Sarang Shah

Lawyer + Politics PhD student @ Berkeley. Interested in governance, law, political economy, democracy, history, and epistemology/philosophy of science. Taoist.

Prev: Berkeley Law, Cambridge, Trinity College Dublin and Mitchell Scholarship (of course), and GA Tech alum. Worked at Crowdpac, Palantir, and MapLight. Law stuff at Open Markets Institute, California Lawyers for the Arts, and LPE Blog. Former theoretical physicist and journalist.

Based in beautiful San Francisco, California, USA

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sarangshah_at_mastodon.social@mostr.pub

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Last Notes

2023-09-19 13:24:14

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@npub17yf…8udh Vingo is nice, but he's definitely got a killer streak. Can't wait to see next year's Tour, which seems increasingly likely (bar injuries) will have all the biggest names in cycling of our generation go all out to dethrone Jonas from the podium

2023-09-19 13:21:55

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@npub17yf…8udh it looks like they pulled back though once the fans got wind of it, which was the right call, especially after all Kuss did for them in the Giro and the Tour (and more). But you know with these riders, them ponies just gotta race -- its hard to stop them sometimes

2023-09-18 14:42:58

This makes me so happy. What a well deserved win and what a race!
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2023/sep/18/sepp-kuss-vuelta-a-espana-victory-cycling

2023-09-07 13:39:00

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@npub1h69…7a9y the whole project is a cluster of one bad idea after another from the last ten years

2023-09-07 13:32:19

It’s amazing that given all the money they’re spending, this is what they’d get cheap on
https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/solano-county-new-city-renderings-ai-18351395.php

2023-08-30 16:59:00

Nice. Maybe econ needs a different approach too
"But we've been piling up cognitive biases since 1973, and the last 100 biases we added to the pile don’t seem to have done much. Adding the next 100 will probably do even less. It's time to stop piling"
https://www.experimental-history.com/p/im-so-sorry-for-psychologys-loss

2023-08-30 16:58:28

Hi folks -- obligatory APSA plug: I'll be presenting this paper (w/ Eitan Hersh) on an all-star panel (save for me) tomorrow morning at APSA, feat. Sarah Anzia, Neil Malhotra, Nate Kelly, Jessica Trounstine, and Alexander Sahn. Come join us! 8am in LACC 501C
https://www.eitanhersh.com/uploads/7/9/7/5/7975685/hersh_shah_business_realignment_080123_.pdf

2023-08-24 02:28:51

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@npub18e5…u74q 😂 😅 😢 💀

2023-08-24 02:21:10

Really weird political "party"
"Almost all GOP candidates would support Trump as nominee, even if convicted"
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/live/2023/aug/23/republican-presidential-debate-2023-candidates-trump-tucker-live-updates

2023-08-24 00:38:57

Wild stuff man
#SanFrancisco
https://sfstandard.com/2023/08/23/downtown-san-francisco-soccer-stadium-plans-for-former-westfield-mall-revealed/

2023-08-21 19:07:13

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@npub1hcc…4xws it just seems counterproductive and discourteous. While I understand what folks get out of it, it just seems antisocial

2023-08-21 15:58:41

This should be state law, not CEQA. America has a governance deficit, leading to crufty ways of getting things done.
“Unions often use CEQA challenges to force developers’ hands on hiring union workers”
https://www.vox.com/policy/2023/8/21/23831121/housing-yimbys-affordable-rent-unions-california

2023-08-18 18:45:47

Hi all -- I've also got a Bluesky account fwiw. Please follow! Not leaving here, but curious to see who's landed there and what difference quote-boosting makes
https://bsky.app/profile/sarangshah.bsky.social

2023-08-17 18:49:28

I wonder if so-called "woke" cultural values have actually been a useful stitching mechanism not for Republicans against them, but actually for uniting various members of the Democratic coalition, e.g. business leaders and their employees, urban elites and suburban minority groups, ...

