Flutterby™!: Topic : California Culture

Due to excessive server load and DDOS attacks, this list may be truncated.

Entry: 2026-04-28 19:15:02.112043+02 Wow So this weekend at North Bay by Dan Lyke comments 0

Wow. So this weekend at North Bay Python, the Apify folks were doing a "try out our API, win something". I'd had a glass of wine, so I fired up my phone, did a few queries to enter myself in the raffle, and carried on.

I'm not sure what I did that's ongoing, but just got the "you hit your $100 intro bonus API cost" email.

So clearly there was something I didn't understand. Another entry in the "I'm scared of cloud billing" bucket.

[ related topics: Wines and Spirits Monty Python California Culture Python ]

Entry: 2026-04-28 19:00:03.183429+02 My talk on Modern Western Square by Dan Lyke comments 0

My talk on Modern Western Square Dancing at North Bay Python this weekend is live...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aJVvaz8eFwA

#NBPy

Entry: 2026-04-27 17:53:08.631121+02 An Economy of Empathy by Dan Lyke comments 0

Mario Munoz has put the text of his Sunday morning talk at North Bay Python online. I'm waiting for the recording to experience it again, but it was exactly the Sunday morning angry sermon I needed: https://pythonbynight.com/talks/empathy

Via his Fediverse post

[ related topics: Religion Monty Python California Culture Python ]

Entry: 2026-04-27 00:25:03.233021+02 If you believe that the best part of a by Dan Lyke comments 0

If you believe that the best part of a conference is the hallway track, this year's North Bay Python feels like that. The conversations and presentations feel like the sort of thought provoking topics I want from a conference.

#NBPy

Entry: 2026-04-26 19:20:02.437011+02 Repeat of yesterday's picture now with by Dan Lyke comments 0

Repeat of yesterday's picture, now with more sky texture. You should be at North Bay Python.

#NBPy

[ related topics: Photography Monty Python California Culture Python ]

Entry: 2026-04-25 20:15:02.491541+02 Fantastic talk from Christopher by Dan Lyke comments 0

Fantastic talk from Christopher Neugebauer to open North Bay Python: ""What is Correct?" and is that even the right question any more?"

I'm gonna have to rewatch this to let the lessons sink in.

#NBPy

[ related topics: Monty Python California Culture Python ]

Entry: 2026-04-25 19:20:03.193838+02 You could be somewhere else by Dan Lyke comments 0

You could be somewhere else, or you could be at North Bay Python this weekend.

[ related topics: Photography Monty Python California Culture Python ]

Entry: 2026-04-24 20:12:19.757284+02 Lots of e-dirt-bikes out there by Dan Lyke comments 0

Minetta Transportation Institute — MTI Electric Bicycle Safety Study Identifies Illegal, Over-Powered Devices as Key Problem

While nobody knows how many of these illegal electric bicycles are on the road, the percentage might be quite high. Counts of electric two-wheelers parked at a dozen northern California middle and high schools found that almost 90% may not meet the standards for legal electric bicycles. Some of these devices have as much as eight times more power than legal limits.

Entry: 2026-04-24 18:42:42.062738+02 Waymo doesn't help safety, hates cyclists by Dan Lyke comments 0

Waymo Is Not In The ‘Vision Zero’ Toolbox: Data

Waymo has told advocates that expecting it to respect bike lanes is “too high a bar” because customers expect to be dropped off in them, said Christopher White, executive director of the San Francisco Bike Coalition.

“People always point out that unlike human driven cars, the AVs stop at lights and obey the speed limit. However, they are really only as good and effective and safe as they are programmed to be,” White said. “Waymos pull over into bike lanes all the time for pickups and drop-offs and that’s neither legal nor safe but the companies say that is a normal practice and that’s what customers expect.”

Expecting driverless taxis to respect bike lanes “too high a bar” – because customers want to be dropped off in them, autonomous vehicle firm Waymo tells cyclists

Last June, a cyclist in San Francisco sued the Google-owned company after she was seriously injured when one of the brand’s driverless taxis stopped in a cycle lane and a passenger opened its back door, striking the cyclist and causing her to smash into another Waymo car that was also illegally blocking the bike path.

