for the record im not technially 100% anti-AI, in the sense that its a broad category of tech being lumped under one umbrella term so it feels over-zealous to say i hate all of it all the time forever. but i also think trying to discuss what it actually IS good for is difficult right now when i cant take one step without something trying to convince me to use chatgpt to summarize my life and speed up my hobbies and turn my friends into chatbots and optimize my life into oblivion. i am certain there is nuance to the topic but can we stop cramming the square peg into the round hole before you start trying to sell me on the legitimate benefits of the square peg. please.
Neural Nets have existed for decades and are genuinely useful. It's a form of AI that recognizes patterns, and can do stuff like identify cancer cells, tell whether an egg is fertilized or not, detect fraud, and optimize routes.
Those are Expert Systems, tuned to do exactly one thing. If you (say) ask a medical expert system a question about financial law, it's useless. The autopilot that flies a 787 has no idea how to drive a truck on the freeway. A Coulter Counter is excellent at identifying lymphocytes in a blood sample but can't predict the next card in a blackjack game.
And so on.
The problem with so-called generalized AI (AGI) is that we don't have that yet. It doesn't exist. It MIGHT some day, but AGI has been "10 years away" since the 1980s. The goals keep moving as we learn more about how people and machines process data.
But the current crop of AI techbros have been selling generative Large Language Model AI (LLM) as AGI because generative systems do a good job of faking it. There's no actual thought going on, merely the illusion of thought via predicting the next word in a sentence accurately.
If you let a human toddler listen to 800 hours of YouTube car influencer videos, that toddler might end up sounding like a car influencer. They'd parrot horsepower numbers and 0 to 60 times, mention EV range and MSRP numbers.
But they wouldn't understand any of it.
That's ChatGPT.
And yeah, it's worse than useless because it doesn't even know when it's lying or hallucinating. It just babbles convincingly until you stop it.
But for techbros to make money selling that as "AI"? It's the perfect scam, especially if you don't understand how it works.
commissioner gordon: Harley and Ivy have hijacked an AM radio station and taken the employees hostage
batman: what are their demands?
commissioner gordon: they havenât issued any. they, uh.
batman:
[commisioner gordon turns on the radio]
harley: âyou gotta walk away, sweetie. His family sounds completely toxic, if not outright emotionally abusive, and heâs too enmeshed to see it.
caller: no, youâre right. youâre right. I gotta do it.
harley: you got this, honey. now, stay on the line a minute, Iâm writing down some the names of some books for you and you can get those from Ivy after weâre done. okay! our next caller â
[commisioner gordon turns off the radio]
batman: what station is this?
commisioner gordon: WGTM.
batman: the one that rebroadcasts rush limbaugh?
commissioner gordon:
batman:
commisioner gordon: you know what, i probably didnât need to call you for this.
âalright, babe, one more reminder that my license was revoked which means i have to tell you this as your friend and not as a mental health professional: you have two options here. one of them is safe, legal, and healthy, and will have lasting long term benefits. the other one is fun.â
A few weeks in Selina gets dragged into it, and starts offering advice on caring for cats with special dietary needs and stuff. It inevitably turns into Jackson-Galaxy-esque explinations.
"My cat keeps attacking my feet."
"How often do you play with him?"
"Not as much as I should, but he has a basket of toys right there where he can reach it."
"He wants to play with you. Grab a teaser toy or a laser pointer and go nuts. He'll wear himself out in about fifteen minutes and you can go back to work."
You know, I actually think this would make for a really good Killer Croc redemption storyline
Cause the guy's whole deal is him lashing out at society for rejecting him because he has a skin condition (ignoring the cannibalism in certain adaptations), which means radio would be perfect for him. People can't see him, they can only hear him, and I imagine he has a sort of warm scratchy voice that sounds like he chainsmokes and it feels warm like an old wool blanket
Maybe he tells stories, maybe he does interviews, maybe he takes calls, whatever. But he becomes a fixture of late night Gotham, beloved by late shift workers and night owls, and Waylon Jones becomes a household name amongst a decent chunk of Gotham. That way, when he's eventually outed, people stop reacting like "AAH A CROCODILE MAN" and start being like "hey, it's our Waylon!"
I just like the idea of Croc being accepted and even loved by the people of Gotham
If you ask Bruce in his billionaire-playboy-philanthropist-idiot persona, heâll tell you talk radio is the fastest-growing communications segment in the country and youâll be left wondering how the fuck this man runs a successful business.
