Sarang Shah
now: lawyer + politics phd candidate @ UC Berkeley
soon: Columbia Law School fellow at Public Economic Law Project
Corp law + governance, political economy, democracy + money in politics, housing
past: physicist, tech writer, journalist
taoist in SF
- Reposted by Sarang ShahThis is really an instance of a very longstanding trend where secular pundits end up unwittingly aligned with fundamentalists in treating the crudest and most extreme version of any faith as the genuine article and everything else as somehow inauthentic.
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- Reposted by Sarang Shahthis false spring in the Bay Area on Super Bowl week beginning to piss me off. the very nice weather deprives SF tourists a core local experience: frantically buying a $100 low-quality sweatshirt bc the fog rolled in and they are caught in shorts and a t-shirt
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- Reposted by Sarang Shah"The “anti-woke” movement was not a genteel intellectual inquiry, made by disinterested parties who cared deeply about free speech. It is a social circle of powerful people who feel threatened by #MeToo." Great read.
- I wrote about the Epstein files (gift link) www.theverge.com/tech/874721/...
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- Reposted by Sarang ShahLearned from the Posting Through It podcast just how many MAGA-era influencers turned to politics after failing at more glamorous pursuits — theater, comedy, fashion, TV, movies, music. Knowles, if I’m not mistaken, had dreams of Broadway.
- This is the deal right. There are certain moves we need to make that, while not things we'd like to enable in a more democratic society, are necessary for building that more democratic society. It's a war footing for democracy.
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- Natural experiment for the extent of personalism/cult of personality...apparently
- Brexit-ass logic
- Reposted by Sarang ShahPart of the answer to “Why are so many mainstream columnists and pundits saying such transparently stupid stuff?” is that they’re still on X, and view the world through the perspective X brings them, and that perspective is dramatically warped.
- Trump job approval rating by news platform 🟢 Twitter/X: +9 🔴 Facebook: -7 🔴 Cable TV: -10 🔴 Podcasts/YouTube: -14 🔴 Local TV: -17 🔴 Instagram: -21 🔴 Broadcast TV: -28 🔴 TikTok: -28 🔴 Newspapers/news sites: -33 🔴 Reddit: -40 www.theargumentmag.com/p/twitter-is...
- Reposted by Sarang ShahIt's true that Mamdani is a skilled improviser but that's counterintuitively a result of his superior preparation — spending time and energy to hone your speaking style, memorize talking points etc frees up cognitive load to notice and react to what's around you instead of thinking about what to say
- Reposted by Sarang ShahFT exclusive: “The US state department is set to fund Maga-aligned think-tanks and charities across Europe to disseminate Washington’s policy positions and challenge perceived threats to free speech.” via @annasophiegross.bsky.social and colleagues
- Reposted by Sarang ShahThis year I made two big changes to my graduate International Political Economy syllabus: 1) I leaned in to money and capital as organizing themes, and 2) I assigned (nearly) all books. Here's our reading list, ft. Karl Polanyi, Benjamin Cohen, @stefeich.bsky.social, Ngaire Woods, J.C. Sharman ...
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- Really curious about what happened with the SF Standard, which seemed so promising and at one point hired so many good people
- "Pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will" is indeed a viable, even necessary, disposition in these times. We must cultivate reasonable expectations while anticipating the worst.
- Trump and the Republicans are trying to rig the election. That's not being a "doomer," that's acknowledging reality. Democrats need a coordinated, national response to these coordinated, national attacks. We need an "Elections Czar" My latest solution in @thenation.com
- Reposted by Sarang ShahReal opening for Dems to run as the law and order party. So much corruption. So much abuse of individual rights. So much battery. So much contempt of court. Chaos, disorder. Run as party that will enforce the law against criminal goons. Of course Dems would need to stop funding the criming, too.
- NEW: The top Trump-appointed proseutor in MN says his office is dropping "pressing priorities" to manage crushing immigration workload. His short-staffed office is doing constant overtime and bouncing between contempt hearings. The bleak assessment: www.politico.com/news/2026/02...
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- w ha t
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- Reposted by Sarang ShahI recommend @josephinequinn.bsky.social's How the World Made the West for the picture it paints of the classical Mediterranean world as a cosmopolitan space of exchange and diversity. Murray's mental image of Helen of Troy is probably wrong. His mental image of Western civilization definitely is.
- Charles Murray, famous racist, is very mad that Lupita Nyong’o is going to play Helen of Troy. www.liberalcurrents.com/none-more-wo...
- Good news for all who %>%!
- dplyr 1.2.0 is out now and we are SO excited! - `filter_out()` for dropping rows - `recode_values()`, `replace_values()`, and `replace_when()` that join `case_when()` as a complete family of recoding/replacing tools These are huge quality of life wins for #rstats! tidyverse.org/blog/2026/02...
- Reposted by Sarang ShahExclusive: The European Central Bank is working on opening up its liquidity facility to more countries, making it cheaper and easier to access in a bid to foster the international role of the euro, three sources told Reuters reut.rs/4r2973D
- Reposted by Sarang ShahBitcoin is getting pretty close to being down 50% from its October peak, and it's hard not to view that as one of the most positive indicators we've had in a while.
- Reposted by Sarang ShahEpstein is the sub- plot... My post. open.substack.com/pub/annpetti...
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- Reposted by Sarang ShahTrump: "Mike Johnson is a very religious person. He does not hide it. He'll say to me sometimes at lunch, 'Sir, may we pray.' I'll say, 'Excuse me? We're having lunch.'"
