2018 Recap of Views Expressed

2018 Recap of Views Expressed

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Notes on The Virtues of Apathy

* #Undirosak: You (are) Overachievers - https://sextechandmergers.blogspot.com/2018/01/undirosak-you-overachievers.html

* Letter to an ambitious lover - https://sextechandmergers.blogspot.com/2018/04/epistle-to-disenchanted.html

* Libraries as instruments of hegemony - https://sextechandmergers.blogspot.com/2018/06/libraries-and-hegemony.html

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Notes on Education / Malaysian Public Policy

* How to discuss education policies at the level of a nationstate - https://sextechandmergers.blogspot.com/2018/05/how-to-discuss-education-public-policy.html
* * Supplementary anecdotes - https://sextechandmergers.blogspot.com/2018/06/my-late-submission-to-committee-for.html

* (observatory) Maszlee's first major tango with angry students - https://sextechandmergers.blogspot.com/2018/09/maszlees-meeting-with-students-on-iium.html

* Civics education - https://sextechandmergers.blogspot.com/2018/09/civics-education-in-malaysia.html

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Notes on Economics / Labour / Malaysian Public Policy

* Leadership is the co-opting of those with lesser will - https://sextechandmergers.blogspot.com/2018/03/leadership.html

* I want more taxes - https://sextechandmergers.blogspot.com/2018/04/rimmed-potatoes.html

* Tax breaks for the young are a macro-economic lever, if youth expenditure is wise (big if) - https://sextechandmergers.blogspot.com/2018/05/26-year-olds-tax-break-strange.html

* Immigrants are building Malaysia without due credit - https://sextechandmergers.blogspot.com/2018/11/dear-kula-thanks-for-hitting-news.html

* * Immigration policy in Malaysia - https://sextechandmergers.blogspot.com/2018/06/immigration-in-new-malaysia.html

* * On the futility of raising wages without strategic border controls - https://sextechandmergers.blogspot.com/2018/09/on-putrajaya-messaging-that-upskilling.html

* * Malaysians are too competitive - https://sextechandmergers.blogspot.com/2018/10/malaysian-citizens-are-too-competitive.html

* Notes on some housing debt startup - https://sextechandmergers.blogspot.com/2018/11/fundmyhome-reflections.html

* automation of retail services - https://sextechandmergers.blogspot.com/2018/11/on-automation-of-labours.html

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Notes on Racial Politics

* Bumiputera Rights are Not the Enemy (bad public policy is the enemy) - https://sextechandmergers.blogspot.com/2018/05/bumiputera-rights-are-not-enemy.html

* Powers of the Agong - https://sextechandmergers.blogspot.com/2018/05/wip-incomplete-list-of-constitutional.html

* (discuss!) We should just get rid of English from the Laws of Malaysia - https://sextechandmergers.blogspot.com/2018/06/official-languages-of-law-in-malaysia.html

* On the application of virtual signalling as a branding strategy in wars against a tyrannical majority - https://sextechandmergers.blogspot.com/2018/07/letter-rhetoric-vs-civil-liberties.html

* Mathathir and Article 153 - https://sextechandmergers.blogspot.com/2018/11/from-conversation-analysing-article-153.html

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Notes on Psychology

* Using MBTI as an approach to a formal framework for modelling minds - https://sextechandmergers.blogspot.com/2018/06/concepts-mbti-vs-computation.html

* What hiring managers are looking for when they ask about confrontation - https://sextechandmergers.blogspot.com/2018/10/do-you-handle-confrontation-interview.html

* Crime as a public health concern - https://sextechandmergers.blogspot.com/2018/11/letter-to-editor-reflecting-on.html

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Notes on Sexual and Gendered Politics

* the formal language of rape - https://sextechandmergers.blogspot.com/2018/10/helping-friends-analyse-rape-rape.html

* improved whistleblower protocols would be nice - https://sextechandmergers.blogspot.com/2018/12/letter-we-can-improve-regulations-for.html

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Miscellaneous Journals

* https://sextechandmergers.blogspot.com/2018/01/yawn-34.html
* https://sextechandmergers.blogspot.com/2018/03/yawn-35.html
* https://sextechandmergers.blogspot.com/2018/05/yawn-36.html
* https://sextechandmergers.blogspot.com/2018/06/yawn-37.html
* https://sextechandmergers.blogspot.com/2018/07/yawn-38.html
* https://sextechandmergers.blogspot.com/2018/08/yawn-39.html
* https://sextechandmergers.blogspot.com/2018/09/yawn-40.html
* https://sextechandmergers.blogspot.com/2018/09/yawn-41.html
* https://sextechandmergers.blogspot.com/2018/11/yawn-42.html
* https://sextechandmergers.blogspot.com/2018/12/yawn-43.html
* https://sextechandmergers.blogspot.com/2018/12/yawn-44.html

Yawn 44

Dec 15 - Dec 25

Awake. New mistakes uncovered before bed. Newer mistakes uncovered after. Shower. Enforce feeding. Start fixing things.

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Planning for the day. A great many tasks to mop up. Insufficiently impressive week, and quarter, track record. So, additional food inputs are being factored in.

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1. Remind self that is a good day to die, to generate stimulus.
2. Plan day.
3. Execute 2., with regular revision of 1.
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And people wonder how I get things done. Firstly, not a lot actually gets done. Secondly, at least some gets done. Thirdly, the only thing stopping anyone from hitting that lower bound is an absence of excitation from the prospect of discovering how their lives will end.
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I think people who are stimulated by food, travel, empathy, and other such phenomena, have it easy in that their cohort is broadly understood. The rest of us just examine them and ask, "why do you not [find these things predictable, easy to imagine in fullest detail], such that they are exciting as objects of pursuit?"

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Thinking about the nature of entropy. If one inconveniences oneself, it is easy to encapsulate the problem. If others inconvenience oneself, there appears a looseness of certainty with regards to the underlying cause to the source of inconvenience. I currently practice a mode of analysis which buckets these threats (business terminology: any external source of weakness is a threat, any internal threat is a weakness) into (a) laziness, (b) stupidity, or (c) malice. Regardless of (a, b, c), Machiavellian realism requires that we send messaging that the underlying cause is (b), most of the time, along with constructive advice on how to repair (b).
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The reason is, (a) cannot be easily fixed via external impetus, and (c) is not internally coherent with cooperative behaviour. By the time certainty clears (b) off the table, decisive action must be taken against (a) and (c), which tends to be unassistable by negotiation.
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Hehehe. I know, many who would quibble with this approach.

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Discussions on boredom are fun. I often get comments from people about how bored I am at my current job. But they don't seem to understand that my 20-year arc is driven entirely by boredom. On a scale of 0 to a 100, where boredom is maximum at 100, I generally decide what happens in my life by choosing between events on the 60 to 80 scale. So maybe 70 is the mean, and the standard deviation is like, between 5 and 10. That is to say, if you're a woman and scoring 50 boring points, I consider you someone I'd like to talk to forever, possibly the love of my life. As for why people don't get me, I think on such a linear scale, many people are scaled to a mean of 30-50, and they have standard deviations from 10 to 15...

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Enforced feeding and bed.

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So what's the cheapest legal, non-charity, way to get controlled drugs in Malaysia? Doctors consultation fees add a RM20-50 tax on to the price of any item you can find in a pharmacy, to treat basic infections of various kinds. Sometimes you'll find the pharmacy prices are somewhat higher than the consumer pricing guide on pharmacy.gov.my.

Ada jalan?

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One day, I will have a phone that run Instagram. One day, I will have a car, that can run my business until it pays me a wage, that can afford a phone, that can support the Google My Business Android app. #gonewiththespin

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Anyone looking into disrupting or rationalising the following in Malaysia?

- doctors writing controlled drug prescriptions
- doctors selling controlled drugs
- pharmacists selling controlled drugs without prescription
- market-based pricing of controlled drugs
- consumer price checking for controlled drugs
- reporting of regulatory non-compliance
- blockchain tracking of controlled drug import, manufacture, distributor pricing, retail pricing, prescription protocol, and transactions

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I like efficient regulations that minimise corporate profit taking at the expense of tax payers. Issues like the distribution of WHO Essential Medicines need to solved at national scale. This isn't the 1930s where we have to depend on a free market that hasn't discovered the Internet and global logistics. :)

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When are they going to invent energy weapons that move faster than bullets? And stop pissing on imperial stormtroopers... clearly every bad guy with a gun is just comic relief fodder. All the empowerment of black and brown and female people, and the scriptwriters still couldn't find a better punching bag. Well, by the time you notice that Mera comes of Merida's stock, you also think about how a piece of art is either enticing in and of itself (this is only slightly), or interesting as an addition to the continuum of art history (more this, than that). Biff, bam, boom, it's Adam West and the frogmen. She kills a TV, and faints like Jeannie...

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Adib is dead. Long live racial politicking among the peoples of Malaysia.

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Let's see how this takes to leak.

“The PDRM has warned that it is illegal to make known (sexual crime data) as it could cause anxiety and would not help in controlling the situation.

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I always believe in top-down approaches to mate-fitting, so I do a lot of leg-work. Sometimes it involves reviewing over a hundred profiles a day. It's a bit of a slog, but over the years, I've found it quite rewarding :) I guess I'm a... picky fucker... :-S

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The "create" button on the header:
'This is the most important UI improvement to Facebook I've seen in years. Top-level functionality. Good win, guys. I'll bet traction is up?

