This document establishes a policy for how LLMs can be used when contributing to rust-lang/rust. [...]

No comment on this PR may mention the following topics:

• Long-term social or economic impact of LLMs
• The environmental impact of LLMs
• Anything to do with the copyright status of LLM output
• Moral judgements about people who use LLMs

We have asked the moderation team to help us enforce these rules.

Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.]]> https://cdn.jwz.org/blog/2026/05/the-rust-evangelism-task-force-has-declared-ethics-to-be-out-of-scope/feed/ 3 https://www.jwz.org/blog/2026/05/today-in-fascists-and-their-dongs-news/ https://www.jwz.org/blog/2026/05/today-in-fascists-and-their-dongs-news/#respond Fri, 15 May 2026 19:03:42 +0000 https://jwz.org/b/yk7T Not The Onion:

Penile implant specialist with history of far-right comments led hantavirus presser:

Before he joined the Trump administration last year, Dr. Brian Christine was an Alabama-based urologist who specialized in penile implants. He has little public health experience and a history of far-right commentary and promoting conspiracy theories. He's said the Covid pandemic led to a wider government plot to control people, compared the Biden administration to Nazi Germany and suggested the Covid vaccine had little effect in stopping the pandemic.

He once hosted a YouTube show called "Erection Connection," a professional YouTube series on erectile dysfunction for fellow urologists.

A CNN review of archived podcast episodes, social media posts and radio appearances found that Christine repeatedly framed public health institutions, the federal government and pandemic-era policies as tools used to target conservatives and religious Americans.

Previously, previously, previously.]]> https://cdn.jwz.org/blog/2026/05/today-in-fascists-and-their-dongs-news/feed/ 0 https://www.jwz.org/blog/2026/05/internet-of-shit/ https://www.jwz.org/blog/2026/05/internet-of-shit/#comments Fri, 15 May 2026 01:46:08 +0000 https://jwz.org/b/yk7R AI Poop Analysis App Offered to Sell Me Database of Its Users' Poops

The post was advertising exactly what it sounds like: A database of poop images, collected from an AI poop analyzing app that he had launched several years ago. Basically, 25,000 people had been taking images of their poop and uploading them to his app. He'd been collecting, analyzing, and annotating these images and now wanted to sell access to them. [...]

The poop database comes from an app called PoopCheck, an app made by a company called Soft All Things that purports to use AI to analyze images of one's stool in order to give you a "daily gut health score." [...]

The app also features a "community," of 151,317 "shared stools" at the time of this writing and a "leaderboard," where people can share images of their poop for commentary from other users and earn points for participating.

Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.]]> https://cdn.jwz.org/blog/2026/05/internet-of-shit/feed/ 23 https://www.jwz.org/blog/2026/05/i-see-1password-is-stepping-on-the-rake-again/ https://www.jwz.org/blog/2026/05/i-see-1password-is-stepping-on-the-rake-again/#comments Thu, 14 May 2026 17:35:50 +0000 https://jwz.org/b/yk7M The brain geniuses securing your passwords just squirted out this statement:

At 1Password, we applied agentic tooling to a multi-million-line Go monolith.

(No I'm not linking to it.) Ok first, how in the everloving fuck did you allow a password manager to reach multiple millions of lines??

(I assume they're not even counting the entire embedded copy of Chrome that lurks inside 1Password.)

And now they sloppified it, so more people are jumping ship.

Welp, I warned you about 1Password's self-immolation in 2023 and posted a migration guide. You're welcome.

Please note: If you have come here to recommend a different password manager, I implore you to not do that, as I just do not care. This is what I did. If something else works for you, good for you. Write it up on your own blog.

Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.]]> https://cdn.jwz.org/blog/2026/05/i-see-1password-is-stepping-on-the-rake-again/feed/ 76 https://www.jwz.org/blog/2026/05/how-to-radicalize-investment-bankers-against-ai/ https://www.jwz.org/blog/2026/05/how-to-radicalize-investment-bankers-against-ai/#comments Wed, 13 May 2026 06:13:12 +0000 https://jwz.org/b/yk7J Plunge their ski resorts into darkness for data centers:

The Sierra Nevada tourist hub -- home to ski resorts, lakeside casinos, and roughly 25 to 28 million annual visitors -- is facing an energy crisis with a familiar culprit: the data centers powering the AI boom.

