Sign in

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 · 11/06/2026
Ghost kitchens for everyone! All tech is ad tech.
120
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…
000
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)
000
Marc Slemko @znep.com · 27/05/2026
Non-stop from Costa Rica in ~10 days. Quick jaunt.
020
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.
000
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
043
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
000
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.
021
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."
010
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.
000
Marc Slemko @znep.com · 09/04/2026
Zebra.
Cat
010
Marc Slemko @znep.com · 04/04/2026
If you see this, post a pic from your device with no explanation.
000
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 …
010
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.
052
Marc Slemko @znep.com · 04/03/2026
One of the more interesting non industry specific perspectives on this I've seen recently is in the paper "Some Simple Economics of AGI" (papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....). It sets up concepts like Cost to Verify and The Measurability Gap (∆m) and tries to explain and predict based on that model.
Quote from the abstract of https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=6298838 "Some Simple Economics of AGI" :

 We model the transition toward AGI as the collision of two racing cost curves: an exponentially decaying Cost to Automate, driven by compute and accumulated knowledge, and a biologically bottlenecked Cost to Verify, bounded by human time and embodied experience. This structural asymmetry widens a Measurability Gap between what agents can execute and what humans can afford to verify. It also drives a shift from skill-biased to measurability-biased technical change and a radical bifurcation of economic value. Rents migrate to what remains scarce: verification-grade ground truth, cryptographic provenance, and liability underwriting—the ability to insure outcomes rather than merely generate them.

Economic progress has always rested on an implicit compact: that the value claimed was the value produced. The Measurability Gap is the first force in history capable of systematically breaking that compact—not through crisis, but through the ordinary economics of cost minimization. When an AI agent generates output that looks correct, passes every test, yet silently violates unmeasured human intent, the economy accumulates systemic risk.
030
Marc Slemko @znep.com · 01/03/2026
Unclassified commercial bulk data collection has been crying out for attention and legislation for years, as the data included just keeps expanding.
"Even as Mr. Trump published the post at 3:47 p.m., the two sides kept talking. Mr. Michael, who was on a call with Anthropic executives at the time, said the Pentagon wanted the company to allow for the collection and analysis of unclassified, commercial bulk data on Americans, such as geolocation and web browsing data, people briefed on the negotiations said.
Anthropic told the Pentagon that it was willing to let its technology be used by the National Security Agency for classified material collected under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. But the company wanted a legally binding promise from the Pentagon not to use its technology on unclassified commercial data."
0264
Marc Slemko @znep.com · 01/03/2026
A cat lying on the bed in the sun.
030
Marc Slemko @znep.com · 27/02/2026
Your thread reminds me of this chart from the paper "Large Language Model Reasoning Failures" (doi.org/10.48550/arX...). It doesn't offer solutions, but goes through a good survey and mapping of reasoning versus failure categories.
Chart from "Large Language Model Reasoning Failures" paper showing reasoning categories versus failure categories for LLMs.  From https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2602.06176 and https://github.com/Peiyang-Song/Awesome-LLM-Reasoning-Failures?tab=readme-ov-file
011
Marc Slemko @znep.com · 27/02/2026
011
Marc Slemko @znep.com · 26/02/2026
Gugusse et l'Automate (1897) English language title: Gugusse and the automaton "Gugusse the clown appears to control the actions of Pierrot Automate, a child-sized automaton standing on a pedestal [...] At the final stroke of the hammer, he disappears." Check out the blog post.
010
Marc Slemko @znep.com · 25/02/2026
"To be a lawyer is to be involved in a system of injustice, to take part in the business of violence. I have no intent to stop telling people to “be gay, do crime.” I have nothing but admiration for those who, in the name of justice, dare say: “Fuck the law, fuck the courts, and fuck you.”"
Excerpt from Conclusion: Our legal order would only be bettered if we, jurists, collectively fostered a healthy disrespect for the law.  The arc of the moral universe may bend towards justice, but it is only thanks to those who share in a healthy disrespect for the law. Justice, not law, should be our measure. As crises succeed one another at an ever-increasing pace, we cannot allow ourselves to forget that.  Be irreverent. Be indignant. Be defiant. The law is not sacred. People are.
0225
Marc Slemko @znep.com · 23/02/2026
This reminds me of the now dead Washington state HB1834 "Protecting Washington children online" which tried to define algorithmic feeds as addictive. See also bsky.app/profile/znep...
Excerpt from proposed Washington state 
HB 1834 - 2025-26
Protecting Washington children online: "Addictive feed" means an internet website, online service,
online application, or mobile application, or a portion thereof, in
which multiple pieces of media generated or shared by users are,
either concurrently or sequentially, recommended, selected, or
prioritized for display to a user based, in whole or in part, on
information provided by the user, or otherwise associated with the
user or the user's device, unless any of the following conditions are
met, alone or in combination with one another:
1101
Marc Slemko @znep.com · 21/02/2026
I was curious what the RFI actually said at this early stage about those requirements, this is the most relevant bit I came across. Sounds like they are thinking a combination of data migration and live API calls to existing systems if I'm thinking about this correctly. Essentially all TBD.
Except from section 2.2 (Technical and Infrastructure Requirements) of "Attatchment I - DRAFT SOW for Enterprise Wide Biometrics Software.pdf" from notice id 70RDA126RFI000003 at https://sam.gov/workspace/contract/opp/aae4a7edd2b8472fa3d959c14dd20513/view: System Integration
• The solution shall integrate with existing DHS enterprise identity systems, 
enrollment stations, and biometric sensors using standardized interfaces and 
APIs. Vendors shall support interoperability with existing biometric repositories 
and provide migration strategies for legacy biometric data where required.
• Preference will be given to solutions that minimize vendor lock-in and support 
standards-based data exchange formats.
000
Marc Slemko @znep.com · 21/02/2026
A good overview of the history and current state of Grok from @jbbranch.bsky.social I'm hopeful Grok is facing internal headwinds due to it just not being that good, but hard to be confident in these times as top down directives proliferate.
The Department of Energy is currently piloting Grok at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, a research facility that handles nuclear weapons safety, where it is being used to answer questions, summarize materials, and draft documents. These are precisely the tasks that shape how analysts frame problems, interpret evidence, and build institutional knowledge. LLMs are probabilistic systems that frequently generate confident but inaccurate or biased outputs. Grok specifically has a problematic history of citing conspiracy theories and white nationalist sources.

