Business copywriting is fascinating

I've borrowed the notion of whitespace very much from doing computer programming, e.g.

: the best bullet is any symbol that looks like a bullet

: any ( parentheses ) can / should be surrounded by spaces ; any punctuation or slashes fancier than a comma or period also.

Are you sick of financial advice?

 Here are some pro-tips, which are not financial advice.

1. Learn how to be happy, just by thinking away your dissatisfaction with the world. Minimise dependence on external objects.

2. Learn that every day is a good day to die.

3. Learn how to live on minimum wage in your current city.

Don't follow me. Adjusting yourself is more important than following anyone else.

You can do it! I believe in you.

- me reacting to the stream of things on Threads

I wish Malaysia would ...

Based on all the butthurt I read in the Malaysian press : I think the one thing Malaysians need to learn how to do is cooperate without having to apologise to each other. Stop treating your pain like it's someone else's problem. Delete the words "sorry" and "apology" from your vocabularies. That's my vision for Malaysia. I don't expect the nation to change, but one can dream. :)

My study of the poors

It is 1995. I sit for elementary school graduation exams, to signal my class to future observers. It has been three years since I exited the US, and my career at this point is oriented around going back.

It is 2001. Despite my lack of effort, I manage to get into college and leave Malaysia. I arrive at college in the US and find myself surrounded by rich, happy, but apparently unintelligent people. I start digging myself in for a period of study, expecting it to take extra effort.

It is 2005. It is time to graduate. I had considered aborting my studies after two years, as the institution did not have a syllabus which I deemed appropriate for my interests in the architecture of education systems in general. But a dean had said I was expected to complete the iteration, so I obliged. I have been waiting for two years, to surround myself with poorer people in a commercial environment, in order to learn about that. This is how I return to Malaysia.

It is 2023. I have spent countless hours sitting with, and working among poor people. The previous two years particularly, have not been so poor, because I had been focused on earnings to pay back some debt I had incurred from a prior venture. But the time has come to consolidate my interests once again. So I begin a sabbatical. 

Two years later, I find myself reflecting upon this process. The US is in turmoil. I remain observant without too many conclusive thoughts.

Dating things

Strange things I've encountered in the dating environment :

1. People who have a thought, and presume that you have the same thought, without an explicit discussion.

This is generally bad, bad, news, as it establishes all sorts of runny foundations for activity that needs to be worked out later. The best thing to do generally is to say, "hold up, we need to talk about this". This is problematic with people who don't like to talk about things, enjoy being in moments without risk management, and who are only turned on when their verbal faculties are turned off. Bad, bad news. Recommend to avoid.

2. People who have presumptions about what vague words like "relationship", "love", "feelings", "loyalty" mean, and how they are reified in practice. Recommend to discuss.

Safer things I've encountered :

3. People who know what they want.

• 3a. People who  ask for what they want, without taking it by force.
• 3b. People who can can explain what they want, if you ask them.

4. People who know what they don't want.

• 4a. People who tell you what they don't want, before you discover it by accident.
• 4b. People who can tell you what they don't want, if you happen to ask.

This is a non-exclusive list, whereas it would be nice to have a MECE framework, I'm just jotting this down between other work. Might get back to it later.

Dehumanism

 I like the sound of the adjective : dehumanist.

I shall henceforth identify with it, unless/ until it acquires a popularly accepted meaning which I disagree with.

Power and Speech

 Briefly reflecting on the nature of power and speech as currency. There are these interesting sets of people, with tiny intersections :

• A : those with great objective accomplishments 
• B : those who are well-spoken about their models of the world
• C : those who present at attractive, and are thus influential 

Well,

• ( A < B < C ) : is the ordering of membership size
• ( A ^ C ) : these are typical celebrities
• ( B ^ C ) : these are not horrible, but they are more like interviewers/ prophets
• ( A ^ B ) : are people whose social media content I want to follow, but they often  don't present themselves, so often third-party coverage is needed
• ( A ^ B ^ C ) : truly rare, and treasured members of society; to humanists these are gods ( figure of speech, I'm not a humanist myself )

Reading Aloud, again

 Throwing back to college / now 20y later : I speak to few people, weekly, and spend most of my days reading ... so that circuit is a bit saturated. It becomes many times more effective for memory, if I read things aloud - so I have started to do this again. It's all about casting redundantly on multiple bands, to increase stimulation of the underlying network.

My Studies from 1997 to 2025

The main reason I observe nationalpolitics is as a matter of empathy with a nation, or group of nations. Otherwise macroeconomic phenomena are largely ignorable, while one focuses on microeconomic work.

Empathy with sad situations begets sadness, so I largely avoid it. Yet I have spent years of my life moderately studying what I largely avoid. Most politics on earth is about the manipulation of power, and undeniably all commerce is just local politics.

On the microeconomic scale, macroesthetic control is largely derived from microesthetic control, but that is a wholly separate issue. Around the age of 14, my macroesthetic interests* involved computing, math, and science.

From 15 to 20, I put more emphasis on studying history and culture, as a matter of understanding the origins of the present - I focused this period on non-commercial and non-political domains, as that was allocated for the period afterwards. By accident I become quite well-versed with microesthetic work.

Then from 20 to 39, I devoted myself to a study of commerce and politics, without too much effort - simply participating in businesses and conversations in my own neighbourhood, which I did not suppose I understood, which I wished to understand better.

At 39+ I had the opportunity to take a pause from these studies of nearly two decades. Since then, I have been reorienting to work that I personally enjoy*.

It has however, also been a good time to extend my study of commerce and politics beyond my immediate neighbourhood ... and to look at my own country as a whole. In doing so, I also have been able to afford time to further understand the relationship between my country and the other countries of this world.

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/my-studies-from-1997-2025-yangjerng-hwa-o8eqc

AI Agents in the Workforce

 There's a big difference between 

"we don't hire junior executives anymore" and 

"we now provide all junior and senior executives with a team of PAs"

Deepfake victim trauma

• 1. Regulatory environment, and public legal education in should cover this domain of offenses. 
• 2. Mental health preparedness should cover this for all children, again via public education. We are now living in a time where this sort of violence is common. So defenses must be taught.

Power and Relationships

Amidst a lot of calls for "software developers need to stop coding by hand, now", I find nothing new or particularly enlightening. Delegating work to any agent, human or machine, is the same - either you can and do check it, or you accept the results on faith a.k.a. trust.

Since I generally don't delegate anything I can't check, except when I'm feeling lucky, I don't often find that my workflows are delegable, since I my work is mainly about learning how to read and write new things.

Plebs : most of the world aspires to obtain assets controlled by specific individuals, under legal frameworks, guarded by trust, and hence accessed via relationships.

I diverged from this strategy, many years ago, and I have prioritised assets over which I have direct control, such as the functionality of my little mind, and its comprehension of various domains of mechanics. Happiness is instantaneous, and most other knowledge is a matter of tooling which I am happy to learn.

It is a curious path. I continue to study it.