Examining the difference between a proactive versus reactive approach towards the regulation of social media — Authoritarian leaders have been watching recent events in the US and other liberal democracies closely. Cyber-interference has a covert ring to it, perhaps imagined as the hacking of key infrastructure or the scrambling of military hardware for war-time purposes. However, the reality is that much of said interference today is…

The story of how I became fluent in Chinese sitting in the passenger seat — I rustled into the back seat of the taxi as the door clicked shut behind me. It was dark and well past midnight. My driver was still outside chucking luggage in the boot. Glancing through the window, I saw the cigarette in his mouth flare orange as he took a…

Learn from the warrior, adopt his mentality. Shield yourself from modern life and its comfortable depravity. — What does it mean to be a Samurai? One who lives and dies to usher a battlecry. To emerge unscathed from the danger of battle. No space can be made for distraction nor idle prattle. Fronting the vanguard on the attack and holding the line in retreat. …

What to think and how to cope, this poem is for you, its words are hope — When the outlook for the future is grim and the world appears bleak What is it we ought to pay attention to, pursue, and seek? Personal and collective journeys put on hold thanks to a tiny, abstract killer Hopes and dreams suspended, the fragility of civilisation has never felt realer …

AI, big data, and the cost of surveillance capitalism — “The same tools that can be used to sell me something I don’t really need can now be used to sell me a politician I really don’t need or an ideology that I really don’t need. It’s the same tools. It’s the same hacking of the human animal and manipulating…

What lies beyond time and space? — Dreams unbound by space and time — where do such bright hallucinations lead us each night? Are these constellations of past memories, lovers, places, and friends, the mere product of a slumbering reality machine? Or when combined with events yet transpired, sights unseen, and worlds non-existent, do such experiences lend…

Can China overcome COVID-19 by “crafting an honesty and integrity vaccine”? — National governments the world over are coming to deploy exceptional surveillance measures in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. In the People’s Republic of China, the past several months of crisis management has presented the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) with the opportunity to operationalise, test, and refine reward and punishment…

At the heart of every great question lies a paradox — At the heart of every great question lies an irreconcilable paradox. The previous article in this series described the metaphysical camp of positivism, highlighting how this worldview continues to maintain dominance over collective understandings of reality. Positivism insists that we can separate ourselves from reality and view the world as…

Can our understanding of facts be separated from our relationship with them? — Envisage a wooden chair standing alone in a room. One could say the chair exists as an object in and of itself. It has an identity in time and space. It has physical integrity and appears solid. If you picked up and moved the chair to another location it would…