jwz

Every year, I find the San Francisco Pissed Off Voter Guide to be the best and most useful one. I especially like that they show their work.

The most important ones this year are:

• Yes on Prop 40: Billionaire wealth tax for Medicaid (previously).
• No on Prop 41: Poison pill to kill Prop 40.
• No on Prop 42: Poison pill to kill Prop 40 and any future wealth taxes.
• No on Prop 43: Limit local taxes in general.

• No on Prop 39: MAGA voter ID law.

• No on Props A, D, E and F: the Mayor's anti-democratic power-grab.
  Prop D in particular ensures that only billionaire-backed PACs will be able to afford to field voter initiatives. You may not like the initiative system, but it exists, and making it oligarchs-only is not a step in the right direction.

• No on Prop G: bulldoze a beautiful park and turn it into a freeway (previously, previously).

• District 6 Supervisor: Alex Behrend (previously, previously).

• Congress: Connie Chan -- definitely NOT Scott Wiener! (previously, previously, previously).

• Insurance Commissioner: Jane Kim (previously).

I'd also strongly recommend using a ballot drop-box instead of the mail, and doing so early, to avoid any possible USPS corrupt shenanigans.

Some highlights from The Guide:

Why is Scott Wiener terrible? Let us count the ways. Oh wait, we already have in our previous voter guide writeups. To recap: he's madly pro-cop and pro-developer, he lost the California SEIU endorsement because he opposed the Overpaid CEO tax, and let's not forget his cringey campaign AI bot debacle. Oh, and don't fall for what he's pushing on the glossy mailers - those housing policies he's bragging about passing are single-handedly responsible for the overdevelopment ruining (and ignoring the needs of) local communities throughout the state. While yeah, he has been prolific as a legislator over the past decade or so, if those policies were so great why does our housing situation still suck so much? [...]

We hoped Mayor Lurie would be more independent and open to working with people who disagreed with him. Spoiler alert: he isn't, and now we're pissed off at Denim Dan. [...] Before his sham Charter Reform Working Group had even finished its work, Lurie wrote his own charter amendments without even a public hearing. The city charter, which is like our constitution, already gives the mayor way more power than other cities. But now he's pitching these billionaire-backed charter amendments that will weaken citizen oversight, grant mayoral superpowers to slim down city government, and lock the changes in by restricting ballot initiative access.

Point of order: while I appreciate their use of "Denim Dan", I feel that my "Danny Bluejeans" is superior, since it sounds like a Russian's idea of a gangster name.

I keep checking back to see if they have added snark about District 6, but not so far.

Indivisible SF's and Dean Preston's endorsements almost entirely agree with The League's. See also Mission Local's extensive election coverage.

Previously, previously, previously, previously.

AI-funded group backs Wiener for Congress with $3 million gift:

"Scott Wiener's claim that he'll stand up to Big AI collapses the moment you look at who's bankrolling his bid for Congress," said Chan's spokesperson Krager. "After putting $500,000 behind him earlier this year, Anthropic's super PAC is pouring in another $3 million to send him to Washington. Wiener is delusional if he thinks voters will mistake Big AI's handpicked candidate for its watchdog."

Previously, previously, previously.

The press keeps describing Kimberly Guilfoyle as Don Jr.'s ex-fiancée and that's so unfair. Let's remember that she's a monster in her own right, and describe pickme-bro Gavin Newsom as Kimberly Guilfoyle's ex-husband, which should be utterly disqualifying for him in any capacity from President to barista.

Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.

Character.AI files for bankruptcy, to sell some assets to Disney for $20 million

Earlier this year, Character.AI and Google settled a lawsuit by the mother of a 14-year-old Florida boy who killed himself after the startup's chatbot allegedly encouraged him to do so. Kentucky has sued the company, saying its chatbots ⁠encouraged users to cut, starve or kill themselves, while Pennsylvania filed a lawsuit alleging its chatbots posed as doctors. [...]

Disney will help the platform in the transition, using staff it has hired from Character.AI. The platform's services would continue meanwhile.

Previously, previously, previously, previously.

I don't wear watches, let alone $10,000 watches, but this is cute:

Oh hey this one looks like a fucked up QR code for only $18,000:

Previously, previously, previously, previously.

XScreenSaver 6.17 is out now for MacOS, iOS (eventually), Android and Unix. This is mostly a maintenance release, triggered by some onerous and stupid Apple changes.

• I think I worked around several longstanding Apple bugs where the "legacyScreenSaver" process would start using 100% CPU and savers would never run again.

• MacOS 14.6 or later and iOS 17.6 or later are now required, because Apple sucks.

  As I value my sanity, my desktop machine is still running macOS 14.7. But Xcode 6 won't run on that (because they suck), and Apple won't accept app store submissions from older versions of Xcode (because they suck). So I got a used Mac Mini with macOS 27 to use as a sacrifice zone and build machine.

• X11 localizations are being installed again. Apparently that broke 3+ years ago and nobody noticed or cared.

• macOS, iOS and Android are now localized.

• I added many missing localization strings, largely auto-translated via Google Translate.

Mr. Gotcha pops out of the well: "But jwz, you say the 'AI' industry is unethical, and yet you used Google Translate. Curious!"

