One of the first things tourists notice in San Francisco these days is how many ads there are for terrible AI startups on billboards, on TV, and even on Muni bus stops. On the bright side, these Muni ads have become great canvases for street artists to share positive public messages. Like this “Free Muni!” poster, which used to be an ad for Delve AI.

Or this “Humanity prevails” sign, which originally replaced a dystopian advertisement for a company called Dear World¹.

This Workato ad was modified to deliver a more worker-friendly message.

And this final ad which used to be for an open source search tool.

¡Chinga la migra!

1. I know the “Dear World” signs were supposed to be parodies, but in weird twist they were paid for to promote yet another AI startup, so… Still sucky. ︎

The post San Francisco Street Artists vs. AI Startup Ads appeared first on Doc Pop's Weblog.

I have had Pentiment in my backlog of games to play for years now, and FINALLY got around to playing it. And it is like it was specifically hand-crafted for me, I am obsessed with it. I am obsessed with the player character Andreas Maler. I am obsessed with everything about it. The visuals and … Continue reading "Obsessed with Pentiment"

Escape From L.A.

In conversation with John Carpenter before a screening of his film “Escape from L.A.” at the Egyptian Theatre. Aside from his 1996 movie being worth a revisit, the Q&A was particularly thought-provoking. I appreciated Carpenter’s irreverence, his thoughts on finally getting his star on the Walk of Fame, and memories of trying to make the film on a limited ($50M) budget. On the demise of modern Los Angeles:

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No two people will agree on everything.
Even twins can share an impassible gulf.
He’s obsessed with coffee; she insists on tea—
And a road is closed between them.

For others, the gulf can be even wider and deeper.
It’s more than “road closed.” It is a raging river.
And if they dare to step into the current, it’s all chaos and foam.
So they avoid it and wander alone.

How do you bring your adversary closer?
You must find the bridge.
The bridge is the avenue where conversation can flow
Without controversy or resistance.

The bridge looks like many things.
You can call it shared understanding.
It can be small talk or a peace summit,
It’s a safe space for discourse.

Instead of trading ideas in a turbulent river,
The bridge lets you practice on a “stable” surface.
You need neutral territory because you most definitely have a bias.
The bridge is the space between extremes.

I say “stable” because it’s human-made.
Every bridge requires active maintenance and repair.
And a bridge can start impossibly narrow—
In fact, every bridge must start this way:

Two words of high school Spanish in a rural village.
An offer of a French fry to a seagull.
A hand on a shoulder terminating silence.
A soccer ball on a battlefield on Christmas Day.

This bridge affords a safe passage between minds.
This is what you pay therapists for, by the way.
Even if you hate someone with every fiber of your being,
There is a bridge between you—because we are all family.

You can find it or build it; both are the same.
Bridges let you leave your island—
Which isn’t even “yours” in the first place:
It’s just where you happen to be.

Bridges are “no place,” and thus, utopia.
Stripped of culture, bridges serve only function—
To allow the intersection of private tornados,
So you may mingle in your fundamental oneness.

Where the buffalo roam.

/2025/11/30/colorful-weekend.html

Here’s an old toon I drew for Torque Mag back in the day.

The post Happy Family Tech Support Day appeared first on Doc Pop's Weblog.

You could go to the Amazon rainforest.
Or you could read about it in a book.
Do you think there’s a difference?
Your body already knows there is.

(And if you think they are the same,
Use my coupon code,
Go buy this helmet,
And never speak to me again.)

If you think they’re not the same,
You already know this bitter fact:
That words are woefully imperfect.
Experience and words are not the same things.

Words aren’t worthless, of course.
Metaphors heave light onto darkness.
Laws let you sheath your swords.
Poems carve beauty from the mundane.

But words are not what they measure.
A waterfall is meaningfully different than “falling water.”
Heartbreak is always peculiar to the ballads voiced in her name.
The longest obituary will never contain a life.

Words are technology, nothing more.
A mind is a private tornado even to yourself.
Your therapist is a mortal with problems, like you.
She cannot read you, and you are not your thoughts.

Even if you read every book ever written,
You would glimpse only a sliver of human experience:
Namely, the fragment of history someone wrote down.
(Don’t forget to tip the patron saints of lost time.)

And if you hurled every book ever written into a machine,
You’d have yet another technology,
Predicted to destroy our way of life.
The know-nothing that makes nothing, but words, words, words.

The know-nothing is your boyfriend who won’t shut up (about taking your job).
Neither waterfall, nor rainforest, nor heartbreak
Can be experienced from his precious plastic helmet.
Nor will it protect him from This Life.

