The Offline Report

Former San Francisco sports columnist Joan Ryan has a new book out, the result of over 100 interviews, on team chemistry. "Intangibles: Unlocking the Science and Soul of Team Chemistry" to be released next week. Here's a teaser, describing the transformation of Aubrey Huff: When the Giants signed Aubrey Huff as a free agent before the 2010 season, they were gambling on a player who had a dubious reputation within the game. It seemed surprising that general manager Brian Sabean and manager Bruce Bochy, each attuned to harmony in the clubhouse, would welcome such an edgy character. Huff had serious doubts of his own, wondering if he had any chance of being accepted, and by the 2011 season, he had begun to wear out his welcome. More recently, Huff found himself uninvited to a planned reunion of the 2010 team because of his incendiary Twitter comments on politics and gender. But for a few months in what became a World Series championship season, Huff’s persona underwent a p...

Today's paper had the first COVID-19 poem that made me laugh. I'm reprinting it in full here because SF Chronicle's web layout ruins the poem's rhythm and I want people to see the magic and serendipity of a physical newspaper. Subscribe! (E-reading is the pitts! You'd have never noticed this online.) Enjoy: We're All the Lone Ranger by Ishmael Reed Maybe it’s a good idea to keep homo sapiens/Indoors/less opportunity to get into mischief How about two months every year/The Yang administration would pick up the tab The oceans and the forests could take a deep breath Men would pay as much attention to their/Loved ones, as they do to guns Every house would have a treadmill/Rowing machine and bike/Stomachs would be flattened The streets of Oakland would be as clean as/The streets of Vienna Bears would inhabit the meadows of Yosemite/Instead of tourists Species terrorized by humans/Could relax Families would eat at the dinner table/Instead of in the park...

I refuse to become a bird watcher. But there's no denying the apocalypse is really pretty. This work by AJ Fish is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License .

A story deep inside the front section caught my eye late last night, titled " South Bay cases tied to China strain? " The COVID-19 virus mutates more slowly than other viruses, but does mutate about three times per month. As it travels from human to human it has opportunity to mutate again. The strain that traveled through Washington state early this year intersected enough people that its multiple mutation result bears its own fingerprint. Let's call this strain "COVID-19W" for the Washington state superstrain. This year's early COVID-19 victims in Santa Clara, California, however, did not bear those mutations, and therefore their infections were imported straight from the Wuhan, China superstrain, which I'll call "COVID-19WC" for this blog post. While COVID-19 is far too widespread to contain now, the substrains of those and other superstrains can be identified or "traced" and contained . Containment is possible. In fact, Dr. Charl...

A surprising number of people who think of themselves as environmentally concerned say electric cars are no better for mitigating pollution or climate change than regular cars. Former tech reporter Walt Mossberg asked about this on twitter . Comedian Jenn Kirkman said on her podcast last month she was buying a new car that was not electric. I caught a random conversation from people saying the particulate matter emitted from EV brakes was just as polluting as everything emitted from a regular car. This view has become so pervasive that academics are playing defense, and just last month published a study " Electric cars produce less CO2 than petrol vehicles, study confirms ." Los Angeles with exhaust. -> To many, it's a forgone conclusion that electric cars emit less CO2 into the atmosphere while in use. But someone muddied the waters along the way and left many with the notion that EVs score even with gas-powered vehicles when measuring how much CO2 they emit. Who ...

Saturday April 25, 2020 Antibody Tests/Plasma Donors:   UCSF and San Francisco General Hospital are "looking for adults who have recovered from known or suspected COVID-19 infection and who are willing to be plasma donors in the San Francisco Bay area. You will be asked to answer questions about your health history. Then you will be asked to come in to ZSFG for tests to confirm that you are recovered from COVID-19 and that your blood contains antibodies against the virus" before donating plasma.   hividgm.ucsf.com Thursday April 23, 2020 Treatments:   Today's paper listed two drug treatments now in clinical trials for treating people infected with COVID-19, "colchicine" and "leronlimab" . Diagnostic Tests:    Governor Newsom set a goal for the state to administer 60,000 - 80,000 diagnostic tests per day up from 16,000 tests per day the state is currently administering. The goal must be reached in order to "reopen the state" the arti...

I talked on the phone with a friend he other day. She did everything she could to get me to Zoom with her. I said let's step away from the screens and do a voice meeting. Friend ended the call saying next time, let's Zoom. I associate Zoom with work. I found a thread on twitter that weighs the pros and cons of Zoom videoconferencing compared to face-to-face meetings: It’s easier being in each other’s presence, or in each other’s absence, than in the constant presence of each other’s absence. — Gianpiero Petriglieri (@gpetriglieri) April 3, 2020 I am finding Zoom easier if I don’t make eye contact. Then I can mimick a distant presence, which feels more real. If I want intimacy, and we’re apart, I’ll phone. And If I want to say thinking of you, I’ll write. — Gianpiero Petriglieri (@gpetriglieri) April 4, 2020 ------------------------------ Further Reading: Nation Close to Getting Videoconferencing Software to Work:     theonion.com This work ...

I wear my mask into grocery stores and Walgreen's drug stores. When I'm outside and away from people, I remove the mask to breathe in the fresh air. Wearing a mask is an act of public health. It's saying "I don't want to be Typhoid Mary." No mask vs. mask. Pretty much everyone in Japan is wearing these. pic.twitter.com/tD1Y9M4JGc — Reinhard Kargl (@TweetReinhard) April 4, 2020 Here is a much faster video showing how to make a no-sew facemask: How to make a mask at home using a bandanna and hair bands pic.twitter.com/3ESSF2R8TY — King “Kuarantine” Kortney😷 (@fakerapper) April 3, 2020 This work by AJ Fish is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License .

This is an abstract for the academic paper titled " Access to Algorithms ": Federal, state, and local governments increasingly depend on automated systems — often procured from the private sector — to make key decisions about civil rights and civil liberties. When individuals affected by these decisions seek access to information about the algorithmic methodologies that produced them, governments frequently assert that this information is proprietary and cannot be disclosed. Recognizing that opaque algorithmic governance poses a threat to civil rights and liberties, scholars have called for a renewed focus on transparency and accountability for automated decision making. But scholars have neglected a critical avenue for promoting public accountability and transparency for automated decision making: the law of access to government records and proceedings. This Article fills this gap in the literature, recognizing that the Freedom of Information Act, its state equivalents, ...