Uber Technologies, Inc., commonly referred to as Uber, is an American multinational
transportation company that provides
ride-hailing services,
courier services,
food delivery, and
freight transport. It is headquartered in
San Francisco, California, and operates in approximately 70 countries and 10,500 cities worldwide. It is the largest
ridesharing company worldwide with over 150 million monthly
active users and 6 million active drivers and couriers. It facilitates an average of 28 million trips per day and has facilitated 47 billion trips since its inception in 2010. In 2023, the company had a take rate (revenue as a percentage of gross bookings) of 28.7% for mobility services and 18.3% for food delivery.
Uber classifies its drivers as
gig workers or
independent contractors, a practice that has drawn criticism and legal challenges because it allows the company to withhold
worker protections that it would have been required to provide to employees. Studies have shown that, especially in cities where it competes with
public transport, Uber contributes to
traffic congestion, reduces public transport use, has no substantial impact on vehicle ownership, and increases
automobile dependency. Other
controversies involving Uber include various unethical practices such as aggressive lobbying and ignoring and evading local regulations, many of which were revealed by a leak of documents showing controversial activity between 2013 and 2017 under the leadership of
Travis Kalanick. (Full article...)
Marion Hugh "Suge" Knight Jr. (/ʃʊɡ/SHUUG; born April 19, 1965) is an American music executive and convicted felon who is the co-founder and former CEO of
Death Row Records. Knight was a central figure in
gangsta rap's commercial success in the 1990s. This feat is attributed to the record label's first two album releases:
Dr. Dre's The Chronic in 1992 and
Snoop Dogg's Doggystyle in 1993. Knight is serving a 28-year sentence in prison for a fatal hit-and-run in 2015.
James Robert Baker (October 18, 1947 – November 5, 1997) was an
American author of sharply satirical, predominantly gay-themed
transgressional fiction. A native Californian, his work is set almost entirely in
Southern California. After graduating from
UCLA, he began his career as a screenwriter, but became disillusioned and started writing novels instead. Though he garnered fame for his books Fuel-Injected Dreams and Boy Wonder, after the controversy surrounding publication of his novel, Tim and Pete, he faced increasing difficulty having his work published. According to his
life partner, this was a contributing factor in his suicide.
Baker's work has achieved cult status in the years since his death, and two additional novels have been posthumously published. First-edition copies of his earlier works have become collector's items. His novel Testosterone was adapted to a
film of the same name, though it was not a financial success. Two other books have been optioned for films, but they have not been produced. (Full article...)
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Milk in June 1978
Harvey Bernard Milk (May 22, 1930 – November 27, 1978) was an American politician and the first openly gay man to be elected to public office in California, as a member of the
San Francisco Board of Supervisors. Milk was born and raised in New York, where he acknowledged his homosexuality as an adolescent, but chose to pursue sexual relationships with secrecy and discretion well into his adult years. His experience in the
counterculture of the 1960s caused him to shed many of his conservative views about individual freedom and the expression of sexuality.
Milk moved to San Francisco in 1972 and opened a camera store. Although he had been restless, holding an assortment of jobs and changing addresses frequently, he settled in
the Castro, a neighborhood that at the time was experiencing a mass immigration of gay men and lesbians. He was compelled to run for city supervisor in 1973, though he encountered resistance from the existing gay political establishment. His campaign was compared to theater; he was brash, outspoken, animated, and outrageous, earning media attention and votes, although not enough to be elected. He campaigned again in the next two supervisor elections, dubbing himself the "Mayor of Castro Street". Voters responded enough to warrant his running for the
California State Assembly as well. Taking advantage of his growing popularity, he led the gay political movement in fierce battles against anti-gay initiatives. Milk was elected city supervisor in 1977 after San Francisco reorganized its election procedures to choose representatives from neighborhoods rather than through city-wide ballots. (Full article...)