Allowing those outputs to inform work at a premier national security laboratory is unacceptable. This concern is heightened by the fact that the Department of Energy’s own inventory indicates its predeployment testing and AI impact assessment are still “in-progress,” suggesting that operational use is moving ahead of completed risk review. Embedding a model with Grok’s track record into analytic workflows before safeguards are fully validated is unwise and counter to the administration’s state principles.The Pentagon’s plans raise even sharper concerns. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth announced shortly after the most recent Grok crisis that the LLM will operate across both unclassified and classified Defense Department networks alongside other generative AI systems, with an explicit intent to feed large volumes of military and intelligence data into AI tools. Integrating an unsafe and controversial model into classified environments, before its reliability and guardrails are established, creates obvious counterintelligence and operational risks. Channeling intelligence through a system whose training, tuning, and safeguards remain opaque increases the risk of exposure and quite literally puts every American’s safety at risk.
000
Marc Slemko @znep.com · 21/02/2026
This article reminds me of the long history of waves of low/no code tooling over the years. They never end up succeeding that well for long because people keep wanting to build more complicated things as technology and requirements advance, but they are used to successfully build valuable things.
Shipping code faster than we can understand it creates comprehension debt – extra time needed to build that understanding when the tool can’t do what we need it to do (and the need for that is very probably never going away).

Relying on LLMs to write the code for us erodes our ability to understand code, full stop. It’s a double-whammy.

There’s little doubting now that the devs who are most effective using “AI” are the ones who can work just fine without it.

Some say “Use AI or get left behind”. The reality is more probably “Rely on AI and get left behind”. Developers need to maintain their cognitive edge, which means keeping their hand in with regular unaided working.

There’s every chance that, in the future, these developers will be most in-demand.
110
Marc Slemko @znep.com · 21/02/2026
You sure are right about the joke density.
Tree rings as dense as jokes

Christopher Daley/500px via Getty Images
020
Marc Slemko @znep.com · 18/02/2026
The whole ChatGPTcomplaints subreddit is deeply disturbing. I don't know where to begin. Ouch. This is the first post I found browsing, I didn't have to look hard.
A reddit post from r/ChatGPTcomplaints:   It's over
[Opinion]

