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Matt Waite

@mattwaite.bsky.social
2.1K followers 924 following 237 posts

Professor of Journalism, University of Nebraska-Lincoln. I teach people who can't spell code to find stories and visuals in data with #rstats. Publish all my course books and tutorials at github.com/mattwaite

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Matt Waite @mattwaite.bsky.social · 10h
First thought was this seems like something AI could do. Second thought was I would sue myself for this kind of copyright murder. The joy is in imagining it, not hearing a fake version of it.
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Matt Waite @mattwaite.bsky.social · 11h
Now I want to hear a Brian Setzer Orchestra cover of Talk Dirty To Me.
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Matt Waite @mattwaite.bsky.social · 13/10/2026
Hot take: I thought he wandered a little in the middle portions of the argument. Still, worth the read. bsky.app/profile/dans...
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Matt Waite @mattwaite.bsky.social · 09/10/2026
Ahhhhh, remember headlines before SEO? Good times. Good times. No idea what that story is about, but the answer is in this 3 pound hunk of paper.
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Matt Waite @mattwaite.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
DON'T DO IT -signed, guy who graded all day yesterday only to get half of it done.
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Matt Waite @mattwaite.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
Got the data from NOAA, visualized with ggplot.
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Matt Waite @mattwaite.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
Lincoln Nebraska got more rain last night than any day in the last quarter century, according to NOAA data.
A bar chart of more than 9,500 days of weather observations in Lincoln Nebraska, showing Oct. 1, 2026 as having the highest single day total of 4.92 inches.
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Matt Waite @mattwaite.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
I am an undignified amount of giddy about how it turned out.
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Matt Waite @mattwaite.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Do you, like me, still think about the 2010 Winter Olympics interactive graphic from the NYTimes where they turned finishing times into sound? Good news: I burned some tokens and created soundeR, an R package that sonifies data in a very beginner friendly way: www.mattwaite.com/posts/2026-0...
mattwaite.com
Announcing soundeR, an R package that turns data into music(?) – Matt Waite
Announcing the soundeR package, that turns data into sounds. It’s made for people with basic tidyverse skills and a rudimentary understanding of music. You can make sounds with very little, and there’...
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Matt Waite @mattwaite.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Took me 20 minutes, three screenshots and Opus 5.5 in Claude Code. Works on desktop, works on mobile, pops into the CMS with a simple iframe. And there's room to grow.
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Matt Waite @mattwaite.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
What if news orgs offered news avoiders a break from the relentless terrible of the day with a silly little game off the news? Example: Big news here, 1/4 of the football stadium will be demolished in December. Turn that into a game of Breakout: www.mattwaite.com/south-stadiu...
mattwaite.com
South Stadium Breaker
The south stadium facade is coming down. Grab the wrecking ball and help.
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Matt Waite @mattwaite.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
Give me a minute and I can probably construct a convincing argument that my mental health hasn't improved since I gave up my Blackberry.
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Matt Waite @mattwaite.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
One day. Soon. commodore.net/computer/
commodore.net
Computer - Commodore
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Matt Waite @mattwaite.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
There’s Proper Spurs and then there are the true champions who take Proper Spurs to new levels.
A headline saying Richardson considering legal action against Tottenham to try and cancel contract
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Matt Waite @mattwaite.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
Something like it. I used the national participation data in class the other day. Lot of theories why, but it’s something like 32 states saw declines in participation.
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Matt Waite @mattwaite.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
High school football participation is down nearly 40 percent from 2008 in the state so it may be happening and no one is asking the kids about it.
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Matt Waite @mattwaite.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
My next pitch: America needs kids to be Nebraska football fans to teach them that life is suffering - joyless even when you cover at -23.5.
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Matt Waite @mattwaite.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
I see the launch of your clickbait empire is going well.
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Reposted by Matt Waite
Robert Simmon @rsimmon.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
I am having a particularly frustrating week, so here’s one of the best things I’ve ever done. The eruption of Sarychev Peak in the Aleutian Islands, seen by the crew of the space station. www.nasa.gov/image-articl...
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Matt Waite @mattwaite.bsky.social · 31/08/2026
How Gen X am I? Super, so glad you asked. You see, right now, the earworn burrowed deep in my brain is the theme music from The Adventures of Remo Williams. *That* Gen X.
