Vikram Bath
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vikrambath.bsky.social
Vikram Bath
@vikrambath.bsky.social
2K followers 590 following 6.9K posts
Former business school professor, current software engineer. Writes at ordinary-times.com
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vikrambath.bsky.social
I feel such shame reading this www.wsj.com/world/europe...
Trump said Thursday during an interview with Maria Bartiromo on Fox Business that he wasn’t sure the North Atlantic Treaty Organization would stand by the side of the U.S. if it were attacked. He also diminished the military alliance’s role in the conflict in Afghanistan. “We’ve never needed them,” he said. “We have never really asked anything of them. They’ll say, they sent some troops to Afghanistan or this or that, and they did. They stayed a little back, little off the front lines.” While the U.S. suffered the highest level of losses in Afghanistan, the deaths per million of the population were only slightly higher than some of its closest allies. The U.S. had 7.9 deaths per million, followed by Denmark with 7.7, the U.K. with 7.2 and Estonia with 6.7. 
January 24, 2026 at 12:06 AM
vikrambath.bsky.social
New thing to signal, just dropped, @epicciuto.bsky.social !
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent brushed off Carney’s speech. “I think Prime Minister Carney should say ‘thank you’ [to the U.S.], rather than giving this value-signaling speech,” Bessent told Politico in Davos.
January 23, 2026 at 10:32 PM
vikrambath.bsky.social
On Threads, it is not enough to tell a joke. For your joke to be understood, you must tell it, explain its premise, and draw an arrow pointing to the joke part. Otherwise most people won’t get it
AI picture of Usha Vance dressed matching the sofa she sits on with text saying she has to ensure the mood is right. The reply, which has more likes asks “is that why she’s dressed like the sofa?”
January 23, 2026 at 10:14 PM
vikrambath.bsky.social
Uh…
Jed Clampett aiming a rifle
January 23, 2026 at 6:44 PM
vikrambath.bsky.social
Cool cool cool
Democracy Now: Internationally acclaimed Iranian author Sahar Delijani says the deadly anti-government protests that continue to rock Iran are "a working-class uprising" Commenters saying Democracy Now is a CIA op
January 23, 2026 at 1:51 PM
vikrambath.bsky.social
In September 2000, the S&P 500 traded at a price-to-earnings ratio of 26 and then returned almost nothing if you held for 11 years even counting compounded dividends.

The S&P 500’s current PE ratio is 29.

Good luck out there, guys wagonsfund.b-cdn.net/Pabrai%20Wag...
January 22, 2026 at 4:22 PM
vikrambath.bsky.social
This is ridiculous. Obviously it should depend on how good looking you are?
“Should the government place the same dollar value on everybody’s life?” Dr. Viscusi asked. “Should rich people’s lives be valued more? Should old people’s lives be valued less?”
January 21, 2026 at 8:08 PM
vikrambath.bsky.social
The next front in the movement: "Can we design a room that doesn't have bathroom doors at all?" said Bjorn Hanson, adjunct professor at New York University's Jonathan M. Tisch Center of Hospitality. Some hotels have been moving the sink and shower into the bedroom and enclosing the toilet in glass or placing it in cubby-like space, which helps make the room look more spacious, Hanson said. The Line Hotels, a boutique chain, uses a mix of partial partitions, pocket doors and glass in lieu of traditional bathroom doors. Stefan Merriweather, the chain's creative director, said the layout creates more space, light and flexibility—and bathroom odors are better ventilated. Goose meme: Where are the bathroom odors ventilated, motherfisher?
January 21, 2026 at 2:58 PM
vikrambath.bsky.social
A man bet $50,000 that someone would run onto the field at the Superbowl then did it himself, cashed out $374,000, and paid a $1,000 fine
January 21, 2026 at 12:39 PM
vikrambath.bsky.social
There’s only one dril
Tweet: As a general rule, grown men should not go to therapy. Dril: The toilet is an instrument of femininity. Real men shit in the yard like dogs
January 21, 2026 at 12:03 AM
vikrambath.bsky.social
So US citizens then
ICE: UNDECLARED CASH SEIZED AT MSP On January 18, HSI St. Paul and @cbpgov seized $14,135 from two Somali-born U.S. citizens who were departing on international flights from MSP. ICE and CBP remain vigilant in detecting and preventing the illegal movement of funds across borders to protect national security.
January 20, 2026 at 7:13 PM
vikrambath.bsky.social
Is this supposed to make Macron look bad?
Trump sharing a message from Macron inviting him to dinner and saying he does not understand what he is doing on Greenland?
January 20, 2026 at 6:36 PM
vikrambath.bsky.social
Peirce quincuncial projection is my favorite, and it’s particularly relevant when talking about Greenland en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peirce_...
The Peirce quincuncial projection is a type of map projection that transforms the northern hemisphere into a square and arranges the southern hemisphere into four triangles around it, creating a unique tiling pattern. It was developed by Charles Sanders Peirce in 1877 and is conformal except at specific points along the edges.
January 19, 2026 at 3:26 PM
vikrambath.bsky.social
Even Facebook is dunking on him
Meme: No you can’t have Greenland. You haven’t even finished your Venezuela yet. Imagine is a prototypical mom with a mixing bowl
January 19, 2026 at 1:48 PM
vikrambath.bsky.social
"Do you think the ICE agent should face criminal charges for shooting the woman in Minneapolis?"

