Life in a Liminal Zone

I moved back to San Francisco a year ago, drawing litanies of doom loop alerts from others. To which, I'd reply, “Sounds like no better time to be there”.

By chance, I landed where I'd hoped, at the edge of San Francisco’s Barbary Coast-Jackson Square Historic District. Over the past year, walking through it every day, I've seen it become the preeminent center of global AI (Artificial Intelligence) Venture Capital funding. The rapid development has been astounding.  

Yet even more astounding is that AI was hardly mentioned in the 2024 election cycle, especially at the presidential level, because that office is destined to preside over decisions around the most profound technological transformation in human history. 

Most egregious of all was the Democrat's total silence around Peter Thiel even after the revelation that he promoted Vance, his protege, as Trump's successor in waiting.  If you can get through Bloomberg's paywall, read this 2018 article, Palantir Knows Everything About You.  Believe the headline. 

Palantir is Peter Thiel's data surveillance platform that got client startup funding in 2004 from the CIA. Since then it has secured US government contracts within at least twelve departments including Medicare and Medicaid which then VP Biden praised in 2010 for its success in uncovering Medicare fraud.  Wikipedia's Palantir reference (as long as it survives) has linked details: Palantir Technologies

And now at the dawn of the unknown Age of AI, Trump is the frictionless enabler for those who are actually in charge of creating a world that no one can accurately predict.

So to those gearing up to fight for their endangered issues, take heed of the wisdom about choosing battles wisely. Here's one small example of why social initiatives such as DEI (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion) become irrelevant in the Age of AI.  

Though I’m not inside the VC firms just blocks from my apartment, I do catch worthwhile bits of street level conversation. Walking behind two Venture Capitalists funding an AI tool to screen new-hire applicants, I heard them describe how it can determine the best "fit" using only a candidate's voice response patterns.

To the vast majority of us who know little to nothing about what AI is already capable of detecting, this can be touted as an audio only “color-blind” solution.

Yet, speech patterns, vocabulary, tone, metaphor, accent, etc., can accurately define cultural, economic, psychological identities with no human accountability for AI's decision. Meanwhile, in our day-to-day lives, we all contribute terabytes of training data 24/7 to refining its "fit" finding skills.

Facing a time that may be best summarized by the title of Peter Pomerantsev's book, Nothing is True and Everything is Possible, take stock of your own bottom lines. What is a "virtuous" life, a "meaningful" life, a "convenient" life?  At least these might be answers you can trust. 

Marketing is Propaganda - The Master of Freudian Persuasion

Marketing is Propaganda

Propaganda is a Latin word meaning 'to spread' - essentially - 'to propagate'. In 1622, it was originally used to describe the mission of a new administrative body in the Catholic Church called the Congregatio de Propaganda Fide (Congregation for Propagating the Faith). Its activity was aimed at "propagating" the Catholic faith in non-Catholic countries.

Until the 20th Century, its meaning was largely apolitical and amoral. But thanks to Edward Bernays, the power of persuasion became an essential tool in promoting acceptance of WWI.  As Sigmund Freud’s nephew, Bernays had the benefit of insider insights about exploiting human proclivities. WWI was not a popular cause in the US so a government agency called the Committee on Public Information hired Bernays to sway public opinion to support it. 

Referring to his work as “psychological warfare”, Bernays’s WWI propaganda campaign was successful beyond expectation. So, after the war he turned that success into a new field of marketing called Public Relations, focused on producing a pivotal psychological impact. He outlined the methods behind propaganda in his aptly named book, "Propaganda", which is still the foundational textbook of Public Relations.

Though Bernays was a professed Democrat and described his wife as a “feminist”,  he represented clients with any political and/or economic objective. His most cited persuasion campaign is the American Tobacco Company’s effort to increase its customer base by getting women to smoke. 

Its first series of ads used doctors to promote the idea that smoking could replace eating in an effort to stay thin.  Then Bernays succeeded in making lasting cultural change with “Torches of Freedom”, a staged event where a large group of influential Feminist debutantes in the NYC 1929 Easter parade smoked cigarettes along the route. 

Introduced in the 1970's as a "support statement" for Women's Lib, Virginia Slims cigarettes are an obvious example of "propaganda's" enduring power to both shape and capitalize upon social trends. 

So, with that background in mind, here are the opening and defining paragraphs of Propaganda.

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ORGANIZING CHAOS

The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country.

We are governed, our minds molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society.

Our invisible governors are, in many cases, unaware of the identity of their fellow members in the inner cabinet.

They govern us by their qualities of natural leadership, their ability to supply needed ideas and by their key position in the social structure. Whatever attitude one chooses toward this condition, it remains a fact that in almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons  - a trifling fraction of our hundred and twenty - who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind, who harness old social forces and contrive new ways to bind and guide the world.

It is not usually realized how necessary these invisible governors are to the orderly functioning of our group life. In theory, every citizen may vote for whom he pleases. Our Constitution does not envisage political parties as part of the mechanism of government, and its framers seem not to have pictured to themselves the existence in our national politics of anything like the modern political machine. But the American voters soon found that without organization and direction their individual votes, cast, perhaps, for dozens of hundreds of candidates, would produce nothing but confusion. Invisible government, in the shape of rudimentary political parties, arose almost overnight. Ever since then we have agreed, for the sake of simplicity and practicality, that party machines should narrow down the field of choice to two candidates, or at most three or four.

