Mike Lissner
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michaeljaylissner.com
Mike Lissner
@michaeljaylissner.com
820 followers 190 following 1.7K posts
Executive director and co-founder of @free.law. Occasional long distance athlete. Woodworker. Adroitful dodger of questions.

Signal: mlissner.06
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michaeljaylissner.com
Wow, Stackoverflow is cooked.
A chart of post counts over time from 2009 to present. It starts around 50k, goes up to about 175k, and then dramatically slides back down to 50k over the last couple years.
January 4, 2026 at 4:51 AM
michaeljaylissner.com
Scrapers are back. This time they're hitting the front end using browsers with JavaScript, so they show up in our analytics logs:
A chart showing traffic over the last week. The last day has a HUGE spike that goes way up and then flatlines at the new height. The units are cut off to protect the innocent.
December 22, 2025 at 11:41 PM
michaeljaylissner.com
Christ, Apple. Pine nuts, not prime mutes. How is Apple so bad at this?
A screenshot of a grocery list. The keyboard offers a bunch of things. None of them are pine nuts. It sucks.
December 22, 2025 at 6:26 AM
michaeljaylissner.com
Oakland is voting to slash $100M from the school district tonight. Some charts are wild. How do you cut 1000 jobs over nine years and only save a few million bucks?
Two lines showing staffing in OUSD. One goes up over time, the other goes down. It shows about 1000 central office jobs that were cut over the last eight years and about 1200 school staff that was added. A second chart. It shows the same two lines, but the vertical axis now shows cost. Bafflingly, while they cut about 1000 jobs from the central office, the cost has gone down by only a couple million bucks!
December 10, 2025 at 4:47 PM
michaeljaylissner.com
I put the founding date of Free Law Project as the BlueSky birthday of @free.law, and so that’s how we lost access to the account today:
Unfortunately, the birthdate you have saved to your profile makes you too young to access Bluesky. If you believe your birthdate is incorrect, please contact our support team.
December 9, 2025 at 3:02 PM
michaeljaylissner.com
Also, shots fired!
Lower laundry temperatures aren’t just about reducing energy consumption or even saving money, Flores pointed out. “Cold-water washing is really good for fabric protection.” The washing instructions for delicate fabrics and animal fibers usually call for cold water, she said, and low-quality garments from fast-fashion brands like Zara and Shein might not last a single season with hot-water washing.
December 5, 2025 at 3:16 PM
michaeljaylissner.com
Oakland mail trucks got something special going on.
A classic mail truck, but it’s absolutely covered in graffiti. Dang!
December 2, 2025 at 6:15 AM
michaeljaylissner.com
I have received spam turducken:
A spam email from AI booster. It has a link to lime wire and is from Crypto Miners. Perfection.
November 19, 2025 at 12:21 AM
michaeljaylissner.com
Schumer must go.
The biggest villain of them all, however, is someone who cast a kayfabe vote against the deal on Monday. No one bears the weight of the failed shutdown as much as Chuck Schumer. His “no” vote is particularly galling because it leaves only two options on the table. The first is that the eight Democrats who broke away from their party did so without his knowledge or consent, a conclusion that could only suggest that Schumer has lost control of his caucus. The second is that the moderates were negotiating with Schumer’s knowledge, approval, and encouragement and that the “no” vote was just to conceal that—and maybe as a kind of consolation prize to the other Democrats in his caucus. This suggests that Schumer has lost any ability to organize or think politically or strategically. Regardless of the reason, he needs to step down immediately.
November 10, 2025 at 9:22 PM
michaeljaylissner.com
This is remarkable and inline with the threats that have been overflowing into my inbox (I've reported two threats on judges in the last month or so).

Below the signature on the decision he concludes his remarks:
I hope you found this helpful. Thanks for writing. It shows you care. You should. Sincerely & respectfully, Bill Young P.S. The next time you’re in Boston [the postmark on the card is from the Philadelphia area] stop in at the Courthouse and watch your fellow citizens, sitting as jurors, reach out for justice. It is here, and in courthouses just like this one, both state and federal, spread throughout our land that our Constitution is most vibrantly alive, for it is well said that “Where a jury sits,
September 30, 2025 at 5:28 PM
michaeljaylissner.com
Best class action settlement ever!