Men: Yes
Women: Yes
White: Yes
Black: Yes
Hispanic: Yes
Other: Yes
Survey results. Not every demo is above 50%, but every demo has “yes” greater than “no”
January 18, 2026 at 11:51 AM
vikrambath.bsky.social
I miss having brands around
Disney account asking people to share a quote that sums up how you’re feeling right now Reply: screen cap of Pocahontas: These white men are dangerous
January 17, 2026 at 11:42 AM
vikrambath.bsky.social
lol
Sam Altman: I remembered a lot of this, but here is a part I had forgotten: "Elon said he wanted to accumulate $80B for a self-sustaining city on Mars, and that he needed and deserved majority equity. He said that he needed full control since he’d been burned by not having it in the past, and when we discussed succession he surprised us by talking about his children controlling AGI."
January 17, 2026 at 1:26 AM
vikrambath.bsky.social
Remember how asking job candidates for diversity statements was an implicit ideological litmus test?

They then went and founded a “university” that requires all faculty and staff to subscribe specifically to “anti-communism, anti-socialism, identity politics, and anti-Islamism”
“According to Niall, under the constitution of UATX Joe Lonsdale, as chair of the board, had no authority to tell those of us at the meeting: “That all staff and faculty of UATX must subscribe to the four principles of anti-communism, anti-socialism, identity politics, and anti-Islamism (this is the first time I heard of these four principles); “That ‘communists’ have taken over many other universities and that he, Joe Lonsdale, would stay on the board for fifty years to make sure that no ‘communists’ took over UATX (the identity politics crowd and some Islamists are a threat, but the Marxist-Leninist menace in 2025?)” Lind said when he asked for definitions of “communists” and “socialists,” he’d been told they included anybody who didn’t “believe in private property” and “hate the rich.” This, he wrote, struck him “as a libertarian political test excluding anyone to the left of Ayn Rand.” Lonsdale had said that the board would make a case-by-case determination on whether “New Deal liberals” would be allowed to work at UATX. Lind said that he considered himself “an heir to the New Deal liberal tradition of FDR, Truman, JFK and LBJ.” He was “in favor of dynamic capitalism in a mixed economy, moderately social democratic and pro-labor, and anti-progressive, anti-communist, and anti-identity politics.”
January 16, 2026 at 11:39 PM
vikrambath.bsky.social
“Oh, he didn’t really earn it.”

Okay, well then explain this
Trump deserves Nobel Peace Prize, Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu says
January 16, 2026 at 1:42 PM
vikrambath.bsky.social
I did not realize quite how bad this “AI” error in hiring ICE officers was www.nbcnews.com/politics/imm...
"They were using Al to scan résumés and found out a bunch of the people who were LEOs weren't LEOs," one of the officials said. The officials said the AI tool sent people with the word "officer" on their résumés to the shorter four-week online training - for example, a "compliance officer" or people who said they aspired to be ICE officers. The majority of the new applicants were flagged as law enforcement officers, the officials said, but many had no experience in any local police or federal law enforcement force.
January 16, 2026 at 1:06 PM
vikrambath.bsky.social
Yep
January 15, 2026 at 8:23 PM
vikrambath.bsky.social
Yep
January 15, 2026 at 8:22 PM
vikrambath.bsky.social
They gotta release this guy’s “Why Oxford?” essay
After attending the University of the Witwatersrand, he received a scholarship to Oxford, which enabled him to further his quest. For his doctoral dissertation, he chose to study South Africa’s history of electrification, “so I could get into the electricity supply commission’s library and archives, and work out how much electricity they were using to enrich uranium,” he told the BBC. From there, it was possible to calculate how many nuclear bombs could be produced. Six such bombs had reportedly been made by the end of apartheid in the early 1990s; the United States had initially aided the regime’s nuclear program.
January 15, 2026 at 6:52 PM
vikrambath.bsky.social
Slave patrols were so successful because they gave poor whites a way to participate in an aspirational slavery economy, and I think this is one of the reasons Stephen Miller is so shocked at the pushback to ICE. Even with the sign-on bonuses and etc, Americans as a majority disapprove of what's happening because dragging everyone back to 1845 is...stupid.
January 14, 2026 at 9:40 PM
vikrambath.bsky.social
oh, wow, you mean we did all this before I had no idea digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/cfeb25...
Picture shows a Black woman reaching for her papers which are being torn up by a man. Caption : Tearing up free papers. In the Southern States, every colored person is presumed to be a slave , till proved to be free; and they are often robbed of the proof
January 14, 2026 at 9:12 PM