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Sarojini Rao

@sarojinirao.bsky.social

Economist || Healthcare & development policy nerd 🤓
‼️Personal account, personal opinions
🇮🇳🇺🇸🏳️‍🌈✊🏽🐕🐾
📍occupied Powhatan land aka RVA

Posts Replies Media Videos

Reposted by Sarojini Rao

Jack Jackson

@heywoodhawk.bsky.social

This is a really interesting and underreported point. More here:

youtube.com/shorts/j47fk...

The Racist Family Legacy of Elon Musk

YouTube video by Katie Couric

youtube.com

February 8, 2025 at 5:29 PM

Reposted by Sarojini Rao

Micah

@rincewind.run

one of the defining features of the techbro dipshits now running the USA is their absolute refusal to consider that anyone, ever, has thought about problems before them

time after time they come in, propose a solution that was rejected years ago because it's stupid, and call themselves geniuses

Anna Bower @annabower.bsky.social · Feb 4

Ah, yes, I’m sure no prior administration thought to ask how all the payments are made.

Screenshot of tweet that reads: “I bet Elon got to DC, asked where all the money was going, and nobody could answer.

So he asks how payments are made and it turns out one department does them all. Obviously he’s like, “great, there, I want to go there.”

What’s crazy is no previous admin *even thought to ask*”

February 4, 2025 at 12:16 AM

Reposted by Sarojini Rao

e.w. niedermeyer

@niedermeyer.online

Elon Musk's mother moved to South Africa in the year Apartheid was created, and she and Elon left the year it ended. The last Apartheid Prime Minister, a man who refused to testify at the Truth and Reconciliation Committee, was a family friend who stayed at their home. This is not a crazy theory.

Carl T. Bergstrom @carlbergstrom.com · Feb 3

What’s his beef against USAID in particu….oh. Wow.

X post:

Elon Musk

@elonmusk
We spent the weekend feeding USAID into the wood chipper.

Could gone to some great parties.

Did that instead.

U.S. policy was to help bring an end to apartheid and establish a nonracial, democratic government. In response to this policy and the Act, USAID/South Africa was responsible for financing projects that apartheid victims viewed as critical in promoting social, political, and economic change through peaceful means.

The mission enabled community consultation and ensured that the United States did not impose foreign-defined solutions to local problems. USAID created projects and activities to respond to the priorities of the black community and its leaders, maximized black participation and leadership, and ensured activities had a linkage to the general objectives of U.S. policy.

First-year funding for the program was $25 million, which was raised to $50 million the second year. The main project areas were community outreach and leadership development to redress the repression of black-led institutions; educational support and training to address the educational crisis in South Africa; black private enterprise development to combat the inhibiting effects of apartheid–induced discrimination in private enterprise; university grants to help create a new generation of economic and political leaders; human rights; legal assistance; labor union training; and health and nutrition

February 3, 2025 at 2:55 PM

Reposted by Sarojini Rao

southpaw

@nycsouthpaw.bsky.social

NBC News is being kicked out of its space in the Pentagon and replaced by OANN.

MEMORANDUM FOR THE PENTAGON PRESS ASSOCIATION
SUBJECT: New Annual Media Rotation Program for Pentagon Press Corps
For over a half-century, the Pentagon Press Corps has benefited from working out of individual office spaces that provide coveted and open access to some of the Department's top military and civilian leaders.
Known as the Correspondents' Corridor, this office space loaned to media outlets by the
Secretary of Defense stands as a tribute to the importance the Department has long placed on informing the public about the U.S. military and all it does to project peace through strength. It also honors the many correspondents who put their lives on the line, and in many cases died, while covering our finest in battle.
In order to broaden access to the limited space of the Correspondents' Corridor to outlets
that have not previously enjoyed the privilege and journalistic value of working from physical office space in the Pentagon, beginning February 14, 2025, the Office of the Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs will implement a new Annual Media Rotation Program for those dedicated media spaces.
Each year, one outlet from each press medium - print, online, television and radio - that
has enjoyed working from a physical office in the Pentagon will rotate out of the building to allow a new outlet from the same medium that has not had the unique opportunity to report as a resident member of the Pentagon Press Corps.
This year, the following news outlets will begin their rotation by vacating their physical
office space effective Friday, February 14, 2025:
Print - The New York Times
TV - NBC News
Radio - National Public Radio
Online News - POLITICO
In their place, the following outlets from each medium will be invited to move into the
Correspondents' Corridor workspaces formerly occupied by the above four outlets.
Print - New York Post
TV - One America News Network
Radio - Breitbart News Network
Online News - HuffPost News (aka The Huffington Post)

