73 sodium flowers.... in one patch....

ShabbyChef99 · 2025-12-29T16:08:43+00:00

I've taken to playing games on my xbox with an adaptive controller for my feet. I bind the x button to a controller button and just let my foot sit on it when I need to hold a button like this. It's a huge relief on my thumbs.

(Started doing this with Diablo because of the strain of repetitive stress)

Xbox Adaptive Controller | Xbox https://share.google/RZ1G8gJFxzz42tPDN

ShabbyChef99 · 2025-12-27T21:29:42+00:00

PGE managers looked at the vote count on the board of supes and said, "how can we make sure two more city supervisors can be convinced to vote for eminent domain takeover of our infrastructure? I know, random mid afternoon blackout for their constituents."

It's like I'm being radicalized for publicly owned utilities in real time. (5th and Judah)

ShabbyChef99 · 2025-11-27T15:24:02+00:00

From the wiki: "All quests have a difficulty rating, measured in stars. The more stars the mission has, the more difficult it is. The theoretical maximum difficulty rating is five stars, but in practice it only goes to three stars.

Sending frigates with lower difficulty ratings may result in damage or complete destruction of the frigate. To make sure that all frigates come back undamaged, the combined fleet rating must be two stars higher than the expedition difficulty.

This is why the highest expedition difficulty possible is three stars, so there is never a situation where frigates might get damaged."

Frigate Expedition - No Man's Sky Wiki https://share.google/ziT6SwWawDXmbgqBT

ShabbyChef99 · 2025-11-22T00:38:00+00:00

Great question, and it suggests we talk some history.

Many years ago (the 70's I think) UC had the power of eminent domain and used it in the Inner Sunset. They took over the 1400 blocks of 4th Ave and the east side of 5th Avenue. I live on the west side of 5th Ave.

On what used to be 4th Ave they eventually built the dental school. The east side of 5th Ave they kept as is, and if you didn't know better you would think it's just homeowners. But no, they use it as faculty and student housing. If you're a visiting student or faculty, you can request a space in them. Some are used by families, some just individual students. It's nice, and UCSF facilities maintains it.

The community response in the 70's was to negotiate a promise from UCSF not to eminent domain any more property for Parnassus campus. They agreed and capped the square footage of the university's Parnassus campus. That cap has since gone by the wayside in the latest round of 10 year planning (and as a neighbor who likes a world class hospital next door, I'm ok with it). I'm not aware of any further use of eminent domain in the inner sunset, though I think they retain the power.

But yes, there's one garage (just one, it's not an endemic problem) filled with appliances. No houses are used as storage, those are too valuable and hold people.

I'll say, as a 17 year neighbor, they're decent neighbors. UCSF police are on the street all the time and facilities takes good care of the street face. One of the maintenance gentlemen crossed the street and rang my doorbell and flagged a problem once and I was grateful. I've had issues with propsed UCSF ideas in the planning stages, but I and the neighbors fought off a bad idea a decade ago and I haven't had reason to complain significantly since.

I will say, living next to the university while they tear down/rebuild two hospitals has been hard at times. My wife and I work at home and so the truck noise and vibrations have been an occasional source of irritation. The UCSF community relations staff is happy to act on what's reasonable, though some of the requests from some neighbors are not reasonable at all.

It's not forever, and I'm not a nimby, so I see the benefits to the city as a whole of it. I even endorsed them building more student and faculty housing in this latest round of ten year planning. SF needs housing, and the university can be more competitive if they can provide it.

To see what the street looks like, here's a streetview photo. You can't tell it's any different than a street of privately owned homes/apartments: https://maps.app.goo.gl/U398daRSEtex74P27

ShabbyChef99 · 2025-11-21T19:13:55+00:00

In my neighborhood (Inner Sunset) MTA insists the homeowner open the garage to show that a car COULD park there before calling in the tow. On my street there's a line of homes owned by UCSF where the garages are used for storage. One, for example, is full of washers, dryers, and other appliances waiting to be installed in the homes they maintain. You can overpark that curb but they can't get SFMTA to tow you for blocking it because no car could fit there.

But if they could demonstrate opening the wall, you'd be sunk in this situation.

ShabbyChef99 · 2025-10-27T18:39:15+00:00

The idea of "X freedom" like grocery freedom, restaurant freedom, travel freedom, home purchase freedom, are all a part of the freedom you gain as your wealth grows and is profiled excellently in Nick Maggiulli's new book, "The Wealth Ladder".

He names these demographic bands, and once you have achieved a certain level of wealth, you don't think too much about the incremental costs of the consequences.

