I will use this thread to explain the concept of "administrative bloat."

Administrative bloat is the employing of so many managers and supervisors, paying them excess salaries, while the people who do the actual work don't get employed or paid.

That is the government of Kenya.

A few weeks ago, I asked this question: since Muigai doesn't respect the 2010 constitution, why is he invested in #BBInonsense, and in getting Kenyans to accept? He can just run for another term, send cops to kill people, the US will support him and he will remain in office.

The great #KOT explained this to me: #BBINonsense isn't about destroying the constitution. It's about destroying the story. Unfortunately, the only story which we use to challenge Muigai is the constitution.

We don't know our history, we have no theology, our arts are commercialized, our cultures are corrupted, and our education is destroyed. The last pillar standing between us and full scale uthamaki fascism is the Constitution 2010.
#BBINonsense #UhuruinSagana

I honor the lawyers and those working hard to ensure #BBINonsense doesn't happen. But I hallenge us in the arts, in faith, in history to do our work to spport those in law with philosophical, theological, artistic and educational arguments against #BBINonsense.

If Magoha can say, despite the constitution, that kids should be caned, it means that education is completely spineless. #uhuruinsagana #BBInonsense

Corruption doesn't start at the public purse. It starts at the basic idea that people can be stupidly rich from no work of their own, but of others.

So until we deal with the monstrosity of the title deed, we will not fundamentally address corruption in Kenya.

That system of stealing people's work starts with the title deed.

What is a title deed? It is not the land. It is the legitimacy of her majesty the queen to own and decide what happens with land.

When someone has a title deed, they are saying that the queen has allowed them to use that land mentioned in the deed, and that the queen is committed to using force to validate that deed.

The problem is, who gave the queen the authority to guarantee use of the land?

The only way she got is is through stealth. Or what others politely call "enclosure."

What is an enclosure, and why is it a form of corruption?

Imagine we are that romantic non-colonized village that our elites like to con us about. We live next to a forest. The forest provides our food, fuel, building materials and trade. And through our culture and rituals, we replenish the forest, hold it sacred and protect it.

The cruelty of our civil service is a logic that was built by Lord Cromer, grandfather to Sir Evelyne Baring, the governor of Kenya who oversaw the Mau Mau concentration camps during the 1950s.

The sadism of the civil service and bureaucracy in Kenya has a long history.

Lord Cromer is considered the guru of civil service bureaucracy. He was so instrumental that even the Americans took lessons from him.

LC indirectly argued that civil servants must have no compassion or connection to the people who live where they are sent.

LC said that London must be the center of empire and must dictate how the empire runs. However, civil servants sent to far areas of the world would adopt the "defect" of seeing issues in their local context and forgetting London's interests.

The other thing LC instituted was profile of the hollow, colorless and inhuman bureaucrat. Because the British empire was the appointed incarnation of the Roman Empire, civil servants had to forget their own humanity and lay it at the service of empire.

Another cruelty LC introduced was secrecy and silence. Civil servants were never to reveal their real intentions. They were to avoid being noticed, and they were to avoid putting anything in writing. They were to operate under the radar as much as they could.

We can't speak symbolically because that makes us inaccurate

We can't lament because we're not providing solutions

We can't provide solutions because they will not work

We can't refer to society or trends because that means we're generalizing

We can't speak without providing facts and evidence

We can't be expressive because someone will be offended

How then can we talk in this Kenya?

To get any conversation going in this Kenya, you must be limit yourself to a vary narrow topic, you must present the facts from confirmed sources, you must stick to dictionary and literal meanings, you must not betray any emotion, and everyone must agree with you.

The point of conversation in Kenya is not truth or knowledge.

It's consensus.

Survivorship Bias 101

History is written by the victors. But if we exclusively focus on these successes, we allow survivorship bias to distort our understanding of the world.

But what is "survivorship bias" and how does it work?

Here's Survivorship Bias 101!

👇👇👇

1/ First, a few definitions.

Survivorship bias is the logical error of concentrating on survivors (successes) and ignoring casualties (failures).

When we do so, we miss the true "base rates" of survival (the actual probability of success) and arrive at flawed conclusions.

2/ When we completely ignore failures, we lose our ability to correctly identify the differences between successes and failures.

Put simply, exclusively focusing on successes may actually inhibit our ability to identify (and replicate) the actions that led to such success.

3/ Cicero wrote on the topic over 2,000 years ago.

An atheist named Diagoras is shown portraits of people who prayed and were saved from death at sea as proof of God's existence.

Diagoras replies, "I see those who were saved, but where are those painted who were shipwrecked?"

4/ Cicero cuts right to the point - we cannot conclude that prayer led to being saved from the sea if we ignore those who prayed and then drowned.

Survivorship bias can lead to a deeply-flawed understanding of cause-and-effect relationships.

Let's look at some examples.

I was asked to do a tweet on how to be a good Minceir Ally. So here are my thoughts ... Other Minceiri are welcome to add.
Allies can do the actions you can.

Learn about Traveller Culture, history and issues affecting us from us not others. You can do this by checking Traveller org websites, chat with us, invite us to give inputs in your place of work.

Educate others and challenge Anti Traveller racism when you see it.

Get to know Travellers locally and local issues. Support the work of local and national Traveller orgs.

Get to know Travellers locally becoming friends. Invite Traveller children to your parties/playdates. Let your children go to Traveller children parties,playdates in their home.

Back when I went to Bishop’s University, I managed the student radio station, CJMQ. When I started, it was kind of a pirate station. We had an illegal antenna on a roof, and a couple of residences could get us through the radiators somehow. Nowhere to go but up.

Happily, it was 1993. Pump Up the Volume made it cool to be a DJ. Grunge and indie were huge. We went from, like, 12 DJs to 100 and started acting like a real radio station. God, it was awesome. It was like we were on a quest. It felt like a real crusade.

Eventually we decided to try to get an FM licence. This was no easy feat. The bureaucracy was maddening. It cost a lot. We needed to find a proper tower. Long story short, after two years of solid effort, everything came together: CJMQ was awarded 88.9 on your FM dial.

We were going to launch one blissful night in 1995. I planned a massive party and woke up the morning of, not quite believing we’d finally made it. I went to say good morning to my roommate, David, and… Not a single sound came out of my mouth. Not even a whisper.

I had completely and utterly lost my voice. OH GOD NO. I raced to the pharmacy and scribbled a note to the pharmacist: “I’ve lost my voice, and I really need my voice.” She nodded and retrieved two suppositories. They were each the size of large-caliber artillery shells.