By Joanie Juster

Rumor has it that it’s summer, but at my house I’ve scarcely seen the sun in over a month. Fogust is here, and I hold my jacket and scarf more closely around me when I leave the house. Here’s hoping that it’s sunnier where you live. In the meantime, fog or no fog, there is a lot going on.

Monkeypox updates

As of August 4th, the city of San Francisco, the state of California, and the US government have all declared public health emergencies due to the rapid spread of the monkeypox virus. Information seems to change daily as more is learned about how the virus acts, how to protect yourself and others, and where to go for help. Town halls and Zoom seminars are proliferating to help get information to people who need it. I attended two on August 1: a Zoom meeting hosted by Manny’s with infectious disease expert Dr. Monica Gandhi and health reporter Liz Highleyman, who was calling in from the International AIDS Conference in Montreal, and a hybrid live/Zoom town hall hosted by the San Francisco AIDS Foundation and the Harvey Milk LGBTQ Democratic Club’s HIV Caucus.

While the Zoom meeting focused primarily on the most up-to-date medical guidance, the town hall was more focused on listening to peoples’ concerns, and searching for solutions. Much of the concern was focused on the difficulty of getting tested, getting vaccinated, and getting treated. Others shared concerns about the health inequities experienced by those who cannot afford time off from work to stand in line for hours hoping for a vaccine, or quarantining for weeks if infected. One thing everyone agreed on: the government has moved much too slowly in addressing this public health crisis, and many affirmed that they were ready to stand up, make their voices heard, and demand change.

With the situation changing daily, it is up to each of us to stay informed in order to stay safe. The San Francisco AIDS Foundation has compiled useful information on their website. Please stay informed, stay safe, and help others who may need assistance.

Monkeypox Info & Updates

Transgender History Month and Riot Party

Last year, San Francisco officially proclaimed August as Transgender History Month, an annual event to honor and celebrate the significant contributions of trans advocacy and trans culture to our city, and to highlight the work that still remains toward achieving full equality.

Keep an eye out for other events commemorating Transgender History Month, but in the meantime, be sure to mark your calendar for Riot Party, a concert and fundraiser for the Transgender District on August 28 celebrating the 56th anniversary of the Compton’s Cafeteria Riots of 1966— the first large-scale act of resistance on the part of Trans and Queer individuals against police brutality in the United States. Riot Party will feature celebrated transgender, nonbinary, and queer performers, as well as other special guests.

For more info, and tickets to the Riot Party: https://www.riotpartysf.com/

New Services for Black Women at SF AIDS Foundation

Did you know that people over 50 represent the majority of individuals in the US living with HIV? The CDC estimates that people living with HIV who are 50 and older will make up 70% of those living with HIV in the US by 2030. And yet, in most communities, appropriate health care and social services for elders with HIV have not kept up with the need.

The San Francisco AIDS Foundation has added a new program to its array of services for people with HIV over 50. Called HUES (Healing & Uniting Every Sista), the program is designed specifically to address the needs of older Black women with HIV. HUES program coordinator Ebony Gordon came to San Francisco after years of experience in the South, first doing HIV prevention and education work, then doing graduate work toward a counseling degree, and exploring trauma work with people living with HIV of all ages and backgrounds. Her work made her confront the disparities that exist at the intersections of race, poverty, and health.

The program is being designed to give older Black women a safe space where they will feel less isolated, and more supported. It is a welcome addition, and complement to, other services available in the city. To see Gordon’s presentation on HUES: https://tinyurl.com/SFAFHues

Pacific Center on the Move

Change is never easy, especially when it comes suddenly and unexpectedly. The venerable Pacific Center for Human Growth recently learned that it must move, after 50 years in the same location in Berkeley. The organization is known as the oldest LGBTQ+ mental health and community center in the Bay Area, and the third oldest in the country. The modest Edwardian house that has been their home on Telegraph Avenue for 50 years has been sold, but there is still no word on when they need to relocate.

The Pacific Center offers a wide array of direct services to the East Bay’s LGBTQ+ and queer, trans, Black, Indigenous, and people of color communities, including affordable therapy, peer-to-peer support groups, community outreach services, and facilitated workshops.

Planning documents show that the new owners plan to tear down the house to make way for a proposed 5-story, mixed-use building containing 35 apartments, including 11% for very low-income households. There is no timeline yet for the project; we’ll keep you apprised of updates.

