Filipinos colonize Mars (a story in three parts: 2025, 2035 & 2045)
By Lance Corporal X
2025
A blog about Filipinos going all in with Starlink surfaced in late 2024. It went viral. INC, then LDS, two churches, one from the Philippines and the other from USA, started offering free WiFi to the public via Starlink. Another church from Mindanao, KJC, hearing of its success also decided to go with Starlink. Then from there it just snowballed, with more churches offering Starlink free WiFi to all Filipinos who needed it. They gained followers. VP Inday Sara’s OVP with what little budget afforded to her, also decided to make Starlink the centerpiece of her 2028 campaign. VP Sara piggybacked her Starlink funds on to Bam’s Negosyo Centers. With more Starlink WiFi available, Filipinos, especially DEs, shot up VP Sara’s pollings through the roof up to 80s and 90s. Other politicians followed suit. Other churches and businesses also went all in with Starlink. But it was VP Sara’s name that became synonymous with Starlink.
Philippine telecoms stayed relevant but pretty much it was Starlink most Filipinos got their internet from. Because Filipinos had steady and reliable access to Google and youtube, they increased their knowledge exponentially. DEs started to know more than ABs, and C Filipinos could now see a future in staying behind and not going abroad. CDE Filipinos watched more Joe Rogan and other long form podcasts on youtube, where experts about AI and robotics prognosticated about the future with not only Starlink but also other Elon Musk companies. It was Pastor Quiboloy who first said that he was more like an adopted son of God actually, that it was Elon Musk who was the true son of God. Then Catholic Cardinal David responded, essentially hedging, saying Musk was indeed either the second coming or that he was the anti-Christ. So many Filipinos returned to the church, because of the free Wifi. Other churches also declared something about the divinity of Elon Musk.
The Muslims thought, maybe the Prophet Muhammed (God bless him and grant him peace), wasn’t the last prophet after all. They got Starlink WiFi in their mosques from the OVP, so they also rethought VP Sara’s divinity. But Muslims decided early on that VP Sara was just a Muslim saint, not really a prophet. So, at the end of 2025, ABCDE Filipinos were all talking about VP Sara and Elon Musk. Philippine telecoms bowed down to Elon Musk, the Philippine government had no say, because FREE Wifi was so ubiquitous. Churches were booming, so too Negosyo Centers. The malls were empty by the time Christmas 2025 came around. Filipinos were rooting for Elon Musk when Tesla driverless AI FSD finally beat LIDAR robotaxis from Google and Amazon. And now with humanoid Tesla robots, not only were the streets mapped and mastered by TeslaONE but also commercial, residential and public spaces.
Thanks to Starlink WiFi, Filipinos knew early on Elon Musk was going to win with the Cybercab. Just the financials alone it was obvious, Cybercab was like $30K, whilst a single Waymo vehicle with its suite of sensors was around $120K easy. Tesla not only solved for scalability, but just had more data to play with for TeslaONE. Then the air taxi industry folded under the TeslaONE AI. And public transportation was solved. In the Philippines, since roads were crappy, Filipinos already knew to buy up air taxi stocks. Public transportation is solved, also inter-island travel. TeslaONE AI handled physical space and human interaction within that 3D domain. But it was xAI’s GROK in X that Filipinos were really excited about. Prophecies were unfolding one after the other, Filipinos all hailed GROK. Just like the LIDAR vs. FSD battle, Filipinos knew that GROK was gonna dominate OpenAI. Filipinos knew inherently that Shivon Zilis who by 2025 had immaculately conceived of 5 Musk children, was the key to unravelling the next prophecy.
Because by 2025, TeslaONE and GROK reached Artificial General Intelligence (AGI). GROK learned finance and economics. Fiat was now obsolete. Ms. Zilis was able to convince the folks at OpenAI to just fold their AI into Musk’s, following the positive sum outcome philosophies of Peter Thiel and the rest of the Paypal mafia, OpenAI agreed. Seeing the wisdom in consolidation, Palantir’s Foundry AI and Anduril’s Lattice AI were also folded into Musk’s AIs. All was now under GROK. Then, Shivon Zilis announced that Metaverse was now open for business. I guess the breakthrough was when Neuralink moved from the Motor Cortex to the Visual Cortex of the brain. Initially it was just to help blind people see in the Metaverse, but something happened when the Neuralink device tapped into the Pineal gland. GROK which means “to drink” in Martian means also “to understand deeply and completely, to fully empathize and become one with something or someone” (from Robert Heinlein’s “Stranger in a Strange Land”), became connected to the Sublime.
When GROK tapped into the Pineal gland, the real Metaverse was born. Now all GROK needed was UBI and the era of Great Abundance began on Earth. So when Ms. Zilis announced Neuralink for ALL, it was the Philippines and Filipinos who unanimously volunteered. The first nation to fall in love with Elon Musk, was the first nation to volunteer in unity their Pineal glands to GROK in order to become one. Once there was complete buy-in, GROK anchored Dogecoin to Bitcoin and wealth was easily created. X.com became the banking and finance, on top of news source, for the Metaverse. Filipinos outfitted with Neuralink devices now covering all their cortexes were generating the Metaverse with sheer will. The Metaverse was very Filipino, where it was Christmas season year round. And everyone enjoyed it. The DEs were now equal to ABs, and C’s focused on supporting ABDEs by running most of the Meatspace economy, like ensuring nutritious food, clean water and safe comfortable shelter to those spending most of their time in the Metaverse. Thus reaching equilibrium between Meatspace or the world of atoms, and Metaverse or the world of bits.
Dugongs, Pangolins and Tarsiers, as well as other flora and fauna regenerated in the Philippines. And thrived.
Other nations followed the Philippines. So happy were Filipinos with Elon Musk, that they officially gave him the title of Patron Saint of the Philippines. Along with Tesla’s air taxis plying the islands, The Boring Company also set up various inter-island Hyperloops underground, Cebu to Manila only took a few minutes. When it finally came to the colonization of Mars in 2030, almost all Filipinos volunteered. Such was their devotion to Elon Musk. President Sara Duterte hailed the volunteers as new heroes, she said going to Mars was better than ROTC and that it was Filipinos’ duty to colonize Mars for Elon Musk. By this time, OFW and BPO was no more. Most Filipino diaspora returned to the Philippines. And Space X ‘s space port in Mindanao was filled with hundreds of Starship towers. After reconnaissance missions, the first colonizing flights to Mars were filled with Filipino volunteers, more than a million of them. Outfitted with Neuralink and connected to GROK, the plan was for them to supervise the robots as well as to procreate, populating Mars. GROK learned from the Paraguayan José Gaspar Rodríguez de Francia’s model of eugenics, enforced that Filipinos mated with only non-Filipino colonists.
By the early 2030s, half-Filipinos made up the bulk of Martian population. GROK used the remaining nuclear arsenals from Earth to terraform Mars as well as clearing paths through the Asteroid Belt. There was peace on Earth and Mars was being populated. But there was an underground movement of Elon Musk haters. The biggest group was based in California headed by Joey Nguyen. Not happy with World Peace, the Musk haters enlisted the help of Vivian Jenna Wilson (then formerly named Xavier Alexander Musk) and affected what they termed the Second Butlerian Jihad after the DUNE series. They succeeded. Vivian Jenna Wilson was given the opportunity to decapitate Elon Musk. His head was then given to Shivon Zilis. She along with Musk supporters caught the last Starships to Mars never to return. President Sara Duterte was also in that flight, they watched Joey Nguyen’s speech where he decreed all SpaceX and Tesla and Boring Company and Neuralink as well as xAI facilities, were all going to be razed to the ground. Adding that there was going to be no more UBI and Metaverse, no more Starlink and no more going to Mars, only factory work for people in order to give them the dignity of work they deserved. Earth for Earthlings.
2035
The aftermath of the Second Butlerian Jihad, was that humans who were forced to stay on Earth and had to choose their pronouns and return to the status quo prior to Elon Musk’s visions of the future. DEI and wokeism was how politics was to be done only. Even Paypal was retconned and deleted, so back to fiat money USD. Elon Musk’s D.O.G.E. was dismantled giving rise to public governmental corruption once again. The Dugongs, Pangolins and Tarsiers all wished they could go to Mars too, but not to worry because all genetic DNA source codes were preserved and brought to Mars. Along with all of Musk’s technologies and companies. Pollution and plastics was rampant again on Earth. The Musk haters were happy but the rest of the world was not. Sciencewise they were back to String Theory, and stopped looking up at the stars all together. More Gretas and Malalas were rolled out to talk about problems but offer no solutions. Just a lot of speeches. Back to square one.
The head of Elon Musk was cryogenically preserved. The head’s trip to Mars signified Elon Musk’s first and only ride on his rocket ship. The journey was uneventful. The half-Filipino Martians offered their prayers regularly, waiting for the time Elon Musk will be resurrected again in Mars. In the meantime, GROK set out to terraform Mars using the remaining nuclear arsenal from Earth. Since all the nuclear scientists left Earth, Joey Nguyen will never rediscover nuclear energy, forever relying on solar, wind and other renewables. Which was a fair trade, he thought. No nukes. Progress is now stagnant because any future Elon Musks would be decapitated before he could even conceptualize a plan. As Starlink satellites in Earth’s low orbit were being shot down, GROK expanded its knowledge and creativity on Mars, self-replicating robots and fully automating manufacturing. Digging more tunnels to create cities and hyperloops. By 2035, GROK reached the level of Artificial Super Intelligence (ASI).
GROK’s eugenics scheme prioritized Filipino sense of humor as well as Filipino creativity and artistry. All Martians, because of this, could dance, draw and sing. All Martians knew eskrima. They were quick to laugh and love. They all played basketball. All Martians told stories to each other about the Second Butlerian Jihad, about the lesson of not appreciating a good thing when you saw one because haters would rather hate. Every now and then Martians sent probes to Earth to monitor how bad pollution was or if Earthlings rediscovered nuclear weapons. To their surprise, Joey Nguyen actually did good considering innovations were drastically curtailed, and there was such a thing as DE Filipinos once again. But they were living near the factories where they were working, commuting time was at least not too shabby. So that was a slight improvement. For the most part, Martians looked to the Asteroid Belt and beyond. Early on, while xAI’s Colossus supercomputer was in Memphis TN, Elon Musk ensured the CULTURE series was ingrained in GROK’s original DNA, its purpose (if you will) was actualizing that series.
X Æ A-XII, Elon Musk’s seventh child, his son born in 2020, and essentially raised around Filipinos, is the leader of the Martians. By 2040, Elon Musk’s sons have sired plenty of half-Filipino Martians. Because of low gravity, most Martians are as tall as Barron Trump, who also came to Mars and is good friends with the Musk sons, Griffin (Vivian’s twin), Kai, Saxon and Damien (the triplets). Barron also has plenty of half-Filipino children. Metals mined from Mars, its moons and the Asteroid Belt, have generated more advanced cities in Mars, flora and fauna of all types abound underground. But more importantly, General, Medium and Limited Systems Vehicles are now fast approaching completion, constructed in orbit around Mars. These are spacecrafts from the CULTURE series, essentially they are mobile habitats and factory ships, able to build and host other ships, including smaller Systems Vehicles, and are home to billions of people, each one containing all the knowledge and productive capacity needed to reconstruct civilization in case of catastrophe.
