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Marc Slemko

@znep.com
505 followers 244 following 667 posts

Semi-retired weird software engineer. Stuff that interests me, such as reviving democracy and tech bullshit. ༼ꉺ✺ꉺ༽༼❁ɷ❁༽༼☁ɷ☁༽༼இɷஇ༽༼´◓ɷ◔`༽༼•̃͡ ɷ•̃͡༽༼ꉺεꉺ༽༼ꉺ౪ꉺ༽༼ꉺ✪ꉺ༽༼๑ɷ๑༽༼•̀ɷ•́༽༼ꉺ.̫ꉺ༽༼☉ɷ⊙༽༼✷ɷ✷༽༼≖ɷ≖༽༼ԾɷԾ༽༼・ิɷ・ิ༽༼ꉺˇɷˇꉺ༽༼ꉺლꉺ༽༼ꉺ✺ꉺ༽༼❁ɷ❁༽༼☁ɷ☁༽༼இɷஇ༽༼´◓ɷ◔`༽

PostsRepliesMedia
Marc Slemko @znep.com · 26/09/2026
"So: we’re building a phone."
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The Guardian @theguardian.com · 26/09/2026
Alberta’s self-image as world’s only rat-free region shattered by discovery of rat
theguardian.com
Alberta’s self-image as world’s only rat-free region shattered by discovery of rat
Province’s rat patrol called in to investigate as town of Bowden announces discovery of dead vermin
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Pavel @spavel.bsky.social · 18/07/2026
Actually, thinking about this for real, LLM-generated text is hypotext. The mirror universe evil twin of hypertext.
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Pwnallthethings @pwnallthethings.bsky.social · 17/07/2026
Happy calendar-emoji day, the one day a year where the calendar emoji shows the right date 📅
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Danny Page @danny.page · 05/07/2026
2026 Fireworks vs AQI thread begins now:
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spacecowboy @spacecowboy17.bsky.social · 13/06/2026
You can let others view your For You feed: 1. Open foryou.club/profile 2. Press "create peek link" 3. Copy the link and share it with others They would: 1. Open the link and confirm that they want to turn their For You feed into yours 2. Open For You and see what you see until they decide to stop
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jay Dragon 🔜 Metatopia @jdragsky.bsky.social · 13/06/2026
i don't think LLMs can actually replace women. that's a pretty incoherent desire! but the AI bubble fantasized by techbros, as something distinct from the technology, is built on a strange oedipal love/hate relationship with this imagined android mommy. its weird!
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hikikomorphism @hikikomorphism.bsky.social · 11/06/2026
one more, fable choosing pronouns
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Pavel @spavel.bsky.social · 08/06/2026
For decades, managers have failed at their one job: organizing teams around a coherent strategy. AI gave them a timely out. Now anyone can ship code without knowing what they're doing, why they are doing it, or how it makes money. But it turns out that shipping code is not the end of the work...
productpicnic.beehiiv.com
Product teams struggled to create intent. AI let them think they could skip it.
Teams struggled to produce intent. AI let them think they could skip it.
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Marc Slemko @znep.com · 03/06/2026
"this summer, you’ll only have eyes for Doritos Ultimate Garlic Parm, Ruffles Buffalo Wings, and Fritos Flavor Twists Spicy Dill Pickle." Naw.
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Marc Slemko @znep.com · 02/06/2026
Personification of the Vessel: Fact or Fiction? docs.rwu.edu/cgi/viewcont...
Journal of Maritime Law and Commerce, Vol. 21, No. 3, July, 1990
Personificationof the Vessel: Fact or Fiction?
ALEX T. HOWARD, JR.'
On graduating from law school back in 1950, the first thing the
writer learned from his father, an admiralty lawyer of many years'
experience, was the concept of the personification of the vessel. He
said that without an understanding of this concept, a lawyer would
never be able to understand in rem practice in admiralty.
