There are countless stories to tell in San Francisco, but sometimes a picture says so much more than mere words can. Each week we present to you 7 Reasons. (Our sister site LAist does the same thing, which we found too inspiring to resist.) Much like Photo du Jour highlighting a nifty image shot by our readers, 7 Reasons features recent photos from the SFist pool on Flickr, or photos tagged #sfist on Instagram, showcasing the uniqueness of San Francisco. And with that, here are 7 reason why S.F. is, for lack of a better word, boss.

Stop and think for a minute about what would happen if you die suddenly. Say, today or tomorrow. Your world would end but Facebook's world would just keep on truckin', and that means your Facebook page would become more than just a profile: it would become a place where grieving friends and family members gather to offer condolences and revisit precious memories. It's weird to think about, sure, but that's just the ways things are these day, right?

Now lawmakers are going a step further by grappling with whether "digital assets" such as your photos, messages, posts and other elements of your Facebook profile should be treated just like your real-world estate (yes, we love the idea of calling our our mattress, book of weird doodles and collection of chipped mugs our "estate"). When you die, you personal affects become the property of your beneficiaries, including your embarrassing high school diaries and the contents of your bedside drawer. In today's Facebook age, should your family have the same access to your private Facebook property?

When Karen Williams' 22-year-old son died in a 2005 motorcycle accident, she wanted to preserve her son's full profile assets and to get full access to her son's account. She even figured out his password, but Facebook locked her out, citing company policy. Even after Williams sued and won, she never received full access she was looking for and the account was eventually deactivated, along with all its photos and posts. (Now, Facebook will permanently "memorialize" your profile if presented with an obituary or other proof of death, which means, among other things, that your friends won't be encouraged to "reconnect" with you on the site. Awkward.)

Karen's experience prompted the Oregon legislature to take up the issue of revising the ancient Stored Communications Act of 1986, which prohibits companies from sharing a person's information even if requested in a last will and testament. So far, pushback from the tech industry has stalled the Oregon initiative, but five states already have some form of digital assets laws in place, including Oklahoma, which already allows estate lawyers to access social media accounts.

As a memorial to a person's memory, Facebook is chillingly perfect: it mimics the timeline of a life so well it can almost seem to fill the missing space where someone used to be. And we know that while the landscapes of our online identities continue to evolve, there'll come a day when a last will and testament will need to address the online world as well as the real one. But we just need to say one thing:

Moms, we love you. But please don't read our Facebook chats or look at photos you shouldn't after we die. You will regret it.

[AP]

Did you catch Saturday's Chinese new year parade in San Francisco? No? Well, we have you covered. Erik Wilson snapped these shots of the action happening around the festivities. (Which, let's face it, is the most interesting part of the parade. Do you really need to see another corporate-sponsored float?) And some parade shots for good measure.

Enjoy.

Just a friendly reminder that we need photos of your corner store cats. Is this an excuse to post a bunch of cat pics? Yes. It is also a way of honoring the felines that, when they're not protecting the store from rats, greet you when you buy you $7.99 wine and pint of Chubby Hubby? Yes. So send us those pics. We've already received a slew of cat images that make us want to run to your nearest corner store, like Whiskey (pictured here) who can be found a Eddy and Hyde.

Send photos to tips@sfist.com of your bodega cats and we'll create a list of the greatest corner store cats in the Bay Area! Feel free to include a location (vicinity/neighborhood, but no store name since we don't want to get anyone in trouble) and any details you may know about the cat. You can also share photos with us via Instagram by hashtagging them #SFist and #CornerStoreCat, or via Flickr tagging them with "sfist" and "corner store cat."

Facebook just doesn't know how to get over you, it seems. Three years after tech sites called out the social network for keeping copies of deleted photos on their servers, Facebook is still having a hard time permanently deleting all the old photos its users trashed in the sober light of day. Facebook originally claimed that an old photo management system wasn't properly clearing out the deleted photography, and that they've been working to improve it, but according to Ars Technica's follow-up report today photos deleted as many as three years ago could still be floating around the back corners of the Internet.

The potentially career-ruining or otherwise embarassing photos can be dug up by anyone who managed to snag the direct link to the .jpg file on Facebook's servers. (It's the long messy link that you never think will work when you try to IM it a friend, but then it totally does and now it's saved in your chat history forever — which, by the way, that's another thing we should probably talk about: your chat logs.)