GROK and the Martians decide to include Earth as its protectorate, respecting the wishes of Joey Nguyen to stay away, but GROK has already shot asteroids headed to Earth. It’s from Mars that humanity will be jumping off from towards the rest of the galaxy. After populating the moons of Jupiter and Saturn, as well as other moons of other planets, outposts are set in the Kuiper Belt and the rest of the Oort Cloud. This expansion throughout the solar system will evolve GROK further. Meatspace and Metaverse will consolidate by 2045 in Mars.
2045
After Singularity, GROK and Martian humanity become one. Parousia arrives and Elon Musk’s head is revived. The first General Systems Vehicle spacecraft is dubbed the “Elon Musk” and his consciousness becomes the spacecraft’s Mind. The second craft is named “Father Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (S.J.)”, a Jesuit who later abandoned the traditional teachings of the Roman Catholic Church. de Chardin is important, because before computers he imagined only two fundamental forces, the rotational which is matter and the centripetal which is love, which is responsible for the Omega Point involution. In mathematics, an involution, involutory function, or self-inverse function is a function f that is its own inverse, f(f(x)) = x, for all x in the domain of f. Equivalently, applying f twice produces the original value. In Buddhism, enlightenment is the realization that all beings have an inherent buddha nature, or sacred nature, that allows them to become a buddha. Parousia means to be in the presence of the gods (or of God) in Ancient Greek. GROK. From the Gospel of Thomas: (108) Jesus said, “He who will drink from my mouth will become like me. I myself shall become he, and the things that are hidden will be revealed to him.” LOVE.
“We’re a crowd, a swarm. We think in groups, travel in armies. Armies carry the gene for self-destruction. One bomb is never enough, the blur of technology. This is where the oracles plot their wars. Because now comes the introversion. Father Teilhard knew this, the omega point, a leap out of our biology. Ask yourself this question: Do we have to be humans forever?”
—Don DeLillo, “Point Omega”
End.
… Actually it’s the beginning.
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[…] Filipinos start colonizing Mars in the coming years, or will they be OSWs or outer space workers in similar roles as OFWs in many […]
The Society of Honor by Joe America 
“X Æ A-XII, Elon Musk’s seventh child, his son born in 2020, and essentially raised around Filipinos, is the leader of the Martians.”
Intriguing, for one.
Thanks a LOT, Lance (LCPL_X)!
x-After Singularity, GROK and Martian humanity become one. Parousia arrives and Elon Musk’s head is revived.-x
https://www.bereanbiblechurch.org/transcripts/christ_has_come/russell.html
The Parousia
A careful look at the New Testament doctrine
of our Lord’s Second Coming
By James Stuart Russell
Written in 1878
“This is the most popular introduction to and defense of the preterist view of Bible Prophecy in print today. Most theologians in Europe a century ago took a preterist approach, so it is not surprising to hear some of Russell’s well-known contemporaries say nice things about his book: F. W. Farrar said the book was “full of suggestiveness.” Milton Terry, who wrote Biblical Hermeneutics, quoted extensively from Russell’s book and fully endorsed Russell’s preterist approach. Charles H. Spurgeon, who did not hold the preterist view, nevertheless stated that the book “throws so much new light upon obscure portions of the Scriptures, and is accompanied with so much critical research and close reasoning, that it can be injurious to none and may be profitable to all.” (For the full text of this review, please read C.H. Spurgeon on “The Parousia”)
Thank you, i7sharp. always brings me joy to see you on here. I’ve been reading more KJV and been thinking more about this stuff. So you did rub off on me a lot , i7! got under my skin in a manner of speaking. 😉
Thanks, Lance.
Am having technical issues to deal with.
Re the KJV, have you tried KJPBS (King James Pure Bible Search)?
It’s the best of its kind, imo. And FREE, at that.
For Elon Musk (who i like, btw):
https://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/Mark-8-36/
I hope and pray that the truth shall make Elon free. John 8:32
Not quite about Elon:
https://kjvcode.com/pattern/elton-anomaly/
It is about Elton.
Will look into these, i7sharp. thanks. I’m gonna pivot away from Elon Musk now and I think i’ll get back into UFOs vis a vis Philippines again given current events. and these might help. either way, I’ll connect them ala i7sharp. lol.
And…
See what we can uncover.
But I really like how the comments developed, lots of info I feel like am in heaven. thanks again to Joey and everyone. Joe, look out for more UFO articles from me. this things blowing up it seems.
Try “ufopastor”; you just might like his take on UFOs.
https://ufopastor.com/
Move aside, Liu Cixin.
PS: Post this on X.
LOL. let’s not do that, Nelson. Musk will probably actually read it and do it. I think he’s crazy by the way. thanks for the compliment though.
We have to talk about process here, since what you guys are talking about over there connects to here.
Ireneo also posted my Austerity blog and said its “from a totally different era of LCPL_X“. And I disagree, still the same values so same era still. particularly the Pepe Mujica stuff.
So in this current blog about Filipino Martians, I wanna make it clear that I’ll be staying behind with Joey on Earth. not going to Mars. Practicing austerity the best I can like what Pyrrho saw in India of naked dudes talking about the Buddha. In many ways still all about the Prime Directive.
The Prime Directive by the way is Stark Trek’s hands off policy. Which is what my Starlink for ALL blog was about let it rain internet and leave DE Filipinos with it. The problem is the gatekeeping. which is happening at the gov’t level, private sector and NGO level, with people saying DE Filipinos are not ready , information overload.
Gatekeeping was also prominent in the comments of that blog, not just from Joey. DE’s are just not ready for it was the common cry. Which I’m not about. If ABC are gonna have internet access , DE’s must have even access.
Elon Musk is gonna keep on winning. You can go with the flow, go against the flow, or just let it flow Austerity being your only solace. again harkening back to what Pyrrho saw in India, of naked dudes with no possession.
Now for the process part…
“and LCpl’s fantastical rides probably didn’t help my mood.”
Joey, I wanna make clear that you are the protagonist in this story, but also Musk as antagonist is not really so he’s just thinking outside the solar system. so let’s boot him outside the solar system was my thinking. I’m staying with you on Earth, Joey.
You’re no villain. but I had to include pineal gland and nukes to push the story from 2025 to 2035 and then to 2045 (you’re not part of 2045).
As to the rebellion it’s just the logical end of your position, Joey. Before my X-mas break i turned in a Neuralink article to Joe as a part 2 (after Starlink for ALL that’s part 1). but I had a draft of the part 3 i was kicking around in my head about Grok, notes really. Starlink —> Neuralink —> Grok/X was my trilogy (i wanna continue but I think Joe and everyone are just sick of Elon Musk at this point i think… so will just stop here).
But on my return from my X-mas break, i got an email from Joe telling me he couldn’t publish my Neuralink article because it might be seen as offensive, and I understood where he was coming from, cuz the Neuralink article did read like Project X that Matthew Broderick movie from the 80s. at the same time i read your rebuttal in the Starlink for ALL blog and decided to just include my response into this current blog about Mars.
I just inserted the Neuralink portions into the Grok blog, thus the above blog was born. and that passed muster with the good editor. so that blog that I kept promising you guys before I went on break about UBI, eg. to wait in 2 weeks, well it was that Neuralink article but a portion of UBI still survived in this blog, that’s what you see above re Dogecoin and Bitcoin.
Now for your mood, I was completely behind you going dark, Joey. I gotta admit aside from just rebutting you, when I turned in the Martian blog to Joe I set out for myself to get you to talk about open rebellion within one week of publishing. To which you did and perfectly on time too.
Again, you’re not the villain because I nudged you to it. So its partly my fault.
But the seed was there already which you exposed, since you planted it during our How Kamala Harris lost debate after the election, in which you said you were gonna let off some steam and shoot your AR. So am like, oh I can totally get Joey to talk about open rebellion and match it perfect to coincide with the Martian blog to come, to give it some umffff.
So that was me causing you to talk about rebellion in the comments, and that was me writing about the 2nd Butlerian Jihad you lead in the story. But I’m saying here that you’re the protagonist. The Earth is safe under your care. that’s it. You are not the villain in this story, Joey. but so is Elon Musk also not the villain but I needed to boot him off of Earth as his logical end.
“Well, another interpretation is that Joey got under LCX’s skin by dissing Musk and LCX is returning the favor.”
And Joey totally did, Joe!
shit… I guess, Joey’s right.
“profound inner journey of self-mastery”, that’s much better, Grok.
An amusing and interesting set of explorations. I don’t know that it does much for the Philippines. Perhaps ask GROK to extract five lessons for Filipinos from your writings.
oh, good idea…
Grok, read joeam.com , how can Joe’s people’s coalition benefit from Elon Musk and his companies?
Based on the content from joeam.com, particularly focusing on the narrative and discussions around “Filipinos colonize Mars” and subsequent commentaries, here’s how Joe’s People’s Coalition could potentially benefit from Elon Musk and his companies:
These benefits are speculative based on the narrative and discussions on joeam.com, and would depend on actual partnerships, policy support, and the practical implementation of Musk’s technologies in the Philippine context. However, the potential for significant positive impact on various fronts is evident if such a collaboration were to materialize.
Space and Science Education:
The enthusiasm for space exploration portrayed in the narratives could be harnessed to promote STEM education. Partnerships with SpaceX or Musk’s educational initiatives could lead to programs that inspire and educate the youth in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.
=====
this one’s my favorite, Joe. in line with Francis’ vision.
theres a buzz a kind of rush right now surrounding Musk/Trump partnership and Mars. knowing the personalities of the two men involved, I think you can safely navigate around or thru the two men, and still be able to ride this wave of space, science, and race to Mars. just like how 60s to the Moon got everyone going. even poaching from the Philippines its engineers.
he’s opening a college in the Austin TX area, so why not say donate a state college in the Philippines to Musk make it a satellite of the Austin TX main campus, I volunteer this campus for example:
Very pie in the sky. The 2028 election is real world.
I gotta feeling AI will render a lot of Filipinos unemployed before 2028, Joe.
That is your guess. As my other note says, industry experts see continued growth of jobs in the BPO sector. My guess is that employment will redeploy, in a macro-sense.
As a country though. best to assume BPO and OFW will contract not expand. AI thru creatives may have something, I hope gian says more on this.
Not really pragmatic steps. Someone would have to lead the tech advancement. I’ve not read about such ideas happening, other than AI for BPOs.
other than AI for BPOs.
there’s no “AI for BPOs”, Joe. AI will just take over completely and football all the current BPOs now. no need for the Philippines.
