Damon Kiesow
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damon.kiesow.net
Damon Kiesow
@damon.kiesow.net
5.1K followers 3.5K following 4.8K posts
Knight Chair in Journalism at Mizzou. Authored first textbook for News Product Management. Previously: Director of Product at McClatchy. Big @newsproduct.org fan.
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damon.kiesow.net
So now we need travel papers to get gas?
Chicago Tribune U.S. Border Patrol agents smash a man's car window before dragging him out and taking him into custody when he failed to present citizenship documentation at a gas station on Jan. 11, 2026 in St. Paul. The Trump administration has sent an estimated 2,000 federal agents into the area as they make a push to arrest undocumented immigrants. (Scott Olson/Getty Images)
January 14, 2026 at 1:18 AM
damon.kiesow.net
This is factually incoherent nonsense.

1) Fraud was at best the fig leaf
2) The accused were all legal residents or citizens
3) ICE does not investigate general fraud.
The fraud cases - which involve schemes to defraud safety net programs managed by state agencies - were the chief reason the Trump administration launched an immigration crackdown in the state. The vast majority of defendants charged in the cases are of Somali origin.
January 13, 2026 at 6:11 PM
damon.kiesow.net
Mark Twain on tariffs (chapter 26 of A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, 1889)
In my day, in my own country, this money was collected from imposts, and the citizen imagined that the foreign importer paid it, and it made him comfortable to think so; whereas, in fact, it was paid by the American people, and was so equally and exactly distributed among them that the annual cost to the 100-millionaire and the annual cost to the sucking child of the day-laborer was precisely the same—each paid $6. Nothing could be equaler than that, I reckon.
January 10, 2026 at 3:24 AM
damon.kiesow.net
Reposting because I took a Waymo to the airport to see how it handled that mess. Not bad.
A line of stuck Waymos with the meme title: There are more things in heaven and earth oration than are dreamt of in your training model.
January 8, 2026 at 7:38 PM
damon.kiesow.net
Life is unpredictable.
Picture of Waymos in a traffic jam with the meme text: There are more things in heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your training model.”
January 7, 2026 at 5:11 AM
damon.kiesow.net
The NYT ought to ask itself why just by random luck it so frequently ends up whitewashing the activities of people who dabble in eugenics and don't mind drinking in Nazi bars. (Not linking to the story - it is a dating service.)
The application, which can take hours to complete, asks users for their height, ancestral background, SAT score and their feelings about entrepreneurs. They can chose from an exhaustive list of political affiliations (conservative or progressive, Zionist or anti-Zionist, neoliberal or neo-Nazi) and select their partner’s “ideal” ethnicity. The system can assess their cheekbone prominence, jaw strength or body-fat percentage from a scanned photo, and analyze their application to estimate an IQ score.
January 6, 2026 at 5:49 PM
damon.kiesow.net
So you are saying we have a plan.
Trump says US will ‘run’ Venezuela.
January 3, 2026 at 5:48 PM
damon.kiesow.net
I mean:
Google’s top autocomplete for “us supported” is “us supported coups”
January 3, 2026 at 1:52 PM
damon.kiesow.net
"Just checking the till here, Tony, and it seems you're short a few million"

www.cbsnews.com/news/tony-do...?
Sometimes they want to talk to me about our coverage of NAFTA or the Iraq War. Other times, it's about Hillary Clinton's emails or Russiagate. Or more recently, COVID lockdowns, Hunter Biden's laptop or the president's fitness for office.
January 2, 2026 at 3:46 PM
damon.kiesow.net
I usually work in Keynote (which is entirely unscriptable) so had to redesign the theme in PPT which is nicely XML-friendly. Just map from a CSS-generated template to some fairly simple PPT layouts and:
A series of lecture slides in lightbox view with a variety of different layouts and colors.
December 30, 2025 at 3:19 AM
damon.kiesow.net
A bit of a weekend project: A CMS for lecture slides. SQLLite to python-pptx and a few other bits to export to Slides, PDF or HTML. Includes injected variables for asignment due dates, linked slides that stay in sync, selection of templates and color schemes.
A simple editing interface for PPT slides - with a navigator/selector on the left, slide editing on the right with keywords, template selection, bullet points
December 30, 2025 at 3:09 AM
damon.kiesow.net
Sad but common. Gannett drained the Rolla Daily News of resources, sold it to more local owners who merged it into a competitor. Now the original domain is - AI, spam, pink slime? Not sure? But not Rolla, Missouri.
The Rolla Daily News when owned by Gannett. The Rolla Daily News after someone bought the domain and built a site apparently on random content such as " 6 Proven Steps to Successfully Meet Ukrainian Women for Marriage Online There's something magnetic about the idea of finding love across borders. Ukrainian women have captured international attention not just for ..."
December 23, 2025 at 2:22 AM
damon.kiesow.net
Broken website; Unintentional art.
Blank website except for: Intentionally Blank. Contact Matt with Questions.
December 22, 2025 at 12:47 PM
damon.kiesow.net
The new owners at CBS are not huge fans of news.
Editor's note explaining why coverage of the CECOT prison was pulled from 60 Minutes tonight.
December 22, 2025 at 3:17 AM
damon.kiesow.net
Beautiful day for graduation.
Faculty march toward Jesse Hall with a partially blue sky above the dome.
December 20, 2025 at 5:01 PM
damon.kiesow.net
Apparently AI c-suites are filled with delusional grifters.