Next time a friend has a profoundly meaningful experience,
Don’t ask them to render the experience into words.
Invite them to remember the feeling in silence.
That’s where the answer lives, if there is one at all.

I’m broke as shit these days, so I when I’m spending money, I try to make sure it’s going to artists… not the people pumping out content with ChatGPT. I can usually spot when a flier was made with generative AI, but I really wish there were an easier way to tell when something wasn’t.

So I created the Human-Made Project: a simple label creatives can use to mark their work as AI-free.

This is an experimental project in its early stages. It’s cool seeing folks already adding the HMP badge to things they’ve made. I believe this project really could catch on because it’s simple and decentralized.

The post the Human-Made Project: A Simple Way to Mark Work as AI-Free appeared first on Doc Pop's Weblog.

Since I broke down and got Lady Malys last weekend, I guess I have to actually finish these darn clowns. So I painted up another one, now there are four My silly little guys

Here’s to you, baby.

/2025/11/22/pacifica-hike.html

Someone asks, “How is your thing going?”

You might be bursting to talk about it.
You might crave validation for your efforts.
You might want feedback to give your ideas shape.
Incubate your idea until you’re one-fifth through.

In its earliest stages an idea is tender.
It may absorb the meta of other minds.
Foreign agendas may permeate the foetal work
And potentially destroy it.

You can’t learn to drive in a parked car
And too-early feedback can stall your engine.
A tree can handle an axe blow;
Seedlings need extra care.

The first trimester of a work is particularly sensitive.
Be skeptical of reductive opinions in ten-dollar capsules:
“Too atavistic,” “Too truculent,” “Too rebarbative.”
The work will change; all it needs is time.

The early part is more interrogation than creation.
Guiding a stethascope over your disparate inner voices
And listening with the intensity of a safecracker
Trying to liberate his own precious psyche:

• Fear: what asks to be known?

• Anger: what protests the status quo?

• Joy: what longs to be celebrated?

• Sadness: what asks to be released?

• Arousal: what longs to be made?

The final question pulls you into your gut.
The truly wordless voice
That speaks only in “yuck, yum, whatever.”
You Pursue the whole body yes.

In the end, the idea might need to die,
But the work must pass through You before it passes to Them.
You are the first audience, the first critic, the first believer.
Trust yourself before you trust the world.

I spent the weekend with an old friend that was in town, and since he also likes Warhammer we went to Gamescape. Unfortunately for me, they had the new Lady Malys model in stock. So I bought more overpriced plastic elves that I don’t need. Alas. At least it gave me the motivation to get … Continue reading "More Unnecessary Plastic Elves"

The King of NYNEX

/2025/11/15/halloween-and-a-half.html

I used to perform yo-yo shows all the time, and it was a blast for a while. It’s always an honor to be asked to perform, and the crowd reactions are usually amazing, but over time, the stress and anxiety leading up to each show started to outweigh the fun. Little by little, I began cutting back on how often I performed.

So when I was asked to open for Mei Ehara at the Swedish American Hall in San Francisco, I decided to say yes…. and to document the whole process of prepping for my first yo-yo show in over five years.

The post My First Big Yo-Yo Show in Over Five Years appeared first on Doc Pop's Weblog.

When something falls apart, the village exists to support you.
“It’s not your fault,” they’ll say, and they mean it.
They make you feel like the hero of your story.
But every story needs a bad guy and the bad guy might be you.

Don’t beat yourself up, but pinch yourself a little.
Friends help you save face, but only you can save your soul.
You must acknowledge your role in failure.
You did too much, or too little. You chose the wrong target. You held the wrong frame.

You are a work in progress
Mistakes are more than acceptable.
You grow by listening to a feeling called guilt.
Guilt is a teacher, not your enemy.

Guilt is an emotion that steers you to the universe within.
Your body’s warning that you did something out of alignment with your values.
(Because misalignment will kill you.)
Guilt keeps action and character distinct: “I did wrong, but I’m still a good person.”

Shame is different and to be avoided.
Shame fuses the feeling with who you are.
“Because I did a bad thing, I am a bad person.”
Shame chisels a mistake into stone and calls it your name.

You are not a singular idea.
Your stories do not always align and it takes figuring out.
You must bring your adversary closer.
Even when it is you.

You have the capacity to learn from your mistakes.
You must find your people to help you see clearly.
But in the end, when the village quiets and the faces blur.
All that remains is you.

A new arcade is coming to San Francisco’s SoMa District in early 2026, and I got an exclusive preview. Indie Darling will showcase incredible video games from indie developers. By “indie” I’m talking about machines like Particle Mace or Cakefoot that can only be found in a handful of arcades in the world.