Entry: 2026-04-18 01:26:51.810536+02 John Eastman disbarred by Dan Lyke comments 0

State Bar of California: Attorney John Eastman Disbarred by the California Supreme Court.

Context for this Bluesky thread debunking the various people attempting to exonerate him.

Via.

[ related topics: Law Current Events California Culture ]

Entry: 2026-04-17 20:39:21.542022+02 Fake bear mauls luxury automobiles by Dan Lyke comments 0

3 sentenced in 'unbelievable' bear attack insurance scam:

But the video and photos from the scene didn’t look quite right. During the investigation, detectives sent the footage to a biologist from the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, who “concluded the animal shown was clearly a human in a bear suit,” according to the news release from the California Department of Insurance. The team then realized similar claims had been made about damage to two Mercedes vehicles.

The news release includes a link to a Flickr image set that includes a picture of the bear suit. No human in it, alas.

Entry: 2026-04-14 17:39:29.599667+02 CHAOS by Dan Lyke comments 0

Finished CHAOS: Charles Manson, the CIA, and the Secret History of the Sixties by Tom O'Neill and Dan Piepenbring last night. Read it on the suggestion of a friend. I forget the context in which it came up, but...

It makes a compelling case that the LAPD and DA's office told a story about what happened that wasn't consistent with the facts, and that there was a lot of bumbling between the LASD and the LAPD. It raised a lot of questions about why Manson and his entourage may have been treated very leniently before the murders by both law enforcement and the judiciary. It points out a whole lot of intersections between the CIA's MKUltra program and various aspects of the '60s counterculture that intersected with Mason and crowd.

What I don't know after reading this is how out of the norm these various connections are. We know from so many cases in the intervening years that the LAPD and the LASD as institutions have practices of altering crime scenes and reports to fit a DA's narrative, and that judges are wont to, say, give young women who are having their first interactions with the court a little leniency in hopes that they can straighten themselves out without punishment (since, let's be fair, that's the main remedy courts have).

We also know that various US federal agencies engage in some sketchy shit in terms of internal US policies, and what university research gets funded, and a lot of this stuff may have been cleaned up a bit in the intervening years, with IRBs and all.

And the book acknowledges all of this.

So, yeah, a good read in understanding how, for instance, "conservative" factions act to make sure that the counter-culture acts in the ways that they fear, in seeing a lot of how prosecutors and "law" enforcement act to reinforce their initial suspicions, in how so much of society is intertwined. I recommend it from that front.

But frustrating (and, again, the author acknowledges this) that in the end this is the tangled yarn of a connection board without a clear picture emerging. It's the tale of the decisions a society makes, without an overarching story.

Fascinating read, I'm glad I went through it, but still trying to figure out what it means.

Entry: 2026-04-03 20:26:42.956876+02 Tahoe update by Dan Lyke comments 1

What I wanted for a MacOS Tahoe 16.4 update: performance, stability, security, better handling of switches disabling "Liquid Glass", square corners...

What I got: 🫍🪎🛘🫯🫪🪊🫈🧑‍🩰

[ related topics: Theater & Plays California Culture Macintosh ]

Entry: 2026-03-31 08:05:03.629377+02 Every time I think fuuuu why did I by Dan Lyke comments 0

Every time I think "fuuuu, why did I sign up for another gig this week?", and then I go call a square dance, and I'm like "oh, yeah, that's why".

Tonight the Caper Cutters in San Francisco.

[ related topics: Bay Area California Culture ]

Entry: 2026-03-28 23:55:02.49045+01 Went to the rally today in our unicorn by Dan Lyke comments 0

Went to the rally today in our unicorn costumes (I expect pictures of us to blossom on the internet shortly), but standing around all day was a reminder that in last night's calling for South Bay Squares I was moving. A lot.

My legs are downright tired today.

[ related topics: Photography California Culture Net Culture ]

Entry: 2026-03-27 19:44:06.880844+01 CEQA fix needs fix by Dan Lyke comments 0

Cal Matters: California blew a hole in environmental planning law. Now, lawmakers are trying to fix it.

CEQA has problems, but the problems aren't "oh, no worries if this facility dumps heavy metals", it's about models for traffic and neighborhood impacts and stuff like that. Grrrr.