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I think we need to take precautions against a government that chooses to defend the rights of a deity which cannot speak for itself.

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Still not dead. But how will it die? An ongoing curiosity. Soon, time to enforce waking.

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The last six to eight months have been a good exercise in civic engagement. Perhaps, as the environment regresses gradually to business as usual, I should return my modus operandi to less lofty enterprise. Also, I have been sick for two months, while also nursing a friend, and this is beginning to take its toil on my cognition. I am looking forward to finding out how it ends. But none of this is anything, but ordinary business. Mostly the sort I am willing to afford myself. Perhaps a reduced allocation of interest in finding intelligence, and an increased allocation in developing it, will be timely. Perhaps.

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Every day, I wonder if I should incur the wrath of my stakeholders, and generally I decide that the definition of civility which I prefer, is to be kind to people regardless of how foolish they are. Especially when you are in control of your shared environment, and they have only wrath and squealing to offer. #totd #lifeinthetrenches #commerce

By the way, is that chap in the sticker... touching himself?

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Speed is difficult, while paying for the sins of the slow. Can't avoid slow people, without being mean in general, so better to encapsulate their weaknesses, and to work around them. Increases to efficiency may vary. After all, the best merely survive, and the worst fail. That is, if we remove all unnecessary excitement from the system. Put all the bombs in boxes. Hopefully you get containment and not an IED. Of course, supervised detonation in an open area is preferred.

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Briefly reviewing the sadness which I reserve for entities which seek their purpose in patterns of tea leaves. I mean this in the context of imputed patterning, with regards to the geometries of things observable. Aha, so-called humans witht their elevated rights are all too similar to tea leaves then... we all simply see how the crowd moves, and we decide on our interventions.

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Time to enforce feeding, and a review of priorities. Nothing exceptional. Just a return to neglected daily routines. But you know how tactical priorities are - they come out of nowhere.

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Every five minutes, a rejoiner, to check for incoming threats and weaknesses. Do we die first from:
- regulators
- machine failure
- meat failure
- incoming projectiles
- adverse contract counterparties
- slow business
- laziness

? There is only one of these which is easy to resolve.

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"how do you love someone so different from yourself?"
"what? you ah? ok, the real reason is probably "most people look the same to me.""
🙊
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This observation is not intended to function as relationship advice.

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"It is rare to see you display such emotion."
"Do not be misled by rhetoric. If you are an actor, you are supposed to cry. If you are a lobbyist, you are an actor.
If you are a business owner, and you talk about politics, then you are a lobbyi$t."

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I usually require myself to let staff mess things up x% of the time. Letting supervisors mess things up x% results in x^2% of time under mess, so... I rarely train supervisors. But when we do, I get less sleep. I do wonder if letting even higher levels of decision makers results in higher exponents of mess. x^3% or x^4% anyone? #agoge

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Time for a snack, and back to work. Hi ho.

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The worst case scenario is that Masz actually believes in violent subversion of non-Muslim religious belief. I will make a comment on how the best case scenario is more neutral, and leave it you to pin him on the map. Lol.

There is in English, a similar ambiguity to the words "mission", and "ministry", which can be applied very specifically to mean "to further the cause of providing help, via religious proselytisation." But also, there is a more general sense in which missions and ministries can simply refer to, "the cause of providing help in general."

Referring to the etymology (word origin) of [Da‘wah (also daawa, daawah or dakwah[1][2]; Arabic: دعوة‎ "invitation")], it is indeed often used to refer to the invitation for someone to study the practices of the Islamic narrative of what exists in the world, and of how we should act in the world. But in the more general sense, it can refer to a general invitation to study the nature of the world, and how we should live in it.

While these are two separate things, they are often confused inside the heads of people. This is an intentional and common vaguary among people who believe intuitively in "right ways to do things," because they strongly believe that there is ultimately one right way, even if they can't articulate it in detail. This pattern is viewable in people with ethical intuitions from any worldview, theist or otherwise.

The real mistake that Masz makes, as a person who relies heavily on his own intuitions, is that his language is not sufficiently polished for deployment in the secular sphere. Very few people would take issue with a Muslim man in a meeting of Muslim people, if he used Arabic words to invite other Muslims to spread civic consciousness and science in general. But using exactly the same words, and intentions, as a Muslim man in a religiously plural meeting, he lost a third of his audience.

Needs more media training.

11Dec: Parliamentary comment (https://malaysia.news.yahoo.com/sabah-churches-alarmed-maszlee-medan-095541843.html)

20Dec: Follow up comment on comment (https://www.thestar.com.my/news/nation/2018/12/21/i-was-urging-them-to-have-integrity-maszlee-clarifies-miscontrued-statement/)

It remains irresponsible to assert that anyone knows what Masz actually means - but it is responsible for all of us to assert that there are a few things we do not want, and that a public official must be careful to avoid those things.

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Grandmaster is not yet irrevelent. Hehehe
(kit siang threatening to yank DAP from Harapan)

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Awake. Parts of myself have recuperated. For example, I now gain limited benefit from active attempts to dream. This means that I am getting enough sleep.
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My normal practice since college has been to actively avoid remembering dreams from being stored in conscious memory. This helps to keep I (my conscious self) from being distracted from real world concerns. I say, "remembering," because I am not sure that it is possible to turn off the activity of dreaming - but I am sure it is possible to not remember dreaming, because the latter is the result of my normal practice.
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However, when generally deprived of sleep, I may wake before my subsconscious cognitions have returned to a high degree of operation. In response to diminished conscious cognitive ability, I may force myself to consciously participate in the dream behaviours of the mind (engage with short term memory), as that seems to correlate with longer sleep, and then increased degrees of operation in subconscious memory, or access from conscious memory to subconscious memory, from the point of view of conscious memory.

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Do you fear loss? I was talking to a friend who fears losing his friends, because his friends fear things they do not understand.

Either we never meet new people, never fall in love, never feel pain from loss, or we must enjoy pain. Haha

It's fun watching people stop at each level of outcome.

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Siti Kassim's theory of mob fights is amusing to read. Can't comment on her posts, so I'll just make a note that I read some of those. Bruh, do you even mob? Aside: bruh, do you even hit people? The whole point of intentional hitting is to cause maximum damage with minimum effort, not to flail your attacks and pat the target on his hands, or on the shoulder...

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I'm all about minimum CAC, moderate ARPU, and minimum LTV.

(ok, ok, I'm hiding LTV)

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Altria is on a buying spree. What to do when you're cash rich and the markets are down?

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Tun & Masz.

I do wonder how much Tun leads Masz into saying this or that, before he goes out and throws the new boy under a bus every so often ;)

Or do they have rational debates on policy as equals, whereby Masz decides to do his own thing, and then gets slapped back into place? ;)

Option 3: they both know exactly what's going on, and have scripted practice three weeks in advance of the media circus.

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I have a data structure proposal for Facebook. This would really save me time from making the same dumb-ass comment on every share of the same dumb-ass URL that I encounter, in the process of countering dumb-ass comments from dumb-asses other than myself. Roughly:
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1. Every time a URL is Shared as a link, Facebook should store all Shares of that URL under a Canonical Object.
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2. Comments on the URL should be stored under the Canonical Object; each User is allowed only one Canonical Comment on the Canonical Object.
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3. When you share the URL anywhere (as a Post or Comment), you should be able to tick a box that captions the Share with your Canonical Comment on the Canonical Object.
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4. When User comments on any Share, User should be able to click a button and link in User's Canonical Comment on the Canonical Object.
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5. User may make further comments on the Shares.

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Of all people, the SPORTS minister can't demontrate team formation.

Then agan, you know, it's quite feasible that the entire PPBM posse is orchestrating its mass comms with great intentionality 🙃 I can see Syed, Masz, Tun, & co. having a good weekly laugh about which message to troll on next. But wtv....

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I realise from 20 years of data that I am not happy with the use of a Medium toothbrush. I want to trade back to a Hard. But I have five unused Medium brushes in stock :(

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After a whole day of cutting and pasting menus, I'm ready for something that isn't handicraft. However, that is the job. :)

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I like how we can probe and prod for weakness at a natural system for years, until a critical deficiency is found, and then it writes off the entire study.


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This is a problem with the tax structure. I work in the industry. I have done a cursory study of the problem. It is not well-regulated.
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Restaurants are motivated to add "services charges" which are SST-free (the service charge is not taxed for service tax?). Yes, you read that right. Other non-core revenues may be SST-free, which while efficient in theory, is not well implemented at the level of criteria for audit. That's all I can see from my point of view.
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My own business is too small to be SST-taxable. Why is this even an option? Now every large restaurant has an incentive to smurf their operations into smaller companies.

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Blame whoever you like for inflation. I'm blaming QE3...

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That's one helluva bogey today. What next?

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The remarkable paradox of analytical phenomenology is this:
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Every conscious experience is deemed quantifiable if it can be mapped to a geometric form. There are specific approaches pertaining to smells, tastes, etc. - the short story is that they are mappable to sounds, and sounds are mappable to quantities without question. So if you get good at this, then no conscious experiences ever seems original - they are all seemingly derivative of some qualia arranged in a specific geometry. The only things that seem original are geometric definitions which have not been articulated before. So you end up studying only geometry.
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But if you, as most people, cannot map smells to sounds, and all sensations to a common minimal set of qualia - then regardless of the geometric articulation, you regard each massive arrangement of sensations as unique. Then you become a student of food, or travel, or fashion, or cars, or watches, or whatever clumsy composition of patterns it is that you care to brain, and use in your daily language.
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And so we can say, that they who think of all things as quantities will find quantities to be qualitatively distinct... and that they who think of certain sets of things as qualities will find qualities to be quantifiably distinct.
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Erm. Yeah. That's all for now, folks. 😪😛


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20 years on, I still think General Artificial Intelligence research is interesting like flower arrangement is interesting.