2023-08-15 19:08:17

I am honestly still surprised so many journalists are still on that thing. It's literally throttling their livelihoods, while its owner continues his Trump-ian (Musk-ian?) attack against critical reporting.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/08/15/twitter-x-links-delayed/?pwapi_token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJyZWFzb24iOiJnaWZ0IiwibmJmIjoxNjkyMDcyMDAwLCJpc3MiOiJzdWJzY3JpcHRpb25zIiwiZXhwIjoxNjkzNDU0Mzk5LCJpYXQiOjE2OTIwNzIwMDAsImp0aSI6IjhlMGNkMzQxLTBmMzctNDgwYy05YTY1LWUzMGNmNTM5NzA0NCIsInVybCI6Imh0dHBzOi8vd3d3Lndhc2hpbmd0b25wb3N0LmNvbS90ZWNobm9sb2d5LzIwMjMvMDgvMTUvdHdpdHRlci14LWxpbmtzLWRlbGF5ZWQvIn0.PYurIdZdzuxCjxy6VSIngPfTG5CkW1J5YQZZfDzrnZQ

2023-08-14 22:16:18

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@npub1qzh…8quj oh nice, I didn't realize there was a follow up to Erik Olin Wright's Real Utopias!

2023-08-14 21:45:56

The social sciences may be in a place where it's primary concern is not the development of ontological models, but rather the refinement of its epistemological model through which observations are accumulated. It feels like we need to get a lot better at knowing and cumulating what we know before we can think about modeling beyond the "rational agent" paradigm

2023-08-14 15:33:29

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My theory is that Trump/GOP attracts a handful of voters in rural, working class communities driven by socio-cultural issues, but lots more people, mostly men, in outer suburbs making well above median income who identify as “working class” culturally. Meanwhile Biden/Democrats mop up the rest: urban working class, some rural working class communities, lots of middle class suburbanites and an overwhelming number of urban elites.

2023-08-14 15:30:37

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See e.g,
“By every reasonable definition of working and middle class, the Biden coalition has tons of them”
https://plus.thebulwark.com/p/media-still-doesnt-get-biden-voters

2023-08-14 15:22:43

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What I think my version of engaging with conservatives looks like is actually deepening our conversation with liberal conservatives who identify with the center and center-left, because it’s important for us to strategically know how these thinkers circumscribe the boundaries around pragmatic pro-democracy/anti-domination change under a conservative heuristic.

2023-08-14 15:20:47

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I am not a conservative (for the most part), but I do think we should engage with conservative intellectual traditions. But that doesn’t mean engaging at face-value with radical extremists with an -R at the end of their name like Richard Hanania/Hoste

2023-08-14 15:20:35

I’m often troubled by how the ones most loudly making the argument that “we should all read more conservatives”, like Matt Yglesias, don’t really have a good sense of what being conservative is, the rainbow-like variations in conservatism, the actual depth and richness of conservative philosophies, and even the conservatives right under their nose.

2023-08-14 14:22:22

I think the class inversion thesis is fairly compelling, but I am not convinced (yet) it holds for the financial base of the Democratic and Republican parties
https://qz.com/13018/the-class-inversion-how-american-politics-turned-upside-down

2023-08-13 18:27:03

I am interested in articulating a European “dream” and project, one that might draw from the American infatuation with Europe, as the author here outlines for himself, but also one that lives up to the reality of Europe today and the near-universalist definition of Europe by Milan Kundera: “Maximum diversity in minimum space”. What does a grounded, integrated, yet still promising and hopeful Europe look like?
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/13/opinion/american-expat-life-europe.html

2023-08-13 03:59:05

Wait, why would the Charmin bears ever buy non-Charmin toilet paper

2023-08-11 17:36:53

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@npub1fnm…20j3 ooo this looks great, thanks!

2023-08-11 17:29:39

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@npub14dt…vlek ughhhhh

2023-08-11 17:29:00

Gonna try this for the first time on Mastodon/Fediverse:
Anyone know a good casual gathering spot for lots of people in #DTLA/downtown #LosAngeles? Like a beer garden with food.
Hoping to organize a gathering of friends and colleagues during #APSA2023 later this month.

2023-08-11 16:10:09

I think what we're missing here in the whole "self-driving cars are safer than human drivers":
(1) human drivers get out of the way when emergency services ask them to
(2) we don't know what a critical mass of self-driving cars will mean for safety
(3) an unsettled legal environment means the liability burden falls on human drivers rather than the self-driving car companies for accidents
(4) idly driving cabs increase congestion
(5) they divert money and attention away from public transit

2023-08-11 02:35:58

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For anyone who has tried to get through an automated call service to get to a real human on the line to address your problem, imagine that, but behind a several ton speeding machine

2023-08-11 02:34:59

Literally saw these things abruptly stop and “stall out” twice on a walk today. This decision to allow these “automated call centers” as cars onto the streets is a huge mistake #SanFrancisco https://sfstandard.com/2023/08/10/just-the-beginning-san-francisco-weighs-next-moves-robotaxi-expansion/

2023-08-09 16:44:36

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FWIW I’d love to see Market Street as a pedestrianized grand boulevard, one that is as much a neighborhood as it is #SanFrancisco’s town square and red carpet for visitors to some of the best the city has to offer.

