2021 August
-
It's August! A quote: "Here's the thing: there is no real life. There is no full, meaningful, "best life." There are, at best, more and less meaningful pursuits, from your perspective, based on your upbringing, imprinting, and your own specific cocktail of longings. It is natural for us to feel anxiety about how we spend our limited time. No matter how happy you convince yourself to be, you will sometimes feel the vague ache of other possible lives." -- SandwichBear via Amy Hoy The world: Some good news for the country last Monday, and it wasn't the old man's last
2021 July
-
A quote: "I just wanna keep being proof that good people with no hidden agendas still exist in this world." - @diorkenn on Twitter The world: This past week in Metro Manila was very cold and rainy, which came with the attendant problems like flooding and such. There's a typhoon nearby, but I don't think it's in the PAR; instead it's just doing this thing where it drags in rains and winds via the Habagat monsoon. The feared delta variant is here in the PH and has been since May. The DOH confirms local transmission. And the response in Metro -
A quote: "The important work of moving the world forward does not wait to be done by perfect men." - George Eliot The world: Fitch downgrades PH credit rating outlook to "negative" Pacquiao ousted from PDP-Laban by an opposing faction, just as he's preparing for his upcoming fight. Covid-19 delta variant has been detected in the PH, let's hope the government can keep it under control. Valve has announced the Steam Deck, a handheld PC for playing Steam games Links of interest: Hobson's Browser: How Apple, Facebook, and Google Broke the Mobile Browser Market by Silently Undermining User Choice The
-
A quote: "You are the books you read the films you watch, the music you listen to, the people you meet, the dreams you have, the conversations you engage in. You are what you take from these. You are the sound of the ocean, the breath of fresh air, the brightest light and the darkest corner. You are a collective of every experience you have had in your life. You are every single second of every single day. So drown yourself in a sea of knowledge and existence. Let the words run through your veins and let the colours fill
-
It's the Fourth of July, which really only means something in the US. Over here it used to be "Philippine-American Friendship Day", but apparently that was phased out while I was still in grade school. A quote "Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts" - W. Churchill The world: Our current president and one of our possible future presidents, who are ostensibly allies / partymates have been feuding over the past week. Just another sign of how tenuous political alliances in this country are; they are no match for ambition. The
2021 June
-
It's almost July, which means 2021 is just about halfway done, and yet here we still are in pandemic mode. A quote "Each year that passes rings you inwardly with memory and might. Wield your heart, and the world will tremble." - Doran the Siege Tower The world: Last Thursday, former PH President Noynoy Aquino III passed away quietly. This led to the usual condolences and accolades from across the political spectrum, although many noted the delay in the palace issuing a statement (I suspect it was because the current president was still asleep). Many of his friends and supporters
-
Today is father's day. If you're lucky enough to have a good father in your life, be sure to show your appreciation. Today's weeknotes are shorter than usual for some reason. A quote "My goal is to build a life I don't need a vacation from." - Rob Hill Sr. The world: The International Criminal Court is proceeding with a probe into Duterte's drug war. The admin is all like "ha ha we don't care, you have no basis, we won't cooperate, etc etc", but despite the posturing, it kind of feels like they're a bit scared. On the pandemic
-
These weeknotes are being published a day late, for reasons that will be discussed later. A quote "The price of being a sheep is boredom. The price of being a wolf is loneliness. Choose one or the other with great care." - Hugh MacLeod The world: Early last week, a slew of big websites went offline due to some problems at a CDN, which is some kind of testament to the problems with centralization, but my favorite part of that story was that tech news site The Verge did their reporting from a Google doc during the outage but they
-
A quote "There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man; true nobility is being superior to your former self." -- Ernest Hemingway The world: This week was the anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, and a recent tweet highlighted how the HK government, which used to freely allow commemorating the event, is now cracking down on the former colony's freedoms. StackOverflow has been sold to an investment company. The Q&A site founded by Joel Spolsky and Jeff "@codinghorror" Atwood completely changed everyday software development when it launched in 2008. To this day, there are numerous programmer
2021 May
-
June is almost upon us, hopefully bringing some respite from the scorching summer heat. This year feels like it's passing by very quickly. A quote There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable nor how it
-