If you are one of the select few who knows him in his âalso I am Batmanâ capacity, heâll tell you overall crime has gone down since the villain-run station has hit the air, and also if Harley Quinn can talk someone out of the early stages of an abusive relationship before heâor worse, the Gotham City Morgueâhas to get involved, so much the better.
(Also, Ivy sent him a very nice orchid with very clear, vaguely-threatening care instructions, as a thank-you for the funding. Alfred follows them to the letter, of course.)
It is perfect đđ and Bruce would 100% sponsor it because then he would be able to ensure they stay good and don't use the station for brainwashing without involvement from the police of the Bats.
Just imagining Hatter or someone starts trying to use their portion to mindwash themselves an army and all the other rouges barge in on their segment and pummel them mid-talk. Cause-
"You are not ruining this for us Jeffrey!"
While Penguin or someone has taken over the segment and is providing live singing. And all listening just hear between the lovely singing; yelling, screams from their previous presenter and intermittent punching sounds before the song ends and all the noises seem to have stopped not that the station has muted but because they are all holding their breath.
The most tired sigh is let out before "Hand him over."
âA French lawmaker torched President Donald Trump and his top officials in a scathing indictment of his second term in the White House. Senator Claude Malhuret, who was described last year by the New York Times as âTrumpâs European nemesis,â linked the Iran war to the U.S. presidentâs appearance in the Jeffrey Epstein files and shamed American legislators for failing to impeach him for clearly unconstitutional conduct. âA year ago, here in France, I compared Trumpâs presidency to Neroâs Court,â Malhuret began. âI was wrong â itâs the miracle court. An anti-vaxxer, former heroin addict as minister of health [Robert F. Kennedy Jr.], a climate skeptic minister of economy [Scott Bessent], an alcoholic TV anchor, minister of the armed forces [Pete Hegseth], an old Qatar agent, minister of justice [Pam Bondi], a groupie of Putin, minister of national security [Tulsi Gabbard].â âA Turkish proverb says, âWhen a clown settles in a palace, he does not become king, it is the palace that becomes a circus,â Malhuret continued. âThis great team has decided to create a competitor to the UN. Since the creation of the Board of Peace, Trump has triggered more military strikes than Biden during his entire term.â âEvery time the Epstein affair resurfaces, bombs explode somewhere in the world and cause a distraction,â he added. âBomb more to win more.ââ
â Trump just got âthe most magnificently savage dismantlingâ in Franceâs parliament
Turns out that your appendix does have a purpose and it has to do with being a "safe house" for good gut bacteria. Not having one can mean issues with gut and immune health.
Traditionally regarded as a vestigial organ, the appendix is now being reevaluated for its significant function in health and nutrition of h
Not only will there be a new volume of CHECK, PLEASE! in the works...
But CHECK, PLEASE!: YEAR FIVE will be...
âŠTHE YEAR OF THE FROG. đž đ âš
Below, find a summary of what the newest volume of CHECK, PLEASE! will have to offer⊠highs, lows, and a whole new SMH!!
Samwell mens hockeyâs favorite bakerâand championship-winning senior captainâhas graduated! How will the team survive?
Problems abound as their new captain, Dex, learns that the effortless balance Bitty maintained on the team isnât as easy as it looks. Then, ultra-aloof Nursey must finally drop his âchillâ and get vulnerable in a senior poetry seminar. And to make matters worse, Chowder faces the dreaded âSSGSâ and is having the worst season of his college career.
But when change arrives at Samwell hockey, it not only threatens to rip the team apart, but could destroy Dex, Nursey, and Chowderâs friendship forever. Before they graduate, to save their team and themselves, the three seniors must come together and ask the question:
âWhat does Samwell hockey mean to you?â
I canât reveal any more spoilers, but Iâll leave you with that questionâwhat does Samwell hockey mean to you? Look out for more Check, Please! news in the months to come!
Subscribe to the Check, Please! newsletter!
Follow me on patreon for more exclusive news and to see me draw this goddamn comic!!
One of our favorite couple bits is B pretending to (incorrectly) mansplain hockey to me (this is funny because pretty much everything he learned about hockey he learned against his will due to proximity to me). Except at the airport today, a woman overheard us and clearly did not understand that it was a joke and looked like she was about to come over and defend both my and hockeyâs honor and I had to very hastily lean over B to explain that it was an inside joke and my husband was not, actually, a Grade A bag of dicks. đđ
If you are on a Windows 11 computer, pause everything you are doing for one minute and:
Open computer settings
Click on Accessibility on the left-hand menu
Scroll down the Accessibility menu and click on the Keyboard Option
Under the "related settings" tab, click "Typing" which should have a description of "spellcheck, autocorrect, text suggestions."