In theory, every citizen makes up his mind on public questions and matters of private conduct. In practice, if all men had to study for themselves the abstruse economic, political, and ethical data involved in every question, they would find it impossible to come to a conclusion without anything. We have voluntarily agreed to let an invisible government sift the data and high-spot the outstanding issue so that our field of choice shall be narrowed to practical proportions. From our leaders and the media they use to reach the public, we accept the evidence and the demarcation of issues bearing upon public question; from some ethical teacher, be it a minister, a favorite essayist, or merely prevailing opinion, we accept a standardized code of social conduct to which we conform most of the time. 

In theory, everybody buys the best and cheapest commodities offered him on the market. In practice, if everyone went around pricing, and chemically tasting before purchasing, the dozens of soaps or fabrics or brands of bread which are for sale, economic life would be hopelessly jammed. To avoid such confusion, society consents to have its choice narrowed to ideas and objects brought to its attention through propaganda of all kinds. There is consequently a vast and continuous effort going on to capture our minds in the interest of some policy or commodity or idea.

It might be better to have, instead of propaganda and special pleading, committees of wise men who would choose our rulers, dictate our conduct, private and public, and decide upon the best types of clothes for us to wear and the best kinds of food for us to eat. But we have chosen the opposite method, that of open competition. We must find a way to make free competition function with reasonable smoothness. To achieve this society has consented to permit free competition to be organized by leadership and propaganda.

Some of the phenomena of this process are criticized- the manipulation of news, the inflation of personality, and the general ballyhoo by which politicians and commercial products and social ideas are brought to the consciousness of the masses. The instruments by which public opinion is organized and focused may be misused. But such organization and focusing are necessary to orderly life. 

As civilization has become more complex, and as the need for invisible government has been increasingly demonstrated, the technical means have been invented and developed by which opinion may be regimented.

With the printing press and the newspaper, the railroad, the telephone, telegraph, radio and airplanes, ideas can be spread rapidly and even instantaneously all over the whole of America.

H.G. Wells senses the vast potentialities of these inventions when he writes in the New York Times:

"Modern means of communication - the power afforded by print, telephone, wireless and so forth, of rapidly putting through directive strategic or technical conceptions to a great number of cooperating centers, of getting quick replies and effective discussion - have opened up a new world of political processes. Ideas and phrases can now be given an effectiveness greater than the effectiveness of any personality and stronger than any sectional interest. The common design can be documented and sustained against perversion and betrayal. It can be elaborated and developed steadily and widely without personal, local and sectional misunderstanding."

What Mr. Wells says of political processes is equally true of commercial and social processes and all manifestations of mass activity. The groupings and affiliations of society today are no longer subject to "local and sectional" limitations. When the Constitution was adopted, the unit of organization was the village community, which produced the greater part of its own necessary commodities and generated its group ideas and opinions by personal contact and discussion among its citizens. But today, because ideas can be instantaneously transmitted to any distance and to any number of people, this geographical integration has been supplemented by many other kinds of grouping, so that persons having the same ideas and interests may be associated and regimented for common action even though they live thousands of miles apart.

It is extremely difficult to realize how many and diverse are these cleavages in our society. They may be social, political, economical, racial, religious or ethical, with hundreds of subdivisions of each.

Influence of Landscape on Identity

In essence, the landscape is not just a physical backdrop, but an integral part of how people understand themselves and their place in the world. The lifelong influence of one's formative landscape is a key part of personal identity.

-"Perplexity"

Changing landscape identity—practice, plurality, and power

Landscape has always been in constant flux; yet, historically landscape change was local, gradual, and nested within existing landscape structures. By contrast, contemporary landscape changes are often seen as threatening, characterized as abrupt, unpredictable, and highly dynamic transformations with little relation to locality. Such transformations are driven by interrelated factors including globalization, urbanization, level of accessibility, calamitous events, economic factors, technological development, as well as changing cultural values.

Historically, the environment in which identities form was downplayed in academic studies. However, relationships and connections to others are always geographically located, as in ‘To be human is to have and know your place’. The relations we develop with our surroundings create and establish belonging, meaning, and security.

A significant step in the landscape identity concept is the unique psycho-sociological perception of a place as a spatial-cultural space as both a physical entity and a vessel for existential meaning. Alterations to the landscape affect how people see themselves. If changes are negative or non-democratic, they undermine the relationships individuals and communities have to their surroundings.

Changes to the landscape’s physicality may result in continued connection becoming untenable or only possible to maintain through increased effort, as the practice no longer fits the landscape and results in a ‘tipping point’ to landscape identity where through change new identity forms. Such change has the potential to create ‘landscape induced alienation’ or Solastalgia, homesickness without leaving home. Recognizing the psychological impact can help explain why landscape change arouses resistance. Identities become important when they are perceived to be under threat. As individuals, if we perceive a threat to the landscape, we find the need to defend it as an identifiable space; consequently, new relations to the landscape develop.

Such connections and understanding impact spatial behavior, the extent of which becomes clear when we are faced by people or practices that appear ‘out of place’, bringing into question who is recognized as a worthy or responsible community member. Yet, identity can also be constructed through change with such change having a positive effect if it provides increased self-esteem.

Contemporary landscape identities are situated in a world characterized by mobility where identities undergo a perpetual process of “rewriting”. Disembodied global processes are manifested in local landscapes restructuring localities from outside. The awareness of being part of global flows and systems undermines local place identity.

The uncertainty generated through global flows and resulting landscape change creates a search for identities of resistance, creating tension between globalization and the local. Landscape identity as a local construct is anchored in a specific place while global identities are abstract, generalized, subsuming the specific and the unique. In spite of and also as a response to global drivers, local identities and landscape distinctiveness become more significant as they provide a sense of security.

