iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Walter @walterkatz.bsky.social · 12/07/2026

60 years ago on July 11, @thenation.com published James Baldwin's, "A Report from Occupied Territory." What is occupied may have moved. The brutality remains. As does the impunity. I urge you to read it even if it isn't your first time. www.thenation.com/article/cult...

thenation.com

A Report from Occupied Territory

These things happen, in all our Harlems, every single day. If we ignore this fact, and our common responsibility to change this fact, we are sealing our doom.

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Walter @walterkatz.bsky.social · 18/09/2025

The brilliance of Orwell was to never reveal whether The Brotherhood in ‘1984’ was real or a fabrication. That ambiguity served its purpose for the state to do whatever it wanted to define it as it pleased and to do what was “necessary” to wipe out the “threat.”

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Walter @walterkatz.bsky.social · 18/09/2025

I will say it again, the lack of a private setting in the @bsky.app means it is not suitable for this environment: www.wired.com/story/inside...

This isn’t ‘cancel culture,’” the post reads. “It’s self defense. A nation that empowers the deranged and the depraved is a nation marching toward ruin.”

The longer-term focus from the White House, the lawmaker close to Trump tells me, won’t be limited to just one social media site, such as Bluesky, where scores of posts were compiled and cataloged by the since-offline site “Expose Charlie’s Murderers,” as WIRED reported. Trumpworld wants to come for them all.

“You’re going to continue to see this: Whether it’s Meta, Reddit, Bluesky, Roblox—all of ’em that are actually taking down any content that’s literally calling for more violence and/or recirculating that horrifying video,” the lawmaker told me.

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Walter @walterkatz.bsky.social · 15/09/2025

It was taken down by Reddit mod, so here is the YouTube version of the explainer by @cybelecanterel.bsky.social about always online Gr*yper meme extremism which has been outside the view of the vast majority of people until now. Best explainer I have seen on this: youtu.be/Wcw02sEslog?...

youtu.be

Blackpill Aesthetics: A Crash Course in Meme Extremism

YouTube video by Cy Canterel

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Walter @walterkatz.bsky.social · 15/09/2025

This thought-provoking explainer of the conflict between Christian nationalists, who want to take control of institutions, and blackpilled memetic nihilists, is what a lot of mainstream writers should watch before doing a Steve Buscemi. www.reddit.com/r/TikTokCrin...

reddit.com

From the TikTokCringe community on Reddit: A breakdown of the differences between the Christian Nationalist and Black Pill Accelerationist Communities

Explore this post and more from the TikTokCringe community

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Walter @walterkatz.bsky.social · 14/09/2025

After 2020, especially, the right moved to private messaging, such as Telegram and Discord. Since last week, people’s public social media posts are being used to attack them and their livelihoods. In this environment, that a private setting is *impossible* renders @bsky.app fundamentally flawed.

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Walter @walterkatz.bsky.social · 13/09/2025

With all else going on, this incident will likely receive little traction but it does call into question the “run/hide/fight” approach to active shooters. A sheltering midshipman apparently mistook a law enforcement officer as a threat and ended up being shot. www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/u...

nbcwashington.com

Midshipman shot during police response to Naval Academy threat

A midshipman was shot at the U.S. Naval Academy in Maryland Thursday as law enforcement responded to reports of threats made to the military school, a source told NBC News.

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Walter @walterkatz.bsky.social · 08/09/2025

Hello to the future from Korematsu II Day

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Walter @walterkatz.bsky.social · 07/09/2025

This chart in the 2024 WICHE annual report on college enrollment projections on state by state high school graduation projections, should put to bed any delusions about saving House seats in Blue states. NY, CA and IL won’t save Democrats. This also explains the purpose of stifling immigration

Map of US depicting high school graduate population from 2023-2041. Across the U.S., 38 states are expected to experience declines — while 12 states and Washington, D.C., will actually see increases.

High school graduate populations will rise by double digits in some states, including South Carolina, Tennessee, Idaho and North Dakota, according to WICHE estimates. In Washington, D.C., they’re projected to jump a whopping 31%.

Among regions, the only increase is expected in the South, already home to the largest number of high school graduates. By 2037, the ranks of high school graduates in the region will rise by 3% to about 1.5 million over 2024. High school graduate headcount is expected to decline 17% in the Northeast, 16% in the Midwest and 20% in the West.

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Justin Wolfers @justinwolfers.bsky.social · 06/09/2025

The relentless dishonesty is revealing. This was a meeting of the *academic advisory council* of the Chicago Fed. Think: Nerds around a conference table. No, academics don't set rates. No, the Chicago Fed doesn't set rates. No, the Chicago Fed President didn't even vote on rates that year.