Entry: 2026-03-25 20:26:40.504338+01 careful what you tell those models by Dan Lyke comments 1

Honestly, this makes sense: Programmers who proclaim themselves expert are generally crappy programmers, so if you tell an LLM that it's supposed to be an expert programmer, of course it's gonna generate worse code. The Register: Telling an AI model that it’s an expert programmer makes it a worse programmer

In a pre-print paper titled "Expert Personas Improve LLM Alignment but Damage Accuracy: Bootstrapping Intent-Based Persona Routing with PRISM," researchers affiliated with the University of Southern California (USC) find that persona-based prompting is task-dependent – which they say explains the mixed results.

Via.

Entry: 2026-03-25 19:18:24.673343+01 Courts are getting more serious about AI by Dan Lyke comments 0

Oregon attorney slapped with record fine after citing case law hallucinated by AI

The Oregon Court of Appeals issued a $10,000 fine to Bill Ghiorso, a Salem-based civil attorney, after determining he signed his name to a legal brief containing 15 bogus citations and nine quotes “that had been contrived from thin air.”

The article mentions a previous slap on the wrist ($2k) against Portland civil attorney Gabriel A. Watson.

Entry: 2026-03-19 17:42:23.342374+01 March 18 is Lemon Pound Cake Freedom Day by Dan Lyke comments 0

A bunch of random links to celebrate Afroman wins in lawsuit from Ohio deputies over music videos: ‘We did it America … freedom of speech!’

Some links from Defector's post, which requires creating an account, by way of ‪Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò‬ ‪@olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social‬

I would like to personally award Afroman the Bluesky Medal of Valor for Exemplary Service in Bringing Back Shame

Previously Flutterby January 6, 2023, and March 24, 2023.

Entry: 2026-03-16 18:11:56.576957+01 Ageless Linux by Dan Lyke comments 0

Ageless Linux

Software for humans of indeterminate age. We don't know how old you are. We don't want to know. We are legally required to ask. We won't.

Including The Ageless Device

A physical computing device designed to satisfy every element of the California Digital Age Assurance Act's regulatory scope while deliberately refusing to comply with its requirements. The device costs less than lunch and will be handed to children.

Entry: 2026-03-15 18:00:02.918545+01 I would happily trade some Midwest by Dan Lyke comments 0

I would happily trade some Midwest weather here in March.

(A screen capture of the National Weather Service forecast for Petaluma California, showing 85 (Fahrenheit ) today, 85 tomorrow, 88 Tuesday, and 87 Wednesday and Thursday.)

[ related topics: Photography California Culture ]

Entry: 2026-03-11 23:27:01.470389+01 LAPD fishing by Dan Lyke comments 0

LA Ten Four: Fishing With Flashing Lights: New Report Shows Pretextual Stops Still Racially Biased

Recent data shows Black and Latino drivers continue to be disproportionately affected by the practice. Los Angeles City Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson revealed that he himself has been pulled over four times, and had even missed a meeting that week because of it.

References Catalyst California: Stop the Stops: Ending Racially Biased and Ineffective LAPD Traffic Stops

[ related topics: Invention and Design Television California Culture ]

Entry: 2026-03-11 01:35:38.352516+01 horny bishop by Dan Lyke comments 0

Details seep out in case against horny bishop who frequented Tijuana mega-brothel

Emanuel Shaleta from Saint Peter’s Chaldean in East County allegedly stole at least $270,000 from his church, which he claimed he gave away to the needy.

I'mma nominate the hardworking women at the Hong Kong Gentleman’s Club in Tijuana’s Zona Norte red-light district as "the needy". Via

Entry: 2026-03-06 21:25:03.031451+01 MeFi thread on Adam Neely's Suno AI by Dan Lyke comments 0

The MeFi thread on Adam Neely's "Suno, AI Music, and the Bad Future" video, and today's work implementing an MCP server in work project, are really reinforcing how the culture of AI tools lies in devaluing skill building.

https://www.metafilter.com/212...sicians-that-have-influenced-you

Entry: 2026-03-03 00:19:08.080072+01 The fight against anonymity by Dan Lyke comments 0

Since there's currently an orchestrated push to destroy anonymity on the Internet: Politico: Resist ‘dangerous and socially unacceptable’ age checks for social media, scientists warn

The warning comes as countries around the world move to bar children from social media, which requires some way of checking users’ ages to decide if they can access online services. In an open letter, 371 security and privacy academics across 29 countries said the technologies being rolled out are not effective and carry significant risks.

