Notices by SewBlue (sewblue@sfba.social)

I keep getting "memory" video snips on my phone that Google puts together. Photos from about 6 months ago.

Dear reader, they are putting together automated video essays of the realities of dealing with my aunt's hoarding situation. To sentimental music.

Because that was such a special time in my life.

Cleaning out a hoarder's house while looking for family heirlooms. Dealing with gazillion of drain flies or whatever those were. Finding moldy food containers tossed across the room. Avoiding the cat shit and the spot where she died. Catching her 2 semi-feral cats with KFC chicken.

All while wearing a hazard suit and respirator.

Fun times.

Am very grateful I did not take many photos of the worst of it.

Yes Google, these are special memories. And your are just as special for memorializing them to me.

@eniatitova @carraway Oh shit. An "oh shit I am probably going to spend more money than I should. "

A woman welder, and an artist when I need a driveway gate.

Hrrrmmm.

@valhalla @carraway I'm sure my handle didn't help!

Dropping the gendered "seamstress" has been tougher because "sewer" has that wee little 2 meaning problem. Sewist just doesn't roll off the tongue.

English is normally pretty good at changing spellings for different meanings (their there and they're) but not sewer. Pronounciation is entirely different, and context is king!

@carraway that is s sinkhole.

Frankly, rather lucky the pavement failed quickly. Gets scary when it keeps pavement keeps it structure for a a while.

It looks like they have made safe and are waiting for the other utilities to mark USAs. The area has been marked out in white but no one had marked.

@carraway sewers can create holes on their own, especially with water leaks.

https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/Pages/DCA14MP002.aspx

In the case above, the NY city kept fixing the pavement without bothering to look into why it kept sinking. The sewer system had a break and was creating a void. Eventually the void created enough pressure on the surrounding pipes a gas line cracked. Migrated to a building.and killed 8 people.

Make safe includes stopping people or cars fom falling in or getting in harms way. It doesn't mean fixing. That they have widened the area without fixing is concerning.

I am surprised this hasn't been fixed yet.

I need to get some photos off FB before I delete it. Any advice?

Please boost!

Why am I so hard on myself about not having the time for household maintenance?

Growing up we weren't poor, but didn't have a lot of money. My parents DIY'd most things. I learned to glue PVC, paint and do wall repairs. And to disapprove of hiring someone when I could do it myself.

With my long covid I don't always have the energy to throw at those projects. Family, then work.

But I'm struggling to accept it. I should have time to powerwash the side yard. I should have time to paint the shed. Put shelves in a closet.

(Seriously though - how come a no one in the 90 years this house has been around has no one installed shelves in the pantry?)

@cdarwin @pluralistic Engineer here in a safety related field. More human focused that pure engineering.

At this point I have 22 years of experience. I'm a principal. What I see a lot of is Great Grandma's Brisket.

Great grandma teaches grandma to make brisket. She cuts the ends off while teaching it. Grandma teaches it to mom. Cutting the ends off. Mom teaches it to her daughter. Cutting the ends off.

Young daughter makes the brisket with pride while great granny watches.

Why are you cutting the ends off? I only did that because my pan was too small.

When I do research, I often find brisket driving a practice rather than clear and present safety concerns. Code was worded differently 30 years ago, safety equipment operated differently or didn't exist.

In a way though, the point is the same. Someone needs to know their shit, to know if the cows are elsewhere or if it's the end of a brisket.

@sidereal @NatureMC @ai6yr and in the case of Rancho Palos Verde, successful sue the government so they can build on a landslide area.

The judge decided that the science wasn't good enough (uncertainty!) and forced the city to allow building permits.

Those homes are now sinking into the ocean.

@futurebird Central heating.

Skirts got short as furnaces and radiators became more common.

@mizblueprint @KFuentesGeorge You could argue that Marin still a sundown town/county, unless you can buy your way in.

You can work here, but you absolutely cannot live here.

Marin had a school desegregation as recently as 2021. For Marin City and the historic shipyards. Was also where that home appraisal lawsuit came out of, where the house value grew by $500k when it was stripped of any signs that a black family lived there.

Economic segregation is alive and well in California. Only now we call them NIMBYs.

https://www.npr.org/2023/03/09/1162103286/home-appraisal-racial-bias-black-homeowners-lawsuit#:~:text=Black%20couple%20settles%20lawsuit%20claiming%20their%20home%20appraisal%20was%20lowballed%20due%20to%20bias&text=Owned%20Television%20Stations-,Paul%20Austin%20and%20Tenisha%20Tate%20Austin%20stand%20in%20front%20of,discrimination%20lawsuit%20late%20last%20month.

https://www.sfchronicle.com/education/article/Two-Marin-schools-forced-to-integrate-after-years-16256418.php

@KFuentesGeorge In my town, Vallejo California, they straight up bulldozed half of downtown for a freeway that never came.