- Reposted by Sarang ShahIs he…roasting the prayer breakfast?
- Reposted by Sarang ShahThe world factbook was an invaluable resource in asylum petitions—a place where the federal government acknowledged in writing that, for example, Tibetans face systematic repression in China. I don’t like to have it vanish.
- Add the CIA World Factbook to the long and growing list of disappearing government datasets: www.cia.gov/stories/stor...
- Reposted by Sarang ShahThe Senate is going to be on a knife edge because of a handful of states, each of which has Democrats heavily concentrated in a couple of cities. There is plenty of scope on Election Day & afterward for the competitive authoritarian shenanigans to meaningfully affect outcomes in 2026.
- A good reason as any for empirical social scientists to redouble their efforts to conceptualize and measure power, and integrate it into their explanations
- Reposted by Sarang ShahStill feels like pulling the wiring out. The factbook's section on territorial/longstanding disputes was also useful in seeing other countries' interests. Very much feels like a gratuituous waste.
- Reposted by Sarang ShahKilling the CIA World Factbook might seem like small potatoes, but it was a touchstone of curated facts in a sea of disinformation.
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- Who all will be at ALPE in Richmond VA this weekend? I'll be presenting some work on corporate law and governance and how to conceptualize corporate power on a panel at 11:30 Friday. Come on by!
- Reposted by Sarang ShahI'm old enough to remember when privacy zealots were content to have Gawker killed off, not realizing--or perhaps not caring--that it was the thin edge of a very dangerous wedge. (This op-ed warning about that was prescient)
- Well... my rageometer was already redlining in 2015 www.latimes.com/opinion/op-e...
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- How in the world is anyone from the West Coast (BEST COAST) supposed to pack for a trip to the East Coast (LEAST COAST)?
- This is like one of those cognitive tests they give you when you've had a stroke
- People sometimes marvel at the twists and turns of my career, but the truth is I've just been trying to get some good work done before whatever industry I'm in gets swallowed up by the insatiable greedy leviathan
- Reposted by Sarang ShahSame thing happening to journalism as at universities following the massive federal budget cuts. You can't break institutions, cast off multiple age cohorts of journalists/scholars, & just flip switches later & expect go back to the ex ante SQ. The downstream systemic effects are huge & lasting.
- Reposted by Sarang Shahhow do you mourn for a lost generation of knowledge, talent, mentorship, institutional memory, etc. ongoing across so many fields
- Reposted by Sarang ShahToday I'm releasing probably the most important scholarly thing I've ever worked on - a report based on talking with 144 people about why they don't vote or only vote regularly, and on what needs to be done to build a democracy that can include everyone. www.swarthmore.edu/u... please share!
- This unified class project of billionaires also includes subjugating many non-billionaire business leaders too. We're all on the same side here, and the sooner we realize it the better.
- Reposted by Sarang ShahThis is how Sen. Ron Wyden clues the public into activity that he finds extremely alarming. He does a press release about a letter he sent to the director of the CIA that basically says, 'I want to make sure you saw the classified letter I sent early today.' www.wyden.senate.gov/imo/media/do...
- This is genuinely a bummer. The world Factbook was very useful
- TIL the CIA killed off its invaluable World Factbook...with a press release dated today?? WTF, is this yet more Trump fuckery? www.cia.gov/stories/stor...
- Reposted by Sarang Shahi know that this is an unpopular take, but everyone starting their own newsletter as a revenue stream is not a sustainable model for writing and reporting or for people who love and want to pay for media.
- Reposted by Sarang ShahMy story on Elon Musk cutting safeguards at xAI is on the front page of today's @washingtonpost.com. I’m also among 100’s of reporters laid off. I absolutely loved my job my brilliant coworkers & the thrill of reporting @ the center of forces upending the world: AI & Silicon Valley’s political power
- what
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- There maybe something to this, but I also think that even billionaires (at least some of them) are in social milieus where buying a hallowed newspaper and immediately wrecking it is just a bit uncouth
- One gets the sense that if Minnesota was its own country, over which the Trump regime had declared its tyranny, that we'd have already had a Minnesota Spring or Minne-Maidan moment
- “If I am killed doing this, throw my body at the White House, martyr the shit out of me & raise hell. Do not be sad. Do not think I would do anything differently. I would do it over & over again — this is too important to sit down & shut up and not do anything.” www.mprnews.org/story/2026/0...
- Reposted by Sarang ShahI think one thing people outside Minnesota don't understand is that after Good and Pretti were killed by feds while observing, the most normal people you could imagine have made peace with the fact that they could be next, and they are still out there because they say it's the right thing to do.
- “If I am killed doing this, throw my body at the White House, martyr the shit out of me & raise hell. Do not be sad. Do not think I would do anything differently. I would do it over & over again — this is too important to sit down & shut up and not do anything.” www.mprnews.org/story/2026/0...
- Reposted by Sarang Shah"Those who were laid off include Caroline O’Donovan, the Post’s beat reporter covering Amazon"
- Reposted by Sarang ShahA publisher who lays off a reporter whose pen is freezing because she's covering a frigid war zone while dodging missiles is not an editor you want to work for, in a more perfect world
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- Reposted by Sarang ShahSCOOP from me in this week’s @wired.com Inner Loop newsletter: A look inside a forum where users claiming to be ICE/CBP vent their frustrations and concerns about their jobs. “This is going to be a train wreck that we may not survive.” www.wired.com/story/inside...
