Laura Hoffman
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lahoff.bsky.social
Laura Hoffman
@lahoff.bsky.social
450 followers 280 following 270 posts
Trained in public health, human rights, & law.

Then: Former health tech lobbyist for the AMA, focused on protecting privacy.

Now: travel pro, cat mom, and immigrant.

Still masking.
Still against genocide. 🇵🇸🇸🇩🇨🇩
Posts Replies Media Videos
Reposted by Laura Hoffman
brian-goldstone.bsky.social
Astonishing to stop and realize that, at any given moment, bands of masked men armed to the teeth are storming churches and daycares, terrorizing entire communities—and that most of the country's political establishment barely blinks.
November 19, 2025 at 6:48 PM
Reposted by Laura Hoffman
anamariecox.bsky.social
From this minister's op-ed: "People wanting to experience God are more likely to meet the Divine trying to shut down the Broadview, Illinois, ICE facility than we ever were in church...God does not live in our houses of worship, but...with those who are bearing the brunt of cruelty in this moment."
jackjenkins.me Jack Jenkins @jackjenkins.me · 5d
Oh wow @reuters.com got the photo here:
November 14, 2025 at 9:38 PM
Reposted by Laura Hoffman
davekarpf.bsky.social
okay, but hear me out: What if we put health insurance *on the blockchain?*
November 11, 2025 at 1:06 AM
Reposted by Laura Hoffman
newsjennifer.bsky.social
Read every word & share with everyone you know. This is real life here in Chicago. Americans need to know this grotesque reality & stand with us.
bgrueskin.bsky.social Bill Grueskin @bgrueskin.bsky.social · 10d
Kyle Kingsbury is not a journalist. He is not an op-ed writer.

He is a computer safety researcher.

And he has written one of the most compelling, comprehensive accounts of the ongoing hell in Chicago that you could possibly imagine.

In under 1600 words.

aphyr.com/posts/397-i-...
I Want You to Understand Chicago Politics Chicago 2025-11-08 I want you to understand what it is like to live in Chicago during this time. Every day my phone buzzes. It is a neighborhood group: four people were kidnapped at the corner drugstore. A friend a mile away sends a Slack message: she was at the scene when masked men assaulted and abducted two people on the street. A plumber working on my pipes is distraught, and I find out that two of his employees were kidnapped that morning. A week later it happens again. An email arrives. Agents with guns have chased a teacher into the school where she works. They did not have a warrant. They dragged her away, ignoring her and her colleagues’ pleas to show proof of her documentation. That evening I stand a few feet from the parents of Rayito de Sol and listen to them describe, with anguish, how good Ms. Diana was to their children. What it is like to have strangers with guns traumatize your kids. For a teacher to hide a three-year-old child for fear they might be killed. How their relatives will no longer leave the house. I hear the pain and fury in their voices, and I wonder who will be next. Understand what it is to pray in Chicago. On September 19th, Reverend David Black, lead pastor at First Presbyterian Church of Chicago, was praying outside the ICE detention center in Broadview when a DHS agent shot him in the head with pepper balls. Pepper balls are never supposed to be fired at the head because they can seriously injure, or even kill. “We could hear them laughing as they were shooting us from the roof,” Black recalled. He is not the only member of the clergy ICE has assaulted. Methodist pastor Hannah Kardon was violently arrested on October 17th, and Baptist pastor Michael Woolf was shot with pepper balls on November 1st. Understand what it is to sleep in Chicago. On the night of September 30th, federal agents rappelled from a Black Hawk helicopter to execute a raid on an apartment building on the South Sho…
November 10, 2025 at 12:15 PM
Reposted by Laura Hoffman
zeteo.com
“We're seeing a level of proliferation of bodies & body piles from space that's unlike anything I've ever seen…”

Human rights investigator Nathaniel Raymond explains how more people could be killed within a week in Sudan, compared to the past two years in Gaza.

🔗 zeteo.com/p/sudans-dea...
November 9, 2025 at 4:00 PM
Reposted by Laura Hoffman
anneapplebaum.bsky.social
For those asking for background - I was in Sudan twice this year and wrote about it
www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arc...
November 2, 2025 at 12:07 PM
Reposted by Laura Hoffman
philnobilejr.bsky.social
Good morning! AI is being force-fed to you by a handful of billionaires who will lose a bunch of money if they fail to convince you that you need it. You do not need it 🫶
November 6, 2025 at 11:55 AM
Reposted by Laura Hoffman
ryanmarino.bsky.social
Panera’s moderately caffeinated lemonade was loosely associated with 2 deaths before it was taken off market.

