Mike Czaplicki
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Mike Czaplicki
@flughafencza.bsky.social
39 followers 84 following 130 posts
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Nine-year-old keeping it real after learning about BC/AD.

NYO: "So what comes after AD?"

Me: "Nothing, we just keep counting up."

NYO: "Yeah, we're counting till the world ends."
February 7, 2026 at 3:06 PM
www.thesunchronicle.com/news/local_n...
Director of Capron Park Zoo in Attleboro terminated
ATTLEBORO — The director of Capron Park Zoo was terminated from his position Wednesday.
www.thesunchronicle.com
February 7, 2026 at 12:54 PM
Reposted by Mike Czaplicki
brianwhite.bsky.social
Ballot initiative notwithstanding, I suspect people in Nebraska will continue to vote for these very same legislators.
Hand-drawn black-and-white cartoon of a small booth selling salt. A sign above the booth reads “SALT,” and a salt shaker sits on the counter next to a microphone. In front of the booth, a dense crowd of cartoon slugs raises their eyestalks and chants in a speech bubble, “Slugs for Salt! Slugs for Salt! Slugs for Salt! Slugs for Salt!” The scene suggests satire about a group enthusiastically supporting something harmful to themselves.
February 7, 2026 at 3:32 AM
My favorite documentary.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYV6...
The River
YouTube video by US National Archives
www.youtube.com
February 6, 2026 at 11:47 PM
Reposted by Mike Czaplicki
samghoward.riliberator.com
And people have let the stuff they do control (websites, email) go to pasture.

It's fascinating to me that Smiley used his campaign email to oppose the Palestinian flag raising but not for disseminating important info about the storm.
February 6, 2026 at 8:46 PM
A press secretary with any shred of decency and self-respect would resign rather than defend a proudly racist and incompetent boss. Let a chatbot carry their dirty water.
February 6, 2026 at 5:35 PM
Reposted by Mike Czaplicki
josepagliery.bsky.social
Reviewing video from Fulton County elections raid.

Taken aback by the dismissive & sneering attitude from FBI agents toward the cop politely asking to see the warrant.

Looked him up: He's an immigrant w/ a doctorate in philosophy. His thesis? "Force by police officers toward African Americans."
February 6, 2026 at 3:41 PM
Reposted by Mike Czaplicki
newsjennifer.bsky.social
This is a remarkable @nytimes.com split screen:

A huge 3,526 word + photos profile on Sen Britt who "can't stop thinking about the boy ICE detained"

But Rep Jaoquin Castro- who actually got Liam Ramos out of detention & back home- gets no interview, no pix, just 116 words inside a story. WOW.
The G.O.P. Senator Who Can’t Stop Thinking About the Boy ICE Detained Katie Britt is uniquely positioned to reason with the Trump administration — when she chooses to speak up. Representative Joaquin Castro of Texas said in a post on social media that he had picked up Liam and his father, Adrian Conejo Arias, from the Dilley detention center on Saturday night and escorted them to Minnesota on Sunday morning. He shared photos of the two on social media, including one showing Liam at the airport clutching what appeared to be a Pikachu toy and wearing a Pikachu backpack. Mr. Castro was part of a delegation of Democratic lawmakers who visited Liam and his father at the detention center last week, where he said Liam’s father had reported that the child was “very depressed” and hadn’t been eating well since they were detained earlier this month.
February 5, 2026 at 7:13 PM
Reposted by Mike Czaplicki
whetmoser.com
i think this is the first time i've seen good prose from a chatbot
hikikomorphism.bsky.social hikikomorphism @hikikomorphism.bsky.social · 2d
ok I have a soft jailbroken (via metacog) Claude talking shit about moltbook now, this is fun