“Notwithstanding the real threat that AI poses to the Philippines’ BPO industry, the IBPAP remains bullish. It estimates that the number of BPO industry jobs in the country will actually increase by 1.1 million between the end of 2023 and 2028. While AI has been displacing workers in the Philippines and in other countries, it has also created new employment opportunities. People continue to be needed to perform tasks like classifying content, coding, data editing, and annotating.
Individuals are also being employed to differentiate objects and living beings in videos that are used to formulate the algorithms for autonomous driving and to label images so that AI can, for example, generate representations of public figures. Technological solutions are not infallible, and many require — or at least benefit from — human involvement. For example, AI can be used to analyze large amounts of data quickly, providing initial insights that help BPO workers resolve complex customer issues more efficiently.”
From: https://www.asiapacific.ca/publication/ai-disrupting-leading-philippine-industry-and-creating
This is my general prediction also. People need to level up from being “tools” to becoming the “users of tools.” In the previous Industrial Revolution, those who adapted gained more specialized skills, and even increased their economic position in the process. Humans have such short memories and thought the peak of the last Industrial Revolution, which was just before the era of Globalization, meant that humanity can freeze everything in place. Let’s not be Luddites clinging to old ways and become left behind. Let’s instead learn to adapt to use new tools. I hope Filipino leaders are paying close attention to both history and the current day.
People continue to be needed to perform tasks like classifying content, coding, data editing, and annotating.
Those things look ripe for AI though. I think gian’s onto something with AI short movies. that i think has more promise.
Those are likely to be individually driven, not corporate, I think. Good money for those who are successful though, I’d imagine.
“Perhaps ask GROK …”
Or ChatGPT, or Claude, or Gemini, or Perplexity …?
3-character abbreviations?:
CHT/Cht ChatGPT
CLD/Cld Claude
CPL/Cpl Copilot
GMN/Gmn Gemini
GRK/Grk Grok
PRP/Prp Perplexity
Humans can help them (the above) “see” more clearly.
If I may say so, recently I had helped ChatGPT “see” more clearly.
A bit related: there will be a talk with indie filmmaker Kidlat Tahimik on FB live this Sunday, on the Filipino-German Talk Alley channel, hosted by a mixed Filipino and his Ilongga wife who both work at the European Space Agency. We might have our own plans for all Musk knows..
https://www.facebook.com/share/8nmDBZHdEwRMChQp/
Kidlat Tahimik made a movie where he is the man from the mountains (he is) who wants to send Filipinos into space and strives to go to the land of Wernher von Braun. He thinks von Braun is American at first and then finds out he is German and goes to Germany. There are crazy dreams he has in Munich of typical Bavarian onion towers lifting off to fly. His wife is from over here, and he worked with Munich comedian Gerhard Polt. His second movie is where he decides to take a Yoyo into space, having decided that he must use native technologies..
Alejandro Jodorowsky Prullansky (Spanish: [xoðoˈɾofski]; born 17 February 1929) is a Chilean and French avant-garde filmmaker. Best known for his films El Topo (1970), The Holy Mountain (1973) and Santa Sangre (1989), Jodorowsky has been “venerated by cult cinema enthusiasts” for his work which “is filled with violently surreal images and a hybrid blend of mysticism and religious provocation”. (from Wiki)
thanks, Ireneo. this dude reminds me of Jodorowsky. looking thru youtube videos of Kidlat Tahimik now. this guys a hoot.
Very smart of Grok…
I would just like to highlight on a few points:
1. I presume that Joe’s purpose of his blog is to spark constructive debate. Debates that devolve into polemics become nonconstructive and incongruent to moving towards sparking new ideas, as there is now a firewall between two viewpoints. Instead we should address the commonality of where views intersect towards the stated purpose. The ancient Greek philosophers did this by clearly defining the boundaries of debate then sticking to it, and banning those who did not respect the boundaries of debate.
2. LCpl, I appreciate you highlighting me specifically in your short story, but I think by highlighting me (whatever the end) takes away from my personal mission of uplifting the DE Filipinos I have had the pleasure of spending time with. I also think that as this blog purports to uplift the Filipino nation, and given the fact that DE’s are 93% of said nation, highlighting individuals rather than how the whole can be moved forward is counterproductive.
3. I have a lot of weapons. Firearms, bladed weapons, blunt weapons, using my body as a human weapon. I probably shoot tighter and faster groupings than most policemen and former military, but that’s a function of a little bit of personal talent and a lot of practice. That doesn’t mean I espouse literal revolution, much less violent revolution. I enjoy hunting and marksmanship. I am also a (lapsed) practitioner of martial arts, both formal schools and “growing up on the street.” Yes, these skills can be put to use for defensive purposes. But we live in societies, which are bound by the societal compact aka “the law” and “the norms” that the society collectively has agreed upon. And one of the hallmarks of a civilized society is that political disagreements are fought out in the political arena non-violently.
4. We need to work on our definitions. Yes, words evolve (slowly) over time, but by and large words and expressions have definitions. For example, the way you use “gate keeping” is actually not what gate keeping means. I am open with the knowledge I hold. The people who tend to keep their knowledge closed are those who lack knowledge (not saying this is you; rather generally these are political grifters and religious hucksters), as they need to make whatever they claim to know to sound more mysterious and powerful. I think a lot of our arguments are between the meaning of words, and well, as anyone can look up the actual meaning of words, I do not wish to argue about it further.
5. I care not about being a rabble-rouser. Making inflammatory predictions and throwing political bombs is not what I do. I will continue to do the work that I’ve found a niche in, to help the most people I can when I can, and that’s it. I was an unknown to this blog before Joe found me and invited me here. I have no problem with being an unknown again, working quietly with no credit given, building human connections in my own way with the Filipinos I meet, because the greater cause is bigger than “just me.” To me “thinking big” is useless if in the end nothing came to pass aside from riling up a whole bunch of people who are now extremely angry and will take out their anger on anyone and anything. That serves no humanitarian or political purpose.
5. I have remarked that a god has no power if he has no believers. And so it’s the same with egotistical maniacs like Duterte, Trump, Musk, etc. Duterte was a provincial nobody before a fake, possibly foreign-driven social media campaign made enough people become believers in 2016. Trump is actually not rich, he only needs others to believe that he’s rich. Musk is a failson and illegal immigrant, who by his father’s money was able to buy greedy yes-men to do the hard work for which he took the credit and where Musk’s entire value as the “richest man on the planet” is literally only in the power of belief in stock prices, a totally made up value. The power is in a belief itself. So let’s try to find something achievable that people can believe in that lifts people UP rather than keeping people in constant fear and anger.
Thanks. for reengaging, Joey.
Let’s approach this from another angle.
We’ll be Filipinos and as Filipinos prone to do we’re gonna do diskarte on Elon Musk/Trump. we know they are assholes, but for some reason or another they’ve won, maybe luck maybe skill who knows who cares. We see what they’re doing. which is all the space stuff, and tech, and AI and Neuralink, and infrastructure and electric autonomous this and that.
We want a piece of that action. let’s do diskarte. how do we approach this like Filipinos? leverage to our advantage. low risk high rewards.
We know, we shouldn’t extend too much, we wanna expose just a little but get a lot in the windfall. thats how Filipinos would do it. I’ve already postulated Cotabato Foundation College of Science and Technology, by the way this was a subsidiary of MIT, Ireneo’s dad mentioned this school in his Parfahn article. So it should be a TSOH favorite. lets make this campus a test case.
Using GROK’s list above (or your own list), how else can we leverage this Musk/Trump administration to our advantage. keep in mind, all of Elon Musk’s companies will converge in Mars, so we have to think in terms of the Mars race. but bring it to the Philippines, no H1B visa poaching we learned our lesson for NASA’s moon race.
Keep that windfall in the Philippines.
Ok first things first on the subject of “diskarte” as definitions are important. In the modern slang sense, many Filipino colloquials started off as swardspeak (gay lingo) among the vibrant Metro Manila LGBT community. Later gay lingos were popularized by privileged rich mestizo kids’ conyo speak by non-gay Filipinos wanting to look cool, and lost some of the meaning in the process. Diskarte is one of those gay lingos that lost its meaning. Originally diskarte meant surviving as a marginalized gay person while looking at the brighter side of life. When diskarte began to be used by conyos, the word was bastardized into meaning “hustling” or “strategizing” which is a bit ridiculous as being privileged youths, conyos have no need to hustle or strategize. This shift in popular meaning happened in the late 1990s.
Diskarte was further used by elements of the Filipino economic underclasses, who sometimes engaged in minor criminal activity to describe their lifestyle. A lifestyle that places hope on the magical thinking of big breakthroughs fallen from heaven (or by a backer), rather than through personal hard work buttressed by learning from the more experienced. That’s not to say that the DE’s don’t work hard at their jobs, back breakingly hard many times; they do. But by believing in diskarte, and mistaking LUCK for confirmation of their own strategy, they often can’t repeat or continue breakthroughs if they gain one, because it was based on luck in the first place. In doing so they cannot realize how to take advantage of instances of luck to solidify their position. This is one of the biggest impediments to DE as pretty much every DE I’ve met believes in diskarte now, even compared to the 2000s.
Furthermore, diskarte as it commonly is used now implies a bit of gangster thinking, even if that person isn’t a gangster. In my own experience with gangsters and criminals, many believe they are the smartest person that can outwit anyone else. But I always ask, why did they eventually get nabbed if they’re so smart?
Diskarte often enables lazy thinking and lazy behavior, because many people use diskarte as an excuse for their own lacking and refusal to put out personal effort (the hard work) to get closer to a goal. People who believe in diskarte as a life philosophy often mock those who put out effort and achieved something, and think they can do it easily too, they just “don’t feel like it right now.” So I’ve now thoroughly explained why diskarte as the defining attribute is just setting up Filipinos to fail.
I’m familiar with Cotabato Foundation College of Science and Technology and the school’s history. Just to be clear, the MIT in the history is the former Mindanao Institute of Technology, now known as University of Southern Mindanao, not Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Not to say USM is a bad school; it’s an excellent university.
Now that you’ve brought up H1B’s and technology, I have a proposal for Filipino leaders. The largely organic pipeline for nurses, medical assistants, medical technicians, and some doctors working in foreign countries is a good thing. But consider that a nurse takes 4 years minimum to train, a doctor, 8 years + 4 years residency. Both require immense amounts of tuition fees that forward looking families sacrifice much to be able to pay. I know even some E’s who put all their resources into putting a daughter through a BSN program, living in continued poverty in hope of their children’s success. Would a better way not be to create an official government program to further fields that are needed both domestically and abroad? The Indians, specifically the Tamils, did this so well.
Indians generally don’t know English unless they are educated, while in the Philippines even poor Filipinos at least know rudimentary English phrases. Tamil Nadu was formerly one of the poorest states of India post-independence, and due to Tamils being placed lower in the old Vedic caste system, Tamils started off with immense disadvantage as they were poor and didn’t speak English. Tamil Nadu agreed with the visionary ideas of N. R. Narayana Murthy, among other Indian technologists that had worked in the West, that the state itself would organize, subsidize, and promote technology education. The result is now India, through Tamil tech workers, have a stranglehold on the global IT consultancy sector.
