The Land of Opportunity

Notes on the elections, immigrants and a request to pay attention.

Vibhuti Patel wore a sari every day to Newsweek for three decades. More on her below. | Sree’s newsletter is produced with Zach Peterson (@zachprague). | Digimentors Tech Tip from Robert S. Anthony (@newyorkbob). | Our sponsorship kit.

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I SURVIVED THE ELECTIONS BY TALKING & LISTENING. On, around and after the elections, I was live, hosting shows for more than 10 hours for Scroll & Scroll Global and Indian Express and was then interviewed multiple times on other networks, including Barkha Dutt’s Mojo Story and Nader Rahman’s Thikana. You can see all my coverage at this link.

Here’s a memo I wrote in prep for my morning-after shows. Let’s see how much I predicted comes true (slightly edited):

• If the results had gone the other way, we would have been bracing for violence nationwide, instigated by Donald Trump lying about a victory. The fact that we are not, tells you something about both sides and how Republicans used to be.

• Close battles in states, but can only be seen as a major win for Trump & MAGA.

• JD Vance, a deeply flawed man, will inevitably be the standard bearer of the party. He will do great damage to America for years to come.

• Yes, the price of eggs played a role. But it was so much more than that. The economy is strong, but people don’t feel it. The fiscally-conservative Economist said it would vote for Kamala Harris if it could.

• Misogyny and racism played a role. There will not be a female Dem nominee for president for many cycles.

• Harris should have distanced herself from Joe Biden earlier and more clearly, but that’s easy for us to say now.

• A right-wing media ecosystem has made it impossible for half of America to know what’s really happening in the world. Until progressives build their own ecosystem, they will suffer electoral defeats. Plus, ever-diminishing traditional media has to learn to focus on real issues, not just horse-race journalism.

• Joe Rogan and Elon Musk are factors in young men voting — typically low-turnout voters. They’re celebs of a different kind. As powerful as Beyoncé, Taylor Swift, George Clooney, etc. The right makes fun of Hollywood elite, but these are some of the right-wing elite.

• The $44 billion Musk spent on Twitter was a steal. What a low price to buy a presidency, to buy a country.

• Control of all three branches of govt + SCOTUS will be a recipe for disaster.

• Project 2025 is about to become real. Not every bit of it, but most likely the worst parts.

• A 7-2 majority in the Supreme Court is very likely, along with Clarence Thomas and Sam Alito being replaced by 40yos.

• Unfettered control of cabinet appointments with no way to stop some of the worst nominees.

• Get ready to hear about Vivek Ramaswamy, Tulsi Gabbard and other deplorables nonstop for four years, at least.

• Get ready for Health Secretary RFK Jr — banning of vaccines, return of measles, etc.

• Women’s right to healthcare will be decimated.

• Grave damage to the planet and acceleration of the climate emergency with a cabinet full of climate-change deniers.

• Putin unleashed: Ukraine will lose land permanently.

• Netanyahu unleashed: Gaza will continue to be pounded and so will Lebanon.

• China emboldened about Taiwan.

• Withdrawal from NATO is on the cards.

• Tariffs on China will raise prices — on everything.

• Mass deportations will be devastating in ways its supporters can’t predict.

• The rise of white Christian nationalism is going to accelerate.

I will keep tabs on this list and am happy to be proven wrong. What’s on your list?

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A tale of two sets of immigrants

This is a tale of two sets of immigrants. The first set are people who come to America, toil quietly in their field of work, succeed immensely and leave the country better than they found it. The other set are people who arrive here, succeed immensely and then decide to reshape the country in ways that leave it worse than they found it.

My friend Vibhuti Patel, was in the first category. An editor at Newsweek for three decades after arriving here from India, she was an arts journalist who wrote hundreds of articles and did countless interviews with some of the top names in the arts for Newsweek, the Wall Street Journal and other publications. She died the Sunday before the election, making sure to vote for Kamala Devi Harris and handed me the absentee ballot to put in the mail. Will miss you, Vibhuti. Rest in Power! 🌷

In the second category are three immigrants to the U.S. with ties to apartheid-era South Africa, who are using their immense financial success to make their adopted country worse than they found it.

You know all about South African-born Elon Musk (who worked illegally in America after dropping out of Stanford) and to some extent, Peter Thiel (a German who spent part of his childhood in South Africa). But you likely never heard of another South African-American, David Sacks, unless you spend too much time on Twitter or watched the more obscure parts of the Republican National Convention.

Trump himself is clearly an empty vessel—he will do what benefits him the most in almost every situation. If there is nothing to be lost or gained, he will simply outsource the decision to the loudest other voice in the room at that moment. This will have consequences at every level of government, across every agency, and, as such, will touch the lives of everyone.