To learn more about Pacific Center’s good work: https://www.pacificcenter.org/

SF Bishop Plays Politics

Last month, the Respect for Marriage Act passed the House of Representatives by a vote of 267-157 with 47 Republicans in support. It will soon be heading to the Senate, with a large majority of Americans now in favor of the right of same-sex couples to marry. But one prominent San Franciscan just couldn’t resist speaking out against it. The notoriously conservative and contentious Roman Catholic archbishop of San Francisco—Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone—wrote a letter on July 22 urging US senators to reject the bill. Posted on the website of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, and speaking as the chairman of the bishops’ conference Committee on Laity, Marriage, Family Life and Youth, he proclaimed: “Marriage as a lifelong, exclusive union of one man and one woman , and open to new life, is not just a religious ideal—it is, on the whole, what is best for society in a concrete sense, especially for children.”

He goes on to pontificate: “People who experience same-sex attraction should be treated with the same respect and compassion as anyone, on account of their human dignity, and never be subject to unjust discrimination … . It was never discrimination, however, to simply maintain that an inherent aspect of the definition of marriage itself is the complementarity between the two sexes.” uh huh

Funny: you’d think a man as highly educated as the archbishop would be familiar with the concept of the separation of church and state. He should also be familiar with the fact the leader of his own church, Pope Francis, has specifically forbidden weaponizing Holy Communion—a trick other US bishops tried to use against President Biden because of his pro-abortion policies.

Clearly, though, he has issues with that concept. In May, during the midst of the national uproar over the potential overturn of Roe v. Wade, he made the mistake of challenging House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, publicly refusing to allow the San Francisco Democrat (and devout Catholic) to receive the sacrament of Holy Communion, and urged other Catholic dioceses to follow his example. Without batting an eye, Pelosi went to Rome, where she received Holy Communion directly from Pope Francis. And next thing you know, Cordileone was overlooked for a promotion.

Don’t play politics with peoples’ lives, Archbishop. If you don’t believe that people of the same sex should be married, you have every right to refuse to perform those marriages in your own church. But your authority stops at your church’s doorstep. And by the way, if you’re going to play politics, maybe you ought to be paying taxes.

Meanwhile, in Wisconsin

In Green Bay, Wisconsin, Bishop David Ricken has taken anti-LGBTQ+ policies in Diocesan schools to a new level of cruelty, by banning trans students and staff from using their preferred pronouns, clothing, and bathrooms. The policy also rejects the use of the words “lesbian” and “gay,” compares being queer to sexual abuse, and falsely accuses the LGBTQ+ community of trying to turn people gay. wow

In an interview with local station WBAY, Kathy Flores, director of the Wisconsin advocacy group Diversity & Resilience, said, “My first thoughts were about the high suicide rates of the LGBTQIA+ youth and how we have seen study after study that suicide risk decreases and depression decreases when we use a student’s name and pronoun that they have asked us to use.”

There is a wonderful advocacy group that stays on top of this kind of news, and works hard to effect change. Faithful America is the largest online community of Christians putting faith into action for social justice. Every day they fight against Christian nationalism, white supremacy, homophobia, transphobia, and extreme right wing political agendas masquerading as “Christianity.” They are 100% member supported and are doing great work. To get their action alerts and help fight back: https://tinyurl.com/FaithAm

Leather Events – Volunteers Needed

Leather and kink enthusiasts braved the summer fog on July 31, and now the biggest events—LeatherWalk (9/18) and Folsom (9/25)—are on the horizon. In the meantime, the LEATHER & LGBTQ Cultural District’s popular monthly vendor, art and artisan fair, Second Saturdays, continues on August 13. You can make a full day of it by visiting the SOMA West Farmers’ Market at Eagle Plaza first (it is now open from 9 to 12:30), and then the Saturday Beer Bust at The Eagle afterwards (3–7 pm).

The District will also have a booth on August 21 at Sunday Streets SOMA. The event will stretch 1.5 miles along Folsom Street from 9th Street to Main. They are partnering with Folsom Street to host the block of Folsom between 8th and 9th. The event needs a lot of volunteers for setup, breakdown, crossing guards, and block monitors. To volunteer, click the following link, then click on Register. When asked if you are joining as a member of an organization, type LEATHER.

www.sundaystreetssf.com/volunteer

One Last Word

With all the focus on monkeypox, we cannot forget that COVID-19 is still firmly planted in our community. Please take appropriate precautions, folks. stay safe

Joanie Juster is a long-time community volunteer, activist, and ally.

Published on August 11, 2022

The post The Fog of … Fogust – San Francisco Bay Instances appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

Fog City News in the Financial District is closing after 22 years in business.

