Zander Furnas
@alexanderfurnas.com
Research Assistant Professor | Politics & Computational Social Science | Northwestern University, Center for Science of Science and Innovation | Dad & Wife Guy | Not Ok | Sorry for the Swears | #goblue
Reposted by Zander Furnas
Research rarely surprises, and that is not a failure. Its value lies in carefully (dis)confirming, qualifying, or bounding what we already think we know.
DOGE was A LOT less likely to cancel contracts from companies that donated money to Republicans than companies that donated to Democrats.
December 26, 2025 at 6:58 PM
Research rarely surprises, and that is not a failure. Its value lies in carefully (dis)confirming, qualifying, or bounding what we already think we know.
Reposted by Zander Furnas
The Wisconsin component of the analysis here is revealing. Evidence is consistent with DOGE strategically delaying contract terminations in WI until after the 2025 state Supreme Court elections to mitigate electoral risk.
December 26, 2025 at 1:25 PM
The Wisconsin component of the analysis here is revealing. Evidence is consistent with DOGE strategically delaying contract terminations in WI until after the 2025 state Supreme Court elections to mitigate electoral risk.
tense problem here
NYT provides no evidence here, probably because the claim is flatly untrue. See eg recent Pew data, or many posts on the subject from @gelliottmorris.com this year
www.nytimes.com/2025/12/23/u...
www.nytimes.com/2025/12/23/u...
December 26, 2025 at 4:45 AM
tense problem here
he’s working with the clockwork elves
everything alex jones was warning us about for years has come true but alas he's somehow now in on it
December 26, 2025 at 4:43 AM
he’s working with the clockwork elves
Reposted by Zander Furnas
I’m from Whoville, and I say kill the Grinch!
December 25, 2025 at 10:29 PM
I’m from Whoville, and I say kill the Grinch!
Reposted by Zander Furnas
A government that can officially declare that Jesus is your savior can just as easily declare the opposite.
Here’s the U.S. government being officially religious in a country with no official religion.
December 25, 2025 at 7:09 PM
A government that can officially declare that Jesus is your savior can just as easily declare the opposite.
Reposted by Zander Furnas
If this was your friend you'd be trying to talk them down from their obviously manic mental health episode.
President Donald Trump gifted the world with nearly 200 Truth Social posts (and counting) on Christmas Day, where he amplified conspiracy theories about the 2020 election and called for a member of Congress to be deported.
Trump Posts Nearly 200 Times in Unhinged Christmas Day Spree
The president amplified conspiracy theories about the 2020 election and called for a member of Congress to be deported.
trib.al
December 26, 2025 at 3:47 AM
If this was your friend you'd be trying to talk them down from their obviously manic mental health episode.
Reposted by Zander Furnas
the nicest thing you can do on social media is reply to someone’s joke saying “good post”
December 26, 2025 at 1:08 AM
the nicest thing you can do on social media is reply to someone’s joke saying “good post”
Reposted by Zander Furnas
My adorable five year old niece calls it "Cake Pop Demon Hunters."
December 26, 2025 at 2:11 AM
My adorable five year old niece calls it "Cake Pop Demon Hunters."
Nationalize em
It recently occurred to me that the "everything as a service" business model has, in conjunction with many of those services becoming essential to modern life & the long-running failure of antitrust policy, transmuted those payments into effectively taxes.
