Mingke Ma

DPhil @OSGAOxford. Swire Scholar. Political Economy of Development and Historical Sociology. @SOASpolitics alum. 东北人. #bizhis

[Mingke Ma @MingkeyMa]

I am happy to share that my paper was accepted by #AAS2023!

[Yuen Yuen Ang @yuenyuenang]

In the 21st century, uncertainty—unknown possibilities—is not a bug, but a feature.

Designing industrial policy under such conditions requires more than pivoting away from neoliberalism.

It means not simply picking winners but discovering them. And once they are discovered, it is essential to tailor support beyond the usual toolkit of tariffs and subsidies.

https://t.co/p2ebmGydh4

[Polymarket @Polymarket]

NEW: Stanford researchers found that overworked AI agents began embracing Marxist views.

[Anish Moonka @anishmoonka]

Researchers at the University of Bergen ran a study comparing 213 Sudanese men. Half brushed their teeth with a chewed tree root. Half used a regular plastic toothbrush. The tree root group came out with healthier gums and less plaque.

That stick is called a miswak. The WHO has been quietly recommending it since 1986. In 2011, scientists at Sweden’s Karolinska Institute finally cracked the chemistry.

The active ingredient is benzyl isothiocyanate, a natural plant defense compound from the same family of sulfur molecules that give cabbage and mustard their sharp bite. The compound punches through the outer wall of bacteria that cause gum disease. From there, it dismantles the chemistry that keeps the bacteria alive. The Karolinska team isolated it by running root extracts through a chemical analyzer that identifies individual molecules.

The stick comes from the Salvadora persica tree, which grows in dry parts of Africa, the Middle East, and India. Inside the wood you also find natural fluoride, a gentle abrasive called silica that polishes off plaque, sulfur compounds, and tannins that tighten gum tissue. A separate team at Sweden’s University of Gothenburg ran another trial. They soaked the sticks in a fluoride solution. The fluoride left in the test group’s saliva came out higher than what people got from regular fluoride toothpaste.

A more recent systematic review pulled together a stack of randomized trials. Miswak on its own controlled plaque about as well as a regular toothbrush. Used alongside the toothbrush, it actually beat brushing alone on both plaque and gum inflammation scores. The Princess Nourah University trial from 2024 complicates that. Over two weeks, the miswak group’s plaque held steady while the toothbrush group’s dropped further. And gums in the miswak group got noticeably worse for people who sawed at their teeth too hard. Aggressive horizontal scrubbing tears at the soft tissue along the gum line.

One stick costs under 10 cents in the regions where the tree grows, and a single twig lasts for weeks. In sub-Saharan Africa, herbal toothpastes built around miswak and neem (another bitter chewing-stick tree) made up over a quarter of toothpaste sales in 2023.

The honest caveat is that Western dental literature treats the miswak as an add-on rather than a replacement, mostly because reaching the back molars with a stick is awkward. Used correctly, with soft perpendicular brushing along the gum line and no aggressive sawing, it does what a toothbrush does and adds a low-grade antibiotic on top. For most of human dental history, this is what cleaning your teeth looked like.

[William Whyte @william_whyte]

A perennial headline

[CHINA MFA Spokesperson 中国外交部发言人 @MFA_China]

和平共处 🇨🇳🇺🇸

[Jostein Hauge @haugejostein]

In a new major report, the World Bank conceded that its decades-long war on industrial policy was wrong, saying its old advice “has not aged well — it has the practical value of a floppy disk today.”

But this is not an intellectual awakening.

The World Bank's doctrine shifted because the means through which Western nations can maintain their dominance shifted — not because economists suddenly discovered new evidence.

The world’s wealthiest nations are now pursuing industrial policy so openly that it can no longer be denied to the rest of the world.

When the geopolitical winds shift, so does the ideology of institutions where wealthy nations' interests are deeply entrenched.

