Michael Wow, we unfortunately let the newsletter production slide for three months -- but now we're catching up! Shortly before Christmas last year, on December 21st, the lights suddenly went out in San Francisco. And not just in a few streets, but citywide. The whole city? Not quite! In the neighborhoods of Mission, Bernal Heights, Bayshore, and Noe Valley, the power grid remained unaffected (see Figure 1), and we only heard about the incident from the news.

But even German media had already picked up on the incident with sarcasm. "Oh yes, a power outage in the capital of the internet and artificial intelligence, I'd rather go to the early shift at the coal mine!" wrote those who stayed at home.

Now, a brief power outage here in San Francisco is not a big deal and happens about once a year. I've prepared for this by strategically placing battery backups in our home that keep the internet and other essential services running. However, if the power is out for 24 hours or longer, the freezer defrosts, and the food in the refrigerator slowly warms up to room temperature and spoils, then you have to throw the whole lot into the trash.

The cause for the outage this time was allegedly a fire in a so-called "substation" of the local power supplier PG&E, which caused a chain reaction and paralyzed three-quarters of the city in quick succession. As mentioned, it didn't affect us, but the neighborhoods near the Golden Gate Bridge were without power for up to three days. Now, PG&E is a profit-oriented private company, but among the workforce, there is, let's say, a sluggish bureaucratic attitude. No one there bothered to comment on the situation or provide estimates regarding the restoration of the power grid. Understandably, electricity customers were extremely upset, especially restaurants that could no longer serve hot meals or even process payments.

What finally made the barrel overflow was that Waymo (Rundbrief 07/2023) made the decision to shut down our world-leading robotaxi fleet. For reasons unknown to me, all of the company's approximately 1,000 autonomous vehicles simply stopped, regardless of whether they were in the middle of an intersection or any other precarious situation. Somehow, their control systems couldn't handle the widespread traffic light failures, and the Waymo safety officer must have literally pulled the plug in a panic.

The following day, the company had apparently rolled out a software update, and the popular fleet resumed operations. However, the energy-generating company PG&E still failed to restore power in some neighborhoods. In some unfortunate areas (ironically, even those with luxury mansions like Seacliff), it took a full three days for the refrigerators to start running again. In some cases, PG&E had only brought in loud portable diesel generators, which now rattled and emitted exhaust day and night.

Oh, I thought, something like that could never happen in Germany. Far from it! I had to laugh a lot when I read in my daily reading of the Bild newspaper (illustration 6) that just a few days later, there was also a power outage in Berlin, albeit for different reasons. Fortunately, I'm not sitting on a high moral horse like my German compatriots, and anyone who knows me knows that malice or schadenfreude is completely foreign to me!

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• More topics you might be interested in:

  	Cesar Chavez and Army Street
  	The Wende Museum, Los Angeles
  	The translation of "Los Angeles - Ein Jahr danach" to English is
  	Bier an der Selbstbedienungskasse" translates to "Beer at the
  	Treat of the Month: Bequet Caramel
  	Top Product: The Foldable Steamer Insert
  	Top Product: Foodsaver
  	TSA -- Partially closed