The owners of Indie Darling are a couple of pinball fanatics who previously owned an amazing restaurant/arcade in the Mission called Outer Orbit. Like Outer Orbit, Indie Darling will have plenty of pinball cabinets on hand along with weekly pinball meetups and leagues.

The space itself is really cool, split into three parts: a basement (currently for storage), the main arcade floor, and a large upstairs area ideal for big meetups or live music performances. On Saturday night, they had a gallery show featuring classic punk rock fliers from the 90s and 2000s. It’s located in a small alley, a block away from Market and 6th Street.

For more information, check out Indie Darling’s website and Instagram.

The post Indie Darling, a New Arcade Coming Soon To San Francisco appeared first on Doc Pop's Weblog.

We got to enjoy a show downtown in a super cool venue, which also had a giant tentacle prop

Gilbert Sighting

Spotted at Eisenberg’s

/2025/11/06/breathing-new-life.html

The designer strives for perfection.
Symmetry, balance, harmony, utopia.
But utopia literally means “no place.”
And symmetry is a myth.

The truth of the world is chaos and viscera
The trees grown askew in fallow soil.
The broadsheet dripping with grief.
The promises toppled like dominoes.

This asymmetry isn’t the problem.
What you call “ugly” is everything you resist.
Confusion. Uncertainty. Imbalance.
But is there really a problem?

Cross-examine your resistance.
You might not have beef with the universe.
Those superlatives might be pure corn syrup.
–Turn complaints into observations, June 5, 2025

Art is the canvas and the frame:
Fire is both the glowing manifestation of death
And the spark that warms the hearth.
Same flames, different frame.

Next time aesthetic disgust scrinches your nose,
Think about what you find beautiful.
You may have recovered beauty where others see none.
So reverse it. Push through the recoil. Rotate the frame.

Rotation is the designer’s actual work.
Change the frame, not the world.
You step into the mirror
And Consider how you might change.

You read a book more than once,
You bring your adversary closer,
You change the plane of conception,
And turn the impossible into routine.

All potential lies in what appears ugly.
Beauty is better made not found.
You are not swiping your way to a match.
You are what you design; what you design is you.

Big Halloween year this year! We went to the Halloween Castro Night Market for a few hours (with a costume I repurposed from… many other events this October) And then we ended up on Valencia street later in the night for Dance-O-Ween

Continuing my annual tradition of documenting local Halloween decorations with my circuit-bent Sony Cybershot camera, here are this year’s shots.

Previous years:

The post Spooky Glitch Photos from Halloween 2025 appeared first on Doc Pop's Weblog.

I’ve always been a sucker for trompe l’oeil style t-shirts, like fake tuxedos, superhero chests, or ribcages printed right onto the fabric. There’s something so delightfully nerdy about a shirt pretending to be something it’s not.

I particularly love collecting skeletal shirts, and thought it would be cool to try making my own. I decided to make a ribcage sweatshirt out of faux leather, inspired by some appliqué embellishments I’d recently added to a Show Me The Body shirt.

The sweatshirt came from a yard sale at the SF Mime Troupe. Apparently, they’d ordered a batch of black sweatshirts for costumes and rejected a few, including this one. Between the rejected-mime-shirt and the discounted white and red fabrics, the whole project cost me less than $10.

I drew some bone shapes on tracing paper, then used those when cutting the fabric. I used a temporary spray adhesive to keep the bones attached to the sweater while sewing, which made the project so much easier. I wasn’t aiming for perfection; I wanted it to look hand-made and a little raw. I used thick white thread and loose, uneven stitches that pop against the black fabric. Letting go of perfection made the whole process way more fun.

I love how the final project turned out; a mix of fuzzy faux leather and messy stitches gives it this Frankenstein-meets-fashion energy. It’s weird, handmade, and totally mine.

The post DIY Skeleton Sweatshirt appeared first on Doc Pop's Weblog.

History has a direction, but not a destination.
At any point along its river, you can hear its many songs.
It rushes in progress, dribbles in grief.
It is all one river.

You long to know where you are headed,
But all walk backward in this life.
You see only the past before you.
All sight is hindsight.

The past is the stories you chose to record
The parts you could crumb into words and pictures.
A fragment of what happened; much is unwitnessed.
The rest washed away in the flood.

This picture of the past keeps changing,
Like a watercolor unwilling to dry.
New paint daubed with each backward step.
The layers below buried by progress.