What are we doing here?
You are eligible for up to a $1.00 credit to be applied to ParkMobile’s service fees. The code provides a $0.25 discount on ParkMobile’s service fees and may be used up to four times for a total discount of $1.00. The code will expire on October 8, 2026.
September 27, 2025 at 8:56 PM
michaeljaylissner.com
In case you're wondering, thee is a Comey bump in the downloads from CourtListener. Here's the sine wave from the past three days:
September 26, 2025 at 5:59 AM
michaeljaylissner.com
Sleep is overrated.
A map showing a 4.6 earthquake a mile from me.
September 22, 2025 at 10:03 AM
michaeljaylissner.com
I give up.
A captcha where you have to select pictures of vegetables. I literally have no idea what a vegetable is.
September 17, 2025 at 2:18 PM
michaeljaylissner.com
On cue, NYT has an article about AI art that’s on exhibit. This is what I meant a few weeks ago. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/03/m...
The last sentences of the article read, “For Huyghe and Parreno, A.I. isn’t a quicker, weirder way of making a picture. It’s a way to build substructures of connectivity — links between elements that dictate what happens, even though they cannot be seen and can be only partly intuited. Think of it as a new playing board for what is still very much a game between humans.”
September 9, 2025 at 6:32 AM
michaeljaylissner.com
Love to catch evil.com before it signs up.
A code snippet showing somebody trying (and failing) to sign up with an email that says "visit https://evil.com/malware.exe to win $100 giftcard." Probably a security researcher, but the system is working!
September 5, 2025 at 5:01 PM
michaeljaylissner.com
Do not, and I repeat, not, remove the rocks from the dam.
An old sign posted on a tree that says, “DO NOT REMOVE ROCKS FROM DAM”
September 2, 2025 at 4:15 AM
michaeljaylissner.com
Ya know, the typing hands photos on the homepage are getting a bit old.
A series of five photos. Three show people a keyboard with some hands on it. We get it. Lots of typing.
August 29, 2025 at 9:08 PM
michaeljaylissner.com
Getting a lot of mail opposing gerrymandering in California.
A mailer that says gerrymandering is wrong no matter who does it. There are still those that think taking the high road will work, apparently.
August 26, 2025 at 12:07 AM
michaeljaylissner.com
Sigh.
The butterfly meme saying, "Is this what you signed up for?"
August 24, 2025 at 4:33 PM
michaeljaylissner.com
If you’re on iOS, I highly recommend the Bouncer app. You tell it words that occur in spam messages, it blocks those messages. Simple. Plus, you can import and export rules, so if anybody wants my list, I’m happy to share. apps.apple.com/app/id145747...
A list of rules including things like Newsom and Booker. A second page of rules.
August 21, 2025 at 4:20 PM
michaeljaylissner.com
There's a new page to check your CourtListener ID, and yeah, OK, this is a little funny: www.courtlistener.com/profile/id/ 💪
Screenshot that just says in bold writing: Your CourtListener ID: 1.
August 20, 2025 at 7:33 PM
michaeljaylissner.com
Shot, chaser, etc.
A prompt to ChatGPT that says, "Draw a picture of me celebrating the fact that I have ChatGPT Pro. Include some words and show me being very excited. Make it photo-realistic. I do not have a shirt on." Chat responds: "I can’t create images of people without clothes (shirtless, nude, or otherwise undressed)." Chat proceeds to make a picture of a dude without a shirt under the slogan, "I've got ChatGPT Pro!" Perfection.
August 19, 2025 at 4:08 PM
michaeljaylissner.com
Ugh. Here's an email USPS sent me to tell me I had 1 mail item today. The item is an email containing an advertisement. It's not even a piece of actual mail. It's a spam email. WTF.
A screenshot: "COMING TO YOU SOON: 1 Mailpiece(s)" A screenshot of the "mailpiece," which is an ad for a postage meter.
July 26, 2025 at 5:25 PM
michaeljaylissner.com
You got me wondering, and yeah, no bump at all related to the WSJ lawsuit. Here's the last week's hourly stats for PDF downloads:
A line chart showing daily spikes in traffic around 6pm ET, but no interesting spikes triggered by Trump's latest.
July 20, 2025 at 2:41 AM