Sarang Shah
@sarangshah.com
lawyer + politics phd candidate @ UC Berkeley, soon Columbia Law School
Social media fasting. Email me:
[email protected]
Here's what I am up to:
sarangshah.com
past: physicist, tech writer, & journalist
taoist living in San Francisco
Social media fasting. Email me:
[email protected]
Here's what I am up to:
sarangshah.com
past: physicist, tech writer, & journalist
taoist living in San Francisco
Pinned
Sarang Shah
@sarangshah.com
· Jul 22
NOW OUT ON FIRSTVIEW!!
Who Wants #Stakeholder #Capitalism? Public & Elite Perceptions of the Role of #Business #Leaders in #Politics
By @eitanhersh.bsky.social & @sarangshah.com
doi.org/10.1017/S153...
Who Wants #Stakeholder #Capitalism? Public & Elite Perceptions of the Role of #Business #Leaders in #Politics
By @eitanhersh.bsky.social & @sarangshah.com
doi.org/10.1017/S153...
Pleased to share our new paper now out in Perspectives on Politics! Happy to discuss and looking forward to hearing thoughts and suggestions for further research.
The President is sick www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...
Trump’s night of 160 posts on Truth Social fuels debate about US president’s stamina
The 79-year-old president’s social media blitz included conspiracies, attacks on political foes and self-praise
www.theguardian.com
December 2, 2025 at 7:24 PM
The President is sick www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...
"A political movement that dreams of a world that is smaller, simpler, dumber, more servile and less curious and much narrower than the one that currently exists would naturally fixate upon campuses and the individual and collective acts of becoming that happen there"
defector.com/the-conserva...
defector.com/the-conserva...
The Conservative Grievance Business Is Always Hiring | Defector
Given his age when he first came to the world’s attention and assuming continued good health in the intervening decade and change, Marine Todd would be in his late 30s today. That would be if he was…
defector.com
December 2, 2025 at 5:35 PM
"A political movement that dreams of a world that is smaller, simpler, dumber, more servile and less curious and much narrower than the one that currently exists would naturally fixate upon campuses and the individual and collective acts of becoming that happen there"
defector.com/the-conserva...
defector.com/the-conserva...
Reposted by Sarang Shah
Love to get an R&R upbraiding me for not engaging more with my own research
December 1, 2025 at 4:18 AM
Love to get an R&R upbraiding me for not engaging more with my own research
Reposted by Sarang Shah
yeah AI Ben Garrison is incredible
November 30, 2025 at 5:17 PM
yeah AI Ben Garrison is incredible
Cambridge really should know better
This is the most alarming story I’ve read today. Giving up the fight before it’s started
November 30, 2025 at 6:21 PM
Cambridge really should know better
Reposted by Sarang Shah
Same as it ever was; to provide sex for the students, sports for the alumni and parking for the faculty.
LSU is paying its previous football coach over $50 million NOT to coach there while likely guaranteeing Kiffin something approaching double that, all while having an academic hiring freeze and budget cuts across the board. What is the purpose of a university (rhetorical)?
SOURCES: Lane Kiffin is expected to accept LSU's offer to become the Tigers next head coach. Kiffin is set to meet with his Ole Miss team this morning at 9 AM CT. As we reported yesterday morning, LSU has been very confident it was going to land Kiffin. www.nytimes.com/athletic/684...
November 30, 2025 at 6:15 PM
Same as it ever was; to provide sex for the students, sports for the alumni and parking for the faculty.
I wonder how many more people now use the Discover feed rather than the Following feed since the inception of this website
November 30, 2025 at 6:15 PM
I wonder how many more people now use the Discover feed rather than the Following feed since the inception of this website
Folks often underestimate how much party leaders in Congress are stewards of the funder network first and foremost. That's the real job they're elected to do!
"High floor, no ceiling" isn't meant to be persuasive to voters, it's meant for donors, and I assume Jeffries, whose job functions partly by being able to direct donor money to favored and against unfavored candidates, knows that.
November 30, 2025 at 6:04 PM
Folks often underestimate how much party leaders in Congress are stewards of the funder network first and foremost. That's the real job they're elected to do!