As such, location-based identities have to be seen as solid and fixed in order to provide anchors where collective practices, traditions, and shared material can form. The identity individuals draw on depends on the issue being addressed as individuals and groups draw on identity from various sources; place of residency, social standing, ethnicity, practices. Consequently, as individuals, we position ourselves on many axes at the same time depending on the issue at hand.

Multiple identities entail power structures, with different value holders vying for recognition, with global community values taking priority over local agendas and informing landscape identity. This raises a need to question the drivers in order to understand what instigates change in identity. Although landscape identity is generally perceived as having positive connotations, joining people together and developing shared values, it also constructs exclusion through the distinction of ‘I’, ‘we’ and ‘the other’.

Identity, including landscape identity, becomes utilized as a means for classification, an objectifying scientific tool, masking the conflicts and ignoring the question of who belongs, who has a right to engage in landscape activities, legitimizing their identity in their surroundings. This discussion reframes landscape identity as a political entity, underwritten with power struggles, as all attempt to make their view and position significant. Landscape identity defines who can inhabit the place, who is included and who is excluded, and how people relate to each other.

Chatty ChillBot - Just Askin' - About Power

Waymo Do You See Me?

I recently moved back to San Francisco after a too long time away. My neighborhood has one the oldest historic blocks in the City and certainly built for foot traffic.

A lifelong preference for ambling on foot allows for sudden discoveries and curious turns that aren't likely to happen while driving and creates a bond with all the others who've taken this same path through time. 

Pedestrian sensations also give me a comparison to how I feel when driving a vehicle, a machine made to be insulating, controlling, powerful - and even a potential weapon. The walker in me knows the vulnerability of having to trust in the goodwill of random vehicular traffic.

It's up to pedestrians to make safety checks. Look both ways before stepping into a crosswalk.  Make no assumptions about the driver's attention/intentions. Get confirmation that you've been seen.

Living in the AI whirlwinds of San Francisco is an immersive preview of unintended consequences.  Trust may be the most common issue raised in discussions around Artificial Intelligence.  Responses usually involve assurances that misleading "hallucinations" will eventually disappear. But little has been said of how an eroding sense of trust increases alienation in general. I got a flash of that erosion while walking in my historic neighborhood. 

Late at night, alone on Jackson Street near Hotaling Place, I stepping into an intersection as an empty self-driving car turned and came toward me. My immediate reaction was to trust in a fundamental human act of mutual acknowledgment. 

With the wave of my hand, a wave of absolute "aloneness" washed over me.  There was no one to respond when I signaled, "Waymo, do you see me?"

The vehicle did stop but I felt an impact just the same...the meaninglessness of my own human training data. 

Spinning in the Doom Loop

The doom loop scenario originated in a November 2022 National Bureau of Economic Research (nber.org) working paper entitled "The Remote Work Revolution: Impact on Real Estate Values and the Urban Environment".  The phrase first appeared on page 35 of the report as "urban doom loop", then became "doom loop" twice in the next few paragraphs.  

It summed up a section of the report, Fiscal Implications for Local Governments, which focused on the possible recurring impact of lost tax revenue.  Though it used NYC as the primary projection model, it stated that conclusions were applicable to the majority of US urban centers.  Yet, Doom Loop now seems to be synonymous only with San Francisco. 

The opening paragraphs of a recent New Yorker story, What Happened to San Francisco, Really?, suggest the reason for this association is based in an American version of schadenfreude (pleasure derived from another's misfortune). 

Since the end of the industrial period, the main path of the U.S. metropolis has been what’s often called urban renewal: transforming old frameworks into beautiful, dynamic settings for prosperous middle-class life. No city excelled at the assignment more than San Francisco.

It invested in lush, landscaped parks, tree-lined boulevards, and world-class museums where there had been none. It grew rich, and seemed to climb out of the Great Recession with both influence and a mandate. “There’s a lot of pent-up envy of San Francisco from a lot of other cities that think of themselves as more important,” one local told me recently.

The reporter paints this backdrop with a very soft brush neglecting to even mention the City's most recent and questionable economic revival effort, the 2011 "Twitter Tax Break".

The late Mayor Ed Lee had bet the tax break, which erased the 1.5% payroll tax for companies that moved into certain Mid-Market buildings, would keep tech jobs in the city and help revive seedy Central Market Street. At the time, half the area’s offices and 30% of the retail shops were empty, according to city data.

Filling vacant buildings with creative tech startups, Lee reasoned, would attract hip, independent retailers...finally ushering in the Market Street revival that had eluded San Francisco mayors since the 1970s.

“We’re on the move,” the mayor said. “This is all for real. No more talk.”

Further down in this 2019 (pre-Pandemic Doom Loop) story, the San Francisco Chronicle offers - Mid-Market: Vision and Reality - an overall assessment of the result:

Despite billions of dollars coming into the neighborhood, retail vacancies plague the street. Thirty months after it was completed, a new 250,000-square-foot mall between Fifth and Sixth streets, branded 6X6, sits vacant, the victim of rising construction costs and apprehension over the drug use, homelessness and filth on the street, its developer said.

Longtime residents and business owners say more drug dealers work the area now than six or seven years ago. Men with wads of cash in hand crowd the corners at Eighth and Market, and Hyde and Golden Gate, openly selling heroin, meth and crack.

Also worth noting is that Twitter's tax break was about to expire (May 20, 2019) just a few weeks after this Chronicle story appeared. This threatened to replenish a growing wave of Market street vacancies. Of course, a tiny virus intervened, allowing the highest-tech heads to conflab under the cover of quarantine, excluding even the fluffiest news coverage. And now X marks the epicenter of the Doom Loop.

