The Advocate

(Source: N4RJ) Whew! It has been a whirlwind of a year plus on Nextdoor as a user and as a lead. But regardless of the abuse, harassment, or barriers put in place to prevent constructive community building and necessary uncomfortable conversations, I remain as dedicated as ever to building a better San Leandro for everyone. A place where we can continue to have real dialogue in the new public square that forums like this have become. While Nextdoor has summarily and improperly stripped me of my lead status for the moment, I will not give up the struggle to make platforms like theirs live up to the standards they say they are dedicated to and connections between neighbors they say they wish to foster. Indeed, this isn’t the first, second, third, or even the fourth time Nextdoor has failed to consider crucial context, incorrectly removed content, wrongly suspended users, as well as engaged in other inconsistent and inappropriate behavior. In fact, Nextdoor actually violates their own gui...

( Credit to playwright Ernest Hemmings. ) Whether you're talking 'bout President  Obama is spreading Ebola , Secretary  Hillary deliberately caused Benghazi , or the thought that Earth is, actually, as flat as the ass of pancake , conspiracy theories seem to reproduce like a rabbit-mouse hybrid in heat. I grew up amongst many of them through the 90's and early 2000's. From apples laced with razor blades to HIV-infected needles in the parks and playgrounds of the neighborhood, or on the handles of the local gas station pump. Others were less well-known, such as the Native-American ghosts that haunted our high school campus and killed the science teacher on back-to-school night. Or the mysterious oil-derricks hidden between Huntington Beach and Costa Mesa in a locked-down facility that, purportedly, housed a testing ground for experimental weaponry and post-apocalyptic machinery. Indeed, I've actually tread those very lines myself as a teenager, searching f...