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Rajan Narang

@rdnarang.bsky.social

1.2K followers 850 following 2.2K posts

Working for a just democracy. Venting for my sanity. Explaining so we do better with our next opportunity. We’re mobilized and now it's time for us to organize. Personal account

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Rajan Narang @rdnarang.bsky.social · Apr 6

Convinced that defeating the other side on displays of proud patriotism is necessary.

It’s completely correct to disagree with historical (and recent!) decisions this country’s made. But we’re fighting for its ideals, and in that fight, we get to define what patriotism means to us

Joe Katz @joekatz45.bsky.social · Apr 5

As the crowd at #HandsOff Boston files into City Hall Plaza, someone got up on a barrier waving the flag, and folks started singing the Star Spangled Banner.

This too is America.

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Stefanie Walter @stefwalter.bsky.social · 9h

Great reporting on the contagion risks of the Trump presidency, drawing in parts on insights from the @disintegrationerc.bsky.social project.

Is America contagious?

Scholars in political extremism are documenting the global spread of right-wing populism.

www.motherjones.com

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Rajan Narang @rdnarang.bsky.social · 5h

best friends never truly leave each other behind. and Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein were the very best of friends

Sanho Tree @sanho.bsky.social · 11h

Holy crap. Trump will make the FCC crucify Jimmy Kimmel for this.

Reposted by Rajan Narang

Doug Mack @douglasmack.bsky.social · 10h

the most delightful version of logging on to see what news you've missed

Dr Ramsdell, whose phone had been on airplane mode when the Nobel committee tried to call him, told the BBC's Newshour Programme that his first response when his wife said, "You've won the Nobel prize" was: "I did not."

To which Ms O'Neill replied that she had 200 text messages that suggested he had.

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Rich Raho @richraho.bsky.social · 5h

Today, with Bishop Seitz and members of the immigrant community, Hope Border met Pope Leo and gave him messages and a video from those fearing Trump’s mass deportations. ‘The church cannot stay silent before injustice. You stand with me. And I stand with you’, the pope said.

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David Hudson @dwhdaily.bsky.social · 6h

“Far from comprehensive, the list does not include the thousands still buried under the rubble.”

@theguardian.com

www.theguardian.com/world/ng-int...

Young lives cut short on an unimaginable scale: the 18,457 children on Gaza’s list of war dead

Every name on a list compiled by health authorities in Gaza of the child victims of Israel’s offensive

www.theguardian.com

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The Associated Press @apnews.com · 8h

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio insisted “no one has died” as a result of U.S. foreign aid cuts. In Myanmar, the grieving father of a 2-year-old boy who died after their food rations were cut calls such claims a lie.

Starving children screaming for food as US aid cuts unleash devastation and death across Myanmar

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has repeatedly said “no one has died" because of his government’s decision to gut its foreign aid program.

bit.ly

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Rajan Narang @rdnarang.bsky.social · 8h

Every Adjutant General in a blue state should be giving the same answer, and if they don’t, they should be replaced immediately

💞Sabrina💞 @sabrinarina.bsky.social · 20h

Oregon National Guard Adjutant General, General Gronewold says if they are federalized, that he will advise the Title 10 commander to utilize National Guard Troops to PROTECT protesters at ICE facilities. This is the right answer.

Rajan Narang @rdnarang.bsky.social · 10h

Donald Trump is in a sweaty panic because of this costumed unicorn 🤷🏾‍♂️

Courtney Vaughn @courtneyvaughn.bsky.social · 12h

Streets are still closed off in front of the Portland ICE facility at 8:30pm. Protesters have gathered on a side street. Dance party in progress.

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Ben Raderstorf @raders.bsky.social · 11h

Texas National Guard troops arriving in Chicago (via ABC News)

Remember: These are not MAGA stormtroopers. These are everyday teachers and accountants who signed up to serve their country with their spare time. They're being used as political pawns by venal, un-American, draft-dodging president

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Scott Horton @robertscotthorton.bsky.social · 11h

It's a well-established global phenomenon: secret police organizations always recruit losers, mediocrities, people who can't succeed in a competitive environment, whether bureaucratic, academic or commercial. These are people who will follow orders and engage in depraved, violent conduct when asked.

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John Pfaff @johnpfaff.bsky.social · 13h

Um, ICE just coldly shot an unarmed PRIEST in the head w a pepper ball when he (and everyone around him) clearly posed no threat.

For the crime of … complaining about government policy.

Core 1A speech.

With cameras rolling, they’re sniping priests for sport.

Kurt @flglchicago.bsky.social · 15h

Here’s video of the incident

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Rajan Narang @rdnarang.bsky.social · 13h

hard to overstate just how unusually bad North Korea is

Be careful with how you express your feelings. As part of North Korea’s latest crackdown on freedom of speech, officials from a factory’s Socialist Patriotic Youth League last month reportedly condemned the contents of a personal letter discovered during a bag search, in which a young person wrote, “I love you” and “The only thing I think of is you.” The officials have turned the message into an ideological issue, calling such language evidence of a “decadent lifestyle imbued with capitalist views of love.”

Reposted by Rajan Narang

jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 15h

thank you brett kavanaugh!

Daniel Knowles @dlknowles.bsky.social · 15h

Good reporting on the South Shore raid from South Side weekly here.

Confirms one thing I was told but didn't put in my own piece because I didn't have a second source and it seemed too insane: border agents segregated arrested residents by race

southsideweekly.com/federal-agen...

