Abhik Pramanik (@abhik) header
Abhik Pramanik (@abhik) profile picture

Cofounder @ashbyhq. Product @PlanGrid. Wrote software to blow things up @DisneyPixar, @ILMVFX, @DWAnimation. If you give me a baked good, I will eat it.

San Francisco Bay Area
Joined May 2010
Photo by Abhik Pramanik (@abhik)Photo by Abhik Pramanik (@abhik)Photo by Abhik Pramanik (@abhik)Photo by Abhik Pramanik (@abhik)Photo by Abhik Pramanik (@abhik)Photo by Abhik Pramanik (@abhik)Photo by Abhik Pramanik (@abhik)Photo by Abhik Pramanik (@abhik)Photo by Abhik Pramanik (@abhik)Photo by Abhik Pramanik (@abhik)
At @ashbyhq, we use thoughtful communication to be unreasonably productive (engineers can focus 36 hours/week!). In our first (!) blog post, I share our motivations, internal guidelines, and challenges these guidelines can bring to a remote-first company: ashbyhq.com/culture/blog/tho…
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Abhik Pramanik retweeted
The result of @sfgov’s progressive drug and crime policies is children stepping over dead bodies to walk their dog.
There’s hundreds of young kids that live in Tenderloin. These kids see dead bodies practically every day and it’s not blurred when they see it. So if they see it and they stomach it I’m quite sure y’all adults who’s asking me to blur it out can stomach it too…
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Your country is being looted
US energy company execs have resigned in disgust as the Trump family is caught secretly expediting the funneling of $25 billion from a sanctioned Russian energy giant in exchange for allowing Russians to obtain a natural gas project in Alaska. According to investigations by The New York Times and Financial Times, Russia's Novatek allegedly concealed its financial involvement in the American project through a UAE-linked intermediary. Gentry Beach, a longtime Trump ally and close friend of Donald Trump Jr., signed an agreement with Novatek to pursue natural gas development in Alaska. Reuters documented the arrangement in February. Meanwhile, Vladimir Putin discussed this cooperation on the Alaska energy project with Trump's representatives, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, during negotiations involving Russia and Ukraine. The controversy deepened when Polar Train LNG's CEO, Joel Riddle, raised concerns about concealed Russian financing and possible sanctions violations. He departed in September, followed by other senior executives. The Financial Times also described discussions about a potential arrangement under which Novatek would provide technology for the Alaska project in exchange for sanctions relief benefiting its Arctic LNG 2 development in Siberia. According to The New York Times, Riddle and two other departing executives warned the Trump administration about the Russian financing and urged officials to investigate. The White House maintains that the project was mentioned only briefly and that no detailed discussions took place. There is no established evidence that Kushner or Witkoff knew about the allegedly concealed financing. Polar Train LNG denies wrongdoing. The central question is how a sanctioned Russian energy company became involved in a major American energy venture while Putin was discussing potential economic cooperation with Trump's representatives and a longtime Trump family associate was pursuing a separate agreement with the same Russian company. Selling Alaska to the Russians or selling Ukraine to the Russians - to the Trump family it's all the same. ft.com/content/e9cfbfbb-e65a…
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Abhik Pramanik retweeted
"I think Paris should be a real wake up call to every single young American. France is the dream the left talks about: the liberal safety-net rich Socialist Europe. That dream is the nightmare I left from Chicago. A society that comes down to how much you can take from others, that's not a society that we want to create" -Ken Griffin, on the lessons young Americans must learn from the recent chaos in France
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When I say "under Trump, the U.S. has switched our alliance from Europe to Russia", I am not exaggerating for rhetorical effect.
Replying to @MalcontentmentT
Update: Ukraine is reporting that additional speed restrictions have been imposed on Starlink Internet terminals, and communications are lost at speeds of 60 to 70 kph. This essentially wipes out Ukraine’s drone operations through the operational depth. Earlier, restrictions were on StarShield only.
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Abhik Pramanik retweeted
The thing about this lawless condition is it's not even some principled policy that brings a net increase in freedom for everyone. If frugal SF engineers saw that camping on the street was tolerated and tried to emulate it by setting up their own little tiny house campers that were cleaner and not filled with drugs, they would be swiftly removed, and probably resented by the neighbors even more strongly. Police would come out in full force against the only group of people they're allowed to act on, which are decent people whose toehold in society requires them to follow rules to maintain standing. It's only the worst behaved, who have nothing to lose, that enjoy a special freedom, and are out of reach of law enforcement. To bring such people into compliance would require overwhelming force and lifetime incarceration to keep them from going right back into the drug tent, which cities aren't willing to do, so they get to live outside the law.
"refuse to move openly using drugs with a bunch of smoke coming out the tent while kids are walking to school"
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Abhik Pramanik retweeted
Why do journalists act like letting drug traffickers take over public space is an unstoppable natural disaster and not just a policy decision that most cities have simply solved?
