Benjamin Rahn
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brahn.bsky.social
Benjamin Rahn
@brahn.bsky.social
430 followers 570 following 320 posts
Dad. Product engineer. Ex-Stripe.
Co-founded ActBlue. Erstwhile physicist.
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brahn.bsky.social
www.nytimes.com/2025/11/12/o...
From the linked piece by Jamelle Bouie: "If they win next year, Democrats will need to treat the next Congress not as a return to the status quo ante but as the beginning of a new era in which the principal task is to roll back the president's effort to create and consolidate a personalist dictatorship. They'll need to fortify the American political system against future attempts to play dictator and lay out a project of genuine democratic renewal. None of this is possible without a willingness to use power rather than just hold it."
November 12, 2025 at 6:38 PM
brahn.bsky.social
Zohran for NYC stylized sign that reads “How to Cook for Forty Humans
November 9, 2025 at 5:53 AM
brahn.bsky.social
If you see this, quote post with a robot that is not from star wars, star trek, doctor who, or transformers
Daft Punk (electronic music duo who dress like robots for their performances)
October 31, 2025 at 7:28 AM
brahn.bsky.social
If we take a step back for a second, the idea that if a political movement garners mass support, it can't possibly be extremism, incompatible with democratic self-government, or beyond the pale in a broader cultural and societal sense is utterly implausible and historically illiterate. History is full of authoritarian movements that had mass appeal (the Nazis, to mention the obvious There is one more factor that helps explain the eagerness of influential people in the (small-d) democratic coalition to accommodate and acquiesce: The position of the liberal commentator in the discourse, and the role he assigns to himself. As America falls apart, Ezra Klein aspires to be the voice of reason and demonstrate that he can still operate across the divide and do politics where everyone else has given up on
October 5, 2025 at 4:43 PM
brahn.bsky.social
If we take a step back for a second, the idea that if a political movement garners mass support, it can't possibly be extremism, incompatible with democratic self-government, or beyond the pale in a broader cultural and societal sense is utterly implausible and historically illiterate. History is full of authoritarian movements that had mass appeal (the Nazis, to mention the obvious There is one more factor that helps explain the eagerness of influential people in the (small-d) democratic coalition to accommodate and acquiesce: The position of the liberal commentator in the discourse, and the role he assigns to himself. As America falls apart, Ezra Klein aspires to be the voice of reason and demonstrate that he can still operate across the divide and do politics where everyone else has given up on
October 5, 2025 at 4:43 PM
brahn.bsky.social
Uncanny www.newsfromthestates.com/article/fede...
Sen John Thune, Republicans Majority Leader Tom Robinson, “We’re all trying to figure out who did this” meme
October 1, 2025 at 7:05 PM
brahn.bsky.social
Um wow www.reddit.com/r/behindtheb...

www.britannica.com/biography/Os...
Headline: Oswald Mosley's grandson is the boss of Palantir in the UK. Picture from Britannica website, with caption: British Union of Fascists founder Oswald Mosley being saluted by fascists in Bristol, England, 1934. The picture depicts the widely-recognized Nazi salute.
August 28, 2025 at 6:37 PM
brahn.bsky.social
...So I tried prompting the model to make a plan for finding the data, verifying them, and embedding the images. The results were much better (though it still required a some back-and-forth).

Results attached, full chat here: chatgpt.com/share/689902...

6/6
Much better results for building a diagram of the US presidents since Herbert Hoover. (On my spot-checking all the information and images are correct.)
August 10, 2025 at 8:35 PM
brahn.bsky.social
...and can be steered toward relying on this sort of search retrieval (rather than just spicy autocomplete) to gather the data.

With the launch of GPT-5 I saw a number of posts mocking its hilariously-recognizable-but-very-wrong results when asked to build a chart of recent presidents... 5/
Very bad results of asking GPT-5 to build a diagram of US presidents since Herbert Hoover. Lots of bad mispellings, wrong dates, and distorted pictures that have only the most passing resemblance to the intended president. Source https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/last-16-us-presidents-chatgpt5-simon-kent-pm09e/
August 10, 2025 at 8:35 PM
brahn.bsky.social
Steven Brust's Vlad Taltos series. Read in publication order, starting with _Jhereg_ (Film noir detective story meets mission impossible caper, set in a fantasy world of assassins and witchery.)