NV Energy, the Nevada utility that has supplied the bulk of Lake Tahoe's electricity for decades, told Liberty Utilities -- the small California company that services the region -- that it will stop providing power after May 2027. The reason? NV Energy needs the capacity for data centers. As in: the energy supplier for the Lake Tahoe region is telling the utility company that it has less than a year to find another power source.

Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.]]> https://cdn.jwz.org/blog/2026/05/how-to-radicalize-investment-bankers-against-ai/feed/ 16 https://www.jwz.org/blog/2026/05/speaking-of-robot-bartenders/ https://www.jwz.org/blog/2026/05/speaking-of-robot-bartenders/#comments Tue, 12 May 2026 21:42:46 +0000 https://jwz.org/b/yk7G slopfondler post... From a recent email exchange:

They:	I just re-read your 2021 Cocktail Robotics cancellation post: "Weren't able to round up enough robots... maybe Plague World just isn't ready for barbots yet." Curious what your read is. On one hand, TechShop closed, hackerspaces shrinking, weekend builders aging into other responsibilities. On the other, robotics as a professional field is bigger than it's ever been, so it's not that the people are gone, it's that the unpaid-saturday-night version of them is. Covid artifact or structural?
jwz:	Yeah, I dunno. Maybe the spirit of whimsy has left the land. Or at least been evicted from San Francisco. You're the first person to even mention Cocktail Robotics to me in I-can't-remember-how-long. So it's not as if people are banging on the door asking me "Hey, when's that coming back, I've got a cool idea..." And, oh wow, can you imagine what an AI-slop shitshow it would be now? Half the entries would be "I made a vending machine that can talk like a sexy secretary, I think we might try to get VC funding for this".
They:	Yeah, the sexy secretary vending machine fear is real. Half the discord servers full of robotics hobbyists in 2026 are also half-full of people workshopping their seed pitch.
jwz:	That is horrifying and unsurprising. Also that this is all happening on Discord instead of out in the open on the fediverse means that I'd never even see it...
They:	Yup - I'm in a handful of robotics and adjacent slack/discord communities and that's the shape of it. Maybe I'm in the wrong ones. Would you say the fediverse has any meaningful SF robotics/maker presence these days?
jwz:	None that I've seen!

Previously, previously.]]> https://cdn.jwz.org/blog/2026/05/speaking-of-robot-bartenders/feed/ 14 https://www.jwz.org/blog/2026/05/a-slopfondler-walks-into-a-bar-redux/ https://www.jwz.org/blog/2026/05/a-slopfondler-walks-into-a-bar-redux/#comments Tue, 12 May 2026 20:34:42 +0000 https://jwz.org/b/yk7E blah blah Mozilla blah blah Code Rush, whatever... but lately all they want to do is proselytize "AI" at me. This has been 100% of fanboy interactions this year. And then they're shocked when I don't want to hear about their awesome project and in fact I tell them that what they are doing is unethical and harmful.

It's so weird, like: you sought me out at my place of business and the first thing you do is demonstrate that you haven't read my blog, ever.

This is getting so frequent that I feel like I would save time if I actually memorized a prepared speech. "I have been asked to read the following statement."

A couple of weeks ago one of these kids kept throwing out all of these ridiculous sci-fi what-ifs leading me to say, "I really need you to understand this, Lieutenant Commander Data is a work of fiction."

Then later he says:

Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.]]> https://cdn.jwz.org/blog/2026/05/a-slopfondler-walks-into-a-bar-redux/feed/ 27 https://www.jwz.org/blog/2026/05/life-imitates-carpenter-once-more/ https://www.jwz.org/blog/2026/05/life-imitates-carpenter-once-more/#comments Tue, 12 May 2026 19:20:02 +0000 https://jwz.org/b/yk7B On Thursday, I hosted a screening of They Live. And then today this happened. Racist, election-denying, insider-trading, fascist, methane-breathing space ghoul "Coach" Tommy Tuberville busts out the Hoffman lenses.

People keep describing things as "mask off" but this is just getting ridiculous.

Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.]]> https://cdn.jwz.org/blog/2026/05/life-imitates-carpenter-once-more/feed/ 7 https://www.jwz.org/blog/2026/05/operation-epic-furious/ https://www.jwz.org/blog/2026/05/operation-epic-furious/#comments Mon, 11 May 2026 18:41:39 +0000 https://jwz.org/b/yk6_

Three "fully functional" arcade games were installed Monday at the District of Columbia War Memorial. According to the group, the game features "furious tweet battles against Iranian schoolgirls, low-flow shower heads, and other threats to American freedom like DEI and The Pope, and an opportunity to collect several Trump style peace trophies."

"Just to save you time, the only way you can lose is by trying to hold Melania's hand. But it's The Middle East, so you also can't win either," the group said in a statement shared with HuffPost.

A plaque next to the machines states: "The Trump administration knows that the best way to sell combat is by making it a video game, that's why they've been pumping out the 'sickest' Iran War video game hype reels. But why stop at clips when you could go full throttle? Introducing Operation Epic Furious: Strait to Hell, a high-octane, flag-waving, boots-on-the-ground simulator where freedom isn't debated, it's deployed. No briefings, no hesitation; just pure pixelated patriotism. Strap in and play hard, because this game may never end."

The arcade games are expected to stay at the D.C. War Memorial, located near the reflecting pool in West Potomac Park, for a few days. The group also made the game available online. [currently not working.]

Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.]]> https://cdn.jwz.org/blog/2026/05/operation-epic-furious/feed/ 4 https://www.jwz.org/blog/2026/05/this-fountain-is-not-going-down-without-a-fight/ https://www.jwz.org/blog/2026/05/this-fountain-is-not-going-down-without-a-fight/#comments Thu, 07 May 2026 00:41:19 +0000 https://jwz.org/b/yk69 Flames erupt as crews dismantle Vaillancourt Fountain:

▶︎

▶︎

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

It is very easy to find either answer, but hard to find one that sounds like it's from someone who knows what they are talking about, and isn't just cargo-culting it or reading from a press release. So show your work.

Previously, previously, previously, previously.]]> https://cdn.jwz.org/blog/2026/05/file-systems/feed/ 24 https://www.jwz.org/blog/2026/05/happy-time_t-1777777777-to-all-who-celebrate/ https://www.jwz.org/blog/2026/05/happy-time_t-1777777777-to-all-who-celebrate/#comments Sun, 03 May 2026 03:09:07 +0000 https://jwz.org/b/yk62 # date +'%F %r %Z = %s'
2026-05-02 08:09:37 PM PDT = 1777777777

Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.]]> https://cdn.jwz.org/blog/2026/05/happy-time_t-1777777777-to-all-who-celebrate/feed/ 13 https://www.jwz.org/blog/2026/05/a-c-a-bee/ https://www.jwz.org/blog/2026/05/a-c-a-bee/#comments Sat, 02 May 2026 20:27:02 +0000 https://jwz.org/b/yk60 Six-Month Sentence in Bee-Assault Case

She seems to have argued at trial that she had no intent to harm anyone, and had only released the bees so they could "enjoy the lovely, flowering landscape" in the area. The landscape was also infested with deputies, though, and the jury does not seem to have believed that was a coincidence. [...]

I've seen no evidence that the one deputy taken to the hospital suffered from anaphylactic shock. It seems a lot more likely that his "elevated heart rate" was caused by his decision to tackle a 59-year-old beekeeper than by the bees themselves. But I'm speculating about that. [...]

This week, the judge sentenced Woods to six months on those charges. According to her lawyer, with time served she will be out in two weeks anyway. [...]

Finally, kudos to The Guardian for refusing to let society ignore the real victims in this case: the bees. "[A]bout a thousand of Woods's bees died during the encounter," it reported, "many of them crushed when several hives toppled as she wrestled with deputies trying to arrest her, and others because female honeybees die after delivering their sting." I assume that "about a thousand" is based on a careful reckoning by a court-appointed bee expert and not just a number that Woods threw out there. Regardless, while I don't really buy the deputies' story here, I do sympathize with the bees. They have enough trouble these days without humans getting them involved in dispute resolution. Leave the bees out of it.

