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Will James

@willjames.bsky.social

3.5K followers 970 following 340 posts

Seattle journalist trying to understand many of the worst things Currently making audio documentaries with KUOW Podcasts: Lost Patients (2024) The Walk Home (2022) Outsiders (2020) Married to @sydbrownstone.bsky.social https://www.will-james.work/

www.will-james.work

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Will James @willjames.bsky.social · Apr 15

It is surreal to announce that Lost Patients is nominated for a Peabody Award alongside work by This American Life, Serial, NPR, The New Yorker, and many journalists we admire.

@sydbrownstone.bsky.social @esmyjimenez.bsky.social @kuow.org @seattletimes-rss.bsky.social @peabodyawards.bsky.social

Nominees in Docs, News, Public Service, Podcast Announced - The Peabody Awards

The Peabody Awards and Center for Media & Social Impact Launch We Disrupt This Broadcast, New Podcast Featuring Interviews with Quinta Brunson, Damon Lindelof, Ramy Youssef, Pamela Adlon, Charlie Broo...

peabodyawards.com

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Will James @willjames.bsky.social · 19m

"Slop" is okay, but I'm really hoping "munge" catches on.

Will James @willjames.bsky.social · 2h

Here's Brian Eno with the most devastatingly accurate description I've yet heard of things made with generative AI:

www.nytimes.com/2025/10/03/o...

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Will James @willjames.bsky.social · 2h

Here's Brian Eno with the most devastatingly accurate description I've yet heard of things made with generative AI:

www.nytimes.com/2025/10/03/o...

Will James @willjames.bsky.social · 6d

Reading @edzitron.com on how the rush to automate jobs using AI is a function of bosses being increasingly disconnected from what their companies actually produce, reducing every job to its outputs:

www.wheresyoured.at/the-case-aga...

Will James @willjames.bsky.social · 7d

The Amtrak train that derailed in Dupont? I reported on that, but I don't remember the antifa conspiracies!

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Will James @willjames.bsky.social · 7d

Hearing "antifa" in the news is a trip; To me, it's such a relic of 2017-2018, when many of us covered regular right-wing protests and leftist counterprotests in the PNW.

Appreciated this necessary refresher on antifa and all the mythologizing around it by @letsgomathias.bsky.social on @kuow.org:

What’s behind the White House’s anti-antifa order

President Trump says he is designating "Antifa" as a terrorist organization and going after its funders.

www.kuow.org

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Will James @willjames.bsky.social · 9d

Alternative view: What they actually built was a bunch of janky, addictive toys.

Adrian Daub @adriandaub.bsky.social · Feb 6

2025 will go down as the year when all the subtext became text

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Will James @willjames.bsky.social · 9d

A point missing from years of “learn to code” taunts:

Building a career out of any kind of creative work requires a level of risk tolerance, scrappiness, and entrepreneurship that’s probably alien to anyone aspiring to graduate college directly into a six-figure job.

Will James @willjames.bsky.social · 9d

At what point do journalists get to start taunting tech people with “Learn to write”?

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Will James @willjames.bsky.social · 9d

At what point do journalists get to start taunting tech people with “Learn to write”?

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Will James @willjames.bsky.social · 9d

Dude… buzz off.

Will James @willjames.bsky.social · 11d

Finally checking out this William James guy to see what the hype is about.

Reposted by Will James

Brandon Kennedy @bicycleidiot.bsky.social · 11d

RIP Kaleb Horton
kalebhorton.ghost.io/2025-so-far/

I also have advice. Everybody loves reading advice on the computer, so I'll share it: the best thing you can do right now is log off as hard as you can. Go outside, talk to people in real life where it's actually kind of rude to talk about the news, try to actually see the friends you usually just text message. Go for a long drive and turn the phone off while you do it. Get back into your hobbies or pick one and learn it for a while. Watch one of those studio movies that reviews called "wildly miscalculated" and you haven't seen since high school. Play an album you like but find embarrassing. Go to free community events even if they sound stupid. If you take the freeway, try the surface streets. Go to a bad diner and just order some bad coffee because even bad coffee is good coffee.
You can't help anybody when you're exhausted and keep posting one million college-educated rewordings of "I would love to be dead right now" on the computer. Walk away from the thing and try out some of those normal things you hear about and if you get bored that's wonderful because we're not supposed to get bored anymore. It turns out boredom is the Cadillac of feelings.

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Will James @willjames.bsky.social · 15d

I'm so sorry, Josh. For Seattle's sake, I hope there is a way for you to keep reporting here. If I can help in any way as you figure out your next move, please hit me up.

Will James @willjames.bsky.social · 15d

Many Cascade PBS journalists I admire are losing their jobs. Seattle is also losing a valuable piece of its news ecosystem. I think of the many journalists scattered throughout local newsrooms who passed through Cascade PBS/Crosscut at some point, freelanced there, or got their start there.