In this 2019 KQED story about the Board of Supervisors assessment of the tax break, 'That's Just Really Sad': Supervisors Lament Results of Twitter Tax Break they seem convinced that the policy was a mistake.

"This policy was poor policy that was poorly implemented by the city," said Supervisor Gordon Mar at a committee hearing on Thursday to discuss the community and economic benefits of the so-called Twitter tax break. "It really just resulted in a handout to the tune of $70 million to a small number of corporations."

The tax credit, officially known as the Central Market/Tenderloin Payroll Tax Exclusion, was championed by city leaders, including then-Mayor Ed Lee, when it passed in 2011 as a way to revitalize the dilapidated Mid-Market and Tenderloin areas -- and simultaneously keeping and attracting corporate tenants like Twitter, which was threatening to move to Brisbane at the time.

In exchange, those tech companies were supposed to invest in the community and provide "robust community benefits," in the words of Supervisor Matt Haney, who represents the area and called for the post-mortem hearing on the credit after it expired last month.

But the consensus from supervisors throughout Thursday's hearing, as they heard reports from several city departments on the tax break's impacts, was that the tech companies did not deliver those benefits, in part because the legislation that created the credit did not specifically outline what those benefits should be.

"They got to decide what was important and how they were going to benefit the community," said Supervisor Vallie Brown of the companies that took advantage of the tax break, "and I think that's just really sad because they didn't know the community, and they came in and said, 'This is what we're going to do.' "

..."If we continue to do it this way, we're going to keep getting what we get," said Haney. "A lot of feel-good stuff and a lot of impacts on the community that are often not positive."

The story's opening paragraph even states a strong determination to avoid repeating the same mistake.

It seems unlikely that San Francisco will ever again undertake a corporate tax break like the one that allowed companies to avoid paying payroll taxes in exchange for moving to and investing in the city's Mid-Market neighborhood over the last decade.

So, what's the new magic public benefit Unicorn that San Francisco proposes next? How about a tax break?

In her State of the City address Thursday, SF Mayor London Breed announced a multipart plan aimed at revitalizing the city's beleaguered, seemingly half-empty downtown, and it involves some Twitter tax-break-style tax breaks.
Mayor London Breed Announces Tax Breaks, Other Incentives Aimed at Reviving SF's Downtown

The spin this time is about focusing on small and "sensitive" businesses. A few high-profile well-timed start-up spin-offs should do nicely.

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Given the demonstrated repetition of these doom loop cycles, why is nothing done to prevent them?

Like most puzzling questions regarding humans, the reasons are complex and often deeply rooting in our very nature. History, in particular, is especially challenging to unravel. Rather than ferret out causes, effects, and patterns from the past, we prefer to wrap it in a satisfying but simple narrative and move on. Like the title character sang in "Annie": Just thinkin' about Tomorrow, Clears away the cobwebs, And the sorrow 'til there's none. Thus, the drivers of repetition have largely escaped scrutiny. That is, until now.

In 2003, along with an international assembly of colleagues, historian and data-scientist, Peter Turchin, opened a new field of historical inquiry called Cliodynamics - (Clio is the muse of history and dynamics is the process of change). Consolidating the now immense bodies of accumulated historical and evolutionary data, they began a new "mathematical" approach to the dynamics of history. On his website, this paragraph explains the benefits of this method.

Mathematics is not just about quantities (it includes such fields as mathematical logic, abstract algebra, and topology). However, if we are interested in understanding the dynamics of such historical processes as population change, territorial expansion/contraction, and the spread of religions, we must get involved with numbers and rates. Furthermore, a “naked” human mind, unaided by mathematical formalism and computers, is a poor tool for predicting dynamical processes characterized by nonlinear feedbacks, or grasping such complex behaviors as mathematical chaos.

On his website, the results outlined in Turchin's new book, Elites, Counter-Elites, and the Path of Political Disintegration, are summarized as follows:

The lessons of world history are clear, Turchin argues: When the equilibrium between ruling elites and the majority tips too far in favor of elites, political instability is all but inevitable. As income inequality surges and prosperity flows disproportionately into the hands of the elites, the common people suffer, and society-wide efforts to become an elite grow ever more frenzied. He calls this process the wealth pump; it’s a world of the damned and the saved.

...in America, the wealth pump has been operating full blast for two generations.

The book's introduction offers a broad summary of the "wealth pump" dynamic that played out in the 20th Century United States.

Wealth is accumulated income; in order for it to grow, it has to be fed by directing a portion of GDP to the elites. The proportion of GDP consumed by the government has not changed much over the past four decades. The main loser has been the common American.

For two generations after the 1930s, real wages of American workers experienced steady growth, achieving a broad-based prosperity for America that was unprecedented in human history. But during the 1970s, real wages stopped growing. While the overall economy continued to grow, the share of economic growth going to average workers began to shrink. We can index the operation of this wealth pump by tracing the dynamics of relative wages - typical wages (for example, for unskilled workers or for manufacturing workers - it doesn't matter as long as we use the same group) divided by GDP per capita.

Before the 1960s, the relative wage increased robustly, but after that decade it began declining, and by 2010 it had nearly halved. This trend reversal in the share of economic growth going to workers also resulted in the change of the fortunes of the wealthy. It's the Matthew Effect: if you take from the poor and give to the rich, then the rich will get richer while the poor get poorer.

