New York City is 9% Muslim and has a Muslim mayor, which scares a lot of people, most of whom don't live here. This afternoon on the train ride home (air-conditioned, thank god), I see an Arab-looking girl in a headscarf and a long, conservative dress chatting animatedly with her friend, a Chinese-American girl (New York is 15% Asian) in shorts and a tank top. As far as I can tell, neither one of them mentions Sharia or jihad; instead, they seem to be looking at pictures and arguing about which boy (I assume) looks cutest. They address each other as "bro." A Caribbean woman enters the car, chatting on her phone. She is heavyset and middle-aged, with dyed orange hair. She sits down and gets off the phone as the train leaves the station. Next stop, another middle-aged black woman, more conservatively dressed, sits down next to her. She's reading "Kin" by Tayari Jones (an Oprah Book Club recommendation). (New York is 20% black, about 1/3 of those from the Caribbean.) At the same time, a white father and daughter come in. People scrunch aside so they can sit together. He starts to read a picture book to her, but after a bit, she insists she can read on her own. He pulls out his own book. (New York is 31% non-Hispanic white.) A few stops later, a Hispanic man gets on the train with a guitar. Oh no! But it turns out he's pretty good (often not the case), I enjoy his plaintive ballads about love or something. I give him a dollar, and he says "Gracias." (New York is 29% Hispanic.) There's one annoying drunk dude, an older white guy. I assume he's drunk and not crazy or homeless because his clothes are nice and he's clutching a phone, but he seems on the verge of passing out, repeatedly bending over slowly until another lurch of the train wakes him up and he straightens. The dad with the daughter looks alert and peeved. Understandably! I get out at my stop, along with the drunk guy, but I take a different set of stairs to avoid dealing with him. Then a short walk from the station in the sweltering heat, with a brief stop at my Yemeni bodega (more Muslims!). Finally, I pass a Cuban-run barbershop with no one getting a haircut, and a couple sitting outside (the owners, I assume) listening to salsa. I get home and turn on the damn AC, safe once more from assault and/or bad serenades.
New read!
Enshittification by @doctorow
It provides a kind of popular structure in understanding why social media is so toxic today…
Early summary: anti-competitive behavior across time after the dumping period
KitKat is owned by Nestlé.
Nestlé is one of the most unethical companies in the world.
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Nestlé wanted to grow its infant formula sales in developing countries, especially in Africa. So they came up with a strategy.
They gave free baby formula to new mothers and promoted it as better than mother’s milk.
At first, it seemed helpful. But it was not.
The free supply lasted just long enough for many mothers to stop producing their own milk. Once it ended, they had no natural option left and had to depend on formula.
But many of these mothers were poor. They could not afford to keep buying it. So they tried to stretch it by adding more water and less powder.
This led to weak and undernourished babies.
It got worse because many of them did not even have clean water or proper conditions to prepare the formula safely. Babies fell sick. Some even died.
And Nestlé did not even provide proper instructions. No clear guidance in local languages. No support for mothers who could not read.
They knew the risks. They still continued.
They only reacted when Western countries protested and boycotted them.
Even today, they are not fully ethical. And people still eat KitKat.
In 2019, MIT professor Patrick Winston gave a legendary 1-hour lecture called “How to Speak.”
It has 18M+ views for a reason.
His frameworks:
• Your ideas are like your children
• The 5-minute rule for job talks
• Why jokes fail at the start
15 lessons on communication:
Saya masuk ke pejabat buat kali terakhir semalam dan hari ini (Jumaat) untuk urusan-urusan terakhir, termasuk mengemas pejabat.
Saya ingin ambil kesempatan ini untuk memperkenalkan beberapa orang yang banyak membantu saya mengusahakan inisiatif ekonomi di bawah Kementerian Ekonomi.
Mereka adalah pegawai-pegawai dasar dalam pasukan saya yang saya pujuk untuk meninggalkan kerjaya masing-masing sebelum ini dan berkhidmat di pejabat saya.
Dari cili kepada semikonduktor, kepada ekosistem syarikat pemula, JSSEZ, NETR, kepada gaji progresif sehinggalah RMK13, mereka banyak menterjemah idea-idea saya sehingga mula boleh dilaksanakan.
Kini mereka akan kembali ke bidang masing-masing.
Terima kasih dari saya kepada:
Dr. Azraai Bahari Nasruddin – doktor pakar endokrinologi lulusan University of Cambridge, dengan lulusan tambahan dalam Informatics dari UCL. Ijazah Kelas Pertama. Berkhidmat lama di UK sebelum kembali ke Malaysia tahun 2014.
Benjamin Quek – lulusan perbankan dan kewangan dari Monash University dan MSc dalam Applied and Computational Mathematics, John Hopkins University. Sebelum ini seorang pengurus dana.
James Chai – pelajar terbaik undang-undang dari University of London dan sarjana undang-undang dari University of Oxford. Ijazah Kelas Pertama. Sebelum ini kerjaya undang-undang dan dalam bidang tech. Juga seorang penulis buku.
Ismat Qayyum – lulusan PPE (Politics, Philosophy and Economy) dari London School of Economics (LSE). Ijazah Kelas Pertama. Sebelum ini di sektor perbankan.
Haqimi Zamri – lulusan Politik and Hubungan Antarabangsa dari University of Nottingham. Sebelum ini mengusahakan perusahaan sosial pada usia yang muda.
Saya banyak belajar dari mereka, mungkin lebih dari mereka belajar dari saya.
Outrageous.
This is data that any half-competent data person can reverse engineer.
If any policymaker doesn't believe me, call me into a room and give me a sample of the data. I'll find your unique ID within 10 mins.
BTW, worth saying, I don't think this is any nefarious plan from Minister or Deputy, or even DOSM who is asking for statistical purposes. It's much more behind the scenes.
I am Malaysian. This never happened in our history.
A simple Chat GPT prompt would explain this, but that would destroy the Islamophobic perspective.
The majority aren’t interested in truth. Westerners swallow their ‘free’ media, looking for blame & to justify their bloodlust.