jwz

Today's VHS find: Pam Doré posted a video of the first night of Club Q at DNA Lounge, back in the distant year of Two Thousand and Two. Wait, we were still using VHS in 2002? Yes. Yes we were. 2002, in case you didn't know, was 24 years ago. How dare it. The nerve.

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Scott Wiener, Ladies and Gentlemen:

Trans community, allies condemn Wiener for exploiting a march he was asked to leave:

State Sen. Scott Wiener was not invited to the Trans March. He was really, really not invited: In fact, Gabriel Haaland, one of the founders of the march, told me, he had been asked specifically not to attend.

In 2016, then-Sup. Wiener, then-state-Sen. Mark Leno, and then-Mayor Ed Lee were booed off the stage at the march. (That was when Leno and Wiener were close, before Wiener stabbed his mentor in the back and endorsed London Breed for mayor.)

"We told them very clearly that we didn't want politicians in our space," Haaland explained to me. "We changed our policy because of Wiener, and his anti-tenant policies, and asked them not to come back." [...]

But Wiener didn't just show up; after he left, he used video of the event to raise national money, $127,000 in national money, for his Congressional campaign. (According to the Standard, even Netanyahu sided with Wiener, saying he was treated unfairly.)

"It's about as craven as I've ever seen," Haaland told me. "To use our community in this way to raise money is disgraceful. ... He never even picked up the phone and reached out to the Trans March folks." [...]

"The Harvey Milk LGBTQ Democratic Club condemns these self-serving actions by State Senator Wiener and urges politicians to stop using vulnerable communities as a fundraising tool. Trans people already face immense danger in this country. We need real allies, not people who will sell us out for a fundraising opportunity."

Guy behind the viral 'Saikat lives in Maryland' van has money ties to a pro-Wiener PAC:

As of Tuesday, the van is back in action with a slightly different message: "I live in this van b/c Connie Chan hates housing."

Gazetteer SF learned that the registered owner of the van is being paid by a super PAC that supports Scott Wiener.

In April, the San Francisco Chronicle used California Department of Motor Vehicles data to identify Conor Johnston as the owner of the van. Johnston is a longtime Wiener supporter who served as chief of staff to London Breed when she was supervisor, and later advised her mayoral reelection campaign in 2024. He is also owner of the cannabis company Otter Brands, and has a history of political pranks and provocations.

Johnston and his business have been paid nearly $30,000 by the Families for an Affordable San Francisco super PAC this year, according to financial disclosures to the Federal Election Commission. Families is a super PAC founded by Wiener's active campaign director, Todd David, who remains the PAC's treasurer.

On April 28, the PAC paid Otter Brands, Johnston's cannabis company, $28,611.37 for "office consulting." One week later, the PAC paid $1,000 to Johnston directly for "office refurbishment." [...]

The Wiener campaign declined to comment through spokesperson Joe Arellano.

The Families PAC itself is a dark-money mess, as it leverages a 2024 FEC rule change in order for the PAC and Wiener's official campaign to share staff and coordinate canvassing operations together. In May, campaign finance experts told Gazetteer that the rule change represents a massive breach of a foundational policy to ban communication between a super PAC and a federal campaign on materials that advocate for voter action.

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▶︎Yet another casualty of last week's PG&E antics: the projector in the pizza eyeball no longer lights up. Honestly I'm surprised it lasted as long as it did: it's been on 24/7 for nine years.

Sadly, the Gakken World Eye is now going for almost a grand on eBay.

So I bought the cheapest desktop video projector I could find ($30) just to see if I could aim that at the inside of the dome. Unsurprisingly, the answer is no. That projector needs to be about 2½ feet behind the dome to fill it and be in focus, which is less of an eyeball and more of an eye sausage.

I took both apart and they have very different projectors and optics, so just swapping lenses isn't an option.

I suspect that in principle I could put some extra lenses in front of this thing to make it go but I have no idea how to do that.

So. Got a Gakken World Eye that you'd like to donate to the cause of "weird DNA Pizza decor"? Or, do you know of a desktop video projector that can throw an in focus 10" tall image from a distance of 10" to 20"?

Update: Fixed!

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There's a new WordPress exploit out there but I will show you how I vaccinated myself against it 6+ years ago:

remove_filter ('wp_head', 'rest_output_link_wp_head'); remove_filter ('template_redirect', 'rest_output_link_header', 11); remove_filter ('wp_head', 'wp_oembed_add_discovery_links'); remove_filter ('wp_head', 'wp_oembed_add_host_js'); add_filter ('json_enabled', '__return_false'); add_filter ('json_jsonp_enabled', '__return_false'); add_filter ('xmlrpc_enabled', '__return_false'); add_filter ('rest_url', 'jwz_no_rest', 1, 4); add_filter ('rest_url_prefix', 'jwz_no_rest', 1, 1); function jwz_no_rest ($url, $path='', $blog_id='', $scheme='') { return ''; } add_filter ('rest_authentication_errors', function ($result) { return new WP_Error ('Fuck REST', 'Fuck REST', array ('status' => 403)); }); // And for good measure: add_filter ('wp_supports_ai', '__return_false');

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Apparently now Google requires you to give them a lock of your hair before allowing you to file a DMCA fair-use counter-claim to a spurious content-ID rejection.

"Build history as you grow: Once you have enough history, we'll automatically unlock features." Apparently my 14+ year old youtube channel has not yet reached 2 months of active use, according to the vibe-coded math of Google's robots.

