Kathleen Murphy Toms

@katmurphytoms.bsky.social

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hypewoman for radical generosity. digital strategist for movements. Todo Para Todos #MutualAid. Abolitionist. The arc is bent toward justice but it doesn’t bend on its own.

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Kathleen Murphy Toms

BREAKING: The largest housing provider for unaccompanied migrant children engaged in sexual abuse and harassment of children in its care, the Justice Department says.

Housing provider for unaccompanied migrant children engaged in sexual abuse and harassment, DOJ saysapnews.com The largest housing provider for unaccompanied migrant children has been accused of “severe, pervasive, and unwelcome sexual abuse of and harassment” of children in its care. the Justice Department said Thursday that Southwest Key employees, including supervisors, have abused children in its care si

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Kathleen Murphy Toms

Artificial scarcity is an existential part of the Republican Party. Convince the working classes they must fight each other for pieces of the needlessly-small pie, while the GOP gets busy cutting taxes & creating new subsidies for billionaires.

The governors of a dozen Republican-led states — AL, AK, FL, GA, IA, MS, OK, SC, SD, TX, UT, WY — opted out of a new federal food assistance program, leaving about 9.5 million students without the aid this summer

Republican-led states are blocking summer food benefits for hungry familieswww.usatoday.com Money for food is especially tight for families in a dozen states where Republican lawmakers declined to accept federal food assistance.

The science of protests: how to shape public opinion and swing votes: Demonstrations are on the rise, and scientists are revealing which types work best. www.nature.com/articles/d41...

The science of protests: how to shape public opinion and swing voteswww.nature.com Demonstrations are on the rise, and scientists are revealing which types work best. Demonstrations are on the rise, and scientists are revealing which types work best.

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Kathleen Murphy Toms

"If the top 1 percent of income earners in America just paid all the federal income taxes they owed, we could raise an additional $175 billion a year. That’s 38 times what it would cost to provide a bed to every person experiencing unsheltered homelessness in America."

Opinion | I Study Homelessness. I Wish More Places Looked Like This Shelter.www.nytimes.com Matthew Desmond takes you to a shelter designed with residents in mind.

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Kathleen Murphy Toms

Denver gave people experiencing homelessness $1,000 a month. Results showed that close to half of the participants secured housing, and nearly $600K saved in public service costs due to fewer ER visits & jail stays. They also saw improved mental health.

Denver gave people experiencing homelessness $1,000 a month. A year later, nearly half of participants had housing.www.yahoo.com Participants in Denver's basic income program received up to $1,000 a month. They became more housing secure and landed full-time jobs.

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Kathleen Murphy Toms

That's one way to disarm the police

The Supreme Court upholds a federal ban on gun possession for anyone subject to a domestic violence restraining order.

Supreme Court upholds federal ban on guns for domestic abuserswww.npr.org The decision was the first major gun ruling since 2022 when the high court broke sharply with the way gun laws had previously been handled by the courts.

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Kathleen Murphy Toms

I would not have imagined a world where “fighting antisemitism” became a rallying cry of white supremacist Republicans to silence pro-Palestinian protesters (including anti-Zionist Jews), and an alleged reason for authoritarian Democrats to call for a mask ban, but here we are.

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Kathleen Murphy Toms

😹

New post: I’ve noticed that A.I. boosters put a lot of emphasis behind calling generative AI a new “general purpose technology.” That’s a load-bearing phrase. If we just call it “improved machine learning” then a lot of their grand pronouncements fall flat. open.substack.com/pub/davekarp...

What's in a name? "AI" versus "Machine Learning"open.substack.com Are large language models a new *general purpose technology,* or an incremental advancement on existing technologies?

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Kathleen Murphy Toms

Load-bearing comma.

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Kathleen Murphy Toms

Awful. Stanford Internet Observatory, a fantastic effort studying online misinfo & related topics, dismantled after "a sustained & increasingly successful campaign among Republicans to discredit research institutions & discourage academics from investigating political speech & influence campaigns."

The Stanford Internet Observatory is being dismantledwww.platformer.news House Republicans attacked the lab’s reports on misinformation and election integrity — and now Stanford is pulling the plug

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Kathleen Murphy Toms

The SSI asset limit is one of the most bullshit, punitive, damaging restrictions in existence.

A little-known Social Security program was supposed to lift people out of poverty. Sometimes it traps them there instead.

These disabled people tried to play by the rules. It cost them their federal benefitswww.npr.org A little-known Social Security program was supposed to lift people out of poverty. Sometimes it traps them there instead.

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Kathleen Murphy Toms

what's great is how multilayered a success this is. It won't win a single conservative voter and it greatly demoralizes a huge number of liberal voters, all while being morally indefensible and a treaty violation.