When America entered an era of wage stagnation and decline, it affected not only the economic measures of well-being but also biological and social ones. I'll talk more about it in chapter 3, but for now it is sufficient to note that life expectancies of large swaths of the American population started to decline years before the COVID-19 pandemic. "Deaths of despair" from suicide, alcoholism, and drug overdoses spiked among the noncollege-educated from 2000 to 2016, while remaining at the same, much lower level among those with at least a college degree." This is what popular immiseration looks like.

And popular immiseration breeds discontent, which eventually turns to anger. Popular discontent coupled with a large pool of elite aspirants makes for a very combustible combination, as we have experienced in America since 2016.

Against this backdrop, let's return to why SF is the Doom Loop poster child.

Nowhere in the US, or perhaps the world, has the "wealth pump" consolidated economic power more visibly than in the San Francisco Bay Area. Although Atherton in Silicon Valley near Menlo Park consistently tops the list of wealthiest US communities, it is San Francisco that, with good reason, immediately symbolizes the entire region.

With its exquisite geography, romantic history, and unparalleled examples of Art Deco architecture (the Golden Gate is the most photographed bridge in the world), San Francisco deserves to be the area's designated crown jewel. Yet, since the unprecidented surge in nearby tech wealth, The City has pandered to that cohort with financial incentives and the sprawling expansion of now vacant office space in order to maintain its standing.

Beginning in the 1970's, which Turchin marks as the period where average US worker wages stagnated then declined, Hewlett-Packard, along with cuts in federal capital gains taxes, got the Venture Capital party started in what was then referred to for the first time as Silicon Valley. But in 1995, the VC party became a full on Rave with Netscape's IPO (Initial Public Offering)

Wikikpedia-Netscape On August 9, 1995, Netscape made an extremely successful IPO, only sixteen months after the company was formed. The stock was set to be offered at US$14 per share, but a last-minute decision doubled the initial offering to US$28 per share. The stock's value soared to US$75 during the first day of trading, nearly a record for first-day gain. The stock closed at US$58.25, which gave Netscape a market value of US$2.9 billion.

While it was somewhat unusual for a company to go public prior to becoming profitable, Netscape's revenues had, in fact, doubled every quarter in 1995. The success of this IPO subsequently inspired the use of the term "Netscape moment" to describe a high-visibility IPO that signals the dawn of a new industry...The IPO also helped kickstart widespread investment in internet companies that created the dot-com bubble.

The resulting dot-com bubble mentioned in this excerpt is a notable example of another power "pumping" strategy, sometimes called "pump and dump", where Venture Capital finances and heavily promotes an often shaky business model all the way to a thoroughly hyped IPO, then sells before the stock price falls for retail investors.

At this point, though, with so much wealth amassed at the top, public trading is just too tedious for the Captains of Venture Capital. By focusing solely on Private Equity, they now invite only the worthiest "power players" to a gaming platform from which to truly rule in a Winners Take All finale. As Supervisor Vallie Brown foreshadowed in the earlier KQED quote: "They got to decide what was important and how they were going to benefit the community...they came in and said, 'This is what we're going to do.' "

As part of its latest image enhancement effort, City officials adopted an ad campaign that itself is stirring controversy and even confusion. San Francisco Has a New Slogan, and Not Everyone Is a Fan.

Its theme revolves around the slogan, It All Starts Here SF and, in an interesting coincidence, it launched just a few days before the New Yorker story, cited earlier. That slogan, it turns out, is a good fit for underlining the national fear described in the article. "In San Francisco, the nation saw its dreams, and now it thinks it sees its nightmares."

So, is San Francisco on the verge of a doom loop collapse? No one really knows. But it's worth noting that one of the loudest voices promoting the City's "post-apocalyptic" scenario now occupies a prominent Market Street address (rent free it seems) made possible through the Twitter Tax Cut.

Meanwhile, down in Atherton, the luckiest conehead on Earth spews polemics like the Techno-Optimists Manifesto (Better called the Techno-Opportunists Playbook) from his conscience-free cranium. Unfortunately, San Francisco seems all too eager to once again twist its outstanding potential into a toady role, heavily touting Artificial Intelligence (AI) as its next big impact on our digitally circumscribed  lives.

In land area, San Francisco is actually quite small which could make it an ideal candidate for a this newfound savior: AI as the Ultimate Security Solution - The City as Gated Community! Relentlessly patrolled by darling droids! How safe will that be!

On the other hand, there could be a quake. 
 

Fake News is Not New

Yes, Virginia. There is a Santa Claus.

...Or is there?

In 1897, Virginia O’Hanlon wrote this letter to the New York Sun newspaper.

Dear Editor.
I am eight years old.
Some of my little friends say there is no Santa Claus.
Papa says, “If you see it in the Sun, it’s so.”
Please tell me the truth, is there a Santa Claus?

Before reviewing the Sun’s iconic response, let’s examine the newspaper’s history and ask why Virginia’s Papa seemed to trust it so much.

The first edition of the NY Sun came out in 1833. For a time, it was the most successful newspaper in America, even winning two Pultizer prizes before closing in 1950.

Paving the way to that success was a series of articles it ran in 1835 called GREAT ASTRONOMICAL DISCOVERIES. Now known as the “Great Moon Hoax” the paper reported on the discovery of fantastic life forms on the Moon thanks to a "an immense telescope of an entirely new principle". The series described a Moon covered with trees, oceans, and beaches along with an odd variety of animals including a Vespertilio-homo which translated from Latin as bat-man.

After six installments, the series ended when the Sun reported that the telescope was destroyed in a fire caused by its powerful lens.