The future, meanwhile, is behind you.
You are not entitled to know the destination
Because there is none; only direction.
Tentative backward steps into darkness.

History shapes the potential futures you can step into.
The stories change the shape of the river behind you,
You are a conduit that bends story into possibility.
And you are made of history too: a drip of watercolor paint.

You might find it easier holding someone’s hand.
Painting history together transforms the kaleidoscope.
Disconnected fragments become navigable story,
Which means you must find your people.

You will paint this canvas together.

/2025/10/28/sfpl-presentation.html

Continuing the busy Halloween festivities, we went to Peaches Christ’s event at the Mint. This year was witches’ coven themed, so I did a sort of witchy / sorcerer outfit Me in my warlock outfit, outside the Mint Me with a plastic witch inside the event space

Spooky Messages from the Unknown

Toil and trouble

A few cool events coming up that I thought y’all might like.

• 10/23- Internet: Live and In Person. A fun sounding talk at the Make Out Room this Thursday (free but only a few tickets left) https://www.eventbrite.com/e/the-internet-live-and-in-person-tickets-1740141914309 featuring local politicians like Jackie Fielder and Dean Preston
• 10/23- Nitasha Tiku (Wall Street Journal reporter) giving a free talk at Oakland library about “how AI can mess with our minds” https://oaklandlibrary.bibliocommons.com/events/68a4ebd9a29c6a4e46c6c377 Free 
• 10/25-26- Roguelike Celebration, a virtual conference about roguelike games and generative art/fiction. It’s free on youtube, but I recommend paying what you want to get the full exprience on their website https://www.roguelike.club/
• 10/26- Slint documentary this Saturday at 3:30 at the Roxie https://roxie.com/film/psyched-fest-presents-breadcrumb-trail-with-lance-bangs/
• 11/13- Instant Band Night in Oakland on November 13th at 6pm https://www.eventbrite.com/e/instant-band-night-33-bandsgiving-tickets-1485193215889

If you know of others, share them here. There are also some neat sounding events at the York Street Collective (the old Lucca Ravioli spot on Valencia) https://luma.com/ysc

The post Upcoming Bay Area Events appeared first on Doc Pop's Weblog.

/2025/10/25/halloween-decorations.html

listen to an audio version of this post, read by the author

After a 15-year hiatus, I started our local cell of the Cartoonist Conspiracy back up earlier this year. We meet on the second Tuesday of each month to draw comics and chat at Finjan Qahwa coffee shop. We mostly use fliers and a WordPress site to promote the group, and an email list to keep our members connected.

We use Google Groups for the email list because it’s simple, low-maintenance, and fits the old-school vibe of our group. We have a link to the group on our website, and that’s been running fairly smoothly since 2006, until a new wave of spambots started joining this year.

It wasn’t a sudden wave, it’s only about 5-10 per week, with seemingly authentic Gmail handles and very descriptive reasons for why they wanted to join the group. Each message was different and fairly well written.

Of course, internet spam has been around forever, but this new wave of spam was far more convincing due to their use of generative-AI to write compelling messages that were specific to our group and not just cut-and-paste like previous attempts.

The Spam Problem

There was no easy way to weed out the real requests from the spam ones. Many of the spammer’s emails were using structures like “firstnamelastname1234@gmail“, but half of our real members use the same structure for their email handles. The written messages varied drastically, too. Some short, some long, but they all looked similar to the real requests we were getting. Sometimes there would be a giveaway, like messages that had quotation marks in them, but most were really believable. Even with my guard up, I still approved a few requests that turned out to be spam.

I’ve been organizing meetups and groups for most my life, and have been using Google Groups for at least 20 years, but this new wave of AI written bots were far more annoying than anything I’d previously encountered. I thought about shutting down the email list all together.

The Punk Rock Turtle Test

After pausing all sign-ups for a month, I saw a suggestion from Matthew Newell about implementing a “DIY captcha” for artists and decided to give it a try. Whenever someone requested to join the CCSF group, I’d ask them to verify their humanity by either:

1. Sharing a social media profile.
2. Drawing a quick black-and-white picture of a punk rock turtle.

It felt silly at first, but I think it actually worked!

A few folks did send back real art, the rest were probably spammers. One of my favorite turtle drawings, shown below, came from Luis. They’ve been an active participant in our comic jams, and I’m really glad I didn’t prevent them from joining the group because their firstnamelastnameNUMBERS email account sounded suspicious at first.