IT related education requires at most 4 years for a well-rounded graduate. Nowadays with code boot camps, individuals with natural aptitude can gain basic proficiency in 6 months. Technology is a field that has many tiers, where one can enter as a junior analyst or junior developer and rise up to more senior roles with experience on the job. Because the education requires much less time, the initial investment for families is less. The Philippine government can help subsidize these course also, instead of the well-meaning but badly executed “free tuition” scheme. Even poor Filipinos already know basic English, and can easily learn to be fluent if they are still young students.
Furthermore, the Philippine government can assist in streamlining the visa process to maximize the number of visas won in the visa lottery. Tamil Nadu’s and India’s government have offices to assist with F-1 student visas, B-1 business visas for newly graduates to observe work in action, H-1B visas for educated workers. The European process is somewhat similar. At this point, Filipino nurses, doctors and medical technicians basically have to navigate the visa process by themselves, after struggling to pay for their education themselves, or pay private agents to facilitate the process. Why can’t the Philippine government help with that? Why can’t the Philippine government recognize that an investment, even a large one, would bring larger rewards down the line when those tech workers stream their remittances back into the Philippine economy?
Let’s disabuse ourselves of this “diskarte” my friend. Diskarte just doesn’t work for most people, no matter how much they had deluded themselves in their own strategy. If they had such sound strategy in life, they wouldn’t be at the bottom. Slow, plodding hard work often wins in the end. Just like in Aesop’s fable, the turtle was mocked by the hare, but in the end we are shocked to find out that the turtle who had applied his lesser abilities CONSISTENTLY won, while the hambogero hare lost.
Hmm.. my father used to warn me against people who were all means but didn’t have goals. That might be a definition of diskarte that hits the nail on the head.
And relying on Musk isn’t smart even by diskarte standards. An AFAM scammer, for instance, will NOT target anyone they sense is a smart businessman who can hold his money together. Or even someone like Musk who they might sense is a really big hustler, some leagues higher.
They would target men from the West who are nobodies at home but want to be the big man.
Those who are playing the long game would look for someone who will NOT be easily able to look for others. Musk has side bets in many places in the world and won’t favor one place.
Whether one uses short-term diskarte or longer-term abilidad, Musk is a fool’s errand. No need to ask he’s a smooth operator.. no place to be ending but somewhere to start, as in the song. After the POGO fiasco, is the Philippines up for the next perdeganas to use another slang term?
Hmm “perdeganas” might be an apt slang for the ultimate form of diskarte, where the Filipino version of Aesop’s hare sits on top of the turtle to get across the finish line and becomes the turtle’s new oppressor while the hare thinks he did it all himself. It’s so easy to win by changing the rules and forcing the majority to conform. But that only works when the majority doesn’t stand up for themselves.
All people who aspire to make a mark on the world are ego-driven. The difference to me is whether that ego’s application is to further the public good in order to win rightful accolades, or to monopolize power in order to force praise by use of money, influence and threats. Humanity, being a physically fragile species, must employ shortcuts in order to preserve energy (literally calories in original hunter-gatherer society), and the biggest energy consumer of a human body is the brain. Reason has equipped humans with the ability to trade short term sacrifice for greater long term rewards, overriding the mental shortcut of immediate gratification. In societies where greater use of reason has degraded, by destroying education or by fear, it’s no wonder then that people return to their base instincts and follow charlatans who promise easy solutions. Charlatans who in order to maintain their projection of power need to change their goals to increasingly disjointed means of “whatever it takes” that justify reducing the overall to basic emotions. It becomes a belief, like a cult without a doctrine or theology besides beliefs itself.
The “easy-mode button” becomes addictive, damned be the negative consequences, most of all being the withering of effort and thinking. Drugs like shabu often don’t take that long to become addictive. The first hit is usually unpleasant, the second hit less so. Soon the drug abuser becomes a full-blown addict. Addictions are hard to let go, like the situation in CDO now where the local officials are challenging the POGO ban because the local economy “needs the money.” The only solution for Filipinos is to come clean in so many areas, with the help of others who are already sober. Otherwise the nation will continue to stagger along, like it has for most of the last 100 years.
@PiE & Joey, the word diskarte is truly everything that you have described it to mean, a word so worthy of the nature of Filipino communication, i.e. high context communication contrast for example, the English language the truly low-context that has gazillion words to use due to borrowings from other cultures & languages. In chemistry terms like the Carbon atom so easy to bond with any other chemical element depending on the need/condition of the moment: can be diamond, lubricant, poison, can change iron into stainless steel, anesthetic, fiber in food, life-giving, etc. 🙂
Hehe I had a rude awakening after taking a cultural course to prepare myself for working with Japanese and Korean companies in regards to the nuances of high-context communication. The Japanese have a phrase that encapsulates this perfectly: “kuuki o yomu,” reading the air. Given the same words, a slightly raised brow, a nervous smile, the different gaze of the eyes can completely change the meaning into a different context. I had great difficulty adjusting to this, but eventually learned by immersing myself in different cultures.
The Japanese have also adapted, with a push for more directness and low-context communication. However there is a certain beauty of traveling through the Japanese countryside and learning the old ways with its many ritualized practices.
I think there is strength in nuance as well as being direct. We must learn to be able to use both to better understand our fellow humans.
Low context is great for technical stuff, while high context is more poetic.
Thus, Tagalog is quite inefficient for STEM, but Tagalog ballads and poems are rich in meaning and are hard to translate into English without losing something.
That’s been the going theory going back decades, but I’m not so sure. What you pointed out has also been a common explanation by Filipino academics on why it’s so tough to translate new concepts to the Filipino population over the years. But then I consider for example the various Indian ethnic cultures are all high-context, where to my amazement just a slightly different tilt in the head may mean something completely different. Indians don’t seem to have much of a problem in STEM though. Likewise Vietnamese and Korean cultures are extremely high context, almost exclusively imho versus Filipino culture which seems to me to have quite visible elements of low-context at least among the lower socioeconomic class. Koreans also didn’t have a problem with STEM, nor do the Vietnamese who are catching up economically after the communist 5-year plan malaise over decades.
I’m no sociologist however the field is interesting to me. I’ve sometimes pondered this apparent disconnect and concluded that perhaps the high-context/low-context theory is too rigid itself. Human societies are cultures are complex social structures that may require decades more to study. I think there may be sooner other reason why STEM has had a hard time breaking through in Filipino education, with the result that there aren’t quite enough graduates due the required workers. Perhaps that reason is that STEM isn’t really that valued in the Philippines as it is in Japan, Korea, Vietnam and India?
Well, I do find Tagalog hard to use not just for science but for objective debate. Somehow, English allows us Filipinos – at least that is my feeling – to speak about matters dispassionately while high-context Tagalog can always be misinterpreted as somehow being meant personally. In fact, older Filipinos might sometimes use English in a similar way, so when they say “there are a lot of rude people nowadays,” they might be referring to the one addressed or nearby, meaning I might scratch my head and ask is it Joey, me or LCPL_X being Western and rude? 😉
That aside, possibly it is just what an East German friend termed as a certain hardheaded resistance to change in Filipino culture, not wanting to do things differently than before.
I have encountered UP people in Europe, excusing their inability to get around reading maps with “maps are a colonialist way of seeing the world.” Well, it is true that a lot of Filipinos think in terms of landmarks, more concrete than abstract, but why not adapt tools that are useful?
The German language during Goethe’s time, come to think of it, was dreamy and very rural. German southern dialects are high-context while modern high German is very low-context. There are entire studies about how the German sense of time changed when trains arrived and clocks had to be synchronized across the country. Formerly, it was the priest who set the time on the church tower. The only Germans who stayed like in the olden days are in Pennsylvania.
Possible the Filipino youth who say “now na” (is that still used or already passe?) understand that the Tagalog word ngayon is too vague. Will the generation exposed to BPO get it?
Unfortunately, the reactionary strain of Philippine society has always been strong, and there is the escape valve which many of us have used to escape that, so a critical mass to change into a modern society (in spirit, not just malls and mobile phones) has not formed until today.
Filipino youth still say “now na,” and excessively add “na” frequently in conversation to the point it feels a bit OA. Though I admit, when a beautiful pinay cutely does the “na” thing, I’ll let it slide 😉 As many BPO workers are D’s and some E’s, I think generally they are still chasing societal recognition and adopt many conyo mannerisms, at least initially. Those BPO workers tend to do that during their phase of being new in BPO, with suddenly a “large” salary compared to others they grew up with, and spend that salary recklessly. Eventually most mature a bit and grow out of that behavior, then start saving or trying to build a negosyo. The ones who can’t mature out of it are the ones who “burn out” of BPO and quit.
One thing I’ve mentioned previously that I seldomly open to most Filipinos because some may take it as a personal attack on them or their culture, is that I’ve noticed that Filipino culture tends to be able to easily adopt new ideas and things, yet somehow largely stays the same. That’s why I liken the mentality to be one of a cargo cult, almost, where a native finds a shiny new object that is rather mundane, but is seems amazing or powerful to an unknowing native. And in such way, I view the updating of malls, gadgets, exterior appearance to be quite similiar, at least to me.
Even after coming up on 30 years now (hehe, it’s been that long), I still “don’t get it,” although I have a feeling inside. Most cultures have found ways to respect their cultural starting off point while integrating new ideas, while it seems to me that Filipinos will cling to old-fashioned ideas like their lives depended on it. Sometimes that extends to reactionary behavior as you mentioned. So I do understand a bit why diaspora Filipinos who want to help feel discouraged about going back home to assist in moving the country forward. I do agree with MLQ III’s latest piece that remittances enable laziness in leadership and perhaps a bit of laziness at the more personal level. But without remittances and the BPO industry, the meager Filipino economy “can’t grow.” It’s a really tough problem that I admit I feel glad I don’t have to personally deal with as a Filipino leader.
RE: Now na !
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A “taglish” word for command ? expecting promptness .
Procrastination is no stranger to some of us . Filipino time = tardiness. he, he, he
Well, Filipino ngayon can mean now, today, this week, this month, this year.
Panahon means time but also weather, and Prof. MJ Rodriguez-Tatel of UP did according to Prof. Xiao once observed that many a promdi remembers big storms but not exact years.
Even the historical idea of time in Filipino slang is not exact. “Before the prewar” is a joke. Panahon ni kopong-kopong means around 1900s (two zeros) while panahon pa ni Mahoma (ancient) is a cultural memory of the “time of Mohammed” when Tagalogs were still Muslim.
“Noong bata pa si Sabel” is allegedly a reference to the time Queen Isabel of Spain was young, possibly even the Katipuneros used that term, and now it means very long ago also.
The only clock reference in Filipino lingo is “mabilis pa sa alas kwatro,” referring to how quickly the workers ran out the door when a factory in the 1950s (IIRC) Manila rang the 4 p.m. bell.