President Biden announced an executive order on Tuesday to essentially block asylum at the U.S.-Mexico border, a major shift in how the U.S. has historically handled claims for protection. Here’s how it will work.

How Biden’s Asylum Order Workswww.nytimes.com The president issued an executive order that essentially blocks asylum claims at the southern border, a major shift in how the United States has handled claims for protection.

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Kathleen Murphy Toms

News Analysis: President Biden’s executive action to temporarily close the U.S.-Mexico border to asylum seekers is a “stunning reversal for a president and a party that spent years arguing that America was a country of immigrants,” Michael Shear writes.

To Restrict Migrants, Biden Leans on Trump’s Favorite Immigration Lawwww.nytimes.com President Biden’s executive action addresses one of his most serious political vulnerabilities ahead of the presidential election.

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Kathleen Murphy Toms

James is of America’s leading authorities on asylum and immigration law.

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Kathleen Murphy Toms

Turns out the "campus antisemitism" fearmongering was fueled by Israeli tech firms. Meta reports that FB and Instagram posts praising Israel's handling of the war in Gaza came from accounts posing as Jewish students, African Americans and other concerned citizens. www.reuters.com/technology/m...

Meta identifies networks pushing deceptive content likely generated by AIwww.reuters.com Meta said on Wednesday it had found "likely AI-generated" content used deceptively on its Facebook and Instagram platforms, including comments praising Israel's handling of the war in Gaza published below posts from global news organizations and U.S. lawmakers.

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Kathleen Murphy Toms

Reply to

Dylan Flesch

Libraries are where you can grab a computer & job search (Workforce1 is still primarly remote) & refugees walk in to find out about English classes. Cuts to these resources is saying quiet things to new New Yorkers very loudly.

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Kathleen Murphy Toms

Reply to

Kaitlin Ruiz

If you go review the stuff that cause Google to force Timnit Gebru out, it reads like she predicted the future. This was written four years ago https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/12/04/1013294/google-ai-ethics-research-paper-forced-out-timnit-gebru/

We read the paper that forced Timnit Gebru out of Google. Here’s what it says.www.technologyreview.com The company's star ethics researcher highlighted the risks of large language models, which are key to Google's business.

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Kathleen Murphy Toms

something that has been with me throughout the last year of AI / deepfake conversations is that from the jump, women have understood how dangerous this is. if nothing else, it was immediately clear to so many of us that these grifting mechanisms would be used to de-humanize women and girls.

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Kathleen Murphy Toms

Folks do not like to acknowledge it, but the reality is you have no first amendment right if the police are allowed to arrest you when you have broken no law, and are assembling in the effort to petition power for a redress of grievance. All the rhetorical trickery aside, it comes down to that.

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Kathleen Murphy Toms

Regional Director of the United Nations Development Programme: “Everything that the United Nations Development Program built in Gaza was destroyed. If we want to build Gaza again, it will take 200 years.”

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Kathleen Murphy Toms

A whole bunch of young people are being radicalized by this moment. If you are new to organizing and need some advice and accompaniment, @prisonculture.bsky.social and I wrote a book for you.

Let This Radicalize Youwww.haymarketbooks.org

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Kathleen Murphy Toms

Are Chicago organizers being targeted for political repression ahead of the DNC? www.cbsnews.com/chicago/news...

Clashes at recent protests in Chicago prompt First Amendment concerns for DNC in Augustwww.cbsnews.com The confrontations with Chicago police on Monday led some activist groups to believe they are being targeted ahead of the DNC.

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Kathleen Murphy Toms

Here's what everyone needs to know* about climate change: 🌍 It's real 👥 It's human-caused ⚠️ It's serious 💡 With immediate action, it's solvable ⌛ Later is too late * social science shows these msgs increase acceptance of the issue, awareness of the risk and, most importantly, willingness to act.

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Kathleen Murphy Toms

Is anyone going to do anything? Ever? What's it going to take? You can't put out a song with an uncleared sample without putting yourself in legal jeopardy; meanwhile these people are openly stealing all of human creation and bragging about it! www.nytimes.com/2024/04/06/t...

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Kathleen Murphy Toms

Germany on Tuesday defended itself at the International Court of Justice against accusations that its arms shipments to Israel were furthering genocide in Gaza. The latest case has placed a spotlight on Germany, Israel’s second-largest arms supplier after the U.S.

At U.N. Court, Germany Fights Allegations of Aiding Genocidewww.nytimes.com Nicaragua has accused Germany over its provision of military and financial aid to Israel. Germany said the case had “no basis in fact or law.”

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Kathleen Murphy Toms

The U.S. doesn't know how to address any social problems outside of criminalization. And criminalization actually doesn't address the roots of any social problems. So here we are with a massive criminalized population and even more social problems.

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Kathleen Murphy Toms

Our library officially debuted its hygiene pantry today. We are very excited about it! #PubLibs 📚