February 14, 2017
“What is the make and model of the car you were driving when you realized you don’t actually like to share with anyone?” In case you haven’t seen it yet: security questions for single, childless people. / McSweeney’s
None very long, none overwritten, none without an occasional surprise.
1. Bloomberg, “Feisty, Protectionist Populism? New Zealand Tried That” / Bloomberg
2. Teen Vogue, “Emily Ratajkowski Defends Melania Trump Against Slut Shaming” / teenvogue.com
3. The Dabbler, “Review: The Plagiarist in the Kitchen by Jonathan Meades” / thedabbler.co.uk
Maybe this is one of those “only in Los Angeles” kind of things, but it looks like there’s still time to send your Valentine a marijuana bouquet. / TimeOut Los Angeles
“The situation at Oroville Dam comes as much of California is suffering from climate whiplash,” following a rapid switch from drought to record-breaking precipitation. / aol.com
Wild footage from a California Highway Patrol plane over Oroville Dam, currently being evacuated, where water careens down the emergency spillway. / The Sacramento Bee
“It worked fine until it had to be used, in which case it didn’t work so well.” / The Sacramento Bee
“Nature discovers the errors in your design pretty quickly. And that’s basically what happened.” Brief but terrifying radio interview with a civil engineer about Oroville Dam. / NPR
California dam politics are darn contentious. For example, environmentalists have been fighting for decades to dismantle the Hetch-Hetchy Reservoir, created when a valley adjacent to Yosemite–and allegedly as beautiful–was flooded and dammed to provide water for San Francisco. / The Verge
4,000: Parties with major water rights in California, where a thorny gridlock presides over the state’s water supply. / San Francisco Chronicle
$20 billion: Value of commerce passing through chokepoint Lock and Dam 52 on the Ohio River, which takes 15-20 hours to pass due to underinvestment. / The New York Times
180,000: Evacuees on tenterhooks waiting to see if their homes will be destroyed by dam failure in Oroville. / Vice
120: Dogs registered at the Chico Red Cross. / The Guardian
50: Feet the lake behind the dam rose in a matter of days before the spillover. / NPR
8 million: Salmon that live in Lake Oroville, comprising 30% of the state’s $4 billion salmon stock. / BBC
1/3: Americans who may lose access to affordable water if price increases continue for five years. / PBS
D: Grade from American Society of Civil Engineers given to America’s water infrastructure. / infrastructurereportcard.org
As there is no central office keeping track, it appears that the numbers the military produces about how many deadly airstrikes it carries out are thousands lower than reality. / militarytimes.com
“Antiquarian books worth more than £2m have been stolen by a gang who avoided a security system by abseiling into a west London warehouse. The three thieves made off with more than 160 publications after raiding the storage facility near Heathrow in what has been labelled a Mission: Impossible-style break-in.” Headline of the day: “Thieves steal £2m of rare books by abseiling into warehouse.” Abseiling for rare books! / The Guardian
When it comes to Trump and Twitter and linguistics, entire fields of study will grow as days proceed. But the president’s not the only who knows how to tweet. Three recent sources of fun: / google.com
1. Pennsylvania state senator Daylin Leach calls the president a shit-gibbon. / New York
2. Donaeld the Unready, who reminds us how medieval our leader can seem, protests St. Valentine’s fame, simultaneously spreading “fake chronicles” (no arrows involved). / Twitter, Wikipedia
Tales from two only-in-California government jobs across from one another in the Bay Area:
—Darlene Flynn, Oakland’s “czar of race and equity,” is tasked with investigating whether the extremely progressive cannabis regulations the city recently approved—guaranteeing half of all business licenses in the city to people with felony convictions or that live in neighborhoods directly affected by the War on Drugs—are truly working for the city’s residents. / San Francisco Chronicle, story.californiasunday.com
—In San Francisco, Anne Stuhldreher, the city’s director of financial justice, digs through city and court records to identify government practices that unnecessarily charge San Franciscans too much money. / story.californiasunday.com
“The election really did have an effect on users’ self-reported dating drive: 29 percent of liberals said they felt less like dating since Trump won. Among conservatives, that figure is 14.2 percent.” Liberals on Match.com have lost their mojo post-election. Why that’s worrying: “People who have more social interactions with members of other political parties tend to have warmer feelings about them.” Can’t we all just agree to mess around? / Vox