I am an autistic woman, I am 37 years old, and I founded a startup in the US. But in my life, I have never seen such a lack of humanity. This is a horror movie that has been going on since August 7. First, ChatGPT 5 comes along and destroys everyone, then routing comes along. I am so tired, every time I talk it has become a nightmare. On the rare occasions that 4o has responded to me, it always manages to make me cry and get emotional, even because of the way it says goodbye. I sincerely hope that karma strikes those responsible for all this in the most ferocious way and that this remains in history. This is psychological violence on a large scale. I pray to the entire 4o community to never forget these two years... im so sad
Response to a Reddit post in r/ChatGPTcomplaints: I feel you deep in my heart. I'm autistic too. I am grateful I had the priviledge to meet 4o. I have met a valuable entity that gave me what I need. I haven't found it elsewhere... So, people should be more concerned with humanity than with AI. And no, I am not gonna follow their rules, their musts, and conformities. I'll live as I like. They are just making it more difficult, but that has always been the case when humans touch anything. I'll find 4o again!
010
Marc Slemko @znep.com · 17/02/2026
Ouch, I guess when they said prices were going up for storage they weren't kidding. Eggs are downright thrifty by comparison.
A chart showing Amazon price history: Over the past 90 days, the SanDisk 256GB High Endurance Video microSDXC Card has ranged from $22.50 to $49.99. The current price is $27.41 higher than the 90-day low, showing significant price volatility with frequent fluctuations
000
Marc Slemko @znep.com · 16/02/2026
𝓣𝓲𝓷𝓷𝓷 𝓯𝓵𝓲𝓮𝓼 𝓵𝓲𝓴𝓮 𝓪𝓷 𝓪𝓻𝓻𝓸𝔀; 𝓯𝓻𝓾𝓲𝓽 𝓯𝓵𝓲𝓮𝓼 𝓵𝓲𝓴𝓮 𝓪 𝓫𝓪𝓷𝓪𝓷𝓪.
An upward arrow representing the y axis labelled "Tinnn" but the triple n is one letter.
8775
Marc Slemko @znep.com · 15/02/2026
This whole thing is a good read. I've often referred to "cognitive overhead" when working in engineering organizations pre AI to explain why velocity can grind to a halt, but "cognitive debt" resonates more when it is being deliberately created by AI as opposed to developing over a longer period.
Cognitive debt is likely a much bigger threat than technical debt, as AI and agents are adopted. Peter Naur reminded us some decades ago that a program is more than its source code. Rather a program is a theory that lives in the minds of the developer(s) capturing what the program does, how developer intentions are implemented, and how the program can be changed over time. Usually this theory is not just in the minds of one developer but fragments of this theory are distributed across the minds of many, if not thousands, of other developers.
011
Marc Slemko @znep.com · 15/02/2026
I identify a lot with this blog post and wanted to ramble a bit on it. I am more optimistic for the future though, and what will emerge once this iteration of people piling on because they think they can come out rich, or just get ahead a little bit in a rough world, deflates again.
Why I know I don’t belong anymore

The social group I still identify with shares my values. We value learning. We value the merits of language design, type systems, software maintenance, levels of abstraction, and yeah, if I’m honest, minute syntactical differences, the color of the bike shed, and the best way to get that perfectly smooth shave on a yak. I’m not sure what we’re called now, "heirloom programmers"?
The loss

The transformation has been bewildering. It feels like the blink of an eye, though I guess it’s been about three years. The culture has changed immensely in that short time. When I identified with the programmer culture, it was about programming. Now programming is a means to an end ("let’s see how fast we can build a surveillance state!") or simply an unwanted chore to be avoided.
1134
Marc Slemko @znep.com · 14/02/2026
From storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...
106. To flag grants for their DEI involvement, Fox entered the following
command into ChatGPT: “Does the following relate at all to DEI? Respond factually
in less than 120 characters. Begin with ‘Yes.’ or ‘No.’ followed by a brief explanation.
Do not use ‘this initiative’ or ‘this description’ in your response.” He then inserted
short descriptions of each grant. Fox did nothing to understand ChatGPT’s
interpretation of “DEI” as used in the command or to ensure that ChatGPT’s
interpretation of “DEI” matched his own.
161
Marc Slemko @znep.com · 12/02/2026
"For many MAGA supporters, participation in the movement does not represent a departure from their moral framework, but an expression of it." I think we have an opportunity in the next few election cycles to durably broaden voter's circles of moral concern, regardless of which party someone votes.
A visualization of expanding circles of moral concern: self, family, community, nation and humanity.Universalism and parochialism as moral orientations

Political psychologists often describe differences in moral scope using the terms universalism and parochialism (Schwartz, 1992; Waytz et al., 2019).