Even if you don't want to pay, you have to
Even if you don't want to pay, you have to
[somberly] You cannot serve both god and money [upbeat music hits] Until now. Introducing god as a service
December 26, 2025 at 2:08 AM
Nationalize em
Reposted by Zander Furnas
“On the External Validity of Turtles”
December 26, 2025 at 1:24 AM
“On the External Validity of Turtles”
the nicest thing you can do on social media is reply to someone’s joke saying “good post”
December 26, 2025 at 1:08 AM
the nicest thing you can do on social media is reply to someone’s joke saying “good post”
Reposted by Zander Furnas
It really is about the notes you don’t play
Kennedy Center Christmas Eve jazz concert canceled after Trump's name added reut.rs/3NfgBky
Kennedy Center Christmas Eve jazz concert canceled after Trump's name added
A planned Christmas Eve jazz concert at the Kennedy Center was canceled, with the host of the longtime annual performance attributing the decision to the addition of Republican U.S. President Donald Trump's name to the institution in Washington.
reut.rs
December 25, 2025 at 1:30 PM
It really is about the notes you don’t play
@dieworkwear.bsky.social can you comment on sleeveless suiting
Indiana State Senator wishes you a Merry Christmas by… posting images of himself assaulting Santa Claus.
Are the fascists okay?
Are the fascists okay?
December 26, 2025 at 1:03 AM
@dieworkwear.bsky.social can you comment on sleeveless suiting
Reposted by Zander Furnas
Hillary’s “basket of deplorables” speech *defended* conservatives.
Paraphrasing: “Some call all Republicans racist, homophobic, and otherwise bigoted, but that’s unfair to millions. It’s only half, the rest are good people.”
But the press made calling an openly bigoted campaign bigoted a scandal.
Paraphrasing: “Some call all Republicans racist, homophobic, and otherwise bigoted, but that’s unfair to millions. It’s only half, the rest are good people.”
But the press made calling an openly bigoted campaign bigoted a scandal.
Kind of wild how the take that some of Trump's supporters were "deplorable" was some huge scandal, but regularly screaming about "radical left scum" is just a thing he'll say with no media backlash.
December 25, 2025 at 10:12 PM
Hillary’s “basket of deplorables” speech *defended* conservatives.
Paraphrasing: “Some call all Republicans racist, homophobic, and otherwise bigoted, but that’s unfair to millions. It’s only half, the rest are good people.”
But the press made calling an openly bigoted campaign bigoted a scandal.
Paraphrasing: “Some call all Republicans racist, homophobic, and otherwise bigoted, but that’s unfair to millions. It’s only half, the rest are good people.”
But the press made calling an openly bigoted campaign bigoted a scandal.
Which one is krampus
Every Christmas villain is a caricature of Trump and/or people in his world. Sigh.
December 26, 2025 at 12:54 AM
Which one is krampus
Made my moms meat sauce. Wish I could tell her how well it turned out.
December 25, 2025 at 11:32 PM
Made my moms meat sauce. Wish I could tell her how well it turned out.
Reposted by Zander Furnas
Call me a nerd, but yesterday, a federal judge in Pennsylvania cited my reporting in a ruling against the DOJ in a case challenging Trump-era actions targeting transgender people.
A reminder that this work really does matter.
A reminder that this work really does matter.
December 25, 2025 at 8:19 PM
Call me a nerd, but yesterday, a federal judge in Pennsylvania cited my reporting in a ruling against the DOJ in a case challenging Trump-era actions targeting transgender people.
A reminder that this work really does matter.
A reminder that this work really does matter.
Reposted by Zander Furnas
“Who’s gonna stop you for that” is Trump’s key political insight
Newly discovered recordings show how far Donald Trump went to attempt overturning the 2020 presidential election results in Georgia.
Trump told the Speaker he could call the session “for transparency, and to uncover fraud,” adding, “Who’s gonna stop you for that?” trib.al/Yk7Lyb5
Trump told the Speaker he could call the session “for transparency, and to uncover fraud,” adding, “Who’s gonna stop you for that?” trib.al/Yk7Lyb5
December 25, 2025 at 8:51 PM
“Who’s gonna stop you for that” is Trump’s key political insight
Reposted by Zander Furnas
Clear evidence that employers rate workers with foreign-sounding accents as having lower verbal and math skills.
This gap persists even when employers are provided with explicit performance signals.
This gap persists even when employers are provided with explicit performance signals.
