2022 October
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It is now Throw Short People month. Three months remain in the year. Time continues to be stretchy. Maybe that's why today's weeknotes are a day late, or maybe I was just busy? The World PH/Covid: Covid cases are still in a plateau or a slight rise. I must admit that I haven't been paying close attention the past week though. PH, surprisingly "controversial": This past weekend the PCSO lotto rolled an interesting number combination: 9-18-27-36-45-54. People were also surprised when the PCSO announced that 433 people had won and would be splitting the jackpot. A senator wants this "controversy"
2022 September
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Bits and Pieces It is a stormy Sunday afternoon right now. Supertyphoon Karding is barrelling towards Luzon and we are currently on signal no. 4 I think. (The highest level is signal no. 5). This is coming roughly a day before the same day that Typhoon Ondoy devastated Metro Manila 13 years ago. This is the third supertyphoon to hit the country in a month, yet another indication of how the climate problems are intensifying. PH/Covid: Covid cases continue to plateau and maybe even rise a bit here in NCR, and the positivity rate is climbing. Coincidentally, Biden declared that
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Bits and Pieces PH/Covid: It looks like our downtrend is at an end, especially in NCR. Hopefully this mini-surge stays manageable. The World: Queen Elizabeth's funeral is tomorrow. The British have been waiting in a miles-long queue to view her remains (or at least the coffin I guess). The Queue has been called "a triumph of Britishness". I scanned this piece of scratch paper that had been on top of my desk for the past week or so: (Click photos to view full-size) The left half is a Superman/Batman doodle I did over the week. Sometime this past week, someone -
This week's header image was generated using DALL-E with the prompt a ultradetailed beautiful panting of a stylish woman sitting on a chair looking over a peaceful bay during sunset, by conrad roset, greg rutkowski and makoto shinkai. Bits and Pieces The big news this past week is the passing of Queen Elizabeth II, Britain's longest reigning monarch. She is succeeded by Charles III. And I think a lot of Brits discovered how many people on the internet weren't too fond of either their beloved monarch or their history of colonialism. PH/Covid: Cases seem to have plateaued, instead of continuing -
Bits and Pieces It's September! In the Philippines, that's usually an excuse to start the Christmas season already. TV shows are already counting down how many "sleeps" there are remaining until Christmas. During recent years, it's become a local meme that as September nears, Jose Mari Chan is getting ready to pounce, because his age-old song "Christmas in Our Hearts" is a popular choice for background music in malls and such. The week was a bit busy, as I finally managed to dig into some work I've been putting off. The end of the month always brings with it a
2022 August
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The year is almost two thirds done! Switching up the format a bit this week. Bits and Pieces The week was a bit rainy as we had a tropical storm pass by during the second half. Always makes my daily walks more challenging. Sleep was also irregular, which is sadly quite regular for me. Had to go out a few times for family errands. At least the hospital no longer requires us to fill up a form or get an antigen test just to walk in. Managed to get some work in on some side projects. PH/Covid: Cases continue to -
Thirty-nine years ago Ninoy Aquino was assassinated on an airport tarmac. He famously said "The Filipino is worth dying for." Not sure if he'd still consider that to be true today, as a lot of online trolls try to tear down his legacy. The World PH/Covid: Hey, our cases have started declining, with most of the days this week under 4k! It's good news, and hopefully the downtrend continues. I guess other things happened elsewhere in the world also? IDK, not really paying attention I guess. Some Links of Interest Tecnicos y Rudos, wrestling and politics - Austin Kleon: I -
Not a lot today. It's been kind of a boring week. The World PH/Covid: We have happily managed to avoid hitting 5k daily cases this week; the weekly total is still slightly above the previous week, but the positivity rate has declined for the first time since May and there are some indications that NCR might start trending down. Hopefully we are past the worst of this mini-surge and maybe that will calm my going-out anxiety. Some Links of Interest People who read live longer than those who don’t, Yale researchers say - Big Think: '...The readers who read over
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The World Despite dire warnings from Beijing, US Speaker of the House Pelosi went ahead and visited Taiwan. In response, China has suspended international cooperation in several areas like climate change, and has conducted military exercises around Taiwan, even firing missiles over Taipei. It could be really bad for the world if all of this escalates while the whole Russian invasion of Ukraine is still ongoing. As of today, we are at 4k+ covid cases per day for four days in a row. We are inching up ever closer to 5k covid cases per week. I am hoping that this
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The weekend kind of got away from me, so I'm doing this on a Monday instead. My weekends often seem to be busy, maybe I should consider just scheduling these on Mondays? The World Last Wednesday a magnitude 7 quake struck Luzon's Northern region. I am told it was felt all the way here, but I was asleep and of course felt nothing. I awoke to an annoying NDRRMC message though. Former PH president Fidel V. Ramos has passed away. There is a pattern. We broke 4k daily covid cases last week, though the counts really feel like they are
