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vgr's profile
Venkatesh Rao
Venkatesh Rao
Venkatesh Rao
@vgr

Tweets

Venkatesh Rao

@vgr

Conversational account. For work follow @ribbonfarm, @breaking_smart, @artofgig. Tweets are 90% vacuous views, apathetically held. Mediocritopian. IKEA builder.

Los Angeles, CA
venkateshrao.com
Joined August 2007

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    1. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Nov 3
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      Since this is a livetweet of the election I must capture this inevitable inflammatory tweet. Now *this* is different from every other election.pic.twitter.com/Q9HLFDycCu

      5 replies 1 retweet 40 likes
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    2. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Nov 3
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      Arizona is possibly going to make it off my crap list. I’ve enjoyed all my visits to the state and it’s certainly good for astronomy.

      4 replies 0 retweets 43 likes
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    3. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Nov 3
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      So looks like in Michigan and Pennsylvania the disproportionate early voting by democrats might cause a sharp shift in a few hours. They’re currently lagging on counting those. So double blue latency: cities and mail-in. Question is if it will be enough.

      4 replies 1 retweet 20 likes
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    4. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Nov 3
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      Venkatesh Rao Retweeted Venkatesh Rao

      Van Jones on CNN just made basically the same point I did a few hours ago, so I guess this is now a basic normie takehttps://twitter.com/vgr/status/1323814941040635904?s=21 …

      Venkatesh Rao added,

      Venkatesh Rao @vgr
      Well already seems clear it won’t be the blowout repudiation of Trumpism that beating Hoover’s 1932 margin of defeat (59-472). So my most favored outcome is already off the table. Dammit this was the one record I wanted Trump to own.
      Show this thread
      3 replies 0 retweets 12 likes
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    5. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Nov 3
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      But just in case you think nothing is different: storefronts all over big cities are boarded up and prepared for riots, several friends have left the country, and others are prepping go bags. Belief it’s not the same is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Naive to pretend all is normal.

      1 reply 1 retweet 31 likes
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    6. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Nov 3
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      There’s serious mechanism-complexity related uncertainty but still looks like Trump has more combinatorial pathways than Biden despite Arizona flip.

      2 replies 0 retweets 11 likes
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    7. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Nov 3
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      Remember in 2016 Trump won 304 electoral votes. That’s 34 votes Biden has to reclaim from somewhere. Looks like 11 in the bag so far, 23 more to go. Residual structural bias favors Biden (cities/mail-in) but Trump has more scenarios.

      1 reply 1 retweet 10 likes
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    8. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Nov 3
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      Both pre-election polling and exit polling are psycho-WMDs. Produces months of pseudoevent news.

      2 replies 6 retweets 24 likes
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    9. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Nov 3
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      CNN tldrs state of play succinctly: Down to: PA, WI, MI. Whoever wins 2/3 wins.

      3 replies 2 retweets 23 likes
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    10. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Nov 3
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      Le sigh this is getting close enough, I’m thinking it might end up in the courts like in 2000 even without shenanigans. The Florida recount took a month to sort out and this will be much uglier.

      2 replies 1 retweet 21 likes
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      Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Nov 3
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      Commercial break. Check out the @yak_collective for all your dark age consulting needs.pic.twitter.com/22MwIAimmZ

      10:47 PM - 3 Nov 2020
      • 7 Retweets
      • 38 Likes
      • Amit Paranjape 𝙈𝙖𝙩𝙩! Josh Chua Mike D Rahul Ramchandani Mike D Varun Adibhatla Conor L. Myhrvold 🐘 ሐዋርያ*
      1 reply 7 retweets 38 likes
        1. New conversation
        2. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Nov 3
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          Another big difference: highest turnout in a century. Likely around 65% which would be the highest since 1908. So even if the map and outcome remain the same as 2016, it’s not the same. It’s more of the same. By about 5% more turnouthttps://foreignpolicy.com/2020/11/03/historic-united-states-voter-turnout-2020-election-behind-other-democracies-global/ …

          3 replies 6 retweets 18 likes
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        3. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Nov 3
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          Alright I think I’ll turn in soon. I think I’ll be waking up to the following scenarios in order of likelihood: - Legal wrangle in PA - Trump win - Biden win - Cthulhucene

          4 replies 1 retweet 19 likes
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        4. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Nov 3
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          Ok: actual last tweet for the night. Trump is on droning about play by play in states. I’ll catch up tomorrow if he lobbed any grenades. Looks like prop 22 might pass in CA Now to read a chapter of Iain M. Banks’ Hydrogen Sonata before shuteye.

