Shannon Ang
@angabridged
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sociologist, demographer, population health researcher @NTUsg . views are my own.
Singapore
Joined June 2017
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There’s radical, then there’s ridiculous. The problem with our approach is somehow we think lifelong learning = lifelong credentialism.
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“Dying out” makes it sound like the process is/was passive and natural. No. Singapore made a cold, calculated decision to sacrifice intergenerational communication for economic relevance. Chinese dialects were locked up and starved to death.
IN FOCUS: Are Chinese dialects at risk of dying out in Singapore?
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How to address overworked teachers? Of course, we shouldn’t reduce class sizes and hire more teachers. Instead, (in addition to our awsm chatbot), we should ask other people to do free labor and create even more inequality between schools with strong/rich alum and those without.
School alumni can help ease the workload of teachers, says Chan Chun Sing
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Again, he needs to define what he thinks Chinese privilege is. Easy to build your own strawman and demolish it, and then act like you’ve dealt with the issue.
Claims of Chinese privilege in Singapore “entirely baseless”, all races treated equally with no special privileges: PM Lee
#NDR2021
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THIS, dear ministers, is what you call a red herring. Cap the admin work la hello, no one is asking you to micromanage how much care they want to show students right.
Cap on teachers' work hours 'unrealistic' as some will still exceed call of duty for students: Chan Chun Sing
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For the nth time - all this survey data collected with taxpayers’ money, release it publicly! Data hoarding by the govt keeps our policy discussions in perpetual infancy coz it prevents independent parties from scrutinizing and digging deeper into reasons behind these numbers.
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How dehumanizing, some of these quotes.
Employers may find it hard to look after well-being, safety of maids if they live out: MOM
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Once in a while, a gem of a letter turns up in ST Forum pages.
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I am recently reminded that Singapore loves to moralize its pragmatism. That is, we will not only say something we do is practical and produces the results we want, we will go out of the way to tout and preach it as the morally superior Way.
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If you make us treat migrant workers like the actual humans that they are, we will lose a lot of money, so please give us more time to treat them horribly. Pretty please - we promise it will get better…someday.
Business groups call on Govt to take ‘careful consideration’ after calls to ban lorries ferrying workers
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S’poreans tend to have rather weird ideas about what a PhD means - it just means you have been trained to do research (that speaks to a specific audience). It doesn’t even guarantee that you can do it well, as we often see in social science studies here.
Gen Y Speaks: I have a PhD but after 10 years in academia, finding a new job wasn’t easy
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Jamus Lim’s face here is gold.
(Vikram Nair was trying to explain something about assets and accounting, I believe.)
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Welcome to Singapore, where we say you cannot combine 5 companies into a megazord to qualify for presidency, but can irreversibly (?) issue an eligibility cert and call someone who objectifies women “of good character and reputation” bcoz we failed to check his socials beforehand
Presidential Elections Committee 'not aware' of Tan Kin Lian's social media posts before issuing eligibility certificate
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Some unintentional insight here - maybe we are just too okay with anything as long as it is “temperate and dignified”. We prize the appearance of harmony (thus the tone policing), neglecting its substance. Perhaps too many of us are just temperate and dignified racists.
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This is like a word cloud of all the meaningless government lingo.
S'pore needs cohesive leaders with diverse skills in uncertain world, says Chan Chun Sing
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Always others’ fault for misinterpreting, isn’t it? What I find notable here is that there is not a hint of self-reflection or remorse, just a vindictive, snide retort. At least Yaacob Ibrahim apologized when he previously made insensitive comments. This one digs his heels in.
ESM Goh 'dismayed' after Hari Raya greeting on Facebook was 'misinterpreted'
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Saw this view on LinkedIn, and frankly, found it problematic. Do you take interviews from journalists only if you're sure that they will write in a slant that you agree with? What happens if they do more research, talk to more people, and realize they need to change the framing?
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People who are saying "this is not privilege" but "just a blindspot" or "natural advantages that come from being part of the majority" should be made to define what privilege is.
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Wtf is with this year's NDP song lyrics? It could be a Pokemon theme song, sure. Is there even anything remotely Singaporean in there?
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Now that I have some time, it may be good to address why this is wrong. The SG system doesn't really train us to think about this critically, so I'm not surprised people are confused. I hope that race scholars like
@laavy_k
will also chime in, but here goes. 1/n
What in the flying f? I was watching this cute CNA documentary on parents going to school with their children, and then I heard this (which was being taught in a sec school social studies class):
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Headline caught my eye today, so just supplementing it with information from the report.