Burnham was born on a
Dakota SiouxIndian reservation in Minnesota, in the small village of Tivoli near the city of Mankato; there he learned the ways of
American Indians as a boy. By the age of 14, he was supporting himself in California, while also learning scouting from some of the last of the cowboys and frontiersmen of the
American Southwest. Burnham had little formal education, never finishing high school. After moving to the
Arizona Territory in the early 1880s, he was drawn into the
Pleasant Valley War, a feud between families of ranchers and sheepherders. He escaped and later worked as a civilian tracker for the
United States Army in the
Apache Wars. Feeling the need for new adventures, Burnham took his family to southern Africa in 1893, seeing
Cecil Rhodes's
Cape to Cairo Railway project as the next undeveloped frontier. (Full article...)
Paula Julie Abdul (born June 19, 1962) is an American singer, dancer, choreographer, actress, and television personality. She began her career as a
cheerleader for the
Los Angeles Lakers at the age of 18 and later became the head choreographer for the
Laker Girls, where she was discovered by
the Jacksons. After choreographing music videos for
Janet Jackson, Abdul became a choreographer at the height of the music video era and soon thereafter she was signed to
Virgin Records. Her debut studio album Forever Your Girl (1988) became one of the most successful debut albums at that time, selling seven million copies in the United States and setting a record for the most number-one singles from a debut album on the
Billboard Hot 100 chart: "
Straight Up", "
Forever Your Girl", "
Cold Hearted", and "
Opposites Attract". Her second album
Spellbound (1991) scored her two more chart-toppers – "
Rush Rush" and "
The Promise of a New Day". With six number-one singles on Hot 100, Abdul tied
Diana Ross for the third-most chart-toppers among female solo artists at the time.
Joshua Abraham Norton (February 4, 1818 – January 8, 1880) was a resident of San Francisco, California, who in 1859
proclaimed himself"Norton I., Emperor of the United States", commonly known as Emperor Norton. In 1863, after
Napoleon IIIinvaded Mexico, he took the secondary title of "Protector of Mexico".
For the first few years after arriving in San Francisco in 1849, Norton made a successful living as a commodities trader and
real estate speculator. However, he was
financially ruined following a failed bid to corner the rice market during a shortage prompted by a famine in
China. He bought a shipload of
Peruvian rice at 12 cents per pound (26 ¢/kg), but more Peruvian ships arrived in port, causing the price to drop sharply to three cents per pound (6.6 ¢/kg). He then lost a protracted lawsuit in which he tried to void his rice contract, and his local prominence faded. (Full article...)
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Ruth E. Norman (born Ruth Nields; August 18, 1900 – July 12, 1993), also known as Uriel, was an American religious leader who co-founded the
Unarius Academy of Science, based in
Southern California. Raised in California, Norman received little education and worked from an early age in a variety of jobs. In the 1940s, she developed an interest in
psychic phenomena and
past-life regression. These pursuits led to her introduction to
Ernest Norman, a self-described psychic, in 1954. He engaged in
channeling, past-life regression, and attempts at
communication with extraterrestrials. She married Ernest, her fourth husband, in the mid-1950s. Together they published several books about his revelations and formed Unarius, an organization which later became known as the Unarius Academy of Science, to popularize his teachings. The couple discussed numerous details about their alleged past lives and spiritual visits to other planets, forming a
mythology from these accounts.
After Ernest died in 1971, Ruth succeeded him as their group's leader and primary channeler. She subsequently began publishing accounts of her experiences and
revelations. In early 1974, she predicted that a space fleet of benevolent extraterrestrials, the Space Brothers, would land on Earth later that year, which led the Unarius Academy to purchase a property to serve as the landing site. After the extraterrestrials failed to appear, Norman said that trauma she had suffered in a past life had caused her to make an inaccurate prediction. Undaunted, she rented a building for Unarius' meetings and sought publicity for the movement, claiming to have united the Earth with an interplanetary confederation. She revised the Space Brothers' expected landing date several times, before finally settling on 2001. Her health declined in the late 1980s, prompting her students to try to heal her with rituals of past-life regression. Despite predicting that she would live to see the extraterrestrials land, Norman died in 1993. Unarius has continued to operate after her death, and formed a board of directors. Since the 2000s, leaders have concentrated on individual transformation leading to spiritual change in humankind. (Full article...)