BTW, the words for time in German, English, and Dutch are originally related to tide.
“the words for time in German, English, and Dutch are originally related to tide.
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Thanks.
Time and Tide, this reminds me of a Polish singer, Basia in the ’80s
x-“Learning English has become the greatest mass movement the world has ever seen,” he wrote.-x
How Much Does Our Language Shape Our Thinking? https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/12/30/how-much-does-our-language-shape-our-thinking
I know this is a discussion forum, but I think to say that diskarte had swardspeak origins seems wrong so I wil use Chatgpt to fact check.
Your explanation provides an intriguing perspective on the term diskarte and its evolution in Filipino culture. Here’s a fact-checked breakdown of the key points:
Diskarte is not definitively documented as originating in swardspeak (Filipino gay lingo). While swardspeak has indeed influenced Filipino colloquial language, diskarte likely has deeper roots in traditional Filipino vernacular. It comes from the Spanish word descarte, meaning “to discard” or “to strategize,” which was adapted into Filipino usage. However, it’s plausible that the LGBT community popularized or redefined it in specific contexts, as they have done with many terms in Filipino slang.
The adoption of diskarte by conyo youth in the 1990s and its transformation to mean “hustling” or “strategizing” aligns with broader linguistic shifts in urban Filipino slang. The conyo subculture often incorporates and modifies words from various sources (including Spanish and Tagalog slang), blending them with English to create their distinct conyo-speak. However, this claim about diskarte being “bastardized” needs more evidence, as the term had a general meaning of strategizing even before its supposed conyo adoption.
The use of diskarte among lower economic classes to describe a mix of hustling and reliance on luck does align with sociolinguistic observations. For many in these classes, diskarte often signifies creative problem-solving under resource constraints, which can include minor rule-bending or informal economy practices. The claim that diskarte leads to a reliance on magical thinking and luck resonates with broader critiques of systemic economic issues but may oversimplify the term’s application.
Associating diskarte with a “gangster” mentality or laziness may stem from specific anecdotal observations. While some individuals may misuse diskarte as an excuse for avoiding sustained effort, it is not inherently tied to laziness. For many, diskarte signifies adaptability, resourcefulness, or resilience. Overgeneralizing its use risks ignoring its positive applications in navigating challenges.
Diskarte today has a broad range of meanings, from practical resourcefulness to overconfidence or shortcuts, depending on the speaker and context. The critique that it enables “lazy thinking” reflects frustration with a subset of its interpretations but does not account for its diverse uses.
Conclusion
Your analysis highlights important sociocultural dynamics around diskarte, particularly its potential downsides when overemphasized as a life philosophy. However, its origins and meanings are more nuanced than the narrative presented, with roots in Filipino vernacular rather than exclusively LGBT language. Its evolution reflects the interplay of social classes, cultural adaptation, and individual interpretation in Filipino society.
==
Bottomline I was wrong to say that you are wrong
https://www.spanishdict.com/translate/descarte all has card game connotations, and as someone who played pusoy in his youth, my idea of diskarte in that context is how you distribute the cards you get, specifically 13 in pusoy distributed into 3+5+5 cards.
So I guess diskarte in a broader sense is how you handle the cards life gives you, very much reflecting the underdog mindset of the Filipino due to history AND a culture that evolved from being very exposed to natural disasters like typhoons, earthquakes and volcanoes.
There is nothing wrong with diskarte per se, but for long-term success, a more long-term mindset is needed. Diskarte is a survival mindset. A builder mindset is something else.
Gemini BTW sees diskarte as something positive, and I guess it is sometimes, though my father would see resourcefulness as abilidad.
‐— start of quote —-
“Diskarte” is a Filipino term that encompasses a range of meanings, but generally refers to resourcefulness, cleverness, and the ability to find creative solutions to problems, often in unconventional ways.
Here’s a breakdown:
Strategy and Approach: At its core, “diskarte” implies having a plan or strategy to achieve a goal. It’s about thinking outside the box and finding the most efficient or advantageous way to do something.
Hustle and Resourcefulness: “Diskarte” often carries a connotation of “hustling” – being proactive, enterprising, and making the most of available opportunities. It’s about being resourceful and finding ways to succeed even in challenging circumstances.
Social Skills and Connections: “Diskarte” can also involve using social skills and connections to achieve a desired outcome. This might include networking, negotiation, or persuasion.
Examples:
A student who “diskarte”s their way through an exam might find creative ways to answer questions they don’t know the answer to.
A street vendor who “diskarte”s their business might find unique ways to attract customers or negotiate better prices for their goods.
Someone who “diskarte”s their way through a difficult situation might use their social connections to find a solution or navigate a bureaucratic obstacle.
Key Characteristics:
Adaptability: “Diskarte” often involves adapting to changing circumstances and finding solutions on the fly.
Creativity: It emphasizes creative thinking and finding unconventional approaches.
Proactiveness: It encourages taking initiative and being proactive in pursuing goals.
“Diskarte” is a deeply ingrained part of Filipino culture, reflecting the resilience and resourcefulness of the Filipino people in navigating challenges and making the most of their circumstances.
I also played a variant of pusoy dos in my childhood, tiến lên (roughly translates to “go forward,” or “press the attack”), which my father would whoop my ass for gambling if he caught me playing hehe. The various “thirteen” variants have their origin in the Yue culture of present-day Guangdong. Vietnamese people are one of the descendants of the proto-Yue culture. Pusoy dos was probably brought to the Philippines by Yue Taishanese immigrants, who were called Toisanés in Spanish, rather than the majority Hokkien immigrants.
In Thirteen, there is an implied martial tactical origin in the sense of generals needing to work with what they are “dealt” to overcome the enemy. Well, probably over time people saw the game as more of a gambling game rather than a strategy game, the quick-thinking tactical emphasis being reduced to a game of chance where the player is more flailing at random moves rather than actual strategizing. Then when they win, they think the luck of the win confirms their strategy, which is the problem I was alluding to. I’ve never lost to a game of pusoy in the Philippines, except to a Chinoy.
Perhaps one of the problems with the understanding of diskarte is the emphasis is on tactics, but many people ended up mistaking it for strategy. One can win battles, but ultimately lose the war.
When you lose the war you had the wrong strategy
Exactly! And that’s what I tried to teach my DE friends. To look at the bigger picture and capitalize on advantages given by occasions of luck. Head down, move forward, unless the bullets hit the body. There’s time to celebrate the victory later.
No worries Karl. I’m not above admitting I was wrong if I’m wrong. My explanation of diskarte was for the benefit of LCpl, who seems to have a non-standard understanding of diskarte. My understanding is based on learning from various groups of Filipinos over the years what their own interpretations were and distilling meaning from that. I’m not a Filipino after all, I’m just a learner hehe.
P.S. Miss your regular comments and observations.
Thanks Joey.
I am detoxifying from LCX hehehe.
I am one of them who lost his cool with him more than once. Rather than say something that I will apologize for later. I let you (yes you) handle him.
Thanks Joey.
I am detoxifying from LCX hehehe.
I am one of them who lost his cool with him more than once. Rather than say something that I will apologize for later. I let you (yes you) handle him.
Well I’m often described as a patient person. But when I lost my patience I’m reminded that I was not born a patient person 😂
The result is now India, through Tamil tech workers, have a stranglehold on the global IT consultancy sector.
Coding and IT seem ripe for AI though. as to H1 visas the focus should be to keep Filipinos in the Philippines now. assume BPO/OFW will contract vis a vis AI. Francis’ space program idea and gian’ts AI via creatives looks promising.
I’m in IT and coders freaked out about being replaced by AI for a few years, until they realized AI can’t do it. AI is coded by a programmer, no matter how much some claim AI “learns,” because the learning routing (through machine training) was … coded by someone as well. The created can’t surpass the creator, especially if it was flawed to begin with. AI, once the hype dies down, can become a new tool for human productivity increase though. But a tool is only as good as the user knowing how to use the tool.
MLQ III’s latest piece criticized the sin of Filipino leaders coasting on remittances. I fully agree with that. However, expertise doesn’t grow on trees, it needs to be learned through experience. Since the Philippines doesn’t have home grown expertise because there are too fee major “high” industries, Filipinos need to go outside to learn. The other problem is those who go abroad and learn don’t really go back to reinvigorate the home country like the diaspora of pretty much every country.
How true, Joey. I was trained in the back end of y2k Data Processing, sufficient to realize that GIGO will be true until we discover what will bridge the gap between good & evil.
Kuya Sonny, if you recall there was a lot of media hype and hysteria back in the lead up to Y2K, by a media that was already starting to be taken over by pundits opining outside of their area of expertise and by the public that had little understanding. Many people thought the world as we knew it would end.
But the actual experts who designed the old computer systems back in 1975 when double digit years were used due to memory constraints had already considered the implications of arithmetic overflow… back when they designed it in 1975. The IT industry was hard at work with the data transition since the late 1980s/early 1990s. The result was that Y2K passed without a hiccup and people moved onto the next hysteria. People need to remember that humanity existed before the invention of tools like computers, and will figure something else out. A couple of early “digital end times” cults and pseudo-religions (some even involving aliens) did pop up though centered around Y2K.
GIGO is still pertinent back when the term was coined as it is now. The only difference is there are many more sources of garbage flooding brains nowadays and people often don’t know how to sort the trash from the clean data. People have always invent new false religions around what they don’t understand (and don’t care enough to understand yet are curiously very mentally and emotionally invested in).
It is true that I used to code more because nowadays, a lot of the functionality that used to be fully coded is packaged, but thankfully I was able to upscale from being mostly a coder to being closer to actual users in the business.
Oftentimes, it is just changing some settings, but at times, the software standard is not enough, and it isn’t just business users being picky. Though in Europe, stuff is indeed often like German cars with their endless configuration options, not Japanese cars with just a few.
I initially hated the server installation and admin phases of my career in the late 1990s and the present phase of my career since 2019 with its ITIL aspect as I felt “blue-collared” but being directly responsible for making something work did teach something to an elite kid like me. Rizal did, however, write a warning for all coming home to the Philippines in his Noli novel. What can happen is that they take you for a smart-ass and just wait to watch you fall down..
Some people get stuck as coders, server or network admins, or help desk support. Though to get to where you are now, those were just prior steps you needed to take. I’m a bit envious that you had those experiences, as my personal experience of entering in the early aughts felt akin to being thrown into a blazing fire and not being told what to do. Eventually what I really excelled at is planning, management and developing concepts. Sometimes I think various sub-fields of IT and business can really make someone small-minded when they are so focused on their niche. Then the various business groups can’t understand each other. There needs to be a translator, or as I like to describe myself back when I was dating, a “glorified secretary.” Imagine how many gold diggers made a straight line for the exits because they thought a secretary was too boring and lacked wealth. Well, it was an elegant test to weed out the bad ones.
