Chef Driven

Remember those days? When local politicos were touting village "revitalization" involving local, chef driven, white linen restaurants? Yes. Those days are gone. Now, with the change of ownership of the Shops, the loud chirpers are coming out damp-dreaming about some kind of mega "mixed use" re-development. 'Cuz, why not? 

Glad you asked.

Juxtapose this with the recent pull-back on drones--the latest toys for the boys. The big showstopper seems to be funding, but calling that out resulted in a closer analysis of, justification for, these drones, where it was revealed these have limited range and are basically useless outside the Perimeter area. Something about a radar unit on a Ravinia tower. To be fair, Perimeter is the source of a large portion of city revenue, and as has been pointed out by our elected officials, is also a crime hotspot. The reasons, or ponderings, range from lots of retail attracting thievery, to "this is what happens when you pack folks in real tight." 

So the chirpers have a fix (double entendre intended): let's bring high density, retail and housing, to daVille. They're dreaming of shops and restaurants, and of course the housing required to obtain footfalls to make any of this viable. Only it kinda isn't.

Sunday's AJC had a relevant article regarding the devolution of West Midtown from a funky, innovative center with top notch, locally owned, award winning restaurants, to, well, not. Seems all these cool, local and relatively small enterprises cannot survive the "revitalization" of these mega, mixed use (nee live-work-play) developments. This happens because developers create enormous spaces, because it is less effort to lease out a large footprint restaurant space than, say, three smaller ones. That level of rent, and high upfront costs to equip a space to be a usable restaurant prices the award-winning, local, but small entrepreneurs out of the market. You end up with deep-pocket, national chains selling overpriced commodity food and experiences. Think: mid-level airport eateries, like you'd find at JFK. That's exactly what the chirpers are clamoring for in daVille. 

The damage is already done at Perimeter. Sharing it with other parts of Dunwoody will not fix anything. 

The Dunwoody Velodrome

If you spend time walkin' daVille, as some do, you probably noticed the survey crews marking some territory. 

Not Utilities

Hieroglyphs

All Marked Up

Tagged The Trees Too

TOD reached out to the city for comment but they were incommunicado, unlike the Shining PATH Foundation whose spokesperson, Seymore Siemenz, was quite the chatty Kathy. 

TOD: Hi Seymore, first thanks for speaking with us. Do you know what is going on in the Village...the Funwoody part?

Seymore: My pleasure. Yes, we're preparing, with enthusiastic support from the city, to install trails around Funwoody. If you've seen the wonderful trails recently completed at Perimeter Mall, then you know what we're bringing to the village. 

TOD: So, to be clear, this is adding, not taking away, so the current sidewalks will remain?

Seymore: Absolutely right! We're going to have an additional twelve foot trail alongside the existing sidewalks with a bit of grass setting them apart. You're going to love it. 

TOD: I can't tell you how wonderful I think this will be. So the trees...the ones that are tagged...are going?

Seymore: Well, the great thing about trees is that they are inherently a renewable resource, but yes, tree removal is an essential part of the installation. We're confident supporters will be quite pleased with the results. 

TOD: And these supporters, who are they?

Seymore: Some of the most ardent supporters are the bicycle crowd, you know, the Lancelot wannabes, Now they may not be the largest group, but they currently own the political megaphone down at city hall, so they have been key to the effort. You know, the smallest bird has the loudest chirp. And we're going to give them what they want. When we're done Funwoody is going to be the infield of a velodrome.

TOD: Does that mean "only left turns?"

Seymore: Not at all. We'll have a line down the middle for two-way traffic. In that regard we're politically neutral. 

TOD: Well, Seymore, you've been very helpful. Thanks for all you do.

Seymore: No worries. It's been a pleasure.

So there you have it. Bikewoody is coming to daVille.

What Lost?

A little context...

Looks Right

Just Put It Down

Not Right

Definitely Upside Down

Then we are treated to...

Smart City? NO!

Some have remarked these...whatever they are...are phallic. Others have noted this makes it look like you're entering a business park. They are either new here or simply haven't been paying attention. Dunwoody IS an office park, beholden to developers and businesses and very well isolated from residents and the ballot box. 

Here's something to ponder...

You know that some overpaid folks chose these signs and they were presented with other options. Yet THIS is what won. Don't you wonder what the losers looked like?

Original Sin?

Is this it? Is this the original sin?