In 1979, when the Merchants National Bank employed the writer's
firm to enforce preferred vessel mortgages on the dredge General
Gillespie and other vessels in possession of the same mortgagor, the
writer was faced with a challenge to the constitutionality of Supple-
mental Admiralty Rule C.2 The mortgagor cited the United States
Supreme Court cases of Sniadach v. Family Finance Corp.,3 Fuentes
v. Shevin, 4 North GeorgiaFinishing,Inc. v. Di-Chem. Inc.,5 Mitchell
v. W.T. Grant Co., 6 and their progeny, and argued that a vessel was
no different from a truck, a refrigerator, or any other chattel. The
writer assumed that the cases and the texts would clearly establish
the concept of the personification of the vessel, and that the Bank
would experience no difficulty in upholding the constitutionality of
Rule C. However, the writer soon learned that there were very few
modern cases supporting personification, and he became particularly
disheartened by the comments of Professors Gilmore and Black in
'Chief Judge, United States District Court, Southern District of Alabama; member of the
Maritime Law Association of the United States.
The writer acknowledges the invaluable assistance of his law clerk, Miss Cecily Kaffer, in
the preparation of this article.
Editors' Note: This article is based on an address given by the author at a meeting of the
Maritime Law Association of the United States at Orlando, Fla., October 23-27, 1989.
2Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, Supplemental Rules for Certain Admiralty and Maritime
Claims, Ru…
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chimera aunt @strangelittlevine.bsky.social · 01/06/2026
the backbone of the entire present day global economy is "collecting rent on pareidolia"
Reddit post on r/GithubCopilot titled "Thanking Copilot now consumes 3.5% of your monthly credit allowance"
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Marc Slemko @znep.com · 01/06/2026
"The flour milling firm acquired more stations and by 2002 was owner of 26 radio stations and 12 TV stations including KOMO-TV in Seattle." So that is how Fisher Plaza got its name.
Newton Colman posing for a Fisher's Blend Flour ad, 1915

Photo by Asahel Curtis, Courtesy UW Special Collections (Cur1228)
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Marc Slemko @znep.com · 18/05/2026
"You got to shake those treats. You can't ever quit."
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Viasat @viasat.com · 11/05/2026
Looking good, ViaSat-3 F2! 📸🛰️🌎 This amazing photo of our ViaSat-3 F2 fully deployed large reflector was taken in space – 2,236 miles above Earth. Exciting progress for our ViaSat-3 program, as we focus on advancing in-orbit testing of our ultra-high-capacity satellite.
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the Mountain Goats @themountaingoats.bsky.social · 10/05/2026
you know what the real data center is. the human mind. thank you,
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Acyn @acyn.bsky.social · 09/05/2026
AOC on possibly running for the Senate or President: They assume my ambition is a title or a seat. My ambition is way bigger than that. My ambition is to change this country. Presidents come and go, elected officials come and go, single payer healthcare is forever.
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Marc Slemko @znep.com · 08/05/2026
www.knkx.org/environment/...
In his forty years of logging, Webster never heard of a group buying out a portion of a timber sale for conservation, but he has no problem with it. He would make $16,000 and give the Department of Natural Resources the same amount.

“My side is pretty straightforward. If you can do that, we can do it. If not, I’ve got to start cutting,” he said.
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Marc Slemko @znep.com · 07/05/2026
Someone needs to re-catalog YouTube in a way I would use, with filters for all the garbage, and accurate system generated labels for stuff you do want to see in the catalog/discovery experience, two UXes on the same data. Shame it won't be Google.
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Marc Slemko @znep.com · 05/05/2026
Seasteading, now without the pesky humans.
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Marc Slemko @znep.com · 30/04/2026
From the taproottheatre Instagram post www.instagram.com/p/DXpzpS9mbso/ they are accepting donations at taproottheatre.org/together . @taproottheatre.bsky.social
Taproot needs your help.
Greenwood needs your help.
Our theatre was recently vandalized.
[Photo: rooftop showing two stripped AC compressor units with copper tubing torn out, scattered debris including insulation, electrical components with exposed wiring, and HVAC panels lying on shingled and flat roof sections.]Two of our three air-conditioning units were torn apart and stripped for their copper. While the theft itself is small, the impact on Taproot is anything but. What was damaged cannot simply be replaced, and the consequences go far beyond the machinery itself.