Erica C. Barnett @ericacbarnett.bsky.social · 16d

BREAKING: Cascade PBS, which operates the website Crosscut, is laying off 19 people, reportedly including its entire news staff. In an email to staff, CEO Rob Dunlop blamed federal cuts, saying the nonprofit is "winding down our longform, written journalism."

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Will James @willjames.bsky.social · 21d

I did not! Didn't know about it.

Will James @willjames.bsky.social · 25d

If I could make people understand one thing about the computer, it would be that if a piece of information feels too good — if it has that sweet, addictive pull — there's a good chance it's bad for you.

People have come to understand this about food. Maybe they can learn the same for information.

Charlie Warzel @cwarzel.bsky.social · 25d

Wrote about the week. How the shooter's ID didn't appear to matter to ppl. How the discourse takes place in very same spaces that incubate/perpetuate hate & violence. How shooters now know that their acts will be flattened, analyzed, argued over & amplified. How all of this feels so dark & poisonous

Something Is Very Wrong Online

Our political conversations take place in very same spaces that incubate and perpetuate unthinkable violence.

www.theatlantic.com

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Will James @willjames.bsky.social · 28d

I will not stop saying it: "Fantasy A Gets a Mattress" is the most authentically Seattle piece of art to come out in a decade. I hope the filmmakers get a distributer.

Some laugh out loud moments in this story by @vivmccall.bsky.social:

The Team That Made the Cult Hit 'Fantasy A Gets a Mattress' Learns About the Virtue and Danger of Whimsy

Fantasy A is a Seattle icon whose face has decorated lampposts and phone poles for a decade.

www.thestranger.com

Will James @willjames.bsky.social · 28d

A few days later, I'm still surprised at how bleak this made me feel.

Sometimes a piece of writing manages to pull something ubiquitous out of the air and make it visible.

Longreads @longreads.com · Sep 1

"Disney’s ethos began to change in the 1990s . . . but only after the economic shock of the pandemic did the company seem to more fully abandon any pretense of being a middle-class institution." —Daniel Currell for @nytimes.com

www.nytimes.com/2025/08/28/o...

Opinion | Disney and the Decline of America’s Middle Class

The theme-park operator, like so many other companies, is abandoning America’s middle class.

www.nytimes.com

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Will James @willjames.bsky.social · Aug 31

Hold on, getting a master’s degree real quick so I can understand why all protest is automatically good and never backfires.

Will James @willjames.bsky.social · Aug 31

I haven’t read this but I have read Jack Vance. Good handle.

Will James @willjames.bsky.social · Aug 31

I’ve been observing this playbook since 2017, when Joey Gibson and Patriot Prayer were running it in Seattle, Olympia, and Portland, and counter-protesters almost always obliged.

www.knkx.org/news/2017-06...

Conservative Rallies In Liberal Cities: Part Free Speech Exercise, Part Provocation

Several dozen right-leaning protestors gathered in front of Seattle City Hall this weekend for what was billed as a rally against traditional Islamic law,…

www.knkx.org

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Will James @willjames.bsky.social · Aug 31

In the lead-up to Sean Feucht's prayer rally in Seattle this weekend, @thestranger.com published this smart piece explaining how figures on the right intentionally provoke leftist counter-protest so they can farm the interactions for content.

Decoding Christian Supremacists' Playbook Before Sean Feucht Takes Over Gas Works Park

Christian Supremacist worship leader Sean Feucht is heading back to Seattle for Revive in 25, and anyone paying attention should recognize this isn't just another stop on his revival tour. It's a calc...

www.thestranger.com

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Will James @willjames.bsky.social · Aug 31

Holy shit. The Stranger's @vivmccall.bsky.social attends the Sean Feucht prayer rally in Gas Works Park and walks away with one of the best pieces of magazine writing I've seen come out of Seattle in a long time.

@thestranger.com

Christian Supremacist Sean Feucht Flops at Gas Works

At his Christian supremacist “Revive in 25” prayer rally at Gas Works Park on Saturday, there were no fist fights to film. No “trans terrorism,” or demonic forces. No suppressi...

www.thestranger.com

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Will James @willjames.bsky.social · Aug 28

People from whom death is more distant and hypothetical tend to think of it as scarier than people for whom death is closer and more real.

Your Professional Decline Is Coming (Much) Sooner Than You Think

Here’s how to make the most of it.

www.theatlantic.com

Will James @willjames.bsky.social · Aug 26

I made a joke about how it was fun to bully companies on Twitter and someone replied with a self-serious and chiding post about bullying. Unintentional parody of the archetypal school principal-type Bluesky user.

Will James @willjames.bsky.social · Aug 21

There's a history of conservatives using fear of crime and disorder in Democrat-run cities as a weapon. It had a moment in the 90s.

But right now we're watching the culmination of a discrete political project on the right, by activists and media figures, that started within the past decade.

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