Kevin Y./Yelp

Fog City News, an acclaimed retailer of magazines, chocolates and other merchandise in the Financial District, will close permanently on New Year’s Eve after 22 years in business, its owner announced.

Where most kiosks have a few dozen magazines, Fog City News at 445 Market St. offers its customers more than 1,200 titles. It has issued more than 1,000 greeting cards — at least 100 of which contain a swear word, I’m told. Zero of its products is available online, reminiscent of the good old days when, dare we say it, you had to set foot in a brick-and-mortar store to buy reading material.

“I named my company Fog City News as a tribute to San Francisco,” said founder and owner Adam Smith in a statement sent to SFGATE. “And I felt it my duty to present this city to visitors in the best possible way by offering a welcoming, elegantly old-fashioned atmosphere, attentive service and the very best products I could find.”

Fog City News in the Financial District is closing after 22 years in business.

Catherine W./Yelp

The store has repeatedly won awards for Best Newsstand and Best Chocolate Shop in the more than two decades of its existence. As the latter designation suggests, Fog City News was not only a go-to place for maps and magazines, but also for fine cocoa products. According to the press release, the store evaluated more than 5,000 candy bars at the time.

Smith said he is not closing the store because of the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic, nor because of health or landlord issues (the reasons so many small businesses have had to close in recent years). He’s just ready for the next rodeo.

“I ended up achieving everything I set out to do with Fog City News (and some things I didn’t know I set out to do!). And now I’m ready for a new chapter,” Smith said. “I feel lucky to be riding into the sunset on my own terms.”

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Waymo car in the light fog and rain of San Francisco

Waymo

Robocars use 3 primary sensors – cameras, LIDAR and radar. That started with an existing automotive radar that isn’t discussed much because it’s pretty simple. While Tesla has stated to TSLA that they take pride in taking out their radars (but probably flaring a bit) pretty much everyone relies on it because it’s way cheaper than LIDAR and sees the world in a completely different and superhuman way.

Waymo recently reported about the new radar in his vehicle 5. Today they released a few more details. Several startups have also developed an imaging radar and internal work has continued with other Robocar teams. There were even rumors that Tesla was using ARBE’s radars before they did a U-turn.

Conventional automotive radar has very low resolution. Horizontally, it can be happy if it can see which lane a radar target is taking. Vertically, it is often indistinguishable between a car on the road in front of you and a bridge over the road. It’s a world with very fuzzy blobs, but one that has several worthwhile advantages:

1. You can get a good range measurement (like LIDAR) for any destination, though there can be confusion due to multipath returns bouncing off other things in the world.
2. You also get the speed of each target, which is hugely valuable and otherwise only given by new Doppler LIDARs.
3. When working in radio waves, things like dust and fog are transparent to them, while they greatly reduce the range of the light-based sensors.
4. You can work very long distances.
5. While the multipath returns (bouncing off) can be a curse, they’re also a blessing, as you can spot targets that are blocked from your view, such as between you.

Image from Waymo radar image on a foggy day

Waymo

There are things that shouldn’t be loved – the poor resolution, low reflectivity from pedestrians, noise and multipath returns, and costs that are higher than cameras. In fact, the resolution is so poor that radar is mainly used to detect moving targets. Because radar tells you how fast a target is moving towards or away from you, those targets stand out from anything stationary in the world. You get reflections from stationary objects (like a stopped car in front of you), but it’s hard to reliably distinguish them from all the other stationary objects – like the road, fences, signs, and more. Previous radar users simply had to ignore any returns of solid objects, which is why radar-equipped Teslas were seen plowing into the side of trucks crossing the street and emergency vehicles in the left lane.

One answer is to greatly increase the resolution, which the imaging radar does. While classic radars can reach a resolution of 5 degrees (and worse vertically), imaging radar tries to reach 1 degree, and some claim even less at 0.5 degrees. However, the resolution is not quite like light. Even if an imaging radar can tell you where a target is within 1 degree, that doesn’t mean knowing that two targets are one degree apart is really good at knowing that two targets are one degree apart.

The result, however, is that the radar creates something like the “point cloud” of a lidar. People like to call this 4D radar, because for each point you learn X and Y but also distance and speed. More specifically, it’s 5D because if you look at how things change over time, you can learn even more about it.

