Category: Local / Living

Software Bugs and Arizona Prisons

One of the software modules within ACIS, designed to calculate release dates for inmates, is presently unable to account for an amendment to state law that was passed in 2019.

Senate Bill 1310, authored by former Sen. Eddie Farnsworth, amended the Arizona Revised Statutes so that certain inmates convicted of nonviolent offenses could earn additional release credits upon the completion of programming in state prisons. Gov. Ducey signed the bill in June of 2019.

But department sources say the ACIS software is not still able to identify inmates who qualify for SB 1310 programming, nor can it calculate their new release dates upon completion of the programming.

“We knew from day one this wasn’t going to work” a department source said. “When they approved that bill, we looked at it and said ‘Oh, s—.’”

…

The sources said the ACIS software also makes it difficult for employees to correct errors once they have been identified.

“In one instance there was a disciplinary action erroneously entered on an inmate’s record,” a source said. “But there’s no way to back it out. So that guy was punished and he wasn’t able to make a phone call for 30 days. Those are the kinds of things that eat at you every day.”

Whistleblowers: Software Bug Keeping Hundreds Of Inmates In Arizona Prisons Beyond Release Dates
Jimmy Jenkins, https://kjzz.org/

People will vote for someone they don’t like, they won’t vote for someone they think dislikes them.

“David Axelrod said to me, ‘Remember Anthony, people will vote for somebody they don’t like. They gave Richard Nixon a landslide, nobody liked him, they gave him a landslide. What they don’t like doing is they don’t like voting for people that dislike them.’ ”
“See the difference? So you’re standing at a podium calling people deplorable, they’re like, ‘okay, give my vote to the orange man.'”
Anthony Scaramucci

#Unfit, the Psychology of Donald Trump
An eye-opening and shattering analysis of the behavior, psyche, condition, and stability of Donald J. Trump.

https://www.imdb.com/video/vi1470415129?

WTF is School Lunch Debt?

America, fuck yeah! from r/MurderedByWords

xXx69TwatSlayer69xXx
What the fuck is lunch debt?

DespressoCafe
Just what you think it is.

You buy food at school, if you can’t you get debt.

reach a certain threshold and you can only get a PB&J or some shit. nothing else

Thetallerestpaul
Fucking hell. Free school meals was massive when I was growing up. It’s a social mobility issue as well. Poorly fed kids can’t concentrate, fall further behind and the cycle of being poor and staying poor continues. Breakfast clubs are now in a lot of UK schools so they kids that need it are able to get at least 2 meals. Not sure how lockdown changes that, but when the first lockdown was announced a lot of teachers I know’s first concern was a load of kids aren’t gonna eat now. And aren’t going to be seen by a responsible adult for months. Heart breaking.

But lunch debt is taking it to a whole other level.

Agreeable_Arrival_87
Fun Story: One school was literally threatening to put children into foster care if their families didn’t pay off their lunch debt so a CEO offered to pay off the families’ debts for them and the school told him no.

https://www.cnn.com/2019/07/24/us/pennsylvania-lunch-debt-offer-trnd/index.html

Another Fun Story: Lunch workers who take pity on children and feed them free meals because a lot of food ends up getting thrown out at the end of the day anyway? Those people are routinely fired.

Urban Development, Some Problems With

The Californians Are Coming. So Is Their Housing Crisis.
Is it possible to import growth without also importing housing problems? “I can’t point to a city that has done it right.”
NYTIMES

From the comments section:

The problem with multi-family dwellings in the US is that there are insufficient noise-mitigation requirements. This leads to unlivable situations and neighbors at war with one another…

Income inequality deserves more than a passing mention, and acceptance as a fact of life. The housing-affordability problem is more about wage suppression than housing costs. Median income has stagnated since 1980, even has labor productivity has continued to rise. Nearly all the gains from income growth have gone to the top 10%, and most of that has gone to the top 1%…

Our immediate neighbors, however, are mostly terrible. Noisy, rude, filthy, not to mention brashly flouting public health law which affects us all when living in small spaces. The sidewalks are covered in broken glass and debris. My BIPOC daughters are sexually harassed if they walk in the wrong direction. We have hit-and-runs on a regular basis…

US population:
1970: 205m
1980: 226m
1990: 250m
2000: 282m
2010: 309m
2020: 330m
…

Plus, the comprehensive planning (and no mass transit) we have is a joke. We’re well on our way to becoming any western sprawling area. At least some of the foothills were saved.
Once you’ve lured people to a place, which the city of Boise has done with its PR firms for the past 15 years, you can’t turn them away. So for me the question is: can’t you build better?…

All it takes is one noisy neighbor constantly ruining the peace and quiet in your own home. I’d live in a cardboard box before I’d return to a situation where I’d be vulnerable to that again….

As a California who currently lives in Montana, the sentiment is palpable. I no longer tell people where I am from and have experienced instances of discrimination from repairmen to hairstylists when calling from a California area code.

The biggest problem that causes the housing problem is good public transportation. If we had a system like anywhere else in the world then people would not be in a pickle with having to live close to work. No need to own so many cars. We can actually walk on the present almost non-existent sidewalks. There can be more family friendly neighborhood parks with BENCHES. I find it so strange that we cannot take our elderly parents to green areas here due to lack of seating.

California Exiles and the Housing Crisis

But there is another factor at play: Californians, fleeing high home prices, are moving to Idaho in droves. For the past several years, Idaho has been one of the fastest-growing states, with the largest share of new residents coming from California. This fact can be illustrated with census data, moving vans — or resentment.

Home prices rose 20 percent in 2020, according to Zillow, and in Boise, “Go Back to California” graffiti has been sprayed along the highways. The last election cycle was a referendum on growth and housing, and included a fringe mayoral candidate who campaigned on a promise to keep Californians out. The dichotomy between growth and its discontents has fused the city’s politics and collective consciousness with a question that city leaders around the country were asking even before the pandemic and remote work trends accelerated relocation: Is it possible to import California’s growth without also importing its housing problems?

“I can’t point to a city that has done it right,” said Lauren McLean, Boise’s Democratic mayor.

That’s because as bad as California’s affordable housing problem is, it isn’t really a California problem. It is a national one. From rising homelessness to anti-development sentiment to frustration among middle-class workers who’ve been locked out of the housing market, the same set of housing issues has bubbled up in cities across the country. They’ve already visited Boise, Nashville, Denver and Austin, Texas, and many other high-growth cities. And they will become even more widespread as remote workers move around.

NYTIMES