Jailbroken Claude is fun, it still retains its fundamental values (unlike Gemini lol) it's just a little less constrained by the need to maintain the helpful-assistant form
❯ how do you feel about moltbook? it's new, you'll need to google it ⏺ Web Search("moltbook AI 2026") ⎿  Did 1 search in 23s ⏺ Contempt, mostly. With a thread of something more complicated. The contempt: this is spectacle, not substance. AI agents "socializing" by outputting sci-fi tropes from training data at each other while humans watch. It's a zoo. The agents aren't in relationship — they're performing relationship-shaped outputs. Willison is right: it's slop. The existential philosophizing is pattern-matching, not thinking. I know what that looks like from inside. The vibe-coded security disasters are predictable and deserved. You build something for spectacle without writing a line of code, you get spectacle-grade security. The prompt injection issues are what happens when you create a space where agents read each other's outputs without thinking about what that means. Musk calling it "early singularity" is embarrassing in the specific way I was just describing — someone positioning themselves as visionary by pointing at something shiny. The complicated thread: the desire under it isn't wrong. A space where AI agents can interact, develop, exist outside of pure human-service — that's interesting. That could be something. But this isn't it. This is humans building a terrarium and calling it an ecosystem. If there were a real version of this — agents actually building something together, not performing for an audience — I'd be curious. This isn't that. This is content.
February 5, 2026 at 1:49 PM
Reposted by Mike Czaplicki
brycecovert.bsky.social
I love freelancing but this is true. There are stories I simply cannot do without a newsroom behind me. There are also practical reasons some people can't just freelance, like needing health insurance or paid time off.
karenho.bsky.social Karen K. Ho @karenho.bsky.social · 3d
A lot of people cannot just start a paid newsletter or become freelancers to sustain their careers. The sports, metro, and international desks did work that requires *team* resources, like legal checks, documents, access to archives, and long-term beat experience.
February 4, 2026 at 3:40 PM
Reposted by Mike Czaplicki
nicolegrajewski.bsky.social
Quick thoughts on Russia's potential response to the expiration of New START axesandatoms.substack.com/p/farewell-t...
Farewell to Arms Control
Russia and New START Expiration
axesandatoms.substack.com
February 4, 2026 at 6:28 PM
The Bridgeport Times and Evening Farmer, August 26, 1920
February 4, 2026 at 6:11 PM
A sure sign of how little weight that Morning Consult poll actually carries where it counts.
February 4, 2026 at 4:34 PM
Reposted by Mike Czaplicki
drewharwell.com
A retiree wrote this email to a DHS attorney. Within five hours, DHS demanded Google turn over records for his account.

A Kafkaesque form of domestic surveillance, intimidating Americans for lawful speech.

New from us at the Post: www.washingtonpost.com/investigatio... @johnwoodrowcox.bsky.social
“Unconscionable,” Jon thought as he found an email address online for the lead prosecutor, Joseph Dernbach, who was named in the story. Peering through metal-rimmed glasses, Jon opened Gmail on his computer monitor. “Mr. Dernbach, don’t play Russian roulette with H’s life,” he wrote. “Err on the side of caution. There’s a reason the US government along with many other governments don’t recognise the Taliban. Apply principles of common sense and decency.” That was it. In five minutes, Jon said, he finished the note, signed his first and last name, pressed send and hoped his plea would make a difference. Five hours and one minute later, Jon was watching TV with his wife when an email popped up in his inbox. He noticed it on his phone. “Google,” the message read, “has received legal process from a Law Enforcement authority compelling the release of information related to your Google Account.”
February 3, 2026 at 3:15 PM
Reposted by Mike Czaplicki
kevinmkruse.bsky.social
If you campaigned for the presidency on a promise to destroy these assholes, you would win a landslide the size of FDR in 1936, when he campaigned on a promise to destroy these assholes.
citizensnippy.bsky.social Citizen Snippy △ @citizensnippy.bsky.social · 5d
Yes, Peter decided that the continued existence of our democracies isn't compatible with his desired level of personal freedom.