          3 replies 0 retweets 9 likes
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        5. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Nov 4
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          Ok no real movement huh. Glad I went to bed. Time for coffee and burrito. Here on out it will be intermittent updates only in response to actual movement.

          1 reply 0 retweets 15 likes
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        6. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Nov 4
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          Glad Prop 22 passed. The gig economy is too important to be run by regressive CA labor politics. I distrust big corporation less on this. If a 7/8 supermajority clause and corporate moneybags are required to defend against stuff like AB5, so be it.

          2 replies 1 retweet 26 likes
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        7. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Nov 4
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          Venkatesh Rao Retweeted David Auerbach  📚

          Also glad the Dems kinda got an ass-kicking outside of the undecided potus race. The party machine on senate/house was way too smug and self-satisfied assuming a strong positionhttps://twitter.com/auerbachkeller/status/1324004355629031425?s=21 …

          Venkatesh Rao added,

          David Auerbach  📚Verified account @AuerbachKeller
          A very raw and revealing Politico rant. "TUESDAY WAS AN ABJECT DISASTER for Democrats in Washington. The infighting will be bloody -- as it should be." pic.twitter.com/Spj79XjTA4
          Show this thread
          2 replies 0 retweets 22 likes
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        8. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Nov 4
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          I had a single issue of interest: getting Trump out. That’s still up in the air. Everything else though, yeah... necessary institutional reform. Florida should be a sharp warning for people supporting a far left push. It’s bad ideology and losing political strategy in the US.

          4 replies 3 retweets 37 likes
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        9. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Nov 4
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          When an institution is this sclerotic only charismatic power can renew it. Unfortunately of the two people with any charisma, one is an old caricature leftie out of Seinfeld and the other is a young firebrand leftie blinded by moral self-certainty riding a thirst-trap premium.

          2 replies 3 retweets 38 likes
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        10. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Nov 4
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          I do appreciate the decade-long spotlight Bernie and AOC have maintained on the powder-keg issue of inequality but ceding broad political-moral authority to them while trying to maintain structural integrity under moderate leadership is a one-time, sharply time-limited option.

          2 replies 1 retweet 22 likes
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        11. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Nov 4
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          If Biden wins, they’ve got 4 years to find a better equilibrium. If he loses, it’s game over now. Tactical skill at navigating the peculiarities of US politics can substitute for a vacuum of ideas only for so long. Either moderates come up with real ideas now, or the D’s splinter

          2 replies 3 retweets 24 likes
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        12. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Nov 4
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          AOC is to the #Occupy descended left as Ted Cruz is to tea party politics. The interesting diff is that the tea party created an opening for a kind of populist hijacking by Trump. I don’t see that happening on the left. The US just doesn’t like true left populism.

          1 reply 1 retweet 26 likes
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        13. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Nov 4
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          To her credit, much as I dislike her politics, AOC seems to have higher integrity relative to Cruz, but more idealistic fervor. Absent Trumpist entryism, Cruz could legit have won 2016. But I somehow think AOC can’t ride her twitch-stream to the WH without going more moderate.

          3 replies 0 retweets 24 likes
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        14. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Nov 4
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          Even without the results, the fact that it’s this close in the middle of a disastrous pandemic and with such an extreme cartoon villain as incumbent means the Great American People have spoken and showed who they are on average: mildly alt-lite fascism-curious crypto monarchists.

          7 replies 12 retweets 125 likes
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        15. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Nov 4
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          I am dismayed by that basic revealed preference of course, but it is what it is, and a democratic truth. Even Biden’s likely popular vote margin (win or lose) won’t repudiate it. The US has always been a fascism-lite country but is now open about it. Glad that’s been cleared up.

          3 replies 2 retweets 34 likes
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        16. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Nov 4
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          I do still believe in democracy despite funhouse mirror distortions of electoral politics. So if this is the honest reflection of what the US is as a country, I can live with it so long as it stays lite/mild, and the ideological margins I prefer can be kept secure in urban cores.

          2 replies 0 retweets 20 likes
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        17. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Nov 4
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          “When people show you who they are believe them the second time” — Maya Angelou 2.0 😆 They’re not stupid, the Democratic mechanism is still the most legitimate one we have. You can’t force liberalism on an illiberal, thinking population. They’ve chosen who they are.

          3 replies 3 retweets 37 likes
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        18. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Nov 4
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          The one consolation of this democratically revealed social truth is that it confers natural immunity against a left incarnation of Trump walking through the opening created by Bernie+AOC. Stalin-lite will be held at bay by the paranoid fever dreams of the Hitler-lite.

          1 reply 1 retweet 20 likes
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        19. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Nov 4
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          This means, absent oxymoronic emergence of moderate political charisma (been there, done that with Obama, but a repeat is psychohistorically implausible now) the only counter to extremist charisma trying to woo a fascism-lite-leaning middle from both sides, lies outside politics.

