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walterkatz.bsky.social
Walter
@walterkatz.bsky.social
2.4K followers 850 following 1.9K posts
Policy and politics at the intersection of race, tech, and safe & just communities.

MuckRack: https://muckrack.com/walter-katz/articles
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walterkatz.bsky.social
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.
September 18, 2025 at 3:28 PM
walterkatz.bsky.social
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.
Text from Bluesky API. Why are my posts, likes, and blocks public? The AT Protocol, which Bluesky is built on, is designed to support public conversations. To make public conversations portable across all sorts of platforms, your data is stored in data repositories that anyone can view. This means that regardless of which server you choose to join, you'll still be able to see posts across the whole network, and if you choose to change servers, you can easily take all of your data with you. This is what causes the user experience of Bluesky, a federated protocol, to be similar to all the other social media apps you have used before. Can I set my profile to be private? Currently, there are no private profiles on Bluesky.
September 14, 2025 at 7:34 PM
walterkatz.bsky.social
Vintage Armani 2-button cashmere jacket worn today at Moynihan Train Hall. RIP Giorgio.
Wearing vintage Armani cashmere two-button jacket. September 8, 2025
September 8, 2025 at 9:38 PM
walterkatz.bsky.social
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.
September 7, 2025 at 11:56 AM
walterkatz.bsky.social
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.
August 26, 2025 at 11:00 AM
walterkatz.bsky.social
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
August 26, 2025 at 2:38 AM
walterkatz.bsky.social
The data from Chicago is astounding. I obsessed over a version of this chart when I was in the Mayor’s Office from 2017-19. My rough calculation is that the city may end this year with fewer than 500 murders. Still too many, but relatively, it is a hard-earned miracle.
Recent Compstat data from the Chicago Police Department.
August 15, 2025 at 6:41 PM
walterkatz.bsky.social
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.
August 5, 2025 at 3:17 AM
walterkatz.bsky.social
The f’ing irony that when I clicked on this article, this bullshit popped up:
Bullshit pop up ad falsely claiming I have a security issue on my iPhone when navigating to this 9to5Mac article on privacy features
August 3, 2025 at 1:50 AM
walterkatz.bsky.social
On July 17 when Maurene Comey was fired, I said that a pardon of Maxwell is the next move with a claim that the case was fabricated. And here we are.
Bluesky post on July 17: The only sense I can make out of why Maurene Comey was fired is that a pardon of Maxwell is next and she will be allowed to return to the UK. The claim will be that the entire prosecution was based on fake claims that Comey and her "allies" engineered... despite the testimony of the victims.
July 28, 2025 at 11:51 PM
walterkatz.bsky.social
This claim is not accurate. Jeff Asher does excellent analysis of all sorts of crime data, including clearances. Serious crimes include larceny (15.3%) all the way to homicide (60.9%) - but rates vary widely across jurisdictions. open.substack.com/pub/jasher/p...
Chart created by Jeff Asher which depicts 2024 estimated clearance rates based on 3.1 percent increase in the murder clearance rate, a 1.7 percent increase in the violent crime clearance rate, and a 1.7 percent increase in the property crime clearance rate relative to 2023 reported rate.
July 28, 2025 at 1:16 PM
walterkatz.bsky.social
Too many law enforcement agencies are good at assembling cool tactical gear and and creating a daunting command post (📷👇🏽) and have little idea how to save lives. Get rid of the Call of Duty s*** and learn basic tactics.
At least 100 law enforcement officers including local police, sheriffs and the FBI, stage less than a mile from the home of Minnesota DFL state Rep. Melissa Hortman in Brooklyn Park on June 14. (Alex Kormann/The Minnesota Star Tribune)
July 27, 2025 at 2:23 AM
walterkatz.bsky.social
Can we go easy on the nostalgia here? English anatomy was largely built with the bodies of the executed and the impoverished. pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC...
Judges passing sentences on criminals could recommend anatomical dissection after their death from hanging and William Harvey (1578–1657) performed many dissections on hanged criminals in London (Payne, 2002). Following the Murder Act of 1752, the Company of Surgeons in London was obliged to conduct public dissections of convicted murders, and to expose the corpse to general view (Anonymous, 1752). By the 18th century, charitable hospitals were being set up across Britain to care for the poor who became sick (Woodward, 1974). Closely associated with many of these charitable hospitals were the independently run anatomy schools, where those training in anatomy and surgery dissected human cadavers. The interior of a dissecting-room, probably based on that of William Hunter, ca. 1780. Lithograph after an original drawing by Thomas Rowlandson. Wellcome Library, London.
July 26, 2025 at 7:39 PM
walterkatz.bsky.social
The grift will cost dearly.