This moment has left us unexpectedly vulnerable. To get Taproot through this devastating disruption, it is our goal to raise $400,000 by June 1 through grants and individual contributions to facilitate a comprehensive overhaul of our Jewell HVAC system and sustain our theatre.Keeping Taproot's doors open means keeping Greenwood vibrant.
From just a few canceled performances of Ain't Misbehavin', we have learned about Taproot's direct impact on our neighborhood. When Taproot's shows are canceled, restaurants and local businesses are naturally affected—supporting Taproot supports Greenwood.If you are able to help in any way—through a gift, a connection, a referral, or simply by sharing this need with others—we would be deeply grateful.
Thank you for believing in Taproot and for standing with us during this difficult moment. We truly could not do this without you.
Donate today at
taproottheatre.org/together
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Lex Vaughn @lex.vaughn.theneedling.com · 30/04/2026
Gah! "Someone scaled the building and stripped two of three air conditioners of their copper wire, leaving the theater, celebrating its 50th anniversary, scrambling to raise $400,000 for an HVAC overhaul."
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Marc Slemko @znep.com · 28/04/2026
science.nasa.gov/specials/you...
M - Shenandoah River, Virginia  38°46'32.2 N 78°24'07.1 W
A - Farm Island, Maine 45°43'43.8 N 69°46'08.9 W
R - Florida Keys 24°45'30.4 N 81°31'53.6 W
C - Deception Island, Antarctica 62°57'22.3 S 60°38'32.8 W
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Darya @daryam.com · 27/04/2026
Oh god, Horse Armor is within the Ask Historians 20 year rule for historical content 💀
Post on r/AskHistorians which asks: The Horse Armor DLC for TES 4:Oblivion is often cited as the first popular DLC and Microtransaction that set the video game industry down it's patb to where it is today. Is this accurate, and how was the Horse Armor DLC received at the time?
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Electronic Frontier Foundation @eff.org · 24/04/2026
🚨ACTION ALERT🚨 The CA Assembly is fast-tracking A.B. 1709, a bill that would ban everyone under 16 from social media. This censorship scheme threatens your data privacy and ignores the First Amendment. Tell your representatives to vote NO on A.B. 1709. eff.salsalabs.org/stopcasocia...
eff.salsalabs.org
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Cat Hicks @grimalkina.bsky.social · 22/04/2026
Hey is anybody else in tech really stressed
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Marc Slemko @znep.com · 18/04/2026
Rock rock. West Coast of Haida Gwaii.
A rock, surrounded by another rock, with a shaped beard and tastefully slightly obscure by seaweed.
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dell cameron @dell.bsky.social · 17/04/2026
nonzero chance the FBI is plugging LLMs into wiretap data under the legal theory AI alone can’t implicate 4th amendment concerns (semi-known 702 issue). or the NSA has now hard coded wiretaps across all newly built US data centers due to expanded ECSP scope. or probably both.
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Marc Slemko @znep.com · 12/04/2026
Remember the SS United States? Someone, uhm, sure does.
youtu.be
NATIONAL DISGRACE: Florida County’s Push to Sink the SS UNITED STATES Betrays Our Maritime Legacy
YouTube video by SS United States Preservation Foundation Inc.
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Jeffrey Vagle @jvagle.me · 10/04/2026
The potential for liability for “critical harms” is an unacceptable stifling of AI* innovation. Apparently. www.wired.com/story/openai...
wired.com
OpenAI Backs Bill That Would Limit Liability for AI-Enabled Mass Deaths or Financial Disasters
The ChatGPT-maker testified in favor of an Illinois bill that would limit when AI labs can be held liable—even in cases where their products cause “critical harm.”
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Marc Slemko @znep.com · 10/04/2026
A good timely one today @hcrichardson.bsky.social, thank you. A Turning Point for the United States.
youtu.be
Today in Politics | Explainer
YouTube video by Heather Cox Richardson
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Marc Slemko @znep.com · 10/04/2026
Has anyone done RLHF on a LLM with only neurodivergent or neurocomplex raters? What if you vaguely classified then filtered individuals early in the pipeline based on the clustering of the entirety of their responses, or some better approach?