The GREAT ASTRONOMICAL DISCOVERIES stories boosted the Sun’s circulation and established its success and credibility. Presses had to run ten hours a day to supply the demand for papers. Readers waited outside the Sun offices for copies. Far from suspecting a fake, rival papers congratulated the Sun and some even pirated the stories. Even after the hoax was accidentally exposed, the Sun never issued a retraction and did not lose circulation. Many years later, people like Virginia’s Papa were still convinced that, “if you see it in the Sun, it’s so.”

Let’s return to Virginia’s letter and its specific request : Please tell me the truth.

What the Sun actually gave her was a classic “Red Herring”, something that misleads or distracts from the relevant issue at hand.

In his still celebrated reply, Francis Pharcellus Church, evades her direct question with a bombast of distractions better suited to marketing than the pursuit of truth.

VIRGINIA, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe except they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds. All minds, Virginia, whether they be men’s or children’s, are little. In this great universe of ours man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect, as compared with the boundless world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge.


Yes, VIRGINIA, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! how dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus. It would be as dreary as if there were no VIRGINIAS. There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight. The eternal light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished...

The NY Sun achieved its initial success by promoting fantasy fiction as scientific fact. In Virginia’s case, it responded to reality-based inquiry with a sentimental cautionary fable. Fake News is not New and might best be called Make News. Why dig for Truth when Make News is a ready made Gold Mine?

So, to all the curious Virginias and Virgils out there, know that there are often many answers to a question. For the benefit of yourself and others, consider more than just a single source of authority when you’re searching for the truth.

Bologna Italy ~ Recipe for a Good Life

Piazza Giuseppe Verdi

Bologna, Italy is home to the oldest university in the Western world and to a medieval architecture nominated for UNESCO World Heritage status.  It also enjoys one of the youngest urban populations on Earth. Nearly a quarter of its inhabitants are students. Over a 100,000 of them pulse through the heart of Bologna each day. It is an antique city vibrating with life.

Porticos abound in Bologna!

Palazzo della Mercanzia

Unlike Southern Italian regions famously congested by cars, walking is the most popular mode of transport in Bologna.  Forty kilometers (24 miles) of ancient porticos form a network of vaulted open air walkways throughout the city.  Casual meandering is a pleasure in hot summer sun or seasonal rain.

Energy soars in the evening when even major routes are open to only foot traffic and bicycles. Well past midnight, crowded cafes spill into the streets. Waiters strut between tables, enjoying the atmosphere as much as their guests. There is an entirely human rhythm here, including periods of absolute silence when the city seems to rest along with its people.

Night Life in Bologna

A Medieval City with Modern Sensibility

I stayed at the Albergo Rossini 1936 near the entrance to the University district and close to the Piazza Guiseppe Verdi which is a natural gathering place for students.  Though the street noise was louder than some would like, for me it was an opportunity to bathe in the (often dramatic) music of the Italian tongue.  It is no wonder that Opera was founded in Italy. Rooms on upper floors of the hotel are quieter, facing an inside courtyard, but I chose to stay at street level.

My Room at Albergo Rossini 1936

Albergo Rossini is located within walking distance of Bologna's best known sites and its rates are a bargain. Staff are professional and charming. The included breakfast is plentiful, satisfying and served in an attractive dining room. I'll stay there again on my next visit.

Bologna has three well deserved nicknames, La Dotta (The Erudite); La Rossa (The Red); and La Grassa (The Fat).  The origin of La Dotta is, of course, based on the University.  A long list of famous doers and thinkers have helped perpetuate the "La Dotta" moniker since 1088.

La Rossa has a more disputed origin.  The usual explanation is that Bologna earned this nickname from its predominance of red tile roofs. A more feasible origin, though, stems from its Communist political and economic affiliation which persists in some form even today.  Though he was expelled from the party because of his homosexuality, the writer and director Pier Passolini was a native of Bologna and remained an avowed Communist until he was murdered in Rome at the age of 53.

Of the three epithets, Bologna may be most proud of La Grassa.  As Massimo Montanari, Professor of Medieval History at Bologna University, affirmed in his book, Food is Culture, body weight was an obvious indication of wealth before it became the consequence of a fast food world.

Via Emilia in Modena

Bologna is the Capital of the Emilia-Romagna Province, a region of prominent "Comunes" originally connected by the Via Emilia, completed by the Romans in 187 BC.  Even other Italians acknowledge the preeminence of Emilia-Romagna cuisine.  In upcoming posts, I will highlight some of the Province's best-known cities, Parma, Modena, Reggio-Emilia, and Rimi.  There are options beyond imagination for food and wine tours of the region, though I took the plebeian route, using local trains.

Because of its reputation, Emilia-Romagna is brimming with a wide range of cooking schools, especially in Bologna.  Careful research and clear personal objectives are in order for those who plan to attend one of these schools.  The experience can vary from spending an afternoon preparing dinner in a family home to investing six months toward a certificate in restaurant management. My desire was to recapture a childhood feeling for preparing handmade ravioli. Starting with this Washington Post article, I chose to attend a week long pasta course at Vecchia Scuola Bolognese, a ten minute walk from Albergo Rossini.  I will detail this adventure in my next post but, in short, it was an excellent way to immerse myself in authentic Italian culture.

Emilia-Romagna is one the richest cultural treasures on Earth. Even a veteran traveler could be overwhelmed by the opportunities.  The Bologna Welcome Tourist Office on the Piazza Maggiore is a great help in comparing, consolidating, and booking options, including travel.  Italian train stations can be hectic so I appreciated working out schedules, pricing, and advanced ticket purchase with a gracious English speaking assistant at the Tourist Office.

