Hostile Architecture, SF Edition

Homeless scoff at SF strategy of dumping boulders at camp site

The homeless people the boulders were intended to dissuade simply moved their tents a few feet away. Most of the rocks stand a few feet high, and at about 400 pounds are too heavy to move easily. But there is plenty of space left between them for sleeping bags -- and plenty of Hairball ground beyond that for pitching tents.

"Not sure why they thought this would stop us, but it didn't," James Ayres, 36, said Thursday as he stood outside his tent at the Hairball, on a dirt field about 50 feet from a cluster of boulders. "Maybe they'll put more out here. I don't know. They've got lots of money to do it. But for now, you could camp right between them if you want. I mean, really, it's kind of funny." [...]

This dynamic has played out for decades, from resentment when benches at Civic Center Plaza were removed in the 1990s to keep people from sleeping on them, to sprinklers being installed at St. Mary's Cathedral doorways in 2015 where homeless people slept. The sprinklers were taken out after a public outcry, but the benches have never come back -- and many benches around the city, particularly at bus stops, are now designed to make them tough to stretch out on.

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Merry Last Christmas, Jack Dorsey

Mike Monteiro:

Among the changes, swastikas are now banned from Twitter. That's a good move. I applaud it, and it's beyond time. However, the Confederate flag, a hate symbol that defines one race's desire to own another race, is still acceptable. Twitter's reason is that the Confederate flag is historical. But so is the swastika. This decision seems less based on principles, but more on a desire to not piss off a certain group.

Despite their sanctimonious appeal to "principles", Twitter appears to be making decisions based on who they're afraid to (or can't afford to) piss off and then backwards engineering the rationale to make it palatable. That's not principled. That's cynical.

The new policy also allows a thinly veiled loophole for Trump:


For all his promises about wanting to reduce the amount of hate and violence and harassment on the platform, Jack Dorsey has purposely built in a loophole for the biggest perpetrator of all those things. That's not principled. It's cowardly. And it's dangerous. [...]

As of this writing, despite Twitter's new anti-harassment rules, Richard Spencer, Mike Cernovich, Joey Gibson, and David Duke are still on the platform. All known fascists. Ta-Nehisi Coates is not. Driven off by Richard Spencer's harassment. These are the voices we are losing because Jack Dorsey has chosen not to act. And it is probably too late. That's not hyperbolic. Jack has given Donald Trump the fuse to light a nuclear war. Jack has given Trump's minions the fuse to silence the voices America most needs at this moment. And Silicon Valley has allowed this to happen because their libertarian allegiance doesn't extend beyond their own pricks.


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