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Perry in 2023
Katheryn Elizabeth Hudson (born October 25, 1984), known professionally as Katy Perry, is an American singer, songwriter, and television personality. She is known for her influence on modern
pop music and her
camp style, being dubbed the "
Queen of Camp" by
Vogue and Rolling Stone. At 16, Perry released a
gospel record titled Katy Hudson (2001) under
Red Hill Records, which was commercially unsuccessful. She moved to Los Angeles at 17 to venture into
secular music, and later adopted the stage name "Katy Perry" from her mother's maiden name. She recorded an album while signed to
Columbia Records, but was dropped before signing to
Capitol Records.
Perry rose to fame with One of the Boys (2008), a
pop rock record containing her debut single "
I Kissed a Girl" and follow-up single "
Hot n Cold", which reached number one and three on the U.S.
Billboard Hot 100 respectively. The
disco-influenced pop album Teenage Dream (2010) spawned five U.S. number one singles—"
California Gurls", "
Teenage Dream", "
Firework", "
E.T.", and "
Last Friday Night (T.G.I.F.)"— the only album by a female singer to do so. A reissue of the album titled Teenage Dream: The Complete Confection (2012) subsequently produced the U.S. number one single "
Part of Me". Her empowerment-themed album Prism (2013) had two U.S. number one singles, "
Roar" and "
Dark Horse". Both their respective music videos made Perry the first artist to have multiple videos reach one billion views on
Vevo and
YouTube. The
electropop album Witness (2017) featured themes of feminism and a political subtext, while Smile (2020) was influenced by motherhood and her mental health journey. Afterwards, she embarked on her Las Vegas
concert residency titled
Play (2021–2023), receiving critical acclaim and commercial success. (Full article...)
Calvin Cordozar Broadus Jr. (/ˈbroʊdɪs/; born October 20, 1971), known professionally as Snoop Dogg (previously Snoop Doggy Dogg and briefly Snoop Lion), is an American rapper. His initial fame dates back to 1992 following his guest appearance on
Dr. Dre's debut solo single, "
Deep Cover", and later on Dre's debut album, The Chronic that same year. Broadus has since sold over 23 million albums in the United States, and 35 million albums worldwide.
His accolades include an
American Music Award, a
Primetime Emmy Award, and 17
Grammy Award nominations.
Reagan was born in New York City. After her parents separated, she lived in
Maryland with an aunt and uncle for six years. When her mother remarried in 1929, she moved to Chicago and later was adopted by her mother's second husband. As Nancy Davis, she was a Hollywood actress in the 1940s and 1950s, starring in films such as The Next Voice You Hear..., Night into Morning, and Donovan's Brain. In 1952, she married Ronald Reagan, who was then president of the
Screen Actors Guild. He had two children from his previous marriage to
Jane Wyman and he and Nancy had two children together. Nancy Reagan was the First Lady of California when her husband was
governor from 1967 to 1975, and she began to work with the
Foster Grandparents Program. (Full article...)
... that the serial arsonist who started the fatal Nihon Shōgakkō fire confessed to starting at least 25 other California fires in the early 1920s?
... that after losing his job at KBIF when his father was convicted on
tax-withholding crimes, future California politician
Jim Patterson bought
Fresno's KIRV and turned it into a Christian radio station?
... that in 2000, the
Sacramento County Policy Planning Commission decided that humans would never be allowed to live on Kimball Island again?
... that before
Foster City was built on Brewer Island, unsuccessful proposals included a hog farm, two military air bases, two civilian airports, and an entertainment complex larger than
Disneyland?
... that Project Carryall proposed the detonation of 23 nuclear devices in California to build a road?
... that at the time, the Fountain Fire was the third-most destructive wildfire in
California's recorded history?
... that a man dropped his hat while riding Flight Deck and went to retrieve it, but ended up dying after being struck by the foot of a rider?
The Sierra Nevada (
Spanish for "Snowy Range") is a
mountain range located in the
U.S. state of
California. In a few places, it overlaps into neighboring
Nevada. The range is also known informally as the Sierra,the High Sierra, and the Sierras.
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