megane-kun

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.

Sorry, I’m under my rock here, but distraction from what?

On first thought, it didn’t seem that bad of an idea. Manufacturing and industry-based businesses in the western Rizal area (Montalban, San Mateo, Antipolo, Cainta, Taytay, Tanay, etc) needs access to the port of Manila. That then leads me to thinking there must have already been a plan for such a highway (like NLEX, SLEX, and C6).

However, the devil is in the details. Why would it need to be near the Pasig river? Couldn’t they have adopted an existing alignment? Aurora Avenue comes to mind, but it’s too narrow west of EDSA. An alignment based on Shaw Boulevard could have been nice, but it doesn’t even reach Rizal, it’d have to cut through already-built-up area west of Manggahan floodway if it has hopes of reaching Manila East Road. So, Metro Manila is already too crowded for a major east-west corridor for transporting goods.

How about using the river itself! No, not a highway over the river, but using cargo barges to carry goods from Rizal perhaps via facilities in Tanay, Cainta/Taytay, Pasig, Makati, Manila and then a separate facility next to the port. And then if it works, it can be extended via a different route coming from Laguna. It’s already there, and perhaps there wouldn’t be any induced demand.

Of course, it would be hard to connect with the C6, NLEX, and SLEX projects, which might be the point all along. Also, there might be issues with how navigable Pasig river and Laguna de Bay would be to barges of a certain capacity.

I don’t know, that’s why things like this should have been planned by the government decades in advance, and with expert help from the likes of JICA and others, in light of future projections and policy.

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.

Oh! That’s probably enough for one day’s work (kahit na may konting overtime o mejo heavy workload)! Pwede na palang pang-remote work ito! Of course, it’d depend on what exactly you’re doing, but a work day doesn’t impose a huge demand on a computer all the time.

So pwedeng na ata talaga syang pang-work computer!

That looks like a sweet portable PC set-up. Obviously you can’t use it on the go as laptops would allow you to, but if you’ve got the space, you can set it up rather quickly.

Just one question though, how long do you think it’d run when on powerbank alone (assuming your average usage)?

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.

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.

“It is still being studied… considering that we (have) probably the only major highway in the world where there are bicycles,” Artes said in Filipino.

I think EDSA is a stroad. It is pretty much hostile to both pedestrians and cyclists, which can be taken as a reason to double-down on making it more hostile to pedestrians and cyclists.

If the bike lane were to be removed, an alternate one should be made available if the government is really serious about encouraging cycling in Metro Manila. The same is true for pedestrians, too. I am not really holding my breath for that though. Such infrastructure, like EDSA’s bike lane, always seems to be an afterthought, as if just putting a bike lane would ensure its use.

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!

I remember coming across a similar comment chain, and someone brought out cursive Hanzi, and everyone lost their minds.

IIRC, cursive capital Q is supposed to start way down, so that it’d look like an O with a broken infinity symbol in its butt, like this:

The direction of the strokes in the image is not how I learned it, though. Stroke 1 for the capital starts where stroke 2 starts, but going clockwise until just past where it starts, then smoothly start the second stroke (same direction as shown in the image).

However, I can see how it can look like a more flowy 2 and how people can say “yeah, that’s a capital Q.” Heck, cursive lowercase r barely looks like an r but people kinda get it.