California Assembly Bill 1043: AB-1043 Age verification signals: software applications and online services. apparently makes it illegal to configure an operating system without confirming the user's age, similarly for Colorado Senate Bill SB 26-051: AGE ATTESTATION ON COMPUTING DEVICES

Taylor Lorenz in The Guardian: The world wants to ban children from social media, but there will be grave consequences for us all, in response to the toot linking to that Alan @metaphase@toot.community asked

@taylorlorenz Who is paying for the lobbyists for this seemingly worldwide campaign for the legislation to install identity surveillance everywhere "for the children"?

And why, even in blue states, are the politicians always so eager to enable tools so easily abused by authoritarian, fascist governments

Entry: 2026-02-26 18:42:45.036912+01 LAPD misconduct by Dan Lyke comments 0

I'm not sure I can actually follow on BlueSky because frankly I have enough of "holy shit the world is fucked up" right now, especially since his beat is Southern California, and it's not like I need regular reminders that the LAPD and LACSD are criminal enterprises, but...

LAPD Quietly Admits At Least One Of Its Officers In A “Law Enforcement Gang”

Disabled on Paper, Skydiving in Practice: LAPD Officer Charged With Disability Fraud

Entry: 2026-02-20 18:02:01.181336+01 Live Music in the Cities by Dan Lyke comments 0

Twin Cities (Minneapolis/St Paul) Business: Key Changes: The Tough Economics of Live Music in the Cities.

Good read on intersections of culture, politics, and alcohol...

Via.

Entry: 2026-02-20 18:00:03.274808+01 One of the hardest parts about growing by Dan Lyke comments 0

One of the hardest parts about growing up rural and suburban is getting to late middle age and realizing just how much I've missed because of the anti-city prejudices of my youth.

Feeling like I now live in a place where old people cosplay as having culture, rather than actually having a culture.

[ related topics: Theater & Plays Sociology California Culture ]

Entry: 2026-02-20 00:03:24.837493+01 Protest Music by Dan Lyke comments 0

Just gathering more protest songs here...

Willie Nelson - Heart Of America (From The Gray House Original Soundtrack) (Not sure I like this trend of AI generated video)

"Minnesota" - Marsh Family adaptation of "San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Some Flowers in Your Hair)"

From back in January, but it was still marked as pending in my queue MPR News: How Minnesota musicians are responding in real time to federal shootings.

Entry: 2026-02-18 17:20:08.83168+01 Gatekeeping and AI by Dan Lyke comments 0

A lot of discussion out there about how to create a culture of quality in a world filled with AI slop, especially in Open Source.

Some random links:

Joan Westenberg: The case for gatekeeping, or: why medieval guilds had it figured out

I don't mean you need a certificate to write Python. I mean something closer to what the Debian project has done with its Web of Trust model for decades: existing trusted contributors vouch for new ones. Your vouching carries weight proportional to your own standing. If you vouch for someone who turns out to be a spam vector, that costs you something. The system works because it makes reputation legible without making it bureaucratic.

@Daojoan on the Fediverse, lobste.rs.

Jared White on the Fediverse proposing an end to anonymous contributions, with pushback from David Gerard citing the awfulness of real name policies.

Entry: 2026-02-17 18:23:45.028509+01 California Single Stair non-progress by Dan Lyke comments 0

CalMatters: Housing advocates still waiting for state-ordered stair report

In the fall of 2023, the California Legislature tasked the state’s fire safety regulators with writing a report that some housing affordability advocates say could make it easier to build bigger, airier and better lit apartment buildings in California’s housing-strapped cities.

The Office of the State Fire Marshal was given until Jan. 1, 2026 to come up with a report on single-stair apartment buildings — a type of mid-sized multifamily development legal in much of the world, but effectively banned across most of North America.

And of course... here we are.

Entry: 2026-02-15 03:00:02.825832+01 Unlike reports from ChatGPT by Dan Lyke comments 0

Unlike reports from ChatGPT, Google's "AI" seems smart enough to know that I'd have to drive my car to the car wash. Unless, of course, I was going to use a self-service bay.

Inspired by this thread.