It's the last week of May (more or less), and I'm mostly looking forward to a new month because I'm tired of ridiculous summer heat and I'm hoping the sun tones it down a bit in June. The one aircon we have in the house has been busted all summer, so we have been suffering through the heat and surviving mostly through stacking multiple fans and also an excessive number of showers. A quote “We must be willing to let go of the life we planned so as to have the life that is waiting for us.” ― Joseph Campbell
-
A quote "Who has never killed an hour? Not casually or without thought, but carefully: a premeditated murder of minutes. The violence comes from a combination of giving up, not caring, and a resignation that getting past it is all you can hope to accomplish. So you kill the hour. You do not work, you do not read, you do not daydream. If you sleep it is not because you need to sleep. And when at last it is over, there is no evidence: no weapon, no blood, and no body. The only clue might be the shadows beneath your
-
This post is being published a day late. Things happen okay? Sometimes you get busy and things need to be pushed back. The world: like the thug that he is, our dear president claimed that the arbitral award ruling in the PH's favor was nothing more than a sheet of paper he could easily discard. He also challenged former justice Antonio Carpio to a debate over the West Philippine Sea issue, a challenge the latter quickly accepted. As basically everyone expected, Duterte later chickened out, and offered his spokesman Roque as a distraction, er, proxy for the debate. debris from
-
It's already May? April felt like it came and went so quickly. But then again, time has little meaning in this accursed pandemic. The world: The brouhaha over community pantries (as described last week), seems to have calmed down and they are now generally coordinating with LGUs for assistance in maintaining health protocols Meanwhile, the government has embarked on a propaganda campaign to assert that we aren't the worst in terms of pandemic response in the world Certain congress people continue to promote the usage of the drug Ivermectin, which has no known effect on Covid-19, as a Covid-19 cure
2021 April
-
I've been a bit busy this weekend (see below), so this post is running a bit late. The world: An ongoing saga right here in the Philippines: Last weekend, community pantries for the needy started sprouting up in Metro Manila and all over the country, largely inspired by one started in Maginhawa here in Quezon City. The central idea was "give what you can, take what you need." Stories spread of heartwarming stories like a poor old man donating some food even though he had very little and an ice cream vendor giving away the remnants of his cart for
-
I'm not sure what to think of this past week, feels like it went by quickly. I may have spent too much of it daydreaming. The world: NCR+ bubble is now one week into modified enhanced community quarantine (MECQ - an acronym that makes no sense). Cases still seem to be pretty high on a day-to-day basis, though we're told the R number is dropping slightly, so that's good I guess? Still, would be nice if the case numbers would calm down. Still lots of stories about people having trouble getting into hospitals and dying in ICUs. Meanwhile, the presidential
-
The world: Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh and Queen Elizabeth's husband, has passed away. So has DMX, American rapper. Big facebook breach reported, etc. Doesn't seem like news, really. My phone number was among the data leaked. The country is still experiencing a surge in cases, hospitals and ICUs still bursting to capacity. Yet in spite of the crisis, the president has not been around. This has prompted questions of whether he's still alive. This in turn prompted multiple proof-of-life photos and videos from the senator-who-is-also-presidential-assistant, some of which may or may have been photoshopped. We are told he will
-
It's April! Or as it's otherwise known, March 2020 month 13. As is usual, we are suffering the sweltering summer heat. Also, it's Easter Sunday, if that means anything to you. The world: Surprising almost no one, the PH government extended the ECQ lockdown in the NCR+ bubble. Anyone with half a brain could have told you that the one week ECQ was no way going to be enough, given what we know about the virus' life cycle. Meanwhile, we continued to hit record numbers of new cases, our 7-day rolling average now the highest in SEA since the pandemic
2021 March
-
It's the last weekend of March. It feels like the month went by quickly. The world: Local covid response: The government introduced the concept of an "NCR Plus" bubble last Monday, restricting travel in and out of the NCR and adjacent provinces, in response to the rising cases. Still, the daily counts kept rising, hitting record highs of almost 10k cases daily. Even before the dust has settled on the bubble response, they decided to announce last night a reversion to the stricter ECQ. Shades of last year, during the run up to the first lockdown announcement: rumors circulated via -
The world: Over the past couple of days, our nationwide daily covid cases broke 7000+, the highest recorded so far. Have to be super careful when going out for errands. Not that I wasn't being careful even before, mind you. Just now, government has announced we are still under GCQ (see my post about the PH quarantine levels), but with more restrictions, etc. Looks like they are still hesitant to provide a stronger lockdown which would require paying people to stay home so they don't starve to death. Links of interest: The internet is splitting apart. The Internet Archive wants