Jamie Lynn Waters

I said something last week that is more broadly applicable today:

Calling for empathy is not neutral or apolitical when only one group of people have been socialized and brutalized into having empathy.

Long-held freedoms—the freedom to give, the freedom to invest, the freedom to speak—are in question. But we can and must stand firm in our values and build a more inclusive future.

Read more in my annual essay for @macfound.org: www.macfound.org/about/reflec...

Unite in Advance: Philanthropy Coalition Launches Solidarity Campaign - Non Profit News | Nonprofit Quarterly We’re announcing a public sign-on statement to support philanthropy’s freedom to give. We are united to protect our freedom to express ourselves, to give, and to invest in our communities. Join us by ...

Friends in philanthropy: let's Unite in Advance. #CourageIsContagious #UniteInAdvance

nonprofitquarterly.org/unite-in-adv...

This is right. The fact that they’re doing this to “innocent people” is not irrelevant, but it’s ultimately not the point. People convicted of crimes have rights too. And you can be damn sure that if they want to convict them - or me, or you - of something, they will.

"We’ve seen this before in American history and across the globe. Weaponized oversight. Intimidation dressed up as transparency. It is not new. But our response must be." @macfound.bsky.social

A) Everyone should have protected free speech. No one should being kidnapped, imprisoned, and/or sent to a country that is not their home.
B) There are millions of American citizens who can't prove their citizenship.
It's not a longshot.
www.brennancenter.org/our-work/ana...

Opinion | There’s a Name for What Trump Is Doing to Trans People: Denationalizing (Gift Article) The message is that we are a threat to the nation. The subtext is that we are not of this nation.

"A country that has pushed one group out of its political community will eventually push out others. The Trump administration’s barrage of attacks on trans people can seem haphazard, but as elements of a denationalization project, they fall into place." www.nytimes.com/2025/03/17/o...

You need to understand the damage & horror a disgruntled or bigoted border agent can cause you, EVEN IF YOU HAVE CITIZENSHIP. The status of being in a country is just a category on a system: It doesn't become magically protected even if you have a BIRTH CERTIFICATE.

"Perhaps because, as they keep telling us, the age of A.I. is here (get used to it!), its derivative ethos seems to have permeated all forms of media. Everything must be easy to follow and to understand, simple enough to recognize and categorize."

The New Literalism Plaguing Today’s Biggest Movies Buzzy films from “Anora” to “The Substance” are undone by a relentless signposting of meaning and intent.

This has been rattling in my brain recently. Whence ambiguity?

(excuse the egregious umlauts of the New Yorker, to wit: "Rather than allowing us to reëxamine history, this obsessive reënactment in factsevers us from it.")
www.newyorker.com/culture/crit...

Thank you @drwolfe.bsky.social for holding up this important debate: how much, not if, to increase how much we give away -- as foundations, families, individuals???

Why Techdirt Is Now A Democracy Blog (Whether We Like It Or Not) While political reporters are still doing their view-from-nowhere “Democrats say this, Republicans say that” dance, tech and legal journalists have been watching an unfortunately recogn…

"What’s happening in the US is some sort of weird hybrid of the kind of power grabs we’ve seen in the tech industry, combined with a more traditional collapse of democratic institutions. The destruction is far more systematic and dangerous than many realize.”

Actually basing choices on 'merit' and 'competence' wouldn't result in the leadership they think it would.

“Nwi Yathmomen”: An Intervention in the Marquette Building

A new intervention in @macfound.bsky.social headquarters asserts the continued presence, resilience, and vibrancy of Native peoples in Chicago and the Midwest. We invited a few collaborators on the project to share their experience and reflections:

www.macfound.org/press/perspe...

JD Vance rails against 'excessive' AI regulation in a rebuke to Europe at the Paris AI summit U.S. Vice President JD Vance has told a Paris summit on artificial intelligence that the Trump administration will “ensure that AI systems developed in America are free from ideological bias,” and tha...

AI is fixin to have more rights than people. What if we weren't afraid of regulating tech?

apnews.com/article/pari...

Just overhere looking up Sword of Damocles to make sure I'm using it correctly.

If the US gov is bringing back empire and colonialism, make the territories states. Change the flag. Expand voting rights. Hand out passports like candy.

Illegal, dangerous, unnecessarily expensive, and no one benefits from any of it.

What a time for doomscrolling

Saturday Trendspotting: Litter-robots and creatine gummies

"Okay, but we can't automate everything" -me, when I cleaned my litter robot today.

www.superhuman.ai/p/saturday-t...

New AI tool for fighting health insurance denials could save hospitals billions, and help patients Waystar announced a new generative AI feature that aims to help hospitals quickly fight insurance denials.

I think there might be an easier solution, than automating *appeals* for insurance denials
www.cnbc.com/2025/01/13/h...

Milagros Miceli, researcher: ‘It’s not true that AI is going to automate everything. It requires the manual and precarious work of millions of people’ The expert from the German Internet Institute warns that the rise of tools such as ChatGPT will increase the demand for people who generate content for little money to enrich databases

A little dose of AI realism for ya: "this technology is based on [hidden] work, on precarious work, on the exploitation of millions of workers." Milagros Miceli from @dairinstitute.bsky.social english.elpais.com/technology/2...

‘We’re Fine’: Lying to Ourselves About a Climate Disaster The dystopia of Los Angeles' fires are horrifying, mundane, and everything in between.

"What I am experiencing is something more like the constant mundanity of dystopia that surrounds the direct horror but is decidedly also bad." www.404media.co/were-fine-lo...

Coming back to the office after a long break, feeling both refreshed and confused by the acronyms I wrote on my to-do list before the holidays!

Cheers to a new year of decoding jargon, for yourself and others 🥂

Love how *extremely online* and also very mainstream this whole thing is

so what is that silly man going to *do* with his private pyramid time

Inside America's homeless encampment sweeps Homelessness is on the rise. So are encampment sweeps. What does this mean for our cities and the people living on their streets? It’s our latest collaboration with the investigative newsroom, ProPubl...

Fascism isn't coming, fascism is here, and has been

www.wbur.org/onpoint/2024...

"I believe that everyone, at least once in their life, should know the joy of being locked in a byzantine financial struggle to own InfoWars"

I'm listening.

Lake Shore Boulevard? Fixing the Mistake on the Lake Kam Buckner is one of a loose coalition of Lakefront politicians and transit, pedestrian and bike advocates urging the Illinois Department of Transportation and the Chicago Department of Transportatio...

“…there’s something troubling about a highway running down the middle of a park system…especially a park system that established the idea that a waterfront should be recreational space,”

“We invented the idea—and then we threw a highway at it.”