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Conversations around new citizens always end up trying to answer: “who is S’porean enough?” But perhaps the more critical question is to ask: “who ensures that existing S’poreans, esp the minorities and the marginalized, feel welcome in their own society?”
CNA poll finds majority welcome English test to be part of Singapore citizenship application process
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Not sure what PAP’s deal is with this and other condescending references to “ideology” and “rhetoric”, but this statement is rhetoric and pragmatism is an ideology.
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What in the flying f? I was watching this cute CNA documentary on parents going to school with their children, and then I heard this (which was being taught in a sec school social studies class):
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Somehow, when pointing out systemic burnout and overwork, there must always be this one person who goes "but I did it what, so you should also suffer meaninglessly". Come, Dr Yik, I clap for you.
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Personal views are fine. But politicians should be more circumspect when trying to act as the paragon of morality and censuring others for making derogatory remarks etc. Unfiltered thoughts like these reveal a deep disdain for elected MPs, and by proxy, those that elected them.
Speaker of Parliament Tan Chuan-Jin apologises for using unparliamentary language
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Great, let’s have poor people rely on the goodwill whims of richer people instead of building a system that ensures equitable redistribution. -.-
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Others will also probably highlight why this kind of racial approach to public health is unhelpful, but what especially bothers me are these numbers that are implicitly used to justify it.
Campaign reminds public to watch sugar intake, quit smoking during Ramadan and Hari Raya
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Someone Chinese(?) at this IPS-onepeoplesg conf on workplace racial discrimination just said that we are a minority outside Singapore so we can understand what it’s like to be a minority. This prompted the White panelist (S’porean) to call himself a “minority of the minority”. /2
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Dear Jason Wong and Mohd Khair: Make up your mind lah - do you want to trust research or not? Or do you want to only cite research when it says what you want it to say?
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Why,
@straits_times
, did someone complain about your framing of the article? (Context: Same article, headline and picture was changed)
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Something about these recent letters in ST on tax hikes strike me as very...tone deaf. It's a little like Baey Yam Keng whining about his A-level results not being perfect. I mean, sure - but what really is your point? Wealthier people are also actually poor things?
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Here we go again. The solution to "deepening racial stereotypes" is MORE data, not no data. Race-based data without context can lead to cultural essentialism, yes, but just bc you don't say doesn't mean people don't know. More data helps people understand WHY this happens.
I’ve written before about how we should treat data presented by race. We should be asking questions like: How much of this racial difference is driven by other factors like income? How much of it is due to a lack of available food choices (e.g., in NTU)?
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As usual, we turn to the “other people also same” argument to feel better about ourselves when we cannot solve a problem. The natural progression of all this, though, is that SG’s accumulated reserves may end up mainly benefitting new citizens who immigrate here. Why? 1/n
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Every study has limitations, but the report is very transparent about what was done. And the point is exactly to have all kinds of people decide and agree on what “minimum” constitutes, rather than impose MOF’s top-down understanding of what is “basic” and “discretionary”.
Parents with 2 children need to earn about S$5,800 to $6,400 monthly for basic standard of living: Study
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The absurdity of the reply I think speaks for itself. People are not stupid, so don’t gaslight us. However, it always tickles me when politicians start talking about research methods, so here’s what the report actually says about how to use the data (which is publicly available)
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Not sure what this type of humblebrag is trying to achieve, really.
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So consult no one when shutting down Yale-NUS College, then consult everyone on this naming thing (priorities!), but come up with…NUS College? I guess that achieves the getting rid of Yale part, quite literally.
University announces newly-named NUS College, inaugural dean will be current law faculty chief
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Sometimes I wonder who is it that needs to be “prepared” - is it really “the ground” or is it just the PAP? Without more data and transparency into what is driving this melodramatic caution towards a completely reasonable change, it seems like the latter to me.
/The Government should prepare to allow Muslim nurses to wear the tudung with their uniform, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said on Saturday…
But before the change is made, the Government will need to “prepare the ground”, said the Prime Minister./
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Catching up on parl debates makes me remb what a visceral feeling it is when a reasonable question is met with mocking laughter or aggressive non-answers - that feeling that it is you and me, ordinary citizens, that they are patronizing. We are stupid, and they are untouchable.
