megane-kun

Their “unity” is a lie. Even among the supporters of the Marcos Jr. and Sara Duterte tandem, it is viewed as nothing more than a marriage of convenience. But when it stopped being convenient, it’s back to the usual mudslinging.

I’d also be wary of Duterte’s promises with regards to China.

In the 2016 election, one of his campaign promises involved going by jet ski onto the disputed islands to personally protect them, a promise he later dismissed as just an empty promise and mocked those who bought into it as stupid. His promise of pushing a claim cited in the OP article might as well be one of those empty promises made to increase their dynasty’s chances of winning the elections. Their actions show where their priorities and loyalties lie. What was promised to be a “protect our islands” stance, turned out to be an “embrace China” stance.

Marcos Jr. isn’t in the clear either, with the Marcos dynasty trying to whitewash and erase from history their wrongdoing.

Moreover, his 20 PhP (~0.33 USD) per kilogram of rice promise is just as ridiculous as Duterte’s Jet ski promise. As with Duterte’s jetski, Marcos delivered a ~600 PhP (~10 USD) per kilogram of onions reality instead and later on, dropping to ~20 PhP / kg (~0.33 USD / kg) as local onion farmers had their harvests.

Of note here is the fact that the Marcos Jr. held the post of Secretary of Agriculture at the same time as him being President until November 2023. Meanwhile, the price of (well-milled) rice is around 60 PhP (~1 USD) per kilogram—thrice what was promised. For context, the average daily wage is around 620 PhP (~10.33 USD).

Not that Duterte had the best handling of the economy, it was however, overshadowed by his bombastic statements and pro-China stance.

I personally would have enjoyed watching their (word) war of the dynasties if it were not for the healthy chance that one of them would win (because any politician opposed to both practically obliterated and rendered irrelevant).

NOTE:

All currency conversions were made assuming 1USD = 60PhP

If you have such a problem with too many people existing, do something about it. IDK.

Both can be true, that we’re experiencing record low birth rates globally and that the global population is still increasing at the moment.

How?

1. While birth rates in many countries have fallen below replacement rate, it’s still not zero, which means people are still having babies.
2. Due to advances in health science, the death rate has fallen.

These two factors, especially decades earlier, mean that population hasn’t yet fallen. However:

3. Non-existent humans will not produce babies.
4. The older the population is on the average, the higher the death rate will be.

This means that if I don’t produce offspring, my non-existent offspring will not produce babies. The less babies are produced, the older the population would be, and the higher the death rate will be. If current trends continue, the death rate will overtake the birth rate, and the population will shrink.

Outside of a worldwide disaster that kills off people of child-bearing age, population will still rise before it levels off and then fall off as more and more people find less and less appealing to raise children. This is just a consequence of us humans not dying immediately after childbirth, and us humans as a whole making offspring at a certain age (say, 20 years old). These two factors explain the lag between childbirth figures and population growth.

There’s this saying “a fish is caught through its mouth,” and this is an illustration of what it means. This pope might present this ‘cool’, ‘modern’ image to the public, but his words spoken in private amongst his peers reveals his real stance about these things.

Edit:‌ proofreading.

Target is one creature the caster can touch (can be self). The target can make a wisdom saving throw against the caster’s spell save DC. If successful, the spell ends without having any effect on the target. Otherwise (or if the target chose not to make the wisdom saving throw), the target will immediately taste some really well-made lemonade gin mojito that will linger for as long as the spell is in effect.

For every turn the target takes after this, the target will have to make a constitution saving throw against the caster’s spell save DC. A successful constitution saving throw will restore one first level spell slot. A natural 20 will increase the spell slot level this spell will restore. A failure will end the spell. A critical failure will cause the target to deplete all of their spell slots and the spell ends. Every turn increases the save DC‌ by one.