Social Security recipients are projected to face a 24% reduction in benefits starting in 2032 because of looming insolvency accelerated by the mega bill:
Social Security benefits are projected to face a 24% cut by late 2032 as the program's trust fund nears depletion, according to a new analysis by the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. The accelerated timeline is attributed partly to the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which reduced revenue into the trust funds by including tax cuts and an expanded senior deduction. Medicare hospital insurance payments would also face an 11% cut by 2033, potentially reducing healthcare access for retirees
July 26, 2025 at 4:29 AM
walterkatz.bsky.social
Wasn’t this immediately obvious?

bsky.app/profile/atru...
I think @keithedwards.bsky.social nails it here, with the next step being Republicans like MTG and Burchett rallying around Trump for "exposing the Democrats."
July 25, 2025 at 7:13 PM
walterkatz.bsky.social
Here is Phil Cook: “In 1962, the FBI reported a national homicide clearance rate of 93%. That rate dropped 29 points by 1994… Our preferred explanation includes an upward trend in the standard for arrest” 👇🏽 scholars.duke.edu/publication/...
In 1962, the FBI reported a national homicide clearance rate of 93%. That rate dropped 29 points by 1994. This Great Decline has been studied and accepted as a real phenomenon but remains mysterious, as does the period of relative stability that followed. The decline was shared across regions and all city sizes but differed greatly among categories defined by victim race and weapon type. Gun homicides with Black victims accounted for most of the decline. We review the evidence on several possible explanations for the national decline, including those pertaining to case mix, investigation resources, and citizen cooperation. Our preferred explanation includes an upward trend in the standard for arrest, with strong evidence that although clearance-by-arrest rates declined, the likelihood of conviction and prison sentence actually increased. That result has obvious implications for the history of policing practice and for the validity of the usual clearance rate as a police performance measure.
July 24, 2025 at 2:26 AM
walterkatz.bsky.social
Reddit AI Guy has an idea:
A Reddit user has allegedly has set up Claude to run his Tinder: “I've set up a cool automation setup using Claude Al, an Android emulator, and ADB commands to handle Tinder chats smoothly. This setup let me line up 10 dates in just a week, so I figured l'd share how it works and some tips.” 😳 “Using this integration, my Tinder interactions became quite effective, eliminating repetitive manual tasks and improving the quality and speed of my responses (what is nice). It was so efficient that it resulted in scheduling 10 dates within a single week! (Actually numbers are even higher but hey won't be playing the Playboy over here).”
July 21, 2025 at 11:34 AM
walterkatz.bsky.social
This is the exact agentic AI privacy disaster that Meredith Whitaker @meredithmeredith.bsky.social described at SXSW:
In a recent hands-on with the browser, TechCrunch found that when Perplexity requests access to a user’s Google Calendar, the browser asks for a broad swath of permissions to the user’s Google Account, including the ability to manage drafts and send emails, download your contacts, view and edit events on all of your calendars, and even the ability to take a copy of your company’s entire employee directory.
July 19, 2025 at 12:18 PM
walterkatz.bsky.social
How tariffs actually work:
President Donald Trump on Thursday said that he plans to impose blanket tariffs of 15% or 20% on most trade partners, dismissing concerns that further tariffs could negatively impact the stock market or drive inflation. "We're just going to say all of the remaining countries are going to pay, whether it's 20% or 15%. We'll work that out now," Economists at Goldman Sachs Research assume that companies will pass on 70% of the direct cost of tariffs to consumers through higher prices. But the core measurement for US consumer prices increased less than expected in May. Some recent business surveys have indicated lower pass-through of tariff costs to consumers.
July 11, 2025 at 2:55 AM
walterkatz.bsky.social
Relentless attacks on Karen Bass and Gavin Newsom after the LA fires, but somehow not a peep on what is an obvious and deadly pattern of repeated failures to prepare elsewhere:
Hill Country flash floods
Winter ice storm
Uvalde
Hurricane Harvey
(2025) All NWS flash tood warnings, including the one issued after midnight on Friday, trigger Wireless Emergency Alerts, the emergency push notification sent through cellphone towers to all wireless phones in the emergency area, Fogarty said. That warning was updated nine times throughout Friday, each of which triggered separate alerts through the Emergency Alert System and the Wireless Emergency Alerts, Fogarty said. The most serious warning came at 4:03 a.m. when the NWS issued a flash flood emergency, warning of an "extremely dangerous and life-threatening situation" and urging immediate evacuations to higher ground. Flash flood emergencies are issued using a mixture of rainfall data and on-the-ground reports: "Someone has told us we need to get people out of here immediately or people are going to die," Fogarty said.| (2021) Why Texas was not prepared for Winter Storm Uri The February storm left dozens of Texans dead and millions without power—and exposed an aging energy grid unprepared for a changing climate. Can we build something better? After six federal disasters in five years, why do we not fully prepare? (2022) "Systemic failures" in Uvalde shooting went far beyond local police, Texas House report details
July 6, 2025 at 7:12 PM
walterkatz.bsky.social
Here’s another underreported fun fact: the massive increase to the deficit will trigger automatic cuts to Medicare: www.kff.org/quick-take/h...
