Dan Faltesek
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dfalt.bsky.social
Dan Faltesek
@dfalt.bsky.social
Code: R, Citations: Chicago, NBC 80s sitcom: Night Court. Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Cultural analytics is what I do, also department chair stuff, which I’ve been doing since third year review. I guess that’s me.
Coaching debate this year I have found that as I get older I am more sensitive to poor quality evidence (most if not all neg cards on the current LD topic) and circular defenses of poorly developed critiques.
April 6, 2025 at 10:53 PM
A few sports notes: in both final four games we saw teams win with limited or zero-help schemes. Coaches trusting their players against the other teams stars means limited assists. Florida unlike Duke had a clear identity against the press.
April 6, 2025 at 5:58 PM
Reposted by Dan Faltesek
I was curious to see how academic articles in (Political) Communication and Political Science are being shared on X vs. Bluesky.

I find: In 2024, academic articles in our field seem to be clearly more shared on X. But by 2025, Bluesky is catching up fast.

Short 🧵 1/n
March 27, 2025 at 9:59 AM
Reposted by Dan Faltesek
A 2021 study co-authored by @victorpickard.bsky.social & professor Timothy Neff finds that more robust funding for public media strengthens a given country's democracy—with increased public knowledge about civic affairs, more diverse media coverage, and lower levels of extremist views...
Funding Democracy: Public Media and Democratic Health in 33 Countries - Timothy Neff, Victor Pickard, 2024
This study examines whether and how public media systems contribute to the health of democracies in 33 countries in Europe, Africa, Asia, North America, the Mid...
journals.sagepub.com
March 26, 2025 at 3:17 PM
Reposted by Dan Faltesek
"Everything's computer."
Trump: "What it was, we believe, is somebody that was on the line with permission, somebody that worked with Mike Waltz at a lower level, had Goldberg's number or call through the app, and somehow this guy ended up on the call."
March 26, 2025 at 3:33 PM
Reposted by Dan Faltesek
As I type this, the Senate Judiciary Committee is holding a hearing on the "censorship industrial complex," in which they falsely blame academics who study disinfo of "censorship" at the very moment that the Trump admin is proactively threatening people who dissent from its views. It's fucking crazy
March 25, 2025 at 6:09 PM
Every competitive debate format is premised on a few "problems" which distinguish it policy debate, including: the partner problem, the evidence problem, the topic problem, the monologue problem, the flow problem, and the plan problem, the epistemic problem, and the value problem
March 25, 2025 at 6:36 PM
I have a reasonable computer model that Houston would have lost to 16 Alabama State, they won't lose to SIU-E. Very slow teams that don't get to the line are likely to lose early, regardless of seed.
March 20, 2025 at 4:08 PM
One of the things in the procession of stories is the reason why you can't "permute" a disadvantage in debate, additional new proposals to fix the problems with your old one can get out of hand. Thus, the Lumber DA to the Canadian Trade war is solved by a big new logging initiative
March 13, 2025 at 1:45 PM
Canvas is under such load (midterm 2 time at quarter system schools) that it says to try grading again later.
February 22, 2025 at 7:25 PM
A central problem in academic administration: we design complex activities for middle managers to see for themselves some very reasonable idea and they don't get the idea or come away with actively bad ideas. Lower entropy strategies please.
February 19, 2025 at 4:16 PM
Reposted by Dan Faltesek
It’s about having red hair and freckles FFS and how to be cool with that when other kids make fun of it. By that twisted logic, you’d have to ban pretty much every children’s book, old and new www.cnn.com/2025/02/17/e...
Julianne Moore says her book about embracing differences was removed from Pentagon-run schools | CNN
Oscar winner Julianne Moore claims her children’s book “Freckleface Strawberry” was banned by the Department of Defense’s Education Activity, a global network of 160 schools serving military families.
www.cnn.com
February 17, 2025 at 3:57 PM
Reposted by Dan Faltesek
Beneath a lot of the rot in journalism lies an insidious editorial class more intent on maintaining a vague status quo than creating anything of value. They are destructively incurious and proudly ignorant, terrified of learning new things or having any chance of altering the course of anything.
January 26, 2025 at 12:59 AM
Reposted by Dan Faltesek
"As the U.S. government seeks to enact stricter controls over online speech, TikTok users are adopting more coded 'algospeak' to criticize and resist the government."
The reason “cute winter boots” is taking off isn’t because it’s some secret code (the code has already been revealed and all of MAGA tiktok has made videos on it) it’s bc using product-focused language allows users to circumvent algorithmic downranking. They’re hijacking TikTok’s e-commerce push.
TikTok's 'cute winter boots' trend explained
As the U.S. government seeks to enact stricter controls over online speech, TikTok users are adopting more coded 'algospeak' to criticize and resist the government
www.usermag.co
January 25, 2025 at 6:47 PM
Reposted by Dan Faltesek
The assault on NIH is a test for how the national media covers the Trump admin: Trump is shutting down medical research!

That is easy to communicate. Will they treat it as a 5 alarm fire in a way that forces the government to respond, or will they downplay & caveat it?
January 23, 2025 at 1:16 AM
Reposted by Dan Faltesek
the crazy part is this means the facebook we’ve all been experiencing for the past 5 years was the *good* version
NEW: Meta has quietly dismantled the system that prevented misinformation from spreading in the United States. Machine-learning classifiers that once identified viral hoaxes and limited their reach have now been switched off, Platformer has learned www.platformer.news/meta-ends-mi...
January 15, 2025 at 2:44 AM
Called it on the TikTok ban the day it passed.
January 17, 2025 at 4:52 PM
Does anyone have a working clip tool for liaon5b anymore?
January 15, 2025 at 11:49 PM
Reposted by Dan Faltesek
"Climate misinformation is exploding — and Canadian politicians are spreading it." But is fact-checking the cure-all? thenarwhal.ca/canada-polic...
Politicians should stop lying about the environment | The Narwhal
Climate conspiracies are now part of every Canadian election cycle. How did it happen — and how do we stop it?
thenarwhal.ca
January 7, 2025 at 1:02 AM
Is it a good sign or a bad sign when you need to find your copy of the Ecrits?
January 6, 2025 at 10:12 PM
The degree to which gambling coverage has replaced meaningful sports commentary is wild.
January 5, 2025 at 8:55 PM
The magical time when you can quick swap AI stuff in place of human content will have some windfalls and then the bubble will pop. Some folks are in the golden age right now.
January 2, 2025 at 11:06 PM
Mark it in the log, valentines season started on 12/10
December 11, 2024 at 7:07 PM
Reposted by Dan Faltesek
🚨New WP🚨
We examine news sharing on 7 platforms:
1)Right-leaning platforms=lower quality news
2)Echo-platforms: Right-leaning news gets more engagement on right-leaning platforms, vice-versa for left-leaning
3)But low-quality news gets more engagement EVERYWHERE, even BlueSky!
osf.io/preprints/ps...
December 9, 2024 at 7:48 PM