Jophin Mathai
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jofmat.bsky.social
Jophin Mathai
@jofmat.bsky.social
300 followers 270 following 640 posts
philanthropy, education, social mobility, social change | amateur philosopher | I read, write, listen l posts are personal

Work at: Center for Asian Philanthropy India
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jofmat.bsky.social
Jophin Mathai @jofmat.bsky.social · 6d
Books I read/finished reading in 2025 🧵

This is a yearly ritual. I shall be adding to the thread every now and then. May you happily stumble upon something worth your time:
#booksky
jofmat.bsky.social
On the ‘Epstein class’, the role of power brokers, and staying in sync with ruling ideas. Great piece by @anandwrites.bsky.social
Snippet from opinion piece: How did Mr. Epstein manage to pull so many strangers close? The emails reveal a barter economy of nonpublic information that was a big draw. This is not a world where you bring a bottle of wine to dinner and that's it. You bring what financiers call "edge" — proprietary insight, inside information, a unique takeaway from a conference, a counterintuitive prediction about A.l., a snippet of conversation with a lawmaker, a foretaste of tomorrow's news.
November 24, 2025 at 6:39 AM
jofmat.bsky.social
It is rare to hear of an educational institution reject the renewal of a donation. But the reputed Wellesley College has done it, ensuring the closure of an environmental justice program.

(The donor was fuming. Again, rejection of funds is rare, unless environ justice has become controversial?)
November 24, 2025 at 6:11 AM
jofmat.bsky.social
Eze who? You know now.

#ARSvsTOT
November 23, 2025 at 6:06 PM
Reposted by Jophin Mathai
thebluemango.in
Hello! 🍜

I am a baker based in #Mumbai, India. I bake these plum #cakes with rum every Nov/Dec.

Dried fruits and nuts are soaked in Old Monk rum and then finally go into this decadent #Christmas treat. If you want to order or know more, number's in the menu.

Please #repost for reach. Tysm! 💖
A photo of the plum cake with rum on a pink plate. There are Christmas ornaments around (Christmas trees, baubles, pine cones, wreath, candle) Delivery Dispatch Points Monday: out of station shipping, thane Tuesday: Andheri (west) Wednesday: Bandra (west) Thursday: colaba Friday: Andheri (west) Saturday: Bandra (west) Sunday: closed. Instagram logo: @thebluemango.in Order @ 9136256950 All i want for Christmas 2025 Classic plum cake with rum (500g) ₹ 1599/- Want to get the cake at last year's price? Pre-order before Dec 7th - ₹ 1499/- Delivery charges as per actuals (within city) (Please note, out of city shipping starts at ₹299) Photo of the plum cake wedge showing the crumbs, it is placed on a white ceramic plate. Behind there is a larger plate with remaining cake.
November 22, 2025 at 2:47 PM
jofmat.bsky.social
In life, not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.
November 23, 2025 at 7:06 AM
Reposted by Jophin Mathai
dpcarrington.bsky.social
#COP30 - “Our elementary school kids are reading textbooks that are more science-based and in line with reality than the [draft] text we have here, where we are supposed to fix this problem” says Juan Carlos Monterrey, climate envoy for Panama

#climatecrisis
www.theguardian.com/world/live/2...
Cop30 live: summit president warns ‘everybody will lose’ if countries fail to cooperate
André Corrêa do Lago issues plea to preserve Paris agreement with countries far from reaching agreement on scheduled final day
www.theguardian.com
November 21, 2025 at 2:28 PM
Reposted by Jophin Mathai
jofmat.bsky.social
Books I read/finished reading in 2025 🧵

This is a yearly ritual. I shall be adding to the thread every now and then. May you happily stumble upon something worth your time:
#booksky
November 18, 2025 at 3:44 PM
Reposted by Jophin Mathai
mollycrabapple.bsky.social
Hey authors! Check to see if Anthropic stole your book to train their slop generator on. You’re entitled to $1500 per stolen Work.

Look up your work, and if you’re in the database, file a claim
secure.anthropiccopyrightsettlement.com/lookup/
Submit a Claim
secure.anthropiccopyrightsettlement.com
November 18, 2025 at 7:39 AM
jofmat.bsky.social
Books I read/finished reading in 2025 🧵

This is a yearly ritual. I shall be adding to the thread every now and then. May you happily stumble upon something worth your time:
#booksky
November 18, 2025 at 3:44 PM
jofmat.bsky.social
Given our times, self-help lit can be a false guardrail against an existential nihilism. But there is a role for individual and collective responsibility to free oneself and others.