[Pope Leo XIV @Pontifex]

When simulation becomes the norm, it weakens the human capacity for discernment. As a result, our social bonds close in upon themselves, forming self-referential circuits that no longer expose us to reality. We thus come to live within bubbles, impermeable to one another. Feeling threatened by anyone who is different, we grow unaccustomed to encounter and dialogue. In this way, polarization, conflict, fear and violence spread. What is at stake is not merely the risk of error, but a transformation in our very relationship with truth.

[Nicole Grajewski @NicoleGrajewski]

Resharing my piece in @ForeignPolicy on Ghalibaf— the man who appears to be leading the talks for the Iranians and who multiple officials have lent their support to tonight

[Dali L. Yang @Dali_Yang]

From Bookworm to Browser: The Decline of Books in Political Science Scholarship | PS: Political Science & Politics | Cambridge Core - https://t.co/90L3GUh8W7

[Mingke Ma @MingkeyMa]

https://t.co/DlRtlpQawX

[Mingke Ma @MingkeyMa]

3) The problem is investors who apparently needed a Cuban-smoking analyst in a speedboat to believe what trade reporters had been filing for weeks

[Mingke Ma @MingkeyMa]

1) The bar here is lower than it looks. As someone who also did fieldwork in FCDO high-risk zone, this is about the lowest-yield form of it imaginable. Citrini risked a human life to confirm what Lloyd’s List, Windward, and satellite AIS analysts had already documented.

[Marko Papic @Geo_papic]

This was absolute 🔥!

Mad respect to @citrini and the entire team.

Meanwhile, the collective profession of journalism should now light itself on fire. How is it that NOBODY else tried to do this!?

[Mingke Ma @MingkeyMa]

2) And the dig at journalism is frankly insulting. War correspondents have been reporting from that strait for months at far greater personal risk — without a Pelican case, $15k in cash, or a paywall at the end of it.

[Aelia Capitolina @Areskapitalon]

后殖民主义研究专注于道德表演那么多年，却从来没想过自己之所以能够这样进行道德套利的基础，是美国左派建立起对中东石油美元帝国的小骂大帮忙体系。他们屁股坐的位置和自己所讲的话是相反的，因此他们现在提不出任何行之有效的解决办法。如果熟悉这个学术尤其是活动圈子，就一定知道我说的意味着什么。

如果一个人知行不合一，说的话和自己的屁股立场相反，那么他们所做的事情无非就是一种极其短视的食腐者套利，却失去了一切以实际经验检验自己那一套经书式的理论的机会，最终在理论破产时被逼到墙角。

对自己诚实才是最大的勇气与美德。拥有美德的后果也一定是获得最大的能力。

[Les Perreaux @perreaux]

But I’ve been reliably informed it’s impossible for busy professionals to learn French. Or that it’s a waste of time. Or that it eliminates the best people. Or that it’s just silly.

[Bert Hofman（郝福满） @berthofmanecon]

Xiaoping (小平).

[محمدباقر قالیباف | MB Ghalibaf @mb_ghalibaf]

Heads-up: Pre-market so-called “news” or “Truth” is often just a setup for profit-taking. Basically, it’s a reverse indicator.

Do the opposite: If they pump it, short it. If they dump it, go long.

See something tomorrow? You know the drill.

[联合早报 Lianhe Zaobao @zaobaosg]

美以伊冲突爆发后，黎巴嫩真主党与以色列再度交火，除了造成大量平民死亡和流离失所，也导致许多动物滞留战区。 https://t.co/pRlMUE2jEb

[Catholic Sat @CatholicSat]

Pope Leo XIV on Palm Sunday, forcefully denounces those who use God to justify war: “Brothers and sisters, this is our God, Jesus, King of Peace, who rejects war, whom no one can use to justify war. He does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war, but rejects them saying “Though you make many prayers, I will not listen. Your hands are full of blood.”

[Pope Leo XIV @Pontifex]

This is our God: Jesus, King of Peace, who rejects war, whom no one can use to justify war. He does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war, but rejects them, saying: “Even though you make many prayers, I will not listen: your hands are full of blood” (Is 1:15).