LAHosken 🇺🇸👀

A couple of things seen on my morning walk in #SanFrancisco:

Apollo's Dog Library, 6th Avenue between Fulton and Cabrillo.

Sidewalk chalk art near Hippie Hill: lemniscankh. uh, infinite life symbol or something

#SanFrancisco vandals are out of control.

#SFHellscape

The Outside Lands concert in #SanFrancisco was a while ago, but the city has yet to paint over the signage-mural things, so I got to enjoy these https://www.indeliblefunk.com/ signage-murals.

Some new-to-me sidewalk chalk art by Kal Zakzouk at 20th and Irving.

If it got you thinking "What's up with that triple yin-yang in amongst the eight trigrams?" Wikipedia had some related ideas: Tricolored Taeguk https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taegeuk#Tricolored_taegeuk , Tibetan Gankyil https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gankyil . (or could be artist noodling around with designs, who knows (Making fun of wanna-be billionaires in search of "three commas"?))

#SanFrancisco

sharp jolt-y quake #SanFrancisco

Spotted some art on tree stumps around #SanFrancisco walking between SFPursuit sites this weekend.

The little blue house on the tall tree stump near the 19th Ave entrance to Golden Gate Park has a "For Sale" sign out plus American Gothic squirrels.

A Hello Kitty pussyhat on a not-so-tall tree stump near Arguello and Euclid.

Rejoice, for I have updated the scored phrase and word lists at https://lahosken.san-francisco.ca.us/frivolity/prog/phraser/, a.k.a. the Phraser project. I fed in recent data from Wikipedia, IMDB, the puzzles wiki, the Spread the Word crossword list, etc so it now knows of recent phenomena, e.g. that `the odyssey` is a thing. Oh, I guess it already knew about that one? But you get the idea; it has newer, fresher data.

It also has some old data that I couldn't get my hands on for a long time: the administrators of the Grand Theft Auto game fandom wiki exported data after several years of not doing that. Thus this version of the phrase list knows about character `franklin clinton`. I guess he's kind of a big deal in the game's story? I dunno, I don't play those games, and thus I rely on this phrase list if I want to fill in the blanks for f _ _ _ _ _ _ _ c _ _ _ _ _ _ (football coaches, Filipino cuisine, flathead catfish, Fanshawe College, Franklin Clinton).

New-to-me sidewalk art in #SanFrancisco 's Upper Haight, Page Street near Lyon.

A piece by Eclair Bandersnatch. In my pic, it looks like her hair eroded, but that's just my camera failing to depict glitter. Her hair had a lot of glitter.

An assemblage of toys.

Some things I saw on my exercise walk in #SanFrancisco this morning:

Another Outside Lands leftover mural by Indelible Funk, this one advocating Music for the People.

When your home looks boring so you try to spice it up with a couple of Dr Seuss-esque helical topiary tree thingies, but fail to consult his works for a more lively color scheme.

Someone tore down flyers and painted over the remaining tape on a utility pole, but a San Francisco Crosstown Trails enthusiast already put a fresh pair of wayfinding stickers up.

My breakfast, because the Mastodon social network still encourages me to post four pictures at a time.

(Not seen: new Kal Zakzouk art. The chalk art at 20th/Irving has been the same design for nearly a month. I hope there's a benign reason for that.)

A fan of the #SanFrancisco Crosstown Trail posted his tribute "Straight Up," a walking route straight up the middle from the south side of SF up to the Golden Gate. Monday, I walked it… https://lahosken.san-francisco.ca.us/new/2026/07/28/straight-up-route/

Today's https://www.minutecryptic.com/ by Ben Stuart, pretty darned amazing: "FIFA World Cup semifinals? Good excuse to miss work! (3)" #puzzle

@lzg@mastodon.social prepped for it by having my internet go out for a few hours this morning, blocking my usual view of the earth

About a month ago, I pointed out an "equine vine" wire-frame garden ornament thingy in Golden Gate Park. I dunno if it's worth seeking out, but if you do want to seek it out, then my location description "Kezar Stadium" wasn't so helpful—Kezar is a stadium-sized stadium, and is 99.9+% not this wire-frame garden ornament thingy. So I took some photos of Kezar Stadium and then scribbled annotations on them to help folks find this thing.

https://lahosken.san-francisco.ca.us/new/2026/08/06/find-equine-vine/

RE: @verge@mastodon.social

"In another big change, veteran Googler Jeff Dean — the chief scientist of Google DeepMind and Google’s 30th employee — is leaving with Google Fellow Sanjay Ghemawat to form an AI-focused public benefit corporation called Discovery Loop."

Donated blood this morning. They asked me some new questions, interested in my recent contact with anyone with Ebola. 😬 Let's be careful out there, everybody.

