alexmahadevan.com - Profile | ThreadSky | a Reddit-style client for Bluesky

Please enjoy my last ever post at Climate.gov/ENSO Blog. This afternoon I was fired by the Trump Administration 15 days before my 2yr probationary period ended on March 13. I have worked at NOAA since 2010, and I'm so incredibly proud of the work I did. If anyone wants a quote, let me know.

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So basically, despite some wailing and hand wringing from some corners of the internet, disinformation is shaping how people make decisions — against their own best interests. Got it

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These community notes on Donald Trump Jr. were visible until a few hours after Musk complained about Community Notes about Zelenskyy’s approval rating “being gamed.” Why did they vanish?

submitted 2 days ago • 1 comment

Wow, antifa appears to be preparing for a protest in my neighborhood

submitted 2 days ago • 1 comment

Please give some love to @mikestucka.bsky.social @biglocalnews.bsky.social @cephillips.bsky.social @ethanscorey.bsky.social- this is BRILLIANT. Check this out if you want to download gov contract cancellations. Also, does anyone know a good expert in fed contracts? github.com/biglocalnews...

submitted 3 days ago • 0 comments

-writer is one of the v v best -def wanna read music profiles that require intl travel -physical media rules -words have meanings -Conde Nast can’t make zines -Pitchfork Review was made by legit zine ppl + didn’t pose -zines build community foremost -why not lean into being the only outlet w $?

submitted 3 days ago • 2 comments

Often left out of the AI-in-the-news conversations: Environmental impact. Brilliant piece from @juliabbarnett.bsky.social. "The key factor is that (newsroom use of AI) shouldn’t be frivolous; they need to be thoughtful and show real utility."

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Yesterday's episode of "Last Week Tonight with John Oliver" highlighted our 2024 Lie of the Year, which went to Donald Trump and JD Vance’s outrageous claims about Haitian immigrants eating pets. Read the full story here. buff.ly/41D6hbq

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lmao

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Highly recommend “the Smart Guys” Guys episode to get a really accurate glimpse of the type of people who think they’re in charge right now podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/g...

submitted 5 days ago • 0 comments

This country is totally cooked. Done.

submitted 7 days ago • 0 comments

This paper was a lot of work and hides many cool findings, notably in Supplement. In this thread I present a few findings that you may have missed 👇

submitted 7 days ago • 1 comment

This is encouraging work! But I would be hesitant to use discernment skills as a ringing endorsement of crowdsourced fact-checking. In these systems, the public notes must have sources attached and compelling narratives. The crowd must discern, but also research and debunk.

submitted 8 days ago • 1 comment

For @columjournreview.bsky.social, @aisvarya17.bsky.social and I tested Grok-3's ability to identify quotes from news publishers. Out of the 200 quotes we tested, 102 returned hallucinated citations and the original source article was correctly cited only nine times. www.cjr.org/the_media_to...

submitted 8 days ago • 3 comments

In April 2024, a few words like "delve" had a viral moment, when researchers pointed out that GPT-4 used it often, demonstrating that the spread of the word showed AI in science papers. Did that result in a decrease in AI use in scientific writing? No, but people started avoiding the word "delve!"

submitted 10 days ago • 3 comments

We are dangerously close to a The Rock-style situation developing

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Journalists second career mentioned in Reddit thread about professions that will be wiped out in the next 5-10 years

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What is the future of AI in news? Looking forward to exploring that w/ @hackshackers.com at their AI x Journalism Summit in May. I'll be speaking about some of my research, but excited to learn from all these other smart people. Early bird tickets available: www.hackshackers.com/join-us-for-...

submitted 14 days ago • 0 comments

As mentioned in the piece, you’ll notice very, very few Community Notes on any of the disinformation Musk is spreading. Crowdsourced fact-checking doesn’t work when one side doesn’t believe the facts.

submitted 13 days ago • 0 comments

I love and am in love with @politifact.bsky.social

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👑👑👑

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‘Cloning journalists’ voices with AI is probably fine for all involved if certain things are adhered to.’ For Nikkei and RISJ, I wrote my way through the question if it’s a good idea to create AI versions of real journalists’ voices. https://buff.ly/4aTFcTS

submitted 18 days ago • 1 comment

"If anyone with a smartphone can publish, they should also be able to verify" How to protect democracies from falsehoods? By empowering everyone with open-source investigation skills, argue @eliothiggins.bsky.social & @drnataliemartin.bsky.social reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/news/how-pro...

submitted 21 days ago • 1 comment

A new ethical AI tool to help journalists. A new business model to support local journalism. These are moments of innovation in journalism. Are you innovating in your newsroom? 👀🏆

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!!!

