Shooting In The 'Hood

I wondered, why did they shut down 24th & Broadway this afternoon? It's all connected somehow with Odd Fellows Cemetery. Life (and death) in my neighborhood:

One person was killed and another was injured in a shooting Friday afternoon in Sacramento, police said.

The victims were taken to the hospital for treatment after the shooting. Sacramento police said one person died; the condition of the other victim is unknown.
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The shooting happened around 12:55 p.m. in the 1000 block of Broadway, near the Sacramento Historic City Cemetery, police said. The victims were found in a vehicle near 24th Street and Broadway.

Refugees of a Sort

Doing Census work, I’ve encountered some of these Bay Area Covid refugees. I thought it strange these folks would flee here, since Covid rates are similar between here and there, but it’s more about housing costs and work flexibility than anything:

The coronavirus pandemic that was virtually imprisoning them in their tiny downtown San Jose walk-up also offered an unexpected escape option. No longer tethered to the office, they could live almost anywhere outside the pricey Bay Area and keep their jobs.

Last week, the couple moved into a 2,700-square-foot home on a leafy street in the suburban Sacramento community of Fair Oaks. It’s their first home purchase. They’ll turn two of the four bedrooms into his and hers offices. And they plan to add a gym and a backyard pool.
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“Because of COVID, we didn’t want to be stuck in a tiny space,” Shanni, a 34-year-old tech worker, said. “But we knew there was no way we could afford in San Jose.”

9/11 Again

Tragedy brings back college memories from the 70s! I took a college English class alongside the fellow who became the captain of United 175, the second plane, the one that hit the South Tower. Nice guy. One of our classmates, a pretty metallurgy student, became a prominent 9/11 Truther. Quite a day.

Sacramento, Crossroads For Crappy Air

Air quality is just dreadful tonight in Sacramento. I'm suffering some respiratory distress - sniffles and post-nasal drip. People with asthma might be in real trouble. So, how does air quality tonight compare to November 2018, when the Camp Fire burned down Paradise, CA?

Here is a chart of fine particulate matter (PM2.5) concentration, in units of micrograms per cubic meter (ug/m3), as a function of day from start of month - either since November 1, 2018, or August 1, 2020 - at Sacramento's T Street, the measurement station closest to my house. November 2018 is shown in orange, August/September 2020 in gray, and the federal health standard is shown as a horizontal blue line.

The Camp Fire started fumigating Sacramento in earnest around November 8, 2018. The crisis lasted about two weeks, with concentrations peaking nearly eight times above the health standard on November 15th.

The current air quality crisis started around August 17, 2020, and has featured lower concentrations than what we received from the Camp Fire, reaching equivalent levels - 144 ug/m3, which is four times the health standard - only today. Nevertheless, the current crisis is much longer-lasting than November, 2018 - nearly a month already. The longer things last, of course, the more harm is done.

Sturgis Legacy

A dumb idea turns into a nightmare:

According to the study, which used anonymized cellphone data from the rally where around 500,000 people congregated, there were a “total number of cases to 266,796 or 19 percent of 1.4 million new cases of COVID-19 in the United States between August 2nd 2020 and September 2nd 2020,” connected to the rally. IZA estimates that the costs of this event to the public will be over $12 billion. It is important to note that to reach this number, researchers worked under the conservative assumption that all of these new cases were nonfatal.

Daft Night Coming Up

Apparently the census wants me to join a team of folks who will soon stay up all night to count all the homeless folks bedding down in their homeless camps in Sacramento. This strikes me as a remarkably stupid thing to do. A lot of the camps are in challenging environments, like in terrain along the American River. Easy to blunder into holes in the dark at 3 a.m. Plus, homeless folks are a bit paranoid and quite wary of strangers. Especially strangers in groups who don't belong in the area. Like we will be.

Withstand This Storm

Pigs

Apocalypse Now

Life in Mordor. The extreme drought of 2012-2016 left epic numbers of dead, dying, and barely-hanging-on trees. An insoluble problem. And now, fire is solving the problem:

California’s mega-drought officially ended three years ago but may have turned the Creek Fire into a monster.

By killing millions of trees in the Sierra National Forest, the historic drought that ended in 2017 left an incendiary supply of dry fuel that appears to have intensified the fire that’s ravaged more than 140,000 acres in the southern Sierra Nevada, wildfire scientists and forestry experts said Tuesday.

“The energy produced off that is extraordinary,” said Scott Stephens, a wildfire scientist at UC Berkeley. “Large amounts of woody material burning simultaneously.”

What’s more, the Creek Fire is shaping up as a frightening template for other wildfires that could ignite in heavily forested areas that suffered extensive tree loss.

“This might provide this first glimpse into the future we’re in for,” said LeRoy Westerling, a climate and wildfire scientist at UC Merced.

(Photo credit: Rachel Rycerz)

Fine-Tuning

I have no beef with the Independent Truckers, but Uber and Lyft will have to go:

More California industries can hire independent contractors instead of employees with benefits under a bill Gov. Gavin Newsom signed on Friday to allow more flexibility in a 2019 state labor law.

The new law, which takes effect immediately, allows more youth sports coaches, artists, interpreters, freelance writers, appraisers and insurance field representatives and a range of people in the music industry to work as independent contractors.

Under The Porch

Last night, I did some watering out front in anticipation of this weekend’s heat wave. I had Jasper with me. Once again, I dropped his leash in order to attend to the hose. Jasper sat quietly on the lawn.

Until I noticed Jasper had moved. He was probing under the neighbors’ porch. A skunk was also probing under the same porch, and gassed the area. The good news is that Jasper wasn’t hit. The bad news is that the neighborhood now reeks.

Broke

I had a different take on the Trump campaign going dark on television as the election approaches. Since campaign funds are relatively easy to convert to personal use, my thought is that Trump simply intends to steal the money as he leaves office. Fewer ads; more loot. I wonder what the SuperPACs will do?:

Long-time readers will know about my skepticism over TV advertising. Public opinion simply doesn’t change, not on presidential preferences, and certainly not via a 60-second television ad. Nearly 200,000 dead have cost Trump a net three points in his job approval, according to the Civiqs daily tracking poll. If we’re lucky, the latest revelations of Trump grossly insulting our troops will cost him maybe another 1-2 points. If we’re lucky.

But that’s a separate debate. Fact is, presidential campaigns advertise. And if they don’t, it’s because they don’t have the money to do so. That goes extra for Trump, who was forcing his campaign to advertise in indigo blue Washington DC so he could watch himself during his copious daily TV time.

So how does the Trump campaign spin away this embarrassing admission of poverty?