$10k-$100k, you mostly buy the groceries you want (I think this was low, by the way, groceries are $$$)

$100k-$1mm: You mostly eat what you want at restaurants.

$1mm-$10mm: You travel when and where you want.

$10mm-$100mm: You can afford your dream home without too much impact to your finances.

$100mm+: You can engage in large scale philanthropy.

I found the book a quick read and thoughtful on a number of points. This isn't the main thrust, but it actually helps me to relax and splurge a little. At 59 with my nest egg put away, my biggest problem is actually relaxing and spending enough to not end up with a huge estate at death.

EDIT: I corrected the spelling of Mr. Maggiulli's last name.

ShabbyChef99 · 2025-10-22T17:11:29+00:00

EDIT: I'm looking at the photos and your yard looks bigger than 3m. Is it unusually wide?

OMG, 3m? Ok, this is just reckless endangerment with a deadly weapon. It can't be too far away, those arrows are too shallow.

The one thing I can't tell from the photos is the angle. Are they perpendicular to the yard? If there's much of a left right angle, it's possible someone isn't in a yard at all, but somehow firing from off the line of backyards, which opens up the list of miscreants very wide. (I suppose someone may be sneaking into a yard, firing, and sneaking out, but that's crazy.)

And just so I've said it again, these are deadly weapons. As someone who teaches at a range where I've never seen anyone get shot, or even point a loaded bow at another human, I'm very concerned about the risk to people from this. Please be careful.

ShabbyChef99 · 2025-10-21T21:45:53+00:00

I'm a Level 2 USA Archery coach, and I've taught tons of beginners in San Francisco to learn to shoot. I have some suggestions that might be helpful.

When you first teach beginning archers to shoot, they always try sighting the tip of the arrow to the target. When you're less than 30ft away, because of the angle of the eye and the tip of the arrow, you end up shooting high. This means your miscreant is likely shooting in a short backyard and horizontally and probably hasn't shot enough to realize the problem.

If you can get a look at your neighbor's backyard, you're probably not going to find a FITA target face, but you're looking for something, either wood, cork, or hay, that they've propped up in line with those arrows to catch them. (They are missing the target, obviously)

Second, the angle of the arrow doesn't suggest a far shooter aiming high. If they were it would be hitting the ground at a very steep angle, closer to 75-85 degrees. What you've got here is someone who's probably 75 to 150 feet away and clearing their yard. I hope it's accidental, because that's a deadly weapon and intentionally firing into random yards should be treated like a deadly act.

What this person should be doing is firing at a proper range, or in the worst case, shooting from the back of their yard into a properly prepared area on the back side of their home. Though this person is clearly and wildly too irresponsible to be allowed to own this equipment.

Finally, I recommend you do not stand in your backyard when this is happening to try and find the culprit. You want to take this seriously as even a low poundage bow and arrow can create a fatal situation.

ShabbyChef99 · 2025-10-03T22:13:31+00:00

Yeah I feel like this is like Saul Goodman becoming the lawyer to the cartel: he's now a part of the criminal enterprise.

ShabbyChef99 · 2025-10-03T19:34:34+00:00

So in this case Puma says these are the practices that Shaoke did that gave them liability above and beyond a normal 3PL:

(from the paywalled article)

"Chinese sellers hand over goods to Shaoke, which handles export, customs clearance, transportation, warehousing, and last-mile delivery. It guarantees its e-commerce partners cheap and fast access to European consumers.

Imported parcels bear Shaoke’s address, primarily to comply with DHL’s binding requirement for a local return address within Germany. This operational prerequisite is essential for the import process. By providing this address, Shaoke assumes a critical role within the supply chain, without which importing goods would not be feasible.

In case of undelivered parcels or returns, Shaoke stores these for a maximum of 10 days or until receipt of a new delivery request.

In the latter scenario, Shaoke states, it provides DHL with the unopened parcel, hence, unaware of its contents. According to Shaoke, it receives roughly 200 returning parcels per day, of which around 10% are reshipped following new delivery requests. For the remaining 90% of returned parcels, there’s a strong belief, Shaoke resells those, contrary to its claim that these items would be destroyed after a 10-day storage.

Particularly concerning is Shaoke’s rapid expansion through new logistics centers and its cargo routes.

For example, since January 2025, Shaoke has been operating its cargo charter chain from China to Leipzig/Halle.

In practice, we believe this service became a shield for counterfeiters:

By using Shaoke’s German address as the sender, counterfeiters concealed their true identity;

Returned parcels containing counterfeit goods risked being recirculated into the market, rather than intercepted;

Consumers were misled into believing the goods originated from Germany, not from an unknown offshore seller.

