Sad Francisco

Dina from the Oakland People's Arms Embargo makes an easy case for why the US has to stop supplying Israel with F-16 bomber parts (and other weapons of mass destruction) via hubs like the Oakland Airport, while corporations like FedEx profit off genocide. Trung co-hosts.

Oakland People's Arms Embargo | IG

Sign the Petition

Palestinian Youth Movement

How South African Solidarity Encampments Worked with Left in the Bay

Refugee Landlords with Trung Nguyen

Support the show and get merch on Patreon: https://patreon.com/sadfrancisco

Trans historian Susan Stryker has been on the podcast to speak on the Compton's cafeteria riot and her documentary about the riot, Screaming Queens, and in March, she came on to speak about the third edition of Transgender History.

Susan's newest book Changing Gender is about gender, but also deals with considerations on how to live an ethical life in 2026; her acid trips in Joshua Tree and the history of the Zionist Mormon settlers who gave the tree its name; the jazz musician Ornette Coleman's circumcision; and how the Tenderloin was nicknamed the "neon sex jungle" back in the day. Recorded live at Fabulosa Books.

Changing Gender

More episodes

• Susan on Transgender History, vol. 3

• Susan on the Compton's Cafeteria riot

• Sophie Lewis on Enemy Feminisms

Screaming Queens (KQED's YouTube)

What leads movement groups to dissolve? Three members of ACT UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power) San Francisco talk about the group's split following the Big Pharma-pilled 6th International AIDS Conference in 1990.

You'll get a history of the local chapter of ACT UP, which was the most notorious organization to come out of the time when HIV was a death sentence, but beyond ACT UP, I'm interested in how movements keep going, how to deal with drama in groups, and when to refocus your energy.

FYI: this episode combines one conversation with Deeg and Kate Raphael, and a separate conversation with Dean Ouelette. I tried to make it flow, but you can decide if I succeeded or not.

LAGAI Queer Insurrection! (Ultraviolet is LAGAI's quarterly zine)

Queers Undermining Israeli Terrorism! (QUIT!)

Deeg and Kate have a piece in the upcoming anthology ACT UP Beyond New York: Stories and Strategies from a Movement to End the AIDS Crisis, out fall 2027 from Haymarket Books.

ADHD key to figures and organizations discussed this episode

AIDS Action Pledge. The name of both a written pledge to protest, and a group formed to combat, the politician Lyndon LaRouche's attempts to quarantine everyone with HIV and his anti-immigrant English-only initiatives. Started under the name Citizens for Medical Justice.

Bathhouse Coalition. Formed against the 1984 policy banning bathhouses in San Francisco.

CONTINUED HERE because podcast apps have character limits.

Support the show and get merch on Patreon: https://patreon.com/sadfrancisco

Another rabbit hole of an episode all about San Francisco's billionaire, Zionist, Levi's jeans-heir mayor and his clique. Mostly a bunch of bored billionaires who want to decide the future of San Francisco and if they get their way, the world. TW for electoralism.

The Phoenix Project | Instagram | Twitter

More Phoenix Project episodes

Jeremy on TogetherSF, the now-defunct rightwing lobby group | Jeremy on the rise and fall of the San Francisco "Doom Loop" narrative | Julie Pitta on GrowSF

Events

9/17, 7 PM: I'll be talking with Susan Stryker about her new book Changing Gender at Fabulosa Books (489 Castro Street, SF).

9/23, 7 PM: PUML presents The Internet Live and In-Person (at Make Out Room, 3224 22nd Street, SF).

ADHD key to figures and organizations discussed this episode

Daniel's clique and projects

• Chris Larsen. Crypto billionaire of Ripple Labs who, with his wife Lyna Lam, funds the cops and Trump so they look the other way. One of his pet projects is the SFPD Realtime Investigation Center, a surveillance den in Ripple's old offices at 315 Montgomery Street, which is partially owned by the Trumps, which he funds through the SF Police Community Foundation.

• CONTINUED HERE because podcast apps have character limits.

Support the show on Patreon: https://patreon.com/sadfrancisco

A decade ago, the Google bus was a hard-to-escape symbol of the housing unaffordability crisis in SF, as Manissa Maharawal describes in her new book, Anti-Eviction.

Manissa works with the Anti-Eviction Mapping Project and teaches anthropology at American University. Discussed: How politicians coddle the tech sociopaths, 9-9-6, and burning piles of e-scooters.

