Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Derek Willis @dwillis.bsky.social · 4h

You're raising your kids right.

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Derek Willis @dwillis.bsky.social · 4h

!!!!

SUGAR @sugarcopperblue.bsky.social · 4h

Sugar is back! New music at sugarcopperblue.com PLUS May 2026 live shows in NYC and London. All the info is here!

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Derek Willis @dwillis.bsky.social · 5h

Happy #FECFilingDay to all who celebrate! Today we'll get reports covering Q3 2025 (July 1 - September 30) from congressional candidates and some PACs.

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Derek Willis @dwillis.bsky.social · 16h

This is why we need independent student media, but if a university is going to actually be involved, then it needs to respect its limits under the First Amendment.

Jess Calarco @jessicacalarco.com · 16h

Indiana University has fired the staff director of the student newspaper, after disputes in which university leadership tried to pressure him to prevent students from publishing news.

IndyStar 2 . Follow
1h:
"All Media School and IU students, faculty and staff
should be scared by this blatant attack on someone
standing up for what's right," student Editors-ln-Chief
Mia Hilkowitz and Andrew Miller said in a statement.
Read more: bit.ly/43ebKW1
IndyStar.
IDS
The original investigative student
newsroom of Indiana University
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Indiana University fires IDS
adviser amid push to control
student newspaper's content

The director of student media at Indiana University was fired amidst a dispute between university leadership and editors at the Indiana Daily Student over what content gets printed in the student newspaper.

As director of student media, Jim Rodenbush did not directly oversee or have any say over the content published in the IDS, per a charter between the IDS and the university. But he told IndyStar his firing follows a series of meetings with IU Media School leadership in which it grew increasingly apparent they were expecting him to officially prohibit students from publishing news.

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Derek Willis @dwillis.bsky.social · 18h

Am slowly working on it!

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Derek Willis @dwillis.bsky.social · 1d

Better than print, but that’s a low bar. But there’s a glimmer of strategy there compared to print.

Derek Willis @dwillis.bsky.social · 1d

As a former print subscriber, I get the dunking, but I don't think the Post's owner *wants* anything more than a token print subscriber base, anymore than Amazon wanted to own actual bookstores.

karl rove knausgård @uhactually.bsky.social · 1d

Lmao WaPo has fewer than 100K circulation now. It turns out “alienate your liberal subscriber base” is not a good strategy when the Republicans also hate you. www.forbes.com/sites/andyme...

The Washington Post Is Running Out Of Readers Willing To Pay

Once a titan of American journalism, The Washington Post now struggles to reach even 100,000 print subscribers most days.

www.forbes.com

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Derek Willis @dwillis.bsky.social · 1d

Most D-I women's soccer teams create fewer shots on the road, but Maryland is off on its own in its quadrant (red dot on this plot; the vertical and horizontal lines are the D-1 averages):

A scatterplot showing average away shot differential on the X axis and average home shot differential on the Y axis. Maryland is in the upper left quadrant (positive average home shot diff, negative average away shot diff), but clearly separated from the bulk of teams in that quadrant.

Derek Willis @dwillis.bsky.social · 1d

Maryland women's soccer has a road problem, and here's one way to understand it: the Terps have been unable to create shots away from home. Among teams with a positive average shot differential at home and a negative average differential on the road, UMD has the 2nd-largest swing (+3.4 to -17.1).

A dumbbell chart showing the NCAA women's soccer teams with the largest difference between average home shot differential and away shot differential. Maryland is 2nd overall, and has the largest average away differential at -17.1.

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Derek Willis @dwillis.bsky.social · 1d

Husker Du's 1987 live cover of "Eight Miles High"

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Neqy...

Sophia_Nyx 🏳️‍⚧️ @sophianyx.bsky.social · 1d

Without saying Hurt, fav Cover Song?

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Derek Willis @dwillis.bsky.social · 1d

An update on #NCAAWBB 2025-26 roster data: the latest release has more than 9,800 players and includes all but ~260 teams for all of the NCAA divisions, including about a half-dozen D-I programs.

This version isn't standardized (yet) but that will come soon.

github.com/dwillis/wbb-...

