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The Photo Behind The Fiasco

A Bay Area photographer is facing legal trouble for posting a composited picture of the Golden Gate Bridge with the blood moon, which was taken from an “illegal angle.”

An "illegal angle"? When did they start making angles illegal? And what effect might such laws have on, say, triangles?

Imagine the trouble he'd be in if he'd defecated under the bridge, like bums do all the time in Portland!

Bruce Getty says he is “just a guy who likes to go on the rocks and get a unique angle of the bridge.” After snapping his photo of the bridge, he later Photoshopped another of his images into it: that of the blood moon from 2014. He then uploaded the composited image onto his website, where it eventually caught the attention of the Bridge District, who issued a cease and desist letter.

Yeah, well, bureaucrats live to restrict.

 

Customer Care At US Bank

In the week since her story made international news, Emily James, the banker fired from a U.S. Bank call center in Portland for a Christmas Eve act of kindness, has been “overwhelmed and emotional” from the outpouring she’s received.

On the day before Christmas, James had gotten permission from her manager to leave the call center and drive to a nearby gas station, where a bank customer was stranded. He couldn’t access the money from his paycheck at the bank, so James gave him $20 of her own money to buy gas, then went back to work.

The bank fired her a week later on New Year’s Eve, James said, calling her helpful hand an “unauthorized interaction with a customer.”

Then last week her account to The Oregonian/OregonLive went viral. She’s had several job interviews, including with other local banks, but hasn’t yet started another job. Several companies reached out over social media, wanting to hire her.

The bank, one of the largest in the USA, was founded in Portland, Oregon in 1891;  and is now headquartered in Minneapolis.

Today, U.S. Bank is the fifth-largest bank in the country, with 74,000 employees and $467 billion in assets as of December 31, 2018.

Well, they couldn't buy the kind of publicity they're receiving now.

 

Australia: This Could All Have Been Avoided

Things are getting desperate down there:

Aircraft are being used to drop thousands of kilograms of carrots and sweet potato to hungry wildlife stranded amid the Australian bushfire crisis.

The New South Wales government commissioned the service titled ‘Operation Rock Wallaby’ which aims to feed the state’s colonies of brush-tailed rock wallabies and help the state’s population of marsupials survive.

They're burning through tons of cash in an effort to address a problem that they themselves have created.

Much as in California, the wildfires are a direct result of "feel-good" environmeddle policies, or as President Trump has correctly observed in the case of California's wildfires, "poor forest management".

The Australian state of New South Wales, where both Sydney and Canberra are located, declared a state of emergency this week, as worsening weather conditions could lead to even greater fire danger. But a 50,000-year-old solution could exist: Aboriginal burning practices.

 

Aboriginal people had a deep knowledge of the land, said historian Bill Gammage, an emeritus professor at Australian National University who studies Australian and Aboriginal history. They can feel the grass and know if it would burn well; they knew what types of fires to burn for what types of land, how long to burn, and how frequently.

 

"Even though people can see the Aborigines doing the fire control, and could see the benefits, they couldn't copy it," he said.

Now, the juxtaposition is clear.

 

"Where the Aboriginal people are in charge, they're not having big fires," Gammage said. "In the south, where white people are in charge, we are having the problems."

We have the same problem in the American West: a failure to learn effective forest management from the natives who successfully practiced it for centuries.

You Vill Comply!

Starting next Wednesday, Oregon lawmakers' ban on single-use plastic bags at grocery stores takes effect. For Oregonians, the may mean making some preparations before the next trip to load up on groceries and other goods. Customers who don't bring reuseable grocery bags to transport their groceries will have to pay five cents per paper bag provided by the business. 

Democratics are all about control. But they did provide some leeway: retailers are free to charge more than a nickel per paper bag, should they choose.

And these are fees, not taxes, so you can't deduct them come April.

 

Green Goo In Michigan

(CNN)A green liquid was found oozing onto Interstate 696 in the Detroit suburb of Madison Heights Friday, causing authorities to block off portions of the highway and call in federal agencies to investigate.