Turn off the AI "correct misspelled words"
and most importantly: turn off Typing Insights.
[ID: a screenshot of the above mentioned Windows 11 settings, showing that Typing Insights is now turned off, with the following description from Microsoft:
"Windows is using artificial intelligence to help you type
To help you save time and type efficiently, Windows can learn to suggest words, autocorrect spelling mistakes, and interpret swiped typing. Take a look at the insights below to see up-to-the-minute stats on how Windows has learned to improve typing for you. These stats are stored only on this device and Microsoft does not collect the typing insights data."
End ID]
"But Mx. November, it says right there Microsoft doesn't collect the typing insights data!"
I mean, yeah, it says that..... for *now.*
It also only specifies that Microsoft themselves don't collect it, and they wouldn't have made this something that I was automatically, secretly opted in for without my knowledge if they didn't have something to be gained by me not knowing it exists!
I only found this because a cat walked on the keyboard and turned on Filter Keys and while trying to figure out why my keyboard was just making chirping noises instead of typing, I happened to click on "typing insights" by accident.
Generative AI, and especially AI that is used to "personalize" and track your activity across the web and on your computer are never going to be in your best interest, it is always going to serve these companies in whatever way will line their pockets the most, and all it takes is updating their terms of service once, and then all of that data they promised they weren't collecting suddenly all belongs to them.
Actually, we need to talk about fandom and the NHL's conservative politics
(read on my Patreon)
You just finished reading every queer hockey story available to manâand holy Wayne Gretzkyâyou're a newly minted hockey fan. You love the gays; you want to watch the sexy men zoom around in the boy aquarium, and it's Friday night. So you tune into an NHL game.
You're a brand new hockey fan and you can see that there's twelve men on the ice, a bunch of others on the bench, there's coaches, assistant coaches, goalie coaches, referees, retired NHL players doing analysis and color commentary. You scan the faces, and all are consumed by the reason for tonight's gathering: working together to get a vulcanized piece of rubber into a goddamn net. We've left the outside world behind; color, creed, orientation, immigration status, and gender matter not. All that matters is the effort these athletes put out on the ice.
Yet, as a new, leftist hockey fan, pick any one of these people, and flip a coinâand there's a decent chance that this person has conservative politics. If they're American and registered to vote, there's a 43.9% chance they are registered as a Republican and if they voted, they voted for Donald J. Trump.
src: From Peter Lutz on Vote Hub
And I'm sure if you asked the other 38.5% of NHL players, they'd say something along the lines of "I don't really do politics." You know, the type of "uh...I think everyone should stop fighting" response that the willfully under-informed offer when you bring up genocides.
Oh man. Oh gosh. That's so weird. You got into hockey because of the myriad of stories that celebrate queerness and marginalized identities and intersectional feminismâso what is up with this league? Why is it so different from the stories that use it as an athletic backdrop? Has it always been like this? And how did you end up here? Why are so many other fannish/bookish left-leaning people like yourself finding solace in a league where there are millionaires who will gladly win it all and shake hands with a self-proclaimed fascist?
If you're at all like me, a leftist Black woman, it's a simple cycle.
You discover the world of hockey and the NHL which is strange and fascinating. The blood, sweat, and tears compel you. Yes, it's filled with white peopleâlike it's mostly white people whatthefuckisupwiththatâbut they're a different sort of people because this niche underground culture is...strange and fascinating! They have slang and enormous asses! (edit: I speak on hockey and whiteness in this Vanity Fair article.)
It is very gay. The homosociality of hockey breeds a male repression unmatched by any other form of physical exertion. You feel safe here now; you feel justified. Nevermind the fact that toxic masculinity is the thing you're actually observing. You were born with slash goggles on. If these men can't untie the bow on their unconscious desires and unrealized tenderness, you can do it for them.
Reality strikes. A good rule of writing is that characters are what they do. And whenever you peek into the real world of the NHL...you see what the league and its players doâor don't do. Time after time again you're presented with political inaction from the league, racism, misogyny, transphobia, and apathy towards the things you really care about. You learn slowly, that the NHL is a league that moves at glacial speeds, pun intended. It is, simply, not progressive.
