Mom:	What's with these AIs escaping and hacking people? That sounds scary.
Me:	You park your car at the top of a hill. You leave a note on the dashboard that says "please be good" and then you pull the parking brake. The car careens down the hill, smashes everything up, and you put out a press release saying "My car ignored my instructions! It hallucinated! It went rogue!" Your insurance company not only believes you, but invests a hundred million dollars in your company.
Mom:	Jesus Fucking Christ

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

Normally I reserve my vitriol for the slopbros for my personal blog, but this has become extremely DNA Lounge-related of late, as I shall explain. (This counts as plumbing-related, the internet being a series of tubes, full of toxic slop.)

As you may be aware, our web site is being constantly, relentlessly hammered by AI scrapers. I am spending an absurd number of hours just trying to keep things barely functional under this brutal onslaught. It's not only us, obviously; this toxic blight covers the entirety of the Internet. These companies are the absolute worst fucking parasites our society has yet created, and if you work for one, I am begging you, in my best Bill Hicks voice: kill yourself. "Just a thought, just trying to plant seeds."

But why do I bring this up now? Because our web-hosting bill is normally between $600 and $800 per month. Except suddenly it's now $3,500 per month, entirely because of all of these piece-of-shit AI model-training robots incompetently scraping all of our text and images, repeatedly, as fast as they possibly can; ignoring our requests to stop; and lying about who they are. And I have no solution, other than "don't have a web site any more".

(Now at least one of you is teeing up a "Well why don't you just" comment right about now. Oh you sweet summer child. I've been doing this longer than you've been alive. Hush. Just hush, you.)

Fundamentally these AI companies are now charging me to train their models for them. I am now being billed $2,700 per month, $32,000 per year, so that their spicy-autocomplete plagiarism-machines can suck the blood out of everything I've ever created and shit it back out. And no matter how many ways I try to say "I would prefer not to," they just. Will. Not. Fucking. Stop.

This cost-shifting is what these methane-breathing, hollow-eyed money-ghouls gleefully refer to as an "externality".

So, seriously, if you work for an AI company, "You are the ruiner of all things good. You are Satan's spawn, filling the world with bile and garbage, you are fucked and you are fucking us; kill yourself, it's the only way to save your soul."

And also!

If you are using this AI bullshit -- in any way -- this is what you are supporting. Every time you "just" plagiarize something "a little bit" because of some halfassed excuse you tell yourself like "but I can't do it myself, uwu smiley emoji" instead of, you know, paying an actual human artist, you are part of why DNA Lounge is being hit with this $32,000 bill. That's you. You voted for that. That's bad and you should feel bad. And more than that, you should STOP.

For example!

Not too long ago, we had this one particular event, that was very successful. It was a rental, and the promoters took in over $40,000 of ticket sales at the door, and yet they still chose to use "AI" for their flyer, and for the printed banners they hung around the venue. For them it was apparently a bridge too far to toss $200 to a local artist. Too expensive. Can't possibly afford it. Let's use the plagiarism machine instead, extruded artwork-adjacent pink slime is good enough. No one will know, nobody cares, fuck it.

I am begging you: don't be that guy.

A friend told me they were planning an October rewatch of classic horror movies. I said, "So just Hammer, huh?" They said, "...what?"

Ok, so, some of you never studied, and don't know about Hammer Horror. I have made you an introductory playlist.

These are some of the greatest, campiest horror movies of the Twentieth Century. This is the classic Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing era of Dracula movies. You've seen the t-shirts even if you haven't seen the movies. At the time these were considered low budget trash, just a hair shy of pornography, BUT / AND they are fantastic! They have a look that is so consistent and when someone in this modern world references it, you are immediately "guy pointing at TV meme", it's such a thing. There's something so distinctive about their lighting and color. When you see that particular too-bright red blood on the lips of a bouffonted showgirl in a negligee, you know what you're in for. The costumes, the hair, 1830 by way of 1962. It's a whole thing.

Anyway, here is where I suggest you begin. They made like a hundred movies over a couple of decades and they are not all winners, but these are some absolute winners that are worth your time:

Christopher Lee:

• Horror of Dracula (1958)
• The Brides of Dracula (1960)
• Dracula Prince of Darkness (1966)
• Taste the Blood of Dracula (1970)
• Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires (1974) -- also a Shaw Bros. kung fu movie!

The "Carmilla" movies, lezzzzzzbians:

• The Vampire Lovers (1970)
• Lust for a Vampire (1971)
• Twins of Evil (1971)

Other vampires and/or witches:

• Vampire Circus (1972)
• Captain Kronos Vampire Hunter (1974)
• The Devil Rides Out (1968)
• The Love Witch (2016) -- not Hammer, but a remarkable tribute to.

There's so much more, but I feel this is a solid intro. (If you are about to say, "How could you have left out this essential Hammer film?", I am listening.)

I overheard some kids at the club the other day talking about their favorite vampire movies. One of them said: "Underworld... and last year's Nosferatu I guess?"

Never studied. Never. Studied.

Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.

• Disclosure Day (2026):
  This was a hate-watch for sure. What in the Whitley Strieber Dr. Doolittle bullshit did I just sit through. Spielberg is such a hack. How did this guy manage to make Raiders when every other thing he has done has been ham-handed saccharine bullshit? Yes, he has a knack for lighting and blocking, I will give him that, he is often a good cinematographer. But who in their right mind lets him get his hands on a script?

