Of Madness And Censorship
Civilizational Collapse in the Bay Area :: Censorship Renées :: Gotham America
Nordstrom’s > Whole Foods > Walgreens Flee SF
When Walgreens started closing up stores in San Francisco in 2020, progressive activists and city leaders alike waved away concerns as “right-wing media,” and told anyone who would listen that the closures had nothing to do with the rampant shoplifting and other crimes that plagued the stores.
Then, Whole Foods closed a year-old store downtown last month, triggering a new wave of concern. “Male w/machete is back,” was one of the 911 calls quoted by The New York Times. “Another security guard was just assaulted.” The San Francisco Standard and others noted that there have been 20 major store closures since 2020 alone, including of Office Depot and Anthropologie.
But progressives attacked those who suggested the loss of Whole Foods indicated a broader crisis. The neighborhood was already dangerous, they said. It was thus a bad decision by Whole Foods to ever a store in… downtown San Francisco.
Then, finally, Nordstrom's announced earlier this week that it was not only closing its flagship store, but also another store in Westfield Mall, whose owner blamed the Nordstrom’s closure on “unsafe conditions” and “lack of enforcement against rampant criminal activity.”
Nordstrom’s is different. Though the store exists in other cities, it has always had an outsized presence in San Francisco.
CNN and Senator Scott Weiner were on hand, as usual, to downplay San Francisco’s rapidly accelerating downward spiral. But this time, neither the San Francisco Chronicle or New York Times joined them.
The San Francisco Chronicle published an astonishing six articles about the departure of Nordstrom’s over the last three days, and the New York Times published a long and unusually critical piece on Whole Foods.
What’s driving it is simple: the public is angry. “San Francisco is in the midst of a voter revolt on public safety,” said Supervisor Matt Dorsey. And it’s no longer just the “right-wing media” saying so.
—MS
Hella Vicious Oakland
Oakland, California is the 12th most dangerous city in America. After last weekend, it seems to be gunning for an even higher ranking.
Last Sunday, a “sideshow” took over the intersection of Adeline and 34th Street in West Oakland. Sideshows are something of an anti-social tradition in Oakland. They involve people doing donuts in the middle of the street while crowds gather around them, cheering the drivers on. In February, a semi-truck participated in a late night sideshow near Oakland’s Lake Merritt. Sideshows have spread to other cities as well, including New York.
At Sunday’s sideshow, a fed-up man walked out into the middle of the intersection and chucked a bucket at one of the cars. The car stopped, and the passengers got out to confront the man. Immediately the gathered crowd descended on him. They beat him until he was unconscious and bleeding on the sidewalk, and then they beat him some more. Dozens of people cheered and shot video on their phones. To top off the beatdown, someone put the bucket on his head as he lay sprawled out on the concrete. The worst part: nobody on camera, at least, defended or helped him.
On the same day, another sideshow of cars, dirt bikes and ATVs took place on the other side of town. In a video that went viral, a police car timidly weaved its way through the encircling traffic, in a perfect image of the impotence of the authorities to do anything about crime and disorder in their city. As many as two more sideshows also took place that same weekend, according to KTVU.
The Oakland Police Department is short about 80 officers, which is more than ten percent of the force. It’s currently on “No Report Status,” which means they will not respond to 911 calls for anything but a violent crime in progress. If you come home to a burglarized house with your windows smashed and your valuables stolen, they won’t even send a patrol car.
A man I spoke to, who wishes to remain anonymous, first learned of this policy when he was robbed at gunpoint by three men in ski masks in an SUV while walking his dog at an East Oakland park last Sunday, the same day as the sideshow lynching. Even though, by the time he called 911, his crime qualified as “in progress,” the dispatcher told him there was nothing they could do. He had to wait four days for an officer to come to take his report. That was after calling the police at least three times and visiting the station in person.
The same man was the victim of a hit-and-run just a month ago. While crossing the street in a crosswalk, a car plowed through a red light and clipped him. Then the driver threatened to kill him for damaging his car, before tearing off again. That time, it took the Oakland Police Department 5 days to show up, and they showed up at 4 in the morning.
Unfortunately for Oaklanders, help is emphatically not on the way. On Wednesday, Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao announced a budget that would impose a hiring freeze on police officers.
—LW
This Week In Deep Fakes
From Elon Musk to Steve Wozniak, everybody’s worried about AI apocalypse.
The idea is that somehow the self-learning machines will secretly plot to take over the world and kill off humanity.
But the motive and means, as with most apocalyptic scenarios, is rather hazy. Why exactly would machines want to kill us off, even if they could? And why can’t we just re-boot the computers once they start mouthing off?
The answers offered to those questions often sound confident at first but quickly descend into hand-waving.
The problem with apocalyptic predictions is that they rest upon predictions of what humans will do in the future. And humans, including “experts,” are absolutely terrible at predicting human behavior, present or future.
But if we need not worry about robots devouring the sun, or us, we might worry about the future of creative enterprises. Deep fakes are getting better and better. Will they cause mass unemployment of artists?
Witness the delightful new AI trailer for a parody of a deep fake Star Wars film, The Galactic Menagerie, (not) directed by Wes Anderson. It’s hard to remember that it was just a few weeks ago that Bellingcat’s founder made deep fake images of Donald Trump being arrested so arresting that he was banned from the AI platform Midjourney. Now we have videos that look like they could have been made by Pixar, albeit early 2000s.
Another AI creator made a series of fashion lines based on the styles of famous artists, including Salvador Dalí, below.
Does AI spell the death of the creator? Is this just copycat fakery?
Perhaps. But there appears to be some skill in creating these works of art, too. “Many folks have reached out asking for us to share our process,” said the mind behind The Galactic Menagerie. “So I'm going to put together some training on how we did the video and share how you can create your own AI trailers.”
If you don’t think there was skill to creating The Glass Menagerie, then watch the awful AI deep fake trailer, Star Wars, As Directed by Stanley Kubrick, to provide the necessary contrast.
The printing press didn’t ruin book writing just as the Internet didn’t destroy reporting. If the history of automation teaches us anything, it’s that the automation will allow more creation, not less. Most works will be terrible. But a few AI productions will continue to be great.
AI will, no doubt, destroy. But it is hard to believe it could destroy human creativity, which draws from a deep well we still do not understand — and which gave us the best Wes Anderson parody trailer, SNL’s Midnight Coterie of Sinister Intruders.
—MS