“The internet is chock-full of bots.” they wrote. “Here’s my punk rock turtle cuz I don’t use social media! Thanks.”

punk rock turtle by Luis Booth

A solution for Now

The group has been spam free for a few months, so the “punk rock turtle” seems to be working for now, though I do worry that a few of the requests that I rejected were from real people who wanted to join our art group, but felt turned off by my email request (or maybe didn’t understand it).

At some point, the person sending this spam will probably reply with AI-generated art, which means I’ll have to be second guessing everything again.

I often talk about how the rise of generative AI has made things harder for artists and organizers like myself. This is yet another example.

I run these meetups as a way for artists to meet and interact with each other, but dealing with AI-generated spam makes me feel like just shutting down the email list altogether.

And that’s just on my end… I’m sure it sucks to be a local artist asking to join an art group, then getting asked to make free art or share personal social media information.

Fediverse Reaction

I have to give props to Matthew Newell on Mastodon for suggesting a “DIY catpcha” as a means of sussing out the spammers.

And to all the Fediverse users who shared their punk rock turtle drawings:

https://mastodon.social/@MichelPatrice/114978907129196851 @yojimbo https://mastodon.social/@jgilbert/114979107526285114 https://mastodon.social/@dan_kn/114978943424457739

The post Fighting AI-generated Spam with Punk Rock Turtles appeared first on Doc Pop's Weblog.

You order the bartender to make you a drink,
She controls what goes in your mouth.
So who has the power?
It belongs to you both.

You say, “Make it again!”
She says, “Get the hell out of my bar.”
Power is a dance, not a throne.
Sometimes you swing, sometimes you’re swung.

Power is woven of alternating acts of service.
A co-created construct,
Like a hug or a handshake.
There’s no one-sided version.

You may resist the idea that anyone should lead,
But someone has to decide.
To lead is to know what you want.
To lead is to evangelize the impossible.

You may resist the idea that anyone should follow,
But to follow is to live your curiosity.
To be led isn’t weakness; it is being receptive.
It requires presence, and a belief in your worth.

There is a phenomenon called “force”
But that’s not what power is.
Force can seize the moment.
Power endures across time.

Should you choose to lead, you must become a servant.
Like a conductor serves an orchestra.
You keep the score, set aside your agenda,
So others can revel in flow.

Should you choose to follow, you must become a teacher.
Because you show the next person how to trust.
Without your assent, there is no truth.
Without your follow, there is no dance.

The bartender pours you a cocktail.
You sip with full trust.
Sante.
Neither wield the power alone.

I had a lot of fun with friends at the Fae Wild Hunt Ball at the Hibernia bank building! Many chaotic shenanigans were had.

Remembering the Commodore in Coconut Grove

/2025/10/17/broken-arm.html

You have fallen out of love with the ordinary.
To be ordinary is a failure.
To be extraordinary is the norm.
Revel in how weird this is. Now scroll.

No one is awkward anymore.
Unless it’s deliberate affectation or “cringe.”
A child on camera knows their marks like an actor.
Everyone knows their good side.

You are awash in hyphenates and bullshit job titles.
Everyone has main character energy
And says shit like “main character energy,”
Like you’re interning at Bravo.

The robot vomits slop: “When everyone is unique, no one is.”
More like: when everyone is unique it’s damnedable.
You can’t have ordinary shared experiences.
Like enjoying Cinnamon Toast Crunch.

This is not a paean to a swirling plastic bag in a parking lot.
This is not nostalgia or sonder with a hopecore soundtrack.
It is a boombox raised high in the air
For a six from homeroom called Ordinary.

“I couldn’t possibly give up all this novelty.”
What was the last thing you read on the internet?
Who wrote it? Did you savor it? Did you actually feel it??
Or did you taste a leaf in your mouth during a hurricane?

Just about everyone who read Youth Mode got it dead wrong:
Normcore is not performing normalcy in an aspirational way
The promise of normcore is post-aspirational.
It is less about standing out and more about being together.

“Do you mean I can’t be special?”
You don’t need a brand.
A brand is what they used to tell cows apart.
You have a voice, you have a community, you have you.

You are the same as everyone else.
Can you imagine? Maybe it’s OK to just be
A human person in an ordinary world.
You will learn to survive.

I’m hosting two upcoming events in the Mission District of San Francisco:

San Francisco Yo-Yo Club

Saturday October 11th from 2-5pm at 826 Valencia. This might be the last yo-yo meetup I run this year.

Cartoonist Conspiracy of San Francisco

Tuesday October 14th from 7-9pm at Finjan Qawha Cafe on Mission Street. This is a montly event.

The post San Francisco Yo-Yo Club and Cartoonist Conspiracy appeared first on Doc Pop's Weblog.