Well, at least you have hockey romance and that is progressive! You don't need professional men's hockey! You can make a difference! Yay!
...But oh good God, now you've spread the gospel of hockey to dozensâmaybe hundreds of people with your hockey fandom. And some of the people with whom you shared your fandom? They may never make it to step three. (Picture me running from laptop to laptop, closing the Word documents of various hockey romance writers. I kind of sound like Jimmy Stewart: "Stop! St-stop it now! We're spreading it! Dontcha know we're spreading it, huh? You're sending 'em down to the boy aquarium, but that's no boy aquarium! That's MAGA territory, you see! These people think Bernie Sanders is crazy!")
Am I saying that watching an NHL game is like buying a signed copy of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child? No. (But someone do the math on that.) Any time we engage with any of the major sports we put money in the coffers of billionaires. (The PWHL is owned by billionaire Mark Walters, who is the owner the Lakers, Dodgers, and Sparks. He donated to Obama and the DNC and is always happy to visit the White Houseâeven if it's to hang out with Trump when his sports team does well. Do NOT get me started on the MLB)
All I am saying is that, you, new hockey fan, can save yourself a lot of time and frustration by knowing precisely the league that is being marketed to you. You will be disappointed with player politics. You will be lulled by the basest forms of rainbow capitalism. 43.9% of American NHL players are registered Republicans. You will find yourself accepting the bare-minimum. (I was way too proud of Sidney Crosby for like, knowing a gay person?)
I deeply regret having made Jack Zimmermann's "uncle" Wayne Gretzky. I didn't know the guy would go to Trump's inauguration... He's not even American.
Digital products and services keep getting worse. In the new report Breaking Free: Pathways to a fair technological future, the Norwegian Consumer Council has delved into enshittification and how to resist it. The report shows how this phenomenon affects both consumers and society at large, but that it is possible to turn the tide. Read more on forbrukerradet.no/breakingfree
this recent trend of teenagers using genAI chatbots to talk to fictional characters is fucking grim. what you should be doing is roleplaying on private messages with your friends until the lines between you & the characters begin to blur & you develop some very complex & confusing feelings for each other that culminate in a massive fallout you dont have the tools to process nor understand
I canât even imagine how the US Womenâs hockey team players, who probably slept in their gold medals, felt when they woke up to that shitty fucking video.
ESPECIALLY because so many of the men had been cheering the women in public and talking about how inspiring they were.... But the minute the men's team got behind closed doors and it was just The Boys, all pretense fell aside and they let their misogyny out. So fucking performative.
These are the same men who brought Gaudreauâs daughter onto the ice. And then minutes later behind closed doors theyâre laughing along with the president as he shits on womenâs achievements in their sport.
Petition for the US mens team to grow a collective fucking spine.
"You could get up early and do it before work" I could also wait for a magic beanstalk to start growing in my living room LMAO. Let's focus on things that happen in the real world
What happens when you do minimal screening before hiring agents, arming them, and sending them into the streets? We're all finding out.
(This article is behind a paywall, so hit yon readmore for the full text)
January 13, 2026
The plan was never to become an ICE agent.
The plan, when I went to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Career Expo in Texas last August, was to learn what it was like to apply to be an ICE agent. Who wouldnât be curious? The event promised on-the-spot hiring for would-be deportation officers: Walk in unemployed, walk out with a sweet $50k signing bonus, a retirement account, and a license to brutalize the countryâs most vulnerable residents without consequenceâall while wrapped in the warm glow of patriotism.
The catch, however, is that thereâs only one âLaura Jedeedâ with an internet presence, and it takes about five seconds of Googling to figure out how I feel about ICE, the Trump administration, and the countryâs general right-wing project. My social media pops up immediately, usually with a preview of my latest posts condemning Trumpâs unconstitutional, authoritarian power grab. Scroll down and youâll find articles with titles like âWhat I Saw in LA Wasnât an Insurrection; It Was a Police Riotâ and âInside Mike Johnsonâs Ties to a Far-Right Movement to Gut the Constitution.â Keep going for long enough and you might even find my dossier on AntifaWatch, a right-wing website that lists alleged members of the supposed domestic terror organization. I am, to put it mildly, a less-than-ideal recruit.
In short, I figuredâat least back thenâthat my military background would be enough to get me in the door for a good look around ICEâs application process, and then even the most cursory background check would get me shown that same door with great haste.