This article alone has 4 examples of ChatGPT encouraging young people to commit suicide, and OpenAI’s own public stats estimate over a million users discuss suicide with ChatGPT each week.
November 7, 2025 at 10:56 PM
Reposted by Laura Hoffman
npr.org
The Department of Homeland Security is adopting powerful new tools to monitor noncitizens. Privacy advocates are worried they erode privacy rights for immigrants and Americans alike. n.pr/440Ovz4
Immigration agents have new technology to identify and track people
The Department of Homeland Security is adopting powerful new tools to monitor noncitizens. Privacy advocates are worried they erode privacy rights for immigrants and Americans alike.
n.pr
November 8, 2025 at 10:13 AM
Reposted by Laura Hoffman
disabilitystor1.bsky.social
1.This is not the only known example we know of ChatGPT cheering on a vulnerable young person to die by suicide, this time it is a recent Texas A&M grad
2. Every single university that has invited OpenAI into our midst should be asked to account for their choices.
www.cnn.com/2025/11/06/u...
Shamblin’s conversation partner wasn’t a classmate or friend – it was ChatGPT, the world’s most popular AI chatbot. A CNN review of nearly 70 pages of chats between Shamblin and the AI tool in the hours before his July 25 suicide, as well as excerpts from thousands more pages in the months leading up to that night, found that the chatbot repeatedly encouraged the young man as he discussed ending his life – right up to his last moments.
November 7, 2025 at 1:50 AM
Reposted by Laura Hoffman
hypervisible.blacksky.app
Again, this precise use case is why these systems exist-to proliferate people’s racist (transphobic, misogynistic…) imaginary at scale. This should not be seen as a “misuse” but rather the product being used exactly as intended.
Racist Influencers Using OpenAI's Sora to Make it Look Like Poor People Are Selling Food Stamps for Cash
Folks looking for evidence of SNAP recipients as welfare queens have no shortage of AI generated schlock to use as justification.
futurism.com
November 2, 2025 at 12:44 AM
Reposted by Laura Hoffman
propublica.org
📽️ WATCH: The U.S. government doesn’t track how often immigration agents detain citizens. So ProPublica did.

We found more than 170 incidents since the start of Trump’s second term. Americans have been kicked, dragged and held for days without access to lawyers.

➡️ Full story: propub.li/3LjuAVS
November 3, 2025 at 2:02 AM
Reposted by Laura Hoffman
crampell.bsky.social
The USDA sent an email to grocery stores telling them they are prohibited from offering special discounts to customers affected by the SNAP funding lapse.
I'm aware of at least 2 stores that had offered struggling customers a discount, then withdrew it after receiving this email
November 2, 2025 at 7:01 PM
lahoff.bsky.social
Statistics are sometimes used to express the scale of the destruction in Sudan. About 14 million people have been displaced by years of fighting, more than in Ukraine and Gaza combined. Some 4 million of them have fed across borders, many to arid, impoverished places-Chad, Ethiopia, South Sudan—where there are few resources to support them. At least 150,000 people have died in the conflict, but that's likely a significant undercounting. Half the population, nearly 25 million people, is expected to go hungry this year. Hundreds of thousands of people are directly threatened with starvation. More than 17 million children, out of 19 million, are not in school. A cholera epidemic rages. Malaria is endemic.
November 2, 2025 at 12:36 PM
Reposted by Laura Hoffman
lorennacleary.bsky.social
Jesus, Sudan.
October 31, 2025 at 12:29 AM
Reposted by Laura Hoffman
luxalptraum.com
You haven’t heard as much about Sudan because people in Sudan aren’t able to broadcast their suffering on social media the way many others are but it is really bleak there. This is just the tip of the iceberg. 🎁🔗
Executions and Mass Casualties: Videos Show Horror Unfolding in Sudan
www.nytimes.com
October 31, 2025 at 11:37 AM
Reposted by Laura Hoffman
jasonkoebler.bsky.social
“ICE does not provide the opportunity for individuals to decline or consent to the collection and use of biometric data/photograph collection”

www.404media.co/you-cant-ref...
You Can't Refuse To Be Scanned by ICE's Facial Recognition App, DHS Document Says
Photos captured by Mobile Fortify will be stored for 15 years, regardless of immigration or citizenship status, the document says.
www.404media.co
October 31, 2025 at 2:06 PM
Reposted by Laura Hoffman
paleofuture.bsky.social
Not content with terrorizing communities in regular face coverings, our secret police have moved to horror masks. How is this real?
federal immigration agent wearing a Halloween mask on October 28, 2025. Photo via @harborareapeacepatrols/Instagram.
October 31, 2025 at 3:14 AM
Reposted by Laura Hoffman
emilylhauser.bsky.social
🧵Thread of cafes, restaurants, bars, bagel joints, etc offering free meals to SNAP recipients, for those who might need it, & so those who don't can give 'em their business.