Tamburini

Gamberini

There are two cherished establishments that claim to be the oldest of their kind in Bologna, and both deserve top billing on any food lover's list, Tamburini - Antica Salsamentaria Bolognese and Gamberini Pasticceria. They are impeccable in every aspect. Their window displays alone may be enough to sate your hunger.

Tamburini Antica Salsamentaria

Gamberini Cafe and Bakery

Often overshadowed by Milan, the Fashion District on Via Luigi Carlo Farini is another alluring aspect of Bologna.  Exquisite window dressings are set in gleaming halls of inlaid marble, where all are welcome to glimpse the rarefied world of Prada, Gucci, Armani, and those other designers not lucky enough to be Italian.

Via Luigi Carlo Farini ~ Haute Couture District

This was my second trip to Bologna.  I first visited as a backpacker in 1977, three years before the deadly train station bombing, known as the Bologna Massacre, in 1980.  This may explain my impression of underlying tension there then. I shortened my visit to only a few days and remembered little about it other than the Two Towers.

So I arrived in Bologna this time with only modest expectation, planning to use it mainly as a base for exploration. Yet even after spending nearly a month there, I regretted having to leave. In fact, I now plan to return for regular extended periods. Bologna deserves to hold a patent on the formula for a good life. It already holds the recipe. And an unchallenged place in my heart. 

Implicit Bias ~ Face to Face

I know when I first recognized my own implicit bias about gender. It was in the Fall of 2006 during a high school speech tournament in Helena Montana. I’d volunteered to judge the Lincoln Douglas debates and, along with a few other adults, was tired from a long day of civil argument as we sat to evaluate the final, prize-winning round.

The realities of gender inequality were not new to me. I was a fifty-two year old woman who had graduated from a women’s college at the peak of 1970’s Feminism. Over decades of work in film production, computer animation, and the Web, my primary colleagues were all men. Some of them, like my son’s father, were generous collaborators in favor of opportunity for all people. The majority, though, were male endowment heirs intent on seizing personal trophies. Harassment was surprising only when absent.

The Lincoln Douglas debate style takes its name from the original 1858 match between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas which focused primarily on slavery.  Now practiced mostly in high school speech tournaments, topics commonly center on moral questions argued between two people who are assigned either the affirmative or negative position.  The topic for the final round in Helena was: Civil disobedience in a democracy is morally justified.

The young contestants, a male and female, were both attractive, white, successful high school Seniors probably destined for law school.  Both were tall and well-groomed in conventional, tailored clothing. The young women had every sartorial detail crisp, tucked and aligned. In contrast, there was a noticeable rumple in the young man’s shirt. His tie, striped classic blue and red, was loosely knotted and slightly askew, suggesting an ivy league rebel.  

Throughout the debate, the young woman’s arguments were the most compelling and well-conceived, clearly affirming that civil disobedience is morally justified in a democracy. Her delivery was sincere and precise. I naturally agreed with her position.

Perhaps to mask his own distaste for having to support the negative view, the young man adopted a casually entertaining sarcasm that even highlighted the weakness in his argument, yet somehow also made it more appealing. Culture had granted him a wider range of persuasive tools than to his opponent.  On her, this approach would likely have seemed sloppy.  On him, though, it was charming and confident.  I found myself wanting to call him the winner.

Even the most intelligent and analytic of us will rely on cultural “rules of thumb” in everyday life. Acting without thinking because the situation appears to be “without question”. Face to face, these two young people seemed so evenly matched. Before laying down my final marks, I did shake off the enchantment of cultural mythology and gave the rightful win to the young woman.  But I had to consciously recognize and question my own conditioned bias in order to do it.

Acceptance of Denial - In Three Acts

Jim was tall, lean and intense. A successful engineer in sustainable energy, he spoke with the halting precision of those who carefully consider every word. He orchestrated training seminars on a global scale and wrote technical manuals about building the foundation of a fledgling industry. Jim was comfortable in his success and confident in his ability to be effective. I met him when he attended a digital media course I taught in Helena, Montana. When the course ended, we continued a casual friendship.

For the fun of it, our conversations often devolved into quirky fantasies about ways to profit from the foibles of human nature. I had my fall back novelty product, Shroud of Turin beach towels aimed at the Easter break crowds in Florida. Jim usually joked about writing a book called "Acceptance of Denial", targeted at middle aged men. The title alone guaranteed a best seller, he said. Even if the text was nothing but blather.

Jim married a woman with a young a boy from a previous marriage and undertook fatherhood with total commitment as a role model to his step son. Being an accomplished player himself, Jim introduced Sam to ice hockey and signed him up in the local junior league club where he volunteered as a coach, allowing all the more time to spend with Sam.

My son was also on the hockey team so I saw Jim often and watched Sam grow up along with the other boys. He was exceptionally intelligent and a gifted musician. His mother had a talent for languages which he inherited. Sam's future seemed brighter than the sun.

As Sam entered his teen years, Jim got an opportunity to study sustainable energy in Europe. His wife was thrilled since she could assist him using her talents as a translator. And Sam was beyond ready for the cool of living in a foreign country. So they spent nearly three years in Europe, living mostly in the Czech Republic. When the assignment expired, they returned to the US.

Back in Helena, Jim's work in energy consulting flourished. In the aftermath of 9/11 oil prices were beginning to climb beyond the stratosphere. His authority in cutting edge energy made him an in-demand expert with national media attention. Jim and his family became local celebrities in Helena and an invisible wall began to politely separate them from people they once recognized as friends.