Is the original sin really giving our data to unelected billionaires? Really? Here's a thought: maybe the original sin was giving our data to unelected bureaucrats. Maybe we should stop doing that. Maybe we should do something about them.

Preemptive Shame On You

In a Talk Back in the Blue Bag Rag, founding councilman Danny Ross offered up some historical insights on the genesis of the city, commitments made, offering a "shame on you" for what is certainly about to happen. He offers an insider's perspective and all that he says is true. If this were being written by Paul Harvey, we're now at the point where he would offer "the rest of the story." But it's not, and we're left with few facts and many questions.

Who wrote the original city charter? Out of the gate, it seemed heavily influenced by developers. But who actually decided that this city should have elected officials, that we vote into office, with no operational responsibilities whatsoever? Was this based on the [unofficial] plan for a Public-Private Partnership where almost every service was put out to competitive bids ensuring best service at the best price? How could anyone, especially anyone in politics, NOT know that you simply cannot build a government bureaucracy that will not expand without bound? And yet we got exactly that, an administrative bureaucracy that is metastatic, a parasite that will consume the host. 

We don't have the equivalent of the Federalist Papers so it is good that we have someone like Danny Ross, and that he is willing to speak up. But...wouldn't it be nice to hear from Dan and Fran, the originators of this...whatever it is...about how proud they are of their little experiment?

Telemedicine?

Here's a nugget reported by the AJC:

"A doctor for Veterans Affairs said her return to the office after working remotely for the past two years..."

You simply must wonder what this doctor was doing that can be so easily done remote and yet really requires a medical degree. Telemedicine? Maybe.

Parking Issues Resolved

Remember RTO? The Chicken Littles were clucking about too few parking spaces at the CDC and an intolerable increase in traffic in the area. Well, that's been fixed. Seems that quite a few of the road warriors will NOT be returning to the office. Not now. Not ever. They may be out on the streets, but not in their cars. You have to wonder if sitting in traffic on the way to work was really all that bad.

Merry Go Round

DeJoy is gone, so what's the problem now? Well, it could be the mail delivery merry go round.

What? Where? When?

What"s going on here? Why does mail swirl around, maybe down the drain? Are the loops getting faster and tighter, or are they spinning out of control? Every day is a new surprise.

Political Pontificates

A trifecta of DeKalb's political pontificates held a town hall to diss and discuss shenanigans under the gold dome. Not to worry, these were Democrats one and all so the party wasn't crashed by professional rabble rousers. Unhindered, they got to lay out Their Truths. One priceless nugget regarded bills to restrict or ban machine issued traffic tickets, all managed by a for-profit private corporation. Here's the kicker: they actually support the privatization of government responsibility. That's right, and they're Democrats, who've obviously never heard of a writ of mandamus. But we get this nugget:

“Here we are pontificating about protecting our children, then we turn around and ban local communities from protecting their children by not being able to give tickets to people who speed in school communities,” Draper said. [emphasis added]

Here's the deal, outside of political echo chambers it makes no sense for private citizens, and private companies, to be issuing fines for violating laws because that is the job of our government, a government ideally beholding to our elected officials. Like them. What they ignore, perhaps willingly, is that if these local communities want to protect children, they are free, almost required, to do so, after all that IS what the police force is for. In fact these new little cities that sprang up had to provide a minimum number of services, and most chose to put police at the top of the list. And yet...here we are, Democrats wanting to privatize government.

We don't need a corporate police force when we're paying for a real one. We may need a writ of mandamus. And a recall vote.

Data Poisoning

Data poisoning started life as a Bad Thing but has been re-purposed for something that is arguably good: intellectual property protection. Zhao's work was originally applied to graphics, visual content but the technique can be used to protect written works, it just isn't clear exactly how that is done. Major news organizations are pushing cases through the court systems claiming copyright violation in data sets used to train large language models. Perhaps one approach is to use homophones, and it appears this is what the AJC has recently adopted. Think "effect" vs "affect" or perhaps even further afield. Meaning be damned. 

Isn't that "side"?

Maybe they really meant "sight" but that doesn't make much sense, which is kinda the point if you're trying to trick an LLM.

Ions? Really?

Yes, "ion" is a word, just not the right word in this instance. But again, maybe the objective is to confuse a machine rather than communicate clearly with a human. 

There are alternative explanations. Maybe the goal is to aid in detecting plagiarism, like a watermark that shines through the LLM training. Perhaps these texts were generated by an already poorly trained LLM. Or, and this is very possible, journalists may have deteriorated badly.