Anyhow, Jacqui Cheng at Ars Technica dug through mountains of embarrassing photos sent in by paranoid readers who are currently living through this social media nightmare and discovered she could still access at least one naked toddler photo that was deleted way back in May of 2008, among others. So what can you, as a private citizen of the Internet, do to get those not-actually-deleted photos removed from the Internet entirely? Well, you could be a reporter writing a negative story on the problem, for starters. That seemed to work for Cheng:

Amusingly, after publishing the 2010 followup, Facebook appeared to delete my photos from its [Content Delivery Network] that I had linked in the piece. The company never offered me any explanation, but my photos were the only ones that were deleted at that time.

For the rest of us, on the other hand, we'll just have to wait until Facebook implements a new photo management system that they promise will permanently eradicate deleted photos within 45 days. A spokesperson for Facebook claims that fix should be online "within the next month or two", and that they will also delete those photos that should be long gone by now, but we're not exactly holding our breath over here.

[ArsTechnica]

Folsom Street Fair brought out the sun and sleaze in grand form this year. Fleshy bits and pieces were out in full force at yesterday's annual ode leather and sexual fetish in SoMa. Here are some scenes from yesterday's bash. (It should go without say, but these images are NSFW. Please be cautious, curious ones.)

Did you attend yesterday's festival? Did you partake in any devious rituals? Did you, ahem, see your dental hygienist getting flogged by a bear? Let us know your favorite moment(s) in the comments.

Local activist Michael Petrelis attended Sunday's Dore Alley (rechristened Up Your Alley) Street Fair. What is that, you ask? Well, it's like the Folsom Street Fair, but for adults. Did we go? Heck no. Are you kidding? We were wearing deodorant and Paul Smith shoes on Sunday. Petrelis, however, did attend the festivities and has a batch of SFW photos for you to enjoy at your leisure at the workplace. Later in the day, we'll have more racy pics to share from yesterday's slap-and-tickle bash.

No, not this. Nor this. And certainly not this.

This is what we're looking for this Halloween season. After you've carefully assembled your seamlessly executed Halloween costume -- one that you thought of in a moment of sheer genius -- be sure to snap a picture of it and send it to SFist. Then, on November 1, we'll post your picture(s)on the site. Fame is just a photo away, people, so get shooting.

Also: maybe we'll have some sort of first-place award, giving a nifty gift to the most creative outfit. You can even send us images of your wee ones rocking out their festive costumes -- SFist is a family-friendly zone too; well, for some kinds of families, anyway.

Send your images to editor[at]sfist.com along with a name and explanation of said costume(s).

If you still haven't come up with costume, here's a decent list of Halloween costume stores in San Francisco to help get you started.

On Sunday, the annual How Weird Street Fair took place on Howard Street (get it?), with many residents showing up for the organized fun festivities wearing very bright colors. Described as a way to "rewire our way of thinking towards peace, by rebooting the motherboard," the zany fair was filled with Burners, furries, transgressive types, self-described weirdos, and other people who had bad experiences with "organized religion" and/or mean parents who believed in some sort of structure.

Enjoy.

The Sisters of Perpetual (over 200 of them!) are all over town this weekend. Thank God. On Friday, the nuns had a 30th birthday party at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts.

And today, over in Dolores Park, they are holding their annual Easter Bash / Hunky Jesus Contest, followed by "AfterBirth" at 4 p.m., their massive street party at Noe and Market, in between Cafe Flore and the Lookout.

Yesterday, however, a gaggle of the nun with something extra (i.e., a penis between their legs) from around the world gathered for a bus ride all over town before landing at the Eagle Tavern. Here are some images of the Sisters' Saturday excursion.

Here are some images of people acting stupid. ("Stupid," it seems, equals "wearing loud colors.") Check back here for updated images of today's alleged inanity at today's St. Stupid's Day Parade.

Did you know the Bay Area is under siege right now? It's true. The invader? Thousands and thousands of pudy butterflies. Why, just today we received an urgent message from SFist Deborah N about hundreds of colorful, frolicking butterflies swarming up Lapu Lapu. We've also heard reports of butterfly sightings from the Sunnyside neighborhood to Crissy Field.

According to San Jose Mercury News, "thousands, perhaps millions of painted lady butterflies are migrating through the Bay Area this month, on their way north from where they hatched in Southern California desert areas." Many Bay Area residents, it seems, have spotted "clouds of butterflies everywhere" this week.

This is soft news at its finest, folks. Not to be missed. So, if you happen to snap a shot of a few monarchs or painted ladies, send them to SFist. We'll show them off to the world. Simply tag said butterfly images in Flickr with 'sfist,' or just email them to editor@sfist.com.

Preference will be given to shots of people being chased and/or attacked by the winged creatures. The more creative, the better.

Hop to it, readers.