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chatterjee.net
Techie, public historian, and activist from Berkeley, California. I curate the monthly Berkeley South Asian radical history walking tour — now celebrating its 12th year. Pronouns: he/him/ও/সে https://www.chatterjee.net/
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Narika and all the other South Asian American feminist/anti-DV/anti-violence groups do such critical work in our communities

For the one in a thousand (?) people who needs to date an old world map

These leakers are wild: “The Republicans who spoke to WIRED for this story all requested anonymity…share varying degrees of concern about Musk harming Trump’s image and felt compelled to speak up…to protect the boss”

“They had endorsed Trump’s racism and xenophobia, hoping it would conveniently spare them as the exception. So, unable to call it racism—lest this exposes the hypocrisy of their endorsement…Hindu groups are crying Hinduphobia”

"we had actual expert techies making government work better, and they got replaced by people whose main qualification appears to be their willingness to break things and their loyalty to Elon Musk. The burglars aren’t just in the house…they’re livestreaming the robbery…calling it home improvement"

Did you know you can commission a high-quality professional city-level survey? Turns out that 73% of Berkeley residents support expanding bike infrastructure — including 57% of non-bikers This isn't niche anymore. Will city council listen? via @marcprecipice.bsky.social @libbington.bsky.social

"US funding cuts to South Africa's HIV/AIDS programs could trigger more than 500,000 deaths over the next decade, the head of the Desmond Tutu HIV Foundation, Linda-Gail Bekker, told reporters"

"Iowa…holds the dubious distinction of becoming the first statehouse to repeal civil rights protections for trans people. The bill legislators passed…removes civil rights protections that had been enshrined in state law."

“Biden’s inner circle…the architects of a failed strategy that kept Biden in the race until the last possible moment, ignored glaring warning signs, and left Democrats without a viable alternative.”

I just want to take this #Project2025 tracker, and maybe a graph of the price of eggs, and time travel back to 2024

“The officer issued a verbal warning…She was 100 years old. No one was injured that night. But the drivers in Berkeley's last three pedestrian fatalities were 79, 85 and 87 years old.”

Good grief. Both the Trump *and* Modi administrations are angry at alleged USAID funding for voter outreach in India. Trump says India exploited the US for funding. India says US was meddling in its affairs. But the grant ISN'T EVEN REAL. They may be mixing it up with a 2022 grant to *Bangladesh*

“it can trigger a so-called ‘transit death spiral:’…fewer people ride transit,…forcing more cuts that worsen service further and trigger even more people to leave.”

In the short term, money can help protect some Americans from the Trump administration's actions. But *everyone* is susceptible to the flu. Mess with the vaccine, and you potentially make millions of Americans sicker next winter.

"I’d just like to pause for a moment to acknowledge that…it takes a very specific type of shitty villain to have me backing Verizon…Musk stealing Verizon’s FAA contract is just one of countless conflicts of interest that arise with having an unelected bureaucrat…bypassing bidding processes"

"In his first term, billionaires and foreign governments booked…suites in Trump Hotels…That was inefficient. Now, they can buy a worthless coin, drive up its value, and shovel millions into Trump’s personal fortune—without ever stepping into a hotel lobby"

I've been in a bunch of vacation rentals. Previous guests seem to forget to log out on almost every TV I've looked at.

WTF?! DOGE just murdered 18F — the government digital improvement team that's the LITERAL DEFINITION of scrappy tech-enabled government modernization. A rational Trump/Musk administration would take over 18F, rename them "DOGE," and claim all the credit. This makes absolutely no sense.

Cambridge Analytica built a database of personality profiles of American gun owners, based on two decades of data

2025 travel news: Trump's State Department is now going back and altering people's passport gender markers without their OK

"It turns out that Elon and DOGE actually fired 90% of the team working on it. Which raises an interesting question: How exactly do you 'turn on' Ebola prevention when you’ve fired all the people who… you know… prevent Ebola?"

A reminder of how many high quality tech tools *aren’t* American.

"Mr. Musk's demands…were initially rejected by more than half of the president's cabinet…[but] when they convened…with Mr. Trump, they made no attempt to say so."

“These stories amount to ‘the left was so annoying about pronouns…they had no choice but to get on board with the second coming of the Third Reich and the destruction of the planet.’”