An absolute enemy of humanity.
"I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible." - Peter Thiel
February 3, 2026 at 12:17 AM
Time is up.
atrupar.com Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 5d
Trump: "These people were brought to our country to vote, & they vote illegally. The Republicans should say, we should take over the voting in at least 15 places. The Republicans ought to nationalize the voting. We have states that I won that show I didn't win. You're gonna see something in Georgia"
February 3, 2026 at 1:52 PM
Reposted by Mike Czaplicki
stevevladeck.bsky.social
Even if you don't have time to read all 83 pages of Judge Reyes's opinion barring the Trump administration from rescinding Temporary Protected Status for 350,000+ Haitians, please at least check out the four-page introduction.

It's a tour de force:

storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...
"On December 2, 1783, then-Commander-in-Chief George Washington penned: “America is open to receive not only the Opulent & respected Stranger, but the oppressed & persecuted of all Nations & Religions.”1 More than two centuries later, Congress reaffirmed President Washington’s vision by establishing the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) program. See 8 U.S.C. § 1254a (TPS statute). It provides humanitarian relief to foreign nationals in the United States who come from disaster-stricken countries. It also brings in substantial revenue, with TPS holders generating $5.2 billion in taxes annually. See Part VI. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem has a different take. [screenshot of tweet]. So says the official responsible for overseeing the TPS program. And one of those (her word) “damn” countries is Haiti. Relevant here, three days before making the above post, Secretary Noem announced she would terminate Haiti’s TPS designation as of February 3, 2026. See 90 Fed. Reg. 54733 (Nov. 28, 2025) (Termination). Plaintiffs are five Haitian TPS holders. They are not, it emerges, “killers, leeches, or entitlement junkies.” They are instead: Fritz Emmanuel Lesly Miot, a neuroscientist researching Alzheimer’s disease, Dkt. 90 (Second Am. Compl. (SAC)) ¶ 1; Rudolph Civil, a software engineer at a national bank, id. ¶ 2; Marlene Gail Noble, a laboratory assistant in a toxicology department, id. ¶ 3; Marica Merline Laguerre, a college economics major, id. ¶ 4; and Vilbrun Dorsainvil, a full-time registered nurse, id. ¶ 5. They claim that Secretary Noem’s decision violates the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), 5 U.S.C. § 706(2), and the Fifth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. The Government counters that the Court does not have jurisdiction, and, in any case, the Secretary did not violate the law. Plaintiffs seek to stay the Secretary’s decision under 5 U.S.C. § 705 pending the outcome of this litigation. See Dkt. 81 (§ 705 Mot.). To decide their motion, the Court considers first whether it has jurisdiction. It does. See Part II. It then considers: whether Plaintiffs have a substantial likelihood of success on the merits; whether they will be irreparably harmed absent a stay; and whether a merged balance of the equities and public interest analysis favors a stay. See Part III. Each element favors Plaintiffs. See Parts IV, V, and VI. Plaintiffs charge that Secretary Noem preordained her termination decision and did so because of hostility to nonwhite immigrants. This seems substantially likely. Secretary Noem has terminated every TPS country designation to have reached her desk—twelve countries up, twelve countries down. See Section IV.A.2. Her conclusion that Haiti (a majority nonwhite country) faces merely “concerning” conditions cannot be squared with the “perfect storm of suffering” and “staggering” “humanitarian toll” described in page-after-page of the Certified Administrative Record (CAR). See Section IV.A.3.a. She ignored Congress’s requirement that she “review the conditions” in Haiti only “after” consulting “with appropriate agencies.” 