Waymo isn’t going to say much about their new radar other than reviewing all of the commercial offerings and finding that they can’t keep up with what they can do in-house. Many companies, including ARBE, Aptiv APTV, Bosch, Conti, Infineon, Magna, Metawave, Lunewave, ZF, Vayyar, Oculli, SRS and many others develop or even sell imaging radars. Google Googles and its cousin Waymo may have their origins as a software company, but they make hardware when the world doesn’t sell it to them, which is why there is also a custom LIDAR on Waymo cars, but the vehicles are derived from modified standard OEM cars . Waymo has been researching its sensors for longer than anyone else in the field.

Waymo also has a very good LIDAR with a very long range and high resolution. Your cameras and AI can also see things from a great distance. Some companies have lidars that report the speed of targets just like radar does. Is radar a must?

Waymo’s philosophy is to preserve all available data to improve safety and functionality. The cost is not the same problem with a robotic taxi, so invest all the money and effort initially to get to safety faster. The more you know about the world, the better. Waymo would have wanted this additional data in Arizona, but it was especially worthwhile in their new San Francisco operating area, famous for its fog. In SF, it’s easy to get caught in fog and blur your view. You can handle that better with image radar. No man’s radar is good enough to drive in pea soup with no vision or LIDAR – although some hope it might one day be possible – but it can make it possible to drive in worse weather. Radar works fine in snow but can be disturbed by very heavy rain, although sometimes not as much as visibility.

This is important for a robotic taxi. You don’t want a robotaxi service that shuts down when the weather changes unless it’s something massive that blocks most of the roads. Private robocars are given a pass here – they can announce that self-driving is disabled, but owners can still drive them if they have a bike.

Waymo says the accuracy of their image radar will help them better distinguish targets on the road. Radar targets vary widely in intensity – things like flat metal signs, license plates, and more are very bright, while animals and people can be very dark. This means that the signal from a bright reflector can drown out the reflection (up to 60 dB dimmer) from someone nearby, unless you can resolve it to a fine angle.

In this massive fog accumulation in 2002, 5 people died in Georgia

Getty Images

Many will date the beginning of the Robocar era to the DARPA challenges, especially the November 2007 Urban Challenge. On the day of that challenge, not too far away, there was a pile-up on CA Highway 99 with 108 cars, 2 and hurt many more. It was caused by thick fog and human drivers zooming into it at high speed. A car equipped with image radar would not have done this as it would be able to see through the fog as if it weren’t there.

Tesla took out their radars. While most suspect that the reason is related to the lack of chips, since they kept radars in their S and X models, they now state that radar only makes self-driving difficult. The argument is that if you have multiple sensors you need to fuse them together. You need to understand that the target you see on the radar and the target you see on the camera are the same. If you make one mistake doing this, it can lead to other mistakes. If two sensors don’t match, which one do you trust? It’s not always easy. It could mean your system is more complex than it needs to be – argues Tesla. Almost everyone else disagrees.

However, this isn’t the first time people have dropped radar. Early ADAS were all done with radar, but these units were expensive and ignored things like blocked cars. They also often made mistakes in tracking a car. MobilEye came forward with its camera-based system. It was cheaper than radar (although it would incorporate radar if you had it) and didn’t make the same mistakes as radar. (It made its own mistakes, however, that radar wouldn’t make.) Because it was cheaper, many OEMs switched to it to provide features like forward collision warning and adaptive cruise control. ACC was now working with cars stopped in traffic, which is what many customers wanted.

Even so, MobilEye uses Radar and LIDAR in its Robocar plans, but continues to offer single-camera driver assistance. Driver assistance doesn’t have to be perfect – it’s just there to help the driver, not to take over. When Tesla used MobilEye’s product in an early autopilot beyond spec and a Tesla crashed into the broadside of a truck and killed the driver, MobilEye severed its relationship with Tesla at a great cost to itself (however, they were fine and sold it for $ 16 billion to Intel INTC.) Tesla was already working on its own system and deployed it in a hurry, losing some functionality. When Tesla pulled out the radar, they also reduced functionality.

Many companies are also using AI techniques to understand data from radars. This includes both removing the noise that radar returns are full of and identifying targets from their profiles as they change over time. For example, if you look at a radar output as a human, it turns out that cyclists are very obvious from their radar signatures because their legs and pedals are constantly spinning back and forth – this is very evident on a radar over time, and AI tools can seek that out and identify the target. AI techniques help identify things that are difficult for humans to see, such as motorcycles leaving the trail and other specific targets on the road.

Radar continues to get a lot cheaper. In fact, some vehicles, trying to cut costs, rely on radar on the sides or behind for certain applications like detecting cross traffic (which is never stationary) and don’t spend as much on LIDAR in that direction.

The weather may look bleak, but the future looks bright for radar on robocars.

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