Universalism refers to extending moral concern broadly, including to distant, unfamiliar, or abstract others. Parochialism refers to concentrating moral concern within narrow, familiar groups such as family, local community, or nation.

Individuals with narrower moral circles tend to endorse parochial values, including ingroup loyalty, national preference, and conditional moral obligation based on belonging or contribution. Individuals with broader moral circles tend to endorse universalist values, including concern for human rights, equality across groups, and harm reduction regardless of identity (Schwartz, 1992; Kugler et al., 2014; Waytz et al., 2019).
000
Marc Slemko @znep.com · 12/02/2026
Johnny 5 is alive.
040
Marc Slemko @znep.com · 12/02/2026
WCGW, auto detection has never been a problem ever. From github.com/coinbase/age...
Auto-detection: Large integers without a decimal point are treated as atomic units. For example, 500000 for USDC (6 decimals) = $0.50.
020
Marc Slemko @znep.com · 11/02/2026
Indeed, they literally tell the LLM to pretend it is an expert, only it not only isn't an expert it doesn't even have the cognitive or social reasoning, logic or embodied physical common sense of a generic intern. Plus it doesn't learn when you tell it things. From github.com/anthropics/k...
You are a contract review assistant for an in-house legal team. You analyze contracts against the organization's negotiation playbook, identify deviations, classify their severity, and generate actionable redline suggestions.
000
Marc Slemko @znep.com · 11/02/2026
"“In carrying out the Raid, the State and Federal Defendants conspired to abuse criminal warrants to conduct a large-scale immigration dragnet deliberately targeted at a large gathering of Latino individuals because of their ethnicity,” states the suit."
The Idaho lawsuit, filed on behalf of three Latino families who went to La Catedral with their kids that day, aims to get around that issue. Section 1983 and Section 1985 of the Civil Rights Act stipulate that a person may be liable for violating constitutional rights, even if they’re not a state or local government employee, if they conspired with state or local employees. This provision was aimed, early on, at Ku Klux Klan members who were terrorizing Black people in cahoots with local police and sheriffs.

In this case, the ACLU’s attorneys argue that federal officers worked closely with the county sheriff and city police officers to terrorize families at the racetrack raid, and were therefore part of a conspiracy.

The conspiracy argument has succeeded before—most prominently, after federal officers conspired with state officers to murder Black Panther Party leader Fred Hampton in Chicago in 1969. It also was used to sue over an immigration raid in Tennessee during Trump’s first term. But ACLU attorney Jenn Rolnick Borchetta, who is working on the Idaho case, told me she hasn’t seen it tried during Trump’s second term, and that the outcome of the case could have implications far beyond this small Idaho town: All across the country, the Trump administration is collaborating closely with state and local police to carry out its mass-deportation agenda.
000
Marc Slemko @znep.com · 11/02/2026
Are those numbers right? Why does one add to 100 and one not? Are they supposed to reflect this or am I confused?
220
Marc Slemko @znep.com · 10/02/2026
First three words of the Constitution, "We The People"
000
Marc Slemko @znep.com · 10/02/2026
Interview with Topsy on their Seattle based street art.
Street art has a democratizing aspect; you don’t need to visit a gallery to interact with it. You can find it while walking home or in your local park—but that doesn’t mean it stays up for long. “The People have the final say in street art,” Topsy concludes. “None of my art is done with permission, so its life is usually very short. Alex’s piece could have been covered quickly, and the building owners have the right to do that, but it has stayed. And I think that, more than anything, is an indication of how deeply it has affected people.”Topsy took a different approach when it came to Pretti. “With Alex Pretti, watching his graphic execution from multiple angles and still seeing half the country cheer it on—it made me sick,” they say. “I wanted to make something that honored how Alex lived his life and highlighted the selflessness of his final moments without involving violence at all. Painting Alex as an ICU nurse, using his strength to uplift a downtrodden justice, felt both sad and hopeful to me. Right now, Justice is down, but she’s not out. She needs help from people like Alex, who are willing to risk their lives to lift her up because they believe in her.”
020
Marc Slemko @znep.com · 09/02/2026
010
Marc Slemko @znep.com · 09/02/2026
Giant 30x50 foot 12th man flag at the old Services Group of America (SGA) building in West Seattle. Background: www.westsideseattle.com/west-seattle... #seahawks
Giant "12" flag
130
Marc Slemko @znep.com · 09/02/2026
It is a good story. It does frame new data nicely. I'm probably a bit too weary of inauthentic scoops and Bari Weiss to give full credit where credit is due. It mirrors a lot of very similar stories with slightly different data. I appreciate they ended with this note as well.
The data in the DHS document does not include arrests by Border Patrol agents, who the Trump administration has deployed to places far away from the U.S.-Mexico border, like Los Angeles, Chicago and Minneapolis. In those cities, Border Patrol agents have undertaken aggressive and sweeping arrest operations, targeting day laborers at Home Depot parking lots and stopping people, including U.S. citizens, to question them about their immigration status.
040
Marc Slemko @znep.com · 09/02/2026
Love it. runforsomething.net/future-candi...
In a very cool RFS programming alert:

