In geek (and sundry) news; nerd queen to spawn child process.

I’ll do the day, Lord give me the money for a night nurse. Every two hours is brutal right now.

California is fucking enormous and various. You could absolutely find a studio for that in parts of LA County or the Central Valley. Probably up by Humboldt area too. No, you’re not going to find that deal in the bay or in any major city center here, but CA does not have a monopoly on the US housing crisis.

The most profound moment of my life was a couple years ago when I was big pregnant and my husband and I went for a walk around our community (it was one of those little gated developments) to try to jump start labor. It was fairly late at night and we were walking and we saw a cop car at the house behind ours a few…

The two fundamental problems are that too many people have come to the area (far outstripping available housing) and tech companies are paying wages far beyond the average (and most people aren’t engineers). There are a lot of reasons for the lack of housing, one being that many cities discourage new construction -…

Homelessness is a huge issue throughout the Bay Area, and it isn’t just about areas affected by gentrification, either. I live in a working class, low-ish density (lots of single-family homes) neighborhood, and the number of homeless people has exploded. There are maybe a dozen homeless people just in the immediate…

The movie was based on a school in the district that serves East Palo Alto kids, but the school itself is not in EPA. The only public high school in EPA, Ravenswood, closed in 1976 or so when enrollment was declining. The EPA kids had to be bussed other district high schools. EPA, BTW, is not in Santa Clara County,…

I teach in this district, within sight of Facebook, and this is all absolutely true, although selfishly I will point out that teachers are struggling with housing as well. Over half of our teaching staff quit headed into last school year. It is heartbreaking to work with so many young children who deserve so much,…

Housing in CA is a more locally controlled issue. Individual cities get to decide what is built. No city wants to do something that destroys the value of exiting homes.

I’m curious as to when you lived in CA and for how long...? Was it during The Govenator’s reign of incompetence? He put us in the hole. Luckily we got our collective shit together, re-elected Moonbeam, raised taxes and cut spending. We are now back in the black. If only we could keep our tax revenue for ourselves.…

Because its not liberalism or corporatism that is doing this, but NIMBYism. The fact is that homeowners associations and city rules PREVENT new housing from being built. Silicon Valley should have its own skyscrapers by now, but houses that would sell for $100,000 in the Midwest are going for $1 million because new…

The tech industry certainly enhances the issue, but it is pretty disingenuous to say it’s the tech industry’s fault. The housing market is all sorts of screwed up in any metro area.

Democrats can shout about it until they’re blue in the face but nothing can actually be done—investigation, prosecution, something as sexy as impeachment—without a lot of Republican lawmakers and officials going along with it. And unless it becomes politically advantageous, that won’t ever happen. Republicanism is…

What I’m really curious about is what do you send TO Bill Gates? He seems to like to read quite a bit so I would probably send him a few non-fiction books I enjoyed and that seem to match his interests as they are indicated by his book list. I probably would also send some home made baked goods and as a joke a…

That’s a tricky situation and I am so glad you don’t feel damaged or abused. Although you seem extremely self-aware and that self awareness contributed to a nonharmful sexual relationship, it’s still disturbing that your coach didn’t maintain professional and legal boundaries. I realize that there is a thrill in…

And here I thought it’s never lupus.

The dead cells are eaten by macrophage white blood cells, like all other cells that die or go cancerous in your body. But in guess in rare cases, The dead cells fragments trigger a really strong inflammatory response and your body freaks out a little bit—leading to that hyperplasia.

There’s a story in my family of a great grandmother who was known in her adopted town as a mysterious, quiet yet elegant lady. She came from a well-to-do family in Belgium and never learned much English. Back then, it was announced in church when parishioners were sick, so a group of “aid society” ladies would come…

Oh, this is awful and I’m so glad for your cousin and your family that she is doing well now. Fuck these guys, and whoever victimized your cousin.

I was so happy to read this headline on twitter this morning. Fuck backpage and fuck these guys. I spent months searching for my teenage cousin who was abducted, scoured the pages of that filthy fucking dirty site completely horrified by the children on there, worked with sex workers (who were helping me) up and down…