Josh Pasek
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joshpasek.com
Josh Pasek
@joshpasek.com

Prof of Comm & Media and Polisci @UMich studying how people get & use political information and social measurement.
Competencies: data sci, DIY solar, election analytics, carpooling, #polcom, #polpsych, survey methods, AI literacy (views are my own) .. more

Political science 40%
Communication & Media Studies 23%
When we say "explicitly neo-Nazi" we mean channels that fly swastikas and praise Hitler. That's the zone of internet where DHS is apparently finding inspiration for their X posts. It's ultra unlikely they would have ever encountered that song if they weren't in that space, imo.
Our researchers found at least 450 posts on Telegram dating back to 2020 that shared the song mentioned in this reporting.

Nearly all the posts we found were from explicitly neo-Nazi and white supremacist channels. And a review of our datasets found it hasn't circulated much outside those circles.
This is not the language of the government of a free country.

Reposted by Josh Pasek

Covid-19 and cancers connected to September 11 account for 75 percent of the deaths in ICE’s history.

No ICE agent has ever been killed by an immigrant.

www.motherjones.com/politics/202...
How dangerous is it really to work for ICE?
According to ICE’s own data, none of its officers have been killed by an immigrant in the agency’s history.
www.motherjones.com

Because someone has to post a single positive news story for the day - and those of you from Michigan can help support the project by filling out the survey - www.mlive.com/life/2026/01...
Passenger train from Ann Arbor to Traverse City is on track. Michigander input will get it rolling.
The North+South Rail project launched an online survey examining travel patterns, proposed routes, ridership demand and costs.
www.mlive.com
“Now once they were at the Capitol and the attack…happened, he refused to stop it. He instead issued a tweet that without question in my mind endangered the life of his own Vice President.” (p. 33)

www.justice.gov

I’m legitimately confused about how the US can charge a representative of a foreign government with having a machine gun in their own country, “out of the jurisdiction of any particular State or district of the United States”

Reposted by Josh Pasek

Political scientists today

Hot take:

Ben Shapiro is actually on Coates’ side of a key point in the Coates-Klein divide — that there has to be a clear line where you won’t platform folks whatever happens to the overton window.
The biggest danger to American Jews over the last couple of decades have been right-wing Jews who somehow thought that aligning themselves with “pro-Israel” Christofascists wasn’t going to bring them to precisely this moment. www.jta.org/2025/12/23/p...
Ben Shapiro is mounting a last stand against right-wing antisemitism. It’s not going well. - Jewish Telegraphic Agency
Megyn Kelly said Shapiro, not Tucker Carlson, is inflaming antisemitism.
www.jta.org

Reposted by Josh Pasek

This message should never come from the government. This message is both un-American and unconstitutional. The Department of Homeland Security should be sued. Immediately.

Reposted by Josh Pasek

The biggest danger to American Jews over the last couple of decades have been right-wing Jews who somehow thought that aligning themselves with “pro-Israel” Christofascists wasn’t going to bring them to precisely this moment. www.jta.org/2025/12/23/p...
Ben Shapiro is mounting a last stand against right-wing antisemitism. It’s not going well. - Jewish Telegraphic Agency
Megyn Kelly said Shapiro, not Tucker Carlson, is inflaming antisemitism.
www.jta.org

Part of the big problem here is that the organization of knowledge is actually knowledge in and of of itself - and it’s some of the very knowledge that systems like AI and search use. So this whole process has a potential to feed model collapse.
Hot take: kids not knowing what a file system is AND kids misusing LLMs as a search engine are two sides of the same technology incompetence problem this thread is criticizing.

Amazing results - but feels like the “is it a coup or an autogolpe?” discussion when we’re calling it “politicized bureaucracy” instead of straight up corruption.

I understand, saving it as a question for the discussion section, but it’s really sad that the word “corruption” does not appear at all.
DOGE was A LOT less likely to cancel contracts from companies that donated money to Republicans than companies that donated to Democrats.

