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Varun

@varunr.bsky.social
458 followers 553 following 488 posts

Data scientist at Slack (my views don't represent those of my employer, obviously). Based in Queens

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Varun @varunr.bsky.social · 14h
huge surprise
https://www.wired.com/story/ice-agent-at-nyc-shooting-has-history-of-alleged-violence-and-illegal-arrests
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Charles Johnson @charles.littlegreenfootballs.com · 08/10/2026
I know everyone’s jaded and exhausted by the continual parade of madness, but this is the president of US openly inciting racist violence against an entire community of immigrants. (w/ alt text)
The once Great State of Minnesota is being taken over by Somali Immigrants. There is Violence, Murder, and Mayhem all over the State. The people of Minnesota must fight back. You have been robbed, and abandoned by your State Government. Your Governor is an incompetent thief who doesn't want to get involved. He just wants to get out of town with as much as he can steal, and then, lead a quiet life. The Somalians should not be allowed to get away with what they are doing.
They view you as weak and stupid people. Fight back Minnesota, fight back! If you need, the Federal Government will come to your rescue.
Governor Tim Walz, and Mayor of Minneapolis, Jacob Frey, must immediately ask for Federal help — and leave the rest to us! President DONALD J. TRUMP
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Patrick Cosmos @veryimportant.lawyer · 09/10/2026
There should be a political party that wants to stop this and punish the people doing this
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Varun @varunr.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
I wrote about AI and the barriers to productivity growth at my workplace: varunprajan.github.io/blog/product...
varunprajan.github.io
What are the barriers to productivity growth at tech companies?
Introduction
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Dave Itzkoff @ditzkoff.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
Oh brother.
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Steve Vladeck @stevevladeck.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
Justice Alito devotes an entire chapter of his new book to the emergency docket—and to responding to people like me (“the most prolific academic critic of the emergency docket”). As I explain over at “One First,” it … didn’t go well: www.stevevladeck.com/p/256-so-une...
In the pre-publication galleys to his new book, So Ordered: An Originalist’s View of the Constitution, the Court, and Our Country, Justice Alito spelled my last name inconsistently. This is, I suspect, the pettiest possible point on which to open in discussing a Supreme Court justice’s new memoir, and I would never have mentioned it except for the fact that inconsistency turns out to be the organizing feature of the chapter in which I (“the most prolific academic critic of the emergency docket”) repeatedly appear.The central inconsistency of Chapter 8, which is devoted to the emergency docket, is structural: Rather than tackle the subject holistically (as one might expect in a book), Alito mashed together the speech he gave five years ago at Notre Dame Law School with a “postscript.” The former was deeply flawed even at the time (among lots of other things, Alito repeatedly insisted that there was “nothing new” about the Court’s behavior on emergency applications during the first Trump administration and COVID); and the latter tries to move the goalposts away from the specific phenomena to which critics like me have actually objected.The result is to leave readers with a disjointed, inaccurate, and misleading sense of what the debate is even about—to say nothing of how the Court’s own behavior since September 2021 (including Alito’s) has only further undermined the already-flawed claims Alito made back then. Somewhere between the galleys of Alito’s book and the final product (which hits bookstores today), someone apparently figured out that my last name should be spelled the same way (and correctly!) throughout. The other, more significant inconsistencies were, apparently, harder to fix.
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southpaw @nycsouthpaw.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
I despise seeing what’s really going on stuffed into a “but critics say” clause.
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jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 05/10/2026
what an asshole
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Steve Randy Waldman @interfluidity.com · 04/10/2026
this kind of chart doubles down on the dumb in “social science” and economics. the dumb comes from lossily compressing complex phenomena into rankable scalars, then using arithmetic and ranking to launder claims into “scientific” truths. 1/
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Varun @varunr.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
Better late than never
 Sipping tea from beer mugs with his co-workers, Kyle Bos listed the ways his life is changing.

Bos has two daughters, with a third due in January. At the grocery store, five items cost as much as a full cart once did. And on Wednesday, Bos and nearly 1,400 other people were laid off from their jobs at what had been the Navistar truck factory in southwestern Ohio.

The layoffs — occurring just three days before President Donald Trump’s rally on Saturday at a nearby high school — were large enough to basically erase an entire year of job growth in the greater Dayton, Ohio, area. And they are one reason why Bos, 30, plans to spend the final weeks before the November election canvassing votes for Democrats.

Asked how many times he had voted for Trump, Bos held up three tattooed fingers. But he said he’s done with the president.