If you know of such offers in your area & don't see them here, please tell us in @'s.

Here's one! toastedseattle.com
October 29, 2025 at 10:44 PM
Reposted by Laura Hoffman
shannonhale.bsky.social
I'm shaking almost too hard to type. I entered SLC airport and heard screams and cries for help. I could see people gathered around, watching. I sped over to discover this woman face down on the floor, four grown men pushing her down, while she cried "HELP ME" and pled for her child.
October 29, 2025 at 10:23 PM
Reposted by Laura Hoffman
apnews.com
BREAKING: Over 460 people were reportedly killed at a hospital in western Darfur that was taken by Sudanese paramilitary forces, the WHO chief says.
Sudan's paramilitary killed hundreds including hospital patients in Darfur, residents say
Sudan's paramilitary forces have killed hundreds, including patients in a hospital, after seizing el-Fasher city in Darfur.
bit.ly
October 29, 2025 at 3:11 PM
Reposted by Laura Hoffman
josephcox.bsky.social
New incredible detail here: ICE says a match in its facial recognition app Mobile Fortify is a "definitive" determination of a person's status, and that this overrides birth certificates. This is an app ICE is using in the field to scan people

www.404media.co/ice-and-cbp-...
Ranking member of the House Homeland Security Committee Bennie G. Thompson said in a statement “Mobile Fortify is a dangerous tool in the hands of ICE, and it puts American citizens at risk of detention and even deportation.” He also said “ICE officials have told us that an apparent biometric match by Mobile Fortify is a ‘definitive’ determination of a person’s status and that an ICE officer may ignore evidence of American citizenship—including a birth certificate—if the app says the person is an alien. ICE using a mobile biometrics app in ways its developers at CBP never intended or tested is a frightening, repugnant, and unconstitutional attack on Americans’ rights and freedoms.”
October 29, 2025 at 3:03 PM
Reposted by Laura Hoffman
josephcox.bsky.social
New: Videos show ICE/CBP agents are scanning peoples' faces on the street to verify citizenship. ICE has tool to instantly look up unprecedented number of databases with just a photo

“I’m an American citizen so leave me alone”

“Alright, we just got to verify that”

www.404media.co/ice-and-cbp-...
ICE and CBP Agents Are Scanning Peoples’ Faces on the Street To Verify Citizenship
Videos on social media show officers from ICE and CBP using facial recognition technology on people in the field. One expert described the practice as “pure dystopian creep.”
www.404media.co
October 29, 2025 at 2:42 PM
Reposted by Laura Hoffman
cmdrwilkens.bsky.social
@vanhollen.senate.gov Holy shit my dude. This is wrong on so many levels. As a Marylander I've been incredibly proud of the work you've done to oppose the authoritarianism running rampant but this, THIS? This is an abject surrender of our rights, our privacy, and our future and for what?
fightforthefuture.org Fight for the Future @fightforthefuture.org · 26d
🚨‼️As of yesterday KOSA is at 64 cosponsors with @vanhollen.senate.gov + @kim.senate.gov - who claim to support LGTBQ+ rights but are clearly okay with supporting legislation that’ll censor us off the internet- newly signed on.

You know what to do: www.stopkosa.com
October 26, 2025 at 7:30 PM
Reposted by Laura Hoffman
theharvardcrimson.bsky.social
HMS postponed an online course on transgender healthcare after the National Review contacted the school about the legality of offering fee waivers to transgender participants.

Abigail S. Gerstein and Ella F. Niederhelman report.
Harvard Medical School Postpones Transgender Healthcare Course After Inquiry Into Fee Waiver Legality | News | The Harvard Crimson
Harvard Medical School postponed an online course on transgender healthcare after the National Review, a conservative news outlet, contacted the school about the legality of offering fee waivers to…
www.thecrimson.com
October 27, 2025 at 11:00 PM