Put on your pearls and clutch hard: Starbucks has come under fire after being accused of under filling their lattes in an effort to save money on milk, as KQED reports. The class action suit, filed by one San Diego resident and one San Francisco resident, claims the coffee giant "cheats purchasers by providing less fluid ounces in their lattes than represented." In fact, the suit accuses the coffee chain of under filling by approximately twenty-five percent, be it Tall, Grande, or Venti.

The suit goes on to say that Starbucks gets away with this by topping off the lattes with a "quarter-inch of foam," which is technically still milk, but whatever.

Starbucks claims the suit is without merit, adding, "If a customer is unhappy with their beverage preparation, then we are happy to remake it to their satisfaction." But for some, litigiousness comes easier than having to say "no foam, fill to the top."

The lawsuit seeks more than $5 million dollars in damages.

Far more egregious, however, is the accusation that Starbucks also cheats customers out of espresso pulls. Robert King of Auburn, California says he's been short-changed on his espresso drinks numerous times, and now he wants the company to do something about it. "I order a double-shot of Espresso and only get one-and-a-half ounces,” says King. "This is not an isolated case. It has happened at all the Starbucks I’ve gone to from Grass Valley all the way down to Elk Grove, and it’s always short."

Not cool, Starbucks. Not cool.

This isn't the first time the food and beverage industry has tried to deprive us of tastiness. If you recall, Subway got caught in a foot-long Grindr-esuqe lie, which advertised a full 12-inches but only delivered a meager 11.

Report below:

This is likely a story you only noticed or cared about if you were a) growing up in Marin in 2004-05, or b) paying close attention to LGBT hate-crime news, but it did make some national headlines at the time. It goes like this: A senior at Tamalpais High School in Mill Valley, who was an out lesbian and co-president of the school's Gay Straight Alliance, was the victim of a rash of anti-gay vandalism in the fall of 2004 for which no suspects were ever identified. Epithets were scrawled on her locker and the side of her car, and then the attacks grew more threatening, with eggs thrown at her, and death threats. The school rallied behind her, holding a vigil and talking a lot about tolerance. Ultimately, several gay teachers at the school, who were not out to their students, received cryptic, threatening voicemails from a disguised voice in the spring of 2005. Tracing those calls lead Marin police to identify the culprit, who was the girl herself. She faced charges. Her friends and the rest of the community disowned her. The case made plenty of local news headlines. Now, ten years later, a BuzzFeed reporter who went to school with the unidentified girl tracked her down at her Bay Area home where she lives with her wife, and got her talking about the incident.

At the time, the resolution of the story was pretty unsatisfying. "She did admit to police that it was basically for attention," said the school superintendent. Ten years on, the explanation from the woman who was that attention-starved girl is a little more nuanced. First of all, she was drunk on cough medicine. A lot. Also, the day it all started, she was mostly trying to get out of going to class because she hadn't done her homework. The principal immediately let her go home when a janitor spotted the word 'FAG' scrawled on her locker.

"I was like, Sweet. I went home and did my homework.” She puffs air between her freckled cheeks and meets my eyes, summarizes: “I started a whole fake hate-crime thing with the police so I didn’t have to do my homework.”

...

Each time she committed another crime, she says, “It was a little like pressure-release valve.’”

“Imagine someone was like, ‘You have zero responsibility now.’” In her voice, I can still hear a glimmer of how incredible she found this effect. She could go to school if she wanted. She could still play sports. Her mom, friends, teachers, and coaches rallied around her, told her how much they loved her: “All that shit that you just wish somebody would have said without there being an explicit reason to.”

As for why she decided to place the threatening calls to gay teachers, which ultimately got her caught...

“It was probably about calling them out,” she admits. “None of our teachers were really out. Even ones we knew were gay. You definitely got a sense like they wanted to let you know, very old-school gay code shit where you drop hints about things but you never come out and say it. It’s kind of fucked up to be on the other end of that as a gay person, like, ‘Oh, we can’t talk about this.’” But she insists she didn’t do what she did out of a spirit of activism. Her motives were totally selfish: “If I put us two steps forward, I definitely took us 10 steps backward.”

