Monika✨

Tell stories, build community, make a difference. My Mother's daughter.✨ | M.A. graduate | Let's connect! #documentary #filmmaker #brandstorytelling

[Monika✨ @MonikaWatkins]

A personal and professional dream fulfilled.✨ A trailer for the documentary I recently directed for the #HarrietTubman #NationalPark We are all called now to act. What can each of us do to create a more just, humane world? Happy Black History Month! @BlackHistoryUS

[Monika✨ @MonikaWatkins]

I love how honorably she speaks of him. She did recently at SXSW, as well. That's REAL, TRUE LOVE.✨

[Variety @Variety]

Jane Fonda pays tribute to her former husband, Ted Turner:

“He swept into my life, a gloriously handsome, deeply romantic, swashbuckling pirate and I’ve never been the same,” Fonda wrote on Instagram. “He needed me. No one had ever let me know they needed me, and this wasn’t your average human being that needed me, this was the creator of CNN, and Turner Classic Movies, who had won the America’s Cup as the world’s greatest sailor. He had a big life, a brilliant mind and a soaring sense of humor."

“He could also take care of me. That was new as well. To be needed and cared for simultaneously is transformative. Ted Turner helped me believe in myself. He gave me confidence. I think I did the same for him, but that’s what women are raised to do. Men like Ted aren’t supposed to express need and vulnerability. That was Ted’s greatest strength, I believe."

https://t.co/gcHcWQabGs

[Boots Riley @BootsRiley]

I would only correct this video by saying that stealing isn't outside the bounds of capitalism- its the foundation by which capitalism was founded and by which it continues to maintain itself.

I Love Boosters- in theaters May 22nd!

[Christiane Amanpour @amanpour]

“We are in a narrative crisis in America. There are people who want to ignore the harms of our history,” says lawyer and activist Bryan Stevenson. Still, he has hope: “I’m actually feeling more energized, more determined, more committed,” he tells me.

[Boots Riley @BootsRiley]

SXSW Opening Night Film announced:

I Love Boosters

Starring Keke Palmer, Naomi Ackie, Demi Moore, Lakeith Stanfield, Taylour Paige, Will Poulter, Eiza Gonzalez, and Poppy Liu.

[Monika✨ @MonikaWatkins]

@A24 @martysupreme @RealChalamet SCHWAPP!!✨📙✨

[Black, Blessed & Unbothered @MelanatedTalk]

Debbie Allen is truly a legend. Her acceptance speech is a clear example of her excellence, eloquence, grace style and class. Blessings to you and your family Ms. Debbie! I’m happy to see you get this well deserved honor! 🙏🏾
@msdebbieallen
#Oscars #DebbieAllen #BlackExcellence

[The New York Times @nytimes]

Breaking News: Zohran Mamdani, a 34-year-old state lawmaker from Queens, will be the 111th mayor of New York. He will be the first Muslim to ever lead the city, as well as its first South Asian mayor and the youngest mayor in more than a century.
https://t.co/7tewUOBm0A

[philip lewis @Phil_Lewis_]

WASHINGTON (AP) — Democrat Zohran Mamdani wins New York City mayor’s race.

[Sinead Bovell @sineadbovell]

A few weeks ago, @OpenAI launched Sora 2, a social app filled entirely with AI-generated videos. Most people saw it as another TikTok clone no one asked for. But Sora 2 isn’t a social-media play. It’s a systems play.

If you read about Sora 2 on OpenAI’s website, “social platform” is rarely mentioned. What is mentioned several times: world simulators and robotic agents. Sora 2 isn’t a social app. It’s a data pipeline for teaching robots how to see.

Part: OpenAI is pulling an Apple and teaching us to normalize a new behavior: prompt, generate, iterate, and share AI-videos. The same way Apple used Photo Booth and the first front-facing cameras to make people comfortable seeing themselves on screen, a “toy” that quietly trained us for a video-first world.

Part 2: OpenAI’s Sora 2 is the visible layer of a larger strategy: building the behavioral and technical foundation for AI that can act reliably in the physical world. We’re training OpenAI’s simulation models and robotics models. They have outsourced the labor to us. Every time someone attempts to create an AI-generated video, gives more feedback, puts the video into drafts and doesn’t post, what the “crowd” does or does not respond to is a micro-signal teaching an AI world model how physics, lighting, and human motion behave.

https://t.co/gStCuwggGE

[LAT Entertainment @latimesent]

Dakota Johnson and director Celine Song rethink the rom-com with 'Materialists' https://t.co/DvYvwHCQWI

[Democracy Now! @democracynow]

Director Ryan Coogler questions why his contract for @SinnersMovie has generated so much media attention.

“I'm not the first filmmaker to get any of these deals,” he says. “And Warner Bros. is not the first studio to provide these deals to a filmmaker.”

[Monika✨ @MonikaWatkins]

@reghud Really excellent work on this @reghud! Watched the first part last night and LOVED IT! Bravo!✨

[Monika✨ @MonikaWatkins]

@sineadbovell I like your optimistic take! Do you think AI agents might deepen the echo chambers we’re already stuck in, much like social media algorithms have? Or could they actually help break us out of them?

[Monika✨ @MonikaWatkins]

@USCWBB Let's go WATKINS!!!!! ✨

[Jemele Hill @jemelehill]

Peep game: 62 percent of SNAP recipients are white. But if clowns like this can present racist tropes to grossly misrepresent who the average SNAP recipient is (read: it’s the Black and brown folks out here scamming!) then it not only gives people permission to dehumanize poor folks, but convinces the white people who also need SNAP to vote against themselves.

In 2022, 50 percent of SNAP recipients with children earned income — so they also paid taxes. In general, a lot of people on SNAP use it to supplement low wages.

The companies that employ the largest percentage of SNAP recipients are Walmart and McDonalds. Walmart has 14,000 employees on SNAP and 10,000 on Medicaid.

So Nick, the next time you go to Walmart or McDonalds, go ask an employee where their $1,200 rims are.

[Ms. Lauryn Hill @MsLaurynHill]

Whitney Houston once said to me that Roberta Flack’s voice was one of the purest voices she’d ever heard. I grew up scouring the records my Parents collected. Mrs. Flack was one of their favorites and quite instantly became one of mine as soon as I was exposed to her. She looked cool and intelligent, gentle and yet militant. The songs she recorded from ‘Compared To What’ to ‘The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face’ to her version of ‘Ballad Of The Sad Young Men’ fascinated me with their beauty and sophistication. Mrs. Flack was an artist, a singer-songwriter, a pianist and composer who moved me and showed me through her own creative choices and standards what else was possible within the idiom of Soul. Killing Me Softly, a song Mrs. Flack didn’t write, but made hugely popular became the song that catapulted myself and the Fugees into household phenomena. We wanted to honor the beauty and brilliance of this song and her performance of it to our generation. I will forever be grateful for the sensitivity and delicate power of her Love and Artistry. Rest in Grace Beloved One. 🌹

[Monika✨ @MonikaWatkins]

@FlavorFlav artist, documentary filmmaker, professor... @monikawatkins.bsky.social

[Ben Crump @AttorneyCrump]

Harriet Tubman, abolitionist and symbol of courage, was posthumously awarded the rank of brigadier general by the Maryland National Guard in her Dorchester County hometown on Veterans Day. Tubman’s promotion is a testament to her enduring impact on the fight for equality. 🙌🏿

[Meidas_Charise Lee @charise_lee]

Go to https://t.co/WeNoivlcnC and see if your vote was counted!