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Walter @walterkatz.bsky.social · 07/09/2025

Follow @unraveledpress.com for the clearest real-time reporting on what is happening in the streets of Chicago.

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Walter @walterkatz.bsky.social · 06/09/2025

“What one man’s 45-year-old case tells us about the ‘Jim Crow juries’ haunting Louisiana” - 19-year-old Lloyd Gray, a Black man, was sentenced to prison for life even though the only two Black jurors had voted not guilty. @propublica.org www.propublica.org/article/lloy...

propublica.org

What One Man’s 45-Year-Old Case Tells Us About the “Jim Crow Juries” Haunting Louisiana

Today, a split verdict would mean a mistrial. But in 1980s Louisiana, when nonunanimous juries were still legal, 19-year-old Lloyd Gray, a Black man, was sentenced to prison for life — even though the...

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Walter @walterkatz.bsky.social · 04/09/2025

Consumers are even more skeptical about AI than a year ago, yet enterprise and public sector adoption is accelerating without that valuable public/worker input or visibility into potential impact. www.cnet.com/tech/mobile/...

cnet.com

Smartphone Buyers Care Even Less About AI Than They Did Last Year, CNET Survey Finds

Shoppers aren't sold on thinner phones, even as rumors suggest Apple will soon debut the iPhone 17 Air.

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Walter @walterkatz.bsky.social · 04/09/2025

A truly remarkable achievement. Chicago has seen the fewest homicides for June, July and August in 60 years. Overall violent crime remains near its lowest point in more than four decades. www.wbez.org/news/2025/09...

wbez.org

Chicago sees its fewest summer murders since 1965

The Chicago Police Department’s criminal homicide tally for June, July and August is the lowest in 60 years. And overall violent crime remains near its lowest point in more than four decades.

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Walter @walterkatz.bsky.social · 03/09/2025

What works to reduce homelessness? Housing first policies and harm reduction programs. What does the July executive order specifically prohibit? Federal funding to cities that have housing first and harm reduction programs. gothamist.com/news/a-new-t...

gothamist.com

A new Trump order could upend the way NYC treats homeless people. Here’s what to know.

Trump’s executive order “ending crime and disorder” proposes a shift away from solutions the city says have worked for decades to address homelessness.

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Heather Cherone @heathercherone.bsky.social · 02/09/2025

From a a source in the Texas governor's office: "I'm not sure where the Governor got his information but it is not accurate." @wttw.bsky.social

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Walter @walterkatz.bsky.social · 01/09/2025

Unemployment among Black people is at the highest level since 2021 and up significantly for college-educated Black workers. DOGE cuts disproportionately hit Black federal staff. Add nonprofit cuts caused by grant cancellations, attacks on diversity and there you have it. www.wsj.com/economy/jobs...

wsj.com

Black Americans Are Losing Jobs in a Warning for the Economy

Unemployment among Black people reaches highest level since 2021. “I am in the fight of my life.”

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Walter @walterkatz.bsky.social · 30/08/2025

Among cops in LA there is a longstanding joke that CHP stands for Can’t Handle Policework. “They know how do a traffic stop but not much else.”

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Alejandra Caraballo @esqueer.net · 28/08/2025

They're openly calling to lock up every trans person by force. We need every ally to speak out forcefully against this because trans folks cannot do this on our own.

Alt text: A tweet from Joey Mannarino (@JoeyMannarinoUS) dated August 27, 2025. The tweet calls for Health and Human Services to violate HIPAA laws and forward information about every transgender and transgender-questioning person to law enforcement for immediate detainment, claiming they are killing children in schools. It describes this as a matter of national security, says transgender people should be locked away and studied, calls for medical professionals who enable transitions to be expelled from the profession, and demands that the federal government treat transgender people as if they were terrorist organizations. The tweet shows it was last edited at 1:11 PM and has 5,049 views.

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Walter @walterkatz.bsky.social · 30/08/2025

It happened before 2022. The rapid rise in violence in 2020 continued into 2021. Journalists had a hard time understanding that COVID-related factors drove it and the easy answer was to blame George Floyd protests that either emboldened criminals or demoralized cops - which evidence doesn’t support.

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Walter @walterkatz.bsky.social · 30/08/2025

“It turns out ‘states’ rights’ was never about principle—it was just about who had the whip hand. Funny how ‘federal tyranny’ became ‘law and order’ the moment their guy was holding the federal badge.”

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Walter @walterkatz.bsky.social · 29/08/2025

This is absolutely true. I’ve been away from Chicago since 2020 but I’m still in regular contact with funders, community service providers, funders, and more. There is such a deep commitment to make a difference in under-resourced neighborhoods that see too much gun violence.

