Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Reposted by Derek Willis

Emily Giambalvo @emilygiam.bsky.social · 17h

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 · 17h

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 · 17h

new polls website just dropped fiftyplusone.news

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Derek Willis @dwillis.bsky.social · 18h

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 · 20h

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 · 18h

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

Derek Willis @dwillis.bsky.social · 1d

The fun part is that this stuff works

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Derek Willis @dwillis.bsky.social · 1d

Tough but fair

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Derek Willis @dwillis.bsky.social · 1d

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 · 2d

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 · 2d

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

ESPNcricinfo @espncricinfo.com · 2d

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 · 3d

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 · 3d

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 · 3d

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 · 3d

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 · 4d

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 · 5d

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

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Derek Willis @dwillis.bsky.social · 5d

Gotta start somewhere

Derek Willis @dwillis.bsky.social · 5d

It applies universally, or the mug gets repeatedly bestowed

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Derek Willis @dwillis.bsky.social · 5d

Might need to start taking this to meetings

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Derek Willis @dwillis.bsky.social · 6d

Sickening.

Minnesota Star Tribune @startribune.com · 6d

The messages show high-level officials in the Trump administration discussing the possible deployment of the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division, an infantry force that has dropped into combat zones in both World Wars, Vietnam and Afghanistan.

Trump officials discussed sending elite Army division to Portland, text messages show

A high-ranking White House official was indiscreetly texting about the Portland, Ore., planning last weekend, according to messages shared with the Minnesota Star Tribune.

bit.ly

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Derek Willis @dwillis.bsky.social · 6d

That’s some good student reporting:

www.uscannenbergmedia.com/2025/10/01/u...

USC sold dead bodies to U.S. military to train IDF medical personnel

A review of seven years’ worth of contracts unveiled more than $860,000 to use cadavers in surgical trainings involving the Israeli Defense Forces.

www.uscannenbergmedia.com

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Reposted by Derek Willis

dan sinker @dansinker.com · 6d

ICE unleashed tear gas on the street in Chicago’s Logan Square today and I tried to find meaning among the fog and my own anger about, well, everything. dansinker.com/posts/202…

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Reposted by Derek Willis

Matt Brown @mattbrown.bsky.social · 6d

Like, I don't want to sound alarmist or anything, but to me, this is terrorism! This does not make Chicago or anywhere in the United States *more safe*. It does not make Chicago more subject to the Rule of Law. This is a van full of goons terrorizing the neighborhood.

Eileen Clancy 🧿 @clancyny.bsky.social · 6d

Logan Square neighborhood, Chicago. Man wearing a balaclava in a white, unmarked vehicle, pulls the pin on a tear gas canister and tosses it in the road.

"Just trying to grab some lunch and these fucking losers showed up. FUCK ICE!"
source: www.reddit.com/r/LoganSquar...

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Derek Willis @dwillis.bsky.social · 6d

Steve Garvey, the former LA Dodger who lost his Senate race in 2024, resumed raising money for his new PAC last week:

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Reposted by Derek Willis

Elise Cutts @elisecutts.bsky.social · 7d

What's a life well-lived? Researchers looked at 38 MILLION obituaries over 30 years to study virtue.

Among the fascinating results, this one is chilling:

After the pandemic, benevolence dropped in popularity and never recovered. In its place, tradition as a virtue experienced a popularity surge.🧪

An exploration of basic human values in 38 million obituaries over 30 years | PNAS

How societies remember the dead can reveal what people value in life. We analyzed 38 million obituaries from the United States to examine how perso...

www.pnas.org

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Derek Willis @dwillis.bsky.social · 7d

A choir friend shared news of the passing of Dr. James Abbington, "the dean of African American church music" who helped to spread Black church music beyond Black churches. "There was no one like him."

religionnews.com/2025/10/02/d...

‘Dean of African American church music’ James Abbington dies at 65 after Duke appointment

(RNS) — ‘I grieve for his family, friends, and our Divinity community,” said Edgardo Colón-Emeric, dean of Duke Divinity School, where Abbington had planned to teach in the fall.

religionnews.com

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