"Echo Chamber of Delusion, Paranoia and Racism”

GREENSBORO, NC -- The Greensboro Police Department announced today a partnership, short on specifics, with Nextdoor.com, the closed social site/app that requires users to sign up with their real names and provide their verified address.

Out of the currently 123 reviews of Nextdoor.com on Site Jabber, 99 give it one star out of five. Here are some of the most notable, good and bad:

Every person "who looks out of place" walking on the sidewalk gets called out on the app. God help you if you're black and knocking on doors in our neighborhood.

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I signed up for this service because it was recommended by the city that we live in for traffic alerts, street closings, etc. I signed up for the service, began to browse for vital information in my city, and only then found out that this website publishes your entire personal information for everyone in the community to see without divulging this to users before the sign up. Considering we pay for a non-published phone number and address, I was pretty upset to find all of my private information listed. I deactivated my account, and only then did I look for complaints about the company. Boy was I surprised to see the complaints on here.

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The best thing is I feel cool after expressing my opinion there, about environment and things. That's why I don't read free local paper any more.

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The app sends "push notifications" for urgent alerts tagged as "Crime & Safety". This means that every bored, stupid Desperate Housewife who gins up a fantasy of danger now has the ability to push her stupid blather straight to your cell phone.

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I highly recommend this medium, it is a great resource to share emergency news (ie.: missing pets, bears in the neighborhood, theft alerts, odd jobs, yard sales, free stuff, block parties, etc.). A neighborhood is safer when its residents care and keep an active neighborhood watch.

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home to politically correct extremists...

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Continue to be re-registered by either the company or site lead. Have unsubscribed and quit the stupid site three different times only find NEW bat-$#*! crazy posts from "neighbors" I don't know. Ironically, it keeps signing me up for neighborhood I don't even live in. There must be some sort of con / grift going on whereby the company is trying to pump up its user numbers.

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If you like trying to communicate with brain dead idiots this is the website for you.

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This organization sounds like it is run like a Junior High popularity club.

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Nothing has caused more hard feelings between neighbors in my community than Nextdoor.

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This works beautifully. Obviously it depends on the type of neighbors you have, but I have found NextDoor to be a life saver many times.

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I've found this site to be used only to judge and provide nasty comments about neighbors, and not helpful at all. 

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I also love it because the Police Department can post urgent messages to those neighborhoods under their jurisdiction.

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Complete scam. How do I know ? Postal mail has return addresses of non-existent people in our own neighborhood saying we are "invited" to join. Getting them weekly now with fake return addresses claiming to be from neighbors. So folks, nothing free is any good. They are up to something. Pretty sure it will end badly for the investors....

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I feel that in this day and age if you need an app to communicate with your neighbors, instead of going and rining their doorbell, then maybe you should just stay inside.

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What it is is simply a means to locally share information and get to know your neighbors. As with all things that involve people, things can go wrong quickly if people aren't respecting each other and treating each other with kindness and understanding.

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if you are a upscale tight ass this site is for you.

New Greensboro film festival calls for submissions, volunteers

GREENSBORO, NC -- There is a new film festival coming to Greensboro this summer. It's the Barefoot Bijou Summer Film Festival and they are calling for submissions.

From the press release:

The inaugural Barefoot Bijou Summer Film Festival invites North Carolina filmmakers to submit their short films. The fest is seeking short films produced in the last ten years, either: 1) films made by a North Carolina resident, or 2) films made within the state. There is no submission fee. Selected films will be screened at the 2015 festival, running June 3-28, 2015. To submit your film, email a link to your screener to submit@barefootbijou.com.

There is also a planning meeting next week for people interested in chipping in and helping out:

Barefoot Bijou Planning Meeting
Thursday April 30
6-7pm
The Forge, 115 West Lewis Street

For more information, contact April Harris: aharris@newcityventures.net

Tony Wilkins, man of the people

GREENSBORO, NC -- Watch as district 5 City Council representative Tony Wilkins stands up for Greensboro against the doings of the local oligarchy. Also instructive is what passes for transparency in the mind of our Mayor, Robbie Perkins.

News & Record: Duped or shillin'?

GREENSBORO, NC -- In her article of August 18th, "Here's what you need to know about GPAC," News & Record reporter Amanda Lehmert told her readers:

"Cost to buy the land: Up to $7.6 million."