Federal Agents Storm South Shore Building, Detaining Families and Children

Families were woken by flashbangs and helicopters as hundreds of federal agents raided their homes. Days later, neighbors are still searching for the missing.

southsideweekly.com

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Rajan Narang @rdnarang.bsky.social · 14h

If you're struggling to understand how Trump is skating around laws that should constrain him, here's how and why:

Pema Levy @pemalevy.bsky.social · 1d

“The reality is that the court is adjusting the law to make place for arbitrary power.”

To understand the Supreme Court's role in Trump's authoritarian project, I turned to the idea of a dual state: an authoritarian regime that keeps up a facade of normalcy

www.motherjones.com/politics/202...

The “dual state” theory was invented to describe Nazis. The Supreme Court could take us there.

Authoritarianism—but make it look like the rule of law.

www.motherjones.com

Rajan Narang @rdnarang.bsky.social · 14h

She really had that guy in the chicken suit quaking in his feathers 🙄

Ron Filipkowski @ronfilipkowski.bsky.social · 16h

Kristi Noem confronts enemy combatants in the Portland war zone today.

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Rajan Narang @rdnarang.bsky.social · 15h

When the house of cards topples, it's gonna be ugly

Carl Quintanilla @carlquintanilla.bsky.social · 16h

NVIDIA and OpenAi:

Concerns that their “increasingly complex and interconnected web of business transactions is artificially propping up the trillion-dollar AI boom.“

@bloomberg.com $NVDA 👀
www.bloomberg.com/news/feature...

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Matt Novak @paleofuture.bsky.social · 17h

“I can find people, but I also don’t want to put anyone at risk because there are people being deported even with proper documentation. Every time they come or leave it’s worrisome, and you don’t know if they’re going to make it back home. I would feel like it’s my fault.”

Florida farmers struggle as legal foreign workers worry about immigration crackdown

“I also don’t want to put anyone at risk because there are people being deported even with proper documentation. Every time they come or leave it’s worrisome, and you don’t …

www.orlandosentinel.com

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the abbot of unreason (an archaeologist) @merovingians.bsky.social · 19h

killing civilians is wrong, because if it's not an absolute law a certain number of civilians dead becomes acceptable and that number is *not* set by the oppressed

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Micah @rincewind.run · 23h

"surely I, a layperson without a legal degree, cannot parse the august mind of John Roberts": not actually true! try it sometime, your "wow this is some bullshit" instinct is just as correct as any actual lawyer's

Robert Black @hurricanexyz.bsky.social · 23h

But also, yes, you'd be surprised how accessible the bullshit this Court writes is! You mostly don't need to know technical legal precedents and doctrines (although that does help), just to be able to read a paragraph and say "wait that made no fucking sense, dafuq did I just read??"

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Rajan Narang @rdnarang.bsky.social · 22h

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Tom Scocca @tomscocca.bsky.social · 23h

It's not just that they're going to strike down a law against conversion therapy, it's that they're going to do it on behalf of made-up claims from a straw plaintiff who can't honestly show the law affected her at all

Tom Scocca @tomscocca.bsky.social · 23h

One thing about American's widespread distrust and disapproval of the Supreme Court is that mainstream news coverage mostly doesn't dwell on stuff like standing, so people don't even begin to grasp how rigged the Court truly is www.nytimes.com/live/2025/10...

Supreme Court Live Updates: Justices Seem Set to Rule Against Colorado’s Ban on Conversion Therapy

www.nytimes.com

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Rajan Narang @rdnarang.bsky.social · 1d

general consultant, campaign manager, first-time candidate

Andy Reid, Travis Kelce, and Pat Mahomes

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ghost malone ergo propter malone @proptermalone.bsky.social · 1d

this is the country they think is a model

FinTwitter @fintwitter.bsky.social · 1d

The number of deaths from alcohol-containing products with methanol in the Leningrad region has reached 45, reports the Investigative Committee.

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Rajan Narang @rdnarang.bsky.social · 1d

very cool and normal currency here that is definitely not a speculative bubble

Elsewhere in “Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System,” here is a fun Kansas City Fed research briefing finding that, while no one ever really used crypto to buy a sandwich, the incidence of using crypto to buy a sandwich is now decreasing:

The share of U.S. consumers who report using cryptocurrency for payments—purchases, money transfers, or both—has been very small and has declined slightly in recent years. The light blue line in Chart 1 shows that this share declined from nearly 3 percent in 2021 and 2022 to less than 2 percent in 2023 and 2024.

I suppose it is often the case that a technology is introduced with great hype to solve one particular problem, and then turns out to be more or less irrelevant to that problem but quite useful for some other problem. Here Bitcoin was introduced to allow for peer-to-peer permissionless payments, for which it has turned out to be a dud. But Bitcoin is very good at an unrelated thing, which is “going up in price.” (You can see why that would make it bad as a payments medium!) So it has caught on and become widely adopted, even though its original premise was kind of wrong.

Rajan Narang @rdnarang.bsky.social · 1d

This may be controversial, but I prefer games that aren’t designed by MechaHitler

Every Film Now @everyfilmnow.bsky.social · 2d

Elon Musk announces xAI game studio will release a great AI-generated game before end of 2026.

Powered by Grok, the studio aims to revolutionize gaming with dynamic, photo-realistic experiences.

#xAI #Grok #AIGaming