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"No need to rush" is one of those things that only those benefitting from the status quo can say. This is the most unhelpful kind of view - what is "too quick"? what is "go[ing] overboard"? Define it and explain. Words like "nuanced" and "focused" are meaningless without context.
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Always fun to hear political office holders talk about research - to supplement the ministries’ (weak) critiques of the MIS report, this guy tries to answer a PQ by calling two of his residents, and then disclaims he understands it is not “statistically significant”. What a mess.
Parliament debates on what constitutes basic needs after NTU report on adequate minimum incomes
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Minimally, we should recognize that 1) there are more dual-income couples; 2) the (boomer) population has aged. These demographic changes mean that it’s not quite fair to compare 1990 numbers to today, since the household income is earned by more ppl and likely with more work exp
WATCH: Build-to-Order (BTO) flats remain affordable, with flat prices moving in tandem with incomes, said Deputy Prime Minister Lawrence Wong during his May Day rally speech on Monday (May 1).
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Our politicians go to the best schools and win all the awards - they’re supposed to be smart. So why is it that whenever they try to do a hit job on the opposition (esp on their own blog) it feels like the IQ suddenly minus 200? Is it because no civil servants to help draft?
This is called "war of words"?? More accurately, this is called "Why you never say earlier? I say now why need to say earlier? Why you never ask earlier? Why you say I never ask earlier? I ask now." 🙃🙃🙃
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This is one of the greatest lies in local reporting. No details given here (also a problem), but Milieu typically relies on a online consumer panel that is not based on a probability sample.
Generational split among S'poreans on whether consuming cannabis abroad should be illegal: Survey
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TCJ can virtue signal all he wants, but I’m disappointed to see (imo) rather speculative and/or hypothetical portions like these in the report. Even if the conclusions are warranted, the language in the report reads to me overly confident and too ready to cast moral aspersions.
WP’s ‘attempts to politicise’ COP report ‘regrettable’; findings ‘based on objective evidence’: Tan Chuan-Jin
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Observing a trend: patronize the opposition MP with bureaucratic reasoning, then end up doing whatever they asked for anyway, while acting all benevolent and reasonable. Seemed that way for live-streaming parliament proceedings, seems this way now.
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We’re not critiquing just any other scholar’s critique of CRT, we are critiquing YOUR problematic representation of it
@zaobaosg
. Don’t equivocate.
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People talking about majoritarian grievances today, so it’s perhaps time to point out an aspect of privilege that is does not exist “in every society” (as Shan likes to say) - Chinese are guaranteed to stay the majority, even if they have fewer children. This is official policy.
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If the govt truly wants to “partner” Singaporeans, it will share data so that all of us work from a common foundation. Not reject ideas by hiding behind this opaque excuse of “looking at data and evidence” that cannot be independently verified.
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So if one day my foreign colleague buys me lunch and says “hey your research is quite relevant to this new govt policy maybe you should consider writing an op-ed about it”, and I think it’s a good idea and go ahead to do it, is that foreign interference? Asking for a friend.
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The problem is a lack of commitment to tackling overwork in all of our social systems, incl. teachers, social workers. I don’t see why we can’t address this by paying well and providing better work culture (e.g. work-life balance). We just think the economic cost is not worth it.
Parti Liyani case: Police investigation officer, supervisor found to have 'neglected their duties', says K Shanmugam
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Disappointed to hear
@LawrenceWongST
defend “not ready for non-Chinese PM” comments again. IPS’ survey simply shows that when people are asked to think about nameless, faceless, racialized candidates, they default to their biases. It doesn’t mean people don’t want Tharman as PM.
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I really dislike this whole vague accusing people of having “an agenda” thing. Does that mean everyone else is just supposed to walk around aimlessly? Tell us what the damn agenda is, so that we can decide whether it’s a good or bad one.
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This does us no good. It makes us a complacent, indignant, vindictive people. Instead of seeing possibilities, we see false dichotomies. The way that works is not always the way that is right. We should always be ready to lay out (also SHARE) the data, and revise our assumptions.
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Dear
@straits_times
, what is this ageist bulls*** you are publishing? Terms like “silver tsunami” are bad enough, now suddenly you are trying to be creative and ageing is “a two-tonne grey rhino charging towards you”?
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Okay, so the PEC shouldn’t and isn’t the moral police, but the SNOC…is and can be? The one looking at presidential candidates doesn’t read social media, while the one for sportspeople can produce a 30 + 6 page report? I don’t understand.