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Walter @walterkatz.bsky.social · 26/08/2025

The full text of Gov Prtizker’s remarks yesterday are a must-read. Not enough has been said until now on the glaring hypocrisy behind the false claims that the military is needed www.cbsnews.com/chicago/news...

Excerpt from speech by Illinois Gov JB Pritzker on 8/25/25:

If Donald Trump was actually serious about fighting crime in cities like Chicago, he, along with his congressional Republicans, would not be cutting over $800 million in public safety and crime prevention grants nationally, including cutting $158 million in funding to Illinois for violence prevention programs that deploy trained outreach workers to deescalate conflict on our streets. Cutting $71 million in law enforcement grants to Illinois, direct money for police departments through programs like Project Safe Neighborhoods, the state and local Antiterrorism Training Program, and the Rural Violent Crime Reduction Initiative, cutting $137 million in child protection measures in Illinois that protect our kids against abuse and neglect.

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Walter @walterkatz.bsky.social · 26/08/2025

What’s unnerving is the hybrid of traditional and compulsory visibility- Foucault: “Traditionally, power was what was seen, what was shown, and what was manifested. Disciplinary power… is exercised through its invisibility… it imposes on those whom it subjects a principle of compulsory visibility.”

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Walter @walterkatz.bsky.social · 26/08/2025

Currently reading - Hallucination, Perception, and the Limits of Knowledge: “Whether in neuronal circuits or neural networks, the feeling of plausibility is unreliable, always vulnerable to error or bias.”

"What lessons do these machine hallucinations offer us? Fundamentally, they underscore an epistemic humility: prediction is not truth. Whether in neuronal circuits or neural networks, the feeling of plausibility is unreliable, always vulnerable to error or bias. The need for grounding, error correction, and critical self-examination is universal, whether for machines or for minds."
Jonathan Boymal
Hallucination, Perception, and the Limits of Knowledge

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Walter @walterkatz.bsky.social · 23/08/2025

“trust declined among many white Americans after the 2020 election when President Trump began to blame his loss on voter fraud among Black Americans, majority-Black cities, and immigrant communities.” Notice how claims of mortgage fraud are now being waged against high profile Black women.

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Walter @walterkatz.bsky.social · 20/08/2025

The subhed: “The remark, made as the president has ordered a wide-ranging review of museum exhibits, added to his pattern of minimizing Black history.” “Minimizing” is the exact verb I was looking for too. /s www.nytimes.com/2025/08/19/u...

nytimes.com

Trump Says Smithsonian Focuses Too Much on ‘How Bad Slavery Was’

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Walter @walterkatz.bsky.social · 19/08/2025

OMG, this photo. I have walked out of Union Station dozens of times after arriving from NYC and I never saw any need whatsoever for the National Guard at the rideshare pickup island. This is a colossal waste that deserves nothing but derision. www.publicnotice.co/p/democratic...

publicnotice.co

Don't listen to centrist Democrats about crime

They're wrong on the policy and wrong on the politics.

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Walter @walterkatz.bsky.social · 19/08/2025

A lot of people who are, at best, visitors to New York, have a lot to say about Mamdani. In the city itself, I hear much more measured nuance. www.wired.com/story/tech-e...

wired.com

Silicon Valley Is Panicking About Zohran Mamdani. NYC’s Tech Scene Is Not

New York City tech leaders aren’t rattled by the prospect of a Mayor Mamdani. In fact, many of them welcome it.

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Walter @walterkatz.bsky.social · 16/08/2025

First they came for the immigrants and I said nothing. Then they came for the homeless and I said nothing.

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Walter @walterkatz.bsky.social · 16/08/2025

The piece focuses on leaving summit planning documents in the printer. The bigger risk was the 🤡 who used a public printer in the first place! Assume that whoever connected to it now has malware from other countries’s spy agencies on their laptop. Amateurs! 😡

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Walter @walterkatz.bsky.social · 15/08/2025

Let’s be clear about the facts: The steep rise in crime was in 2020. The upward trend peaked in ‘21. At same time, PDs were losing officers. From 21-24, funding was drastically increased for community violence intervention programs. Now crime has fallen to levels not seen in decades.

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Walter @walterkatz.bsky.social · 15/08/2025

As we‘ve seen for 8 months now, the “it’s stupidity or authoritarian” arguments are not altering policy in any way. Why? The frames here are all wrong. Crime is down, so WTH with the National Guard? Because for their audience, crime stats are fake and crime is worse than ever. Ergo. More force.