“Something has to change politically in this country,” said Bos, a member of the United Auto Workers who identifies as a centrist. “Seems like it just kept getting worse and worse and worse.”
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Colin @colin-fraser.net · 30/09/2026
I really wasn’t trying to start a fight with Prof. Bender but now that she has created a long thread subtweeting me and her disciples are all yelling at me, let me just say that this is the crux right here. She seems to respond as though I am describing something a priori impossible.
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Ben Casselman @bencasselman.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
One of the dominant narratives about the labor market over the past couple years has been that it's a "good time to have a job but a bad time to be looking for one." I think that's only half true. A quick 📈🧵: #EconSky #NumbersDay
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Carl Quintanilla @carlquintanilla.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
GATES: “.. I almost can’t believe you’re asking that.” @ezraklein.bsky.social @nytimes.com www.nytimes.com/2026/09/29/o...
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Carl Zimmer @carlzimmer.com · 27/09/2026
Four days ago, a scientist was surprised by the news that Anthropic discovered new virus genes for making DNA. He says he’s been studying them for years—and feeding his data to Anthropic’s AI as part of his own research. Coincidence? Here’s my story. nyti.ms/3VSWayc
nyti.ms
Did Anthropic’s A.I. Really Make a Scientific Discovery on Its Own? (Gift Article)
An expert at the University of Copenhagen said his team had been sharing its research with the company’s A.I. model, Claude, and that its new finding matched their work.
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Varun @varunr.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
Good times
Bessent shitposting about US treasuries 9 months ago
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Julian Sanchez @normative.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Glad about the result, but I don’t think it speaks well of us as a country that after two years of human rights violations, war crimes, naked gangster corruption, and contempt for the Constitution, he’s finally unpopular because gas got expensive.
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the beggars out of here getter @milesklee.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
malpractice story packaging in that the more pertinent details are: this guy is a bodybuilder promoter who killed his own son with a $100K divorce on wheels but is crowdfunding his funeral on a page that just says he was “accidentally struck by a moving vehicle” and they’re close to half that amount
latimes.com
Young boy killed after father backs Cybertruck into him, police say
A California man accidentally hit and killed his 6-year-old son while backing out of the family’s driveway near Temecula in a Tesla Cybertruck, according to police reports.
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Nicole Marie @nicolemarie.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
What have we been telling you? Dems aren’t going to do anything. www.c-span.org/clip/public-...
c-span.org