One consequence of the reconciliation bill that is making its way to the House floor is more than $500 billion in Medicare cuts between 2026 and 2034. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the reconciliation bill reported out of the House Budget Committee would increase the deficit compared to current law by at least $2.3 trillion. If enacted into law in its current form, and Congress takes no further action, that increase in the deficit would trigger mandatory cuts, also known as sequestration, under the Statutory Pay-As-You-Go Act of 2010. Unlike Social Security and programs for low-income people, Medicare is not exempt from these cuts. Triggering Statutory PAYGO would mean an automatic 4% reduction to most Medicare spending. That includes payments to hospitals, physicians and health care providers, Medicare Advantage plans, and standalone prescription drug plans. The cuts to hospitals are on top of the effects of Medicaid changes included in the legislation. Some spending to support low-income beneficiaries is exempt, but most Medicare spending is not. The purpose of Statutory PAYGO was to impose some budget discipline. However, the across-the-board cuts triggered by the law have never been allowed to go into effect because Congress has either excluded those effects from the “scorecard” as part of the underlying legislation or later acted to exclude or delay the effects. For example, neither the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act nor 2021 American Rescue Plan resulted in automatic cuts despite large increases in the federal deficit. Congress could choose to take action before the end of the year to block implementation of the cuts as it has done in the past. Unlike the reconciliation bill, excluding the effects of legislation from the PAYGO scorecard requires 60 votes, rather than a simple majority in the Senate, which is a higher hurdle.
July 4, 2025 at 1:20 AM
walterkatz.bsky.social
From the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget: “15 Major Problems with the Senate Reconciliation Bill.” It is is really bad: www.crfb.org/blogs/15-maj...
1. Adds $4.1 trillion to the debt through 2034 - more borrowing than any reconciliation bill in history. 2. Would add $5.5 trillion to the debt if made permanent - more than the CARES Act, American Rescue Plan, Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, and the CHIPS and Science Act combined. 3. Violates the House reconciliation framework by $600 billion - with only $1.4 trillion of gross spending cuts and $4.5 trillion of tax cuts. 4. Accelerates Social Security and Medicare insolvency to 2032 - a year earlier than under current law. 5. Is littered with special interest giveaways and new tax and spending entitlements - including a SALT cap increase, hospital fund, RECA expansion, farm bailout, new car loan 6. Relies on numerous budget gimmicks - including arbitrary expirations, phony baselines, and fantastical growth assumptions. 7. Undermines future budget enforcement - setting the precedent that the majority can make up whatever budget score they want, which could allow massive new spending increases or tax cuts that are claimed as free. 8. Increases future spending if made permanent - with spending increases and interest costs outweighing the spending cuts in the bill. 9. Makes the tax code more complicated and less fair - creating new deductions, credits, and phase outs that treat similar income differently and increases the number of itemizers. 10. Explodes interest costs to nearly $2 trillion per year - including by adding to the debt and pushing up interest rates throughout the economy. 11. Worsens deficits by even more using dynamic scoring - higher interest costs will increase the debt more than faster growth reduces it. 12. Increases the debt limit by $5 trillion in exchange for deficit increases - asking members who had previously not supported debt ceiling increases or demanded dollar-for-dollar deficit reduction to instead agree to almost a dollar-for-dollar debt increase. 13. Makes the 3% of GDP deficit goal much harder to achieve - boosting annual deficits above 7 percent of GDP, nearly $600 billion a year further from the 3% goal, if provisions are extended. 14. Uses up key offsets needed for debt reduction - enacting meaningful savings from health care, higher education, and tax breaks but using them to justify a massive deficit increase. 15. Poisons the environment for bipartisan budget and trust fund deals - by signaling that the majority party will unilaterally add to the debt by cutting taxes and pad their appropriations priorities.
July 4, 2025 at 1:05 AM
walterkatz.bsky.social
The latest gymnastics by the Times to not see what is glaringly obvious is something else. As if these two developments are completely unrelated to each other 🙄

To say it plainly, the clamor for “the principle of neutrality” is the Trojan horse for extremism.
www.nytimes.com/2025/06/21/u...
New York Times article about a University of Florida student who won an academic honor after he argued in a paper that the Constitution applies only to white people. In its reporting, it includes the line in screenshot above: Well beyond the classroom, bigoted and extremist views are on the rise and vying for mainstream acceptance, raising questions about whether principles of neutrality and free-speech rights are proper and adequate responses to the threats.
June 28, 2025 at 11:27 AM
walterkatz.bsky.social
A big deal is being made about Tesla “robotaxis” debuting in Austin. Caveats include that they are geofenced, by invite only, and have a human safety monitor on board. All things Waymo didn’t need during my ride in Austin this April.
June 23, 2025 at 1:12 AM
walterkatz.bsky.social
I pay for #feedly because of the integration with #pocket which I also paid for. This was part of my essential news tracking workflow. This is maddening.
Mozilla is shutting down Pocket
May 22, 2025 at 10:51 PM