harrassment of PoC just like those in the US. But far, far less fatal.

Yeah...it was a bad joke based on similar statements said in all seriousness by right wing representatives bragging about how easy they made development, and how much they were pro business. Now that deaths are reported, I retracted it. I thought the building was empty when I wrote it.
That said, if it is a 'failure to meet code' issue, then at least the 'code enforcement' part would be on point, even if in extremely bad taste.

12 cm is huge if only some parts sank and others didn't. That's why I always found downtown Houston scary, all those high rises built before 90 are sinking at different rates. They have tunnels connecting some that were flat when built and now are all ramps, some too steep to use! Yikes!

Here in Austin, when Covid isn't around, you can go downtown to the campus area and see almost everyone jaywalking. I've even come close to hitting a few idiots that had their face buried in their phone and stepped out almost in front of me while I was doing 30.

Like you said, it's never enforced unless the cops want to either send a message or want an excuse to do a 'stop and search'.

Your video, Red Bull Wingsuit Pyrotechnics Over Downtown LA, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

This is Playa Montesinos in downtown Santo Domingo. On Google Earth there is a cruise ship docked less than a kilometer from this beach. Apparently this happens after heavy rains which ties in with studies that show that 90-95% of all the plastic in the oceans comes from 10 rivers, 2 in Africa and 8 in Asia with China being the worst offender. It seems that as third world economies improve, their taste for western throwaway culture increases without a corresponding increase in disposal and recycling infrastructure. I've read somewhere that even where they have landfills they're often located near rivers where rains and floods flush the landfill and allow it to accept more trash.

Shocking # of Homeless People in Downtown L.A. on Xmas 2017. has been added as a related post - related requested by Mordhaus on that post.

Oh, that explains a lot. The closer you get to downtown and to UT, the rent/sale value rises exponentially on houses I wouldn't let my pets live in. I've seen crappy 1940's houses that are falling apart listed for 400k and up that close to UT.

Yeah, Austin is pretty tame. I live in one of the sort of 'bad' areas and we never have had any issues. The closest I've ever come to real trouble is when I walking away from a music venue in south-east Austin a few years back. Three guys asked if I wanted to buy a knife and I, like a total idiot, was like "Sorry, I might have but I spent all my cash inside the club."

It was only after finished walking to my car and left that I realized they were kind of attempting to mug me.

Edit: On the flip side though, unless you live in a district the city keeps the taxes artificially low in (IE, east Austin), you get reamed. Our house is from the late 50's and is valued at 215k, but our yearly property/school taxes run over 4k. Since they just took out another huge bond, I expect next years will be closer to 5.

Here you go, don't test the nerds

Oct 22, 2015
"To call the Glowforge a 3D laser printer isn’t quite right. But the liberties the machine’s three co-founders have taken with the name are really more for the sake of having an intelligible way to describe a working laser cutter that’s the size of a desktop yet can perform the functions of the hulking, 700-plus pounds, $10,000-plus laser CNC cutter-engravers that are found in makerspaces and garages.
“I had a traditional laser cutter in my garage, and I would show it to people all the time,” says co-founder Dan Shapiro. “They would say, ‘Your laser printer is amazing.’ I’d say, ‘That’s not a laser printer.’ … At some point I learned the business advice that you’re supposed to be learning from your customers rather than lecturing to them.”
The machine Shapiro and co-founders Tony Wright and Mark Gosselin have created from their headquarters in downtown Seattle is really a laser cutter. It’s a subtractive manufacturing tool, as opposed to the additive nature of 3D printers." - Fortune Magazine

I think he hit the button after I called him out.
Have you talked to him? It's not out o character for him to make a statement like that.
This is why I reengaged.......
http://videosift.com/video/Suicide-Bombings-and-Islam-An-Apologists-Guide

It came before this thread.

You can see those types of pro cop videos, I've posted some myself...but when they do it for personal gratification, web hits or a friend's web hits and not as a community outreach type thing, like here, I can complain that they did it on my dime. Same when the outreach gets out of control like batkid shutting down downtown San Francisco on a busy workday, costing untold dollars.
So sorry that I'm not on board with their viral marketing campaign involving abusing their authority for fun....I would rather have them working instead of wasting time trying to go viral. That doesn't come close to stopping them, though, so fret no more.

Lovely Any pics. I had many friends doing the same around San Jose (downtown) back thenish. Maybe a bit earlier.