2023-08-09 16:42:38

I wonder how this squares away with Manny’s endorsement of self-driving cars. Genuinely curious. Manny cares a lot about the city and the staff at his namesake cafe are very thoughtful and considerate about the programming they’re putting on for the city. Yet I find his positions to be often incoherent, at least from my perspective. #SanFrancisco
https://sfstandard.com/2023/08/09/make-san-franciscos-market-street-a-car-free-paradise-transit-official-says/

2023-08-08 19:00:06

The moral economy of prevailing wages makes a comeback baby!
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2023/08/08/biden-davis-bacon-union-rules/

2023-08-07 20:46:52

Stability of funding over the long term is one reason why it's better for thr government to invest in basic R&D
https://www.ft.com/content/919c05d2-b894-4812-aa1a-dd2ab6de794a

2023-08-06 16:09:37

Deleted my Twitter account months ago, but still seeing tons of my posts indexed on search engines. How long will that last?

2023-08-06 16:05:36

Look, I always like a bit of creative civil and criminal procedure, but really there is no substantive basis to not have the trial in DC. It really is the best place for this!

2023-08-06 15:05:58

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FWIW I don't know who won, don't tell me

2023-08-06 15:05:41

I can't be the only one who thinks Apple News should be banned for sending a push notification with results of the USA-Sweden game before anyone has had a reasonable chance to watch the replay

2023-08-06 02:29:34

This is fantastic investigative work https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/richard-hanania-white-supremacist-pseudonym-richard-hoste_n_64c93928e4b021e2f295e817

2023-08-05 02:39:45

OK this slaps #AllezLesBleues https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D_HPiaAx_QA&embeds_referring_euri=https%3A%2F%2Fdefector-coral.herokuapp.com%2F&source_ve_path=MzY4NDIsMjg2NjY&feature=emb_logo

2023-08-04 23:32:22

The best way to explain how someone as incompetent as Zaslav has acquired and retains so much power, just think of him as a warlord who has managed to vanquish his foes in a sovereign nation's byzantine political system, a nation around which a border of law and social norms insulates all others from penetrating.
He won the war and it doesn't matter that he sucks for him to stay in power.
https://gizmodo.com/warner-bros-max-streaming-earnings-losing-subscribers-1850703372

2023-08-04 22:58:40

Just checked X (fka Twitter) for the first time using my spouse's account to see if there has been any feedback on a draft paper, and boy, is it a helluva lot quieter there than it was a year ago

2023-08-01 17:46:08

Been stuck in a weird limbo for the last five years:
Too old to be interested in usual grad student socializing activities.
Too grad student to cultivate professional friendships with faculty colleagues.

2023-07-05 17:38:37

We need to shut these schools down until we figure out what the hell is going on here https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/07/05/ai-apocalypse-college-students/

2023-07-03 17:04:09

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@npub1an2…26h4 @npub17yf…8udh I was thinking about this while reading this Balko piece: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/02/opinion/half-the-police-force-quit-crime-dropped.html
Breed may be responsive to the particular communities who believe that more police is the answer, but it's not at all clear (and often clear in the opposing direction) that more police will not necessarily lead to better outcomes on a wide set of measures, despite perceptions that it does or would

2023-07-02 03:18:02

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@npub17yf…8udh that’s a fair criticism of the piece, I think the author conflates the systemic problems of the “doom loop” (high commercial real estate vacancies, persistent number of people without housing, low public transit ridership, etc.) with the “doom loop” narrative itself, which may only have a minor impact on the actual problems the city is dealing with (other than low morale and poor coverage)

2023-07-02 00:45:56

“There’s a rather simple political lesson here — you reap what you sow. Breed never forcefully counteracted any of the hyperbolic narratives around life in #sanfrancisco When it suited her, she was happy to indulge in declinism and let Boudin fail.”
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/07/london-breed-and-eric-adams-built-their-own-doom-loop.html