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Wrote this before yesterday’s disappointing debate on the EIP. We need more analysis, not defensiveness and dichotomies, please.
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I mean…why don’t you start with ensuring your own public servants are not overworked? You can do that unilaterally, can’t you?
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My takeaway is simply that those with the power to address the main systemic issues (i.e., large class sizes, too much administrative work) are (predictably) turning it against the teachers, by making it seem as if it's all just about self-care. Hopefully this leads to progress.
Shocked is an understatement when over 100 teachers sent in long, tired responses to our question, ‘how are you coping mentally?’.
@ChiewTongCNA
and I got the MOE to address their burnout.
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Spot the difference. Never rely on politicians to tell you what is political/politicized and what is not.
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“Resilience” is not a catch-all term you can use to blame individuals for systemic problems.
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At times, it’s quite like abusive, violent parents who torture their kids into submission, and then not just say to people that “it works” because the kids “listen”, but go out of their way to declare that it is some kind of revered “Asian value” that should never be challenged.
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The word “judicious” here is working very very hard. By what measure did they judge it irrelevant?
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Demography question: Graphs are from the Singapore 2020 Census. Why has our ethnic composition not changed between 2010 and 2020? (10 marks)
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Govt talking about the limitation of incl higher-income folk is quite rich, coming from a country where well-paid politicians make most of our national policy. But to see how tryhard they can be, you just have to look a little closer. Here they raise budgeting for “jewellery”…
Singapore government says report on rising minimum income standards 'may not be accurate reflection of basic needs'
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One of the comments from a rejected grant app was that I should "[consider] tapping on data from existing studies such as the Singapore Life Panel to minimize the duplication of efforts". Well, I totally agree. But the SLP team has refused to grant me access to it multiple times.
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There are also occupations that we will always need - teachers, nurses - which are constantly overworked and underpaid despite their invaluable contributions to society. Yet our S’porean idea of worth is still so tied to what employers will pay you, rather than what they should.
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A robust study to debunk unhelpful stereotypes is needful, but I am sad to say this is probably not it. How can you examine "over-representation" in the NT stream if you ONLY study those who've been in it? Isn't this selecting on the dependent variable?
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The logic here is a special kind of screwed up - he accuses others of doing the very thing he is doing (i.e., being racist). Reminds me of groups decrying “militant activism” or “cancel culture” while fighting (and mobilizing) to retain the criminalization of private behavior.
Ex-Ngee Ann Poly lecturer gets jail for making racist remarks against interracial couple
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More money is great but I hope he realizes that a way to boost SS&H research in SG for very little cost is simply to make more govt data public. Lots of these “millions” could be better used if we didn’t have to re-collect data already held by the govt.
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Second, we do not "have" a race - instead, we are racialized. Race has historically been used to justify mistreating ppl by asserting the superiority of one race over another. Racialization is an act of power. For the SG case, see this by
@laavy_k
: 6/n
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Saw this statement in ST about a study concluding that "most Singaporeans" are resilient, so I decided to look at how they arrived at this. Turns out, they concluded this by observing that the mean and median scores were higher than the "mid-point" of the scales they used. Wtf?
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If a business is failing and you are the leader (with a spotty past corporate record, nonetheless) - I would think you take responsibility, not umbrage.
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If your employees consistently get hurt on the job, you’d best consider that something is wrong with the work environment. The argument by certain orgs that racial insensitivities in Singapore are a bunch of “isolated incidents” continues to mystify me.
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A broader point was made about “shared humanity” and “allyship” (which are good and fine), but the whole equivocation (appropriation?) of minority experiences made me incredibly uncomfortable.
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First, race is has no biological basis. There is no way to distinguish one race from another purely from their genes, or their physical/behavioural traits. This is not a disputed fact. Race is a social construct, it is not biological reality. 5/n
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To my mind, constant denials of privilege are ironically more divisive than assertions that privilege exists. "How can I be privileged, when I suffered so much?" is the wrong reaction, privileged persons. Ask instead, "how have you suffered, and how can we progress together?"
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Local media again mangling the term “representative” to mean whatever it wants it to mean. What even is “demographically representative”? What aspects of demography are we talking about? Can’t find any details beyond these vague descriptions.
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Leadership lesson
#1
: Whisper lots of sweet nothings via the national broadsheet, but don’t bother consulting those directly affected - they’re just collateral damage to your wonderful bold brilliant new vision of “interdisciplinarity” anyway.