I'm old enough to remember when Google Translate was merely "machine translation" and not "Skynet the Eschaton Supergod Climate-Reaper", so let's pretend it's still that? I'm sure that some of the new auto-translations are shitty, but the last time most of them were updated was in 2002, which I assume is when Red Hat stopped paying people to do it. If you care about this (more than you care about Gotcha Points), you can help! For each entry marked "auto-translated" in the .po file of a language that you speak, please:

• Verify it or correct it;
• Remove the "auto-translated" comment;
• Email me the new file.
• You don't have to do them all; every little bit gets us closer.

If you aren't willing or able to do even that, then I encourage you to go climb back down into the well.

tl;dr:

• Yes on Prop 40: Billionaire wealth tax for Medicaid
• No on Prop 41: Poison pill to kill Prop 40
• No on Prop 42: Poison pill to kill Prop 40 and any future wealth taxes

Billionaires won't flee. The state won't lose money. But taxing the rich in CA could spread nationwide.

Billionaires just got a massive tax cut from Trump. California billionaires' wealth grew more than 30% a year from 2023 to 2025 and is on track to match that this year. [...] So billionaires will barely even notice a one-time 5 percent wealth tax. Is it really so bad for a billionaire to make merely $235 million this year instead of $300 million if that means millions of people get to continue having healthcare and we save tens of thousands of Californian lives?

Well, the billionaires think it's really, really bad. That's why they've spent about $200 million spreading lies and bad faith arguments against it. [...]

And as if spreading lies about the wealth tax isn't enough, the billionaires spent more than $130 million to put two poison pills on the ballot against Prop. 40 -- Props. 41 and 42. If either of those passes with more votes than Prop. 40, Prop. 40 will fail to pass even if it gets over 50 percent of the vote. These are the kinds of tricks you play on voters when you know you are in the wrong and can't win on the merit of your arguments. [...]

What's the point of becoming a billionaire if you won't even live where you want to live? [...] But for the sake of argument, let's say all 250 billionaires in California decide, en masse, to move. Well, here's another secret about billionaires Porter doesn't mention: They pay almost no income taxes. Billionaires avoid taxes by borrowing off their wealth for consumption, or relying on capital gains, which are taxed at a much lower rate. That's why even if all the billionaires in California moved away, it would take 25 years before the lost income taxes matched what Prop 40 raises.

Previously, previously.

You have once again voted DNA Lounge to be "Best Nightclub" in the 2026 Best of the Bay! Thank you all for your continued support! It means a lot, and is really helpful.

We also got second place for "Best Live Music Venue" and, for the first time, second place for "Best Pizza"!

I just did a roundup of our Halloween events, but here's what we've got coming up in the next two weeks. It's a lot!

Ravefurrest Secret Psy Egyptian Lover Echos Rocky Horror Gorilla T Light City Project X Bearrison Drift Mothership Riddim Ghoul

City Immediately Regrets New Religious Liberty Law That Allows Prayer at City Council Meeting:

On Tuesday night, Ottumwa resident, satanist, and former city council member Matt Dalbey took the podium to read an invocation to start a routine meeting of the council. "Thank you mayor, council. Let us pray," Dalbey started. "Dear dark father, let us stand now unbowed and unfettered by arcane doctrines born of fearful minds and darkened times. Let us embrace the Luciferan impulse to eat off the tree of knowledge and dissipate our blissful and comforting delusions of old. [...] Let us reason our solutions with agnosticism in all things, holding fast only to that which is demonstrably true. Let us stand firm against any and all arbitrary authority that threatens the personal sovereignty of one or all. That which will not bend must break. And that which can be destroyed by truth should never be spared its demise.""It is done. Hail Satan." [...]

The invocation to Satan in a small town in Iowa is just the latest salvo in a 10-year-long battle over religious freedom of expression in the state. In 2016, a religious liberty group installed a Christian nativity scene at the state capitol in Des Moines. Later that year a group of atheists installed its own nativity scene honoring the Bill of Rights. In 2023, The Satanic Temple put up a pentagram built from red ribbon and topped with a mirror-mask ram's head that invoked Baphomet in the capitol rotunda. The group also began holding winter celebrations in the Rotunda. A man vandalized the display, police arrested him and charged him with a hate crime.

Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.

Dear Lazyweb, if you have some very old Macs, I would like you to test some things.

I have a handful of very old XScreenSaver DMGs on the downloads page because, for example, 5.14 was the last XScreenSaver binary release capable of running on PPC.

Due to recent Apple stupidity, I was forced to re-codesign these old DMGs. So I'd like to know if they still install and run on very old Macs -- which I do not have. I'd like a status report on:

• 5.14: any PPC Mac (confirmed: 10.4.11, 10.5.8)
• 5.34: macOS 10.5 - 10.7 (confirmed: 10.6.8)
• 6.00: macOS 10.8 - 10.12 (confirmed: 10.11.6)
• 6.16: macOS 10.13 - 14.4 (confirmed: 10.13.6, 10.15.8, 12.7.6, 13.7.8)

The retrocomputers of the world thank you in advance.

*  I re-signed them but didn't re-compile them, because I can't, because of even stupider Apple stupidity.

** I suppose I'll also want to re-test this after the old certs expire in Feb 2027, but here we are.

Previously.