December 25, 2025 at 9:02 PM
Clear evidence that employers rate workers with foreign-sounding accents as having lower verbal and math skills.
This gap persists even when employers are provided with explicit performance signals.
This gap persists even when employers are provided with explicit performance signals.
my 3.5 year old invented saucisson sec topped with duck rillettes last night and i could not be more proud
December 25, 2025 at 8:23 PM
my 3.5 year old invented saucisson sec topped with duck rillettes last night and i could not be more proud
Wow this is wiiild
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?!
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?!
December 24, 2025 at 9:42 PM
Wow this is wiiild
Reposted by Zander Furnas
This essay from @bschmidt.bsky.social on how history rejected computational methods, & so "quantitative history" ended up in the social sciences, & "digital humanities" in literature, with no historians doing computational work, is fascinating, & worth a read: dhdebates.gc.cuny.edu/read/computa...
![The first is a working paper by three economists—Elliott Ash, Daniel Chen, and Suresh Naidu—from 2017. While the authors are economists, the actual contribution—summed up in a title that few historians would think debatable, “Ideas Have Consequences”—is about legal or intellectual history. It presents a powerful and discrete account of the transmission of ideas across social networks through textual analysis. The substance argues that privately funded Manne seminars in law and economics—which were attended by a substantial proportion of the federal judiciary—affected the language, decisions, and sentencing of federal justices who attended them and thus, by implication, allowed large-value conservative donors to capture the federal judiciary. The effect seems robust to a variety of covariates [...]
Reading this paper was exciting, but looking through the tools and tricks and sources also made me feel like someone in a science fiction movie encountering an artifact sent back from a few decades in the future. The extraordinary quality of data that economists can obtain is almost unimaginable to humanists. It is not just a million or so circuit court votes and 300,000 opinions but also the institutional capacity to file Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests to get the exact years of attendance for every judge who went to the Manne program and the disciplinary capacity to casually use relatively new methods like word embeddings without spending pages slowly, gently analogizing them to some “simpler” concept. Humanists wandering through algorithms seem to have to justify using an algorithm by first identifying which Borges short story—whether about the Map of the Empire, the analytical language of John Wilkins, or Pierre Menard and the Quijote—it most closely resembles.](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:643p6z4ydk2xnwv77maa6eec/bafkreidctt57eseamimgzctkjtu2ly2vmsugcjwcrargerohe5bljg7jie@jpeg)
November 4, 2025 at 3:34 AM
This essay from @bschmidt.bsky.social on how history rejected computational methods, & so "quantitative history" ended up in the social sciences, & "digital humanities" in literature, with no historians doing computational work, is fascinating, & worth a read: dhdebates.gc.cuny.edu/read/computa...
Reposted by Zander Furnas
it requires an absolutely staggering lack of self awareness for chatterton to complain that he has lost elite opportunities because he has anti-woke views.
The Other Way the ‘Super Woke’ Left Discriminates
Race and gender aren’t the only categories that determine who gets special treatment.
www.theatlantic.com
December 24, 2025 at 5:16 PM
it requires an absolutely staggering lack of self awareness for chatterton to complain that he has lost elite opportunities because he has anti-woke views.
Reposted by Zander Furnas
It’s not “losing money” any more than air traffic controllers or public highways or street lights or fire departments are “losing money.” It is a government service. It’s not SUPPOSED to make money. It’s supposed to reliably deliver to anywhere in the US, even the unprofitable places.
The USPS faces a tight squeeze. With fewer people using the mail, it’s lost more and more money: $9 billion in the 12 months ending in September alone.
https://cnn.it/4qkeNoF
https://cnn.it/4qkeNoF
December 24, 2025 at 5:33 PM
It’s not “losing money” any more than air traffic controllers or public highways or street lights or fire departments are “losing money.” It is a government service. It’s not SUPPOSED to make money. It’s supposed to reliably deliver to anywhere in the US, even the unprofitable places.