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Wow. Did not know MHA invented a way to affirm the null hypothesis. Wonder what data they are relying on.
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I was interested to check out how the recent surveys on 377A were conducted, and have just realised some polling companies (e.g., Ipsos) are using "credibility intervals" as the new buzz-phrase to obfuscate the bias in their (online) non-probability samples.
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Majority (if not all) of the social science data collected by Singapore institutions are like this. They talk a big talk to funders and to the media about sharing data, but in practice…
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Why so slow? Do you remember Edwin Tong saying that "the essence of the remedies is that they have to be able to address and counter the quick, wide and deep spread of falsehoods"? This has already spread quick, wide, and deep.
MOH may use Pofma to clamp down on websites promoting ivermectin as a Covid-19 cure: Ong Ye Kung
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I’ve written before about how we should treat data presented by race. We should be asking questions like: How much of this racial difference is driven by other factors like income? How much of it is due to a lack of available food choices (e.g., in NTU)?
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I dislike this tactic of politicians acting like they are defending you when they are just defending themselves - “it is unfair to say X is unfree”. First Maliki (on acad freedom), now her. People do their best in spite of the influence. They can probably do better without it.
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No, this question has already been asked for decades by NGOs. The question we should be asking ourselves is: why did people in power not listen and act earlier?
Mr Janadas Devan, Director of the Institute of Policy Studies, gave his opening remarks at the final day of Singapore Perspectives 2021: Reset. In his speech, Mr Janadas implored the audience to consider how we treat our essential workers:
#SP2021Reset
(1/3)
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From 2019 to 2022, flat supply increases by ~1.6x, but the 2022 building has 6 times as many windows as the 2019 one. Who on earth is making these misleading graphics?
PSA: Up to 23,000 BTO flats will be launched per year in 2022 and 2023, to meet strong housing demand. Home buyers can look forward to flats in towns across Bukit Merah, Jurong West, Kallang Whampoa, Queenstown, Tengah, Toa Payoh and Yishun in 2022.
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Surely there are bad journalists, especially those who misrepresent or twist your words. But in this case, it doesn't seem like that has happened - by my read, his statements stick out quite obviously as different. Judge for yourself here:
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Quite sure blaming each other for not being “hireable” is exactly what exploitative employers want - for you to never feel good enough, so they never have to value you enough.
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Perhaps nothing is more “acrobatic” than companies trying to evade their responsibility and providing all kinds of excuses for treating migrant workers as sub-human.
Worker sues company for damages after fracturing leg alighting from overcrowded lorry
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Seems like mere rhetoric to me. Census 2020 shows that 40.1% of Indians and 22.7% of Chinese among the resident pop are born outside SG. What data do we have to show that, e.g., new C/I immigrants are more similar to their local-born counterparts compared to local-born Malays?
We cannot deny there's 'casual racism' in S'pore, but we're doing something about it: Shanmugam
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Parliamentary debate about the EIP today is such a low level waste of time. No real details, just lots of false dichotomies.
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Some people think they can empathize w the poor just because they came from humble backgrds. But by turning talk about inequality into an opp to talk about their own rags to riches story, they inadvertently show that it is the “self-made” types that tend to have little empathy.
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So even if I accept that a good part of Chinese privilege is due to “natural advantages that come from being the majority”, the fact is that policy makes these advantages perpetual for the Chinese. Is that not privilege?
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Also notable how many people (guess which kinds) in the Q&A session tried to hijack a dialogue on race with questions about discrimination due to disability/age. Not that these factors are un-important, but obviously race isn’t important enough to them to stay on topic.
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Something is clearly broken if our entire construction industry is only sustainable when we exploit migrant workers.
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A thought-provoking paper on the US looking at how neoliberalism enabled authoritarianism. Probably has applications to Singapore context.
Professor
@margaret_somers
also published an article in
@tandfonline
, "Dedemocratizing citizenship: how neoliberalism used market justice to move from welfare queening to authoritarianism in 25 short years."
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Just say “I have the data and I don’t want to give it to you because it might make me look bad”. Please don’t resort to all these hand-wavy statements and/or accuse others of having bad intentions just because they ask for data. I’m quite sure people can see through the farce.
He has been asking about this since last Nov.
In response, Maliki who is 2nd Minister for Education, said that most schools have "good representation from different socioeconomic backgrounds"
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