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Walter @walterkatz.bsky.social · 10/08/2025

It’s really worth the larger ⚡️ bill so I can ask a LLM chatbot how many Bs are in blueberry

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Walter @walterkatz.bsky.social · 09/08/2025

Big city policing is frequently an affair for immigrants or first generation Americans. So, if the door to immigration is shut, what happens to departments in a decade? More unintended downsizing! gothamist.com/news/nypd-co...

gothamist.com

NYPD commissioner says 25% of new officers are immigrants, recruitment rebounding

New officers hail from the South Bronx to South Korea, officials said.

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Melissa Gira Grant @melissagiragrant.com · 05/08/2025

one of the most infuriating parts of the Epstein story is over the same years that young women went to police and reported assault, and were ignored, law enforcement is pushing this idea that they need massive grants and manpower to rescue thousands of girls they say don’t even know they’re victims

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Walter @walterkatz.bsky.social · 09/08/2025

The go to mantra is, “hire more cops.” Personnel costs are about 90% of a gov’t agency budget and in a PD, cops cost much more than civilians. But, here it is finally in writing what I saw firsthand — there is no relationship between falling or rising officer headcount, and crime rates.

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Noah Rosenblum @narosenblum.bsky.social · 07/08/2025

This is another attempt to circumvent the law and aggrandize personal power. Trump is trying to politicize grants by using “discretion” to change priorities. The problem is not just this includes unconstitutionally vague language and viewpoint discrimination. It also misunderstands discretion. (1/5)

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Walter @walterkatz.bsky.social · 06/08/2025

Lately, I’m hearing Toto’s “Africa”everywhere I go. Even the band now thinks the lyrics are problematic. Can music programmers please choose another yacht rock anthem?

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Walter @walterkatz.bsky.social · 05/08/2025

I spoke to Time Magazine’s @andrewchow.bsky.social about the lack of safeguards and validation in the use of AI in the criminal legal system:

Katz says that when he went to a policing conference last fall, "it was Al everywhere." Vendors were aggressively hawking technology tools that claimed to solve real problems in police departments. "But in making that pitch, there was little attention to any tradeoffs or risks," he says. For instance, critics worry that many of these Al tools will increase surveillance of public spaces, including the monitoring of peaceful protesters-or that so-called
"predictive policing" will intensify law enforcement's crackdowns on over-policed areas.

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Walter @walterkatz.bsky.social · 03/08/2025

In Chicago, ballot petition scrutiny is a take no prisoners cagematch where rival campaigns pore over each signature and submit challenges all the time. Apparently, in New York it’s “whatever.” gothamist.com/news/forged-...

gothamist.com

Forged signatures found on Mayor Adams’ petitions to run as an independent

The Adams campaign said it is conducting a review after Gothamist found signatures that were fraudulently obtained or outright forged.

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Walter @walterkatz.bsky.social · 01/08/2025

If you ride New York City subways, you have seen the bizarre So Yummy’s fast-paced “cooking” videos and likely thought, “this must be how they eat at home in Williamsburg.” @hellgatenyc.com does a huge public service by diving headfirst into the monstrosity. hellgatenyc.com/tried-gross-...

hellgatenyc.com

I Tried Five of the Subway's Gross Viral 'Recipes' and Survived (Barely)

I fed "Brieghetti Pie" to my friends. I hope they will forgive me.

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Walter @walterkatz.bsky.social · 01/08/2025

What an utter disaster. It is a dark day for knowledge and the arts.

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Guardian US @us.theguardian.com · 31/07/2025

Rodney Taylor, who was detained by Ice in Georgia, was put in solitary confinement after complaining about flooding in his cell that he said was potentially dangerous for his electronic prosthetic legs.

theguardian.com

Georgia detainee with prosthetic legs who objected to flooded cell sent to solitary

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Walter @walterkatz.bsky.social · 31/07/2025

Sad that this is a completely unsurprising result. A couple years ago I spoke to TV station new directors about their coverage of gun violence at a convening. They said they wanted to be less exploitive but the pressure for ratings was constant.

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Walter @walterkatz.bsky.social · 30/07/2025

What happened Monday was an absolute tragedy. I don’t know anything that anyone in NYC could have done to prevent it. Eyes should be on Nevada’s mental health and gun policies. I am curious whether gambling was influential. www.nytimes.com/live/2025/07...

nytimes.com

Live Updates: Details Emerge of Park Ave. Gunman’s Mental Health History

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Walter @walterkatz.bsky.social · 29/07/2025

This was not a proof of concept by Mayor Johnson. One Summer Chicago was launched under Mayor Richard M Daley and was a centerpiece of every Mayor’s summer safety program since. It is one of the most proven youth programs in the country and it is great to see its expansion under this mayor

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