I am in a meeting now that is so annoying but I want to take my mind off things that upset me to talk about love and marriage.

I have been listening to people talk in many @joinClubhouse rooms about what they expect from potential partners and laugh very hard each time.

There is this inertia that most people in business who think they are successful have that prevents them from acting on things until it is too late. It is why they are caught unawares by change.

I read ”Only the paranoid survives” and I am seeing it play out in real life again.

Constant paranoia doesn't mean acting like a crazy person or even a mean and greedy person. It means that you are constantly aware that adverse change can make you irrelevant very quickly. The speed of irrelevance is much faster now and it largely depends on team types.

Some teams can be deluded. They believe too much in themselves because of past glory that it clouds their ability to see future danger. When the unexpected finally happens, they turn on each other and blame themselves and abandon the ship. They have always been living a lie.

Some teams can be totally ignorant of what is happening around them and can have tunnel vision. They end up working on products that have become irrelevant before they finish. They still believe somehow that others will adapt to them and csnf understand why failure happens.

Some teams can have extreme keyman risk. One person knows most of what needs to be done and nothing works well when that person is not in the picture. This type is more prevalent than we can imagine. Once one person takes more initiative, others just become passive.

What is the calculation of the super-rich Nigerian and why don't they run to the hills whenever there is an economic crisis?

I think because each crisis presents new opportunities with loopholes to gain advantage. I’ve once said that Nigeria is the world’s opportunity capital.

What Nigeria produces in abundance is opportunists. We don't do capitalism or socialism in Nigeria, we do opportunism.

Opportunism doesn't think long term about anything. It takes lemons and makes lemonade, then tries to create a lemonade monopoly to have outsize sales margins.

This is why we import when things are scarce. We trade when we are broke. Importation and trade are very short-term value creation processes without long-term upside. It is why our wealthy people are ”low-quality” according to @DoubleEph 😂

There is generally no production depth

Our banking system is also complicit in supporting this charade. It is why most of the nonperforming loans have been made to these same opportunists masquerading as the ”super-rich”. I missed the opportunity to add quotes in my first tweet. Their so-called wealth is qualified.

Something is fundamentally wrong when an economy is almost completely transactional. Yes, I have made money from fintech but I also see the long term damage of the current fintech hype. Nigeria as a country has been in one long hype cycle. This is why I keep saying it isn't real.

One thing I am grateful about is the ability I have always had to keep living my life on my own terms without being drawn into trends. I am an obsessive extremist. I don't do middle ground obsession. When I love something, I don't do half measures. I can also do dislike that way.

What I have learned is that there are some trends you can't avoid even when you don't like the hype around them. One of those trends is crypto.

My boss @osuide ALWAYS without fail, predicts big things in tech. He introduced me to the Internet with my first infoweb account.

He introduced me to crypto too in spite of my misgivings. I bought $300 bitcoin and promptly lost it. The fact that I could lose something valuable that easily was my pain. I didn't at first see the bigger picture of custody aggregation. This was before coinbase became a thing.

I had actually searched for the domains ”bitbase” and ”coinbase” and maybe I even owned one of both domains at some point, I can't remember. I was, however, a very early adopter who dropped off when it seemed to become a fad. I was even on some ICO advisory board at some point.

I remember I wrote to @iaboyeji and @TechProd_Arch to take it seriously at Flutterwave. I also had a chat with one of the founders of the local exchanges about not using the .ng domain and using .africa to avoid the Nigerian government and their potential issues.

There are many Africans with a free $50k to $100k lying idle somewhere than we think. They keep cash as a contingency for many reasons. Anything can happen. Positively or negatively. Cash is sometimes worse than a dead asset. They keep it anyway. Most likely outside Africa.

I was having a chat with my best man about African investments and I could have tried to teach him ancient Sumerian instead. Dude’s mind is closed to Africa. He would rather invest in Dubai as it made more sense. Problem is there are African investments with much better returns.

I think Africa has a massive PR problem. The problems are real no doubt but the opportunities are also real. The news about the problems overshadows the details about the abundance of opportunities. I still can't forget the lady at @Ashesi who told me about African abundance.

I have seen magic done in 2001 with $285m raised all locally in a month for a deal. Over 20 years later, African startups are still hustling in a demo day abroad for thousands of dollars that other Africans already have to give but don't or can't. It is a complete mindfuck.

There is a reason African people don't believe too much of the good news. They have been brutalized and conditioned so much with bad news that it becomes their frame of reference. Where else can a train track be attacked twice in two days and nothing is said by the government?

Epic Win!

That was our team. 🔥

-THREADE-
#Germany #China #5G #Huawei

In contrast to countries like Great Britain, Germany does not exclude the Chinese with 5G across the board. But now the cabinet has agreed on stricter rules for foreign network equipment suppliers.

