Darts & Laurels 4/18/14

The last full week of classes passed by in a blur of taxes, blood moon Instagram pics and studying — endless studying.

For seniors, the end is in sight, and for everyone else — well, we’re just excited for a break. Before you busy yourself preparing for finals, consolidating internship plans or packing your bags for one of the many music festivals coming up, stop and check out your so-long-farewell-auf-wiedersehen-goodbye edition of...

Darts & Laurels

Small-scale breweries and brewpubs are continuing to fight big-business interest as Florida Senate Bill 1714 threatens the beer-brewing community with oppressive rules and regulations that would hinder growth and profit.

“For example,” the Alligator reported yesterday, “the bill mandates breweries sell bottles and cans to distributors. To sell to their own customers, they must buy the stock back. Most of the time, this includes a significant markup in price. It also prevents brewers from opening wineries or cideries.”

In Gainesville, we cherish our small businesses and flourishing craft beer scene. So we’re tossing an exceptionally pissed-off DART to SB 1714 for promoting sketchy mob-like regulation of Florida breweries.

On Monday, we were pleased to learn that the Tampa Bay Times, which has a handful of UF and Alligator alumni, won the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for local reporting. Staff writers Will Hobson and Michael LaForgia were recognized for their coverage of “the county’s Homeless Recovery program, (which) revealed that the agency — created in 1989 to provide transitional housing for the poor — funneled millions of public dollars to slumlords and placed families in unsafe living conditions,” according to the Times.

From one (much smaller) newsroom to another, we’re handing off a congrats-on-No.-10 LAUREL to the Tampa Bay Times.

This week, Facebook announced that it would be rolling out a new feature on its mobile app that would answer what we’re always asking: Where are my friends located right now at this very moment?

A location-sharing feature called “Nearby Friends” shows users (who have consented to use the feature and know that their location will be broadcast) where other users are hanging out on a map, according to the Times. So in case you like Facebook but wish it was more similar to Grindr and The Sims 3, this new feature is perfect for you.

No. No, it’s not perfect for you. Why do you need to know where your friends are at all times? This app seems more like an enabler for codependent friendships and a potential self-esteem destroyer (“Why are seven of my friends at Salty Dog right now and I wasn’t invited?”) than a tool of convenience. We’re tossing a DART at Facebook for being creepy as hell.

And finally, a collective LAUREL to all those little things that make finals studying and job searching more bearable: coffee, 24-hour fast-food drive-thrus and Facebook’s temporary-deactivation function.

That’s all, folks. Congratulations to all the graduating seniors, and as for everyone else — see you later!

[A version of this editorial ran on page 6 on 4/18/2014 under the headline "Darts & Laurels"]