In one campaign, we started out using tokens of some kind on a battle grid. However, as the campaign went on, we stopped using it. For most part, it went okay. However, keeping track of where everyone can sometimes be too much. In particular, my character, whose modus is either hiding or healing, sometimes both, lead us to a situation when even I forgot to inform of our DM that I was hiding behind a huge statue that fell over. I was too busy keeping the rest of the party alive that I forgot where I was. Thankfully, when it was brought up, our DM just asked me to do an acrobatics check to confirm that I managed to roll out of the way and another check to see whether or not I kept myself hidden.

Keeping track of everyone’s positions also became less important because our DM got a bit more lax about imposing those area of effect rules.

Thanks as well. It’s certainly a POV I didn’t consider (that it’s akin to a protest) having grown up in the culture that produced such practices. Again, thanks!

Ah, my bad. I didn’t mean to imply that it being done in a religious context invalidates it, just that the religious context would inform us more about the man’s intent and whether or not they’d continue on doing so regardless of the result.

I used the term “pledge” earlier, but maybe it’s better to use the word “vow” to refer this. The term in Filipino is “panata” (which wiktionary translates to “vow”). It usually isn’t as dramatic as this, however. And as far as I’ve observed, a lot would do these vows after they deem their prayers to have been heard (usually recovery from illness or accidents, or recovery from financial ruin), and thereafter, no matter what, they’d try to fulfill their vows, whether that’d be a crucifixion reenactment, or attending processions, or even just as simple as foregoing alcohol or vices or letting their hair grow.

edit:

I must clarify my position here, I‌ guess. I am neither in favor nor against the practice. But having grown up in the country where these practices occur, I just felt I have to clarify some things. Personally? I don’t mind. They’re doing these things with good intentions, and they’re hurting no one. As far as I know, they don’t force anyone to join them, but rather, make sure that those who are following their footsteps are sure they want to.

I agree with your sentiment, but I felt compelled to comment on one crucial element here: what he has been doing isn’t a protest, but some form of a religious pledge. It just so happened that this year, he’s praying for world peace. This is akin to some traditions in India and other parts where self-flagellation is part of religious ritual, but only for those who pledge themselves to it. It’s touched upon in the article, but he’s been doing it since the 1980’s as thanksgiving for his survival in an accident. Some people just do it once, but some devote their lives to it, and it seems to me that he’s one of the latter.

Whether or not his actions will lead to results doesn’t matter, as far as I see it. He’s already devoted to the bit, and only old age (and poor health) will likely stop him.

Thanks for the explanation.

It reminds me of the concept of depreciation in accounting, in which you’re accounting for the “loss of value” of a piece of machinery as time goes on. I guess it fits how the capitalists view people (labor) as yet another kind of machine. I dunno how it fits with what you’re trying to explain here, but it somehow clicks for me. So that the factory owner can keep buying machinery, they must allocate some of their funds not just for the upkeep of the equipment, but also save up for the cost of buying a new one.

Admittedly, I’m not very well-versed with neither accounting nor the theories put on display here, but we learn something new every day, right?

(PS:‌ I’m still working through the pamphlet you’ve linked. I might have gotten a lot of things wrong, and in that case, I apologize.)

I was like “(companies) paying parents to have children” belongs to a caricature of capitalism, but here we are. (My bad, it’s companies paying parents to have children, and not some bigger entity, like the government. I already edited the previous sentence for clarity.)

If you don’t mind me asking though, what “marxist theory in action” do you see in this article?

“If I can’t have you, no one will.” – China, apparently.

And as usual, no one will do something decisive about it because China is a huge bully and is using its reputation as the world’s factory and its economic heft to intimidate anyone who thinks of doing anything about it.

Same. I bought a cheap set when I began, but I’ve bought a handful of D6 dice mostly for sneak attacks. Currently, all of my dice can still fit in a 2"×2" cloth drawstring bag.

It’s been a while since I played D&D though.

I expected someone to make this joke, but this still made me chuckle. Thanks for the laugh!