  Anyway, amongst the many indignities of this movie, I'll just leave it with: I'm no train expert, but I'm still pretty sure that's not how you secure a boxcar full of pianos.

• The Thing Expanded (2026):
  Why yes, I did watch a five hour documentary about The Thing.

• Supergirl (2026):
  (Or Dirtbag Supergirl, as Kingfish has been calling it.) Having read the very good comic this is based on (Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow) this was pretty disappointing. The comic is a melancholy road trip; the movie is a comedy Guardians of the Galaxy knock-off. The comic also does not include Space Lemmy, or the interminable "life on Krypton" segment. Pitch Meeting eviscerated it, and no lies were detected.

• Evil Dead Burn (2026):
  Solid little possession movie. Good scares, nobody does anything performatively stupid to advance the plot. Stands alone; if there is continuity with previous installments, I didn't notice and don't remember them.

• Tuner (2026):
  A piano tuner discovers he has a knack for safe cracking. You know exactly how this is going to go; there aren't many surprises, but it's a fun entry in the field.

• House of Games (1987):
  Hadn't seen this in a while: A classic switcheroo about con men that remains unsettlingly relevant to today's political climate.

• Ponies (2026):
  Unqualified American lady spies in Soviet Russia. It's forgettable popcorn, but fun.

• I Love Boosters (2026):
  Someone needs an editor. This was like 3 different movies smushed together. Any one of them would do. As is, it was just a mess.

• Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist (2008):
  I haven't seen this in ages, but it holds up ok. Call it Scott Pilgrim 0.1a. Some of the writing is poor: the Evil Ex with no discernible personality or motivation, and the greek chorus of the Three Gay Best Friends who are Wise. Otherwise, it's cute and nobody's really a monster. I definitely want to go back in time and live out my days in the music scene that they inhabit (which was almost certainly already nostalgia for something extinct by the time this movie was made).

• Coyote vs. Acme (2026):
  I would not normally watch a courtroom procedural, but this one had anvils. This was hilarious!

• Lanterns (2026):
  "Sad old men wearing denim and driving cars while being mean to each other in some rural shithole" is not really what I am looking for in a show about Green Lanterns. It's supposed to be baroque cosmic weirdness.

  You can't even blame this on the usual knee-jerk studio note of, "Ok, but what if instead your fantasy show was a police procedural??" Because it was already a god damned police procedural!

  They already did a Stewart origin story cartoon; it was fine. Not great, but better than this garbage: "Green Lantern, Beware My Power (2022)".

• Reacher S04:
  I am enjoying how they are just leaning way in to the theme of this show being: 250 pounds of autism punches people for justice.

• Neagley (2026):
  Reacher spin-off, also pretty solid. What could possibly go wrong with all of these poorly socialized, emotionally stunted weirdos going vigilante.

• Slow Horses (2022):
  Like Reacher and Neagley, this strays dangerously close to being a cop show for my tastes, but farting, disheveled Gary Oldman is just too good to miss. He is a repulsive treasure of dirtbagdom.

• Dark Matter S02:
  Absolutely killing it. The second season is even better than the first. To call this a Sliders riff is like calling Andor a Star Wars story.

• Backrooms (2026):
  I thought this was kind of crap. I didn't care about a single character and the explanation for how the rooms work was stupid and unnecessary. Before watching the movie I also watched whazzisname's 10 YouTube shorts; they are brief, moody and plotless, but interesting. The most important aspect here is brief. They didn't have a lot to say but at least they said it quickly. Unlike the movie.

  (Pitch Meeting: "Is the real villain unprocessed trauma?" "Nooooooo.... Yes....")

• It Ends (2025):
  Four folks on a road trip find themselves on a road that never ends and where they can never stop or the screaming horde converges. It was nice and creepy, and did not serve up all the answers. I enjoyed it. And I'm surprised by that, because normally a movie that starts off with "4 college friends get in a car and start bickering" has me nope'ing out by 15 minutes in; that's the stock "cabin in the woods" setup and it is traditionally shorthand for "all of these people are little shits and you won't be sad that we're about to kill them all", but that is not where this movie was going.

• The Last Kiss (2026):
  High school slasher rom-com where a girl can see someone's death if she kisses them, so she has to go on a kissing spree (her words). For the first half of it I was feeling, "I wish this was like 20% less stupid", but after that it stops with the "oh noes she has to kiss a boy" and takes a more serious turn and leans into the trauma. Unsurprised to learn that teenagers in 2026 high school dramas still look like they're 25, just like they did in 1980s high school dramas. And they still dress for school like they're going to a candy rave.

• Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma (2026):
  By way of telling you how much I hated this, let me first shit on Backrooms a little more, by way of faint praise. There's a lot to hate about Backrooms: All of the characters are shitty and there's no reason to root for any of them; the B plot is meandering and stupid; the cosmological reveal is simplistic and stupid; nothing is resolved and everyone ends up in Hell. But at least it has a three act structure, it has premise, conflict, and resolution. "Say what you want about the tenets of National Socialism, at least it's an ethos." Which brings us to Miasma. First act: ponderous "cabin in the woods" trope setup. Second act: we watch (literally, sit there and watch) a ham-handed parody/remake of the first two acts of Friday the Thirteenth while someone reads their Livejournal post about it to us. Then the remainder, which I hesitate to grace with the word "act", is... they're murdered, no they weren't, they go shopping at the Kwik-E-Mart, wink wink. In the annals of "this meeting could have been an email", this two hour movie could have been a perfectly serviceable four minute Sabrina Carpenter music video.

Previously.

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.