To be clear, the outlets that vacate the spaces loaned to them by the Secretary will remain as full members of the Pentagon Press Corps. They will continue to enjoy the same media access to the Pentagon and will be able to attend and cover briefings and be considered for travel with civilian and military leaders in the Department as they have previously.
The only change will be giving up their physical workspaces in the building to allow new
outlets to have their turn to become resident members of the Pentagon Press Corps.
Thank you in advance for participating in the Pentagon Press Corps Annual Media
Rotation Program. By turning over the office space loaned to you by the Secretary, you will ensure that new outlets will have the same opportunity you have enjoyed covering our nation's finest up close from office spaces inside the walls of the Pentagon.
(John Ullyot
Acting

February 1, 2025 at 2:28 AM

Reposted by Sarojini Rao

Ken Klippenstein

@kenklippenstein.bsky.social

ICE just adopted new policies making it harder for Congress to prevent deportations, per memo leaked to me:

January 31, 2025 at 10:25 PM

Reposted by Sarojini Rao

MC Squared

@mcsquared.bsky.social

January 23, 2025 at 7:25 PM

Reposted by Sarojini Rao

Jonathan M. Katz

@katz.theracket.news

TL;DR: There’s no new intelligence. A China hawk lab leaker took over the agency and decided to make this the position, with “low confidence.”

How unexpected.

The New York Times @nytimes.com · Jan 25

The CIA has said for years that it did not have enough information to conclude how the Covid pandemic originated. The agency has issued a new assessment this week, with analysts saying they now favor the theory that it emerged from an accidental leak at a research lab in Wuhan, China.

C.I.A. Now Favors Lab Leak Theory to Explain Covid’s Origins

A new analysis that began under the Biden administration is released by the C.I.A.’s new director, John Ratcliffe, who wants the agency to get “off the sidelines” in the debate.

nyti.ms

January 25, 2025 at 9:59 PM

Reposted by Sarojini Rao

Shiv Ramdas Mens Rice Activist

@nameshiv.bsky.social

Chandrashekhar Azad the Indian freedom fighter once evaded British police looking for him on a train by disguising himself as the conducttor and escorting them from car to car helping them search

nai THEE People's Princess 🦋 @astoldbynai.blacksky.app · Jan 23

11. Who is the coolest person in history that no one has ever heard of?

January 23, 2025 at 3:25 PM

Reposted by Sarojini Rao

Ziyad Al-Aly MD

@zalaly.bsky.social

The latest from my team in Nature Medicine.

We comprehensively mapped the benefits and risks of GLP-1 receptor agonists (GLP-1) (Ozempic, Wegovy, Mounjaro, Zepbound).

By @Biostayan, Taeyoung Choi and me

A 🧵
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Mapping the effectiveness and risks of GLP-1 receptor agonists - Nature Medicine

An atlas of the associations between the use of GLP-1 receptor agonists (GLP-1RAs) and 175 health outcomes reports the effectiveness and risks of GLP-1RAs compared with other antihyperglycemic medicat...

www.nature.com

January 20, 2025 at 8:41 PM

Reposted by Sarojini Rao

Katie Mack

@astrokatie.com

Same. This is not where I look for fights — or even for perfectly civil debates. I have other places to find all that! This place, for me, is primarily for learning about things I find interesting, sharing stuff I think is cool, and connecting with people in worthwhile ways.

Mark Harris @markharris.bsky.social · Jan 20

Since a page is about to turn, I'll just say that I have less patience than I once did for unnecessary fights or with spending time here with people looking for them. If that's your thing, fine--everyone blows off steam in different ways. But I'm not here for that.

January 20, 2025 at 3:06 AM