Great piece by Erik Baker in the Drift magazine that connects some important dots.
While an exaggerated sense of our own importance is a recipe for both political and psychological disaster, it is also possible to overestimate our insignificance. Acceptance shades easily into excuse. With enough practice tolerating imperfection you can learn to forget what it is you're failing to live up to. When those expectations include owning a vacation home or winning a Nobel Prize, letting go might be healthy - but doing so is tragic when they include stopping a genocide or ending homelessness. If that seems like an unreasonable standard to hold ourselves to, it is only because so few of us today have experienced the way that participating in the exercise of collective power can augment and extend our personal agency. Erik Baker When we are left to fend for ourselves, the conditions that shape our lives tend to feel alien and monolithic, forcing us to choose between the two polarities of self-help: the delusional optimism of positive thinking and the stoic acceptance taught by "philosophy."
November 2, 2025 at 5:05 AM
jofmat.bsky.social
Cioran.

“Life is possible only by the deficiencies of our imagination and our memory.”

…and also of our knowledge (and ignorance).
"If we could understand and love the infinity of agonies which languish around us, all the lives which are hidden deaths, we should require as many hearts as there are suffering beings. And if we had a miraculously present memory which sustained the totality of our past pains, we should succumb beneath such a burden. Life is possible only by the deficiencies of our imagination and our memory." (E. M. Cioran, A Short History of Decay)
October 4, 2025 at 5:05 AM
Reposted by Jophin Mathai
benphillips76.bsky.social
Today, harmful stories are shaping the global conversation, constraining policy ambition.

Our new report identifies how to overcome these stories.

PUBLIG GOOD: Building a winning narrative to bring the world together

By Jonathan Glennie & Ben Phillips

globalcooperation.institute/public-good-...
Public Good Narrative Project - Global Cooperation Institute
September 2025
globalcooperation.institute
September 23, 2025 at 3:59 PM
Reposted by Jophin Mathai
wid.world
📢 We’re excited to announce that the 3rd edition of the World Inequality Conference will take place on 4–5 June 2026 in Paris.

📄The call for papers is now open — submit by December 1!

▶️ inequalitylab.world/en/event/wor...

@pse.bsky.social @cris-sciencespo.bsky.social @taxobservatory.bsky.social
World Inequality Conference 2026 - World Inequality Lab
The World Inequality Lab is organizing the third edition of the World Inequality Conference, to be held at the Paris School of Economics on June 4-5, 2026.
inequalitylab.world
September 17, 2025 at 2:37 PM
jofmat.bsky.social
I turn to Thich Nhat Hanh every now and then for some grounding in the present. I reflected on ‘Being Peace’, and what it means to nurture peace in turbulent times.

#books

www.goodreads.com/review/show/...
Jophin Mathai's review of Being Peace (Being Peace, #1)
5/5: Life is tough and overwhelming. There is the proximity of personal (and collective) hardships. There is suffering that cuts across space and time, live-streamed into omnipresent screens—genocide...
www.goodreads.com
September 15, 2025 at 4:37 PM
jofmat.bsky.social
“The key thing is this is not about all of humanity creating these threats. It is not about human nature. It is about small groups who bring out the worst in us, competing for profit and power and covering all [the risks] up.”
‘Self-termination is most likely’: the history and future of societal collapse
An epic analysis of 5,000 years of civilisation argues that a global collapse is coming unless inequality is vanquished
www.theguardian.com
August 7, 2025 at 3:46 PM
jofmat.bsky.social
There are few sport formats that have the ability to emulate theatre like Test cricket. And in the best of emulations, it becomes an incredible art form.

Excellent piece by Jarrod Kimber that captures the drama.

www.goodareas.co/p/56-minutes...
56 minutes of Test cricket
The crowd is still - as if every single person here knows they’ve just seen the best hour (56 minutes) of cricket they’ll ever see.
www.goodareas.co
August 5, 2025 at 6:49 AM
Reposted by Jophin Mathai
ambaazaad.bsky.social
This is why we must be anti-carceral in our politics
scroll.in Scroll @scroll.in · Jul 22
"I knew, my family knew, and even the police knew that I was innocent. I knew my time in jail would be prolonged. But I was sure I would get released," says one of the men, acquitted after spending 19 years in prison.

scroll.in/article/1084...

Tabassum Barnagarwala reports
July 22, 2025 at 5:16 AM
jofmat.bsky.social
This article is hilarious: an analysis of the 'Gen Z' stare at the workplace. And advice on how to be, of course.