But these three have Trump’s ear and that should worry us plenty.

Musk—who I warned about here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here—has already cashed in on the $100 million he spent to get Trump elected by joining him on a call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Fits right in with his idea that only “high status males” should run the government, with no room for women or men with low testosterone.

Sacks is even more of an ideologue than Musk. There are thousands of tweets and other online gristle to sift through if you want to get a flavor of Sacks’s whole deal, but I think this blog post from 2021 perfectly encapsulates his worldview. It’s a great example of how people like Sacks cherry-pick and obfuscate their way to an argument. Read this paragraph and then follow the links that Sacks provides:

Just as there is no set definition of “hate speech” that everyone agrees upon, the definition of a “hate group” is nebulous and ripe for overuse by those with an agenda. So it should come as no surprise that the ever-increasing list of suspects has grown from unquestionable hate groups, like neo-nazis and the KKK, to organizations who espouse socially conservative views, like the Family Research Council, religious liberty advocates, and even groups concerned with election integrity.

The Family Research Council espouses conversion therapy to “cure” LGBTQ+ people, and that’s just one thing on its long, awful list of priorities. Follow the hyperlinks in his post, and you’ll find that it’s almost impossible to agree with his libertarian fever dream of an ideology.

This entire cohort is made up of super-rich techno-libertarians, and Thiel may be the quiet king-in-waiting of them all. He hired VP-elect JD Vance at his venture capital firm, bankrolled his election to the Senate in Ohio with a cool $15 million, and now has his man in the White House. Thiel is almost solely responsible for Vance’s career advancement, and there’s good reason to believe that Thiel’s brand of no-holds-barred capitalism will find many willing compatriots in the next Trump administration.

Thiel’s seminal work was a book called The Diversity Myth, authored with Sacks, and is demagoguery and little else.

In 2022, James Pogue wrote a great piece on the Thiel-ian New Right and all of its strange nihilism, and it was prescient to say the least. Please read it—especially the extensive sections with Vance.

This is where I write something thoughtful, rousing, looking ahead. But instead I will ask you all to just pay attention, listen, understand what’s happening in the days and weeks and months ahead. Tuning out is not an option. Coasting is not an option. America — with its disproportionate, sometimes distasteful, impact on the world — is too important to accept blindly and also too important to give up on. We can still make it better.

— Sree | Twitter | Instagram | LinkedIn | Facebook | YouTube / Threads | Spread

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DIGIMENTORS TECH TIP | Nomo Smart Care: Family-Friendly Peace of Mind

By Robert S. Anthony
Each week, veteran tech journalist Bob Anthony shares a tech tip you don’t want to miss. Follow him @newyorkbob on Twitter and check out his 1.1 million followers on Pinterest!

If you’ve ever been on the wrong end of a cane or the back of a hand when attempting to assist an older family member, you know how much they appreciate their independence. Yes, you want to make sure they’re safe and sound, but how do you keep an eye on them without getting in their way?

The Nomo Smart Care system offers caregivers a simple way of monitoring older adults or other family members—like someone recovering at home from an injury or a preteen arriving home from school—without invading their privacy. Instead of using video, the system tracks movements and detects patterns, sending alerts to a smartphone app if anything seems out of line.

The system includes an Internet-connected hub with a motion detector, emergency button and a speakerphone; satellite modules which can also detect movement and small, motion-sensitive “tags” which can be attached to flat surfaces or worn as pendants.

Together the Nomo Smart Care system monitors movement patterns, like the normal time of day someone opens the refrigerator door or walks through the hallway in the morning and at night. If the system, for example, notices that it’s well past a subject’s normal waking time but no movement has been detected in the hallway and the refrigerator door never opened, it will send an alert to the app user.

The tags are waterproof and have small alert buttons that can be pushed in an emergency. Thus, one could be stuck at a low level in a shower stall or tub so it would be reachable in case of a fall. If worn as a pendant, the tags provide fall detection and can send immediate alerts to the app. App users have the option of speaking to the subject through the hub’s speakerphone.

The $250 Nomo Smart Care Essential Care Kit comes with the hub, two satellites and four tags but additional tags and satellites are available. The $9.99 monthly subscription includes connectivity with the app and emergency response services. If necessary, emergency response personnel can make an emergency 911 call in the subject’s home area, a task which app users may not be able to do themselves if they don’t live in the same city as the subject.

The Nomo Smart Care app can connect with other devices such as blood pressure monitors and thermometers and other consumer devices are under development by the company.

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Did we miss anything? Make a mistake? Do you have an idea for anything we’re up to? Let’s collaborate! sree@sree.net and please connect w/ me: Twitter | Instagram | LinkedIn | YouTube / Threads / Spread