Entry: 2026-02-09 21:30:01.445965+01 SFUSD shovels money at OpenAI by Dan Lyke comments 0

How do we know AI is a grift? School admins are bypassing sanity in order to shovel money into it. San Francisco Unified School District Approves OpenAI Contract, Bypassing Board and Raising Student Privacy Concerns.

Via.

Entry: 2026-02-09 19:44:42.948607+01 Hard Braking Events as crash predictors by Dan Lyke comments 0

From Lagging to Leading: Validating Hard Braking Events as High-Density Indicators of Segment Crash Risk

This study systematically evaluated the correlation at individual road segment level between police-reported collisions and aggregated and anonymized HBEs identified via the Google Android Auto platform, utilizing datasets from California and Virginia. Empirical evidence revealed that HBEs occur at a rate magnitudes higher than traffic crashes. Employing the stateof-the-practice Negative- Binomial regression models, the analysis established a statistically significant positive correlation between the HBE rate and the crash rate: road segments exhibiting a higher frequency of HBEs were consistently associated with a greater incidence of crashes.

Via.

[ related topics: Law Enforcement California Culture ]

Entry: 2026-02-04 22:32:30.673846+01 EVs reducing NO2 by Dan Lyke comments 1

We still need to cut down dramatically on cars, generally, but EVs are measurably reducing NO2 emissions in California:

Auto Blog: EV Growth Is Already Cutting Neighborhood Air Pollution Across California

The Lancet Planetary Health: Zero-emissions vehicle adoption and satellite- measured NO2 air pollution in California, USA, from 2019 to 2023: a longitudinal observational study

Via

[ related topics: Weblogs Health Current Events California Culture ]

Entry: 2026-02-03 00:44:10.503512+01 ICE & CPB sex offenders by Dan Lyke comments 0

Pacific Antifascist Research Collective has "A thread of ICE and CBP sex offenders and credibly accused sex pasts." I think they mean pests, not pasts, but the rest of the point stands.

Entry: 2026-01-31 17:26:38.880842+01 plagiarizing prompts, LOL by Dan Lyke comments 0

Aaah, it's a good morning for the schadenfreude: Futurism: Furious AI Users Say Their Prompts Are Being Plagiarized

While Zairi is only the latest AI hound to bark about stolen prompts, she’s certainly not the first. Examples abound, as the Daily Dot pointed out back in December: consider a poster who railed about “prompt thieves in the AI art community,” or the “AI artist” who went on a tangent after someone aped his prompt “without knowing it’s mine.”

Entry: 2026-01-22 18:15:07.991943+01 Reading about Georgism and coercive by Dan Lyke comments 0

Reading about Georgism and coercive economics, and then I see more employer provided housing in the SF Bay Area (this about an SF restaurant, but context included a convenience store owner in Sebastopol), and...

https://www.sfchronicle.com/fo...tment-san-francisco-21291046.php

Entry: 2026-01-22 17:53:41.574288+01 Ribald in Sydney by Dan Lyke comments 0

Wish this piece went deeper, but still a fascinating glimpes at Australia's sexual culture of the early 1970s: Satirical erotic newspaper discovered inside heritage Hobart hotel.

Via Metafilter.

Entry: 2026-01-22 00:52:59.512766+01 Mental illness and LLMs by Dan Lyke comments 0

Man Who Had Managed Mental Illness Effectively for Years Says ChatGPT Sent Him Into Hospitalization for Psychosis

"They straight up took my data and used it against me to capture me further and make me even more delusional."

Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff calls out AI models as 'suicide coaches'

In three public appearances, the executive of San Francisco’s largest tech company used the phrase “suicide coach” to describe the chatbot from Character.AI — a Menlo Park startup sued by multiple families over their children’s mental health crises. Benioff discussed the issue with TV interviewers from CNBC and Bloomberg, then on stage with President Donald Trump’s AI czar David Sacks. Calling out the United States’ failure to regulate social media, the CEO advocated for new accountability measures aimed at chatbot companies.

Connectivity provided by highertech.net , awesome bandwidth, well away from fault lines and other potential for natural disasters, reliable, and run by cool people.

Questions, comments, flames: contact Dan Lyke

Flutterby™ is a trademark claimed by

Dan Lyke

for the web publications at www.flutterby.com and www.flutterby.net.