But trying to run a restaurant startup is more in the ballpark of "shit, we are doomed," every morning, kinda interesting...

-

I suppose, if you find people to be unique and exciting entities, then GAI is a really interesting problem.

But if you find people to be unfailingly boring and predictable, then the generation of intrigue must come from scaling up the study of one, to a study of sending dozens against thousands, and against the elemental markets, in real time, just for the hell of seeing if you can beat the odds...

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In either case, one is likely to work hard, mostly thanklessly, have few friends, perhaps an absent or complicated love life, fall ill, and die of boredom anyway. But, well, that's probably why one picks the job that pays better. Always follow the money.

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Many people who argue about religous truth miss the boat: the arguments are (a) about which set of language to use, to best describe the world, not (b) about what exists in the world, or (c) about how to act in the world.

Longer exposition not available due to time constraints.

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Merry Xmas, panda, wherever you are.

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(comment) I'd really like a redelineation of ministerial responsibilities:
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1. There SHOULD be a "Penerangan / Propaganda / Public Relations" DEPARTMENT just to specialise in making the message of the CABINET coherent; individual ministries should be banned from issuing their own press releases; this should totally aim to sync up messaging on a calendar with news cycles, and reduce cross-talk.
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2. There should be a MINISTRY of Constitutional Liberties (which covers the secular / Islam balance of language), which should have a DEPARTMENT of speech freedoms which has someone issuing the cabinet's take on what words mean what, and what's encouraged and what's discouraged, without escalating the language to "bans" (in most cases).
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3. There should be a MINISTRY of Information Sciences & Technologies, which basically functions like a value-adding IT department business partner to the country.
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4. I like how the MINISTRY of science and environmental concerns are tied together for the time being, though this is not necessary - we have a good complement there.
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Right now it seems like Gobind gets 2, 3, mashed together, and we see the anti-thesis of 1. throughout cabinet activities...


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What motivation have I found, to fuel myself through the upcoming work day? Only a reminder that weaknesses of character must be annihilated. 😁
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(Group) Just another work day for me. 😋 0538hrs now, haven't slept yet. Dropping a friend home, breakfast, wash up, then 0930-2230 peddling brown water, data entry, and indoctrinating recently added labour in the mores of our chores. 😴

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Dec 25, 2018, 9:14 PM
#til what is a warkah

Edit: Mujahid's epistle is either the latest example of a troll cabinet led by the prime troll himself, or today's greatest piece of accidental art...

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cohl furey is my new crush

Yawn 43

Nov 8 - Dec 16

QA in services is a matter of endless tutoring. :)

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No sleep yet. Enforced shower, workout, feeding, accounts, design, investor relations, machine monitoring, gogogo...

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If they capitulate by one day on the cigarette ban, I promise to vote against Harapan in the next GE.

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If they capitulate by one day on the cigarette ban, I promise to vote against Harapan in the next GE.

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Hardship porn: All I have to say is, if you don't enjoy the hustle, then get out of the porn business.

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I've been coming to this SBUX for a decade now.

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"gorton is god" - wait, is Lime still Mike?

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On regulators inspecting Snap for insufficient pre-IPO disclosure: Really? How about you go after GRPN as well lol...

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Nov 14

Short AMZN now. 15Nov market opening price. Buy and return stocks within 12 months. I have no material interest. Just curious.

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Am I the only one that thinks co-working space branding has turned into social club branding. And given that social club marketing is a negative sum game, we're just waiting to see what happens?

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Forum polemics. US (and generally) politics in a nutshell (or, "why it's good to put bad people into office, every now and then"):

- the argument elaborated sounds roughly like this;

- butter up a large mass of snowflakes, of the type that respond well to short term incentives;

- take votes in the short term;

- take away long term wealth from snowflakes, and most of the apathetic middle;

- use short term votes, to put long term structures into place to ensure that snowflakes don't "see it coming", and that by the time they do, someone else will take the hit for future short term losses;

- long term gains then accrue only among those who put policies into place; in fact, by the time those gains accrue, it doesn't look like they did it because they're not working in policy anymore;

- both (all) parties are doing this, they just differ on which snowflakes to bully 😛;

- the point about "it's good to have bad people in public office," comes back here: they all go bad eventually, so it's better to force them to play musical chairs such that bullying is more evenly distributed across different types of snowflake in the long run.

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Empowerment: Delegate, and then standby to provide upon failure... an option to improve, refund, or leave. ✋

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Well, taking it to the necessary conclusions, I look forward to a ban on male circumcisions in Malaysia - SJWs, over to you.

//

Context:

(1) Minister misquoted by press - furor ensues.

(2) Some documentation with pointers to sources (unverified).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prevalence_of_female_genital_mutilation_by_country#Malaysia

https://orchidproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Malaysia-Final.pdf

(3) Pasting my comment from elsewhere:

"By some accounts, the quantity and quality of tissue removed in the majority of Malaysian female circumcision cases is equivalent to a male foreskin circumcision. Unverified, undocumented, unquantified.

FGM is a blanket term for any tissue removal.

MoH has a guideline for female circumcision in Malaysia. I have not read it.

My dataset is very small, I know nothing more.

🖖"

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Further further thoughts from another conversation (mostly paraphrased):

So I was talking to my friend. She thinks pedophilia can be framed as a health problem, but not as a public health problem. "It has to affect thousands-to-millions of people, before we should allocate resources to address it in a structural manner."

Hello, I'll leave it to the career activists and SJWs to argue that there is quantifiably widespread negative impact due to structural patriarchy, toxic masculinity, macro/micro-aggressions, reported/ unreported harassment, and straightforward abuse - they have better data and political will, until such time as I decide to write a proper thesis on this.

I think overarchingly my view is that we tend to cluster ideas like [crime / free will / individual agency / the justice system / good and evil] together, but separately from ideas like [culture / systemic pedagogy / determinacy / medicine / biology]. Whereas I see these as two lenses upon an information system (which is my prefered paradigm, for most things). So, when I look at the discourse around crime and public health, I see an inefficient segregation of these two clusters of language.

[... trying to remember what else was discussed... ]


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IIRC the first time I ever noticed that 1MDB was doing dodgy stuff, it was when Ananda Krishnan made an unusual premium on the sale of some power plants to the fund... in 2012. AK then stuck around and provided a mini-loan to 1MDB a little while later, before the stories went elsewhere. Whatever happened to all that?

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I have RM7 cash-back vouchers to hand out to anyone, for food and beverage in Petaling Jaya. Due to the volatile nature of the Internet, we have to do this offline.

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It should only take me a year to build drones that speak, listen, take orders, coach staff, and monitor customers... given how much of the heavy lifting can be outsourced to the cloud... anyone wanna pay someone else to do my existing job for me?😛

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The purpose of education public policy is to manufacture individuals that are able to operate the state. It's great to see parents and teachers looking out for pedagogical improvements, but let's not forget the overarching machinery: if any individual reaches voting age, without practical knowledge of how laws are made, of how they are interpreted, and of how to twist and break undesirable structures of the state, then that individual underutilises its function of citizenship.

;)

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The first rule of customer service, is that the customer is king. The second rule of customer service, is that the staff is the kingmaker.

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"Make the national education curriculum the purvey of an independent commission, by act of parliament."

(Someone sent me a form for submitting suggestions to the Ministry of Education's CRM.

From recent conversations, the first cogent suggestion I could think of was... )

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The baseline exit strategy for all infrastructure businesses is nationalisation.

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People keep trying to define information systems in terms of mathematics, when instead they should be doing it the other way around. Ok, fine, some circularity is involved, but I stand by the gist of it. 😛

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TIL #seranganmakcikmakcikbawang

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Well, I do spend most of my time vacuuming floors and arranging furniture. 🤔

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WHO Model List of Essential Medicines - Wikipedia
Need to memorise this:

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On the second half of Watergate.

Insightful review: a reminder that in the days of Mahathir's youth, and early premiership, corruption was de rigeur in international commerce. The Americans moved on, but Malaysians had the same boss for thirty years, and he didn't learn fast enough. Now he has had to come back to fix up.

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"I don't believe in royalty, because I don't believe that winning the genetic lottery should bequeath anyone with special rights."
.
"Come, let us take this down the slippery slope of in-group/out-group identity...

... by the same argument there are people who fight for open borders, i.e. no one should have exclusive rights to any state-centric privilege just by winning the "genetic" lottery (in both your case and this one, we're probably both referring to happenstance class-by-birthright: royalty, citizenship, human rights...)

... and by the same argument: human rights should be accorded to all objects, too. "

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Marketing discussion: Oh god, what now? Only way to find out is to get out of bed...

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Reviewed the origin timelines of Gap, Hilton, McDonald's, and KFC after discussing consumer branding in a conversation on project timelines. Ho hum.

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Discussing immigration policy? I see your troll, and I raise you a point of governance: most civilians are not equipped with the data, or the political authority, to design and implement an economy's immigration policy. We can lean left or right on empathy, but it's quite faffy without the ability to operationalise a solution. But also people disagree on the role of citizens' sentiment in a republic such as the US or MY so oh whatever...