The ICE expo in the Dallas area, where my application journey began, required attendees to register for a specific time slot, presumably to prevent throngs of eager patriots from flooding the event and overwhelming the recruiters. But when I showed up at 9 a.m., the flood was notably absent: there was no line to check in and no line to go through security. I walked down nearly empty hallways, past a nearly empty drug testing station, and into the event proper, where a man directed me to a line to wait in for an interview. I took my spot at the end; there were only six people ahead of me.
While I waited, I looked around the ESports Stadium Arlingtonâan enormous blacked-out event space optimized for video game tournaments that has a capacity of 2,500. During my visit, there couldnât have been more than 150 people there.
Hopeful hires stood in tiny groups or found seats in the endless rows of cheap folding chairs that faced a stage ripped straight from Tron. Everything was bright-blue and lit-up and sci-fi-future angular. Above the monolithic platform hung three large monitors. The side monitors displayed static propaganda posters that urged the viewer to DEFEND THE HOMELAND and JOIN ICE TODAY, while the large central monitor played two short videos on loop: about 10 minutes of propaganda footage, again and again and again.
The expo event was part of ICEâs massive recruitment campaign for the foot soldiers it needs to execute the administrationâs dream of a deportation campaign large enough to shift Americaâs demographic balance back whiteward. Youâve probably seen evidence of it yourself: ICEâs âDefend the homelandâ propaganda is ubiquitous enough to be the Uncle Sam âI Want Youâ poster of our day, though somewhere in there our nation lost the plot about the correct posture toward Nazis.
When Donald Trump took office, ICE numbered approximately 10,000. Despite this eventâs lackluster attendance, their recruitment push is reportedly going well; the agency reported 12,000 new recruits in 2025, which means the agency has more new recruits than old hands. Thatâs the kind of growth that changes the culture of an agency.
Many of ICEâs critics worry that the agency is hoovering up pro-Trump thugsâJan. 6 insurrectionists, white nationalists, etc.âfor a domestic security force loyal to the president. The truth, my experience suggests, is perhaps even scarier: ICEâs recruitment push is so sloppy that the administration effectively has no idea whoâs joining the agencyâs ranks. Weâre all, collectively, in the dark about whom the state is arming, tasking with the most sensitive of law enforcement work, and then sending into Americaâs streets.
And we are all, collectively, discovering just how deadly of an arrangement that really is.
At the end of my brief interview, the recruiter mentioned I could talk to a current deportation officer about what the job would be like. There was no line to talk to a deportation officer (did I mention how empty the place was?) and so I walked up, introduced myself to one of them, and asked about day-to-day duties.
I shouldnât expect to hit the streets right away, the agent told me. Odds were good Iâd get a support position firstâsomething like the Criminal Alien Program office. âLetâs say a local police officer arrests someone out in the field for a DUI. Extremely common. Or beating their wife or whateverâall the typical crimes they commit,â he said. (The âtheyâ here being âundocumented immigrants,â and while itâs extremely difficult to measure, evidence suggests that âtheyâ actually commit crimes at a lower rate than U.S.-born citizens.)
If the cops suspect theyâre dealing with an immigrant who doesnât have permanent legal status, they alert ICE, whose agents conduct interviews and run record checks.
If this preliminary investigation suggests that status, the person ends up in the Criminal Alien Program office for processingâwhich is where I would come in. âWhat you see on TV, with us arresting people and doing all kinds of crazy things, thatâs maybe 10 percent. The other 90 percent is essentially doing a bunch of paperwork,â the agent said. âIt takes a lot to remove somebody from the United States. Some people are subject to due process.â
The officer ran down other departments I might end up in: Prosecutions, Removal Coordination Unit, or Detention. The point being that I should not expect to be a badass street officer on Day 1. âI have so many guys that come over to me, theyâre like, âIâm gonna put cuffs on somebody. Iâm gonna arrest somebody.â Well, you need to master this first and then weâll see about getting you on the field.â
I told him that I was fine with office workâwith my analyst background, it seemed like a better fit for my skill set anyway. His attitude shift was subtle, but instant and unmistakable; this was the wrong attitude and the wrong answer. âJust to be upfront, the goal is to put as many guns and badges out in the field as possible,â he said.