Reposted by Josh Pasek

Hot take: kids not knowing what a file system is AND kids misusing LLMs as a search engine are two sides of the same technology incompetence problem this thread is criticizing.
DOGE was A LOT less likely to cancel contracts from companies that donated money to Republicans than companies that donated to Democrats.

Reposted by Anna O. Law

Can vouch for this and for the researchers cited here.

But an important caveat …

Protests aren’t magic and there needs to be a strategy behind them.

Also, effecting change through a protest movement is a marathon, not a sprint.
How effective is protesting? According to historians and political scientists: very | Protest | The Guardian www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...
How effective is protesting? According to historians and political scientists: very
From emancipation to women’s suffrage, civil rights and BLM, mass movement has shaped the arc of US history
www.theguardian.com

If they want to show the Department of Homeland Security doing its job, a sleigh that enters the country, bypasses American airports, and includes an infinitely deep bag of gifts would seem like a killer enforcement target.
Here’s the U.S. government being officially religious in a country with no official religion.

In my search for an intellectually honest winter holiday, I learned a ton about Saturnalia, which—while always chaotic—only gained the traditions of cross-dressing and having a Lord of Misrule to mock the Emperor after the Republic ended. That was the tradition that fed this kind of stuff.
This was also interesting, given contemporary discourse:

"In a Yuletide twist on trick-or-treating, men dressed as women, and vice versa, and went door-to-door demanding food or money in return for carols or Christmas wishes."

Reposted by Josh Pasek

This was also interesting, given contemporary discourse:

"In a Yuletide twist on trick-or-treating, men dressed as women, and vice versa, and went door-to-door demanding food or money in return for carols or Christmas wishes."

Thanks for this awesome rabbit hole! For others who want to learn more, this was a pretty good summary: www.history.com/articles/whe...
When Massachusetts Banned Christmas
They banned the celebration of Christmas for a generation.
www.history.com

I’ve felt for some time that we need an American equivalent of the reform act of 1832 - the big question is we work through this tumult is about what institutional changes need to be in it and which ones are nice, but unnecessary.

www.ebsco.com/research-sta...

They “targeted Harvard because it saw it as an incubator of liberalism that violated the civil rights of white and Jewish people”

Yet liberalism is quite literally the only force that has historically kept the United States safe for Jews.

www.nytimes.com/2025/12/24/u...
In Private Letters, Harvard and Trump Administration Escalate Duel
www.nytimes.com
A small (personal) example of this book’s intellectual dishonesty:

My father-in-law is reading In Covid’s Wake, and excitedly told me he found a passage where I’m quoted. The quote in question is me saying the FBI worked to censor speech on social media.

Huh? When did I say that?!

Reposted by Josh Pasek

“The cost to Jews of the changes is steep.
When you don’t work on with other groups, then you’re not going to have those other groups come into your defense.“

Back in 2023 I said @rweingarten.bsky.social and Dem leaders should push Greenblatt aside. In the event, he left—after doing great damage.
Top ADL civil rights lay leader quits, accusing group of being 'useful idiot' for Trump - Jewish Telegraphic Agency
Joe Berman resigned in March and is making his resignation letter public for the first time now.
www.jta.org
This is the real cancel culture.

Using the full force of the government to punish perceived enemies, aid their billionaire tech cronies, and protect pedophiles, neo-Nazis, and other extremist, antisemitic hate groups.

THIS is the threat to our rights and freedoms.

www.nytimes.com/2025/12/23/t...
U.S. Bars 5 European Tech Regulators and Researchers
www.nytimes.com

Reposted by David Darmofal

This approach to retractions is about the strongest possible fuel for those who already believe that there has been a conspiracy.
🚨 The DOJ appears to have redacted Donald Trump’s name from the allegations made in this exhibit in the Epstein files.

Trump’s name was in the original release. Now, it’s blacked out.

See for yourself.

I always use “survivorship bias” as the example and label - it’s much more intuitive and most of the other examples could just be shoved under more general “confounding”
🚨 The DOJ appears to have redacted Donald Trump’s name from the allegations made in this exhibit in the Epstein files.

Trump’s name was in the original release. Now, it’s blacked out.

See for yourself.