Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Derek Willis @dwillis.bsky.social · 4h

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

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Derek Willis @dwillis.bsky.social · 4h

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

dan sinker @dansinker.com · 5h

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 · 7h

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 · 11h

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

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Derek Willis @dwillis.bsky.social · 23h

That would be appropriate, so no.

Derek Willis @dwillis.bsky.social · 23h

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 · 1d

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

ESPNcricinfo @espncricinfo.com · 1d

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 · 1d

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

Derek Willis @dwillis.bsky.social · 1d

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 · 2d

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 · 2d

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 · 2d

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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Reposted by Derek Willis

Emily Giambalvo @emilygiam.bsky.social · 3d

How America’s favorite sports bet is fueling sportsbook profits

Parlays are becoming more popular, accounting for an increasing share of the money wagered on sports, according to a Post analysis of betting data. Bettors lose billions a year on these bets.

www.washingtonpost.com/sports/inter...

Americans can’t stop betting parlays. Sportbooks are cashing in.

As betting booms, parlays are accounting for an increasing share of the money wagered on sports, according to a Washington Post analysis of state data.

www.washingtonpost.com

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Reposted by Derek Willis

G Elliott Morris @gelliottmorris.com · 3d

we have been working on this new polling aggregation website for a few months now, and are excited to share it with the world! plenty more features and polls to come.

FiftyPlusOne.news @fiftyplusone.news · 3d

new polls website just dropped fiftyplusone.news

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Derek Willis @dwillis.bsky.social · 3d

Maryland counties have mostly very high rates of MMR vaccination among kindergarteners, helping to contain the spread of measles.

And then there's Kent County.

cnsmaryland.org/2025/10/09/a...

A dumbbell chart showing the change in kindergarten MMR vaccine rates for the previous and current school years by Maryland county. A number of counties have improved their percentages, which are mostly in the mid-90s. Kent has gone from 93 to 88.

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Reposted by Derek Willis

Brad Heath @bradheath.bsky.social · 3d

A woman who was shot multiple times by U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents did not ram them with her car and had her weapon stored in her purse at the time of the incident, according to her lawyer, contradicting accounts by the Department of Homeland Security.

www.reuters.com/world/us/bod...

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Derek Willis @dwillis.bsky.social · 3d

My idea for this is to make my campus a Coca-Cola campus.

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Derek Willis @dwillis.bsky.social · 3d

The fun part is that this stuff works

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Derek Willis @dwillis.bsky.social · 3d

Tough but fair

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Derek Willis @dwillis.bsky.social · 4d

workona.com

Workona Tab Manager | Tab Organizer for Chrome, Edge, & Firefox

Organize your tabs into a dedicated space for each project.

workona.com

Reposted by Derek Willis

Mindy McAdams @macloo.bsky.social · 5d

State of Florida steals $83 million from land conservation fund to pay off a developer (who is also a DeSantic donor). floridaphoenix.com/2025/10/02/c...

Campaign contributor skips line, gets big payday from Florida governor and Cabinet • Florida Phoenix

When you were in elementary school, did you ever have to deal with some rude student who tried skipping to the front of the line? Something like that just happened with Florida’s popular land preserva...

floridaphoenix.com

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Derek Willis @dwillis.bsky.social · 5d

“Tazmin Brits” is like 1 billion on the colonial word name scoreboard

ESPNcricinfo @espncricinfo.com · 5d

Tazmin Brits loves a celebration 🏹

Tazmin Brits trademark ballerina celebration, an imitation of Viktor Goyokores' Bane celebration, and the archer celebration after her World Cup hundred

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Reposted by Derek Willis

Patrick Schmiedt @pschmiedt.bsky.social · 6d

Sora stuff has filled a big chunk of my social feeds. I’m discerning enough to notice (most times). I fear for how its misuse will outpace, by orders of magnitude, society’s ability for its output to be debunked.

BostonJoan 🏳️‍🌈 🦫 @bostonjoan.bsky.social · 6d

I started a project earlier this year looking at generative AI as a national security risk. Now that Sora is being publicly tested, more media outlets will have to cover and debunk AI slop and disinformation: www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

OpenAI launch of video app Sora plagued by violent and racist images: ‘The guardrails are not real’

Misinformation researchers say lifelike scenes could obfuscate truth and lead to fraud, bullying and intimidation

www.theguardian.com

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Reposted by Derek Willis

AAUP @aaup.org · 6d

Michel DeGraff, a tenured professor of linguistics at MIT, discusses how his proposal to teach a class on language & decolonization in Haiti, Israel, and Palestine was denied. He faced significant repercussions: he was removed from his department, had a pay raise withheld, and his salary frozen.

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Derek Willis @dwillis.bsky.social · 6d

The very first Sora-generated video I saw was of MLK's "I Have a Dream" speech in which the dream is that Sora wouldn't be so strict, so things are definitely gonna be fine, folks.

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Reposted by Derek Willis

ProPublica @propublica.org · 7d

ProPublica and @theassemblync.bsky.social found that in some North Carolina counties, homeowners with the highest incomes received two to three times as much FEMA housing assistance as those with lower incomes after Hurricane Helene.

By @jenniferberryhawes.bsky.social and Ren Larson

Arduous and Unequal: The Fight to Get FEMA Housing Assistance After Helene

An analysis by ProPublica and The Assembly of the more rural counties in North Carolina hardest hit by Helene shows that the households that got the most aid tended to have the highest incomes.

www.propublica.org

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Derek Willis @dwillis.bsky.social · 8d

No wonder the guy I saw today with a Penn State shirt looked so unhappy.

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