(weird, happy AI-generated image as cover)

timesofindia.indiatimes.com/education/ca...
‘Gen Z stare’ is fuelling manager stress, making them walk out: Here’s what the young workforce needs to know - Times of India
Careers News: A silent stare from Gen Z is triggering rising tension and burnout among managers, many of whom are reconsidering their roles. Seen by some as passive
timesofindia.indiatimes.com
July 18, 2025 at 7:21 AM
Reposted by Jophin Mathai
sansip.bsky.social
New Yorker fiction editor Deborah Treisman’s Reddit AMA.

www.reddit.com/r/writing/co...
July 17, 2025 at 3:43 AM
jofmat.bsky.social
“…is it not the supreme and most insidious exercise of power to prevent people, to whatever degree, from having grievances by shaping their perceptions, cognitions and preferences in such a way…
In the first place, what, in any case, is a grievance - an articulated demand, based on political knowledge, an undirected complaint arising out of everyday experience, a vague feeling of unease or sense of deprivation? Second, and more important, is it not the supreme and most insidious exercise of power to prevent people, to whatever degree, from having grievances by shaping their perceptions, cognitions and preferences in such a way that they accept their role in the existing order of things, either because they can see or imagine no alternative to it, or because they see it as natural and unchangeable, or because they value it as divinely ordained and beneficial? - Power: A Radical View, by Steven Lukes
July 9, 2025 at 3:38 PM
Reposted by Jophin Mathai
olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social
A global minimum tax on the ultrarich could change planetary politics. Right now South Africa, Chile, France, and Spain are pushing for it
gabrielzucman.bsky.social Gabriel Zucman @gabrielzucman.bsky.social · Jul 7
France could raise around €20 billion per year from this tax

That’s half of the €40B the government is looking for this year

Globally? $302–377 billion could be raised—every year

From the ultra-rich. Who currently pay very little.

gabriel-zucman.eu/files/report...
July 8, 2025 at 1:12 AM
jofmat.bsky.social
www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/b...
www.hindustantimes.com
July 8, 2025 at 4:52 AM
jofmat.bsky.social
The global inequality and the concentration of power makes elite ignorance exceedingly brutal.

If there is one thing I wish generally for elites, it is epistemic humility—that privilege does not grant omniscience.
July 3, 2025 at 7:08 AM
Reposted by Jophin Mathai
astrokatie.com
I frequently take comfort in the fact that the Universe is vast and beautiful and entirely unaffected by petty human foolishness
June 23, 2025 at 5:46 PM
Reposted by Jophin Mathai
bencollins.bsky.social
Donald Trump just unilaterally bombed Iran. A masked gang is terrorizing our streets. America has rapidly devolved into an authoritarian state.

That's why, today, The Onion has purchased a full page ad in today's New York Times with a simple plea to Congress:

Sit back and do absolutely nothing.
An Onion front page with the headline: Congress, Now More Than Ever, Our Nation Needs Your Cowardice Who will stand up for our democracy? This question, fraught in even the most peaceful times, has only grown more pressing as our country approaches its 250th anniversary. Each passing day brings growing assaults on essential liberties like freedom of speech and due process. Meanwhile, our delicately assembled legal system faces a constant barrage of threats. Even as this issue reaches publication, the U.S. military has been deployed against peaceful protesters. We teeter on the brink of collapse into an authoritarian state. That is why, today, The Onion calls upon our lawmakers to sit back and do absolutely nothing. Members of Congress, now more than ever, our nation desperately needs your cowardice. Our republic is a birthright, an exceedingly rare treasure passed down from generation to generation of Americans. It was gained through hard years of bloody resistance and can too easily be lost. Our Founding Fathers, in their abundant wisdom, understood that all it would take was men and women of little courage sitting in the corridors of power and taking zero action as this precious inheritance was stripped away—and that is where we have finally arrived. Now is not the time for bravery or valor! This is the time for protecting your own hide and lining your pocket. Now is not the time for listening to your idiotic constituents drone on about what’s happening to their precious democracy. This is the time for getting down on all fours and grov- eling. Now is not the time to say, “Enough is enough,” and have the tough conversations about resisting the ongoing assaults on American liberty. This is the time to let the wave of apathy and indifference roll over you as you think about getting a really nice renovation to your house in Kalorama. But what can I, one coward, do alone? you might ask.
June 22, 2025 at 2:36 PM