Reposted by Sarang Shah
"High floor, no ceiling" isn't meant to be persuasive to voters, it's meant for donors, and I assume Jeffries, whose job functions partly by being able to direct donor money to favored and against unfavored candidates, knows that.
November 30, 2025 at 4:50 PM
"High floor, no ceiling" isn't meant to be persuasive to voters, it's meant for donors, and I assume Jeffries, whose job functions partly by being able to direct donor money to favored and against unfavored candidates, knows that.
Note here that FDR starts from a moral objective, however utilitarian, and works out from there. It's hard for me to articulate what our current Democratic leaders think is just and good.
November 30, 2025 at 5:56 PM
Note here that FDR starts from a moral objective, however utilitarian, and works out from there. It's hard for me to articulate what our current Democratic leaders think is just and good.
Popular sovereignty may have issues in its execution, but hot damn it's a far better principle for governance than personalist rule!
Turns out personalist rule is geopolitically erratic and consequential! It’s much easier to find a Wilhelm II than a Napoleon.
open.substack.com/pub/deadcarl...
open.substack.com/pub/deadcarl...
The Kaiser and a "Mediocre Man" Theory of History
A Case Study in the Historical Importance of Incompetence
open.substack.com
November 30, 2025 at 5:37 PM
Popular sovereignty may have issues in its execution, but hot damn it's a far better principle for governance than personalist rule!
Reposted by Sarang Shah
one reason "great power competition" is a bad description of the emerging order is that an interlinked global kleptocracy does not care about national interests or rivalries
Extraordinary WSJ reporting today that unveils the extent to which Trump, Witkoff, Kushner and US business executives are salivating over business deals with Russia while Putin’s forces kidnap Ukranian children and bomb civilians in their apartments.
🎁 www.wsj.com/world/russia...
🎁 www.wsj.com/world/russia...
November 29, 2025 at 2:42 PM
one reason "great power competition" is a bad description of the emerging order is that an interlinked global kleptocracy does not care about national interests or rivalries
Reposted by Sarang Shah
Yeah that's how I avoid the charge of supporting deregulation when supporting YIMBYism: bsky.app/profile/egal...
Also, instead of removing the majority of zoning regulations, I'd simply reverse the polarity of them: All parking minimums are now parking maximums. All minimum lot sizes are now maximum lot sizes. All maximum height limits are now minimum height limits. All setbacks are now setforwards. And so on.
November 30, 2025 at 12:36 AM
Yeah that's how I avoid the charge of supporting deregulation when supporting YIMBYism: bsky.app/profile/egal...
This is why I think the language around regulation needs to be about "regulatory design" and "reregulation" rather than the one-dimensional spectrum implied by "deregulation." We're not deregulating anything; we're marketcrafting to achieve certain objectives.
The people in my replies explaining that actually some regulations are over broad and small businesses need help to navigate them and so this is a left-wing position. Yes! Good!
November 30, 2025 at 12:31 AM
This is why I think the language around regulation needs to be about "regulatory design" and "reregulation" rather than the one-dimensional spectrum implied by "deregulation." We're not deregulating anything; we're marketcrafting to achieve certain objectives.
Reposted by Sarang Shah
RIP the greatest British playwright of our time on.ft.com/4anfEQJ
British playwright Sir Tom Stoppard dies
[FREE TO READ] Czech-born author of witty, cerebral plays was also an award-winning screenwriter
on.ft.com
November 29, 2025 at 9:15 PM
RIP the greatest British playwright of our time on.ft.com/4anfEQJ
Reposted by Sarang Shah
A Cool Young Writer Is Isekai’d Into the Future By Time’s Inescapable March
November 29, 2025 at 8:37 PM
A Cool Young Writer Is Isekai’d Into the Future By Time’s Inescapable March
Reposted by Sarang Shah
On the other hand I think it would be very funny to retitle literary fiction light novel style. “Oh No! This Author Stand-In is Unhappily Married”
This attitude is how you end up with light novel titles.
November 29, 2025 at 8:23 PM
On the other hand I think it would be very funny to retitle literary fiction light novel style. “Oh No! This Author Stand-In is Unhappily Married”
Reposted by Sarang Shah
“He combined more than 30 plays for the theatre with a steady stream of works for television and radio, and with screenplays including an adaptation of John le Carré’s The Russia House, Terry Gilliam’s Brazil and a joint credit for the Oscar-winning screenplay of Shakespeare in Love.”