The story, unfortunately, is not unique, and because of the media's sensitivity around LGBT issues and intolerance, the temptation for the dishonest to get attention for such stories can be great. There have been numerous incidents of faux hate crime in the last few years that have received wide attention on social media, only to be debunked — e.g. the lesbian waitress in New Jersey who wrote that fake note on a customer's bill denying her a tip. And the more such incidents there are, the more fuel there is for right-wing blogs to suggest that anti-bigotry is all in our lefty imaginations.

But, ultimately, the story of Marin's great hate-scare of 2004 was just one of teenage impulsiveness and stupidity. The woman looking back on her crimes is a teacher now, dealing with kids every day, and she seems to have forgiven herself. And, despite the reporter's seriousness about it all, it was really only dramatic for the people in the middle of it all.

[BuzzFeed]

For people likes Fox News' John Stossel, who believe panhandlers are really raking it in for upwards of $80K/year, here's a news flash: according to a survey funded by the the Union Square Business Improvement District, San Francisco panhandlers make less than $25 a day.

According to the survey, which involved 146 people over a two-day period around Union Square, "the typical panhandler is a disabled middle-aged single male who is a racial minority and makes less than $25 per day despite panhandling seven days a week for more than five years." Contrary to popular suspicions, 94 percent said that they use the money they glean for food (44 percent use it for drugs or alcohol).

Other findings:

• 83 percent are men


• 48 percent are African American


• 31 percent are white


• 69 percent are single


• 26 percent served in the military


• 70 percent are 40 to 59 years old


• 58 percent have been panhandling for at least five years


• 53 percent panhandle seven days a week


• 60 percent make $25 a day or less


• 94 percent use the money for food


• 44 percent use it for drugs or alcohol


• 62 percent are disabled


• 25 percent are alcoholics


• 32 percent are addicted to drugs


• 82 percent are homeless

Researchers also surveyed 400 people who had given money to panhandlers in the past year, and found that the majority were young working-class Bay Area residents (not tourists or tech workers). Meanwhile, a New York Times article notes that Twitter's payroll tax break will save them at least $22 million over six years in their new nearby mid-Market offices.

[Think Progress]
[NYT]

A 10-year-old girl escaped an attempted kidnapper in Pacifica on Sunday night by punching her assailant and running away. At least, that's what she said happened. Turns out, the adorable preteen was lying about the whole thing, including the details she described to a police sketch artist (the sunglasses are a nice touch).

Police say they began looking for the man she described but at some point in the proceedings began to suspect that the girl was fibbing about the whole thing. The girl and her friend, who with zero information we still suspect was the mastermind behind the whole thing, later admitted that they had fabricated the whole story.

We'd like to say there are better ways to get attention, but we'd probably be wrong. Well done, future deplorable teens.

[CBS]
[Mercury News]

That was fast. Much like your friend who gets sent home drunk before the party even begins, Golden Gate Fields has prematurely cancelled its All-You-Can-Drink Saturday special. As we reported Wednesday, Golden Gate Fields was set to premiere 'Bottomless Saturdays' this week in an effort to attract a younger clientele to the racetrack. But the $30 ticket, which was to include unlimited well drinks from noon to 5 p.m. on Saturday, was yanked "in acknowledgement of the concerns of some of its employees and some members of the community", namely, that five+ drinks over the course of an afternoon might actually not be a good thing.

“We are here to entertain the community, and if they get upset, then we are going to take their concerns seriously — and that’s what we have done,’’ Golden Gate Fields marketing boss Dan Cirimele said, according to the Chronicle. “We are not in business to upset anybody."

Come anywhere near Dollar Day and then we'll see about getting upset.

[SF Gate]

The 21-year-old woman who told police she was beaten and raped while walking along a wooded area on the UCSC campus has reportedly confessed to investigators that, in fact, the attack was a hoax. The unidentified woman could face criminal charges for making the false report.

"The report of this incident has very understandably created a deep sense of unease among UCSC students, staff, and faculty, as well as residents of the Santa Cruz area," UCSC Police Chief Nader Oweis said in a press release, according to Santa Cruz Sentinel.

Before any rape apologists get on their high, sanity-estranged horses in the comments, we direct you to the graph from The Enliven Project (via Jez). It uses data from Department of Justice's National Crime Victimization Survey and FBI reports to show both how little rapes are reported and how rarely rapists go to jail. And way down at the bottom you can see how few false accusations are.

