Tag: Trees

World is changing too fast nowadays. Events that used to be the news of the month are supplanted by greater events or outrages daily. But a story from Zerohedge alerted me to a local event reported by New York Post, namely a crime in Oakland.

Somebody had stolen the SUV of the mayor of Oakland, former Congress Representative Barbara Lee. The vehicle was recovered hours later from Vallejo, which is a smallish city in Solano County, in North Bay. The mayor said in her statement that “no one in Oakland should have to worry about their car being stolen”, a sentiment which I rather agree, but still the people worry and for good reason. While my car is dented and has a stick shift, there are places in Oakland where I would not park because of bippers.

The presence of bippers is easy to detect by checking the sidewalks and gutters next to parking spots – if they are covered with glass grains from broken side windows, it means a bipper was there since the last street sweeping (which in Oakland happens often enough that the city does not stink like San Francisco used to.) If there are multiple spots with glass gravel indicating multiple cars having been hit, I’d find another street or block to park if possible.

But back to Oakland mayor’s SUV, which was recovered, improving the property crime solving numbers. It is easy for a regular citizen to complain about preferential treatment, but apparently this SUV had a tracer which made it easier to track.

What really piqued my interest was the backstory and the circumstances of the theft. The car thief had spent the Presidents Day weekend squatting in the 11th floor of the City Hall, unnoticed by the security firm hired to guard the city government buildings, and had jimmied the lock of the door to mayor’s office, swiping the keys from there. The security firm has connection with the previous mayor Sheng Thao, to whom the aforementioned SUV had been bought. The SUV had been broken into already during her term in a garage near city hall, and other city hall workers have also complained about the lack of safety for their vehicles. But a suspect in at least this car theft has been arrested, this incident being too much for even California.

And to make this post a bit prettier, I added a GIF of magnolia flowers and a bird, and a video of a couple of clips I took on February 21st of clouds and tree branches in wind, but unlike in most of my videos, I kept the sound because it was mostly birdsong.

The tree writhes strangely, the video stabilization after imaging sometimes causes weird effects.

And here is the birdsong. The clouds are also twisting strangely, but this does not indicate a dimensional portal about to open, just another stabilization artefact.