SEPTEMBER 22, 2026
Sen. Duckworth Urges Democrats to Not Impeach Anybody and "Get Back to Work" If They Win Majority
Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-IL) says Democrats should not impeach "anybody" if they regain control of Congress and "get back to work" on issues like funding of USAID or easing tariffs, which she says are hurting Illinois pork and soybean farmers who trade with China. "I would rather move the ball forward to the benefit of the American people, and if we can do it in a way that allows him to save face, and he doesn't stop us, then that's better for everybody all around," she adds.
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Cristian Farias @cristianfarias.com · 18/09/2026
In a Manhattan federal courtroom today, a lawyer for the Trump administration argued that Article II of the Constitution lets the president fire a federal employee because he’s Black, and there’s nothing a court can do about it. www.politico.com/news/2026/09...
politico.com
DOJ says recent Supreme Court ruling shields Maurene Comey firing
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Paul Kiernan @pkwsj.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
Polymarket’s compliance team was floored by CEO Shayne Coplan’s response to their discovery of rampant fraud on the platform in February: Just keep growing and pay a fine if regulators ever find out. www.wsj.com/business/pol...
wsj.com
Polymarket’s Rush to Grow Left a Door Wide Open For Fraudsters
CEO Shayne Coplan brushed off concerns about a scheme involving stolen debit cards. Now the prediction market is bolstering its executive ranks as it eyes an IPO.
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Quantian @quantian.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
Now this is the situational awareness I’ve come to expect from an OpenAI employee!
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Razzball @razzball.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
lmao
Bill Mitchell ®
@mitchellvii
X.com
With regards to beef prices, have you ever tried a veggie burger?
They're actually really good. A little lettuce, tomato, pickles, a portobello mushroom, slice of Swiss cheese. Excellent.
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Mike Konczal @mtkonczal.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
The Tax Foundation argued recently that we should think of the falling labor share as making a 'round trip' back to 'historically precedented' values. I disagree and walk through how the argument is weaker than it seems. Plus we dig into NIPA flat files! newsletter.mikekonczal.com/p/i-disagree...
newsletter.mikekonczal.com
I Disagree With The Tax Foundation, Labor Share is Collapsing
Getting into the guts of NIPA and what prop income really does when you include it.
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Aaron Sojourner @aaronsojourner.org · 17/09/2026
These people have too much money. They have all the personal stuff and experiences they want. All that's left for them is trying to seize control of public power to force their tastes and delusions on us.
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Brian Beutler @brianbeutler.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
Fail. (Big piece on this tomorrow.) www.politico.com/news/2026/09...
politico.com
Democratic advisers are warning their candidates not to go too hard at AI
Democratic consultants are warning their candidates in some key races not to lean into AI regulations out of fear that powerful tech groups could spend heavily against them.
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ryan cooper @ryanlcooper.com · 15/09/2026
when Republicans are on the wrong side of a 60-40 issue they double down over and over and over, it becomes the center of political debate, and more often than not the numbers move. when Democrats are in that position they immediately give up
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Cameron 🇺🇸🗽🦅 @cameroncorduroy.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
dunno if it can get more on the nose than "condemning racism makes you a cuckold"
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Justin Fox @byjustinfox.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
What the Trump administration has been doing to the federal government, in one chart. Gift link: www.bloomberg.com/opinion/arti...
Nondefense agences with 2,000+ employment decline since Jan. 2025
Department, agency or subagency	Employment change	Percent change
Internal Revenue Service	-29,985	-29.4%
Veterans Health Administration	-26,347	-6.2%
Social Security Administration	-7,934	-13.8%
Forest Service (since July 2024)	-7,268	-17.8%
Transportation Security Administration	-6,481	-9.8%
Federal Emergency Management Agency	-5,759	-22.1%
Bureau of Land Management (since July 2024)	-5,274	-47.6%
Veterans Benefits Administration	-5,198	-15.0%
National Institutes of Health	-5,052	-23.5%
Agency For International Development	-4,739	-95.4%
Food and Drug Administration	-4,700	-22.4%
Army Corps of Engineers	-4,563	-11.8%
Environmental Protection Agency	-4,476	-26.4%
Department of Energy	-3,976	-24.8%
Centers For Disease Control and Prevention	-3,649	-28.6%
Small Business Administration	-3,480	-40.6%
National Park Service (since July 2024)	-3,469	-15.4%
Department of State	-3,158	-21.8%
Natural Resources Conservation Service (USDA)	-3,002	-25.3%
Fish and Wildlife Service (since July 2024)	-2,803	-30.8%
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Admin.	-2,575	-20.8%
Geological Survey	-2,572	-30.5%
Citizenship and Immigration Services	-2,514	-11.0%
Public Buildings Service (GSA)	-2,452	-43.8%
Census Bureau	-2,436	-18.3%
Agricultural Research Service	-2,325	-32.7%
Bureau of Reclamation	-2,207	-38.0%
Bureau of Prisons/Federal Prison System	-2,175	-6.0%
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Varun @varunr.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
???
half the nypd has terrible handwriting and/or can't spell
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🎃🎃🎃Michael Scare-anicolas🎃🎃🎃 @karanicolas.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
Democrats should be targeting crypto, as a Republican constituency, with the same zeal that Republicans targeted universities for being liberal-coded. But they won’t, because it might jeopardize the crumbs that industry throws their way.
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Financial Times @financialtimes.com · 13/09/2026
Days after an investigation into the party’s finances was expanded, crypto billionaire Ben Delo said he was giving Reform £36mn. Fellow crypto billionaire Christopher Harborne said he would match it: ft.trib.al/mfvakFN
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Giles Wilkes @gilesyb.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
aleximas.substack.com/p/will-ai-so... The best blog ever written on AI and growth, by a clear margin. By @aleximas.bsky.social
aleximas.substack.com
Will AI soon lead to double-digit growth?
Probably not. Here is why.
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FactPost @factpostnews.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
Don Jr complains of “enriched elites” who benefit while normal people suffer
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Dan Davies @dsquareddigest.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
It contributes to the impression of dodginess that most of the time it's "LLMs are totally inscrutable, we can't tell anything about the relationship between training data and output, we can't explain any decisions" and then when it becomes inconvenient they're "nope, definitely didn't happen"
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Carl Quintanilla @carlquintanilla.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
“.. The Atlanta Fed calculates that as of May, a household would need income of $124,674 a year to afford a median-priced home … that is 45% more than the median household makes.” - Schwab
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Toby Nangle @tobyn.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
Have I understood this correctly: Meta charges a fraction for use of its latest AI model if you permission them to use all the data you input to train future models? developer.meta.com/ai/lp/start-...
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Gil Durán @gilduran.com · 06/09/2026
Got 'em: The @thebulwark.com added an editor's note to the review, acknowledging that the author's direct affiliation with the Foundation for American Innovation ("the foundation shaping the tech right," according to Inc.) created a conflict that should have been forthrightly disclosed.
Editor's note from Bulwark: 1
Editor’s note (September 3, 2026, 1:10 p.m. EDT): In a response to this review posted to social media, Gil Durán, author of The Nerd Reich, has highlighted that the reviewer, Jacob Bruggeman, is affiliated with the Foundation for American Innovation (FAI). Durán mentions FAI in his book, once, in a sentence that reads as follows: “This merging of tech and far-right networks—hosted by the Foundation for American Innovation, which Inc. later described as ‘the foundation shaping the tech right’—seemed like a live test of [Balaji] Srinivasan’s theory.” Bruggeman’s affiliation with FAI is an unpaid, nonresident fellowship (in other words, it is not his day job), and while it was mentioned in his byline beneath this review, we should have made a point of additionally disclosing it in a footnote like this.
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Matt Novak @paleofuture.bsky.social · 06/09/2026
Everything is just impossibly dumb
Trump posts: Map of New Mexico with Mexico crossed out to read America
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Nathan Hoffmann @nathanihoff.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
My paper "Double robust, flexible adjustment methods for causal inference: An overview and an evaluation" is out in Social Science Research. Spoiler: In simulations, double robustness appears less important than flexibility, and OLS does pretty well! 🧵👇 1/7 www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
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Aaron Reichlin-Melnick @reichlinmelnick.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
Aaaaand he’s been fired (presumably for putting all of this in an email to the victim’s lawyers). www.cbsnews.com/news/ice-min...
cbsnews.com
Federal prosecutor fired after investigating ICE officer for civil rights offenses in Minnesota shooting, sources say
A federal prosecutor in Minnesota who was investigating an ICE officer for possible civil rights crimes has been fired, four sources familiar with the matter told CBS News.
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mtsw @mtsw.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
(The answer is no. I say this not only because it's important for everyone to understand that the political media is against us in this election but also so people understand that they find Piker's views about Israel genuinely objectionable but find Musk's views about blacks unobjectionable)
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👻👹 boo-rit 👹👻 @britculpsapp.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
the fuck is this kink supposed to be?
official government account for HHS tweet from rfk jr with an ai generated image of rfk at a table with jd vance, rfk has a steak in front of him but for some reason, he is joyfully spoon feeding jd vance a bowl of noodles or sauerkraut as marc rubio lurks behind a beam nibbling on a pop tart (i think)