[Santa Cruz Sentinel]

Sad news, folks: about a third of the fish you ate last in the two years was probably not what you thought it was. According to a new study, this huge oceanic conspiracy was pulled on pescatarians nationwide, but Northern Californians were especially hard hit. In the Bay Area, 58 percent of fish sold in restaurants was mislabeled or misidentified. It's like restaurants don't even care about ichthyology.

The Chronicle, details the study conducted by seafood truthers at activist group Oceana:

Genetic testing of 1,215 fish taken from 674 retail outlets, grocery stores and sushi bars throughout the United States between 2010 and 2012 found that 33 percent of the samples had been mislabeled, according to U.S. Food and Drug Administration guidelines.

Researchers with Oceana, a group dedicated to preserving the ocean ecosystem, reported finding seafood mislabeling in all 21 states where they tested, including retail outlets in San Francisco, Monterey, Los Angeles, Seattle and Portland.

Whether this is because all fishermen are prone to lying to begin with, or this is a large-scale conspiracy by the seafood industry (or more likely: a quality control issue) is still unclear. What we do know is we're not getting the right fish: "Fish labeled snapper turned out to be rockfish 34 times at sites in the Bay Area, Monterey and other sites in Northern California, according to the watchdog group."

Can you imagine? Accidentally getting rockfish, when you really wanted snapper? The mind reels, remembering all the times we were desperately craving snapper. To think, all those times we could have been unknowingly eating rockfish. It's as if all the parts in our lives when we were eating fish have been a complete lie.

There's hope for the future, at least: mislabeling food for profit is illegal under California and federal law, so we can probably curb this fishy labeling epidemic just as soon as the state can come up with the cash to create some kind of Fish Investigation Agency. On the other hand, mislabeled fish might be a product of confusing bureaucratic bullshit to begin with: "California law allows 13 species of rockfish to be sold as Pacific red snapper, but FDA guidelines allow only one."

Things only get worse when we start talking Tuna though: The FDA includes 14 species that can be called "tuna," but eight out of nine pieces of tuna sushi sampled in Los Angeles were actually escolar, which is not one of those 14 official tunas. Fish Biologists — as in real people with advanced degrees in this sort of thing — call escolar the "ex-lax fish" because of its "purgative effect on the digestive system." And we wonder how Los Angeles stays so slim.

There are some other unexpected benefits to mislabeled fish too: shark meat has been found in fish tacos sold across California, so it's kind of like we've been getting an added bonus this whole time.

[Chron]

Last week, the journalistic stalwarts at Fox News printed a striking piece claiming California's 2012 budget deficit would hit $28 billion and cause an exodus of high wage earners from the state. Unfortunately for the news site's nonexistent integrity, that was a flat-out falsehood. Other journalists headed to Twitter to mock the shoddy and easily refuted reporting, but California Governor Jerry Brown's press secretary, Gil Duran, decided to mount his own PR campaign against the "completely false" statements.

Duran explains the situation to media watchdog Jim Romenesko (emphasis, ours):

I wrote a request for a correction. Ignored. So it appears I’m going to have to campaign for a correction. Most news outlets are more than happy to correct an egregious error. Not Fox News, apparently. I’m not surprised by most of what they do. But — come on — you can’t just write fiction. I’m used to their relentless attacks and we generally ignore them … falsehoods are another matter!

As part of his campaign for truth over truthiness, Duran also published his correspondence to the unresponsive FoxNews.com. First in an email sent last Saturday, when the article was published:

From: Gil Duran Sent: Saturday, December 22, 2012 8:14 PM To: foxnewstips@foxnews.com Subject: Correction

Your story on California has some major and obvious errors.

First, the story states that California has a $28 billion deficit. This is completely false and is already being mocked by California reporters on Twitter. Please correct the record immediately.

The story also makes misleading claims about Proposition 30. Specifically, the story says that “families making over $250,000″ will have their income taxes increased. But for families that file jointly, there would be no tax increase unless they made $500,000.

In general, the article simply rehashes arguments from obscure columnists whose opinions are contradicted by all available data. But these two major errors merit immediate correction.

Please correct the record.

And finally, a follow-up this morning:

From: Gil Duran Sent: Thursday, December 27, 2012 10:50 AM To: ‘foxnewstips@foxnews.com’ Subject: FW: Correction

Dear Fox News,

I am following up on the message I sent earlier this week. This story contains an absolute falsehood. It contains a claim that is refuted by all existing evidence. In fact, this error was brought to my attention by a journalist who read the story and was shocked by the inaccuracy. I have made a good faith attempt to have the record corrected via the means provided on your website. However, this seems insufficient.