Manissa's site

Anti-Eviction (code UCPSAVE30 = 30% off)

Counterpoints: A San Francisco Bay Area Atlas of Displacement and Resistance

FoundSF: Protesting Techsploitation in the 2010s (protest photos by Chris Carlsson)

KRON 4: 5 tech buses reportedly shot with pellet guns

SF housing groups

Gay Shame

Bay TANC

Coalition on Homelessness

POOR Magazine

SF Community Land Trust

SF Tenants Union

SOMCAN

WSTA

WRAP

Episodes

Erin McElroy on Silicon Valley Imperialism

WSTA: "We Keep Each Other Housed"

Events

9/12, 7 p.m.: Homotopia and Criminal Queers at Human Resources

9/17, 7 p.m.: Susan Stryker & Toshio talk Susan's book Changing Gender at Fabulosa Books

Support the show and get merch on Patreon: https://patreon.com/sadfrancisco

One of our tech overlords, Mark Zuckerberg recently published a manifesto in the Wall Street Journal describing why we should cheerlead him on his quest for infinite growth and profits.

Eddie Kim writes for the anti-generative AI outlet Gazetteer SF, and several of his recent pieces contend with why Marc Andreesen (venture capitalist, Andreesen Horowitz/a16z), Alex Karp (co-founder with Peter Thiel of surveillance giant Palantir), and Zuckerberg keep larping as Aristotle.

Also discussed: Crime reporting that only takes into account press releases from the District Attorney and Mayor's offices, how tech media article slop fed the AI bubble, and the Luigi Mangione effect.

Eddie for Gazetteer:

Asshole shrugged [on Mark Zuckerberg's manifesto]

The banality of Palantir's evil airport ad

Eddie on Twitter/X

Mark Zuckerberg for the Wall Street Journal: The AI Future Is for Everyone

Palantir on Twitter/X: The Technological Republic

CNBC: New CNBC Generation Lab poll shows almost half of 18- to 34-year-olds see democratic socialism positively

Most recent PatronScan coverage from Cydney Hayes: 'Members of the LGBTQ+ community have legitimate reasons to be sensitive about privacy'

Thom Waite (Dazed): Techno-fascist fashion: Why Silicon Valley is moving into menswear

Episodes:

Enter the Panopticon with Ian Firstenberg

Aesthetics of the New Rightwing Tech Intelligentsia with Jimmy Wu

Support the show and get merch on Patreon: https://patreon.com/sadfrancisco

PS. The 60th anniversary of the Compton's Cafeteria riot is this year. Come see Susan Stryker's documentary about the riot, Screaming Queens, on 8/27 in SF. It's free, and Susan Stryker and dee(dee) c. ardan from the podcast are also on the lineup. There will be Sad Francisco merch for sale.

What was the filmic movement called mumblecore? Jemma Decristo and dee(dee) c. ardan offer an abridged history of the post-college-centric genre that went mainstream in the early 2000s.

One of few mumblecore movies with a Black director and Black leads is 2008's indie romance Medicine for Melancholy by Barry Jenkins, before he did Moonlight If Beale Street Could Talk, and the 2024 Lion King sequel.

In the movie, girl living in the Marina hooks up with boy living in the Tenderloin, and a meditation on gentrification ensues, replete with a cameo by anti-gentrification activist Tommi Avicolli Mecca.

Return to the time of "violently heterosexual" hipsters on fixed-gear bikes as we talk MOAD vs. MOMA, the influence of Criterion, Awkwafina's blaccent, and why being the solitary blerd or gaysian in an otherwise white clique should never be the goal.

Episode: Jemma on her book The Aesthetic Character of Blackness: Sounds Like Us

Support the show and get merch: https://patreon.com/sadfrancisco

In 2026, dead internet theory—the idea that most of the internet is bots and AI-generated content—is more reality than theory.

Matthew Lawson co-hosts Eating For Free—a podcast critiquing American culture and politics through the lens of pop culture—with Paper Magazine editor Joan Summers. In their series "It's All Bots, Girl," they've been reporting on the corporations and politicians (Benjamin Netanyahu, for example) who are engaged in psychological warfare against the rest of us, using bots that pretend like they're real people on the internet.

Topics discussed include industry plants, fake fan accounts, and manufactured hate campaigns devised to control discourse and sell you products. And possibly to punish Chappell Roan for being a gay woman who supports Palestine and Epstein survivors.

