Reliable, Trustworthy Reporting, Capturing The Heartbeat Of Our Community
Reliable, Trustworthy Reporting, Capturing The Heartbeat Of Our Community
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When Jillian Henn first picked up a bundle of cord and began learning macramé, she was simply looking for a creative outlet. Today, the stay-at-home mother has turned that hobby into a growing side hustle. After purchasing $20 macramé plant hangers from Walmart, Henn examined them more closely and decided she could make them herself. Henn started learning macramé in March 2025 and launched a Facebook page to sell her creations just a few months later. Henn said, "You know what? I am going to do...
A good buddy has a favorite saying: “We’re all smart. We have smartphones.” It’s funny, and I’ve used it several times. After all, smartphones have, in a lot of ways, made our lives easier and smarter. Got an unfamiliar address to find? Use the smartphone to give you directions. Hungry for a burrito? Use a smartphone to find the nearest restaurant. Engaged in a heated argument over who hit the most home runs, Willie Stargell or Harmon Killebrew? Google it on your smartphone. They have basically...
I'm going to keep it short this week. I'm still trying to recover from the weekend in Lincoln for the press convention. What a great experience! I always come home with so many practical ideas. I cannot wait to implement a few of the ideas. One of my favorite sessions was led by Tom Hallman Jr., a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who writes for The Oregonian. His approach to storytelling is similar to mine. He offered some tips about digging deeper into the psyche of a story. That point...
The text popped up on my phone on a Saturday morning. The message warned about unresolved traffic violations in my name and threatened a barrage of legal penalties and fines if I didn't reply within a specified time frame. Luckily, I didn't click on the link provided in the text. Unfortunately, it is likely that more than 1,000 individuals will click and make a payment. Scams like these generally originate from outside Nebraska, utilizing spoofed numbers, making it difficult to track down those...
Scroll through social media - any platforms - and you’ll see artificial intelligence-generated photos and videos. While elements of AI products may make it difficult to differentiate between what’s real and what’s not, the rapid rollout of deepfakes makes the line between fact from fiction a blurry mess. Case in point: A person from my hometown posted multiple pieces of AI-generated media on the book of faces over the weekend. So many, in fact, that I snoozed her for 30 days, all the while...
SILICON PRAIRIE NEWS Stone Pillar International is a software and intelligence company that uses drone-acquired data for actionable decision making. The company's official launch comes as Nebraskans face the threat of invasive eastern redcedar and the opportunities of new drone rules and advancements. Nebraska is on the front lines of both tech innovation and woody encroachment. As pilots and entrepreneurs look to the skies with new uses of drone technology, researchers and ranchers are looking...
None of us like paying taxes. But even the Bible says we're supposed to ("Give unto Caesar what is Caesar's" is how I remember it). Anyway, I about fell out of my chair the other day when reading a probing article by the Lincoln Journal-Star's Andrew Wegley about the state's lackadaisical collection of taxes. When I pay my taxes, I'm expecting everyone else to do the same. But that's not happening in Nebraska (really it never has) but the number of tax scofflaws is growing. The story detailed... Full story
As the recent stench of war grew stronger, I noticed once again how much we love our machines, be they bunker-busting or surgical, life-saving or high-earning, analog, digital or artificially intelligent. But what happens when our doodads and thingamajigs act human … you know … err? To wit: Last week in this space, the modern marvel autocorrect changed one letter in one word (“defund” to “defend”) in one sentence, in one paragraph of an entire 750-word commentary. The “correction” altered the en...
This week, my family has been buzzing with excitement for our first trip to the College World Series in Omaha. With our new home-state Huskers out, we threw our support behind our previous home state team, the LSU Tigers, hoping they'd be playing in the game for which we had tickets. Early one morning before I had finished my first coffee, my wife, surprised at our luck, told me she saw online that LSU would indeed be in that game. Eager to confirm and view the bracket, I went straight to...
Have I got a story for you. Since I believe in transparency, I want you to take a look of the photo of Ryan Rifer sliding into home plate on Page 3. Go on, I’ll wait. It’s a good photo, and it would be even better if I could remove Coach Kevin from the first-base line, so the slide and defender’s stretch were in full view. I decided I would try a photo-editing tool to remove the coach and make note of it as an editor’s note in the cutline. I open the editing program, use the lasso tool around...
Nebraska is seeing an increase in a type of scam tied to cryptocurrencies and social media called “pig butchering.” This has nothing to do agriculture; it’s a scam initially developed by criminal organizations in China in which scammers develop a relationship with their victims over a long period of time to repeatedly steal money. This form of fraud is also known as a relationship scam, financial grooming, or confidence scam. How Pig Butchering Works Scammers often initiate contact by sending a “wrong number” text, email, or social media mes...
With the rapid rise in internet use among children, the dangers of online exploitation have grown alarmingly. Children’s access to the internet has become nearly ubiquitous, especially following the COVID-19 pandemic. Remote learning, online gaming, and social media are now integral to daily life, meaning more children, even preschool-age children, are regularly online, often unsupervised and unprotected. This new reality demands that we consider not only physical safety for our children, but also the dangers they are facing online. The S...
Artificial Intelligence or A.I. has gone from science fiction to a reality. This technology continues to evolve and find new applications in the world, including the world of medicine. With any new advancement, there are pros and cons to be considered when implementing it into regular use, especially in medicine. In 2023 the Journal of Medical Internet Research published an article where they had ChatGPT take two of the three USMLE exams. Step 1 is taken by third-year medical students and all...
Online learning seems new, but it’s older than you think. The field’s predecessor, distance education, can be traced back centuries. From Sir Isaac Pitman, who taught shorthand by correspondence in 1840, to lectures broadcast on the radio in the early 1920s, all the way through to the early 1990s when colleges and universities took advantage of the newly minted World Wide Web and began to offer online education programs, it has evolved alongside technological advances. In those early days of the internet, online learning was an adjustment for...
Researchers are investigating how artificial intelligence can help improve Nebraska crops. Although AI has become a popular new topic for many, researchers have been discussing, for several years, the ways this technology may help the future of farming. Unlike what most people mean when they talk about using generative Large Language AI models like ChatGPT, Michael Tross, a University of Nebraska-Lincoln complex biosystems graduate student, said researchers are using AI to generate more than...
Technocrats are voicing concern about the safety of artificial intelligence. Should we let them take charge of figuring out how to regulate it? Alarmism in online articles generates sensational news and keeps the marketing machine running. The more hype, the more clicks, the more visits, the more money. Unfortunately, online news surrounding artificial intelligence has not been spared by this trend. Artificial intelligence refers to the ability of machines to perform tasks that would typically...
Last week’s column focused on optimism. I figured it was appropriate as we were ready to open a new chapter for the new year. The column included examples of how optimism leads to improved mental and physical health. It focused on the “glass half full” mindset, which translates to positive thinking. It even included a quote from Dr. Seuss’ “Oh, the Places You’ll Go!” I believe in every single word and idea in that column. But ... I did not write it. I “suggested” it. Last week’s column was an ex...
For more than 30 years, the mission of Kester Herefords, of Clearwater, has been to produce a quality herd According to Cody Kester, the family's foray into the Hereford industry began when his dad, Bill, rented farm ground and had an opportunity to purchase a few cows. "Granddad always had Hereford cattle when dad was growing up," Kester said. "He was looking for something with an easy temperment, especially with five kids running around, so jumping back into Herefords was the right fit." Growi...