For more than five days now, this completely inaccurate piece has been on your website. It was featured on the Drudge Report and was the top trending story on your site. And it contains a major error. It is unethical to refuse to make a necessary correction. Please correct the record.

In Fox News' defense (which: ugh, sorry) that foxnewstips@foxnews.com inbox is probably overflowing with with emails from conspiracy theorists and people asking for autographed copies of Killing Kennedy. Maybe the network just couldn't be bothered to clean out the junk mail while they were defending Christmas from the infidels.

Update: In a footnote, FoxNews.com has corrected the error, stating: "Editor's Note: An earlier version of this article misstated California's latest deficit projections. The article has also been updated to clarify who is affected by the new tax increase." The article now states Gov. Brown's budget deficit will only hit $1.9 billion instead of $28 billion. While we appreciate the correction, a more transparent news outlet might admit the error with some actual conviction.

Speaking to a crowd at BuzzFeed's kitten photo factory in New York earlier this week, Twitter co-founder Evan Williams suggested that the almighty follower counter might not be the best way to measure a user's actual audience. The metric, which only seems to interest people who list "Social Media strategist" in their bio, is kind of a joke given how many fake Twitter accounts are supposedly out there.

To Williams, who still remains on Twitter's board now that he's moved on to Obvious Corp, the ideal metric would be the number of people who actually saw a tweet. A retweet from a big shot Twitterer should carry more weight than a hollow tweet to spam accounts, after all. It's the same idea behind Klout — another San Francisco startup that measures how users influence others on various social media. After Twitter made some changes to how third party apps use their system last month (and whipping up some backlash in the process), the company has started collecting more detailed data on user engagement.

Of course, an engagement metric also gives Twitter a little more leverage with data-hungry advertisers who are still trying to figure out how to measure what they're getting when when they pay for Kim Kardashian's next #sponsoredtweet. The preferred platform for organizing protests and sharing photos of one's lunch still has to make a buck at some point.

Still, we wouldn't expect them to dump the follower count right away — that would only get those power users with high follower counts riled up.

[BuzzFeed]
[VentureBeat]

Yahoo CEO Scott Thompson may not be quite the academic he professed to be. The excitedly-punctuated Sunnyvale company admitted today that, just four months into Thompson's tenure, their CEO's resume listed a degree in Computer Science that the executive never received during his time as an undergrad at Stonehill College.

At least one Yahoo investor, Daniel Loeb, whose hedge fund owns 5.8% of the company, is calling him out for the resume padding. Thompson, who graduated from the tiny Massachusetts school in 1979, does in fact hold an accounting degree from Stonehill; however, somewhere in the past five years, the fictitious CS degree started showing up on his resume. Curiously, no one at Yahoo caught the error when he was hired from his previous gig as president of PayPal. Now some leading tech gossips are calling for his resignation.

Loeb has accused Thompson of misleading Yahoo's board at a time when the web portal desperately needed someone to turn the ship around. Yahoo, on the other hand, is defending their new chief exec and calling the resume blunder an "inadvertent error," pointing out that Thompson still has the accounting chops to put Yahoo back on track.

During his first four months as Yahoo's chief, Thompson laid off about 2,000 employees — that unfortunate set of job losses lead to the company's first increase in year-over-year net revenues since 2008.

[BusinessInsider]
[TechCrunch]
[CBS5]

In a storyline ripped from a rejected Desperate Housewives spec, Laurie Ann Martinez, a psychologist at Folsom Prison, was charged with faking her own rape in order to get her stubborn husband to move the couple to a better neighborhood. Reasonable, right? No, that is not reasonable. That is terrible. Also, she was in cahoots with a friend during this faux rape/robbery ordeal.

Sacramento Bee reports: "Investigators said Friday that she ripped open her blouse, split her own lip, scraped her knuckles with sandpaper and had her friend punch her with boxing gloves." Police responded to the the Martinez home on Norgard Court last April where they "found Laurie Ann Martinez lying on the floor, crying hysterically."

The fuzz says "it was all a ploy to get her husband to agree to move to a more desirable neighborhood." But now? The couple is divorcing.

Released Monday on $50,000 bail, Martinez faces two counts of conspiracy and, quite possibly, a lifetime of spinsterhood.