Two parts today. Up top, a San Francisco round-up. Then, it’s Twitter’s fun and flirty rip-off products, a classic industry dilemma, and the future of the social internet. As ever, choose your own adventure.

This park is not for amusement. I’ve been dragging my feet on a dispatch from San Francisco because, I’ve got to be honest, I’m starting to find the subject more depressing than I do surprising, and that depression is exhausting. But it’s been one Hell of a winter, and I do think a quick summary of our city’s ongoing collapse worthwhile. As must come as no surprise to anyone, our local government’s push for self-destruction continued apace these last few weeks, but while there were many notable players none so greatly contributed to the insanity as the Board of Education.

With the concept of merit now officially determined racist, the roughly 80% minority student body of San Francisco’s Lowell High School will be the last class determined by academic achievement. Henceforth, admission to every school in the city will be determined by lottery (excepting, of course, admission to the public performing arts school where the vice president of the Board sends her children). Lowell’s activist cancellation arrived in the middle of what was already a media firestorm, catalyzed in large part by the Board’s decision to rename 44 of our schools, including Lincoln, also on grounds of racism — with explicitly the opinion that Abraham Lincoln was racist — while the schools themselves remained closed despite all public health guidelines and tremendous pressure from parents. Criticism of the Board: also apparently racist. It was in this environment, with so much to answer for, that the Board convened one of its regular public meetings and spent two hours debating whether a gay dad of mixed-race children was “diverse enough” to serve on a parent advisory group. Ultimately, it was decided he was not.