This "Gold Rush" #SFPursuit reminds me of https://www.munzee.com/ , a.k.a. "What if geocaching, but we can use QR codes?"

@lzg@mastodon.social Messier-Ashpool

Space filling curve, 8th+Irving St San Francisco

How to finish an #SFPursuit challenge in minutes^W years:

Attend elementary school a half block away. Get to know the neighborhood.

Write (the first draft of) The 2-Tone Game https://lahosken.san-francisco.ca.us/frivolity/2tone/ , one of whose puzzles covered the relevant territory.

If you're failing to discern something through glare-y glass: give up, stand back, and consider what nearby establishments the Hours & Access notes might describe. Enter the first one you thought of. It's correct. Now you can figure out what you failed to see through glare-y glass.

#SFPursuit

#USPol

"The AI czars have been Sacks, Burns, and Fall? are they doing a bit?" –Prestemon

https://blacksky.community/profile/did:plc:zsiieea4nujz6h7kh3vx5pqf/post/3mr7537u4wk2f

Some mighty nice sidewalk chalk art at Presidio Wall Park today, celebrating Phillip's birthday. I dunno know who did it; it's unsigned. Maybe, like, Phillip's grandma or something? #SanFrancisco

A year and a half after a truck hit a pedestrian at Parnassus and Stanyan, we finally got some speed humps on Parnassus Ave. They're very, uh, gradual? I suppose the city wanted to say they'd done something but didn't want to actually slow down traffic. Angry drivers might complain, and we mustn't have that. Hashtag Vision Zero, etc

#SanFrancisco

Some new-to-me pretty-subtle #SanFrancisco #StreetArt this morning. Can I say it's "new to me" if I'm not sure I haven't walked right under it many times without noticing? I was walking down the Willard Street hill south of Parnassus Ave and thought "Eh, why isn't that crow moving?" And then I thought "Hey wait, why is a twig growing out of a utility pole?"

Compare and contrast: Two actual neighborhood ravens.

#corvid

I continue to check my little dashboard of #SanFrancisco COVID numbers each morning to decide whether to go inside the local good-but-not-amazing sandwich shop. If you've been following me for a while, you might remember that I track three stats. I blog about it when some stat crosses from a pretty-safe value to a not-so-safe value or vice-versa; but first I wait a week after the stat crosses the pretty-safe-line to see if it stays on that side of the line. These stats are pretty noisy, and I don't want to blog "Everybody panic!" on Monday and then "Everybody stop panicking!" on Wednesday. Usually, things settle down within a week or two and then I do/don't blog about it as appropriate. But lately, stuff has been happening and not settling down. Below is a graph of how things have been going in SF for the last two months. A couple of stats have been bouncing up and down across the pretty-safe line for the past ~three weeks.

Yeah, it's weird that the COVID-in-wastewater stat was going down at the same time that the other stats were going up. It's not necessarily super-weird; if there's a surge, you don't necessarily see it in all the stats at the same time. But it's weird that SF's wastewater number was going down at the same time that California's overall wastewater number was going up; also at the same time that the overall San Francisco Bay Area's wastewater number was going up. Over the past few weeks, the California Department of Public Health, for all regions they track, has raised their level from "Very Low" to "Low". https://skylab.cdph.ca.gov/calwws/ ("Low" doesn't sound so bad until you remember that the Department is thinking in terms of "Have things gotten bad enough yet such that hospitals in the region are filling up and we should send patients to other regions?")

Anyhow, what have I been doing lately, indoor-sandwich-wise? As I did half a year ago https://lahosken.san-francisco.ca.us/new/2026/02/06/continue-to-check-my-little-dashboard-SF/ , I'm still going inside places. But if these stats ever make up their mind on "up" vs "down" and choose "up," then I might restrict myself to getting sandwiches at Luke's Local, who will hand them to me through the window.

Outside Lands is still two weeks away, but the temporary cell towers are already up and their diesel generators are in full roar. Meanwhile, at 20th and Irving, there's a new-to-me Kal Zakzouk sidewalk chalk piece:

@lzg@mastodon.social i heard "yuck" was in the name, so i keep my distance

new from Sam Lavigne: "A form which calculates an individual’s 'income tax body count', or the total number of conflict-related deaths they have caused through their income tax contributions to the U.S. government."

https://income-tax-body-count.lav.io/

MRW Hallowe'en decorations are already up at the supermarket

@lcamtuf@infosec.exchange goodreads says "First published September 1, 1996"

huh. I got kinda-relevant advertising ‽on Tumblr‽ of all places. A "puzzle cafe" with those try-to-disassemble-this sliding iron shape thingies.

Trying to remember the last time I saw a relevant ad.

oh cool, the emergency room near me is in the news oh hoo boy wait hang on https://missionlocal.org/2026/05/ucsf-er-crisis-death-staffing-parnassus/