www.404media.co/anthropic-ex...
We have published research showing that the models have started growing neuron clusters that are highly similar to humans and that they experience something like anxiety and fear. The moral status might be something like the moral status of, say, a goldfish, but they do indeed have latent wants and desires,” Clinton said.
December 16, 2025 at 3:23 PM
damon.kiesow.net
Reflections on technological inevitability:

www.bbc.com/audio/play/m...

And: theconvivialsociety.substack.com/p/manufactur...
And then there was Margaret Heffernan's superb reflections on the theme. The goal of those who deploy the rhetoric of technological inevitability, she rightly insists, "isn't participation, but submission." "Anyone claiming to know the future," she adds, "is just trying to own it."
December 16, 2025 at 1:54 PM
damon.kiesow.net
News publishers signing away the future. Google: we will pay to for a commercial relationship with you whereby we provide "attribution" and "links" in AI-driven products that will among other things, "create audio briefings for those who prefer listening"

pressgazette.co.uk/platforms/go...
“As part of this new AI pilot program, we’re working with publishers to experiment with new features in Google News. For example, we’re testing AI-powered article overviews on participating publications’ Google News pages to give people more context before they click through. And we’re experimenting with audio briefings for those who prefer listening. These features will include clear attribution and link to articles.
December 16, 2025 at 1:20 AM
damon.kiesow.net
A bit of a theme emerging for my holiday reading list.
BEYOND MEASURE The Hidden History of Measurement from Cubits to Quantum Immediacy or, The Style of Too Late Capitalism WHY AI UNDERMINES DEMOCRACY STAMPEDE THEORY NIHILISM AND TECHNOLOGY THE DIVISION OF RATIONALIZED LABOR
December 13, 2025 at 11:45 PM
damon.kiesow.net
I call this one, “No visible means of support.”
The Time Magazine people of the year cover with a bunch of CEOs running AI projects perched on a girder over a city. Definitely AI-created.
December 12, 2025 at 12:02 AM
damon.kiesow.net
It is just adorably malicious for a company to argue that watermarking it logo onto AI video is sufficient to warn social media users it is fake.

www.nytimes.com/2025/12/08/t...
The companies behind the A.I. tools say they are trying to make clear to users what content is generated by computers. Sora and the rival tool offered by Google, called Veo, both embed a visible watermark onto the videos they produce. Sora, for example, puts a “Sora” label on each video. Both companies also include invisible metadata, which can be read by a computer, that establishes the origin of each fake.
December 10, 2025 at 3:44 PM
damon.kiesow.net
In a mature product, features like this are innovations that add value and loyalty.
iOS 26 AirPods: Pause Media on Sleep AirPods can now detect when you fall asleep and automatically Pause media.
December 10, 2025 at 3:18 PM
damon.kiesow.net
I missed this at the time, but what a disaster of syndicated content mash-up. On several levels.
Headline: Can Missouri sex offenders take part in Halloween? What the law says about trick-or-treat Video: Halloween ideas when trick-or-treating isn't an option Story: With Halloween soon approaching, Missouri's attorney general's office is reminding residents about the state's strict safety measures regarding registered sex offenders.
December 9, 2025 at 1:45 PM
damon.kiesow.net
2012: We want to beat HBO to a prestige digtial audience.

2025: We want to pick the bloodied corpse off the floor.

web.archive.org/web/20130205...
Sarandos is also warming up Jodie Foster, who directed an episode of Orange Is the New Black. "The goal," he says, "is to become HBO faster than HBO can become us." His seductive pitch to today's new breed of TV auteurs: a huge audience, real money, no meddlesome executives ("I'm not going to give David Fincher notes"), no pilots (television's great sucking hole of money and hope), and a full-season commitment. Read More http://www.gq.com/entertainment/movies-and-tv/201302/netflix-founder-reed-hastings-house-of-cards-arrested-development#ixzz2JzQYirsT
December 5, 2025 at 8:37 PM
damon.kiesow.net
You would be correct if you guessed the school is protecting equity by canceling two publications serving female students and black students. Because Orwell. thecrimsonwhite.com/125358/news/...
In a statement Tuesday, a University spokesperson said the University is required to "ensure all members of our community feel welcome to participate in programs that receive University funding from the Office of Student Media."
December 3, 2025 at 3:46 AM