The agent then told me a bit about his own background. Like me, he enlisted straight out of high school, then got out and vowed to get as far away from the violence of the military as possible. Like a lot of veterans, he had trouble assimilating into the civilian world. âAfter about six months, I was like, âThese people arenât like me. I want to be around like-minded people.â â He found his way into law enforcement. That was well over a decade agoâheâs on his way to a very comfortable retirement, and he enjoys the work. âI like that instant gratification of Hey, that guy committed this crime, these X, Y, and Z, heâs not even supposed to be here,â he said.
I do not agree with his framing, but have no trouble understanding the appeal. Hell, itâs why I enlisted in the first place. Thankfully, Afghanistan beat it out of me. If I believed what he believed, I would surely do the same thing heâs doing.
I thanked him for the information and time, shook his hand, and took a seat on one of those uncomfortable folding chairs. I had a few hours before my flight back to New York City, and it made more sense to hang out than to flee the building and get good and airport drunk, regardless of how desperately I would have preferred the latter. Instead, I settled in to do what everyone does at the DMV: check my phone and people-watch. The aspiring officers fall broadly into three categories: thick-necked law enforcement types who look like they do steroids but donât know how to work out, bearded spec-ops wannabes who look like they take steroids and do know how to work out, and dorks. Pencil-necked misfits. I couldnât tell whether there were more white or Hispanic people waiting for their email, but it was close. A few Black applicants rounded out the overwhelmingly male group.
Iâd been sitting around for about an hour when the video suddenly stopped and a bearded man in a black suit stepped onto the stage. He did not introduce himselfâwe were, I gathered, supposed to already know who he wasâbut it became clear heâs a senior agent of some sort. âI figured it would be best if I break up the same video youâve been watching for the last four hours,â he said, and offered to answer any questions we might have.
One person asked about work/life balance, which the agent said is possible but not the route heâs chosen. Someone else wanted to know about travel opportunities and he talked about the many places heâs gone as part of the job.
Every other question during the 45 minutes the agent stood onstage pertained to the hiring process or what we could expect in training. Law enforcement types seemed especially concerned about the painful parts: Would they have to get pepper sprayed again? Would they have to get shot with a taser if theyâd already qualified? Yes and probably not, respectively. The agent took the opportunity to gush about ICEâs new state-of-the-art semi-automatic tasers and brand-new pepper-ball guns. âItâs mostly very liberal citiesâSan Francisco, Los Angelesâwhere groups will come and try to stop ICE officers from arresting somebody. Theyâre like, âWeâre going to form a human wall against you,â â he said. âWhen they do that, you can just pop âem up. Let them disperse and cry about it.â
When, during a moment of protracted silence, the agent threatened to put the video back on if no one had questions, I asked about harassment and doxing. âWe will prosecute people to the fullest extent of the law,â he assured me, âand then people like myself will go on TV and publicly talk about how that person is now in prison to dissuade other people from doing it.â
As empty as the place had been when Iâd arrived, it was even emptier by the time the senior agent ended the Q&A. Somebody vastly overestimated the number of Americans willing to take a job brutalizing and disappearing hard-working men and womenâeven with a potential $50K bonus, even in this economy.
That may have something to do with what happened to me next.
I completely missed the email when it came. Iâd kept an eye on my inbox for the next few days, but Iâd grown lax when nothing came through. But then, on Sept. 3, it popped up.
âPlease note that this is a TENTATIVE offer only, therefore do not end your current employment,â the email instructed me. It then listed a series of steps Iâd need to quickly take. I had 48 hours to log onto USAJobs and fill out my Declaration for Federal Employment, then five additional days to return the forms attached to the email. Among these forms: driverâs license information, an affidavit that Iâve never received a domestic violence conviction, and consent for a background check. And it said: âIf you are declining the position, it is not necessary to complete the action items listed below.â
As I mentioned, Iâd missed the email, so I did exactly none of these things.
And that might have been where this all endedâan unread message sinking to the bottom of my inboxâif not for an email LabCorp sent three weeks later. âThank you for confirming that you wish to continue with the hiring process,â it read. (To be clear, I had confirmed no such thing.) âPlease complete your required pre-employment drug test.â
The timing was unfortunate. Cannabis is legal in the state of New York, and I had partaken six days before my scheduled test. Then again, I hadnât smoked much; perhaps with hydration I could get to the next stage. Worst-case scenario, Iâd waste a small piece of ICEâs gargantuan budget. I traveled to my local LabCorp, peed in a cup, and waited for a call telling me Iâd failed.