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Abhik Pramanik retweeted
Welcome to California where instead of producing more power to meet demand during heatwaves, the nation’s dumbest state just turns the power off while charging the highest electricity rates in the country
San Diego Gas & Electric is starting to implement Public Safety Power Shutoffs today, with around 35,000 customers at risk of shutoffs over the next few days.
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Abhik Pramanik retweeted
Uzbekistan broke ground for its high speed rail in 2011 and began service the same year. California broke ground in 2015 and as of 2026 has completed zero (0) miles of rail.
Uzbekistan (GDP per capita $4,600) has a high-speed rail line, and California (GDP per capita $108,000) does not
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Abhik Pramanik retweeted
Kumon and other successful after-school tutoring organizations always use traditional drill and practice to catch kids up in math. I once attended a lecture by a well-known math ed guru, who was selling the "new way" to teach math. My colleague asked her: "Why do you think places like Kumon always use traditional teaching - like math drills and worksheets? If your approach is so much better, why don't they use your approach?" She replied: "It's nostalgia. It makes parents feel good to see things being taught the way they were taught." The real reason is that Kumon is a paid service. They will lose business if they do not deliver a product that works. Public schools do not face such consequences. They can just keep doing whatever they want, listening to the gurus, and buying their products. And parents have to keep sending their kids. This is the sad tragedy of public education. @mattyglesias
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BREAKING: New polling shows Josh Shapiro leading his Republican opponent by 21 points. It's not even surprising anymore how badly Shapiro is crushing his Republican opponent. Democrats could learn a lot from Shapiro.
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Abhik Pramanik retweeted
Real estate developers keep proposing office projects in SF despite the 30% vacancy rate because commercial rents don’t have rent control, unlike residential projects. sfstandard.com/2026/09/24/of…
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Abhik Pramanik retweeted
Well this is infuriating to read
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Abhik Pramanik retweeted
Mamdani is easily one of the most interesting people in politics right now.
🚨 At the U20 Mayors Summit, Mamdani Says the Left Has Ceded “Quality of Life,” “Efficiency,” and “Fraud and Waste” to the Right This was one of the more interesting arguments Zohran Mamdani made today at the U20 Mayors Summit, and a reminder that he can be genuinely sharp when he drops the “central casting” routine. “In New York City, there are certain words that have taken on ideological associations.” “Quality of life has come to be seen as somehow a right-wing concern. Efficiency… has been taken on as a right-wing concern, rooting out fraud and waste, a right-wing concern.” Mamdani’s argument is that refusing to engage those issues actually helps the Right. “If you are staring at an example of social disorder or social inefficiency, and the left refuses to explain either why it has happened or how they will fix it, then the right gets to point at someone in the immediate area and say, ‘That’s who did it.’” The harder question is how much of the broader Left is actually prepared to follow the advice.
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Abhik Pramanik retweeted
You can buy fentanyl and a stolen gun two blocks from here with no problems, but the second you try to buy a $16 venture backed smoothie, the government steps in
This quoted post is unavailable.
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Abhik Pramanik retweeted
This editorial is, of course, basically pleading with employers to stop regarding a UC degree as a signal of value. We have to get the people who see the world this way out of power before they destroy our incredible state university system.
This op-ed can’t be real: “Students on University of California campuses may struggle with basic math, but they are graduating at record rates.” “What has made the University of California exceptional is its commitment to increase access without sacrificing excellence.”
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Abhik Pramanik retweeted
Indo-Americans are well under 2% of the American population. Their parents have insipid suburban lives that are basically "Leave it to Beaver" on steroids. Their kids grow up to be tanned White kids who obsess over fantasy football and would rather cut their balls off than go to a temple. There is no way you can attribute anti-Indian animus to numbers, behaviors, or political shifts. The math doesn't math for that. What's really going on is a mix of bigotry and political opportunism. Republicans want to burnish nativist credentials for their White Boomer base, while avoiding a backlash among working class Latinos. The way they square this circle is by going after a small, inert, and politically fractured minority.
The Indian HB-1 discourse is being hijacked by bad faith actors. The real question is not about whether Indians can assimilate into western nations, it's about the scale at which it is happening and the large-scale consequences that immigration is having on western nations.
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Abhik Pramanik retweeted
Indian-Americans have historically punched well below their weight in political engagement. This race is now perhaps the most important test this cycle for the Indian-American lobby. Many politicians agree with @bofrench but are waiting to see how his election goes. The Indian-American lobby can either leverage their wealth and power to defeat a Republican in Texas and show that Indian hate is a losing electoral strategy; or it can stay on the sidelines and reinforce the message that Indian-Americans are a convenient populist punching bag.
I heard UT graduation this year looked like this. I didn’t believe it. The problem is now obviously far worse than anyone imagined.
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Wow @united, mechanical issue and then meals expired so we’re taking off 4h+ later. What a mess.
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Abhik Pramanik retweeted
And some of you say women can’t be president because they’re too emotional. Dude is a mental midget
BREAKING: President Trump calls on the Fed to cut interest rates after the August jobs report nearly triples expectations. Trump also threatens to "stop trading with countries with which we have a deficit" if the Fed does not cut rates. The Fed "must get smart," Trump says.
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