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Enforced waking. Enforced feeding. Enforced work, and generally enforced swatting of colleagues who encourage slacking. 😊

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First, they funded the taxis, and I did nothing because I thought traffic optimisation and nationalisation were both exceedingly old and boring problems with existing well-practiced solutions.

Then, they funded the bicycles, and I did nothing because I already had a bike.

Then, they funded the battery scooters, and I did nothing because this was another dumb as shit business model.

Then I tried to raise money, and there was no funding left for me...

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Also, posting legal information online could get you in trouble with people who don't like laws.


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From forum:

The current mom-and-pop co-working surge is going to deflate slightly, pretty much like most trendy bubbles. The less competitive 30% of outlets founded in 2018 will probably fold within a year of operations (changing business model counts towards this for the purpose of discussion).

The economics of co-working spaces in Malaysia haven't changed much since Fluentspace was kicking it in 2008 (?). A provider needs to collect RM600/desk/month... a user wants to pay RM300/desk/month.

The hard game is tweaking the quality of the amenity being rented. You can automate, use self-service, and prettify the finishings, and thereby increase capex to cut opex.

You can aim to boost volume (not price) by marketing a space using the next lowest-common denominator talking point: building a community that provides network equity (connections, friends, help) to its members, but all organisations should be doing this anyway.

In brief:

Co-working spaces that do not handle nutrition find it hard to take revenue away from coffee shops, because the cheapskate M40 user doesn't want a huge bill for food AND rent combined. Instead, the market being eroded is the whole-unit-office rental as observed by other commentors - people stop renting large spaces, because now it is easy to rent nice small spaces. But people who were paying zero in rent are not going to start paying a lot of rent just for network effects - usually, they are already curating their networks for free. Sure, some people will want a place to leave their stuff overnight - co-working spaces will help them too, as long as the spaces are also easily accessible by time and location from the user's residence.

At the end of the day, co-working spaces seeking to eke out margins will get into the provision of residences, gyms, laundries, and sundry goods. This is a natural progression.

Disclaimer: I don't run a co-working space, but I do run a restaurant that competes with co-working spaces for users. I tell staff that they have to behave like it is a hotel, because that is the long game, and sometimes the hipsters cannot brain it. Too bad for them 😛

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If I may weigh in with my usual spiel on the Darwin Awarded missionary... I'm not concerned about his religion much at all. What does seem to make me happy, is that there's one less person in the world driven to great lengths by intuited emotional motivations. I'd be just as humoured if he was an atheist looking for a selfie... ultimately, none of these people are very different from those of us in the middle. We all do what is right in our eyes, as long as we have breath.


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On consumer reports saying that prices are up:

Just great, in the month I cut prices lagi...😛


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"Causing death with intent to kill is bad, regardless of what one thinks life is."
"I have the same non-esteem of people who take for fundamental values things they read in a book, heard from someone else, or looked at in the world and simply decided was good. Basically, I prefer fundamentalist amorality to fundamentalist morality. :) Whereby of course the former is a sort of the latter, but wtf."

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Most of the time these day, my daily question mark is whether to keep my thoughts to myself so that I don't get distracted by people asking for attention, or to speak my thoughts more aggressively to remind people that they are foolish in their demands.

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Apparently, if I live another three years, I will have been retired for half my life... 🤔 ... why do I even bother? Guess it's still in the genes and culture to stay alive. Usually, I just say, curiosity.

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Cross-disciplinary martial arts fights should be banded by body weight, and possibly strength and agility also. Otherwise potentially meaningless. Who wants to see a young punk TKO an old man and claim it is a point of techne? Boring.

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Eww. Mouldy ice cream. (Not my business. But I want a refund.)

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IT IS TIME for me to start pretending that I care about food, by writing snarky food reviews on restaurants. Because, well, if you know, you know. And if you don't, then just presume I have reasons. 😛

(I never actually get around to this...)

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Why are there so many dumb shits trying to make things look two hundred years old? In another hundred years it'll be quaint to see humans running around with vacuum cleaners, manual light switches, etc. Stop wasting money on the past. You're already here... :P

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Thermal overload relay motherfucker. #pretendstounderstandself

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Talking about talent management with startup peeps.

"Case in point. Lol.

Today I had one staff getting off shift at 6:30pm, one at 7:00pm. Two others getting on shift at 5:30pm.

I give them each, individually, and as a group, instructions for a logistical task (move A, clean B, etc until Z). I do this in an almost fire and forget fashion, because I believe that people have to fuck up before they will be motivated to learn. I drop a few reminders along the way, as things don't seem to be moving.

So there are four staff. 6:30pm rolls around and the first one leaves. The other three are having coffee. 7pm rolls around and they are still refusing to ask for help. 7:30pm I come back from feeding myself, and find the second guy leaving.

The third and fourth guys are all gloved up and wrestling with objects. No one is serving customers. Bear in mind we run a REAL TIME operation, like a meat web server. So I have to break them up, send the senior back to the production line (bar), and leave the junior to continue, with me assisting him. The senior is informed that he fucked up badly, but that he needs to make sure that customers are babied, and that the junior is babied, because the junior is going to be exhausted by the time he finishes the extraordinary work. (We have turned off the kitchen production line due to this logistical emergency, and so ordinary business is now at half-tilt.)

Ordinary business is supposed to have two fresh workers at this hour. So instead of having two worn out workers, they have to be ordered to specialise in a fresh/worn pair configuration.

But this is not surprising. It is merely disappointing. Ah, life at the bottom of the pyramid...

😂 "

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I remain disappointed that so many people care that some bloke pissed off some people and that the latter killed him. No worries, world, I'm sure I disappoint you too.

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The reengineering of racial tensions is a bit too obvious with this one. Goto tactic in Malaysian politics.

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Maszlee posting Linkin Park lyrics:

As much as his press management is weak, I applaud this as a pretty epic trolling.

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Daily review. Awake. Only slightly ill. (Probably, more hungry than ill.) Much work remains undone. Enforced rising, shower, and food, then work.

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MAS needs to hang Josh Cahill out to dry. If there is an acceptance of his claims, a public statement must be produced in full. If there was a fradulent claim (and current information suggests there may have been many), then there must be lawsuits for defamation.

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Nothing like off-key karaoke rehearsals at club volume, from kept-women housemates, to get one out of bed. Lol.

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I think the natural progression from Haskell is to Rust...

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Ah, more crap. But that is the human condition, so as long as one works with humans, one only expects as much.

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What's the white version of an ABG?

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Math prodigy says he can't deal with highschool: Sorry kid, I was smart too. You can't wait for the others to lead you. You have to lead them. Now quit yer griping because it makes you sound like a pan lookin for a handout...


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Subang temple: Well, this is either the greatest theatre since May 13, or an upgrade.

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You all need to stop getting offended.
Get a lawyer lah...

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Being bedridden is really boring. But that's the nature of enforced rest. Enforced feeding in a bit!

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There are few things more amusing than being generally unimpressed by the world, and being berated for it by people who are only selectively unimpressed with the world. 🤔 I have been giving consideration to my peers who are enamoured by little gains in life, a meal here, a gift there, or an interaction of this or that kind - and generally I feel saddened by the small scope of their impressability. Of course, I believe they would be generally saddened in symmetrical form by my lack of appreciation for the things which amuse them. But such is society, we all find different things valuable, and so we assert our efforts accordingly.

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On the automation of labours.

I was talking to a friend about business today. People who talk to me about my work seem to find restaurants inherently interesting. It takes them a while to brain that I have no long-term interest in restaurants as a human activity. And while I believe restaurants and retail are always going to get more and more mashed up until we all live in resorthotelmalls, I have no long term interest in retail as a human activity, either. *

Retail is dying - we have all known this for a decade, but some of us choose to procrastinate about the impending fate of these jobs. As alien as it may seem to most civilians, the rudimentary interaction between human beings in casual settings, the gist of personalised service, is ridiculously easily automated. The oldest profession, the encultured gestures, the flirty melodies of speech, the diversity of human personalities - these will all be automated at fractions of the cost of human labour in the present. To cut a long argument short, skipping moreover the demonstration of robots that break the Turing test, consider this: interactions with service staff are often such that the service receiver classifies the service provider as the least complex of human interactors, having the lowest value of all their daily human interactions. The expectations for humans in the service sector are the lowest that we place upon humans in any business. This is why their jobs will quickly be eradicated. **

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(* Why I would bother to run an operation that I have no inherent interest in, is simply because (i) I view it as a means to the end of building a long-term interest in being a service provider to restaurants or the neologismic (and neologistical!) resorthotelmall, (ii) as a business owner, I would not want to outsource my supply chain to someone who hadn't demonstrated a comprehensive understanding of my value chain and operations.

** Don't ask me what what we're going to use the humans for unless you want to discuss other business models. Lol. Maybe we should leave it to the politicians - but probably not.)

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Probably controversial. 🙃
But worth addressing at the MoE level because Tun has spent so many years using the word "lazy" in public, that it is taken for granted as part of Malaysian culture. He got it from a Brit...

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Can we teach Maszlee's office to talk this? Been a fan of Muhyiddin's FB posts since his post-GE13 address to UMNO members. Well-structured. Keep it up.

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Today I lost a lover, and it made me very sad. But sadness is basic, and generally I do not make a fuss about it, because, it is so common. Work however, never ends...
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... back to common problems. Is it now the best hour to sleep, or work? Hmm.