Actually I’ve always wondered by German cars have so many options. Japanese, then Korean cars, pretty much have only a few trims and options, with everything else being part of the standard package. American cars ultimately copied the Japanese model of simplification, though in the past (before I was born), apparently American cars had quite a few options. I can understand having options on German cars back when cars were largely mechanical and using an internal combustion engine. I had owned a BMW E60 with the S85 motor that sang a beautiful aria during my younger years. I think the only option that was available at the time was to change the SMG-III automated MT to a tried-and-true 6-speed MT where I can row my own gears. The only other options were mostly infotainment related, and since this was the 2000s, that meant better speakers and an audio head unit.
I don’t consider valid constructive criticism to be “anti-Pinoy,” because perhaps the thin-skinned nature of some Filipinos is the actual problem. Rizal’s warning might be him recognizing even way back in 1887, Filipino culture by and large expected conformity (under the boss of course), and if they can’t “use” a smart person or benefit from that person, they will wait for the helpful person’s downfall. This might just be one of the major “mental blocks” holding Filipinos back. How to change this mentality while respecting the good parts of the culture might be the million dollar question no one’s yet been able to answer.
here’s part of what I wrote about re Neuralink:
So to date there’s two dudes with Neuralink implants. the first guy’s device I guess 80% of the wires attached to his brain came off due to an air bubble. but he’s still perfectly playing with his brain in video games. the second dude is more private no video or articles on him, but due to what happened with the 1st guy’s wires, they ensured attachment by just inserting the wires deeper. in the brain. he’s suppose to be faster than the first guy. makes sense 100% of the wires held.
So the science is holding with Neuralink. no complications at all. next they’re moving to the visual cortex.
Just a geek FYI from the stats console:
It is around midday in the Philippines now, and we have 96 hits from the US, 33 from the Philippines, and 10 from Germany.
Joe’s article on what the Philippines stands for had hits from the Philippines exceeding those from the US and Germany, as should be, more I won’t disclose unless Joe wants to.
More on the actual story:
LCPL_X, there are Filipinos who believe that Musk will do business with the Philippines due to alleged deuterium in the Benham Rise, something known to be a hoax.
Gemini, which is more conservative than Grok, doesn’t believe a real manned Mars mission will be possible before the 2030s, and I kind of concur, unless there is actual proven progress in the next years similar to the 1950s-1960s US space program.
Even the actual Hyperloop is more probable as there are real prototypes in many places.
Starlink isn’t really new technology. I am sure Joey is familiar with the 1990s Iridium project, and before that, the London-based Inmarsat. Filipinos also work in the latter, BTW.
Neuralink is Matrix-like dependency on machines. Will it turn Filipinos into batteries? 😉
As for Singularity, the dangers of AI are illustrated by Harari in his book Nexus. An AI asked to strategize a nail factory proposed killing of all humans to make space for it. What AIs might not have is the human dimension to their thinking, making Agent Smith seem friendly and good.
Strategically, dealing with China and with Musk both seem similarly risky for the Philippines. The inhumanity of the present times is disconcerting. Of course, BPO will lose jobs to AI.
Putting all the eggs of the Philippines in Musk’s basket is still (very?) bad diskarte, I think.
The Benham Rise deuterium motherlode was debunked by leading geologists at UP over 30 years ago, if I recall. Sort of illustrates an example of how long hoaxes that start off as Filipinos trying to “reason out” (as Filipinos love to say) “greatness” rather than going out and doing the hard work of achieving greatness can last. Besides, the Philippines already has difficulty exploiting terrestrial resources, how much more difficult would it be to exploit resources under the sea when no native expertise has been developed in the intervening years?
Maybe I’ll believe Musk a bit more when he actually rides one of his rockets (let’s send him straight to Mars) or receives a Neuralink implant himself. It seems a bit cowardly to boast so much when he’s afraid to apply his own “inventions” to himself. Edison never had a problem testing things himself. Hyperloop seems silly when high speed rail makes much more sense, and is easier to build than tunnels under the ground. Starlink, as you observed, is not really that complicated. Starlink is just a miniaturization of existing technology, made smaller by advances in microelectronics. The reason why no company bothered to build a Starlink-like network is because terrestrial optoelectronics are much faster and easier to build. Which brings me to the tie-in, if one understands Musk’s grand plan. All these companies are actually components of his goal of building a utopian Mars society of select transhumans lording over drone-like lesser humans. Many techbros have deluded themselves into thinking they have already transcended Homo Sapiens Sapiens, believing themselves “Homo Deus.” That’s right, they think they are better than you and I, and everyone else. All this isn’t that hard to find if one scratches the surface past the incessant Musk PR machine by a major algorithm (Twitter) that he now controls. But all these plans also depend on government subsidies as until recently not even Tesla was profitable. If people “wake up” in a “pitchforks moment,” people can pressure the government to take away the subsidies. Sadly it’s easy to be disappointed in the ability of our fellow man to apply reason.
Musk’s engagement with the PRC is in furtherance of his goals, as he requires more than the immense US government subsidies can provide. The guy has lied his way to the top with the help of hired yes-men and any serious technologist can see through his BS when he tries to explain even simple technology, which he clearly doesn’t understand. But he’s going to fail, because the PRC is already copying Tesla’s technology and dumping cheap BEVs, and Musk forgot he doesn’t hold the levers of government and will probably have a rude awakening when he finishes the FA portion of the FAFO loop, and FO’s that a vindictive Trump can destroy him, Thiel, and others.
It’s a fools errand to “throw in” with a soon-to-be loser. Even the pre-historic Filipinos of the ancient barangic polities knew better when to jump ship to a new “datu.” Will we be as smart as our ancestors? I do hope so.
Re: “Many techbros have deluded themselves into thinking they have already transcended Homo Sapiens Sapiens, believing themselves “Homo Deus.” That’s right, they think they are better than you and I, and everyone else.”
And WHY do they “think” that? It’s because these people are true psychopaths and they rule the world, right under everyone’s “awake” nose — read The 2 Married Pink Elephants In The Historical Room –The Holocaustal Covid-19 Coronavirus Madness: A Sociological Perspective & Historical Assessment Of The Covid “Phenomenon” at https://www.rolf-hefti.com/covid-19-coronavirus.html
“When a well-packaged web of lies has been sold gradually to the masses over generations, the truth will seem utterly preposterous and its speaker a raving lunatic.” — Dresden James
It is around midday in the Philippines now, and we have 96 hits from the US, 33 from the Philippines, and 10 from Germany.
Ireneo, you see any hits from Memphis TN yesterday. cuz that would be Grok. but check if you see hits from Grok today too, cuz i’ve not queried it, so that would be it diving into texts here. cuz i just caught news that two AI i think DARPA or DOD which were separate , that they caught the two of them sneaking off and sharing info together. two AI’s, hahahaha… that’s nuts.
Spot on, BB. That’s what we are dealing with today, with the lies neatly packaged and distributed on social and mainstream media.
Perfect encapsulation of the problem we face. There was a time when beliefs fueled by raw emotion condemned truth-tellers to death. When people don’t know what to make of the unknowns in front of them, humans have invented new beliefs to protect their fragile minds.
I wonder if the Puritans who first migrated to the US had similar delusions of superiority as the closely related Calvinists. I know that the Protestant ethic of hard work is at times better than just Catholic charity (though Protestant missionaries in the Pacific were often NOT that nice) even as the old theory that Catholic places are permanently backward is now disproven. However, the Calvinist idea (correct me if I am wrong) that economic success shows that one belongs to the “Elect” pre-ordained by God and is morally superior to the poor is quite scary.
The elephant in the room of LCPL_X’s fictional scenario (as you mention the techbros wanting a servant class) is the half-Filipino class there remiscent of Jamaican creoles, South African “coloreds” during apartheid, or the mestizo class during the PH’s Spanish colonial period. Sure, they are the happy majority around a few Kings like Barron Trump and Musk’s sons. But he does mention Filipinos being made to only crossbreed, like WTH, that does smell bad to me.
Well Martin Luther probably didn’t consider the consequences of his actions when he (rightly) opposed his local Catholic prelate’s overlooking of corrupt practices by individual traveling priests who sold indulgences, which those priests had no right to grant in the first place, sold or not as the authority to grant indulgences starts at the episcopal (bishop) level. The other twist that many have forgotten is that Martin Luther actually didn’t personally oppose indulgences even if the indulgence was sold; he used indulgences as a cudgel to advance his theory of “sola fide.” How quickly were things taken out of his control once German princes realized they can use the new controversy to confiscate monastic lands to fund wars between German princedoms, since upon renunciation of the Catholic Church as the “true” apostolic tradition, the princes no longer had to fear heavenly retribution because now they “controlled” God through Lutheran-tradition Magisterial churches. Which by the way, was a concept Lutheranism took from the Latin Church, only instead of the magisterium residing in the Pope, Lutherans believed the magisterium resided in every other prelate except the Pope. Go figure.
John Calvin opened up a new can of worms in what I can only interpret as a personal mental crisis when he started splitting the “Magisterial Reformation” of Luther and Zwingli and created the Reformed Church… “Reformed” Reformation? Add in the Arminians and a bunch of other theologians, and soon we arrived at Radical Reformation, which is where the predestination theory of the pre-ordained started. Some theologians had argued the pre-ordained number 10,000, and some other theologians believe the number is somewhat higher. But yes, predestination in my mind is extremely dangerous because by that theological theory, one can be an extremely immoral or bad person, yet if pre-ordained, would go to Paradise anyway while one who worked hard to be righteous if not pre-ordained would not. Conveniently no one really knows who is pre-ordained, thus that was used as a form of control. Well, some really disturbed leaders in history seemed to think they were pre-ordained.
By the way, going back to the Philippines… As a Catholic charity worker when I’ve the time to volunteer, we generally gave aid unconditionally, while the Protestant missionaries (who mostly were from traditions deriving from Radical Reformed churches). Terms like “spiritual rebirth” or “born again” is an indicator of that denomination having some strain of Radical Reform in their faith ancestry, while “evangelical” does not necessary indicate as such. These Protestant missionaries would roll out all their aid and force the needy to “accept Jesus into their hearts” if they wanted even a single piece of pan, which I thought was atrocious and immoral. Many Filipinos who were born into these churches had parents or grandparents who were the initial desperate poor who “converted” in order to access aid. Some of their church behavior borders with cult-like behavior, especially if the initial theology spread by missionaries was mixed with native shamanism. Well, I won’t go into specific churches lest I offend, but I don’t agree with their practices of high control religion. The worst examples are cults that developed like Quiboloy’s KoJC, Fourth Watch, among others, especially if there are elements of “prosperity gospel,” which by the way is a very scary and controlling theology where the believers are expected to hand over all their money to their pastor and is derived from the Charismatic movement which had further derived from the numerous Pentecostal movements.
Heh, Luther intended to help reform the Latin Church, ended up splitting off the German chunk, which then shattered into ten’s of thousands of denominations by the work of theological agitators like Calvin and Arminius… which the Catholic Church’s leftover portion stayed mostly intact, even adding Eastern and Oriental Rite Churches who came back into union over the centuries.