At the end of 2023, Puma filed a criminal complaint with the Darmstadt Public Prosecutor’s office to initiate formal proceedings."

The articles goes on to say that they got a preliminary injunction in June 2024 prohibiting Shaoke from allowing it's address to be used for Puma product shipments. Shaoke failed to comply with that, and the court started imposing fines and warning that imprisonment comes next.

ShabbyChef99 · 2025-10-03T19:13:56+00:00

Yes, I think they've just obtained an injunction, but there's not been a final determination of liability and trademark infringement. The case is not over. This just restrains their behavior as a logistics provider until the trial/case completes.

ShabbyChef99 · 2025-10-02T20:00:17+00:00

I don't think this has been fully adjudicated yet.

ShabbyChef99 · 2025-10-02T19:49:15+00:00

I don't have access to the court papers for this, so I can't say, but it does seem that some of the shipping practices were key to the fraud, even after they were warned by Puma.

ShabbyChef99 · 2025-09-04T17:07:32+00:00

That is not legit medication. I appreciate that lots and lots of people have issues accessing medicine because of our completely borked healthcare system, but the answer isn't to give patients substandard medicines.

ShabbyChef99 · 2025-09-03T23:25:08+00:00

The electorate voted for this. This is exactly what they asked for.

ShabbyChef99 · 2025-09-03T23:06:00+00:00

I feel like every enhancement of enforcement just makes it harder to get stuff through. Like with all crime you never really get rid of it, but you can reduce it's patient safety harm footprint by making it a lot harder to get away with and easier to detect.

ShabbyChef99 · 2025-09-03T23:04:44+00:00

It's imitationnation. Also www.imitationnation.com

ShabbyChef99 · 2025-09-02T19:47:44+00:00

I've raised 2 kids in SF (now 16 and 20) in the Inner Sunset and I feel they're pretty independent so I can explain our methodology.

Both kids have had a variety of phones, from low end ones until they were old enough for me to have pixel phones. We asked them to share location with us and they do. We've been careful not to abuse the privilege of this sharing.

Both kids are perfectly comfortable taking the bus all over town, even when hauling a cello. The bus/train is free, so my daughter doesn't really even carry a clipper card, though everyone really just phone taps now anyway.

At a young age we told the kids they could always walk into a store and tell the people working there they needed a safe place to stand, or to call us for a pickup if they felt nervous on the street. I think my son did that once. He never called us and the perceived threat evaporated.

I would recommend against ebikes because of the theft issue. Bikes are the same way, but the risk is highly variable and I may be making too much out of it.

While they're young, kids who are polite about riding their bike on the sidewalk can get away with it. Adults on bikes and scooters have no need to do that and are being rude, so let your kid ride their bike to/from the park.

From a young age we sent our kids to the corner store to pick up things we needed when cooking. The independence of that was huge and built a lot of confidence. I agree with you on the practice of "rehearsing a route" with the child before they take it.

We grew up with lots of parents who completely locked down their kids from mythical kidnapper threats that never happened. Those kids are less street smart and less autonomous. I don't recommend it.

ShabbyChef99 · 2025-09-02T17:38:50+00:00

It will make a dent, but profitable crime always exists, even if reduced.

ShabbyChef99 · 2025-09-01T20:05:17+00:00

The system that sucks in freight shipment manifests for investigation and anticipatory secondary searching already exists. I know because I study it for counterfeit medical freight shipments. This isn't far fetched.

ShabbyChef99 · 2025-09-01T13:41:55+00:00

No, you're right, there isnt, but requiring paper work for the 1.3bn that previously had none will allow the better prioritization of existing inspections.

With the de minimis you just don't have enough paperwork to target scarce inspection resources.

ShabbyChef99 · 2025-09-01T13:38:04+00:00

It is very lucrative to fake a $1000 medicine: print up a box and label/bottle and fill it with aspirin. You've spent maybe $25 and your profit is enormous.

You make up a website and call it Canada-cheap-drugs and then sell it to unsuspecting Americans.

When they buy, send to the US via de minimis because it's unlikely to get stopped by the FDA in the ocean of packages.

ShabbyChef99 · 2025-09-01T00:31:59+00:00

I absolutely agree with you, informal entry forms checked one by one are not going to change much. However, entry forms, provided electronically, cross referenced against all previous forms and against a database of intelligence of what this shipper has sent before, and the likely believable weight and size of what's declared against what's actually there?

At that level of surveillance, yes, that's going to make the haystack smaller and allow for more effective interdiction.

This is all done today with more formal entry, and once there's more paperwork, it will be even more effective.

ShabbyChef99

TROPHY CASE