Test pattern

Those new features/formats/subjects never quite showed up, did they? It certainly wasn’t due to a lack of subject matter. All the usual suspects have been up to their usual tricks, up to and including reports yesterday morning of Twitter introducing a paid tier. But as I mentioned in that previous post, none of it’s anything

48 Shills: The myth of independent media, part two

Scant seconds after arriving to 48 Hills, a donation plea pops up with a message. “We need independent, local news sources featuring diverse, progressive voices more than ever.” Truer words, never spoken. Unfortunately for visitors to their website, and San Franciscans in general, 48 Hills fails on all counts. Like their big siblings at The

Enrique Pearce rescued by “temporary assignment” judge

The state always protects itself, and Enrique Pearce proves this with each successive/successful court appearance. A powerful man facing a list of child pornography charges found himself in the courtroom of “retired Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge Rene Navarro, who is on temporary assignment in San Francisco.” In other words, they brought in a

Who counts police killings now?

I’m quite late to this, but The Counted announced last month they would not be tallying police killings in the United States after 2016. They reference a “much-improved new government system” making The Counted surplus to requirement, but relying on the government for these numbers puts the foxes back in charge of the henhouse. The

MISSING PERSONS: Former SFPD Officer Jason Lai and Lieutenant Curtis Liu

  Former SFPD Officer Jason Lai and Lieutenant Curtis Liu were partners in crime at SFPD’s already-scandal-ridden Taraval Station, Lai serving directly under Liu. In September 2015, SFPD investigated Lai for sexual assault: According to the warrant, the pair then went to the woman’s bedroom, where she says they had sex despite her saying: “no

SFPD’s performed reform

The Golden State Warriors’ hire of former SFPD Chief Greg Suhr as security consultant created work for many manufactured-outrage activists this past week, but couldn’t have been more business as usual. Team owner Joe Lacob is a Sand Hill Road venture capitalist and both Sand Hill Road and the Silicon Valley it funds have long been

Suzy Loftus curiously quits

“The face of police reform” isn’t long for the San Francisco Police Commission as its president Suzy Loftus resigned this week to join the San Francisco Sheriff’s Department as assistant legal counsel. It’s a curious move for a couple of reasons. First, Loftus is apparently trading two high-profile positions, San Francisco Police Commission president and

The siren song of equality

Freedom. Equality. On the surface, they seem interchangeable, but in practice the two words couldn’t be farther apart. Freedom is self explanatory; acting and living without restraint or oppression. Equality is trickier, however. Equality comes with all sorts of terms and conditions. You can’t be equal by yourself; what’s the point? Reaching a state of

A Medium fleece

Can’t say I didn’t warn you. Medium founder and CEO Ev Williams demonstrated the downside of dealing with the devil yesterday when he announced the blogging platform would fire a third of its staff and cease sharing ad revenue with creators. This despite Medium continuing to raise millions while overall tech funding remains stagnant. While

2016: Year of Entropy

Entropy is defined as “the degree of disorder or uncertainty in a system” or “the degradation of the matter and energy in the universe to an ultimate state of inert uniformity.” Though many words could describe the holy terror that was 2016, entropy was on my mind the entire year. No year in recent memory