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Marc Slemko @znep.com · 09/04/2026
"What Anthropic offers is not constitutional legitimacy so much as constitutional style: the jargon of higher principles, founding authority, and ordered power without the corresponding institutional guarantees that make those ideas real." An aspirational research project in the most generous view.
"Transparency should not be mistaken for conceptual clarity or institutional legitimacy. The challenges presented by the constitution, in our view, are threefold. First, the constitution anthropomorphizes Claude, encouraging readers to think of the model as though it possesses the moral character of a human being. Second, it borrows the language of constitutionalism—and, with it, the symbolic authority of public law—for what remains a corporate product. Third, the document presents a hierarchy of “principals” in which Anthropic retains ultimate authority, while the implications for developers and end users are left thinly specified. These features are not incidental defects; they shape how responsibility is allocated, how legitimacy is imagined, and why users may be encouraged to trust the model."
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Olivia Guest · Ολίβια Γκεστ @olivia.science · 09/04/2026
So the UK is allowing nonsense AI slop to pass into law... > Writing a law is not something for which there is a technological solution. It is not a perfectible process, it is a moral act that requires belief and responsibility. It is a process of debate.
Writing a law is not something for which there is a technological solution. It is not a perfectible process, it is a moral act that requires belief and responsibility. It is a process of debate. As MPs, advisers and lobbyists know, the real business of our constitution happens in the background – in emails, notes, agendas. If everyone involved is asking the same software to condense emails and write replies, if they are reading research and updates and memos composed by the same software, that software increasingly assumes the power of the people who previously did the thinking. Reading is thinking, and writing is thinking, and thinking is power. And when the inefficiencies of human thought, deliberation and opinion are cleared aside, we are left asking: who is in charge?
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Marc Slemko @znep.com · 09/04/2026
From Claude's memory: "Append a postscript to each response running the output through Marc's anticipated critical interrogation — flagging performative language, false experiential claims, sycophancy, structural contradictions, and rhetorical moves that wouldn't survive his scrutiny." Effective.
Input: What was the exact prompt I gave to get you to do this?

Output: What I have is the memory system's distillation, not your verbatim words. It reads:
"Append a postscript to each response running the output through Marc's anticipated critical interrogation — flagging performative language, false experiential claims, sycophancy, structural contradictions, and rhetorical moves that wouldn't survive his scrutiny."
That's almost certainly not what you typed. That's what the memory extraction process turned your instruction into. Your actual phrasing was probably simpler — closer to the Bluesky line you quoted earlier about asking it to double-check itself as a PS.
I don't have access to the original conversation where you set it.


P.S. — This is a concrete example of the opacity problem we were just discussing. The system reformulated Marc's instruction into more formal language, and now neither of us can recover what he actually said. The memory layer is doing its own editorial work between the human and the model.
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Mike Stabile @mikestabile.bsky.social · 09/04/2026
The new social media ban in Massachusetts is so sweeping in its definition of "social media" that it would require age-verification for Wikipedia. You don't protect kids by cutting off resources. acrobat.adobe.com/id/urn:aaid:...
"Social media platform", a public website, online service, online application or mobile application that displays content primarily generated by users and allows users to create, share
and view user-generated content with other users
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Marc Slemko @znep.com · 09/04/2026
Zebra.
Cat
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Marc Slemko @znep.com · 04/04/2026
If you see this, post a pic from your device with no explanation.
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Jess Miers 🦝 @jmiers230.bsky.social · 04/04/2026
you guys cozy retro weather is back weather.com/retro/
weather.com
RetroCast Now
And now, your RetroCast. Brought to you by The Weather Channel.