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Healthcare systems doing daily, three layers of huddles in 45 minutes:I don't want to hear people say it can't be done for large organisations again...

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Anyone actually manage to get > 200mbps down on Unifi?

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On MBS's claims to innocence:

TBH, I would believe either party at this point. I reflect upon my role as a boss in the services industry, and OMG, sometimes you ask for something from a staff, and look at what comes back with complete incredulity.


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Next extra-curricular preoccupation: Might be worth having parliament pass better laws and protocol agencies on (a) anonymous letters (b) slanderous comments posted online (c) whistle dick blowing. Hehehe...
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I agree with the support of victims who feel disempowered to complain. And lowering the cost of complaint without compromising on due process for investigation is probably a hard problem.
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[As usual, I am making it a part of my work to lobby against this sort of practice. Personally, who gives a damn?]

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Back on creatine and whey supplements. Work is not well enough, without. 😛

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Enforced feeding, enforced sleep.

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On being comfortable knowing that relationships will end: Why would you date anyone with a lesser grip on reality?! Stay away from toxic deluders.

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Forum friend was complaining that science education fundamentals should come before martial arts exercises.

"For troll's sake, I'll point out that they should do both. Scientific thinking may be lacking in Malaysia, but the health of an organisation/nation also depends on other exercises. In fact, a real-time, mission-critical, study of security problems in an embodied context is quite a good example of small scale engineering problems that when solved, also provide solutions that can be used in other contexts. By the time you have a robot of normal human strength that can recognise how to beat a human opponent, you have already solved a lot of problems in general robotics. In other words, I'm arguing that martial arts are a liberal art. Learn once, apply everywhere... 😘"

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"Small spaces for local businesses, are trending, due to high rents. Do you think this is good?"
"What about it?"
"Is it good? Will it be profitable?"
"You are asking about setting up business in small spaces. It depends on your business objectives. If your business objective is to make money, you need zero space. Trade commodities.

If your business objective is to run a hospital, you need a lot of space.

Ok?"
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Most people solve problems that don't address the end-target of profitability in monetary terms.

In some cases that's because they have decided on a diversified profitability target, only one sub-target of which is profitability in monetary terms. The lingo for that is in the ballpark of balanced scorecards, triple bottom lines, and beyond.

But in other cases the end-target is simply monetary profitability... existing constraints such as target market, product format, plant & equipment, brand, etc. may result in work being done on intermediate targets within those intermediate constraints.

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"Small spaces for local businesses, are trending, due to high rents. Do you think this is good?"
"What about it?"
"Is it good? Will it be profitable?"
"You are asking about setting up business in small spaces. It depends on your business objectives. If your business objective is to make money, you need zero space. Trade commodities.

If your business objective is to run a hospital, you need a lot of space.

Ok?"
-
Most people solve problems that don't address the end-target of profitability in monetary terms.

In some cases that's because they have decided on a diversified profitability target, only one sub-target of which is profitability in monetary terms. The lingo for that is in the ballpark of balanced scorecards, triple bottom lines, and beyond.

But in other cases the end-target is simply monetary profitability... existing constraints such as target market, product format, plant & equipment, brand, etc. may result in work being done on intermediate targets within those intermediate constraints.

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Forum comments - on the reasonable efforts that people make to save, invest, insure, and otherwise prolong their welfare with monetary tools. I generally do not. An article was discussed, showing how costly tail-events can be - medical fees will wipe you out. A friend said, it's worse if you do not die, only suffer - to which I said, that is easy, suicide is easy. It is even worse if you suffer and they lock you up to prevent your suicide. Haha.
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A near-worst case scenario (no one really knows what's worst): is that you get locked-in syndrome on an operating table, and get to feel the scapels slice in, tubes inserted into urethra, probes on organs, surgeons fingering your intestines, hands around your stomach, needles, knives, etc. Hahaha... prepare yourselves adequately. Money only gets one so far, and then decay sets in... are you operationally prepared, and adequately insured? Consider what will happen to your mind, if you are not.

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Briefly, back to work, after work, after work, after a social, after a shower, after work. Wonder what I'll do after work. 🤔😋

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M's priority is racial in-grouping of the Malays. He doesn't quite seem to care about how that happens. Islam is to some degree a tool for him.

To get completely off the wall and psychoanalyse the old man, I'd say he's hung up about being teased as a child about being a mudblood.

:D

I'm sure it's the sorry joke of his life - and in any event he has bravely shown them who's boss.

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Day off. Time to catch up on work before work self-destructs!

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It's nice to not have to worry about quarterly earnings isn't it? 😛

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Kula says they will create a million jobs.

I am trying to figure how this will be qualified. I have vacancies that cannot be filled. Will we have more of those? Hopefully not. The root of the problem, as highlighted in my letter, is that output per worker needs to increase per unit of purchasing power remunerated. That should be the focus of the ministry in times such as ours.


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Complex problems. Stressful concerns.

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(updated)

Things I had to consider doing today, and ignore: audit, monthly reporting, bill administration, staff welfare, menu iteration, website construction, cleaning air conditioners, expansion of digital marketing campaign to push traffic to other businesses in a B2B product development effort, completing a half-built exhaust vent to improve HVAC, cleaning the storeroom, visiting the city council to update our compliance synchrony, ingesting nutritional supplements to push up APM.
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Things I prioritised: troubleshooting fridges, troubleshooting toilet cistern, removing broken brackets from the wall, wrote a letter to multiple newspapers under our communications campaign to lobby for firmer rule of law, took photos of salads at FamilyMart for a friend, checked in via text on a girl I spoke to yesterday, showered, and did my Tinder homework (swiped till depletion).

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No no, we don't just decide to pop your bubbles. We literally read, "won her heart," as "gained her confidence, without prejudice towards the future welfare of the individuals involved." Lol

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Proof of the pudding. The audience always takes it more seriously than the players. THAT IS THE POINT OF SHOW BUSINESS.

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I am a horrible giver of pep-talks. My pep talks pretty much go along the lines of:
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"I notice that this work didn't get done because you did not do X. We have discussed this before, and you are afraid to do X. We cannot be afraid, or our work will be slow. We need to do X until it causes us no fear. If you are a timid person, you cannot work here. You must become apathetic to influence. If you are a timid person today, you must tell yourself, "in ten years I will not be a timid person, and anyone can tell me anything without influencing me to be shy." Then every day, you have the goal in mind, and you change yourself slightly until you become a good worker. Then our work will be faster"
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This obviously tells you a lot about how I view the nature of work, and why I exhibit a disdain for shyness and the people who value it for humanistic reasons. #notmyhumans :)

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So Unifi is not letting us downgrade Biz packages to the new, cheaper, Biz packages. Apparently, we can hack around this by registering as a different company...

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I disagree with criticisms of Kelantan. Their constituency, their rules.
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"Mak, kenape ada cuti?"
"It's an EVENT, bitches..."

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Hmm. Looks like I'm scheduled for my first day off 6-daily shifts since February... on 13 December. Quite a stint, these nine months...


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"I love that Age/2-7 floor idea. It explains so much!"
"... about why I feel like a creep... 😛"
"No, about the people I see around me."
"Not looking forward to being perceived as creepier as time passes. But such is society."

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Many people who use science as a talking point have no idea how to operate it.

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Caught up a little on sleep. Back to work

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1. Protecting jobs (which are not competitive) is the same handicap as raising wages (per unit of productivity). The sustainable solution is always to protect jobs only when the productivity (per unit of wage) in those jobs is increasing faster than the productivity in the same jobs at competitors, where at the same time productivity increases are greater than wages increases.
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2. The definition of being priced-to-market for any job, is, "you're the first guy to lose your job, when the shit hits the fan." This is the same as being priced-to-market for any product. If your company is not aiming to provide superior value for money to customers in the long or short term, then your company has no tactical advantage to compete, by the definition of competition. Any service buyer is the customer of a service seller - so the same tactical disadvantages apply to people who are trying to deliver just enough to not get fired on any given day. Market volatility will push them out of work eventually, given the laws of thermodynamics. You never have to run faster than a bear, if you can run faster than the guy beside you.
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3. Civil rights do not contradict the points above. Civil rights attach a constant term to the remuneration formula for all individual workers. Civil rights for individual corporations (corporate citizens being individuals by some laws) are the same. Competitive markets rely on action upon the other terms in a polynomial. Rights are constants, competition is infinite - or is it? The model for balancing limits upon competition i.e. inequality probably lies in prodding at this a little further.
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4. Watch governments closely. Can you see if they are creating value or merely buying votes at the expense of voters' eventual welfare?


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Who wants to go to the ICERD rally with meeee? Wearing white!

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This I agree with. After 40 years of M, all Malaysians are lazy.

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Done with tangential work for the day. Back to business as usual. Sleep. Accounts, more drains.

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On why scientists generally do not get excited about philosophers of science:

//

"Probably posting in the wrong group if you're looking for a serious answer.

Here is a short attempt at a serious answer.

Scientists function under political economic structures such as having to worry about funding, salaries, and getting through gradschool. Those are practical considerations which strongly influence the practice of science at scale. Of course, scientists question their assumptions, and reinvent their methodologies sometimes. But they don't have the luxury of dwelling on those issues beyond the practical demands of the market.

Philosophy as a discipline reminds people to break things. Those of us who like breaking things more than making them, end up being more philosophical. It's not for everyone. "

//

As to why we like breaking things? Well if the rest of you fuckers would stop building shitty things, maybe we would have time to want to build things of our own.

