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Arnab Ray

5 Nov, 11 tweets, 2 min read

I had predicted (not the only one of course) that if the margin is narrow (ie Trump doesn’t lose Texas or Florida) he will claim the election is rigged, take it to the courts and then use his newly installed Supreme Court judge to take the election.

To this end, fake graphics showing that votes in states are being circulated on Twitter that dumps of mail in ballots have no votes to Trump and that more votes are being counted than people registered. These are obviously prepared “data” that is being unleashed.

Whether this is Trump’s own vahini or Comrade Putin I don’t know but it’s not important. Now for those that don’t know this: in the US, the elections don’t elect the President, they elect electors.

Electors are anonymous MPs, anonymous because you don’t know who they are and MPs in that they elect the leader. That’s their only role, they elect the President and are discarded. Like condoms. Now here is the strange thing.

Electors aren’t bound to vote as per majority. So let’s say you are an elector from CA. You don’t have to vote for Biden just because Biden won CA and you are an elector for CA. It’s expected you will respect the mandate of your state but it’s not mandatory.

In some states, the penalty of not voting the way your state did is apparently a fine. This I couldn’t believe when I heard it and I sincerely hope it isn’t true. In 2016 Democrats raised the issue of Trump electors (ie those that should vote for Trump) vote for Hillary.

There is even a SNL skit where Kate McKinnon doing her Hillary character does a spoof of a scene from Love Actually going to an elector’s door and asking her to vote Hillary because “Trump will kill us all”.

Now with courts involved & with nothing out of bounds, on a close election, electors doing “palti” may happen. Or as Amit Shah would say they will understand the chronology.

What Trump is doing with fake data circulated by his social media team will do irreparable harm to US democracy. In the same way that Kejriwal and his video gang did for the Indian election system with their “EVM are rigged” canard.

indiatoday.in/india/story/ar… this stuff. What Kejriwal thinks today, Trump thinks tomorrow. Krantikari.

Why the US is like this, I have no idea. Why federal elections are not conducted by the federal government, but by states and counties I have no idea. Why a license to drive is issued by a state and not US I have no idea. Yes I know “federal” structure... but it’s nonsense

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More from @greatbong

Arnab Ray

@greatbong

2 Nov

Rajasthan Royals has a good side in place. Their foreign first choice is the best of all the franchises: The worlds best t20 pacer (Bumrah may disagree), the best all rounder, the best keeper batsman & one of the worlds best batsmen. Problem remains their Indian talent.

These 4 should be the core of the side for the next few years. They are all young & at the peak of their careers. Problem is that they didn’t give Jaiswal an extended run. Did it make sense to keep playing Robbie given this is his last season?

Samson will struggle with consistency like Pandey does but he is a match winner. They need 2 Indian match winning batsmen, who will be the other? A winning IPL side needs at least 2 Indian match winning batsmen. KXP has the 2. RR does not.

Read 5 tweets

Arnab Ray

@greatbong

9 Oct

A lot of social media static on starting children early in coding based on Whitehat junior. What I read is that these coding apps don’t really teach coding, coding is algorithms & problem solving, stuff you can learn much better by having unstructured play time.

As a PhD in computer science in software engineering later going to cybersecurity, here’s my hot take. No, your laadla is not going to make an app that will get your neighbor jealous, but that also doesn’t mean the simplistic “coding is algorithms” either.

The habits (note I didn’t use the word “skill”) you learn as someone less than 10 years old while coding in something like code.org or MIT’s Scratch are patience in front of a computer, debugging, making changes and observing consequences.

Read 6 tweets

Arnab Ray

@greatbong

9 Oct

The new H1B rules on the face of it would benefit Indians in that their salaries would be vastly increased, especially those up for renewal. Companies wouldn’t let employees go for a salary increment of 10k, will be way more costly to replace them.

Such measures, of course made by the white supremacist running legal immigration who isn’t too bright, actually end up helping the people they seek to target. I know of one such example. Years ago, a US citizen and Indian citizen were hired for 75k, identical experience & role

The Indian guy on his first paycheck finds his salary as 90k. Contacting payroll to check if it’s a mistake, he is told that they didn’t know but there is a county ordinance passed by Republicans that set 90k as the minimum for a non US advanced degree.

Read 4 tweets

Arnab Ray

@greatbong

18 Aug

If they want to win, these guys needs to rethink their communication strategy & understand that the Nehruvian days of elitistly laughing at the lack of privilege of others is poor optics. Be it chaiwala or half educated.

The problem of “liberals” is again lack of adherence to principles. One can’t both be equalization of privilege as well as using that inequality as a slur when the opinion isn’t what they like. They can’t call deplatforming as “intolerance” when they do it themselves all the time

I want to say a lot more about the “liberal” elite of India, how liberalism (the true one) is adhering to a set of progressive principles, and how those who think them “liberal” because they read buzzfeedizations of Marxist theory are no better (or worse) than fundamentalists

Read 4 tweets

Arnab Ray

@greatbong

8 Aug

Rajdeep Sardesai: Sushant Singh Rajput was not such a big star that there should be so much political pressure.

People have asked me why do I “go” after Sardesai. This is the reason.

For years, Sardesai, provided a bully pulpit by virtue of his last name, has lived by the dual standard. Some people are “big” hence deserve special treatment, some are not. Hence his reverential head-bowed interview of Sonia & the disrespectful questioning of Modi.

He will go after a heckler in Times Square, knowing very well that this guy is a nobody, but squirm in his seat in front of Pranab Mukherjee or Raj Thackeray. A life or a human being isn’t valuable to him unless it’s “big” as per his definition.

Read 9 tweets

Arnab Ray

@greatbong

21 Jul

Went through Chetan Bhagat’s comments on reviewers and critics. In terms of being contemptuous of critics, he is in august company, Satyajit Ray would write angry newspaper ripostes to bad reviews, much more trenchant than Mr. Bhagat.

The arguments were similar. Critics should keep their opinions to themselves, they are bad faith actors or just ignorant, unable to do anything productive except to tear down those that were.

As an artist of far less excellence than Satyajit Ray and of course Mr. Bhagat, I do concur somewhat in that some critics are indeed bad faith actors, who aren’t critiquing you because you produced bad art, but because they don’t like you for the person you are.

Read 12 tweets

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