Since, as you know, arguing with robots is something of a hobby of mine, I uploaded my traditional driver's license. You can't just "upload" it, of course, they require you to scan a QR code with a phone and take a photo from within the browser, for maximal tracking. So I used one of my burner phones for that. They say their response takes 24 hours, so presumably some dollar-a-day call-center gig worker in India is going to put eyeballs on it, so we'll see how that goes.

In case you're wondering what stupidity I'm up to this time:

Bonnie Tyler died last week, and so the glorious "Total Eclipse of the Heart, Literal Version" by Persephone Maewyn and dascottjr was making the rounds again, dodging takedowns. (This video is a textbook case of fair use, since not only is it a parody song, but the lyrics are direct commentary on the video itself, I mean come on.) Anyway all extant copies of it are shit quality, so I reconstructed it from the official HD video plus the "literal" audio, and re-built the subtitles by hand. Immediate takedown. I appealed. A week later, some intern or chatbot at BMG said "fuck you no". Now I'm trying to counter-claim.

Anyway, maybe someday you'll get to see this higher quality version of the video. It's still pretty funny. You can go request it on the DNA Pizza music video stream I guess.

Update: Oh no. Anyway

Date: Fri, 17 Jul 2026 02:28:12 -0700
Subject: Your YouTube ID verification was unsuccessful
From: YouTube
To: [email protected]

Your YouTube ID verification was unsuccessful

Your ID verification was denied

Google couldn't approve your ID verification. You can try again to get advanced YouTube features with your ID or video verification in 30 days. In the meantime, you can continue to build your channel history by uploading videos or live streams and following YouTube's Community Guidelines. After 30 days, this history may help you get access to advanced YouTube features. Learn more

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I found another 36-year-old VHS tape on eBay! D.O.A.'s final concert, live at DNA Lounge, in 1990.

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Everybody Hates Elon:

"Meta has spent years tracking us online," said a spokesperson for Everybody Hates Elon. "Now it wants to track us in the real world too." [...] "Meta and Ray-Ban's new AI glasses can be used to secretly record women and young people for sexual reasons," the EHE spokesperson continued in their statement. "Simply put, that's abuse."

EHE poses one simple question: "Billionaires could fund cures for cancer -- so why are they funding glasses for perverts instead?"

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Twenty-five years ago today, on July 13th 2001, was the first event at DNA Lounge under current management. I am very old and I have been leaning on this bar for a very long time.

Typically we treat Nov 22 as our "real" anniversary (the club will be turning 41 this year) but 25 is kind of a shocking number, so I thought that was worth noting. Check out what used to pass for photo galleries two and a half decades ago.

Traditionally this is where I do the usual "if you'd like us to be around for another 25 years" blah blah panhandling. So yeah, this would be a great time for you to join our Patreon or up your contribution, or make a one-time donation. We have been getting absolutely obliterated financially this year, the last few months specifically. Attendance has been way down across the board. You people need to start showing up, ok?

If Only There Had Been a Sign That the Face-Melting Nazi from Indiana Jones Wouldn't Make a Good Senator:

Boy, do I feel silly. Until now, I've been a passionate supporter of SS-Sturmbannführer Arnold Toht, the Nazi who got his face melted off by the sight of God, in his race for Senator. I believe the people of Maine deserve better than Susan Collins, and so even though I had some misgivings about Toht, I ignored every click and whirr of my moral compass to cheer him on.

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SOMA's cop supervisor takes a break from jailing drug addicts to ask a billionaire's nazi chatbot whether he can have a little genocide, as a treat:

Grok, what's the difference between right and wrong?

Last Sunday, San Francisco District 6 Supervisor Matt Dorsey relaxed after what was, for most, a fun-packed SF Pride by repeatedly prompting xAI chatbot Grok to provide justifications for the killings of civilians in Gaza by Israeli forces. [...]

In lieu of actually addressing his critics online, of which there were many in the replies, Dorsey only had eyes for Grok, a chatbot that is notorious for being programmed to push false narratives about politics, history, and everything else according to the very transparent whims of xAI's trillionaire backer, Elon Musk.

Matt, are you OK? I really mean that. I'm not trying to be funny. Frankly, I tried to write something satirical about what was happening -- tried to find a lighter way through this -- but the more I dug in, the more concerned I started to feel.

Only a year ago, some backend overcompensation by Grok's puppeteers resulted in the bot compulsively spitting out conspiracies about "white genocide" in South Africa, praising Adolf Hitler, and engaging in Holocaust denial. To that point, AI researchers have warned that AI boosters' framing of chatbots as objective and reliable could be weaponized to push propaganda and even encourage people to commit violence.

So of course, watching an elected official openly using it to confirm his very loaded questions about the correctness of killing civilians is unsettling -- even terrifying.

In his most recent dealings with Grok, the supervisor's behavior is giving off the sketch vibes of a person antagonizing those around him while not even looking at them. Instead, it's almost like he's staring off into space and talking to someone who isn't there.

As it stands today, X is a platform that actively facilitates the turning of brains into pudding. And if this were some rando in the city posting, it would be easy to dismiss them as another soul lost to AI obsession. But Dorsey represents a major and heavily populated slice of San Francisco, including Mid-Market, Mission Bay, SoMa, and other neighborhoods. Supervisors like him write legislation and have a profound impact on the lives of the people in their districts and the city at large.

If this is what he's doing publicly, what is he asking Grok in private?

Despite this, Matt remains only San Francisco's second-worst weird dude named Dorsey.

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