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Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz addresses the tension between influencers and journalists at the Minnesota Newspaper Association Convention: "You're not a journalist because you're on TikTok. You are not a journalist because you send a tweet." Comes on the heels of the "podcast election."

submitted 28 days ago • 0 comments

This is pretty bad. Grok is taking all the unbridled but generally recognizable conspiracy theory tweets on X and blending them into an attractive smoothie.

submitted 29 days ago • 6 comments

When I see title case headlines or titles I KNOW you used AI for it dude

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“Killing the demons in a video game calms the demons in my mind.”

submitted 31 days ago • 0 comments

Very glad I spent two very nice recent vacations getting angry thanks to @kateconger.com and @rmac.bsky.social’s terrific book on Musk’s Twitter takeover. “The goons” and the fork in the road ultimatum have already appeared at OPM. It doesn’t get better!!

submitted 31 days ago • 1 comment

Regular reminder to journalists to ALWAYS CHECK THE METADATA

submitted 32 days ago • 0 comments

leaving the cruelty aside for just a minute it's absolutely humiliating to imagine being my age or older and getting excited because you think you've been given permission to say a bad word. what are you gonna do next, ride your tricycle past the end of the block

submitted 32 days ago • 126 comments

Holy moly. I'm trying to write an academic paper, and nearly every application I'm using is not only offering Generative AI as an option for writing, but pushing it -- pervading the design to the point where a simple misclick would make my content AI-generated. Here's why that's a problem. 🧵

submitted 32 days ago • 31 comments

as a guy who actually likes going into the office, working at a company with a good wfh policy rocks. it's monday and there's no one here, i have the whole place to myself. i'm using like ten monitors and five desks. i ate lunch at 11 am. created something i call "mega chair"

submitted 32 days ago • 78 comments

It’s been a week since President Donald Trump took office and began issuing a flurry of executive orders aimed at keeping 2024 campaign promises. How much progress has he made so far? Here’s our mega-list. 🧵

submitted 32 days ago • 2 comments

Yo! Talk to me about @poynterinstitute.bsky.social’s MediaWise if you’re thinking about a youth project. Our Teen Fact-Checking Network has reached millions of teenagers in six countries. www.poynter.org/mediawise/pr...

submitted 37 days ago • 0 comments

For those of you who are new to Bluesky: We've created this starter pack with people from the Reuters Institute, and journalists and researchers we follow and admire Check them out below go.bsky.app/6r1SGfR

submitted 38 days ago • 5 comments

Health misinformation influencers are going to be the big winners on Facebook Without Fact-Checking

submitted 38 days ago • 0 comments

If you Google "inauguration day," you're greeted with an animation of fireworks forming the shape of the American flag. Google has never done something like this for the inauguration, sources told me, out of fear of appearing partisan. But that's changed now, with Sergey and Sundar attending.

submitted 39 days ago • 770 comments

My colleagues at @politifact.bsky.social will be liveblogging the inauguration. Instead of Googling every claim, just watch this space for fact-checks and fact-based commentary: www.politifact.com/article/2025...

submitted 39 days ago • 0 comments

Better link. I am going to be doing some of these maybe every other day as I refine the model. mikecaulfield.substack.com/p/argument-a...

submitted 40 days ago • 0 comments

Big challenge in journalism: when & how to disclose the use of AI. BBC updated its guidelines. Disclose "where there’s any risk that our audiences might feel misled" + in news "disclose ‘behind the scenes’ use of AI where it has a significant impact on our content" www.bbc.com/mediacentre/...

submitted 41 days ago • 1 comment

I wrote about what happened when India, Nepal and other countries banned TikTok, and what that could portend for the US. www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2...

submitted 41 days ago • 3 comments