Here's Cory Doctorow extolling the series
boingboing.net/2017/10/17/b...
Excerpt from linked review: Firstly, these are sprightly novels. Though Brust is spinning a genuinely epic tale of civilization-spanning intrigue, informed by profound insight into politics and power, these are, at core, caper novels about a wisecracking assassin who is also a witch, and whose familiars, a pair of flying venomous lizards called "jhereg," are even funnier than Vlad, the series narrator. Brust is a great political thinker (he may be the person the wags had in mind when they observed that Marxists are the only fantasy writers who get the ratio of lords to vassals right), but he never allows the politics shot through these volumes to get in the way of their astonishing narrative energy. What I'm trying to say is: these are fun to read. But they're not just fun. They're also daring. Each volume does something that Brust has never done before. One book takes the form of annotations to a dry-cleaning bill (seriously!), another is framed around gathering ingredients for a recipe (likewise); another is a trio of multi-POV novellas that interlock in surprising, head-spinning ways. There are whodunnits, war novels, romances, heists, quests… And, with Vallista, now there is a haunted house novel to rival Gormenghast, The Fall of the House of Usher, or Lovecraft's He. I've followed other long-running series, like Pratchett's Discworld books. Unlike Pratchett, Brust keeps the focus on a single character, Vlad Taltos, and follows his development through book after book, as he quests to…well, that's an interesting question. A more obvious comparison is King's Black Tower books, which I followed for decades (only to be disappointed when the series finished with a wet fizzle of a cop-out), but whereas the Black Tower concerned itself with Roland, the eternal and unchanging hero, Vlad Taltos changes…a lot. He learns things, and then learns that those things were wrong. He changes for the better, and for the worse. [...] these books are unlike anything I've read.
July 13, 2025 at 7:44 PM
brahn.bsky.social
Post your favorite Doctor Who, wrong answers only.
Garak from Star Trek: Deep Space 9, wearing a vest and striped shirt, making a jazz hands gesture
July 1, 2025 at 2:38 AM
brahn.bsky.social
Screencap from "O Brother Where Art Thou" with Pappy O'Daniel and son sitting on a porch. The text reads "Say I got an idea...we could hire us a little fella even smaller than Stokes's".
June 30, 2025 at 8:28 PM
brahn.bsky.social
Caption contest!

From www.rollingstone.com/politics/pol... @swin24.bsky.social
US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth at a press conference, scrunching up his face in a comical manner (which he would probably describe as fierce and manly)
June 26, 2025 at 5:27 PM
brahn.bsky.social
Broke my silence on X.com to reach out to Ken Watanabe
Screen capture of https://x.com/brahn/status/1930749217817149580
June 5, 2025 at 10:12 PM
brahn.bsky.social
Proposed test of an Democratic initiative's media capability: are you getting headlines about beating MAGA, or about beating other Democrats?
bsky.app/profile/poli...

(To be fair, the preview headline has now changed to "Dems are quietly forming a think tank to help them win again")
Politico headline: "New think tank 'Seachlight' pushes Democrats toward more popular positions"
June 4, 2025 at 5:36 PM
brahn.bsky.social
This seems unnecessarily expensive. I just found this nice kit from Melissa & Doug on Amazon for under $25
Collection of four sock barnyard animal sock puppets (a sheep, a cow, a pig and a horse)
May 31, 2025 at 4:04 PM
brahn.bsky.social
A line reading that lives rent free in my head.
Screencap from "O Brother, Where Art Thou": Tim Blake Nelson saying "...and turned him into a horny toad"
May 27, 2025 at 8:10 PM
brahn.bsky.social
Brooks has decades of right-wing enablement for which to atone. But fwiw: www.nytimes.com/2025/04/17/o... Doesn't make him a hero, or someone whose opinions should be mistaken as wisdom. But I think we're better off welcoming the late-to-the-party crowd (so others will know they can join too).
Excerpt from the linked Brooks column: What is happening now is not normal politics. We're seeing an assault on the fundamental institutions of our civic life, things we should all swear loyalty to - Democrat, independent or Republican. **It's time for a comprehensive national civic uprising.** It's time for Americans in universities, law, business, nonprofits and the scientific community, and civil servants and beyond to form one coordinated mass movement. Trump is about power. The only way he's going to be stopped is if he's confronted by some movement that possesses rival power.
May 9, 2025 at 8:59 PM
brahn.bsky.social
Brings to mind this video from ~8 years ago calling out "Weaponized Intertextuality", esp. in context of Episode VII
www.youtube.com/watch?v=QeAK...
Video screen cap with the words "weaponized intertextuality" on top of an out-of-focus shot from Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens
May 9, 2025 at 7:16 PM
brahn.bsky.social
Also fun to see what color is in this season
May 5, 2025 at 5:25 AM
brahn.bsky.social
Every once in a blue moon there’s a pleasant surprise
A billboard that reads “Manage your stormy data. No hush money required”
May 5, 2025 at 5:21 AM
brahn.bsky.social
Did GenAI make this?
Screencap of https://bsky.app/profile/governor.ca.gov/post/3lnycxlgh2c2u with Gov. Newsom, grinning, saying "GenAI has come to traffic management"
April 30, 2025 at 3:21 AM
brahn.bsky.social
HA HA HA HA HA HA YOU DUMB FASCIST FUCKS

Also all the institutions that rolled over and complied look like idiots.
NYTimes headline: "Trump Officials Blame Mistake for Setting Off Confrontation with Harvard" ... "An official on the administration's antisemitism task force told the university that a letter of demands had been sent without authorization"
April 19, 2025 at 2:39 AM
brahn.bsky.social
gdmit
Picture from meme https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heartbreaking:_The_Worst_Person_You_Know_Just_Made_A_Great_Point
April 17, 2025 at 10:56 PM
brahn.bsky.social
It's in the manual! en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simple_... www.cia.gov/static/5c875...
Excerpt from the Simple Sabotage Field Manual: "When possible, refer all matters to committees, for 'further study and consideration.' Attempt to make the committees as large as possible -- never less than five."
April 8, 2025 at 12:42 AM