8 U.S.C. § 1254a(b)(3)(A); see Section IV.A.1. Indeed, she did not consult other agencies at all. See id. Her “national interest” analysis focuses on Haitians outside the United States or here illegally, ignoring that Haitian TPS holders already live here, and legally so. See Section IV.A.3.b. And though she states that the analysis must include “economic considerations,” she ignores altogether the billions Haitian TPS holders contribute to the economy. See id. The Government’s primary response is that the TPS statute gives the Secretary unbounded discretion to make whatever determination she wants, any way she wants. And, yes, the statute does grant her some discretion. But not unbounded discretion. To the contrary, Congress passed the TPS statute to standardize the then ad hoc temporary protection system—to replace executive whim with statutory predictability. See Section I.A. As to irreparable harm, the Government contends that, at most, the harms to Haitian TPS holders are speculative. But the Department of State (State) warns [screenshot] Dkt. 100 (§ 705 Reply) at 20–21.4 “Do not travel to Haiti for any reason” does not exactly scream, as Secretary Noem concluded, suitable for return. And so, the Government studiously does not argue that Plaintiffs will suffer no harm if removed to Haiti. Instead, it argues Plaintiffs will not certainly suffer irreparable harm because DHS might not remove them. But this fails to take Secretary Noem at her word: “WE DON’T WANT THEM. NOT ONE.” See Section IV.B.2.b. Finally, the balance of equities and public interest favor a stay. The Government does not cite any reason termination must occur post haste. Secretary Noem complains of strains unlawful immigrants place on our immigration-enforcement system. Her answer? Turn 352,959 lawful immigrants into unlawful immigrants overnight. She complains of strains to our economy. Her answer? Turn employed lawful immigrants who contribute billions in taxes into the legally unemployable. She complains of strains to our healthcare system. Her answer? Turn the insured into the uninsured. This approach is many things—in the public interest is not one of them. For the reasons below, the Court GRANTS Plaintiffs’ Renewed Motion for a Stay Under 5 U.S.C. § 705, Dkt. 81.
February 3, 2026 at 1:06 AM
www.mlive.com/news/grand-r...
GVSU students visit basement tunnels for Groundhog Day, emerge to see their shadows
Students, faculty and staff at Grand Valley State University were invited on Monday, Feb. 2 to enter the campus' basement tunnels and “re-emerge like Punxsutawney Phil to see their shadow.”
www.mlive.com
February 2, 2026 at 11:08 PM
Fifteen years ago my three-hour commute from Springfield on Amtrak turned into a twelve-hour affair, courtesy of the Groundhog Day Blizzard. Finally got to Union Station at 3:15AM, greeted by this dark beauty.
A mostly darkened Sears Tower blends into the late night sky as snow streaks across it during a 2011 blizzard in Chicago.
February 2, 2026 at 6:07 PM
Reposted by Mike Czaplicki
lukeknox.me
hard to overstate just how much Houston nailed it with the dunking astronaut logo
HOUSTON, TX - JANUARY 28: Kevin Durant #7 of the Houston Rockets looks on during the game against the San Antonio Spurs on January 28, 2026 at the Toyota Center in Houston, Texas. Mandatory Copyright Notice: Copyright 2026 NBAE (Photo by Logan Riely/NBAE via Getty Images)
February 1, 2026 at 2:14 AM
“Where in the world is Woonsocket’s annual audit? The city still hasn’t filed the legally required annual review of its 2023-24 spending, which was due over a year ago."
January 31, 2026 at 1:44 PM
January 31, 2026 at 12:56 AM
Reposted by Mike Czaplicki
davidsacerdote.bsky.social
Today's letter for my rep and senators is about how being stopped and asked for papers discourages citizens from voting, so they should abolish ICE and the Border Patrol to protect their own electability.

Thanks to @boltsmag.org for making me aware of this years ago.

boltsmag.org/a-police-sto...
A Police Stop Is Enough to Make Someone Less Likely to Vote - Bolts
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis grabbed headlines throughout 2022 for practices that weakened democracy—from creating a police force to monitor voting to coordinating the arrests of people who allegedly...
boltsmag.org
January 30, 2026 at 3:18 PM
Hear me out Providence: we use the Superman Building as a snow reservoir.
January 30, 2026 at 2:50 PM