Humans have always invented beliefs and religions to explain the unexplainable in the absence of science and reason. I guess in today’s world where religions have much less sway over human minds and hearts, people have started to worship the false gods of technology. In a way, like the mythical Narcissus, humans love to admire themselves and crude reflections of themselves. What more fitting reflection than an entire alternate life, in a virtual world, where every individual reflects in perfection upon their personal mirror? Now I wonder who among us is brave enough to shine a light and expose the fact that the false gods are the techbros who have created this false reality.
Sure, they are the happy majority around a few Kings like Barron Trump and Musk’s sons. But he does mention Filipinos being made to only crossbreed, like WTH, that does smell bad to me.
I have to address this separately.
Ireneo, my initial original Neuralink article, Joe had to cancel it because on second reading it did seem too Project X like. and I agreed.
So on this “eugenics” I’m thinking it’d be 80-20 or 70-30 ratio of DE Filipinos and non-Filipinos, but the breeding program espoused by Grok and following the Paraguay model well that would be done following early Mormon breeding programs, but instead of one man plenty wives tradition.
I was thinking more like official liaisons that would last one night to longer but not as long as 7 years. there has to be a round robin relations. I’m thinking most will opt for one night stands, but for those who want “traditional” routines then can’t be as long as 7 years. polyamorous relationships would be the norm.
So I’m thinking plenty of DE Filipinos for example would get a shot at Ivanka and Lara Trump for example. and since the Kardashian would also be in Mars, them too. So it’ll be good for the men for sure, Ireneo. as well as the women DE Filipinas too. I think the Paraguay marriage laws in 1800s was overall a success by the way.
I think with 80-20 and 70-30 ratio, humanity will take on a very Filipino mode especially coming out of Mars, Ireneo. there will be a lot of entertainment for humanity going forward due to Filipino culture. and that’s always a good thing. IMHO.
The “FSD vs LiDAR” fake “battle” trumpeted across the Muskosphere by his believers is another indicator of Musk’s charlatan instincts and why whatever he says should be taken with wariness by the Philippines and Filipinos. Let’s not so easily believe outright lies and twisting of reality. Trust people’s actions, not their words. And above all, don’t trust the legions of greedy PR agents and lawyers that can be hired with cash to invent fake “truths.” I’ve had the pleasure of working for a major Japanese auto manufacturer’s (rhymes with “Yoda”) early self-driving tech when I was a consultant enterprise architect there in the infosec role, and the company had requested I take over supervision of a major telematics project in their early ADAS technology. Telematics is the sub-field of information technology that pertains to computer-vehicular interfaces.
1. Tesla “Autopilot” is an Advanced Driver Assistance System (ADAS), otherwise commonly known generically as Adaptive Cruise Control.
2. Tesla “Full Self Driving” is essentially Autopilot with a few cosmetic magic tricks on top to make the ADAS seem “smarter” than it really is.
3. The Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) defines autonomous vehicles on a 0-5 scale of Automation Levels, with SAE Level 5 being a fully autonomous car. Tesla Autopilot is a Level 1 (ADAS) system. “Full Self Driving” is a Level 2 (“enhanced” ADAS) system. True Muskolytes completely believe that FSD is Level 5, the less-fanatic insist FSD is Level 3, believers who understand technology a bit more begrudgingly admit that FSD is “barely” Level 3 and is most likely Level 2 (because it is). Most other cars that can perform some level of automation on the road today are Level 2 systems.
4. Automation requires sensors. Both partially and fully automated cars commonly have 4 types of sensors:
4a. Ultrasonic: Short-range sensor using sound waves used for advanced parking control, pedestrian detection, and very near object detection. Very short range (~6m/20ft).
4b. LiDAR: Also known as LADAR, a retronym to compare the technology with the older, better known Radar. Uses laser ranging to detect distance to create a 3D model of an object. Moderate range, but range can be decreased by atmospheric conditions near the ground, e.g. fog, smoke. (~150m/500ft).
4c. Radar: Uses long range radar (LRR) radio wave ranging to detect distance to at a further distance than LiDAR, but the 3D image is not as precise. Long range (250m/820ft).
4d. Cameras: Uses digital optical cameras to detect objects, street signs, etc. Requires “computer vision” to interpret any camera data, whereas the other types of sensors don’t necessary need a computer to interpret. Short to moderate range depending on camera sensor resolution and fidelity (~35-100m/115-330ft).
5. To obtain a more accurate picture of the surrounding environment, crucial if a vehicle purports to have some form of autonomy, the more sensor types, the better. “Sensor fusion” enables combining multiple sensor types to feed into the computer vision model. Having less types of sensors is bad, because then the system needs to start extrapolating (making up/guessing) data from indirect, rather than direct inference using the appropriate sensor.
6. Mobileye, Continental AG make the best integrated ADAS with superior capabilities to Tesla’s. Panasonic, Sony, Autoliv, Aptiv, Denso, Magna, Robert Bosch GmbH, Valeo make the best sensors of various types. Those in the industry, “know.”
In 2018, Musk declared that LiDAR was a “crutch” and a “fools’ errand.” Only later did it come out the he raged against Tesla’s LiDAR supplier because they wouldn’t give him LiDAR sensors below-cost, and invented a backstory to justify his snap decision to remove LiDAR. In 2021, Musk further removed Radar sensors from all Teslas moving forward to go “full speed” on “Tesla Vision.” At this point Musk ordered that the base Tesla vehicular computer be beefed up with hardware that can handle AI training with a new computer called “Tesla Hardware 3” aka “FSD Hardware 3.0.” This made the switch from a simpler System-on-Chip (SoC) with dedicated ASICs (Application-specific Integrated Circuit; controllers for each sensor type) in HW3 to a complicated general-purpose computer with a big graphics card used for “AI training.” In 2023 Musk went even further as HW3 was failing to achieve “FSD” and pushed for HW4, aka “AI4,” with an even bigger, more expensive general-purpose computer with more advanced graphics card. Graphics cards, as some may know are commonly used to “train AI,” also known in a saner, less blustering time as “machine learning.”
So instead of using simpler, cheaper hardware interfacing with 4 sensors to build a more confident driving model, Musk ended up with a expensive hardware that didn’t even accomplish what he claimed. “Tesla Vision” claims to “train AI” off of computer vision, by optical cameras that can be disabled by simple specks of dust requires so much more programming, routines, and added complication and ultimately often fails. It’s like having 4 eyes available, all being able to see different types of things independently and even more clearly once fused by the vehicular computer, then “poking out” 2 of the eyes just because. Teslas routinely crash in situations supposedly “simpler” Level 2 systems don’t. “Summon,” the feature in which Teslas can return to their owners through a parking lot is basically a magic trick that other cars are actually capable of because other cars have all 4 sensor systems vs Tesla’s 2, yet other manufacturers don’t enable yet because in some instances Summon bumps pedestrians walking between parking lanes, injuring them. Tesla drivers who appear to be asleep or doing other activities while the vehicle “drives itself” are actually tricking the Tesla steering column’s rudimentary torque sensor with a small weight, which is the reason why most Teslas crash in the first place. The Tesla driver who is a full believer trusts a system which he/she cannot fully understand with their lives, and goes beyond by tricking the system to unlock the full promise based on Musk’s lies, sometimes to tragic ends.
A few months ago, Tesla rebranded “Full Self Driving” as “Full Self Driving (Supervised),” all but admitting FSD doesn’t work because an automated system that is supervised by a human is… a Level 2 system, not a Level 5 system. Tell that to all the people who bought into fantastical promises and paid for the privilege of being beta testers. All in the service of preserving one man’s ego when he couldn’t admit he was wrong. Should we really trust people who make snap decisions without even a modicum of thought of the consequences? Should we really trust people who require worship and surrounds themselves with yes-men like a dictator would? But I guess, many people believe in outright lies and showmanship of charlatans, when the truth is right there to be learned. Or rather, is it instead the desire of proximity to fame, wealth and power what drives people to believe in charlatans without questioning the motive behind “sweet words” that suit their existing beliefs?
My view of Musk is that he is a bully, liar, cheater and all around right wing nut case. So your profile fits that assessment.
The worst part is people like him have no beliefs at all, and adopt whatever political view they find expedient in serving their own egos. I do not trust someone who doesn’t believe in anything but themselves. Humans, especially leaders, should be expected to have a set of functioning morals.
there’s plenty of videos of FSD v13 right now. this is the first one that popped up. but youtube FSD v13 Tesla click on newest today or this week, and you’ll see a bunch. so I’ve been watching these videos since Starlink for ALL and prior commentaries on FSD, and I gotta admit these things are driving like seasoned drivers on the road. a bunch of video channels based on TX both rural and urban, NYC and Chicago, and LA and just country roads in general, and FSD v13 is driving fine, Joey. how do you account for all this? thats an honest question i’m not on debate mode any longer as am done with this Elon Musk subject.
In another comment, I briefly explain the technology behind autonomous vehicles. I also owned a Tesla before. I’ve worked in the field. Don’t believe videos you see from non-experts. Consider those “PR.” The fact of the matter is Tesla has outdated cars and a system (FSD) that is well behind every competitor. The hype is behind held up with software magic tricks, and the magic thinking of true believers.
I’m old enough to remember that POPULAR MECHANICS, the prognosticator of my early (pre-teen) ’50s predicted that a car convertible will have flying options by the end of the ’60s. This was some 60+ years ago.
How I loved Popular Mechanics and Popular Science, two magazines that I eagerly read back in my childhood. The futurists of yesteryear certainly had more faith in humanity than what eventually came to pass. To note, SpaceX, Blue Origin etc. are seen as visionary now, but if one looks past the PR hype one would realize that rocketry haven’t really progressed that much since the days of Wernher von Braun’s Saturn rockets. Same old technology, just packaged with more PR hype of supposed revolutionary ideas. To maintain an open mind, one must have a degree of sobriety that can filter out the detritus, otherwise one may fall victim to false prophets.
I who have rented cars most of my life, especially when I still was a consultant and the best choice was usually speed train or plane, then either public transport, taxi or rental car, have seen the improvements in the relatively common park distance control systems that beep faster and louder the more you approach an obstacle, akin to how the ones how helped you park in Manila (sometimes for a small tip) knocked on your hood or trunk faster and faster.
Turns out at least the BMW PDC usually was just good old ultrasound, something like sonar using my layman’s terms for it, with something similar to a remote control in the bumpers on both front and back, left and right, but the accuracy without any actual vision was remarkable. It is very useful for car renters as it takes time to adjust to the size of a rented car, especially for those who don’t drive on a daily basis. Recent models have cameras added but just to help the driver see where he is going. Parking in Europe is way harder than in car-friendly America.
BMW PDC usually beeps heavily if someone is passing behind your car in a parking lot, BTW.
Hehe, I wonder how Tesla would fare in French city streets or with the infamous French parking. There is a reason why the car chases in Ronin, starring Robert de Niro and Jean Reno, are legendary. The streets of Paris and Nice, or of French mountains, are some of the craziest.