//

Basic geometries for estimating attendee counts - much easier when there are big street photos. The whole street between the High Court and the Dataran Merdeka is about 50 people wide. Squish it to 60 for good effect. So a square is 3600 people. Count the squares.


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Fax: Kementerian Komunikasi dan Multimedia Malaysia, KKMM please just ban it... everyone should be using email now.

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PAS = -[(-1)^(1/2)][2^(1/2)]
#changemymind

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Probably organically profitable in November, for the first time inover a year. Lol. Standby for crashes. Wee ooo


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Local council elections: 🐓. That being said, this is civil society's chance to partner with PAS on something meaningful... against Harapan.


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Fortunately, the only brand I have to manage is a work ethic. #circularreasoning 😛

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Should I move to BU11? Save money on food, cook at home, spend money travelling.

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BU11: The decision so far is to trade away social life, in the interest of nurturing an infant business.


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Not sure. But from my heteronormy point of view, Malaysian Tinder has gained a surge of users with religiously conservative fashion photography and profiles expressing an aversion to physical intimacy. Since I'm only ever looking for physical intimacy, my searches are 2-400% harder, and OKCupid generally seems more pleasant again. Everyone's welcome to use whatever app they want, but perhaps more specialised apps would be more useful for segmenting, if filters are not available. Lol cc: Tinder Confessions Malaysia

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Metabolism has been slow for weeks. Thisn is what I get for reducing nitric oxide foods, creatinine supplements, and exercise, without reducing workloads. Fix.

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One day I will have time to individually run staff through a holistic agoge.

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Happy to coordinate a parliamentary lobby requesting for comprehensive federal government policies and budgets for dealing with stray mammals, reptiles, amphibians, insects, birds, plants, fungi, prokaryotes, robots, cars, microwaves, badly written software, whatever, including humans.

Unless you can point me to such an existing lobby.

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As a recipient of an almost full scholarship for four years at one of these schools, I would agree with this article. It offers great opportunities for class mobility.

As for my own appreciation of that opportunity: I wasn't looking for upward mobility, so it was rather wasted on me. I spent most of my time on independent studies, and making fun of my colleagues...

Addendum: my undergrad period was mostly spent studying the architecture of two information systems (i) the body of human knowledge in general, for example, how the entire university is structured to convey this effciently (ii) human consciousness, whereby the output from my work was a basic understanding of how to quantify all of it.

Both fields of study were quite enriching, and I would have found it harder to do anywhere else, and without the institutional subsidy.

However, neither field is aligned with economic class mobility. — at Bates College.

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On the best way to save people from suicide, being to talk to them periodically.

This is pretty well written. My own thoughts about this.
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- I've known people who were successful, and unsuccessful at suicide.
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- I don't think suicide is inherently bad; personally I see it as a legitimate and reasonable method to terminate consciousness.
.
- I do think that people who are incapable of considering suicide are JUST AS problematic as people who cannot not-consider suicide.
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- I think it's far dafter that so many people fail to kill themselves, and that society should support the agency of rational individuals in excercising a preference to die.

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I think I should eat and sleep. Still not functioning at peak asshole.

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On "make your interests gradually wider and more impersonal"

Not sure if I've managed that by accident. Here's what I spend most of my days on.
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- running a restaurant (don't care about food, but it is an amusing type of business)
.
- running a business (don't care about commerce, but man's got to eat)
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- writing public policy commentary related to business (don't care about government, but not allowed to write about business directly -_-)
.
- Tinder (is that app associated with personal, or impersonal social life? take a wild guess)

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Meme:

"what is the key to happiness?"
"do not argue with fools"
"I disagree"
"you are right"

This is why they say, the customer is always right (not a practice I recommend, by the way).

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Back to the office.
No sleep yet.
Duty this that...

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This coheres, loosely, with my understanding of how to manipulate human cognition at the tactical level.

(Acupuncture efficacy by "rewiring" of the brain.

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Contractors vs FTEs: Workforce management 101

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Enforced feeding time.

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Responsible Capitalism laws in the USA: This is the only kind of corporate social responsibility (CSR) which doesn't distract corporations from their core value chains. It amuses me that silly plebs may often consider other activities to be "CSR". LOL

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This is a survey about satisfaction with religious hegemony in Malaysia. State your point of view. Please state your age when answering. Also state if you didn't spend at least 51% of your lifetime in Malaysian.
.
Proposition 1: It is POSSIBLE for a religious culture to set acceptable public policy (particularly in education), for a religiously plural citizenry (many religions including atheism, agnosticis, pastafarianism, etc.).
.
Proposition 2: You are OPEN to the possibility of an ACTUAL implementation of (1.) in Malaysia.
.
Proposition 3: You believe past implementations of (1.) Have been satisfactory (Malaysian history to-date).
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Proposition 4: You believe Maszlee is demonstrating a good chance of executing (1.)
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Proposition 5: The Malaysian constitution always REQUIRED one religious culture to permeate public policy.
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(Notes:
If you vote "1:NOPE", you automatically vote "2,3,4:NOPE".
.
If you vote "2:NOPE", you automatically vote "3,4:NOPE".
.
Let me know if you see other implications between propositions.)


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The core concern remains that Masz isn't very good at politics. I like his policies, but if he can't demonstrate the foresight to plan every public action with a critical media, and antagonistic opponents in mind, then he needs to appoint lieutenants who are capable. A chief strategy officer for his political operation.

Otherwise he will simply go down in history as a guy who could have done the job well, but didn't learn fast enough.

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When it comes to art, and I will quantify it, I believe in balance. About 50% of one's output should be fastidiously precise, and the other half should be decisively unstructured. Neither should take precedence: monocultures are bad, in horticulture; in art we say, they are boring.

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BREAK
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Back to the farm. For a bit.

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Sick, for a while. Kicking the can along. Doop dee doo.

Letter: We can Improve Regulations for Sexual Harassment Whistleblowers

In Malaysia, talk of a Sexual Harassment Act (of law) has been bandied around by various bodies, hitting the press over 2017 and 2018. As of November 2018, this has not yet been tabled in Parliament *sic*. However, we already have Act 711, the Whistleblower Protection Act, which points complaint about improper conduct in general to "enforcement agencies," under a so-called "no wrong door," policy. These are relevant, and they can be improved.

Problem statement

The problem I would like to raise about a "no wrong door," policy is that there remains a general sense among powerless citizens that the enforcement agencies are "all wrong doors." This remains especially true of sexual harassment. This is evident when complaints about bad behaviours of citizens and corporations are sent,

- - to the unregulated networks of social media, where they take on great momentum, resulting in extra-judicial chaos, and

- - to mass-media organisations which have graciously take on the responsibility of coordinating a response from enforcement agencies.

In the interest of emboldening the public to increase its volume of complaints, while ensuring that complaints are processes in an orderly fashion, I briefly propose an improvement to the whistleblowing protocol for improper conduct in general, to be cooperatively regulated by the federal government, and civil society. Act 711 can be extended to include three things.

Solution statement

First, a formal and independent Commission of Complaints, with a commissioner of complaints, should be created, with minimal cost and staffing, to administer the two items below.

Second, a protocol. It seems like a double-blind architecture would work best, the sort of thing commonly used to reduce prejudice in scientific data collection, via anonymity.

- Types of parties: Improper People, Complainers, Collecting Agencies, Reporting Agencies, Enforcement Agencies

- - Improper People are those accused of improper conduct.

- - Complainers are whistleblowers, the people making the complaints.

- - Collecting Agencies would be responsible for taking named, and anonymous complaints, and collecting them in a regular format, while hiding the identity of Complainers, keeping Complainers updated on the status of their complaints, and advocating for complaints to be dealt further along the chain. Lawyers' offices are suited for this role.

- - Reporting Agencies would be responsible for consolidating anonymised complaints from Collecting Agencies, and coordinating a response from Enforcement Agencies. Lawyers' offices are also suited for this role.

- - Enforcement Agencies, as already assumed by Act 711, are the specialised agencies which handle law enforcement of various subsets of the law.

Third, a blockchain. Technology has recently graced us with this marvel designed to keep track of things so that they are never lost, easy to find, and always checkable, by anyone, at any time. All complaints should be consolidated on a blockchain upon arrival at the Commission of Complaints, and the maintenance of the blockchain should be assigned to the Commission. Public access to certain types of information on the blockchain should be updated in real-time: the identities of all Collecting Agencies and Reporting Agencies, the number of complaints and the type of complaints that have arrived at Collecting Agencies, and the current ticket status of each complaint as it is passed through the protocol, for example. [All of this mirrors how court cases are tracked on a court docket, but here we are talking about complaints which have not yet become court cases.]

That's all. I want to keep this brief.

Thanks for reading.

On the Automation of Labours

On the automation of labours.

