(1) When you don’t communicate policies effectively, somebody else will, albeit incorrectly. This is called rumours. This is made worse during information vacuum, the period between saying you’ll announce something, and actually announcing it.

(2) Content - The government is in a position to control the narrative, avoid panic, minimise misinformation - how rumours starts. Govt also controls most media machinery - this should be simple.
(3) Audience - Govt must understand that vase majority of population are common people who are earn wages. They want to know how closures will affect them, their wages, their families. It’s day by day survival for many.
(4) Coordination - If you’re announcing something, make sure you know how to explain other aspects of life that is affected. What happens to schools? How will syallabus will be continued? How about kids with no laptops? Daycare? What if my employer refuses to allow WFH?
(5) Explain - articulate how you arrived at that decision, what considerations were taken, and ways to fix that. Assure people who are daily wage earners from their concern about loss of income. For many, not going to work daily, is a death wish itself.
(6) Delivery - relay content in easy to understand manner. What content does vast majority of people want / need to know. Focus on that. Other information can be put on website. Too much information that people dont understand causes confusion. Confusion leads to apathy / panic.
(7) Above not just limited to government, but to corporates as well. At times like this, frequent, punchy communication required to reassure people that they have their backs
(8) Medium - same content can be reproduced in different formats across FB, IG, Twitter, LinkedIn. Worse crime is to have word by word in every platform. You get caught out by different reaction. FB says good, but you get bashed in LinkedIn as a certain Minister discovered
(9) Control - It’s good to admit where we need to work on. Rather than 100% of ‘world full of flowers’. Builds honesty with the audience that that what was communicated was thinked through

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Patriotism is an interesting concept in that it’s excepted to mean something positive to all of us and certainly seen as a morally marketable trait that can fit into any definition you want for it.+


Tolstoy, found it both stupid and immoral. It is stupid because every patriot holds his own country to be the best, which obviously negates all other countries.+

It is immoral because it enjoins us to promote our country’s interests at the expense of all other countries, employing any means, including war. It is thus at odds with the most basic rule of morality, which tells us not to do to others what we would not want them to do to us+

My sincere belief is that patriotism of a personal nature, which does not impede on personal and physical liberties of any other, is not only welcome but perhaps somewhat needed.

But isn’t adherence to a more humane code of life much better than nationalistic patriotism?+

Göring said, “people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.”+

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Great article from @AsheSchow. I lived thru the 'Satanic Panic' of the 1980's/early 1990's asking myself "Has eveyrbody lost their GODDAMN MINDS?!"


The 3 big things that made the 1980's/early 1990's surreal for me.

1) Satanic Panic - satanism in the day cares ahhhh!

2) "Repressed memory" syndrome

3) Facilitated Communication [FC]

All 3 led to massive abuse.

"Therapists" -and I use the term to describe these quacks loosely - would hypnotize people & convince they they were 'reliving' past memories of Mom & Dad killing babies in Satanic rituals in the basement while they were growing up.

Other 'therapists' would badger kids until they invented stories about watching alligators eat babies dropped into a lake from a hot air balloon. Kids would deny anything happened for hours until the therapist 'broke through' and 'found' the 'truth'.

FC was a movement that started with the claim severely handicapped individuals were able to 'type' legible sentences & communicate if a 'helper' guided their hands over a keyboard.
First thread of the year because I have time during MCO. As requested, a thread on the gods and spirits of Malay folk religion. Some are indigenous, some are of Indian origin, some have Islamic


Before I begin, it might be worth explaining the Malay conception of the spirit world. At its deepest level, Malay religious belief is animist. All living beings and even certain objects are said to have a soul. Natural phenomena are either controlled by or personified as spirits

Although these beings had to be respected, not all of them were powerful enough to be considered gods. Offerings would be made to the spirits that had greater influence on human life. Spells and incantations would invoke their


Two known examples of such elemental spirits that had god-like status are Raja Angin (king of the wind) and Mambang Tali Arus (spirit of river currents). There were undoubtedly many more which have been lost to time

Contact with ancient India brought the influence of Hinduism and Buddhism to SEA. What we now call Hinduism similarly developed in India out of native animism and the more formal Vedic tradition. This can be seen in the multitude of sacred animals and location-specific Hindu gods