2022 July
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The World Our local covid cases continue to tick upwards, albeit a bit slowly, and the health care utilization rate still holds at low values. Positivity rates are climbing though, especially in NCR, so the "real" case counts are probably a bit higher. If I had to I would guess the current "surge" peaks in maybe 2-3 weeks. Tomorrow is president BBM's first state of the nation address. It's a big brouhaha I hope to ignore completely. Earlier today, there was a shooting incident at Ateneo de Manila. Three people died. It was a politically-motivated assassination attempt in broad daylight -
It has certainly been a week. The World Professional troll and part-time entrepreneur Elon Musk wants out of his Twitter buyout deal, and his social media platform of choice is taking him to court in response. No one is surprised by this. NASA published the first images from the James Webb Space Telescope. Comparisons to previous images we had are amazing. A massive leak of documents details how Uber broke laws, duped police, and lobbied governments in their early years. Looks like the files are mostly about their dealings in Europe, but it's not hard to imagine they did some -
I just came back from a pretty good 5-day out of town trip via a miserable 9-hour bus ride, so this past week's weeknotes are coming in late and will probably be a bit short. The World Former Japanese PM Shinzo Abe has been assassinated. Noahpinion has a pretty good writeup on how he changed Japan. Amid multiple crises, the people of Sri Lanka have ousted their prime minister via wide-scale protests. Hopefully they learn from certain other countries' mistakes manage to stop his children from coming back in 30 years to revise history. Speaking of mistakes, our president has -
Dictator's son and habitual liar Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos Jr officially took over as the president of this country last weekend, a living testament to the power of propaganda and short memories. I did not pay attention to the festivities. In fact, I try not to pay attention to news about him at all; though I am paying attention to cabinet appointees and I must note that we still don't have a health secretary! The pandemic is still a thing! Covid19 cases are still on a slight uptick over here, though the number of daily cases at the end of the
2022 June
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The week has been a bit busy, and I don't have a lot of time today, so these weeknotes will be a bit short. The year nears it's midpoint, and it seems like the world continues to regress. A couple of the days ago, as prophesized by an earlier leak, the US Supreme Court struck down the 50-year old Roe vs Wade precedent, clearing the way for multiple states to almost immediately ban abortions. I am neither an American nor a woman, so I do not feel I have the standing to weigh in. In fact, as someone who grew -
Another exhausting, errand-filled week for me. For some reason being human means limited amounts of time and energy to do all the things I want to do. Covid19 cases are starting to go up again in these parts, which is threatening some end-of-month plans I had. I think most people aren't paying the rise in cases any heed, but I have to be extra cautious given that I live with a couple of seniors. We'll see how it goes. Markets are crashing, crypto is crashing, no safe place to put your investments at the moment. Cash is king. Support for -
I have had a busy week; lots of errands and family activities and some stuff I don't care to talk about publicly. And for some reason I feel more exhausted than normal. Maybe just old age? Regardless, I don't have any world news or links for today, so I think I will eschew the usual format I've settled into for these weeknotes. It's good to wander off once in a while, after all. A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers I suspect this review will be a good chunk of this post. This is a short novella, a bit
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The World I have honestly kind of tuned out the rest of the world this week and focused on my own stuff for a while. We could all use a break from all the bad news. I do know that the Depp/Heard defamation trial has concluded, a media spectacle/shitshow that went on far too long and was apparently plagued by all sorts of misinformation. Here's a good Twitter thread I read about it. I also like the coverage by Today in Tabs. Links of Interest Intro to the Web Revival #1: What is the Web Revival? | Melon's Thoughts: What
2022 May
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It has been a sad week for the world, something that happens perhaps way too often in the past few years. The World PH: Congress, sitting as the National Board of Canvassers, has proclaimed Bongbong Marcos Jr and Sara Duterte as the winners of the 2022 presidential and vice-presidential elections. Some reactions from one of my group chats: Of course, not everybody is sad. Presumably, his supporters are happy he won, though I've found little evidence of that online. It's more like they're happy Leni lost than BBM winning, and are a bit incensed that she's happily ignoring the noise -
The World PH: it has been a very rainy week over here, with the mornings typically hot and the afternoons and evenings with daily showers. Weather agency PAG-ASA has declared the official start of the rainy season, making my daily walks more challenging. At least we are hopefully going to suffer less of the summer heat. Covid isn't even over, but apparently there's a new disease to worry about: Monkeypox. I asked an infectious disease specialist I knew if we should be worried about it and she answered "At this point no. But that's we said about Covid too." So