Sometimes the jokes just write themselves . . .

OK, I admit it.  There are times when schadenfreude is absolutely irresistible.  This is one of them.

It seems there's a kerfuffle among the politically correct about a new smartphone app that "uses crowd-sourced data to inform you of the more unsafe areas of your neighborhood".  PC Mag reports:

The problem? Allegations have been made that the app in question, Sketch Factor, is racist—unintentionally or otherwise.

"If the purpose of the app is meant to be about safety — real safety, not just perceived safety — then you'd think the app would rely on actual crime data, at least a little bit, as opposed to purely anecdotal reports. But no. The app will only tell you what 'seemed sketchy' to other people," Bustle's Emma Cueto writes. "And if we are to assume that most of these users are young white people with smart phones, then it isn't long before people's internalized biases […] start to rear their ugly heads."

There's more at the link.

I suppose it was inevitable, then, that a news crew would go to one of those 'sketchy areas' to investigate whether it was, in fact, 'sketchy', and whether its classification as such might be considered 'racist'.  Guess what happened?

The news crew's vehicle was burglarized while they were working on a story about a controversial app that alerts people to "sketchy" neighborhoods, WUSA reports.

The crew had locked their news van on a street in Petworth in Northwest, D.C. while they were out in the neighborhood conducting interviews. When they returned they found the lock had been popped out of the door of their news van, and that most of the crew's gear had been stolen.

Again, more at the link.

Yep . . . sure sounds like a 'sketchy' neighborhood to me!  And I don't care what its predominant skin color might be!




Peter