Great moments in Social Media Automation: four of the last 30 posts from one of my state’s newspapers on the website are actually from that publication. Twenty-three posts are from … St. Louis, the corporate home base.

After 19 years, @politifact.bsky.social this week retired the content management system I built for it so long ago. Bonkers to think it lasted that long, but in the age of AI creating code, its a reminder that it was always the idea, never the code, that mattered. www.poynter.org/commentary/2...

PolitiFact's new platform is a reminder that ideas outlast technology - Poynter

As PolitiFact retires the platform that powered its first 19 years, its original developer argues ideas matter more than tools

poynter.org

I need Sam Waterston to voice this quote from Brown economist Roberto Serrano: "We cannot afford to have a society in which a significant fraction of our best young minds think that cheating is OK. That leads to a declining society, to a failed society … We cannot choose to become idiots."

My idle summer brain combined yellow-journalism era philosophical fights over what the purpose of a newspaper was, Atari 2600 nostalgia, 2 Live Crew and AI to make a version of Pitfall with the algae-clogged reflecting pool as the obstacles: www.mattwaite.com/posts/2026-0...

Irrational products, editorial games, AI and 2 Live Crew – Matt Waite

No newsroom anywhere has so many software developers laying around that any whim can be made real. But now … they kinda can. I find people using AI to write stories so tedious and boring. Hooray, just...

mattwaite.com

I gave a cartoonishly corrupt organization hundreds of my dollars and turned it into a bucket list checkmark I’ll remember forever. AMA

For more than 30 years, I’ve dreamed of going to a World Cup match. When the announcement of a North American World Cup came out, my son and I said we’d be happy to go to anyone anywhere. We’ve made it to the Disgrace Of Gijon revenge match by complete accident.

Honestly, with people so bad at fact checking and so willing to believe AI, I'm cool with some of the models thinking I pitched for the Tampa Bay Rays. Realistically, I would have pitched from 2001-2003 when they lost 305 games and no one cared at all about them, but sure.

@ryanpitts.bsky.social I think it may be time to renew our debate in light of this.

Christopher L. Keller@chrislkeller.com · 2mo ago

🎶 All these models making modern content Can still be open-hearted Not so coldly coded, it's really just a question of your honesty Yeah, your honesty 🎸

Never doubted it for a second. #coys

Why do I treat course evaluation reveal day like Christmas morning? Because where else do you get gems like this?

In the last faculty meeting talking about future changes to Canvas feels like Captain Smith holding a meeting about the return voyage on the Titanic while others deal with that loud bang and grinding noises that occurred earlier.

Canvas/Instructure hacked (twice) during finals week. LMSes nationwide are currently useless.

I have many thoughts about this:

It's not real ... but by the end of the weekend, it should be ... and that size. #nebrasketball #huskers

How am I supposed to feel about things when right now, in Nebraska, the weather alerts are that it’s randomly snowing out of the blue … and the risk of wildfires is high today? Fire snow.

If Canvas doesn't view this as an existential threat, they have no idea how ready I am to replicate college in the 1980s. companion.ai/einstein

Einstein - AI Homework Agent

Einstein logs into Canvas and does your homework automatically. He has his own computer — he can watch lectures, read essays, write papers, and participate in discussions.

companion.ai

Ads in ChatGPT? I cannot *wait* to fail an essay because it says "Times v Sullivan is the backbone of press freedom in the United States, just like the Ford F-150 is the backbone of the American worker. F-150: Built Ford Tough."

Always fun to dust off some old code ...

I'll give you @kleinmatic.bsky.social with the shot: www.niemanlab.org/2025/12/show...

“Show your work” makes a triumphant return

"News organizations will realize that sharing their methods — like publishing detailed methodologies, developing projects in the open, and yes, giving away stuff for free — is essential to building tr...

niemanlab.org

We made a better fake image of this in less than 5 minutes during a class on the evolution of fake news yesterday. Buckle up, society. bsky.app/profile/jour...

Lincoln Journal Star@journalstar.com · 8mo ago

Phones were ringing Tuesday at the dispatch center when pranksters spread phone news about Kearney's famous Archway monument.

What I was confronted with:

In the spirit of using AI to do dishes so I can do art, I tested out Antigravity/Gemini 3 with a gnarly PDF parsing job. What I got back was orders of magnitude better than any other tool I've used over a period of years: mattwaite.github.io/posts/2025-1...

Parsing PDFs with Antigravity – Matt Waite’s Collection of Miscellany

In a word: Gobsmacked.

mattwaite.github.io

We all know transfers rule college basketball … but to what extent? And how different is today vs. the past? We quantified it by analyzing the careers of rotation players on every men’s & women’s NCAA tournament team since 2010. That’s 10,000 players! Check it out (gift link): wapo.st/41By62h

Midwest living in 2025: it is 75 degrees out. The sun is shining. The school district just called. School is cancelled tomorrow because of the blizzard coming.

For those who can't be in the room for my AI Starter Pack in R session, here's some notes/code examples we'll work through. If you can be there at 3:30, more demos in the session. #NICAR25 mattwaite.github.io/posts/r-llm-...

An R + LLM starter kit – Matt Waite’s Collection of Miscellany

A blog about random fiddling with code and data.

mattwaite.github.io

Back in 2009, when I somehow convinced a Florida newspaper to let me move to Nebraska and work remotely, we used to have a computer with Skype running all the time in the small office my group worked in. We could just talk like I was still in the room. It was really nice. www.cnn.com/2025/02/28/t...

Skype is shutting down after two decades | CNN Business

Microsoft is shutting down Skype, the internet-based phone and video service that was once the dominant way of staying connected in the mid 2000s.

cnn.com

Last week, the Nebraska R User Group hosted a presentation by Matt Waite (@mattwaite.bsky.social) on "Talking to LLMs through R". Check out a summary of the talk at neb-rug.github.io/posts/talkin.... #rstats #llms

New report on the state of journalism in Nebraska: There are 9 counties without a single news organization in them. There are 16 county seats with no local news organization in them. More than half of the state's counties are covered by two or fewer journalists. newsmap.unl.edu

Asked AI for a header image for my AI + Journalism class to put into the LMS. Asked for something evocative of journalism's past and future, colorful and futuristic. What I got vs what my Gen X ass sees:

How big is the Palisades fire compared to where you live? This will tell you: calmatters.org/environment/... For me, probably 80% of Lincoln is wiped out centering the fire on campus. Everything from far West O east past 84th Street, from Pioneers in the south to Cornhusker Highway in the north.