Vallejo was a Navy town, and had a huge, rather seedy nightlife spot for the sailors on leave. Party town of the west coast. During WWII a large number of black Americans were brought in to work the shipyard, in segregated housing. Like most of the Bay Area there hadn't been much of a black population before WWII.

Within 15 years of the war ending white flight had taken over and they simply bulldozed most of downtown to stop any black owned businesses from forming in the vacuum. Highly restricted zoning to prevent even restaurants. It was repeated all over the Bay Area - Oakland, Richmond Hunters Point, Marin City. Any place that had ship building intentionally sabotaged the economic growth of the city long term because of the demographic changes, to prevent black wealth.

Pisses me off on so many levels.

@tdverstynen This one lost my respect for him as well.

I loved loved his Great Courses on language - it really made me reevaluate my thoughts on language, what it does and why/how it is used in certain ways, especially to control and enforce class and power dynamics. I've listened to it a couple times, all 26 hours or so. I went through a John McWhorter period for a while, seeking out his stuff. Was super excited when he got this column.

That did not last long. He can not be more infuriating than about politics. He is an expert in his field and is entirely overconfident outside it. He's using language to enforce the class boundaries, rather than break them.

He is shaming people for being excited. He's calling out racism while ignoring that it's misogyny at play. People started to get excited over Hilary too, they just had to hide it. Pantsuit Nation, remember that? Now we don't have to hide it. With the adde excitement for a fresh face breaking new ground, for someone willing to fight.

@quantensalat

1) Communicate your thought in as few words as possible. Make a game of it.
2) do not document the thoughts necessary to come to your conclusion.
3) use lists where practical, not paragraphs.

School teaches you to write in a certain style, vs how to focus and develop the content or thought.

Writing for someone who knows more than we do is very different than someone who knows less that we we do.

The puff, the explanation, the stretching of concepts are all designed to impress a teacher or professor. In writing for someone who knows less, all those writing skills get in the way of a newbie understanding the concept.

@thepoliticalcat In a 2D sense or a 3D sense?

A lot of dyslexics are so strong in their 3D world view they struggle with 2D representations of the world.

It's why b and d get confused. Same shape in 3D.

Am sure you've tried, but does Google Streetview help?

With my severely dyslexic kid, making sure they can orient themselves to landmark helps considerably.

#dyslexia win!

I just had a coworker seek me out because of my dyslexia. Asked for my special dyslexia powers. They were working on engineering concept that needed to be clear to construction workers for safety. Stuff that can kill you.

With my dyslexia, I make the same kind of interpretation mistakes the field often makes. I just don't have the working memory easily process (badly written/presented) written material, doing so by force of will rather than ease.

Through experience am able to diagnose and articulate where my working memory screws things up. Mainly by "how much am I needing to study to understand it."

Was able to quickly help them figure out what was wrong. This info here needs to be clarified so it isn't conflated with that info over there. This is the mistake people can make.

And poof, a plan to fix.

Always feels good when you know you may have prevented someone else's screw up that could have killed someone.

Neurodiversity for the win.

My garden right now. Heaps of flowers. Hard to believe this was a wasteland of lawn a year ago.

The California poppies were volunteers. I love how many bumble bees they attract.

#bloomscrolling #NoLawn

@MelodyCooper @MarkHoltom I heard of a story about how, in a remarkably preserved town, they kept finding knives on high shelves. The male archologists/anthropologists went with the classic religious explanation - place knives closer to the sun or if worship.

Once women came into the field they had a very different and practical idea - out of reach of children.

@DeliaChristina @pooserville @courtcan @mekkaokereke My asshole aunt lives in Rockridge. She is the kind of person who will correct you, because she doesn't want to cop to living in Oakland. She lives in Rockridge. 🙄

I wish known then about the red lining then so I could have asked her place still had the racist covenants. If she ever corrects me again I will. She's one of those who thinks she isn't racist but actually is.

When ever I hear Rockridge I think of my aunt's bullshit.

It is a pretty area but oof, the people.

@argv_minus_one @clarkiestar I'm an engineer with #LongCovid. Doctors have surprised me.

Not a 1:1 comparison, as an engineer I need to be able to walk up to a structure or system and figure it how it works and if a problem is safety related or not. I need to know how to build on someone else's work.

Doctors are drilled on a series of pre-determined scripts. XYZ symptoms and test results, ABC diagnosis, perscribe 123 medication or refer elsewhere. The prior science did the thinking and insurance will only back those treatments. Evidence based medicine is rigid and unthinking.

Go off script, something new to science, and a normal doctor can't figure out what to do, or have the time. Insurance won't pay. Life is not TV.

I've got far, far more professional discretion than a doctor does, and my work is critical to public safety. Medicine also accepts a far higher death and injury rate than is allowed engineers.

The reality of what medicine is today surprised me.