Tom Stoppard, playwright of dazzling wit and playful erudition, dies aged 88
A theatrical sensation since the 1960s, whose dramas included Arcadia, The Real Thing and Leopoldstadt, Stoppard also had huge success as a screenwriter
www.theguardian.com
November 29, 2025 at 7:10 PM
“He combined more than 30 plays for the theatre with a steady stream of works for television and radio, and with screenplays including an adaptation of John le Carré’s The Russia House, Terry Gilliam’s Brazil and a joint credit for the Oscar-winning screenplay of Shakespeare in Love.”
Reposted by Sarang Shah
Ok this is a sign
Wow: JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon seems to think that companies involved with Trump's ballroom project could be criminally prosecuted. thehill.com/business/559...
November 29, 2025 at 6:01 PM
Ok this is a sign
If anything, the proof of the American creed, that a people and a peaceful democratic polity can be forged from a diverse melange of migrants, will become even more important as an ideal for the whole world
“Anyone who thinks the 21st century will not see the biggest global movement of peoples in history has not been paying attention.” The MAGA push forntotal migration prohibition is a doomed last gasp… www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
David Runciman · Are we doomed? The End of the Species
Are we doomed to die out? We find ourselves at the only point in the history of the species when the rate of population...
www.lrb.co.uk
November 29, 2025 at 6:33 PM
If anything, the proof of the American creed, that a people and a peaceful democratic polity can be forged from a diverse melange of migrants, will become even more important as an ideal for the whole world
Reposted by Sarang Shah
Bob Crumb coming out of retirement just to say "RFK Jr. is right about vaccines and my ex-wife should've taken more advice from me" is such a fitting end to Boomer Americana and everything the "alt-comix" movement claimed to stand for
November 29, 2025 at 2:16 PM
Bob Crumb coming out of retirement just to say "RFK Jr. is right about vaccines and my ex-wife should've taken more advice from me" is such a fitting end to Boomer Americana and everything the "alt-comix" movement claimed to stand for
Reposted by Sarang Shah
More Stoppard: His hilarious farce “On the Razzle,” drawn from the same source material used by Thornton Wilder to write “The Merchant of Yonkers,” which in turn inspired “Hello Dolly.” Stoppard’s version is by far the best.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDs1...
www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDs1...
Tom Stoppard's On The Razzle (1983)
YouTube video by American Musical Theater Archives
www.youtube.com
November 29, 2025 at 5:53 PM
More Stoppard: His hilarious farce “On the Razzle,” drawn from the same source material used by Thornton Wilder to write “The Merchant of Yonkers,” which in turn inspired “Hello Dolly.” Stoppard’s version is by far the best.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDs1...
www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDs1...
Reposted by Sarang Shah
Trump has entered the US into a new international order—neoroyalism.
"The purpose of neo-royalist orders is to develop rules that allow a small clique to maintain dominance in both material and symbolic goods"
www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
bsky.app/profile/aben...
"The purpose of neo-royalist orders is to develop rules that allow a small clique to maintain dominance in both material and symbolic goods"
www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
bsky.app/profile/aben...
November 29, 2025 at 4:46 PM
Trump has entered the US into a new international order—neoroyalism.
"The purpose of neo-royalist orders is to develop rules that allow a small clique to maintain dominance in both material and symbolic goods"
www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
bsky.app/profile/aben...
"The purpose of neo-royalist orders is to develop rules that allow a small clique to maintain dominance in both material and symbolic goods"
www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
bsky.app/profile/aben...
Reposted by Sarang Shah
One of my favorite Stoppard monologues. From Arcadia.
November 29, 2025 at 5:40 PM
One of my favorite Stoppard monologues. From Arcadia.
Reposted by Sarang Shah
"We shed as we pick up, like travellers who must carry everything in their arms, and what we let fall will be picked up by those behind. The procession is very long and life is very short. We die on the march. But there is nothing outside the march so nothing can be lost to it."
November 29, 2025 at 5:28 PM
"We shed as we pick up, like travellers who must carry everything in their arms, and what we let fall will be picked up by those behind. The procession is very long and life is very short. We die on the march. But there is nothing outside the march so nothing can be lost to it."