Fried Kielbasahttps://fredkozlowski.com/en-USThu, 24 Sep 2026 16:45:48 GMThttps://fredkozlowski.com/2026/09/24/i-rebuilt-the-nyc-councils-website/https://fredkozlowski.com/?p=681My motivation for getting started was Daniel Golliher’s class, Maximum New York. He had a list of civic tech projects that someone could do. I started off with a simple one — a timeline of changes to the NYC Zoning Resolution. After that, I decided to build a replacement for the website the City Council […]Thu, 24 Sep 2026 16:44:58 GMTFredUncategorizedhttps://fredkozlowski.com/2026/09/20/verification-jigs/https://fredkozlowski.com/?p=678I won the Cosmos Grant! Applying felt like a long shot, but I wanted to see if I could get my writing to work harder for me. I’m looking forward to exploring some ideas I have around making AI coding safer. I’m excited to keep thinking about where human judgement belongs in AI coding — […]Sun, 20 Sep 2026 22:19:11 GMTFredUncategorizedhttps://fredkozlowski.com/2026/09/06/the-duke-of-moctezuma-is-alive-and-runs-a-marketing-agency/https://fredkozlowski.com/?p=674There is a Duke of Moctezuma alive today — he lives in Madrid, runs a marketing agency, and holds a Spanish title, one of many granted to the Aztec nobility that survived the conquest of their empire. The concept of ennobling conquered people makes sense when you consider what the aristocracy actually was. Nobility was […]Sun, 06 Sep 2026 19:40:41 GMTFredUncategorizedhttps://fredkozlowski.com/2026/07/30/when-vibecoding-is-actually-safe/https://fredkozlowski.com/?p=669The problem with vibecoded software isn’t that it’s bad. It’s that nobody knows whether it’s bad. Vibecoding trades an understanding of what the code does for massively increased speed — great for a personal project, but nobody advocates for it as a way to build quality software, because nobody has inspected the code. And all […]Thu, 30 Jul 2026 20:54:36 GMTFredUncategorizedhttps://fredkozlowski.com/2026/06/14/rome-fell-and-nobody-noticed/https://fredkozlowski.com/?p=666When I first began learning about the Roman Empire in middle school, I was most interested in what everyone else seems to be interested in — the time of Caesar and Augustus. Recently, however, I’ve become far more interested in the decline & fall of the Roman Empire. You always hear the date 476 as […]Sun, 14 Jun 2026 18:33:14 GMTFredUncategorizedhttps://fredkozlowski.com/2026/05/14/lets-try-to-build-an-apartment-in-nyc/https://fredkozlowski.com/?p=650So you have a plot of land in New York. You want to put an apartment building on it. What does it look like to actually accomplish this? A pretty usual New York City plot of land that you would put an apartment building on is 25 feet by 100 feet. This is pretty common […]Thu, 14 May 2026 21:44:54 GMTFredUncategorizedhttps://fredkozlowski.com/2026/03/30/why-i-care-about-zoning/https://fredkozlowski.com/?p=572What makes different cities different? Why is it that your daily life takes a different structure when you’re in a new spot? The small things about the built environment make a massive difference in the texture of your daily activities. We’re talking about things like where you get coffee, where you get groceries, how you […]Mon, 30 Mar 2026 01:40:27 GMTFredUncategorizedhttps://fredkozlowski.com/2026/03/15/3-weeks-of-unemployment/https://fredkozlowski.com/?p=567If you’re looking through a security camera at me during a regular workday, there’s not really that much happening. I think that internet use is a natural reaction to living a life which is pretty much the same every single day. I was very lucky to be unemployed with my wife for three weeks between […]Sun, 15 Mar 2026 17:53:37 GMTFredUncategorizedhttps://fredkozlowski.com/2025/12/21/what-they-dont-tell-you-about-getting-arrested-in-new-york/https://fredkozlowski.com/?p=548All I wanted to know was how the NYC government works and now I’m insufferable at parties. Around 90% of people arrested in NYC are released after their arraignment. After a person is arrested, they must be brought in front of a judge to have their bail set prior to their court date. The purpose […]Sun, 21 Dec 2025 02:47:42 GMTFredUncategorizedhttps://fredkozlowski.com/2025/11/02/running-a-business-means-contact-with-reality/https://fredkozlowski.com/?p=526A year ago I decided to help build a service business for my mom because I wanted to learn about marketing and business. One of the largest blindspots engineers have is around sales and marketing. I was determined to not fall into this trap, but marketing seemed like a skill I couldn’t just learn by […]Sun, 02 Nov 2025 22:32:40 GMTFredUncategorized