Something I've been working on lately. cc @mattbrown.bsky.social

Was lucky to see Sonny Rollins play at Pitt when I was a student there. Just a great, great musician. RIP.

Something I've been working on lately. cc @mattbrown.bsky.social

I feel attacked:

I don't often use papal encyclicals in teaching my class on artificial intelligence, but when I do, I use this pope's encyclicals.

No SELECT * this week. Have some important things to look at.

Being poking around No Labels registrants in KS - they started a couple months after we launched IKE Lab and just finished, so we've got great data on their whole run. Mapped out all the party registration changes people had in that span, and some do it a lot. Two people had 8 changes in 2.5 years.

If it was staged then why do we have a slush fund for the actors

I released the first alpha of Datasette Agent - a conversational AI assistant for Datasette that can answer questions about data in SQLite databases, and can be extended with plugins to add extra tools and features You can watch a demo video or try it out yourself on agent.datasette.io

Long shot but does anyone recall a late 80s/early 90s DOS game called Hoops? en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoops_(... I thought I had saved 3.5" floppy disks with it, but apparently no. If you have it would be very interested.

I assume the writers of "Spies Like Us" are somewhere raising a glass in admiration.

Does Facebook have a problem with AI-generated slop pages? Here's a post about UF football coach Jon Sumrall "clashing" with Nigel Farage about immigration to help you decide!

Pretty easy to love my job on days like this:

Democrats: "I'd Like to See The Texas GOP Wriggle Their Way Out of THIS Jam!" Ah, well. Nevertheless.

Not what I had in mind when they said "most transparent administration in history"

"The book is more of an allegory, you see..."

This is so well-written.

Journalism associations need to start making noise about news organizations that deliberately destroy archives under their control. Would like to see @aejmc.bsky.social, @ire.org, @spj-posts.bsky.social and others be vocal about this. This destruction is bad practice and antithetical to civic life.

This popped up before the top of the 4th inning of the #nationals game.

ABC killed fivethirtyeight.com, pulling down thousands of stories and dashboards. I can bring them back, but I can offer you https://fivethirtyeightindex.com, my new index of everything captured by archive.org.

I think a big missing and uncomfortable truth among the, “using AI will ruin your ability to think” discourse is that a whole lot of [high paying] desk work is already brain dead without AI. Like, “the stakeholder needs a churn of the same document for the 4th time this quarter” is many jobs.

We are saddened to learn Merrill College Hall of Famer and former Board of Visitors chair Jane Healy died Friday. After graduating from #UMD in 1971, Healy became a legendary journalist at the Orlando Sentinel, winning the newspaper’s first Pulitzer Prize and becoming a two-time Pulitzer finalist.

Had a great conversation with Jason Michael Perry of WYPR about teaching AI to journalism students without losing our way: www.wypr.org/podcast/thou...

"Gift Article" it says. Is there a return policy?

New (well, returned) dataset from me: U.S. House office expenses, with unique lawmaker IDs and member information added. Get your CSV downloads here: thescoop.org/house-expend... and code for producing them here: github.com/dwillis/hous...

Imagine any other industry in which information is the most valuable product treating it with such contempt. Just willful stupidity.

Inspired by @kjhealy.co's excellent nycmaps R package, I've created a similar one for Maryland: github.com/newsAppsUMD/...

Many, many gems in this Wright Thompson profile of Steve Kerr, but this might be my favorite: www.espn.com/nba/story/_/...

New (well, returned) dataset from me: U.S. House office expenses, with unique lawmaker IDs and member information added. Get your CSV downloads here: thescoop.org/house-expend... and code for producing them here: github.com/dwillis/hous...

Stunning dollar amounts are no longer surprising, but $700 million in two months is a LOT of spending! More on spending in recent and upcoming primaries in our report ⬇️ #2026midterms #commsky #polisky

The Howard Center for Investigative Journalism is looking for an associate director for data & AI investigations and partnerships. Come work with me at @merrillcollege.bsky.social! umd.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/UMCP/j...

IMO this is a very unsupported take. Is NYT food writing weird? Sometimes! Does that mean it's AI? Not based on this. Serious allegations deserve more evidence than this.

The folks at Northwestern are holding an Agentic AI Investigative Journalism Challenge using press releases from my Congress Press project. First place is $5,000. www.gain-agent-challenge.northwestern.edu

MCPS recently quietly updated its gender identity status policy: "if a parent or guardian specifically requests information about their child’s gender identity status, or if disclosure is otherwise required, school staff will be obligated to share that information."

Recently, FamilySearch digitized and uploaded tons of microfilmed records, including many from 18th-century Massachsuetts. They're using some sort of AI to transcribe/summarize the handwritten documents. I've noticed that the AI strips out references to race and enslavement in 18thc documents.

Excellent write up by @mitelectionlab.bsky.social about their effort to collect precinct results from the 2024 general election, include a nice nod to @openelections.bsky.social electionlab.mit.edu/articles/ins...

Really like this from @eads.bsky.social: recoveredfactory.net/en/webs-not-...

Latest edition of SELECT * is out this morning, featuring a return of U.S. House office expenditure data and a new Maryland mapping library. Subscribe here: buttondown.com/dwillis

@actfortransit.bsky.social interesting community meeting with SHA & others last night about the Georgia Ave. & Forest Glen Road intersection. * underground passage is a non-starter ($) * northbound left turn will eventually be not an option at all * cars stopping in the crosswalk a problem

Menopause. The once avoided conversation is now everywhere online and in the news. Women left in the dark on what’s happening to their bodies are thirsting for information. Maryland wants to ensure doctors know how to help them. www.thebanner.com/politics-pow...

They probably could use some accurate information, so I guess this makes sense?

found an interesting form the government puts out? ask for the database it feeds. where there's an interesting form there's usually interesting data.

New from me: See the hidden rules behind AI. Then use them to rewrite this article. I hooked this article up to an LLM to help explain system prompts. Give it a try -> www.washingtonpost.com/technology/i...

Owing to various things (grading, family stuff), the next SELECT * newsletter is delayed but should come out today or tomorrow.

Hüsker Dü

The “product” here is literally a network of websites that ingest local news sources and puke out some AI text inspired by their content, which are allegedly “summaries.” Content theft at scale meant to skim off enough web traffic to make money without providing any value. This is why people hate AI

"CNS examined historical documents and known death certificates to show 243 deaths at Cheltenham compared to 26 at Hickey between 1860 and 1942. The CNS calculations surpass prior published estimates." cnsmaryland.org/2026/05/07/d...

1/ Tear gas was created to incapacitate grown men. So when I started seeing reports of kids hurt by tear gas deployed by federal immigration agents, I wondered how often it was happening. My colleagues and I started to count:

Was last year just a poor shooting season for Clark due to injury, or does she have to prove herself this year? Newsletter by @mingemi.bsky.social: herhoopstats.substack.com

"Preliminary data from Maryland’s department of health shows that firearm suicides overtook homicides in 2025." cnsmaryland.org/interactives...