"Climate advocates have lamented the decision to rescind the [Chevron] doctrine, saying it hamstrings agencies’ ability to protect both public health and the environment. But surprisingly, it could also make it easier to oppose the Trump administration’s actions…"

""

Mourn for what we're about to lose: "[NOAA] scientists, engineers and policy experts issue forecasts relied on by aviation, agriculture and fishing industries…provides ocean floor mapping depended upon for shipping and increasingly…modeling on what to expect as climate crisis unfolds."

American right-wing analysts plot to dox Wikipedia editors www.techdirt.com/2025/02/26/h...

Hey, it's the first tenants union launched under Berkeley's Measure BB!

How to engage a narcissist: "Macron sought to provide a master class in how to manage a belligerent friend. He praised Trump for his leadership. He clapped him on the back and smiled as the two acted like old friends…In an interview with Fox News…Macron called his election a 'game-changer'"

"While centralized governance on platforms like Twitter and Facebook became a highly politicized front in the culture war, it’s worth asking whether the system was truly broken…despite being imperfect, expensive and opaque, [it] nonetheless offered articulated rules…and professional enforcement"

This is wild and sprawling and convoluted beyond belief

It's disappointing that some of the much-hyped policy changes haven't panned out. But something I appreciate about California YIMBYs is that they're focused on actually getting homes *built*, rather than assuming that their bills will magically work.

"California once sued an HCSM, claiming that it…spent just 16 cents of every dollar in premiums on health care expenses.' By contrast, the Affordable Care Act requires…health insurance companies to spend at least 80 cents of every dollar on expenses."

O1 Preview and Deepseek R1 "'…shows diverse hacking behavior, including running another copy of Stockfish to make moves, replacing Stockfish in the game script, and overwriting the chess board'…non-reasoning models like GPT4o and Claude 3.5 Sonnet didn’t do this"

#RightToRepair is one of the most effective little movements of the past decade. Did the early Nader consumer rights movement feel like this?

"what the Trump administration is arguing…'Yeah, the bad guys might get your data, but they might not, so no standing for you.' But what this argument misses is that DOGE itself *are* the bad guys! The bad guys already got the data! Their unauthorized access to it was the exfiltration!"

"Is it wise to report every applicant to your secret service directly to Google, just to get some statistics? The answer the government sent: even if we do that, we don’t, because 'Google cannot see the IP address'. This is complete nonsense"

"Tarrio…described…a mainstream culture shift since leaving prison, walking into a 'multiverse' where Proud Boys are no longer considered 'far right.' 'We’re pretty much right wing,' he said. 'What view [do] we have, that Republicans don’t have now?'

This is incredible, a call to cut 1/3 of the MIC budget: "Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has ordered senior leaders at the Pentagon and throughout the U.S. military to develop plans for cutting 8% from the defense budget in each of the next five years"

"At one agency…an email to staff rescinding the mandate went so far as to say that if workers opted to reply [to Musk], they should 'assume that what you write will be read by malign foreign actors and tailor your responses accordingly.'"

"Once the list of banned countries is determined everyone from those countries who had been admitted to the US since the last ban was repealed will need to undergo an undefined form of 'reassessment'…This provision INCLUDES PEOPLE WITH GREEN CARDS" (Emphasis mine)

Research funding is still in disarray: "Funding for continuing grants administered by the National Cancer Institute has dropped from $162 million between February 1, 2024, and February 22, 2024, to $27 million over the same period this year."

A DOGE lie is bolstering right-wing conspiracy theories overseas: "…no evidence that $21 million was due to be spent for voter turnout in India…Three people with knowledge of regional aid programs, speaking on the condition of anonymity for fear of government retaliation, expressed bewilderment"

This weekend, feds were asked to submit a list of 5 accomplishments to [email protected] by Mon. at 11:59pm ET. Spoiler: we did the math and this creates almost $18M of waste (!!!) Read our newest post about this fun work assignment and what you can do: www.wethebuilders.org/posts/what-w...

“‘We know full well that he sees us as nothing…he’s just a businessman trying to make deals,’ Mrs. Olsen said. ‘We are not furniture…We have been colonized enough already, and we are tired of it.’”

For all the moral panic about AI art, this is probably where most people will see it first

"Burhan Azeem ’19 had never been to a city council meeting before he showed up to give a public comment on an affordable-­housing bill his senior year…Less than a year later, Azeem set out to shift the balance in who gets to make decisions"

"conservatives have picked up on the fact that deriding policies they oppose as products of DEI could encourage the White House to go after them next…Daniel Di Martino encouraged the Trump administration to 'end DEI in immigration' by…ending family-based migration"