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Preparing to take my own son on a trip to Rome, some of my older cousins insisted that I get advice from Father Paul, a priest they'd all known since childhood. He was an accomplished stained glass artist who had done restoration work in some of the world's largest cathedrals, including St. Peter's. A long list of adoring clients vied to own his next original work.

My cousins created opportunities to brag about the marvelous trips they took with him to the Vatican. Hoping to stir envy, they would carry on without encouragement about being welcomed into secret inner sanctums simply because Father Paul was such a brilliant and special man. So unbelievably generous and caring, they said. He just happened to be teaching art history at a Catholic college in Helena, so of course I needed to contact him.  Basking in an opportunity to "pull some strings", they arranged for me to meet him.

I vaguely remembered Father Paul from my childhood when he was a teen-ager, but had no expectations beyond those my cousins had planted.  Being a renowned stained glass artist, Father Paul's priestly duties excluded the usual saying mass and such. He had special allowances about living arrangements giving him a private home and studio in a large old Victorian where we met for our appointment.

There was a veneer of polite formality when we met at the door which surprised me since we shared so many connections that boasted about his warmth and friendliness. There was no relaxed acknowledgement of the place we both grew up. 

As though bothered by an unwelcome intruder, he rushed to arrive at the point of our meeting. His eyes remained awkwardly averted as though fearing I would actually look into them.  This opened a recognition from my years in San Francisco and my stomach twisted with the queasiness of being told an obvious lie.

Something in his too fastidious manner projected a tension bigger than just being hidden behind a closet door and he knew that I felt it.  The heel of one foot kept grinding into the floor while he dug both hands into the deep pockets of sharply creased black pants.  The amazing Father Paul quickly covered enough Roman highlights to fulfill his obligation as a travel consultant then hurried me back out the door. 

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Planning another European trip for myself, I read about a German concentration camp intended primarily for SS training and experimentation.  Situated only twenty miles from Berlin, Sachsenhausen was not hidden in an isolated region. Instead it was the dominant structure in the center of a small village called Oranienburg. 

I read an account of the camp's liberation written by a young American soldier new to the war.  He said that they began to smell the distinct stench of burning flesh when they were still over three miles from the camp. That's how powerful it was.

Yet when the American soldiers interrogated the local people, many of them claimed complete ignorance of what had taken place behind the barbed wire wall that separated them from the neighboring death camp. At the end of the war, German army commanders paraded thousands of skeletal men and women, the remaining prisoners, in a Todesmarsch (Death March) through Oranienburg in plain sight of the villagers. In their interviews, the villagers usually cited the Todesmarsch as the first time they had any idea about the real purpose of the camp. Even though the arriving American soldiers smelled evidence of it from three miles away.

Of course, there were resisters, sympathizers, and profiteers in Oranienburg.  Fear of ending up in the camp themselves was a strong incentive to ignore the evident truth.  But there were also a great number who seemed truly shocked when confronted with the reality. The only explanation for their ignorance seemed to be an extreme state of denial.

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A few years after I met Father Paul, he was found dead in his studio.  The newspapers called it sudden and unexplained, code words for the suicides which happen all too often in Montana. For a long time, "What a shame" was the only comment made about it openly. The college mounted an exhibition of his stained glass art and a walking tour of patron homes where his commissioned work had been installed. "Such a great talent gone too soon," was all that was said.

Cloistered in the recesses of local newspapers, cryptic headlines began to appear about sexual abuse charges being filed against the Catholic Diocese. Names were not yet directly mentioned in the stories, but could be surmised by the timelines of when and where accusations were made. Father Paul's suicide now had a logical explanation. Terms of the eventual settlement required that names be named and published.  In the end, there was no doubt.

My cousins stopped bragging about the Vatican trips. It was as though Father Paul had never existed. I brought up his name once just to gauge their reaction and none of them heard what I said.

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In their late teens, my son and many of his friends were busy testing the bounds of acceptable behavior. Keeping track of my own day to day parental tumult was more than enough to handle so, in general, I didn't pay much attention to what was happening with anyone else. 

I happened to cross paths with Jim one day and we exchanged the usual conversation between friends in a small town. While I alluded to concerns about my son's lack of enthusiasm for high school, Jim said that Sam's years in Europe had propelled him beyond the need of a classroom. He was now fluent in four languages which he used to help translate popular Wikipedia articles, all while maintaining his skill at classical piano and working full time at a local health food store. At seventeen, Sam was fit for maximum self direction. Jim and I parted ways wishing each other the best of luck. 

On an unusually warm night for Montana in June, a blaze of police cars wailed through Helena's narrow gulch of downtown streets. Three teen-age boys had been shot at close range by a fourth teen-age boy who know did not even know them. One of the boys died immediately while the other two survived with debilitating wounds. Early police reports said the shooter escaped on a bicycle but had been apprehended at home in his bed.

Because the crime was so brutal, all juvenile exemptions were waved. When the shooter's name was released it was nearly as shocking as what he had done.  It was Sam, Jim's bright and talented stepson who had shot three boys his own age, all strangers, as he looked into their eyes. 

News stories struggled to resolve the absence of motive with acts so ruthless their only logical explanation had to be revenge. Yet there was none. The boys screamed at him to stop but Sam twice reloaded his 45-caliber Tanfoglio handgun and emptied it into their bodies. When the ammunition was all gone, he beat his victims with the butt of the handgun, hard enough to break his own hands.

A few who knew him said that Sam was no stranger to guns and erratic acts.  But he was certainly a stranger to the lives he destroyed. And even to his own parents. 

Acceptance of Denial is a story that many will buy but few will read.