The federal government has been arguing for two years, now there is a draft law, the cabinet is supposed to get it underway on Wednesday. In contrast to countries like Great Britain and Sweden, Germany does not exclude Chinese companies across the board.

But Berlin, too, subjects the use of companies to strict rules. This is a problem for the German network operators: they have made themselves heavily dependent on #Huawei over the past few years. In the radio network of Deutsche Telekom, Vodafone and Telefónica,

around half of all components usually come from Huawei. With the new 5G cellular standard, data can be transmitted in real time. This opens up new opportunities for industry, but also increases the risk of cyber attacks. The focus on security is correspondingly large.

The draft of a “Second Law to Increase the Security of Information Technology Systems” therefore now uses a two-stage test procedure. In addition to an examination of the technology, there should also be a political assessment of the trustworthiness of manufacturers.

How PM Imran Khan was humiliated during OIC conference.

Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan has condemned the construction of the Ayodhya Ram Temple in India at the Conference of Islamic Countries (OIC).

UAE,which chaired the confernce asked Imran,What is the problem for the Islamic world with India building a temple in their country?
What is the problem for the Muslims of the world with the AyodhyaRama Temple? We hv no interest in interfering in the intrnal affairs of India.

In addition, we have provided 13 acres of land in our country for temple construction and 13.5 acres of land for parking and other facilities for Hindus.

Nowhere in the world have Hindus, who live and study attempt or incite riots or carry out suicide attacks in the name of

religion. They are peaceful and live according to the laws of the land.

Temple construction in India is an internal matter of India.  That is not the issue to be discussed here now.  India will look after India.

When will Pakistan repay the money it

borrowed from OlC? All Islamic countries except Pakistan contributed to this fund. Pakistan only borrows but failed to pay up.

Then the President of the Maldives stood up and began to say "The separatist and coup attempts instigated by Pakistan have created many internal

Thread – Excerpt from a Ross Rant (Election-related)

1. These following are excerpts from a recent “Ross Rant.” Joel Ross publishes these periodic reports that provide commentary on the changing scene with an eye toward wise future investments.

2.

There never was going to be a new stimulus deal. Pelosi did not want to do anything that might help Trump, and she was hoping to trap McConnell, and make him look like he killed it so they could argue the Dems need to control the Senate.

3. My sense is that backfired. It is clear to most that she is the problem, and why, and that she does not give a damn about the people who are suffering. It is all about getting power. Unfortunately, Wall St kept being fooled thinking there would be a deal.

4. So the market was up and down depending on which false rumor they believed. Classic Wall St. Buy on rumor and hope. Sell when it does not happen, then buy again. Trader’s dream.

5. The EU is now in the midst of a major virus surge and that will kill any hope of a near term economic rebound as lockdowns get put back on. While in the US there are a few stories of hospitals in rural areas getting to capacity, reality is, most of the US has lots of capacity.

1️⃣ How the Yemeni Civil War (2014–present) is portrayed in the main stream media

2️⃣ This one is a little different, it hits close to home in many different ways, the Yemeni Civil War is a unique phenomenon in moder warfare, the majority of people don't even know what's really going on and who's fighting who.

3️⃣ The combatants :
Iranian backed Supreme Political Council (Houthis)
  International recognized Government (Hadi-led government)
  South Yemen Nationalists Southern Transitional Council

4️⃣ The (allegedly Turkish and Qatari backed) Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant – Yemen Province (ISIL-YP)
 The (allegedly Iranian and Qatari backed) Ansar al-Sharia and Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP)

5️⃣The so called Supreme political council of Yemen is a Mish mash of bad guys and misfits, Iran supplies the Houthis with arms, drones and ballistic missiles, Hezbollah delivers these arms through shell corporations and Hezbollah operators man the missiles

Portugal is famous for its mild climate and sunny beaches, but each year hundreds of people freeze to death and millions struggle to survive frigid winter weather.

Here's a quick thread based on my @POLITICOEurope story on Portuguese energy poverty

When I lived in Lisbon my friends and I joked that although the Portuguese were famous for melancholia, uncharacteristic (and unrealistic) optimism defined their approach to thermal insulation: homes seemed to be built as if the weather was expected to be perfect year-round.

While the weather is, indeed, really great for most of the year, it can also be really awful sometimes. In the Summer temperatures can shoot up to truly unbearable levels for weeks on end, and in the Winter the icy humidity can easily make you feel like you're freezing 24/7.

This reality is a huge problem precisely because so many Portuguese people live in homes that don't have the capacity to shelter them from the heat when temperatures rise and the cold when they drop. And that means that every year that means people die because of the weather.

This issue can be traced back to the rural exodus that took place during the second half of the XX century, when millions fled the interior to seek better futures either outside the country — immigrating to France, Germany and Luxembourg — or in cities like Lisbon and Porto.