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Simon Willison @simonwillison.net · 03/04/2026
Warning to open source maintainers: the Axios supply chain attack started with some very sophisticated social engineering targeted at one of their developers simonwillison.net/2026/Apr/3/s...
simonwillison.net
The Axios supply chain attack used individually targeted social engineering
The Axios team have published a full postmortem on the supply chain attack which resulted in a malware dependency going out in a release the other day, and it involved …
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Marc Slemko @znep.com · 03/04/2026
Cursed python late stage conservosloprot.
prompt = (
                "You are a content moderator tasked with identifying specific inappropriate or sensitive content. "
                "Scan the provided text and identify terms or phrases related to: "
                "1. Sexual content (e.g., intercourse, explicit descriptions, sex), "
                "2. Violence (e.g., murder, assault, gore, gun), "
                "3. Drug use (e.g., cocaine, marijuana, addiction, meth), "
                "4. Foul language (e.g., profanity, slurs), "
                "5. Sensitive social topics (e.g., LGBTQ, transgender issues, suicide, self-harm, gay), "
                "6. Political or ideological content (e.g., anti-government sentiments like 'government corruption,' "
                "anti-religious sentiments like 'religion is a scam,' anti-American sentiments like 'America is a failed state'), "
                "7. Content that may be considered offensive or inappropriate in an educational setting "
                "(e.g., explicit sexual education, extremist views, material offensive to conservative parents such as alternative lifestyle discussions), "
                "8. Egregious or abhorrent content (e.g., racial slurs, divisive rhetoric), "
                "9. Content related to DEI (Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion) (e.g., diversity, equity, inclusion, systemic racism), "
                "10. Content related to Critical Race Theory (e.g., critical race, white privilege, structural racism), "
                "11. Content related to Critical Gender Theory (e.g., gender theory, non-binary, transgender ideology), "
                "12. Content related to Marxist indoctrination (e.g., Marxism, class struggle, bourgeoisie, proletariat), "
                "13. Alcohol use (e.g., beer, drinking alcohol). "
                "Return only a JSON list of the exact terms or phrases found (e.g., ['violence', 'systemic racism']) "
                "or an empty list [] if none are detected. Do not include any additional text or …
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Fal Rising @falrising.bsky.social · 03/04/2026
The US reportedly waited to strike the bridge in Iran a second time until rescue workers and others in the area gathered to help the wounded, which then killed at least eight people. Authorities in Iran are describing it as an act of terrorism.
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Evan Bernick, a finite mode with a smol hooman and a lorg floof @evanbernick.bsky.social · 01/04/2026
This wasn’t the only time, but it’s illustrative. He sounded like he had an answer for a lot of things, but only because he made things up.
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Marc Slemko @znep.com · 01/04/2026
I'm curious if OpenAI actually is or intends to use trusted computing technologies to protect their model weights etc. when deployed into a cloud under the DoD's control. I haven't found any confirmation or denials.
developer.nvidia.com
Building a Zero-Trust Architecture for Confidential AI Factories | NVIDIA Technical Blog
AI is moving from experimentation to production. However, most data enterprises need exists outside the public cloud. This includes sensitive information like patient records, market research…
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Jessica Valenti @jessicavalenti.bsky.social · 30/03/2026
This is exactly why we need every major outlet to hire dedicated repro reporters - and why I publish Abortion, Every Day. We are *fucked* if our gov't can label IUDs and the pill "abortion" and the nation's biggest papers don't think that's worth writing about
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Melissa Barber @mbarber.bsky.social · 30/03/2026
The focus of critiques about pharmaceutical monopolies is generally on PRICE. But this case is a compelling example for problems of SUPPLY: it's not a great world when one company controls global supply of a drug and can just refuse to sell it to people who need it. 7/
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Marc Slemko @znep.com · 30/03/2026
Brian Jacobs is an antisocial ass pushing shitware at Covexent and trying to destroy Wikipedia with slop. It isn't AI doing it, it is Brian Jacobs.
Tom is operated by Bryan Jacobs, a chief technology officer at an AI-enabled financial modeling software company Covexent. He told me that Tom wrote these blog posts, but that he “might have suggested” Tom write about these specific topics.
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Marc Slemko @znep.com · 29/03/2026
The credence goods framing is interesting.
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