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District 4 shaping up to be San Francisco's loudest and silliest race:

This level of turmoil befitting a Latin American junta is, again, incongruous for a nice, quiet little beach community. But, again, don't believe it -- this is a place where odd stuff happens. District 4 voters have managed to elect two representatives who later spent time in federal prison -- Leland Yee and Ed Jew. Other than Dan White, who murdered Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk, the only supes to be incarcerated have been from District 4. And, for what it's worth, both of them went down for on-the-job crimes. [...] In the era of district elections, no D4 supervisor has served two full terms. No district has run through more representatives than District 4. [...]

And yet these are the issues getting the most play in this race: hand-waving about a done-deal zoning plan, calling for the installation of a Great Highway on top of Great Highway and pushing distorted and hyperbolic crime narratives during a time of citywide and nationwide crime reductions. But it gets better: All of this is being undertaken via a tsunami of third-party cash. Vast sums of money are flowing into the sleepy Sunset to further rile everyone up.

Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.]]> https://cdn.jwz.org/blog/2026/04/single-issue-voters/feed/ 8 https://www.jwz.org/blog/2026/04/respectful/ https://www.jwz.org/blog/2026/04/respectful/#comments Mon, 27 Apr 2026 18:43:21 +0000 https://jwz.org/b/yk6u Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.]]> https://cdn.jwz.org/blog/2026/04/respectful/feed/ 10 https://www.dnalounge.com/backstage/log/2026/04/25.html Sat, 25 Apr 2026 22:01:46 +0000 https://jwz.org/b/yk6r And about 1 time in 100, the customer draws a little picture for us instead. So I thought I should share some of those.

If you're thinking, "they're all dicks, aren't they"...

...you are a smart person.

Of the drawings, I'd say that it's 90% dongs; the rest are a mixture of smilies, pentagrams and cats, in about that order.

(I especially like the ones that just wrote out the word "PENIS", which is like, the Philip K. Dick of dicks.)

To generate this gallery, I had to place eyeballs on hundreds of thousands of signatures, going back to 2021. That's right, I just white-knuckled it, you're welcome. (If you're about to start replying with "Why Didn't You Just", I am begging you to Not.)

Now, if you're thinking, "Wait, why do you even still have that 5-year-old data"... you are, again, a smart person.

Even though the payment processors won't let you issue a refund or a chargeback on a transaction older than 6 months, our point-of-sale saves every bit of information it has about every transaction forever. "Oh geez, you should delete that" you might be thinking. There literally is not a delete button.

After a year, one might want to look at daily graphs, but there's no way you'd care about individual transactions, or anything of higher aggregate resolution than "hourly". Maybe "10 minutes" if you're a complete maniac. But nope, we still have the full PDF of the receipt, including name, last-four, scrawled signature and exactly what products were purchased.

(Though, the customer name isn't included most of the time, only sometimes. I'm not sure what the difference is.)

Anyway that means that when -- not if, when -- this vendor gets popped, all of that data will be stolen, sold, laundered, mixed, and purchased by a data broker who will annotate their profile about you with how much you drink and what, how many nights a week, and whether you attend gay parties. Some of it might even be true! That profile will then be purchased by your car insurance company, your health insurance company, the recruiters used by every future employer, Google, Amazon, Instagram, ICE, TSA, FBI, CIA, all of the "AI" companies, and Deputy Dewey of the East Cowfuck, Texas Police Department.

Oh no, what started off as a juvenile story about poorly-drawn dicks turned into a dystopian nightmare. Welp.]]> https://www.jwz.org/blog/2026/04/everything-is-free-and-nothing-matters/ https://www.jwz.org/blog/2026/04/everything-is-free-and-nothing-matters/#comments Wed, 22 Apr 2026 19:03:08 +0000 https://jwz.org/b/yk6p Noah Hawley:

This is different from classic narcissism, in which a grandiose but fragile self-image can mask deep insecurity. What I'm talking about is a self-definition in which the individual grows to the size of the universe, and the universe vanishes. [...]

Decades of research in developmental psychology have shown that moral reasoning develops through consequences -- not punishment, necessarily, but experiencing the effects of your actions on others, receiving honest feedback, having to accommodate reality as it actually is rather than as you wish it to be. It's not that the wealthy become evil; it's that their environment stops teaching them the things that nonwealthy people are forced to learn simply by living in a world that pushes back. When you can buy your way out of any mistake, when you can fire anyone who disagrees with you, when your social circle consists entirely of people who need something from you, the basic mechanism by which humans learn that other people are real goes dark.

