Religious Conversions, and the Politics of Malay "Ultras"

Politics in Malaysia is drawn across a few distinct axes.

1. Primarily ( and rarely noted ) : there is a class-hierarchy not only among individuals, but also among states : 

• ... 1.1. Sabah, SH, and Sarawak, SK, are not equal states with the states of the Peninsula, PS - they have superior positions;
• ... 1.2. Penang and Melaka, are not equal states within PS, having no Malay ruler as their head of state - they have inferior positions at the Council of Rulers, COR ( besides various legacy differences, including land administration ).

2. Secondly ( and usually spotlit ) : "bumiputera" second-class citizens are grouped together by hereditary status + race + religion ( "Malays of peninsula" + "indigenous of SH&SK, IHK" ... being a subset of the overall "hereditary citizens of SH&SK, CHK, a minor point in national politics" ); the first-class are the Malay rulers, of course.

• ... 2.1. As Malay is constitutionally defined as a superset of Muslim, Islam is co-opted in "Malay ultra" political rhetoric to include non-Malay Muslims as "eventually Malay", and to exclude non-Muslim-non-IHK, NMIHK, as "outgroup irritants".

3. Points 1, 2, establish the underlying fabric of electoral politics

Thirdly, against this fabric, players establish the game. The quantity of votes in each state is analysed in N-dimensions, with various in-group alignments being expressed as factors of

• ... 3.1. elemental
• - migration ( intra- and international ), 
• - death and birth rates, 
• - birthlines ( race, religion, and CHK inclusion ) , and 
• - religious conversions
• ... 3.2. compounded
• - political party ecosystems 

4. Finally, in the specific contexts of 2.1. and 3.1., it becomes clear to any student, that religious conversions are an engineer-able substrate, and a long-term concern for electoral politicians.

That is why this stuff is always in the news.

3Q2025 demographics of Malaysia

najib-trump parallels of yore

Najib is Malaysia's Trump.

He's a pretty boy with manners and limited long-term planning capability

... USED as a faceman by elite planners to

... OBTAIN the love of simpletons to

... MOVE wealth from simpletons and everyone else, to the elites. 

🤷🏻

novel casual dining in KL

Food in Kuala Lumpur : novel casual dining / NCD

1. I don't eat out much these days, as I'm not a foodie, I'm not currently working in HORECA, and I'm mainly on a student budget.

2. I did work in HORECA for 9+ years, and did make a point to check on the scene up to 2023.

3. Most NCD is overpriced, as the broad demand side comes from mixed cultural backgrounds, with a low signal-to-noise ratio. Basically Malaysians mostly have no clue what they are eating outside of traditional local contexts, or their interpretation of what good food is depends on prior notions. ( Probably a controversial opinion. )

4. Some NCD is basic in quality - these tend to get rave reviews for execution and prettiness. Most NCD is sub basic.

I don't even want to think about fine dining options in Malaysia, and I dread to hear what self-regarded foodies have to say about it. I'll leave this under the pretense of "ah, sorry, too poor to know what I am taking about, carry on". 

beauty and its errs

Beauty is an evolved device for strength marking. However the inability to turn off irritation from ugliness, results in an overly-positive feedback loop, which tends towards monoculture i.e. conservativism. 

In fact that inability becomes a weakness, and we can identify groups that share that weakness, based on their common reinforcement of exclusive preferences. 

Thus are the different buyers in luxury markets. 

governance of boredom

1. Establish universe of context

2. Determine values / directions

3. Set goals

4. Take a nap

5. Based on 123, determine strategy and tactics

kaum

Konsep "kaum". 

Konsep sejagat perkauman, adalah konsep usang. Konsep kebangsaan, masih berguna, tanpa pencampuran konsep usang itu, dan perkataan "kebangsaan" boleh ditafsir lebih elok lagi, sebagai sinonim kepada perkataan "nasional" dan "kenegaraan".

Walau bagaimanapun, ada antara kita yang duduk di bawah pemerintahan kerajaan, di mana kitab tertib kebangsaannya digubal pada masa kuno, di mana pada kefahaman kuno itu, konsep perkauman masih berguna. Jadi kini, kita masih menemui kegelabahan dalam otak individual tertentu, mengenai perkaitan antara kaum, negara, dan bangsa.

