megane-kun

That’d be giving in to Chinese provocation. They’ve been doing this harassment in hopes of the Philippine government giving up and complying with the Chinese demands, or the Philippines getting riled up and firing the first shot. The latter will give China the “moral ground” or at least ammo for their propaganda.

IMO, what the Philippine military has been doing is a good countermeasure to this harassment: asserting their rights (as per the arbitral ruling, which China refuses to honor), publicizing Chinese aggression all the while building up its defenses and network of allies.

Punching a bully in the face might feel good, but this bully is also crafty and sneaky, that some care is needed dealing with it.

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

I thought the term sounded familiar, and it is!

It came into our language via the Spanish, and came to mean some sort of an ogre who tends to hang out on trees, smoking cigars. Yikes!

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.

I don’t use a shower, rather, I have a bucket (or two) of water and a dipper. I can ruminate and think about things while giving myself a thorough scrubbing, and not consume any water.

I can take as much time as I need (much to the irritation of people I live with) without consuming any more water.

The alien impersonator was me all along!‌ HAHAHA!!!

I mean, seriously, I am not a native English speaker, but even with my weird English accent, it only became weirder if I try to speak fast while keeping the emphasis on that ‘t’ at the end of “hot”. My native accent also probably lends to that glottal stop taking over the ‘t’ and merging it with the upcoming ‘p’ sound. It also helps that the two sounds (glottal stop and the bilabial ‘p’) are on opposite sides of my mouth, so I‌ can quickly sound them in succession. The end result sounded to me like an exaggerated “posh British” rendition, as if the alien watched way too much‌ BBC before invading Earth.

It just sounded way weirder than I otherwise would be. I can’t really describe it.

I didn’t get it until I started trying to say “hot potato” in the middle of a sentence, like “Look out! Hot potato incoming!”

The ‘t’ in “hot” became more and more like a glottal stop as my tongue started to touch the gums of my top front teeth less and less.

This isn’t about content, but upcycling is a thing. You can have somewhat fashionable and stylish products made from what would otherwise be waste.

Nope, you’re not alone. I sometimes write a lengthy reply, read it, reread it, and before I get sucked into that overthinking loop, press “post” and go do something else.

I then find myself returning to my reply and re-reading it, often catching mistakes in spelling, grammar, or worse, in how I stated or presented my idea. That’s why a lot of my replies end up being edited after the fact, with a note saying why I felt I had to edit my response.

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.

Investigators also spoke to the priest, who said the woman had been told at an earlier Mass on Sunday that she had not fulfilled all the requirements for receiving communion and could not participate, officials said.

When she returned for a later service, the priest says she “attacked” him and “grabbed” a tray of communion wafers from his hands, the affidavit says.

“She informed the priest she did in fact do the steps necessary and is now accepted by God, thus, granting her the ability to participate,” an affidavit reports.

That’s when the priest “became upset and tried to ram the ‘cookie’ in her mouth,” she told police.

“In response … she attempted to grab another communion bread which (the priest) was holding. However, (he) grabbed her and bit her arm,” the affidavit says.

AFAIK, the priest does have the power to refuse communion to someone. But then again, a quick online search to confirm this gave me the following:

Can. 912 Any baptized person not prohibited by law can and must be admitted to holy communion.

Can. 915 Those who have been excommunicated or interdicted after the imposition or declaration of the penalty and others obstinately persevering in manifest grave sin are not to be admitted to holy communion.

Can. 916 A person who is conscious of grave sin is not to celebrate Mass or receive the body of the Lord without previous sacramental confession unless there is a grave reason and there is no opportunity to confess; in this case the person is to remember the obligation to make an act of perfect contrition which includes the resolution of confessing as soon as possible.

(Taken from https://www.vatican.va/archive/cod-iuris-canonici/eng/documents/cic_lib4-cann879-958_en.html#TITLE_III)

Not a Roman Catholic priest, let alone a Roman Catholic canon lawyer, but I think any baptized Catholic can take communion unless:

1. They are excommunicated.
2. Explicitly declared to be barred from participating in the sacrament of communion.
3. Obviously manifesting grave sin.

And then, Catholics are enjoined to refrain from participating from mass or receiving communion if they’re aware of committing a grave sin and haven’t yet done the sacrament of confession.

The only way I can justify the priest’s prior actions given all this is if the woman has been explicitly (visible to all the people in the church) committing grave sin. Or is known by the congregation that the woman is committing grave sin.

However, from the other places, it seems that the advice is to privately convince the person to refrain from participating in communion. Assuming the priest has done this in that previous mass, and the woman escalated the situation by reaching for the communion wafers, I could understand the priest going wild. Afterall, the priest has a duty to ensure the sanctity of the communion wafers.

That the priest’s first impulse in this situation is to bite the woman still is funny to me though. Was his hands and arms already otherwise occupied?

Of course, all I’ve said above (TL;DR: the priest can possibly bar someone from participating in the holy communion, that the priest has a duty of keeping the sanctity of the consecrated hosts) still doesn’t excuse the priest from being charged with assault and battery. I feel this part needs to be said out loud.

And since I’m already quoting the Roman Catholic Canon law, I think this one’s most apropos:

Can. 909 A priest is not to neglect to prepare himself properly through prayer for the celebration of the eucharistic sacrifice and to offer thanks to God at its completion.

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.

Oh, yeah! It can vary from place to place and even from school to school even in the same place! There were even people saying that they can guess from which school someone graduated from based on how they do cursive. I think that’s just nuts.

My cursive nowadays is just reserved for when I‌ really need to write fast, and would tend towards some kind of a personal shorthand than any sort of legibility. 😅

What helped me get back to block print after six years of being required to write cursive is a shop/engineering drawing class that required us to use block print for our plates.

Our teacher in that subject taught us how to do block print, paying attention to each and every stroke and in what order we write them. I remember one of our first handful of plates just being the alphabet and some of the often used symbols. That helped us with our penmanship, without shaming anyone who might have had developed bad habits from previous years. Everyone is required to do it, so there’s no shame in sucking at it.

Oh, yeah! Sometimes context helps, but if you can’t even read a single word, you’re just out of luck!