Derek Willis

New research just dropped, as the kids say. My partner @medialawprof.bsky.social and took a look at how states are trying to stop people from using AI to lie. We settled on A) it probably won’t work, B) is very probably unconstitutional, and C) tech companies need to prioritize tools to help users.

How I used Claude Code in a real data journalism project This morning three colleagues and I published a story outlining how the federal government is using AI. Here’s how I used Claude Code to help. Agencies are required to publish a spreadsheet of AI use ...

New blog post: A case study on using Claude Code in data journalism ->
kschaul.com/post/2026/02...

Amongst other things, this again highlights the core point about due process. It’s bad enough to be in a “show me your papers” situation, but your precious citizen/non-citizen, “legal”/“illegal” distinctions are meaningless when you can’t prove anything to authorities because they don’t give a shit.

I wish I had that, but someone probably does?

Still very surprised that this happened (both the win and the fundraising email)

Funny now news organizations keep finding this.

idk, seems like an unproductive thing to do:

Vito Marcantonio - Wikipedia

Looks like a rare chance to suggest people learn about former Rep. Vito Marcantonio, a New Yorker who supported Puerto Rican independence and was LaGuardia's campaign manager. Not a pal of @dicknixon.bsky.social, but an effective advocate for Harlem:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vito_Ma...

Bold of you to suggest thinking is involved.

You're welcome for having our order shipped.

Both of those are pretty new for Maryland.

Not long after hitting a game-winning 3, UMD's Diggy Coit appears as the sender in an athletic department fundraising email.

Do other colleges do this, @mattbrown.bsky.social?

Also contains, without irony, the line "It's not against the law to be male."

My brother in Christ, who do you think wrote most of our laws?

www.eschatonblog.com/2006/01/wank...

Well, when I was at the post, my comments to the then-ombudswoman took about three days to get into print, and the result was that I was named wanker of the day by a liberal blogger

Most charitable guess is that the readers editor has to ask some desk to respond to your legitimate complaint, they passive aggressively take their sweet time in doing so, and eventually a result emerges.

The only way that the Post even approaches the 200 million paid user goal it declared last year is if it operates more like Amazon.

Trouble is, that makes it less like the Washington Post.

It’s not nothing! But it’s also not legislation and Van Hollen represents a state that’s not going to punish him for doing so. Don’t think he changed support among any Senate Republicans.

Was having this discussion with a student last night, who kept insisting to me that senators "had an engaged electorate behind them" as if that triggered some magical abilities previously unavailable to the minority party.

We found at least 18 of the drugs on TrumpRx have cheaper generics available ranging from potential savings of over $600 for Tikosyn to just around $2 for Diflucan. Most of the drugs are made by Pfizer.

So about TrumpRx: We crunched the numbers today and about half of the drugs on there have cheaper generics available already. www.statnews.com/2026/02/06/t...

An email from Florida GOP congressional candidate Catalina Lauf's campaign with the subject line of "I was thinking about you all night" that begins with a picture of a smiling Lauf and the message "Friend, you've been on my mind all night."

Political fundraising email or something else? You decide!

Thank goodness national flags are never political symbols.

SMDH Bluesky

Great that _tech company_ comms reps believe that an LLM is a fact machine.

Medgar Evers’ killer was a Klansman, but Trump administration says stop calling him a racist - Mississippi Today Among anticipated changes to a new visitor brochure for the Medgar & Myrlie Evers Home National Monument is no longer using "racist" to describe the killer of the civil rights leader.

Look, the least we can do for this White Citizens’ Council and KKK murderer is not to injure his reputation by calling him racist.

When the cover is a subtweet

Student journalism strikes again.

In Oluchi and Kyndal we trust

Spotlighting The World Factbook as We Bid a Fond Farewell Somewhat devastating news today from the CIA: One of CIA’s oldest and most recognizable intelligence publications, The World Factbook, has sunset. There's not even a hint as to why they …

The CIA just stopped publishing their World Factbook and took every page, including the archived copies of previous versions!

This sucks. It was public domain, so I recovered the 2020 edition (the last one published as a zip file) and shared it to GitHub simonwillison.net/2026/Feb/5/t...

Interesting trend unfolding in this cycle's special elections (data courtesy of @the-downballot.com). In 2018, Dems way overperformed on average in heavily GOP districts; slightly in more competitive ones; and not at all in heavily Dem districts.

In 2026, they're gangbusters in all three.