Dalam keadaan ini, seseorang tidak patut mengambil hati dengan kegelabahan saudara kuno yang mengasyikkan konsep perkauman dalam pemikiran sehariannya. Rohani dan duniawi seseorang itu masih boleh berterusan dengan penumpuan kepada pendasaran yang selain ketimbang kegelabahan tersebut. Seperti manapun pendasaran itu, ia adalah pilihan peribadi seseorang. Tujuan nota ini hanya bagi mengingati pembaca bahawa konsep kaum merupakan sesuatu yang ketinggalan zaman.

Jadi, janganlah mengambil hati dengan kegiatan, kenegaraan, pekerjaan, pemikiran, dan polemik yang meyasarkan kelemahan kuno perkauman. Tumpukan kerja anda pada tujuan yang lebih sesuai.

😂

Malaysian governance readings today :

 Malaysian governance readings today :

• - LAND : constitutional article 89, determines Malay reserve land; related acts determine land governance 
• - NATIONAL LANGUAGE : article 152, where "official purposes/ maksud rasmi" is defined
• - RESERVED QUOTAS : article 153, roughly addressing 
• - - civil service jobs
• - - education
• - - business permits and licenses
• - SPEECH : article 10.4 allows subsidiary legislation to limit "questioning", which may be reified as "hypothetical/ speculative propositions/ statements/ sentences", about certain other articles, "the sensitive topics", including articles 152 and 153 but not article 89; also, search query "current speech, secrets, and detention laws in malaysia"
• - JARGON : while the constitution "is the social contract", the contemporary ( 2020s ) use of the phrase "social contract" as a topic of discussion stems from public debate largely between members of UMNO and Gerakan around 2005

anonymised chats in public

Many people are terrified, when their thoughts are scrutinised by others. It is an understandable trigger, but I do not encourage it. Often I publicly post conversations with anonymised conversants, whereas my role in the conversation is more obvious. The anonymised may fear that this exposes themselves to vulnerabilities. But without the reification of a subject, the predicate of conversation is merely a concept, worthy of global review.

I generally comply with requests for secrecy, but in the absence of such requests, my own life is mostly laid bare. I do not know any better way to present information for discussion, than by this method. I certainly don't trust the anonymised parties' views, more than I trust the myriad of public feedback and opinion. 

It is notable however, that parties which tend to be terrified by such dynamics, also tend to be the ones who feel insecure about their place in society : uncertain about their relationships with others, uncertain about job security, uncertain about being perceived as mentally ill.

profitable promise management

 The trick to an easy life with no responsibilities is ...

• 1. underpromise
• 2. overdeliver

The trick to enriching yourself at the expense of others is ...

• 1. overpromise
• 2. underdeliver

The trick to knowing which is which is ...

• 1. assume no promises are implicit
• 2. don't mistake a non-promise for a promise

Follow me for more trite comments, as I try to stay awake at my desk.

integration : triple network model, my college work

People are simple machines, somewhat

It will probably be several years before I can map the language I used for my college work, to the language of the triple network model in contemporary neuroscience. After all, they are both infirm theories. Roughly from my initial reading of the latter :

SMN ... SENSORY-motor ( sensorimotor / somatomotor ) network, covers both exteroception and interoception. ( Which together form a subset of proprioception ... as proprioception broadly involves imagined sensory data as well, not just live sourced sensory data ). Of course this divides into input/output i.e. sense/motor subnets. Various sense modalities have their own subnets.

CEN ... central executive network, mostly concerned with PHYSICS : modelling, simulation, and execution. Bridges the SMN, to other key networks. Since DEDUCTIVE reasoning is a variety of physics ( not a commonly understood or acceptable hypothesis ), perhaps this is also the brain's deductive processor, equivalent to ATPs in maths software. 

DMN ... default mode network, generally said to be involved in free association, pattern matching, and INDUCTIVE hypothesis generation ( first stage of inductive reasoning, where the second stage is deductive coherence checking ).

SN ... salience network, tends to handle PRIORITISATION ( probably value judgements in general, as it links up with emotions, and socioeconomic valuation ).

DAN ... dorsal attention network, seems to be closely related with the shortest-term memory buffer, getting bridged alternately to the CEN or DMN. Maybe the seat of CONSCIOUS memory - need to read up on how this works with blind people, as initial pointers talk about visual data ( we do know blind people can use visual imagination internally, to a degree ).