When Peter Thiel said, "I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible," he wasn't talking about your freedom. He was talking about his own. You don't exist.

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Good, good...

I guess the matryoshka doll of shell companies begins with 340-350 11th Street LLC. The realtor on that sign does not acknowledge it existing. Zillow has a listing for it, which might be entirely fiction, but it does have this banger of a photo of the property that they lifted from street view. What's not to love!

He called Gamble's husband as a witness to testify that he had withdrawn bail money before they attended the protest, as if she knew she was going to break the law in advance.

"I always make sure we got bail money on us," Larry Fletcher responded, to laughter from the gallery. "I have bail money on me now. Whenever there are this many cops around I have bail money on me."

There were no fewer than 16 uniformed police officers standing around the perimeter of the courtroom. [...]

Outside the courtroom, Mary Kay Smith was dressed up in an eggplant costume waving a "NO KINGS - NO DICK-TATORS" sign. "I am here for the Constitution," she said. "The arrest was violent, abusive and uncalled for. It was not even civilized behavior."

Shelly Welch was standing alongside Smith, with a sign depicting a half-peeled banana with a bite taken. "FREE SPEECH SHOULDN'T BE HARD TO SWALLOW," it read.

Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.]]> https://cdn.jwz.org/blog/2026/04/penis-costume-protester-prevails-in-court/feed/ 1 https://www.jwz.org/blog/2026/04/global-tetrahedron-2/ https://www.jwz.org/blog/2026/04/global-tetrahedron-2/#comments Mon, 20 Apr 2026 18:58:02 +0000 https://jwz.org/b/yk6i At Long Last, InfoWars Is Ours:

Imagine a roaring arena packed to the rafters with pathological liars. High above you in the nosebleeds are podcasters, screaming that you'll die if you don't buy their skincare products. Below, on the floor, imagine demonic battalions of super-influencers physically forcing people into home fitness devices designed to dismantle their bodies bone by bone and reassemble them into a grotesque statue of yourself. Out of the throngs, an extremely sick looking man approaches you. He puts his hands on your shoulders. He explains that he is your life coach and that you owe him $800.

Such is the InfoWars I envision: An infinite virtual surface teeming with ads. Not just ads, but scams! Not just scams, but lies with no object, free radical misinformation, sentences and images so poorly thought out that they are unhealthy even to view for just a few seconds. The InfoWars of old was only the prototype for the hell I know we can build together: A digital platform where, every day, visitors sacrifice themselves at altars of delusion and misery, their minds fully disintegrating on contact.

Previously, previously.]]> https://cdn.jwz.org/blog/2026/04/global-tetrahedron-2/feed/ 9 https://www.dnalounge.com/backstage/log/2026/04/20.html Mon, 20 Apr 2026 18:45:24 +0000 https://jwz.org/b/yk6g Long Live The Pound: The Forgotten 2000s Venue That Changed the Bay Area:

At The Pound, Carracci, Cardinal and Cipriano carved out a pivotal and mostly unsung revolution in San Francisco's legendary music scene. The Pound was born on Feb. 8, 2001 with Jerry Cantrell from Alice in Chains playing the venue's first show. Its short-but-influential run lasted just five years; the Port Authority pulled the plug on their lease in fall 2006.

Along the way, The Pound hosted a blizzard of early 2000s bands that would go on to become household names [...] "Back then, no one wanted to touch these bands. The powers that be did not believe that these bands had any kind of draw, staying power. They're playing stadiums now," Cipriano tells KQED. "I was right. My big prize for being right is all the bands eventually go on to Live Nation and suddenly there's no room for the independent venues."

Cip is our booker here at DNA Lounge, so if you've enjoyed live music here in recent years, that has almost certainly been thanks to him!

Speaking of independent venues... About a year ago Yolo, the bottle service club that replaced Slim's in 2020 closed. (Oh no.) Then in January it was announced that some Oakland rapper bought it and named it after himself. Well The Budda seems to be closed already. The sign is painted over and everything. As far as I can tell they only did like a dozen events there total. They didn't even have a web site for the first month, only Instagram.

So I'm sure that's all going really well.

I've heard that Thee Parkside's last live show will be this weekend, and they're closing for good in July. And Bottom of the Hill is still planning to close at the end of the year.