          3 replies 1 retweet 14 likes
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        20. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Nov 4
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          Commercial break. This segment of the doomscroll 2020 livetweet is brought to you by my frenemies at @ycombinator Politics is not the answer. Start up, cash in, sell out, bro down. And hire me for consulting after you get Product-Market Fit and land a series A.pic.twitter.com/TwazkrKn7E

          2 replies 4 retweets 41 likes
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        21. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Nov 4
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          In light of recent events, I’m going to recode Obama’s 2 victories as a triumph of appeal of monarchical cult-of-personality charisma over fascism-lite. Obama got coded as “one of the good blacks” Blackish virtue signal so long as no real change to illiberalism called for.

          1 reply 1 retweet 19 likes
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        22. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Nov 4
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          Both coding voting for Obama as “proof I’m not racist” and coding voting for Trump as “defense against radical left antifa communists” are rationalizations of thinly denied basic dispositions. And you can’t blame disinformation/media bubbles either. This is who the country is.

          2 replies 1 retweet 24 likes
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        23. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Nov 4
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          If you’re comfortable with this 800lb egregorilla in the room, you’re fine. There are three possible natural reactions for those who are not fine with it: turn institutionalist-statist (impersonal state institutions as the , turn Straussian (noble-lie programmer) or Third Way.

          2 replies 0 retweets 11 likes
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        24. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Nov 4
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          I believe 2010s have demonstrated 3 truths: - democracy works (screw Thiel) - Straussianism doesn’t work (people aren’t that dumb, you can’t fool all the people all the time, you’re not saintly enough to lie nobly, there are no good emperors) - Industrial institutions are dead

          3 replies 5 retweets 44 likes
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        25. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Nov 4
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          So your real political choices are: - Accept your new 800lb fascist-lite egregorilla overload - invent better institutions - invent a third way to be elite that’s neither Straussian nor institutionalist - score a mansion; aka secure a tiny personal zone of political agency

          3 replies 6 retweets 33 likes
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        26. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Nov 4
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          Venkatesh Rao Retweeted Andrew Benson

          Yeah this is a major faultline. Mercenary in the policy sheets, missionary in the charismatic streets basically.https://twitter.com/pixlpa/status/1324041539283156993 …

          Venkatesh Rao added,

          Andrew Benson @pixlpa
          Replying to @vgr
          There's a big gulf now between actual policies people vote for and who wins elections (e.g. minimum wage + Trump in FL), which tells me that charisma/personality and connecting to an audience is key.
          3 replies 1 retweet 13 likes
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        27. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Nov 4
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          Venkatesh Rao Retweeted Glenwood Morris

          Yes, even though I’m not feeling this scenario in my gut, it’s now intellectually a clear possibility. The 800lb fascist-lite egregorilla will NOT be happy if the institutionalists buy themselves 4 more years by a razor thin margin that’s vulnerable to doubt-merchanting.https://twitter.com/gemorris/status/1324040401393717251 …

          Venkatesh Rao added,

          Glenwood Morris @gemorris
          Everyone should be making plans to get out, because if Biden squeaks this out the backlash in four years is going to be a legit competent fascist. https://twitter.com/vgr/status/1324020431867711488 …
          1 reply 1 retweet 17 likes
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        28. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Nov 4
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          “Competent fascist” means media charmer who will pay lip-service to individualism. Don’t expect a Hitler-like figure. That’s for Germany. The “competent fascist” is a culturally specific archetype that you may not recognize till too late if you’re overindexed on foreign examples.

          3 replies 2 retweets 36 likes
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        29. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Nov 4
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          A thought on the “popular majority” — the 50-52% of the country that is NOT part of the 800lb fascist-lite egregorilla. Fortunately it’s not an egregore in its own right. It’s a loose dissensus of a hundred factions united only by their distaste for the 800lb FLE.

          2 replies 0 retweets 14 likes
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        30. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Nov 4
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          Natural, un-prefixed liberalism, grounded in individual curiosity, openness to experience, exploratory spirit, and divergent thought, does not cohere into egregores well. The part that does is called “classical liberalism” and is indistinguishable from the 800lb FLE at this point

          2 replies 2 retweets 16 likes
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        31. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Nov 4
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          So even though it *looks* like it has demographic mass to compete, it doesn’t. It lacks the “sticks bound together around an axe” strength of true fascism. 49 sticks bound around an AR-15 trump (heh!) 51 loose sticks. Let’s not pretend it’s all electoral college distortion.pic.twitter.com/HZePAv0Sna

          1 reply 0 retweets 12 likes
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