Simon Willison — Week of 2026-05-08 to 2026-05-15#

Highlight of the Week#

The standout development this week is Simon’s rapid adaptation to the latest frontier model capabilities, most notably releasing llm 0.32a2 to expose and visualize the new interleaved reasoning tokens of GPT-5 class models directly in the terminal. This perfectly pairs with his hands-on explorations of embedding LLM calls deeply into developer workflows, such as executing prompts via script shebangs and leveraging models to output rich HTML rather than just Markdown.

YouTube — Week of 2026-06-27 to 2026-07-03#

Watch First#

Out of a stellar week of content, Candice Odgers’ provocative TED talk, “Why a Social Media Ban Won’t Save Teens,” is the absolute standout. She uses compelling data to argue that the reported youth mental health crisis is actually a symptom of an adult mental health crisis, and that simply banning kids from the internet punishes the victims while letting tech companies off the hook.

Simon Willison — 2026-05-10#

Highlight#

Simon highlights a stark example of AI hallucination making its way into mainstream journalism, serving as a critical warning for anyone relying on LLMs for factual summarization.

Posts#

Quoting New York Times Editors’ Note · Source Simon shares a sobering editors’ note from the New York Times illustrating the dangers of unchecked generative AI in the newsroom. A reporter mistakenly attributed an AI-generated summary of Canadian Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre’s views as a direct, verbatim quote. The hallucinated text falsely claimed he called politicians who changed allegiances “turncoats,” underscoring exactly why LLM outputs must be rigorously verified against primary sources rather than trusted blindly.

YouTube — 2026-06-29#

Watch First#

I Was Kicked Out of China from The New York Times is a stark, essential watch on the reality of reporting under intense surveillance. The reporter recounts how Chinese officials and tipped-off locals physically blocked investigations into sensitive topics like domestic violence and human trafficking before ultimately canceling her visa.

Highlights by Theme#

News & Business#

In global news, The Wall Street Journal’s U.S. Weighs Adjusting its Footprint in the Middle East After Iran War | WSJ reveals that the U.S. military is drastically rethinking its vulnerable, above-ground Middle East bases following a barrage of Iranian precision missile strikes. Domestically, the WSJ also covers a crucial Supreme Court ruling protecting the Federal Reserve’s independence from presidential whims in What the Supreme Court’s Ruling Over Lisa Cook Means for the Fed. For a deep dive into market cycles, Chinese-language channel 美投侃新闻 (Meitou News) offers sharp analysis in AI循环投资的必经路径是？小盘股阶段性看涨！韩国巨额投资加速周期拐点？远程办公的最大bug是？; it unpacks the Bank for International Settlements’ warnings on AI investment bubbles and explains why remote work might be secretly stunting the careers of junior employees.