Eating For Free

https://eatingforfree.com/

https://www.instagram.com/eatingforfree/

https://x.com/_matthewlawson

Eliza McLamb: Fake Fans

https://www.wordsfromeliza.com/p/fake-fans

Times of Israel: Netanyahu, allies using armies of bots to influence social media discourse – report

https://www.timesofisrael.com/netanyahu-allies-using-armies-of-bots-to-influence-social-media-discourse-report/

Madiswan on YouTube: Is Zeus Network a CIA Psyop?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-9wU2sRdpY

Buzzfeed: In the Chapell Roan controversy, 23% of posts were bots

https://www.buzzfeed.com/natashajokic1/chappell-roan-controversy-bots

Zeteo: The Fake 'Invasion' of Spain: What You Need to Know

https://zeteo.com/p/the-fake-invasion-of-spain-what-you

What did Epstein have to do with 4Chan, and Ghislane have to do with Reddit?

https://www.ms.now/opinion/jeffrey-epstein-4chan-chris-poole

Support the show and get merch on Patreon: https://patreon.com/sadfrancisco

The government is putting queers on lists and hunting undocumented people at the Home Depot parking lot. Have you ever felt so seen?

Sad Francisco Surveillance State Correspondent Ian Firstenberg returns to talk about our current dystopia, but it's not all bad news: people are destroying FLOCK cameras with abandon, protests against data centers are getting bigger, and Garry Tan is freshly single.

Ian's recent piece for 48Hills on the death of privacy culture in San Francisco: https://48hills.org/2026/07/what-happened-to-sfs-privacy-culture/

Cydney Hayes for Gazetteer: Why do these Castro gay bars have TSA-style face scanners: https://sf.gazetteer.co/why-do-these-castro-gay-bars-have-tsa-style-face-scanners

Matt Wolfinger for Working Mass: The Dungeon Over Lowell: How the Data Center Boom Divided One City's Working People: https://working-mass.com/2026/06/10/the-dungeon-over-lowell-how-the-data-center-boom-has-divided-one-citys-working-people/

ShotSpotter lobbyist's dramatic monologue at an Oakland City Hall hearing (via Jaime Omar Yassin / @hyphy_republic on X): https://x.com/hyphy_republic/status/1846598258308825144

Noah Shachtman and Maddy Varner for Wired: "Madison Square Garden Kept a List of Gay Celebrities": https://www.wired.com/story/madison-square-garden-celebrity-database-surveillance/

Andy Greenberg and Dhruv Mehrotra for Wired: "A Leak of San Francisco Police Drone Footage Exposes the New Reality of Urban Surveillance": https://www.wired.com/story/sfpd-drone-video-leak-surveillance/

DeFlockSF (IG): https://www.instagram.com/deflocksf/

Have I Been Flocked?: https://haveibeenflocked.com/

Ian's last episode: https://www.patreon.com/sadfrancisco/posts/home-sweet-state-158916825

Episode with StopAI: https://www.patreon.com/sadfrancisco/posts/end-agi-before-127632638/

Support the show and get merch on Patreon: https://patreon.com/sadfrancisco

The government is putting queers on lists and hunting undocumented people at the Home Depot parking lot. Have you ever felt so seen?

Sad Francisco Surveillance State Correspondent Ian Firstenberg returns to talk about our current dystopia, but it's not all bad news: people are destroying FLOCK cameras with abandon, protests against data centers are getting bigger, and Garry Tan is freshly single.

Ian's recent piece for 48Hills on the death of privacy culture in San Francisco: https://48hills.org/2026/07/what-happened-to-sfs-privacy-culture/

Cydney Hayes for Gazetteer: Why do these Castro gay bars have TSA-style face scanners: https://sf.gazetteer.co/why-do-these-castro-gay-bars-have-tsa-style-face-scanners

Matt Wolfinger for Working Mass: The Dungeon Over Lowell: How the Data Center Boom Divided One City's Working People: https://working-mass.com/2026/06/10/the-dungeon-over-lowell-how-the-data-center-boom-has-divided-one-citys-working-people/

ShotSpotter lobbyist's dramatic monologue at an Oakland City Hall hearing (via Jaime Omar Yassin / @hyphy_republic on X): https://x.com/hyphy_republic/status/1846598258308825144

Noah Shachtman and Maddy Varner for Wired: "Madison Square Garden Kept a List of Gay Celebrities": https://www.wired.com/story/madison-square-garden-celebrity-database-surveillance/

Andy Greenberg and Dhruv Mehrotra for Wired: "A Leak of San Francisco Police Drone Footage Exposes the New Reality of Urban Surveillance": https://www.wired.com/story/sfpd-drone-video-leak-surveillance/

DeFlockSF (IG): https://www.instagram.com/deflocksf/

Have I Been Flocked?: https://haveibeenflocked.com/

Ian's last episode: https://www.patreon.com/sadfrancisco/posts/home-sweet-state-158916825

Episode with StopAI: https://www.patreon.com/sadfrancisco/posts/end-agi-before-127632638/

Support the show and get merch on Patreon: https://patreon.com/sadfrancisco