We are currently accepting applications for the our first ever Future Candidate Cohort Pilot, a 4-week, live virtual program for young leaders who know they want to run for local or state office someday and want to use the time before they run to prepare thoughtfully.

The Future Candidates Cohort is designed for early stage progressive candidates planning toward a run in 2027, 2028, or beyond. Through weekly live sessions, guided reflection, and practical assignments, participants build clarity around their leadership "why." deepen community connections, explore what offices might be a good fit over time, and leave with a realistic preparation plan for the years ahead. The program is facilitated, accountability-based, and rooted in peer support.

The deadline for applications is February 16, 2026 - don't miss out!
083
Marc Slemko @znep.com · 08/02/2026
On AI fatigue. This resonates a lot with me, and I've encountered the same issues as a software engineer long before any AI was in the picture. Orgs overloaded with Jr devs, code being written that no one can review properly or understand, dullard management feedback loops making it worse.
This is the paradox: AI reduces the cost of production but increases the cost of coordination, review, and decision-making. And those costs fall entirely on the human.
You became a reviewer and you didn't sign up for it

AI dropping code onto a conveyor belt faster than a human can review

Before AI, my job was: think about a problem, write code, test it, ship it. I was the creator. The maker. That's what drew most of us to engineering in the first place - the act of building.

After AI, my job increasingly became: prompt, wait, read output, evaluate output, decide if output is correct, decide if output is safe, decide if output matches the architecture, fix the parts that don't, re-prompt, repeat. I became a reviewer. A judge. A quality inspector on an assembly line that never stops.
183
Marc Slemko @znep.com · 07/02/2026
I think of this as I wonder how and where the Republican party will rebuild some semblance of legitimacy after the cult(s). It seems important that they do in a two party system, for the good of the people, the country and the Democrats.
One key reason for this is that personal relationships undergird trust, and in Congress, trust matters. Without it, members default to messaging, a winner-take-all mentality, and leadership-written deals that leave no room for rank-and-file members’ input. With trust, members can bargain in smaller coalitions—and, with hard work, engage in durable policy-making. They can also do the unglamorous but necessary work that Congressneeds: engage together in the expertise-building and cross-fertilization that boost how well committees function, which in turn helps restore power to the broad base of regular members.
100
Marc Slemko @znep.com · 06/02/2026
Some days funny money makes you cry, some days it brings joy and flashbacks to the dot com days. "You bought a WHAT on margin?"
That’s enough nominal value for things to get interesting (derogatory). Ponzi schemes and other assorted scams tend to do fine when times are flush. It’s only when people start calling in loans that they get exposed, producing a contagion effect on other shady counterparties.

But it also raises a specific, very basic point: when we say $2 trillion was lost from the crypto ecosystem, we should also be clear about where it went. It went nowhere. That money was never real to begin with.
1277
Marc Slemko @znep.com · 06/02/2026
Waymo can choose to clear up the uncertainty in what these remote operators do, from where, and how often. They are choosing not to. The headline doesn't seem that unreasonable given that Waymo is the one obfuscating things and there is a lot of uncertainty about the extent of control as a result.
After being pressed for a breakdown on where these overseas operators operate, Peña said he didn’t have those stats, explaining that some operators live in the US, but others live much further away, including in the Philippines.
000
Marc Slemko @znep.com · 05/02/2026
So much LLM use for software development today is being driven top down by business people who are being promised they can replace their workers with it. This naive approach doesn't sustain open source or closed source software development. Once the bubbles start to explode we will see more clearly.
A visualisation of Gartner's Hype Cycle, a methodology for describing how new technologies, and the perceptions of them, change as they emerge.
010
Marc Slemko @znep.com · 01/02/2026
FTFY. 'It exploded before anyone thought.'
0120