Mustafa's Musings

Riffs on random topics from sports to sustainability to race and more.

Mustafa Shaikh 7 min read
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Mustafa's Musings: I Got A Buddhist-Inspired Tattoo To Prevent Myself From Going Crazy Again

Alright, I know I was initially supposed to publish this piece last Wednesday, but I got lazy. Today will have to do instead. Before we get into it, this is the final time I will ask you to take the survey on season one of "712 Hayes [https://frommustafasdesk.com/

Mustafa Shaikh 3 min read
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Mustafa's Musings: Our Reliance On Oil = More Ukrainian Deaths

Well if you haven't heard, Russia decided to invade Ukraine. For those who've gone past Instagram clips of badass Ukrainians fighting for their motherland, you may have read into the various sanctions that the U.S. and Western European countries are hitting Russia with. Depending on how deep you've been

Mustafa Shaikh 2 min read
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Mustafa's Musings: A New Year's Resolution For Your Consideration

If you couldn’t tell, I’ve decided to entitle my random riffs, “Mustafa's Musings.” I’m ripping this from "Musings of a Moose:" the title of a column I had in the sports section of my college’s newspaper. I’m kinda over the nickname Moose, hence the rebrand.

Mustafa Shaikh 4 min read
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Mustafa's Musings: Missed Connections

The primary reason I love to travel is the ability to meet new people from different backgrounds and to understand their perspectives. I’ve even taken it as far as staying in hostels while traveling for work—or in one case, a couch at an anarchist collective (shout out Boing!

Mustafa Shaikh 2 min read
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Mustafa's Musings: Survey Results Are In—Here's What's Coming in January

Well, I was able to wrangle a few more completed surveys out of y'all. Much appreciated. When Will Emails Ship * Surprisingly—at least to me—Monday morning was the no. 1 choice. The primary email will be shipped out on Mondays at 8a ET. This is subject to change if

Mustafa Shaikh 8 min read
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Mustafa's Musings: My Top 3 Small Businesses of 2021 (AKA Shop Less On Amazon)

Before we get into it, a big shout out to all the people that filled out last week’s survey. For the record, that’s all five of you. Now on my end, I can see that several multiples of more readers opened last week’s email. So let’s

Mustafa Shaikh 4 min read
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Mustafa's Musings: For The Sake Of The Environment, Eat More Turkey, Please

I have a friend in San Francisco (what it do, Max?) who wrote his master's project [https://repository.usfca.edu/capstone/842/] on mitigating litter from discarded cigarette filters, manages an incredible reuse facility in Berkeley [http://urbanore.com/], and even once reduced his single-waste use to fit into a

Mustafa Shaikh 4 min read
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Mustafa's Musings I'm Tired of Racism in Combat Sports Being Defended

Note from Mustafa: This is my first time writing a sports piece in a decade+. The writing here is an honest 4/10. Think of this more like my first preseason game and I'm just getting my arm warmed up after tearing my rotator cuff the year prior. Imagine this

Mustafa Shaikh 6 min read
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Mustafa's Musings: Malcolm X + Storm King = Me Writing Again

In early Spring I moved back to my mom's house in the suburbs of NJ for a variety of reasons (ok fine, it's because I got broken up with, but that's an oversimplification of things). I spent hours aimlessly walking circles inside mom's house as I put off applying to