I will never get over how much media attention this gets.

Because its all one thing. The promise of AI is that you can basically throw anything at it, and you don’t need to understand exactly how/why it makes the connections it does; you just adjust the weights until it kinda looks alright.

There are many structural hacks used to give it better results (and in this case some form of reasoning) but ultimately they’re mostly relying on connecting multiple nets together and retrying queries and such. There’s no human understandable settings. Neural networks are basically one input and one output (unless you’re training it).

I know it’s almost an oxymoron, but homeless is closely tied to housing prices.

If you lost your job how long would you be able to keep living where you are? Maybe a long time, but for maybe 10% of the population it’s a much shorter frame. Add on some other twists of fate (or bad planning): a medical emergency; an abusive spouse; an unplanned pregnancy; a substance abuse problem; and you have a concoction that could land you on the streets in a few months if not weeks.

The “free drug paraphernalia” (e.g. services to help save addicts lives) has followed the wave of addicts, not the other way around. People were dying long before they showed up.

Affordable housing, shelters, and housing first programs are the real keys to solving this. But there’s a lot of people who would rather eat their right arm than see a drug addict (or other undesirable) get government assistance.

This is about human rights vs. city spending

When someone posts about how unpleasant it is to see other humans sleeping/eating/pooping and concludes from that cities should be able to stop them (or throw them in jail) to make themselves feel better; the implication is that these people have alternatives and are just being rude or lazy.

I’m pointing out that many of these people are stuck and have no alternative. By appealing this case to the supreme court, Grants Pass (an city) was admitting that these people had no alternative and they still wanted to punish them.

The one basic rule that was upheld by the ninth circuit was that cities must first give them an alternative. If they have no alternatives, then it is cruel and unusual punishment. I don’t know how anyone can argue that it is not cruel to throw someone in jail for sleeping in their car (one of the plaintiffs was sleeping in her car) when they have no where else to go. People need to sleep: it is not a choice.

Additionally, large homeless encampments in other parts of the country has two main drivers:

1. In many cities, the majority of the homeless population is sheltered (there’s enough shelter beds). e.g. NYC
2. In other parts of the country (e.g. not any of the cities you mentioned) housing is more affordable, often because the population centers aren’t as large (see Wyoming)

Fuck. This. Conclusion.

Cities in the US have always been able to police sleeping in public spaces GIVEN there was an alternative (e.g. a non-full shelter) where people could go to instead. What changed with the new US supreme court ruling is that they are now allowed to do this regardless of weather or not there is any alternatives.

People need to sleep. It is a biological necessity. Homelessness is often not a choice, but can be temporary if the right resources are available.

How narcissistic do you have to be to think that the person you witnessed wanted to be there? Homelessness is out of control on the west-coast of the US (and elsewhere) but fines and jail time aren’t going to make these people magically stop existing.

Side note: Multiple studies have shown that homelessness is directly correlated to housing affordability. If you want to help fight homelessness, support building more affordable housing (which usually equates to denser housing).

Maybe the time was before the Israeli Government assassinated the person they were negotiating with?