"Up to...", she wrote.

From Richard Barron on the News & Record website yesterday:

"The city would borrow $3.9 million to buy the parcels — at 300 and 332 N. Elm St. — that would push the original $7.6 million land acquisition budget to $11.5 million."

The "original" $7.6 million was never real. It was a canard,  a charade, and reporting it as such illustrates the problem with regurgitating the pronouncements of authorities as facts, as the News & Record—Lehmert especially—routinely do in covering city government.

City Council and City staff knew land acquisition was going to cost significantly more than $7.6 million well before Lehmert reported $7.6 million as a limit.

Here is what Mayor Robbie Perkins said in a closed session meeting on August 5th, in which all City Council members, the City Manager, the City Attorney and Walker Sanders, president of the Community Foundation, discussed having the City spend $7.6 million to purchase seven of the nine needed parcels:

Perkins: "The other thing we need to... the other thing that we need to make real sure of is that we've got one piece of.. [cross talk] Walker, Walker you mind? We need to make real sure... Mr Attorney, we need to make real sure that everybody in this room doesn't talk about anything that we just happened [uninteligible] because we've got one person that's already jacked his price up a couple, three hundred thousand dollars, it's not under contract, and if it comes out that all of this is glued together except for him, you don't know where he's gonna go. And, and, and, I mean, if we start reading about this in the newspaper, this whole project would come unglued. So, y'all don't say anything." 

Yvonne Johnson: "I won't".

So there is the real news hook: somehow, either having been deceived by or cooperating with a deception, Lehmert reported the $7.6 million as a maximum—in a front page story of the most-widely circulated Sunday edition of Greensboro's paper. City staff and City Council knew thirteen days prior to the publication of Lehmert's article that land purchases would exceed $7.6 million, possibly significantly. They knew the $7.6 million they were seeking to spend was only for seven of nine needed parcels and that the mayor was worried about the possibility of the holdout landowner jacking up his price even further. Yet, Lehmert reported $7.6 million as a maximum.

$7.6 million was never the total for land purchases, it was only ever for a portion of the land, so how and why did it get reported as such? Dupe or shill?

N&R editor blames others for his gullibility

GREENSBORO, NC -- The only thing that exceeds the terribleness of the News & Record is their lack of awareness of how completely their veneer of credibility has vanished.

As if he weren't part of the problem to begin with, News & Record editorial editor Allen Johnson is wagging a finger at performing arts center boosters for not being honest about the amount of private donations they have raised.

He writes:

"And when the commitments of private donors are officially announced (and they need to be, sooner rather than later), the community ought to be able to take those assurances to the bank. This effort must be trusted and credible to succeed."

Okee dokie. Just one problem, for all his sincere concern about honesty and credibility, Johnson fails to acknowledge his contribution to the deceit. A N&R editorial from January did not equivocate:

"They have private pledges totaling $20 million."

This is what the N&R editorial told us. They didn't say maybe or might, they asserted that as clearly as anybody can assert a fact. It wasn't attributed to others, the N&R owned it; put their stamp of approval on it as a cold hard fact — and now Johnson is blaming others for the misrepresentation without one word about the N&R's own complicity and guilibility in the misinformation campaign.

Trusted and credible to succeed, indeed.

Excuse me, I Twarted™*

Why do people share things on the Internet? Is it because they have made, thought or captured something truly worth sharing or is it because sharing something— anything—no matter how insignificant or meaningless, makes one feel significant?

It's not that I think everything should be some masterwork of creative genius. The Tweets that tell us Justin Bieber changed your life are not terrible really (they remind us, in few words, of the power of music and the optimism of youth), but intentionally degraded photos without any subject or sense of composition, cell phone video that sounds like it's coming from some not-tuned-in A.M. radio station playing through the blown speakers of a 1972 Gremlin, vapid statements of the obvious and thirteen minutes of "and then...", "and then...", "and then..." telling us about your day, starting with, "So I woke up," are just drivel.

If you're posting such twaddle, is it because you are unable to recognize or create quality or is it because you are so insecure that the point is not what you post, but to post anything in a desperate hope that you won't be insignificant?

* Twart: A Tweet or other social media post as welcomed and interesting as the emission of bodily gas.