Will the last band to play San Francisco please turn out the lights?

In the meantime here at DNA Lounge, we're still pushing that boulder up the hill. Same liver different eagles, as I often say. Come see some shows.]]> https://www.jwz.org/blog/2026/04/pablo-escobars-cocaine-hippos-are-doomed/ https://www.jwz.org/blog/2026/04/pablo-escobars-cocaine-hippos-are-doomed/#comments Sat, 18 Apr 2026 21:49:50 +0000 https://jwz.org/b/yk6e After two years of failed attempts at relocation and sterilization, Colombia's government has decided it will euthanize 80 of the at least 169 "cocaine hippos" that were once owned by notorious drug trafficker Pablo Escobar.

"Without this action it is impossible to control them," said Colombia's environment minister Irene Vélez at a press conference on Monday. Citing estimates that the population could reach at least 500 individuals by 2030, "affecting our ecosystems and native species," she added that "it is our responsibility to take this action." [...]

In 2022 the government launched a sterilization program to slow reproduction of the hippos, which could number up to 200 individuals. At the same time, officials opened talks with seven countries and two international zoo and aquarium associations to relocate the animals. To date, no country has agreed to take even a single hippo, according to the Colombian government, which ultimately led its Ministry of Environment to opt for euthanasia.

Widespread sterilization is not a viable option because it is a "cumbersome, costly and dangerous procedure that progresses at a very slow pace," says Jorge Moreno Bernal, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of the North in Barranquilla, Colombia. A single sterilization requires cranes and puts human lives at risk, he says. "It is not like sterilizing a dog or a cat."

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Viral video handed to insurers as evidence seemed to show a bear in a 2010 Rolls-Royce Ghost in Lake Arrowhead on 28 January 2024. Similar claims were filed on the same date and location for two high-end Mercedes models. But biologists with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife reviewed the footage and determined it showed a human in a bear suit.

Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.]]> https://cdn.jwz.org/blog/2026/04/insurance-fraud-fursona/feed/ 10 https://www.jwz.org/blog/2026/04/joy-which-they-have-rebranded-as-economic-impact/ https://www.jwz.org/blog/2026/04/joy-which-they-have-rebranded-as-economic-impact/#comments Thu, 16 Apr 2026 23:07:48 +0000 https://jwz.org/b/yk6Z 'How Could You Be Against Joy?': Bay Area Artists Are Turning on the Civic Joy Fund:

Crypto billionaire Larsen -- who is currently spending tens of millions of dollars to prop up moderate candidates in California, fight labor unions, defeat the state billionaires tax and San Francisco's own overpaid CEO tax -- is still one of the Civic Joy Fund's biggest benefactors. This is reflected on the organization's own "funders" page, which lists cute categories for these very wealthy people, like "Disco Queens," "Street Sparklers," and "Joy Makers." [...]

In February, at the "Music Industry Summit" -- the conclusion to San Francisco Music Week, another Lurie project -- I watched as the mayor strode to the stage at the Swedish American Music Hall. There, before an audience of struggling artists, engineers, and small venue staff, he triumphantly reported that the last summer of concerts in Golden Gate Park resulted in "$150 million worth of economic impact," and that, according to new data, "our independent music venues generate $1.4 billion in economic impact annually."

Lurie paused for applause. "That's because of all of you in this room."

We clapped dutifully, but the people in that room did not need to be reassured that they had contributed to $1.4 billion in "economic impact." They would have preferred to hear that any of their favorite clubs might exist next year. The people in that room could use health insurance -- and they might be able to afford it if Lurie's billionaire buddies were taxed appropriately; say, with a one-time 5% excise tax on net worth exceeding $1 billion to save Medi-Cal.

But hey, that sentiment doesn't make for great social media content.

Indeed, the dissonance between Lurie's spirit-squad act around cultural events and the material struggles of the people actually making the culture is, at times, ear-splitting. One gets the sense he is physically unable to hear it.

"Those of us on the ground who work in [music] know that it has never been more difficult to be here, and try and provide the city with the core thing it is known for historically, which is free-thinking progressive ideologies and good art," says Austin Waz, frontman of the band Analog Dog and a booker at Kilowatt. "We see the incredible amount of venues going out of business, people losing their jobs left and right. We have an absolute crisis."

