“To reduce ourselves to brands… is to do violence to our personhood.” – another reminder of why we must resist this current madness for “influencing” and performative broadcasting: our very Humanity is at stake.
An Umno politician waxing lyrical about the advantages of open tender for public projects – will wonders never cease?
Our own Andrew Sheng co-writes an intriguing analysis of East/West and North/South divides in contemporary international affairs, and points out the obvious: “everyone loses In a fractured world.” And yet – surely we are headed nowhere but towards increasing conflict and probably even outright war, soon enough.
Termination via email is yet another reminder that good leadership is really just about being a good human being. Look people in the eye, answer questions fairly, and show sympathy for the travails of others. Is that really so hard to do?
Erik Ten Hag’s Manchester United is a salutary lesson in the inimitable power of good leadership. After the disappointments of Moyes, Van Gaal and Mourinho, the fleeting mirage of the Solskjaer years, the failed experiment with Rangnick, we finally have a manager with the grit and dedication to put together a winning team!
UMNO gaya Orwell: bila Presiden yang terpalit rasuah menuduh orang lain yang menjadi punca “sabotaj” – bila prestasi parti merudum dan kepimpinan enggan mengambil tanggungjawab – bila Presiden sendiri melanggar konsensus “No Anwar No DAP” tapi orang lain dituduh pengkhianat – bila “pembersihan” dijadikan label untuk mencantas lawan!
“A river, not a bucket“: a powerful metaphor and method for productivity without tears!
As the world steps back under the shadow of nuclear war, the post-1945 consensus looks to be unraveling. All thanks to the toxic nationalism of a fading autocrat.
“Higher income amounts to lower stress.” No shit, HBS. But yeah, it’s a good reminder, that money can’t buy happiness necessarily, but it can smoothen away a lot of the wrinkles that crop up in life from time to time. It’s not always good to be rich, but it’s very very helpful to not be poor.
American gerontocracy! I haven’t seen similar analyses for Malaysia, but if we have a 90+ year old former PM still hankering for the top job, I’m willing to guess that Malaysia probably has similar problems!
Why and how cats purr. What a wonderful thing it is to make another creature happy, for no other reason than love and mutual care.
Faced with a life-changing decision? You’re more likely to be happier if you Choose Change. Fight that status quo bias. You know you ought to.
This is an interesting method to analyse and discover potential self-identities. Useful when you are confronting a potentially life-changing decision, and you are wracked with doubt. I’m going to give this a try soon.
“Immigration is America’s superpower.” In contract, while Malaysia, too, is an immigrant nation, our politics have been transmogrified by narrow-minded nationalism such that the “pendatang” is now a dirty word, even when the word is uttered by those who themselves are of immigrant stock!
In many countries, we have Boomer leaders unwilling to cede the limelight – arguably Malaysia is in even more straitened circumstances, with a 96-year old patriarch still unwilling to give up hopes of another turn at the top job. We just need to move on as a country, and we need the next generation of leaders to prepare themselves to take over and steer the country in a different direction, free from the outdated baggage of the past.
One of my favourite literary devices is the book review: using the conceit of having to review a book as a means to launch into fascinating and intriguing explorations. The book review essay as intellectual freestyling. This one, which is a fascinating hypothesis on human prehistory as a “high school”-like environment, and the idea of a “gossip trap” as a low-value equilibrium that detracts from the construction of civilisation, masquerades as a review of The Dawn of Everything. A bit of a long read, but worth the while!
Sometimes, all it takes is a shared passion to reconnect with the ones we love…
This is a profound opinion piece that I think every Malaysian policymaker needs to read. The words “reification” and “medicalisation” are what I wish I had in my vocabulary when I was assigned to monitor the Anti-Corruption initiatives under the Government Transformation Programme. I was butting my head against the wall for weeks, constantly feeling frustrated by the lack of progress, and it took deep reflection over the experience in a Leadership course at graduate school, many years later, for me to finally realise that my team and I were essentially collateral damage for a technical approach of ostentatious initiatives (“let’s have anti corruption pledges!” “let’s appoint Chief Integrity Officers!”) aimed at simulating “seriousness” in tackling corruption, when in the other room, billions of public money were being siphoned off thanks to Najib and Jho Low. There needs to be more conversations in Malaysia about how we skirt around our dysfunctional politics, spinning our wheels around make-busy work while Rome continues to burn.
The UN secretary-general just called for a windfall tax on fossil fuel companies. Can we afford to ignore climate change any longer? And what would this mean for Petronas, which has long been the white knight of last resort for Malaysia (cf. Bank Bumiputra, Proton, KLCC, MISC, GST refunds)?
This is an interesting model for student loan financing. Are there more institutions / countries out there that employ this model? The moral hazard risk looks real enough; I’d be keen to see implementations in which the risks are mitigated… #education #financing
The power of the humble papaya! It is gratifying to see the endless ways in which our natural environs can be repurposed for good 🙂 #papaya #beauty #FT
I knew it!!! All this time, lawyers make you think that their contracts are incomprehensible because we lack “legal expertise”… turns out they are just bad writers LOL #law #contracts
Credibility-enhancing displays (“CREDs”), and why David Beckham queueing up to pay his respect to the Queen is not all that different from Muslims fasting in Ramadan. A fascinating and intriguing read.
I grew up in the age of the Cold War and the Iron Curtain. Will the Bamboo Curtain now fall in our lifetimes?