I was talking to a friend about business today. People who talk to me about my work seem to find restaurants inherently interesting. It takes them a while to brain that I have no long-term interest in restaurants as a human activity. And while I believe restaurants and retail are always going to get more and more mashed up until we all live in resorthotelmalls, I have no long term interest in retail as a human activity, either. *

Retail is dying - we have all known this for a decade, but some of us choose to procrastinate about the impending fate of these jobs. As alien as it may seem to most civilians, the rudimentary interaction between human beings in casual settings, the gist of personalised service, is ridiculously easily automated. The oldest profession, the encultured gestures, the flirty melodies of speech, the diversity of human personalities - these will all be automated at fractions of the cost of human labour in the present. To cut a long argument short, skipping moreover the demonstration of robots that break the Turing test, consider this: interactions with service staff are often such that the service receiver classifies the service provider as the least complex of human interactors, having the lowest value of all their daily human interactions. The expectations for humans in the service sector are the lowest that we place upon humans in any business. This is why their jobs will quickly be eradicated. **

-

(* Why I would bother to run an operation that I have no inherent interest in, is simply because (i) I view it as a means to the end of building a long-term interest in being a service provider to restaurants or the neologismic (and neologistical!) resorthotelmall, (ii) as a business owner, I would not want to outsource my supply chain to someone who hadn't demonstrated a comprehensive understanding of my value chain and operations.

** Don't ask me what what we're going to use the humans for unless you want to discuss other business models. Lol. Maybe we should leave it to the politicians - but probably not.)

//

Follow up comments:

In case it's not clear, I'm not saying that customer service is bad. I'm saying that customer service is expensive. One day a robot will do better than a human at a fraction of the cost.

We're probably not on the same page as to how likely this is to happen. On my end, it's not even the best example of how redundant human talents will become.

I expect extremely cheap creative services, art, mentorship, counselling, teaching, and even parentage at some point from robots which will be delivered cheaper than most humans can do it.

This basically upends a lot of economic limitations because the earth is currently oversupplied with meat, and undersupplied with the ability too upgrade the meat to intelligence.

The robots will take care of the last problem. What happens after that? :P

Letter: The Wage-Talent Gap in Malaysia is Horrible: And Immigrants Are Fixing It Without Due Credit

Dear Kula,

thanks for hitting the news. I've been trying to reach your special committee on foreign workers, but to no avail, so in response to that 3D-quip, let me try and get some publication to put this out there for everyone. Businesses can't simply pay higher wages unless they can raise prices of products - happiness is unlimited, but money is not. We know that Malaysians are willing to do difficult work, and that is not the problem with Malaysia.

The Real Problem: some fundamental economic parameters

The problem is that for the same amount of wages, an expatriate is willing to do more than a Malaysian in almost any role. This is because the quality of life in Malaysia (read: public amenities and infrastructure) is better than the qualit[ies] of life in the countries where many expatriates come from - these expatriates who are very competitive in Malaysia, and Malaysia has proven to be very competitive in attracting their talents. In this letter, I will use "expatriate," and "foreign worker," to mean the same thing.

Of course, many of these expatriates came into Malaysia under the bad governance of past administrations, but that is of no significant at this point in history. So much ill has been wrought by administrations since the 1970s, that Malaysia's economy has become highly dependent on expatriate labour inputs. You already know this. No matter how it is politicised, we cannot simply kick out all the illegal expatriates overnight because it would cripple our economy.

The quality of life in some other countries is also higher than in Malaysia, and so Malaysians migrate there to work - those Malaysians who are too competitive for Malaysia, and there it is quite foolish for any of us to be sentimentally pining, begging, or hoping for their contributions to return. Malaysia's quality of life is unfortunately not competitive enough to retain their talents. Forget it. We need to return focus to the members of society who have committed to delivering value in Malaysia - we need to naturalise more immigrants. This is in-character for our nation.

A Make-believe Solution: new Malaysians in the new Malaysia

My personal request is that we begin by expanding the recent move that now provides "legal" expatriates with mandatory SOCSO benefits. The policy as it stands appears to leave out "illegal" expatriates. But the point of SOCSO is to provide a safety net for the most vulnerable members of society, and so I would like to ask that we extend mandatory SOCSO coverage to "illegal" expatriates as well. This would include those who entered the country illegally, as well as those who entered the country legally but work in jobs which they are not officially registered in. The first obvious criticism is of my suggestion would be that no employer wants to incriminate themselves by registering their illegal expatriate labour with SOCSO - but here is a roadmap for mutual benefit:

Employers of illegal expatriate workers love their staff as much as anyone loves their colleagues. We all want our friends to be safe, and healthy, regardless of where they are from, and regardless of where they are going. Allowing employers to register their illegal expatriate labour for SOCSO benefits improves the data collection capabilities of the federal government. Furthermore, it provides a "point of entry," for new protocols/tracks that can be enacted to naturalise any expatriates who already deliver value to Malaysians, identifying their skillsets, and integrating their gifts with those of natural born citizens over decades. We need plans that span decades - reactionary short-term solutions will not build this nation well. We don't have to give expatriates blue NRICs right away - we already have a huge backlog of red and non-NRIC residents who deserve to go first to the first-class of citizenship. Nevertheless, a roadmap spanning five to twenty years may be appropriate for properly integrate expatriate talent into Malaysian society.

While this is being addressed, we must also tighten our borders and improve labour import protocols to avoid repeating mistakes we have made in the past.

Some Context

I've been working very closely with foreign workers since 2015. I've also been working very closely with the local (staff) competitors for the same amount of time. Over this period, I've observed in detail the economies of what they are each able to deliver at the workplace on a minute to minute, day to day, and year to year basis. At this moment, all over Malaysia, various people are making lives better for Malaysian citizens - we are not all Malaysian citizens who make Malaysian lives better. Some of us came a very long way just to be here. It is high time that expatriate workers are recognised for their contributions to the Malaysian economy.

Please bear with me, as I'm not a public policy professional, and so my data is very limited. I've been trying to form a clear view on policies for how Malaysia should work with these people since June 4. As a natural born Malaysian, 35 years of age, I personally do "3D" work daily - cleaning toilets, wiring appliances, enforcing sleep and waking twice a day, in order to balance the needs of all the stakeholders in my environment. I make less than a quarter of what I did at my previous job in an office - I do my job because I plan fastidiously to cram my schedule with risks and opportunities. Yet most of my time is spent enabling other people to do more - not only do I do this for my staff, but my entire business is geared to do this for society.

Finally, let me say in my Trumpiest voice that I'm a huge fan of your work. I love the hat. It's a great hat, and I hope you help us all, residents of Malaysia, to optimise the labour supply chain. I think co-operation with the Ministers of Education, Home Affairs, etc. is crucial, but I'll comment on those tangents some other time.

Sincerely,

Chit-chat on Article 153

From a conversation analysing Article 153:

UPDATED (unscribbling the scribbles - and adding a link to a comment I made on this last month):

Apologies for scribbling - still in bed atm.

- The bumiputera policies we see as implementations of the constitution, are mainly mahathirist policies.

- M's own political journey, from banned book writer, to sitting PM while being writer of a banned book, to turning the book into thirty years of bad* policy (mea culpa, i judge, but this is all debatable) is quite amusing.

- As you say, there is a clear difference between the letter of a law (constitution) and the policy implementations of that law by the executive branch of government (what the public thinks of as "the law").

- - Here is another example: the federal government is given the right but not the obligation to remove Malaysian citizenship from Malaysian citizens who behave like citizens of other countries (dual-citizens, etc.). That is in law; but it an implementation of that law, by the executives under M, that has enacted a policy of almost always removing the Malaysian citizenship from such citizens. Over decades of this particular implementation, many have come to think that the law obliges the government to ban double citizenships; the law does not do this - M did this (to the best of my knowledge).

- M for all his strengths, sadly, enjoys shooting from the hip when it comes to strategy; he intuits vaguely, and executes meticulously. This gave us the 1970s-2000s. (Unless, I am mistaken from my unprivileged point of observation.) Then in the 2000s-2010s, his brethren fucked that up even further (there were a few straightenings out, but the fuck-ups were more numerous, as we can all see).

- And now M is back. He has changed views, and updated his rhetoric on believing in a new and differently managed Malaysia. However, his political constituents have vested interests and cultures, and are not clambering over themselves to turn Malaysia's bigoted policies around.

- One of my key hopes these days is that M will have time to write a new book before he expires; lest we have to remember him by his first one forever.

- Also i hope he gets a better editor.

- previous thoughts: https://www.facebook.com/jerngatwork/posts/1082096415304398

Further Thoughts on Public Health and Criminal Justice

From follow-up conversations on this.

I agree with your main point. I think the chap has indisputably broken the letter of the grooming law, and must be charged.

That being said, I do think that his inability to engage with truth statements and social politics from a young age should be taken into account in the dispensation of punishment and/or treatment by the courts.

The church, or social club, or family has a role in the management of social deviance. These are tracks of support which are informal, and mostly unregulated by law. The formal tracks are the criminal justice system, the health system, etc.

What I saying is that we need both systems, and multiple tracks of *formally coordinated* support for deviants in society.

It is my hope that many of the punitive treatments in the penal code come under additional legislation, of having to be additionally recommended by clinical psychologists. I literally, at this point, want to have the clinical psychologists run the part of the criminal justice system which has the KPI of reforming the thoughts and feelings of criminals. I want all laws reviewed to give them this power and responsibility.

- Currently we probably don't have enough clinical psychologists to get this done. We probably don't even have a mature enough understanding of these things at the highest levels of policy making. I hope that the Women's/ Family / Human Capital / Law / Religion / Medicine arms of cabinet will form a joint committee to look into this initiative. Other countries are decades ahead, and we may not want to become exactly like them, but it would be good to look into it a little bit.

- I include Religion because it is still an inextricable part of Malaysian politics - any policies formed without those stakeholders are ultimately doomed. The question is never how to cleave between religion and state, but how to involve religion rationally in state. That's the hard problem of running states of religious peoples.

