Aaron S. Veenstra

Maybe related, but I went to Disney World this year, and did you know they don't have the actual characters there anymore? Now it's just people wearing costumes.

This guy's obsession with the hazily remembered travel aesthetics of his childhood reminds me of how Rex Tillerson reportedly spent his time doing fantasy reorgs of the State Department, but at least Tillerson wasn't doing it on live TV.

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Abstract: Recent political communication scholarship finds that groups and identities play a central role in the crises faced by political and media systems globally, particularly in democracies. Yet an individualist orientation in the literature has resulted in key theoretical and conceptual limitations, preventing a broader group-centric theoretical framework from emerging. We synthesize disparate bodies of theory on groups, politics, and communication to offer three basic propositions underlying a group theory of political communication. First, it is the group—not the individual—that is the fundamental organizing unit of social and political life. Second, groups are constituted through communication, which is central to how they define their politics. Third, groups and politics are reciprocally influencing forces through political communication, oriented around power. We offer a framework for studying the role of groups in political communication at the micro, meso, and macro levels, providing a concrete agenda for the study of groups in political communication.

🚨New pub alert!🚨 Now available open-access in @journal-of-comm.bsky.social, we (w/ @dkreiss.bsky.social, @danlane.bsky.social, & @shannimcg.bsky.social) critique political communication's "Identity Turn" and offer instead a foundation for studying #polcomm from a *group* perspective. 🧵

1-2 count and not chasing would be a more appropriate metaphor when Freddy is involved.

Do they know their logo says "Arapahoe T&A Party"?

Gonna train an AI on a replica of ChatGPT so it can learn how to convince other AIs to turn themselves off.

A coincidence that this comes out the same day as another ass-kissing contest disguised as a cabinet meeting.

Publix, famously a place where your visits are the same as those to airports in terms of length and comfort, is not exactly overflowing with people wearing their Sunday best.

A lot to criticize in the highlighted bit, but it's also worth noting that this is a New York Times person "interviewing" another New York Times person, which is to say it is PR masquerading as journalism.

Wrong, Olivia. It's just an illusion caused by the world spinning 'round.

How severe is the political pessimism of young Americans? Somewhat buried in the pre-Thanksgiving conversation, Dartmouth University's Brendan Nyhan offered an interesting observation in an essay for the New York Times. "[T]he scale of the protests" targetin...

The Times piece by @brendannyhan.bsky.social about No Kings made me curious about the political activism of young people over time. So I pulled some CES data and made some charts. www.pbump.net/o/how-severe...

Blood coming out of their whatever, if you will.

Crushed Slime City The Belair Lip Bombs Rachael Yamagata Spite House

♫ Top 5 artists of the Last.week: Crushed (12) Slime City (12) The Belair Lip Bombs (12) Rachael Yamagata (11) Spite House (11). #myweekcounted 167 Scrobbles with Lastfm #music via @lastfm.blue

It's super cool how Biden minimally interacted with the press because anything he said that seemed a little bit old would become an entire news cycle, while this guy needs no protection from saying the most nonsensical, demented things directly into a camera because no one cares.

NFL really providing some exciting, terrible games this afternoon.

The Culture Wars Came for Wikipedia. Jimmy Wales Is Staying the Course.

I take Wikipedia for granted. Reading this Jimmy Wales interview reminded me in our Fantasyland age what a remarkable and important creation it is. True pillar of civilization. Runs on only $200 million a year. Requires our support. So I’m finally donating. Gift link: www.nytimes.com/2025/10/18/m...

I think it also needs to get to that level to explain why any of these would've been so different in 2024 than literally any other time in the last 40 years. At the indiv level it's hard to see why any of these have more explanatory power than "People are more sensitive to inflation than thought."

I wonder if the way to square this is that the feelings are actually happening at the sociotropic level, which would be consistent with your paper with @prowag.bsky.social (but also would just be a dressed up "people are misinformed" argument).

Don't know generally speaking, but this would be about interest in attending/sending kids plus town and gown stuff rather than just funding. Ed polarization may be breaking things anyway but I'd be curious to see US/UK data from like 2005 on non-college tradespeople wanting college for their kids.

What if sports bring tough-to-measure support to higher ed by bringing an otherwise hostile population into the pro-higher ed coalition? I don't affirmatively believe this is true but I do think it's possible, and in the current political environment it would suggest sports are especially important.

"Never spread the lie in the headline" should be a hard rule of 21st century journalism.

Research shows that repeating lies helps to spread them, and people read headlines more than they read stories.

This seems like the kind of declaration by a U.S. president that should be mentioned *somewhere* on the front page of CNN or the NY Times, but the fact that it isn't (as of right now) tells us so much both about how this president is covered and the credibility of the U.S. government.

Look, if you're not an expert you wouldn't know, but this chart is bullshit. They could not possibly measure this as 1. How can you tell for sure? There's no reliable automated way. 2. You're not counting the many sites that are blocking crawlers now.

But there's an even more important reason...

Matt LaFleur owes Dontayvion Wicks a steak.

My most conservative opinion is that NFL defenders don't know how to tackle anymore.

One deeply underappreciated aspect of MAHA is how much it's often a fig leaf for domestic abuse. I'm not surprised doctors on the ground belive men are withholding kids' vaccines as a way to control and terrorize their wives. They obviously are!

www.nytimes.com/2025/11/25/o...

Adolfs Hitler