By Saturday, it was discovered that the mysterious liquid was the chemical hexavalent chromium and was leaking from a local business, Michigan State Police said on Twitter. Hexavalent chromium is usually produced during industrial processes like plating and is known to cause cancer, according to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. The chemical is harmful to the respiratory system, kidneys, liver, skin and eyes.

 

EPA's on it now, but advise that remediation is going to "take time", as there's considerable work involved.

 

Fortunately, the stuff has frozen into a solid blob, which should be helpful in accomplishing the needed remediation.

 

 

An App To Buy A Burger?

Most everyone has a "smart phone", it seems, and McDonald's has an app so that people can order items from the fast-food joint for quick pickup. We have smart phones, but we're approaching peak stupidity. Does anybody really need an app to order a hamburger?

The so-called Hamburglar is still at large, hacking customers' McDonald's app accounts and ordering food on their dime.

Here's a thought: since you're going to go pick up your burger, why not pay for it while you're there? That eliminates any third-party involvement and is therefore likely to be safer, although it admittedly lacks the "how kewl is this?" factor.

Since February, CBC News has heard from more than 20 people who allege a fraudster somehow infiltrated their McDonald's phone app  — which was linked to their debit or credit card — and ordered meals for pickup. In one case in April, more than $2,000 worth of meals was ordered at different McDonald's restaurants in Montreal and all charged to one unsuspecting customer in Toronto.

Maybe if this guy was told his brain is an app, he'd use it.

 

 

Tech To The Rescue?

They say there’s a smartphone app for everything, and doubters should know there are now at least two dealing with excrement on the sidewalks of San Francisco. The city has its official SF311 app, part of its “San Francisco at your Service” program, and last year a private developer introduced Snapcrap, which allows residents to upload a photo of an offending specimen directly to the SF311 website. This alerts the city’s new five-person “poop patrol,” which will follow up, presumably, with a smile.

The website RealtyHop.com dubs San Francisco “the doo-doo capital of the U.S.” They noted that the city’s poop reports almost tripled between 2011 and 2017.

The majority of the nation’s homeless people now live in California.

36,000 of them in L.A. and San Francisco, which makes for a lot of poop on the streets and sidewalks of the two cities.

Well, as some have observed - if you put out food for birds or rats, rodents will appear. The same applies even in California.

 

PBOT's At It Again

The Portland Bureau of Transportation's new vision for a 1.5-mile stretch of Northeast 102nd Avenue includes one traffic lane in each direction, plus a center turn lane, a bike lane in each direction and painted on-street parking.

The street currently has two vehicle lanes in each direction.

After collecting data on the initial changes, the city may add permanent concrete pedestrian refuge islands in four to six locations, and build sidewalks and curb ramps.

This messed up driver's turning left onto 102nd. There is now a barrier preventing left turn into middle lane. You now have to wait for it to be clear in both directions.

It's all part of Portland's continuing War on Cars.

Baking Biscuits And Desperate For Panic

It's so hot in Nebraska the National Weather Service baked biscuits using only the sun

By Sophie Lewis

July 19, 2019 / 1:13 PM / CBS News

A brutal heat wave will scorch more than half of the country this weekend, with temperatures expected to feel well over 100 degrees Fahrenheit. And to show just how serious the threat is, the National Weather Service in Omaha Nebraska baked biscuits in a parked car — using only the heat of the sun. 

Maybe people have just become used to A/C. I've stacked 24 tons of timothy and alfalfa in those conditions. Didn't bother me all that much; just stay hydrated. Everything has to be hyped, these days.

Everybody Panic!

 

 

PG&E To Bay Area: How's No Power Work For You?

Pacific Gas & Electric is taking preventative measures this weekend as fire season kicks into high gear by shutting off power to several communities in California's Bay Area. PG&E said it will be shutting down power to parts of Yolo, Napa and Sonoma counties on Saturday.

Maybe they ought to do more preventive maintenance, so they wouldn't need to shut down the grid. Just a thought.

Although it'd be amusing if they just shut down power to Pelosi's place....