- To tie it all up a bit more: I really do think that crime / psychological deviance / personal preference / good and evil / social norms, are just one huge, long, slippery slope. So that's where my policy preferences come from. People who believe in abstract good and evil are accommodated in my model, but they believe in a different model.

Letter to the Editor - Reflecting on Malaysia's Infrastructure for Dealing with Crime as a Public Health Concern

(publication link)

As published:

ON NOV 7, I recognised a childhood colleague from the 1990s, in a post that had “gone viral” on social media.

The allegation of the post was that John Doe had developed a career of harassment, targeting children who volunteered in religious societies and charities.

Firstly, I’m looking at it from a public health point of view. What are the appropriate channels that the government needs to put in place, such that the right multi-track support programmes can be administered to the accused and the victims?

There is a view that there are two parts to dealing with crime in society.

(a) Punitively, by simply punishing those who engage in behaviours deemed illegal, and hope that this acts as a deterrent to future crimes.

(b) As a public health issue, with multiple simultaneous tracks of social, medical, legal, and perhaps including punitive support.

Secondly, even when we have non-punitive tracks to deal with perpetrators, the law cannot take effect without the initiation of a formal process. For someone to receive formal clinical diagnosis and treatment, they have to first either:

(c) Be charged under a law, whereby the courts can thereafter assign them to a social worker or medical personnel for evaluation, or

(d) They must voluntarily seek out diagnosis and treatment.

The formal method for initiating proceedings for anyone who isn’t John Doe himself, is to file a police report. Meanwhile, as the behaviour of the accused has been neither diagnosed by a professional, or formally charged in court, it receives trial by social media, which is not efficient in helping us to determine the whole truth about the issue.

John Doe has already responded to media interviews. I don’t think it’s appropriate to speculate on his specific philosophical positions: neither his views on how he engages with society, nor his views on whether his behaviour is ethical or not. Those are his opinions; they will be taken into consideration by clinical professionals in the event of clinical diagnosis. We can only review what he has actually done, and it returns to the courts to properly convict an individual if he is guilty.

Finally, in my experience of socialising with him in weekly activities over a period of years, it was known that he was never very well-adjusted to society. He was often bullied for being inept at fitting in with the crowd. I know this for a fact because I participated in the bullying at that time – it wasn’t spectacularly violent, bloody stuff, but I do believe that teasing between children, social castigation and verbal abuse are all forms of bullying which may have long-term effects on individuals.

Bullying is easy to spot and deal with. But is it even possible for governments to put in place mechanisms where we can go a step further, where all members of society are familiar with spotting, tagging, and assigning professional social workers to cases of other forms of deviance in children from a young age? Do we want our society to become robust enough to accommodate such facilities?

The relationship between what counts as social norm, and what counts as crime, is often more complex than we may want to admit. Thinking deeply about this issue often reveals that we arbitrarily decide what is good and bad based on what is convenient. For some people, it may seem easier to refer to God; and for others, the truth is more mundane – we all have different intuitions, and can only agree on a social contract which must be explicitly defined, and enforced with checks and balances. That is the rule of law.

HWA YANG JERNG

Kuala Lumpur

TAGS / KEYWORDS:
Letters , Criminal , Sexual Predator , Grooming

\

As drafted:

Letter to the Editor - Reflecting on Malaysia's Infrastructure for Dealing with Crime as a Public Health Concern

On 7 November, I recognised a childhood colleague from the 1990s, in a post that had "gone viral" on social media. The allegation of the post was that John Doe had developed a career of harassment, targeting children who volunteered in religious societies and charities. My reaction was evenly distributed between sadness and amusement, and I continue to have this reaction as the story has developed across tabloids, and the front-page of certain mainstream newspapers.

Firstly, I'm looking for a lens on the issue from a public health point of view. What are the appropriate channels that we need the government to put into place, such that the right multi-track support programs can be administered to each of the accused and the victims?

There is a view that there are two parts to dealing with crime in society.
(a) Punitively, by simply punishing those who engage in behaviours deemed illegal, and hope that this acts as a deterrent to future crimes.
(b) As a public health issue, with multiple simultaneous tracks of social, medical, legal, and perhaps including punitive support.

Secondly, even when we have non-punitive tracks to deal with perpetrators, the law cannot take effect without the initiation of formal process. For someone to receive formal clinical diagnosis and treatment, they have to first either:

(c) be charged under a law, whereby the courts can thereafter assign them to a social worker or medical personnel, for evaluation, or
(d) they must voluntarily seek out diagnosis, and treatment.

The formal method for initiating proceedings for anyone who isn't John himself, is to file a police report. Meanwhile, as the behaviour of the accused has been neither diagnosed by a professional, or formally charged in court - it receives trial by social media, which is not efficient in helping us to determine the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, about the issue at hand.

As of this time, John has already responded to media interviews. I don't think it's appropriate to speculate on John's specific philosophical positions: neither his views on how he engages with society, nor his views on whether his behaviour is ethical or not. Those are his opinions; they will be taken into consideration by clinical professionals in the event of clinical diagnosis. We can only review what he has actually done, against the letter of the law - and it returns to the courts to properly convict an individual if he is guilty.

Finally, in my experience of socialising with John in weekly activities over a period of years, it was known that he was never very well adjusted to society. In fact, this was to the extent that he was often bullied for being inept at fitting in with the crowd. I know this for a fact, because I participated in the bullying at that time - it wasn't spectacularly violent, bloody stuff, but I do believe that teasing between children, social castigation, and verbal abuse are all significant forms of bullying which may have long-term effects on individuals.

Bullying is easy to spot, and deal with. But is it even possible for governments to put in place mechanisms where we can go a step further, where all members of society are familiar with spotting, tagging, and assigning professional social workers to cases of other forms of deviance in children from a young age? Do we want our society to become robust enough to accommodate such facilities?

The relationship between what counts as a social norm, and what counts as crime, are often more complex than we may want to admit. Thinking deeply about this issues often reveals that we arbitrarily decide what is good and bad based on what is convenient. For some people, it may seem easier to refer to God; and for others, the truth is more mundane - we all have different intuitions, and can only agree on a social contract which must be explicitly defined, and enforced with checks and balances. That is rule of law.

FundMyHome - reflections

1. This should be regulated by the SC or BNM, or ministry of Housing, not a private company.

2. On the institutional investors end, it boils down to increased exposure to housing collateral. No matter how you cut it, it means more exposure to real estate. (1.) still needs to cool off the whole housing market, or it will just result in more housing inflation, which is the real cause of the problem: we have an absence of government policies to keep housing affordable, and to reduce speculation.

3. On the consumer end, it increases and improves regulations for group buys of housing if (1, 2.) are properly and holistically executed.

4. Basically this achieves nothing new, except 3.

+5. Upon further reading of other analyses, it seems the consumer investor takes a higher risk and lower reward than institutional investors, in return the consumer investor gets short-term access to physical housing. From that point of view, it's a complete misstep in terms of public policy. The MoF now needs to come out with a strong statement why it would endorse risking the savings of consumers, to cushion the investment losses of corporations, instead of strong-arming policies which ensure: that all citizens have access to housing without long-term financial liability.

+6. Arithmetically, we know that the financing structure amounts to an exotic mortgage anyway. The real question is, is this fancy mortgage better or worse than conventional mortgages. If we don't have a clear intuition, we need to pop open spreadsheets to do some monte carlo simulations for the consumer, and for the institutional investor, to determine what the difference is in terms of quantifiable financial risk, under different macro and micro economic conditions.

/

I question the risk management of the housing market and the role of the government in providing consumer/homeowner protections. This OUGHT to be regulated carefully. Owning is not always good. Renting is not always bad. Housing bubbles are generally bad for equality, but if we are only interested in cushioning institutional investments with consumer savings by bribing consumers with the short-term veneer of ownership, then so be it.

/

(replaying to someone who said EPF was taxpayer money) to be pedantic: many non-taxpayers have EPF savings. It's for social security. This is an underlying structure. If indeed EPF is supposed to increase exposure to this sector, they should just REIT an entire housing estate, and collect controlled rents from consumers, while working with town planners to ensure that inhabitants have first-world amenities, at commendable costs. This would address both the housing concern and the institutional investor.

Home ownership for the sake of investment is a distraction. Anything that facilitates this just distorts the housing market. Access to housing of a decent minimum standard is a government mandate; under that lens, housing is a public utility and should be regulated as such.

Investors should look elsewhere for returns.
/trollface

/

(replying to someone who said that wives do not want to rent, because they live at home, and moving every time you can't renew a rental is expensive)

is this why husbands are over their head in debt? Lol

Will the wives be happier if after five years they have no home, and the price of the home drops, then will they accept their losses as rent well paid or will they cry for help?

If the price of the property drops by 10%, the institutional investor appears to have a put-option that forces the consumer to lose 50% of their initial deposit placed. There is another stated alternative for the consumer, they can take a loan... and then will these be standard mortgage loans, or will they have higher-than-market interest rates because consumers are in a bind? Will the refinancing options be regulated to protect consumers?

(Has BNM/ MoF/ MoH&LG done a thorough risk analysis and simulated the macro/micro-effect of any macro/micro-downturns, including edge *sic* cases?).

Is it apparent to naive retail investors that the five-year term amounts to a liquidation-option held by the institutional investor, which depresses the price of the property at the five-year mark?

The entire program stinks of property speculation. It's cool if the government wants to endorse this - but it needs to be further cooled with rent control policies and more public housing developments to depress the real price of housing the B40 and maybe M40 also.