I had a problem similar to this in the beginning, but being given a chance to play one-off characters (for one-shots and the like) gave me the chance to experiment and lighten up. Most of my one-shot characters ended up being parodies of their models—either playing them as a joke contrasting with their tragic backstories or giving a more tragic twist to their relatively joke-y backstories.

Not sure if it’s at all relevant here, but this reminded me of a character for a one-shot (more like a side-story to a long-running campaign) that I made. He had a pretty serious and “edgy” backstory: his parents died when he was very young and was taken in by his grandfather. After the grandfather died, he was passed off along several relatives until he found himself in an orphanage, where he eventually became too old for it, and went on to be an adventurer.

However, the character was modeled on Pico of Boku no Pico (and its other sequels). I gave him polearm mastery (because, long and pointy things), and I wanted him to carry a “pike” but for more practical reasons, I just gave him a halberd. Continuing on with the extended joke of a character, I have him have a height of over 6 feet, and a bulky, well-built body (out of a lifetime of manual labor, ofc). And to top it all off, I played him as a sweet innocent boy, liking ice cream and being huggy and an overall bundle of joy to be around.

Not everyone in the table got the joke, but the look of the faces of those who knew, priceless! It did play quite decently though, which is a huge bonus.

Thank you. I’ve come to more or less a similar conclusion with regards to my issues. I’ll deal with what I can deal with, with what I have, but for everything else, I’ll just leave it be, hopefully in the past.

Just as a note, I don’t consider myself as having undergone the so-called Asian parenting, with parents employing not just corporal punishment, but also emotional blackmail to get their children to achieve academically, and save their faces; but I think it’s the best word to describe what I’ve gone through. However, my siblings turned out alright (hopefully). I guess I‌ might have gone relatively unscathed had some things in my teenage years have gone differently.

The thing is, there was no explanation, nor an attempt at it. Parents back in my generation weren’t supposed to.

Parenting style where I grew up tend to be “don’t explain, don’t let your children ask, have them just follow.” Corporal punishment is also normal, with being hit by clothes hangers, belts, or really, whatever they can get hands on. If that’s not enough, we are asked to “meditate and discover what actually went wrong” while kneeling on (sea) salt for at least fifteen minutes.

In one occasion, I was lasooed on the neck by a belt and having my face hit by the belt buckle. Of course, it was my fault, no questions asked. There was no explanation, and I was left alone in a room to recuperate.

Oh, did I even explain that I eventually learned (quite early on, actually) that I shouldn’t behave in “destructive ways”? Quite early on, as far as I‌ remember, well, at least while my mom’s around. Again, I should emphasize this: there was no explanation, no attempt to, they weren’t supposed to.

And oh, counseling? Professional psychiatric help? Not a thing that is affordable where I‌ live. Not America, but might as well be a cheap clone of it.

Fair enough.

My mom had been emotionally manipulative that it instilled in me that showing affection in anything will result in that thing being used against me. If that’s not enough, she mocks me for the things I’ve shown interest on, usually telling me it’s “useless” or “a hindrance”. Later on, I learnt to fake emotion and attachment to things that I could very well afford losing. Moreover, if I can lose everything and anything I love at any moment, there’s really no use being attached to anything.

Anyways, I was ready to acknowledge that it’s but one aspect of parenting. Parenting is hard, having seen my parents deal with us siblings, and then seeing my siblings deal with their own children. Parents (as a rule) try their best to raise their children in the best way they know how, for better or for worse. And even if my mom did gave me this trauma I’ve given up in dealing with (long story), I still love her.

Wouldn’t that end up with a kid who values nothing, not even their own life?

My mom used a similar technique to get me to do what she wants me to do, and I ended up, well, the way I am right now. I hide a lot of things from her, and if necessary, only pretend to show interest in things I don’t give a damn about just to have a semblance of a personality. Worse, even if I‌ die right after this comment, I wouldn’t mind one bit.