Secretary Kennedy
Join the party, @SecRubio.
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David Kurtz @davidkurtz.bsky.social · 31/08/2026
The gig is up in the very first sentence of the Supreme Court's per curiam opinion on the Trump ballroom (emphasis added): "In October 2025, the *federal government* started a project to replace the East Wing of the White House." They've collapsed the legislative branch into the unitary executive.
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Mark D. Levine @marklevinenyc.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
Today my office is releasing a major new analysis of income inequality in NYC. We found that NYC has grown considerably more unequal since 2019. Nearly 2/3 of real income growth went to the top 1%, while median income actually fell after inflation and the bottom 90% saw essentially no real gains.🧵
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Toby Buckle @polphilpod.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
elon's being weird about jews again
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Republicans Against Trumpism @rpsagainsttrump.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
Right-wing provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos, who was deported to the UK last week, says he now regrets his support for Trump: “I had any clue that anything remotely like this was even possible, I would never have got involved in supporting Trump in the first place and I’m very ashamed that I did”
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Isaiah Bishop @isaiahbishop.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
Yeah man im feeling comforted by these dems
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Varun @varunr.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
I sent an email to 1password (business@1password.com) promising to unsubscribe if they don't change course. You should too!
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Melody Schreiber @melodyschreiber.com · 31/08/2026
Kennedy and the CDC aren't yet counting the Pennsylvania deaths from measles -- a "highly unusual” move, @drdebhoury.bsky.social told me. www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...
theguardian.com
US health officials exclude measles-related deaths in Pennsylvania from counts
RFK Jr, the health secretary, has suggested the deaths were ‘fabricated’ while the CDC claimed it was reviewing them
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Varun @varunr.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
Is this good?
Krugman post: "Der Untergang: How badly will Trump punish America?"
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