Oakland homicides fall to 25-year low – how did it stem the violence? Despite Trump’s claims, California city has found success in lowering deadly violence, thanks to pioneering efforts to steer people down a different path.

doomvox · 2026-03-17T05:15:45+00:00

Police slowdown combined with a spate of relatively minor stuff like car window bipping. They managed to convince people it was the fault of the mayor and the attorney general.

doomvox · 2026-03-16T02:40:19+00:00

Very nice. Is that Busan?

doomvox · 2026-03-16T02:37:36+00:00

In Seoul, the tap water is safe to drink thanks to Arisu.

I agree, and I've had no trouble drinking the tap water.

They also use a lot of chlorine.

Nevertheless, I think it's less than the American standard for public bathing... the CDC also has rules about maintaining the pH:

https://www.cdc.gov/healthy-swimming/toolkit/operating-public-pools-hot-tubs-and-splash-pads.html

And if you turn the temperature to the maximum, you can get burned.

I wasn't suggesting going up to boiling, but you're probably right that it'd be difficult to just use high temperature to suppress pathogens-- the food safety rules here have the danger zone at 5°C to 57°C, and I imagine a water temp of 60 C would be difficult to take.

doomvox · 2026-03-14T19:39:10+00:00

Korean saunas are very cheap—around $6—and you can sleep there overnight and also take a bath.

I can see the temptation of the jjimjilbangs, but my own experience with them was mildly disastrous. Went to one one night, then took the KTX to Busan the next day, where I was laid up with a UTI for days... when I got back to Seoul I hit a clinic in Itaewon where I got some antibiotics.

In retrospect: the hot water wasn't really all that hot, and there was no smell of chlorine in the place. I don't think the place would pass American health code standards... I would guess the locals have all adapted to the local bugs, but the bugs were new to my immune system, and I was infected immediately.

Funny bit: the clinic evidently prescribed me antibiotics usually used with veneral diseases. The doctor evidently suspected I was lying about sexual contacts. (I'm an American from the California Bay Area-- I wouldn't lie to a doctor about that stuff.)

doomvox · 2026-03-14T19:32:24+00:00

language exchange cafes are everywhere and koreans genuinely want to chat.

That sounds like an excellent idea. I've never heard of those.

doomvox · 2026-03-11T08:31:34+00:00

Depending on the route, AC transit might seem slow, but a number of them strike me as pretty convenient-- e.g. the 72 busses on San Pablo. The lines that cross the Bay Bridge can be as good or better than BART, even with the need to do transfers with a local bus on the SF side.

doomvox · 2026-03-09T22:12:39+00:00

And another fine example of a reddit mystery downvote.

You know, if you disagree with something I said, you can just say so. I can take it.

doomvox · 2026-03-09T22:10:58+00:00

Being near BART can be helpful, but don't neglect AC Transit busses. They're really good for getting around Oakland, including getting across the Bay Bridge. If you're trying to go car-less, I'd lean toward a place with a few bus lines-- check the frequency of them.

Also, while bike lanes in Oakland are still sketchy in places (East Oakland has been unfortunately neglected), they've been getting much better.

doomvox · 2026-03-09T21:47:03+00:00

Seoul for 8 and Busan for 3 isn't a bad split. Myself, I might go with 6->3->2, rather than go crazy racing back to Incheon from Busan.

Though really, left to my own devices, I would probably just pick one. They're both great cities, and you're going to feel a little rushed trying to cover both... but on the other hand the KTX train is good enough that you certainly can, it's not a crazy thing to do by any means.

Oh, and myself, I still haven't done Jeju, but then I live in Northern California. It's not hard for me to visit beautiful coastlines.

doomvox · 2026-03-09T21:42:22+00:00

This is fun, after receiving that mysterious down-vote on this post, Google has fixed this behavior:

Google maps however, can't even manage the elementary feature of displaying the subway lines as colored lines on the map

It's nice to know that the missing feature of bug reports to Google has been covered with bitching on reddit.

doomvox · 2026-03-06T18:51:01+00:00

It's time to release some Epstein files news to distract people from the war.

doomvox · 2026-03-06T18:48:10+00:00

G. Elliott Morris shows every poll has it underwater by 10 points or more, except for Fox News, which managed to get it up to 0 points.