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Matt Waite @mattwaite.bsky.social · 21/08/2026
Database man, database man Database man hates spreadsheet man They have a fight, Database wins Database man
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Matt Waite @mattwaite.bsky.social · 20/08/2026
My first thought was that two thirds of that list is on the Ye Olde Blaire Fire-Hall playlist but alas, It Takes Two is not (though it should be) and the Wild Wild West glimmer of a memory was the vastly superior Kool Mo Dee, not The Escape Club.
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Matt Waite @mattwaite.bsky.social · 07/08/2026
I fear for the fabric of the universe. Don’t cross the streams and all that.
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Matt Waite @mattwaite.bsky.social · 07/08/2026
As someone who finds a zen state working on my house and also has to write a lot for a living, I am so goddamned pissed off that AI has robbed me of using "load-bearing" as an adjective.
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Matt Waite @mattwaite.bsky.social · 30/07/2026
I hate that in America in 2026 this could me you are very, very high or very, very low.
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Matt Waite @mattwaite.bsky.social · 30/07/2026
*this* website. Not the website. Their bluesky feed is jacked is what I’m trying to say. Another vote for an edit button.
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Matt Waite @mattwaite.bsky.social · 30/07/2026
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.
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Matt Waite @mattwaite.bsky.social · 22/07/2026
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...
poynter.org
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
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Matt Waite @mattwaite.bsky.social · 10/07/2026
Source: www.insidehighered.com/news/faculty...
insidehighered.com
Brown Professor Suspects Most of His Class Used AI to Cheat
Brown University leaders’ response to the alleged cheating incident has been “meek,” the professor said.
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Matt Waite @mattwaite.bsky.social · 10/07/2026
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."
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Matt Waite @mattwaite.bsky.social · 06/07/2026
Or he has orange hair. Interpret how you wish.
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Matt Waite @mattwaite.bsky.social · 06/07/2026
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...
mattwaite.com
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...
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Matt Waite @mattwaite.bsky.social · 28/06/2026
I gave a cartoonishly corrupt organization hundreds of my dollars and turned it into a bucket list checkmark I’ll remember forever. AMA
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Matt Waite @mattwaite.bsky.social · 28/06/2026
Wow. Two goals after 90 +4
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Matt Waite @mattwaite.bsky.social · 28/06/2026
Holy hell this match!
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Matt Waite @mattwaite.bsky.social · 28/06/2026
Oh my god. Algeria at the death! The revenge of Gijon happened!
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Matt Waite @mattwaite.bsky.social · 28/06/2026
Fans now booing passing drills.
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Matt Waite @mattwaite.bsky.social · 28/06/2026
Okay, maybe not a disgrace but the last 10 minutes has been two teams realizing they have everything to lose and not much to gain by attacking. But the You Should Feel A Little Bad About This of Kansas City doesn’t have the same ring.
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Matt Waite @mattwaite.bsky.social · 28/06/2026
The ritual booing of the hydration break is fun.
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Matt Waite @mattwaite.bsky.social · 28/06/2026
There will be no Disgrace of Kansas City. Both teams going for it.
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Matt Waite @mattwaite.bsky.social · 28/06/2026
1-1 at half. My watch went apeshit with noise warnings after Algeria scored the equalizer.
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Matt Waite @mattwaite.bsky.social · 28/06/2026
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.
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Matt Waite @mattwaite.bsky.social · 22/06/2026
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.
A screenshot from intheweights.com showing Matt Waite, a professor of journalism, pitched for the Tampa Bay Rays, an obvious hallucination.
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Matt Waite @mattwaite.bsky.social · 08/06/2026
1. Welcome home. 2. The moral is clearly don't drive through Iowa.
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Matt Waite @mattwaite.bsky.social · 27/05/2026
@ryanpitts.bsky.social I think it may be time to renew our debate in light of this.
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Matt Waite @mattwaite.bsky.social · 24/05/2026
Never doubted it for a second. #coys
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Matt Waite @mattwaite.bsky.social · 23/05/2026
Why do I treat course evaluation reveal day like Christmas morning? Because where else do you get gems like this?
A screenshot of a course evaluation that says "i fucking hate r studio"
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Matt Waite @mattwaite.bsky.social · 08/05/2026
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.
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Matt Waite @mattwaite.bsky.social · 07/05/2026
Instructure wide. Not sure if they are a US only company or not but it’s very widespread.
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Matt Waite @mattwaite.bsky.social · 07/05/2026
Sure, Instructure. Sure. Scheduled. Maintenance. Sure.
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