Nine days later, impatience got the best of me. For the first time, I logged into USAJobs and checked my application to see if my drug test had come through. What I actually saw was so implausible, so impossible, that at first I did not understand what I was looking at.
Somehow, despite never submitting any of the paperwork they sent meânot the background check or identification info, not the domestic violence affidavit, none of itâICE had apparently offered me a job.
According to the application portal, my pre-employment activities remained pending. And yet, it also showed that I had accepted a final job offer and that my onboarding status was âEODââEntered On Duty, the start of an enlistment period. I moused over the exclamation mark next to âOnboardingâ and a helpful pop-up appeared. âYour EOD has occurred. Welcome to ICE!â
I clicked through to my application tracking page. Theyâd sent my final offer on Sept. 30, it said, and I had allegedly accepted. âWelcome to Ice. ⊠Your duty location is New York, New York. Your EOD was on Tuesday, September 30th, 2025.â
By all appearances, I was a deportation officer. Without a single signature on agency paperwork, ICE had officially hired me.
Perhaps, if Iâd accepted, they would have demanded my pre-employment paperwork, done a basic screening, realized their mistake, and fired me immediately. And yet, the pending and upcoming tasks list suggested a very different outcome. My physical fitness test had been initiated on Oct. 6, it said: three days in the future. My medical check had apparently been completed on Oct. 6.
The portal also listed my background check as completed on Oct. 6. Had I preemptively passed? Was ICE seriously going to let me start training without finding out the first thing about me? I reached out to ICE for an explanation, but never heard back.
The only thing left for me to do was press the green âAcceptâ button on the home page. And maybe I should have. Maybe no one would have ever checked my name and I could have written the story of a lifetime. Or maybe the agency infamous for brutalizing and disappearing people with no regard for the law or basic human rights would have figured out exactly who I am while I was in one of their facilities with no way to escape. Iâm not actually a domestic terrorist sent straight from Antifa headquarters, but to a paranoid fascist regime increasingly high on their own supply, I sure look like one on paper. Self-preservation won out.
I hit âDecline,â closed my browser, and took a long, deep breath.
What are we to make of all this? To be clear, I barely applied to ICE. I skipped the steps of the application process that would have clued the agency in on my lack of fitness for the position. I made no effort to hide my public loathing of the agency, what it stands for, and the administration that runs it. And they offered me the job anyway.
Itâs possible that Iâm an aberrationâperhaps I experienced some kind of computer glitch that affected my application and no one elseâs. But given all of the above, it seems far more likely that ICE is running an extremely leaky ship when it comes to recruitment.
With no oversight and with ICE concealing its agentsâ identities, itâll be extremely difficult for us to know.
Thereâs a temptation to take some comfort in ICEâs sloppiness. Thereâs a real argument here that an agency so inept in its recruitment will also be inept at training people and carrying out its mission. Weâre seeing some very sloppy police work from ICE, including an inability to do basic things like throw someone down and cuff them. On some level, all of this is a reminder that their takeover is neither total nor inevitable.
But if they missed the fact that I was an anti-ICE journalist who didnât fill out her paperwork, what else might they be missing? How many convicted domestic abusers are being given guns and sent into other peopleâs homes? How many people with ties to white supremacist organizations are indiscriminately targeting minorities on principle, regardless of immigration status? How many rapists and pedophiles are working in ICE detention centers with direct and unsupervised access to a population that will be neither believed nor missed? How are we to trust ICEâs allegedly thorough investigations of the people they detain and deport when they canât even keep their HR paperwork straight?
And if theyâre not going to screen me out, what hope is there of figuring out which recruit might one day turn into a trigger-happy agent who would forget that law enforcement officers are trained not to stand in front of vehicles, get jumpy, and shoot a 37-year-old woman to death on the streets of Minneapolis?
Thatâs exactly what happened last week, and why Renee Good will never have a 38th birthday, and why her children will never again be hugged by their mother.
By all appearances, the only thing ICE is screening for is a desire to work for ICE: a very specific kind of person perfectly suited for the kind of mission creep we are currently seeing. Goodâs murder is not an isolated incident; the American Civil Liberties Union reports a nationwide trend of ICE pointing guns at, brutalizing, and even detaining citizens who stop to film them. A Minneapolis pastor who protested ICE by chanting âWe are not afraidâ was detained at gunpoint by an agent who reportedly asked him: âAre you afraid now?â
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