Who Had the Worst Week?

• Facebook may have rebranded as Meta, but some things never change. The Washington Post outed the company this week as being responsible for a behind-the-scenes smear campaign against competitor TikTok. The details are wide-ranging, but the bottom line is that Facebook/Meta remains evil.
• The City of Denver seems to have some ambivalence about “the Mayor of Pickleball.” Denver Parks & Rec filed a complaint with the Denver Police Department, and DPD arrested the 71-year-old man on charges of vandalism causing damage in excess of $10,000. The Denver District Attorney’s Office, however, is refusing to file charges and is encouraging mediation to resolve the issue.
  • Speaking of the Denver Police Department, Chief Paul Pazen has been mentioned as a potential candidate for Denver mayor, but you have to think last week’s $14 million federal jury judgement against the DPD for its handling of the George Floyd protests, combined with a recent brutal report alleging he was “paralyzed” about how to respond to the protests, has ended those ambitions.
  • Perhaps more embarrassing than the $14 million judgement itself was the Denver Police union’s response. President Nick Rogers, literally wearing camouflage cargo shorts and a beard bundled up in rubber bands, held a “press conference” alleging that downtown Denver would have been destroyed like Kyiv, Ukraine, if not for the heroic actions of officers.
• The Will Smith-Chris Rock “Slap Heard ‘Round the World” was an embarrassing situation on all fronts, and there were three clear losers: Smith never should have gone on stage to confront Rock; Rock never should have made a joke about someone’s medical condition; and the Academy never should have allowed a comedian to mock one of its members live from the stage.
  • How bad was Slapgate for Smith? O.J. Simpson released a video saying that he thought Smith was wrong to have hit Rock.
  • Smith issued an apology on Monday, and if you were under the impression that Rock also issued an apology, you were duped.
• Verizon customers are getting spam text messages from an unlikely source – themselves.
• Hate groups remain prevalent in Colorado, according to a study by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
• If you had any doubts that wildfire season in Colorado has expanded to year-round, the December and now March fires in Boulder County and Estes Park should put that to rest. Can’t say I’m excited about what July will bring.
• The actor Bruce Willis has retired after being diagnosed with aphasia, a disease that impacts cognitive abilities.
• The St. Peter’s Peacocks were the Cinderella of the NCAA March Madness basketball tournament, but one week after losing to the University of North Carolina in the Elite Eight, Seton Hall hired the team’s head coach away.
• Denver’s street sweeping program resumes today, and it is expected to generate about $7.7 million in tickets for Denver drivers who fail to move their parked cars from city streets on designated days.

So, who won the week?

• Colorado Springs was named ninth on a list of “best-performing” cities nationally, ahead of Denver which ranked 14th. The report noted that Colorado Springs is now a top destination for tech workers and recent college graduates.
• The public may be able to ride RTD for free in August under legislation working its way through the statehouse. The proposed pilot program attempts to address air emissions during Denver’s hot, often-smoggy summer.
• Young women are starting to out-earn their male counterparts in certain markets, reversing a trend that has existed since, I don’t know, caveman days. Women in San Diego now earn 105% of their male peers and those in New York City and Washington, D.C., earn 102%.
  • Locally, women in the Denver-Aurora-Lakewood geography earn 95% of their male counterparts, and women in Fort Collins earn 96%.
• The US Men’s National Soccer Team qualified for the 2022 World Cup, rebounding from their failure to qualify for the 2018 tournament.