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Derek Willis @dwillis.bsky.social · 2d

See, this is why I'm not research faculty

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Derek Willis @dwillis.bsky.social · 2d

to be very fair, it is a real shame for people whose research is on offensive Halloween costumes.

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Derek Willis @dwillis.bsky.social · 2d

What a creative idea - exactly the kind of thing that humans are pretty great at.

Meredith Martin @mmvty.bsky.social · 2d

📣 New preprint! We know humans are biased against AI-creativity. But what about LLMs, now often judging creativity in various contexts? Do they replicate, transform, or amplify this bias? We tested it. Turns out: AI is 2.5X more biased against its own work than humans. arxiv.org/pdf/2510.08831 🧵

arxiv.org

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Derek Willis @dwillis.bsky.social · 2d

This is great, and not just because I found out that my work is cited in a 2014 Congressional Research Service report.

Matt Hodges @matthodges.bsky.social · 2d

Well this is fun: Internet Archive full text search: archive.org/details/text...

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Derek Willis @dwillis.bsky.social · 2d

"I'll take 'unbelievable possession stats' for $600, Alex."

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Derek Willis @dwillis.bsky.social · 2d

TIL: the "worst of the worst" now includes youth soccer players.

dan sinker @dansinker.com · 2d

New levels of hell: just got an email from our local AYSO cancelling today’s youth soccer games because ICE is at the Home Depot across from the soccer fields at James Park in Evanston.

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Reposted by Derek Willis

Kate Starbird @katestarbird.bsky.social · 3d

I’ve seen posts claiming this “truth” is evidence of dementia, but IMO that’s not the right frame. This is strategy. Since 2021, the right has been rewriting history, bending timelines, to connect their grievances (Covid) and conspiracy theories (Jan 6, censorship, etc) to the Biden administration.

Joyce White Vance @joycewhitevance.bsky.social · 3d

That’s a nice trick, since Biden wasn’t the president on Jan 6.

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Derek Willis @dwillis.bsky.social · 3d

That would be appropriate, so no.

Derek Willis @dwillis.bsky.social · 3d

I see that the Gators are employing a novel defensive scheme called “don’t cover receivers”

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Reposted by Derek Willis

cricketerik.bsky.social @cricketerik.bsky.social · 3d

Bank robber describes getting caught robbing banks as "one of the most difficult moments" in his career of bank robbery.

ESPNcricinfo @espncricinfo.com · 3d

USA Cricket has described the ICC's decision to suspend it as "one of the most difficult moments" in its history and "difficult to comprehend"

USA Cricket calls ICC suspension 'one of the most difficult moments' in its history

USAC said it remains committed to navigating through this "challenging" period and will hold elections in line with the timeline agreed upon with the ICC

www.espncricinfo.com

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Derek Willis @dwillis.bsky.social · 3d

Hex codes should do the trick: www.kaggle.com/datasets/cor...

Derek Willis @dwillis.bsky.social · 4d

It's a little weird that I have a favorite government publication: the Morbidity & Mortality Weekly Report, produced by the Centers for Disease Control.

But I'll take weird over the idiocy of firing the MMWR's staff & ~70 "disease detectives" who monitor worldwide events. An invitation to illness.

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Reposted by Derek Willis

Jeremy Littau @jeremylittau.com · 4d

A neutral press can only offer a conflicting account to a public habituated to treat competing information with equal weight. But if the goal of journalism is to give non-Portland citizens what they need to decide, is a neutral press what we need? Or ought a pro-citizen press do more?

Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 4d

Trump: "Portland, I mean -- every time I look at that place it's burning down. There are fires all over the place. When a store -- there are very few of them left -- but when a store owner rebuilds a store they build it out of plywood. They don't put up storefronts anymore. They just put wood up."

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Derek Willis @dwillis.bsky.social · 4d

Last year a @merrillcollege.bsky.social grad student told me she wanted to build a news app about evictions in DC. Given the schedule and amount of work, it was an ambitious project.

Taylor Nichols not only did it but got it published by a DC news org!

streetsensedc.github.io/evictions-ap...

Mapping evictions in Washington, D.C.

streetsensedc.github.io

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