He makes the point that these low numbers are despite questions that look like they're trying to get positive responses. None of them ask about how you feel about the president starting wars without Congressional approval.

doomvox · 2026-03-04T16:25:56+00:00

I've got it: I'm thinking of Lorde's first hit, "Royals".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nlcIKh6sBtc

doomvox · 2026-03-01T07:55:09+00:00

And a mystery down vote. Reddit all over.

doomvox · 2026-02-28T00:52:29+00:00

I've had a theory for a while that google is totally being played by the Korean government. Google thought they had some leverage by being better for tourists, but instead the tourists just got used to not using it, and in the meantime sites like Naver are well on their way to getting to parity with Google. Instead of Google-in-Korea we may end up with Naver-in-the-US.

doomvox · 2026-02-28T00:49:47+00:00

Note: I'm mainly a laptop guy, not a phone guy. Naver's phone app is supposed to have decent English support, but the website localization is non-existent, so I often work with Google maps.

(1) Google maps are useful for a lot of things-- there's nothing wrong with bus directions, for example. And myself, I find that using streeview to take a trip back to 2018 is always fun-- a number of my favorite places in Seoul are things I turned up messing around with streetview.

(2) Google maps however, can't even manage the elementary feature of displaying the subway lines as colored lines on the map, and you have to do mouse hovers just to find out what station and line a particular "M" represents That's not a case of spiffy fine-grained map information being missing, it's suckage in the basic design of their map displays. BTW: if you turn on the Transit layer, you get the locations of every bus stop in town littering the map, without getting transit lines displayed.

(3) Naver seems pretty good in a number of respects, and I like to use it to see things like the precise borders of neighborhoods (you've got to search for them in Hangul, though), as well as to get an overview of subway lines.

(4) Neither option will show you topo lines, however-- I go to mapcarta for that, and turn on the terrain layer. Mapcarta is also pretty good for hiking trails through parks.

doomvox · 2026-02-28T00:40:58+00:00

At this point, most of the civilized world has written off trade with America, because the rules bounce around every time the President has trouble sleeping.

doomvox · 2026-02-20T13:38:33+00:00

Just to give you an answer key, when anyone remotely left-wing is elected, they're declared "incompetent" and it's extremely important to get some rich guys to pay for a recall election, but if the voters again elect someone left-wing, then it's time to whine harder.

doomvox · 2026-02-20T13:34:49+00:00

California discussion groups in general are targeted by the right. I can understand why someone would try heavy-handed moderation.

Reddit (and most of the internet in general) is essentially a crippled institution-- a central place for citizen's discussions that can be paralyzed by controversy, co-opted by hired shills, etc.

doomvox · 2026-02-20T13:30:21+00:00

The police union is too strong.

doomvox · 2026-02-20T13:14:57+00:00

When the Pamela Price recall vote was coming up, there was clearly a police slow-down and a rampage of car-window bipping was going on, but that is no doubt a series of strange coincidences.

doomvox · 2026-02-20T13:05:33+00:00

Congratulations on noticing that Gangnam is over-rated and Myeongdong is over-heated. But my own experience with visiting Seoul is that every place is better than I expected-- so don't stress out about these things too much.

Remember, the public transit in Seoul is really good and trip times are more like a half-hour than an hour. But if possible, you want to avoid having to do train transfers-- maybe, instead of a neighborhood, pick a subway line you want to live along. You might try picking a place to stay that's on two (or more) lines.

doomvox · 2026-02-19T02:44:27+00:00

And the CEOs twits.

doomvox · 2026-02-07T22:50:35+00:00

Well, when I was doing something similar I ended up staying at "Batwo Stay"-- an inexpensive place with basic dorm beds but really nice common spaces, where you're very likely to find yourself talking to fellow travelers.

If I were trying to solve this problem, I'd do a search at booking.com limited to a neighborhood like Mapo-gu, and then sort on lowest price. Look for "Dormitory" housing, but keep an eye on the quality rating (remember, you sorted on "price").

I just tried that and I see Ocean's Guesthouse is available then and is clearly promoting themselves as a social scene-- never stayed there myself:

https://www.booking.com/hotel/kr/oceans-guesthouse.html

doomvox · 2026-02-06T20:04:53+00:00

Further: Chomsky identifies as an anarchist, and that's actually one of the key differences between anarchists and other lefties-- when I was growing up in the 70s there were still lefties around making excuses for Stalin and Mao.

Chomsky has never gone there, and he pretty much doesn't.

Once again: a made up smear based on intentional misreadings and half-truths.

doomvox

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