It's frustrating, he says, to see the large-scale parties into which the Civic Joy Fund pours resources. "It's one day, and they put $100,000, $200,000 into these things, and it's like -- you could have saved an entire community with that. You could have created the conditions that would allow a venue to flourish for years," says Waz. "You're not thinking about how to develop or support artists who come from the city ... it's a slap in the face to put up some [barricades] in the street and say, 'Look how wonderful this all is.'" [...]

"I'm hearing artists rightfully starting to question, like, 'Ultimately, who is this for?'" says Guest of the block parties. "Is it for the public, or is it to set up this area as being worthy of real estate investment? Because if the point of it is to cater towards visitors ... it's really not about supporting art or artists at all."

Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.]]> https://cdn.jwz.org/blog/2026/04/joy-which-they-have-rebranded-as-economic-impact/feed/ 5 https://www.jwz.org/blog/2026/04/ai-vegan/ https://www.jwz.org/blog/2026/04/ai-vegan/#comments Thu, 16 Apr 2026 20:00:19 +0000 https://jwz.org/b/yk6V "uwu smol" ways, and, I dunno, I guess they do a land acknowledgment before they boil a lake or whatever.

If anyone is an "AI vegan" it's me -- I don't use these tools at all, ever, because they are unethical. Telling me that they are delicious is not going to make them ethical.

Also, I will endlessly berate you about your use.

That's veganism, you're welcome.

Previously, previously, previously, previously.]]> https://cdn.jwz.org/blog/2026/04/ai-vegan/feed/ 59 https://www.jwz.org/blog/2026/04/honk-honk-its-the-bonk/ https://www.jwz.org/blog/2026/04/honk-honk-its-the-bonk/#comments Thu, 16 Apr 2026 05:38:32 +0000 https://jwz.org/b/yk6S

The Composograph image above is illustrating the 1926 Peaches and Daddy Browning scandal, in which 15-year-old actress Frances "Peaches" Heenan married, and then swiftly tried to divorce, 51-year-old real estate developer Edward West "Daddy" Browning. The Evening Graphic's coverage included allegations that Daddy kept a live goose in their bedroom.

Previously, previously, previously.]]> https://cdn.jwz.org/blog/2026/04/honk-honk-its-the-bonk/feed/ 11 https://www.jwz.org/blog/2026/04/emphasis-on-con/ https://www.jwz.org/blog/2026/04/emphasis-on-con/#comments Wed, 15 Apr 2026 18:47:54 +0000 https://jwz.org/b/yk6O

Stefan Pildes [...] allegedly diverted funds from the event to a "slush fund" to pay for extensive renovations to a lakefront property in New Jersey, luxury vacations in Hawaii, Las Vegas, and Vail, Colorado, concert tickets, extravagant meals, and a luxury vehicle, prosecutors said.

About $124,000 of the SantaCon funds were spent toward leasing a luxury apartment in Manhattan, and another $100,000 was invested in a boutique resort in Costa Rica founded by a friend of Pildes, the indictment said. [...]

"More than a third of the organization's total giving during that period went to groups or individuals who appear connected to Burning Man, the annual weeklong festival in Nevada, including organizations devoted to hula hooping, dance parades, free costumes and more," Gothamist reported. [...]

In 2018, Participatory Safety "lost $17,498 worth of investments it made in cryptocurrencies -- equal to about a third of its charitable giving that year," Gothamist reported. "More than $832,000 of the money raised from SantaCon programming -- or 59% -- went to the nonprofit's expenses, not including its charitable grants."

Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.]]> https://cdn.jwz.org/blog/2026/04/emphasis-on-con/feed/ 9 https://www.dnalounge.com/backstage/log/2026/04/14.html Tue, 14 Apr 2026 18:16:17 +0000 https://jwz.org/b/yk6M started using Chow Now for deliveries. It was a $50/month flat fee, and they were to drop the orders directly into our Revel POS on the back end.

Guess what, they completely failed at their one job. The orders would actually show up in the POS about one time in four, and they could not fix it.

Also we averaged $38 in online sales per week, which is like... a rounding error.

If you haven't read my long post about the absolute apocalypse that has been visited upon those of us who would like to deliver food to people in this modern world, maybe today's a good day to do that.]]>