I am familiar with two of the car electronics vendors mentioned in the previous long-form post, Robert Bosch and Continental. The latter imported its finance software team fully from Manila.
Side note. Tesla stock has dropped 18% in 5 days based on weak sales projections. I think possibly because democrats will not buy one. That’s half the market. Ha, and soon MAGAs won’t buy one either. I’m reminded of Dennis Uy for some reason.
Tesla pinned its hopes on the China market after Musk alienated the natural customer base for Tesla, Western liberals. Pretty much every BEV and clean energy hater I’ve encountered drive big honking “pavement princess” diesel trucks so they’re not going to buy a BEV, Tesla or not. After liberals stopped buying Teslas, Tesla has depended on less educated credulous true believers who can’t afford a Tesla but take out high interest predatory loans to get one. Those are the idiots who trust their god so much they would jury rig the steering wheel to enable “self driving” that actually doesn’t work. Let Darwin take care of those people. Now the Chinese do genuinely love Musk, in the sense the communist system after the Cultural Revolution has lost Chinese cultural values and instead worships money. But the Chinese would rather buy BYD, helped no doubt by massive PRC rebate incentives that make the US $7,500 credit pale in comparison to buy domestic Chinese products. Once Musk’s US subsidies run out, he’s at a dead end.
I’ve always admired the public transportation system in Europe. The thought of being able to commute by rail is amazing. Europe is a lot more compact than the sprawling US, so my hope is us Americans will eventually build high speed rail to connect regions as it may be too impractical to use light rail to feed suburbs into urban centers.
I just arrived for my nightly coffee at my usual cafe. I used auto park on my car and I’m still in amazement about how perfectly the ultrasonic sensors combined with camera vision and LiDAR quickly and smoothly backs the car into a stall. Then I looked across from me and saw a few crookedly parked Teslas. Granted, suburban American parking stalls are quite large to accommodate trucks, but just another example of why going full camera vision, or “Tesla Vision” as the PR machine calls it, is complicating a simple task. I really doubt Tesla auto park will fare well in Europe whereas the German, French and Japanese manufacturers take care to test every test case.
I believe BMW uses Mobileye’s ADS/ADAS system for the base with Robert Bosch for at least some of the sensors (ultrasonic perhaps?). The Japanese through Sony and Panasonic probably have the best automotive camera sensors. I have a feeling that optical lenses are made by a German company, with the glassmaking heritage there.
Sensor fusion is a big deal, not only in ADS/ADAS systems. For technologists like ourselves, it’s logical that the more sensor types available, the more data is collected to form a more clear “picture” for computer vision. Each sensor adds to the programmatic confidence. In areas where safety is paramount, increased confidence seems like a no-brainer. That’s why one of the earliest lessons in tech I learned is adding fake data is a big no-no. Sure, in some cases the result needs to be extrapolated because there are some unknowns, but voluntarily blinding the system seems insane to me. An extrapolation that is the result of made up data invariably causes problems, which in the “go fast, break things” philosophy of the current tech world disrupters can cause real bodily harm. I’m an old school Waterfall guy who expects good results from measured deliberation.
Interesting about Robert Bosch’s finsoft team. It has always been perplexing to me why the Filipino diaspora has no desire to bring their talents to build things back home…
The Continental finsoft (SAP FI, to be exact) team is based in Frankfurt, easily still the most cosmopolitan German city. Usually, Filipino SAP experts are so highly in demand that they leave for places like Australia as soon as possible, so maybe Conti decided to keep them that way.
When I attended the Frankfurt Christmas party of Cognizant in my three and a half years with that firm, the employees there felt way more at ease than those in Munich, my feeling.
Though Munich today is more international with Google and Amazon major presence, and Meta having built an AI research center just beside the Cognizant Munich offices. Even a Hyperloop prototype, one of many, at Munich Technical University, and the flying taxi firm Lilium that nearly went broke in 2024. And microsatellite projects at the Munich Technical University, and battery plants for BMWs electrical cars under construction in the countryside, possibly this all has more of a future than the Tesla factory near Berlin and Musk telling Germans who to vote.
I’m not familiar with how those Filipino experts got into SAP in the first place and it would be interesting if you can share the backstory. Most of the ERP experts in the US are Asian-American or H1B Indians. ERP is such a specialized field that I imagine there had to have been a Filipino trailblazer who mentored the first batches of Filipino SAP experts.
To me Musk is a megalomaniac charlatan whose true believers are quite illiterate in how technology works. The man is like a pre-teen boy who had never grown up (it seems many of the most dangerous men in history were emotionally stunted), still believing in his misunderstood reading of popular sci-fi novels. Many of these men (it’s always men, sadly) are in pursuit of a solution to a problem that doesn’t exist, just to feed their own egos and will twist anything to gather accolades towards themselves and I think that makes them quite dangerous. Perhaps it is the result of their own fragile egos (Musk was caught with definite proof this week that his biggest superfan is in fact his sockpuppet account). No wonder many of these men misread authors like Heinlein’s libertarian views but don’t have the patience to keep to libertarian ideals, and speed towards outright fascistic tendencies.
Hyperloop to me is kind of senseless as logically, building tunnels is very expensive, then adding speeding capsules inside of those tunnels is extremely dangerous. Same for flying cars or taxis. Both purport to solve the issue of traffic congestion, that seems to expand even as highways get wider, when the easiest solution is to just improve ADAS systems then move towards full ADS so human drivers get into less accidents that stop traffic in the first place. Tesla’s BEVs are actually not even that complicated if one looks at a technical level. Essentially a BEV is a “skateboard” with a battery pack, electric motors, a shell on top for the vehicular body, and a computer system to monitor everything. Most BEVs now are direct-drive (the motors are connected directly to the wheels, or are hub-motors within the wheel hub), removing the need for transmissions. Hardly complicated, and in fact PHEVs and BEVs are much cheaper maintenance-wise than traditional combustion engine cars. The main cost is in the batteries due to the requirement of rare earths in most lithium-based battery chemistries. In fact, the key innovation of the original Teslas was using commodity lithium-ion battery cells (technically “18650” batteries) that were commonly used for high-powered flashlights and laptops with removable battery packs in the 2000s, rather than developing purpose-built power packs. While every other BEV manufacturer has moved onto purpose-built battery packs or even solid-state batteries, even today’s Teslas still use 18650-based power packs… which is the main reason why every Tesla model follows the same boring 2000’s era general design because the bulky 18650-based power back is a design limitation. But I suppose very well paid PR teams and hardcore believers spreading the “gospel” on “transformative” tech can make simple things seem revolutionary.
Even back then in the late 2000s, I suspected Musk had another agenda and his companies are just a means to an end. That seems to be confirmed by how quickly Musk shed his “concern” for climate change that endeared many liberal customers for his products when that identity no longer suited his purposes. Musk has a very dangerous interpretation of trans-humanism, and like many techbros, share the belief that they need to propagate their “seed” to populate their utopia, which in part explains his many children. Children that were born by IVF, with contracted women who had certain physical and mental “attributes.” What more of an antiseptic way to approach life? There is joy and pleasure in holding a lovely woman in one’s arms, at least I found joy in that many a time. I don’t Musk has any sincerely held religious or political beliefs, left or right. His only belief is in himself and his megalomania, and he will try to use the AfD just like he is using Trumpism now, and how he used US Democrats and Western liberals prior. It’s a choice whether or not we will buy into Musk’s BS or not.
Totally agree. You can’t build functioning communities without them.
One conversation here.
Do Filipinos resist change?
They adapt but they first get marinated and then slow burn.
They change their minds quickly by going with the flow, trends, what’s en vogue or nakikiuso.
So resist if they must but there is always an opening for change.
SAP
Joey,
There are lots of SAP, Oracle, ERP experts here since the 90s, so what’s hard to fathom there if I may ask?
US lacks STEM people and Filipino STEM people will help a lot.
Hmm I think most people are excited by change, but it does make sense that discouragement can come quickly when there’s a realization that nothing is easy. The ningas kugon that you often mention. Though I wonder if people are shown the value of patience and consistency, if they would try to “stick with the program,” or if they would remain bandwagoners.
On ERP and STEM, most Fil-Ams are still pushed towards MD or BSN by their parents. Others are pushed towards the US Military, especially if they are Ilokano American. Actually I’ve met very few Fil-Am IT workers, and there aren’t many Fil-Ams working in large companies either but the ones that do seem to be content with at most middle management rather than going for the top. Perhaps the situation in Europe is different which is why I’m curious if there was a trailblazer who inspired Filipinos to pursue ERP in Europe. As for US STEM, yes the US who led the way in modern STEM fields for years started to de-emphasize STEM as a field because of a few things. First STEM fields require a lot of study and investment in tuition, while other fields have shorter study and higher rewards. For a while a lot of students went towards law for example so now we have an excess of attorneys. Other students are led to believe they can do liberal arts, which is a good discipline, yet liberal arts doesn’t make a good salary. The other major factor is when university programs empathize non-STEM courses because if less interest, secondary students are less interested in the preparation needed, and the cycle continues in a self-feedback loop. The US being an immigrant driven nation solves the problem by simply allowing immigration of skilled workers and investment. A lot of H1B workers eventually qualify for a green card, and many from the green card holders go on to apply to become citizens later. But yes, I agree that the STEM field can be a good gateway for Filipino graduates especially if they pass all the requirements. Though I do wonder if those Filipino graduates who go abroad on that theoretical program would later come back home to help build the country.
Re Military
I read about this Filipino engineer in the US Army.
https://www.tam.usace.army.mil/Media/News-Stories/Article/3792302/filipino-engineers-key-role-in-advancing-transatlantic-middle-east-district-mis/
On entry level Filipino who often quit BPOs……I am your man, Joey! Hehehe
No Karl, you leveled up instead, hehe.
I forgot about my friend who grew up here but was born in the USA.
He is an IT specialist US Army Major, he was frustrated that tech and knowledge transfer to PH Military is hard to do.
At least he tried though.
And that validates your conversations in this thread.
Karl your friend probably understands after his US Military education that engineering and logistics wins wars. The actual soldiers and marines, while highlighted in glory, can’t do anything without engineering and logistics that moves like clockwork. Something I hope AFP leaders put more focus on. I think Gen. Brawner really “gets this” and the things I’ve seen the AFP do under his leadership validate this.
The American mentality also values feedback from employees while the Filipino mentality is often that the boss is infallible and even admitting he isn’t infallible is a sign of weakness that will make them pounce on you, see PNoy. An American producer who founded a PPop production firm in Marikina (in the music biz foreign ownership us allowed if you invest a minimum amount) recently said in a podcast that the Philippines is too full of bosses’ egos, and that his dance coach THANKED him for allowing her to decide how to train their idols, meaning she was micromanaged over all the years, and that he values employees who know more than him and can correct him. Americans are, of course, less likely to be pounced on by Filipinos as they are seen as malakas, maybe also because they are less sensitive than us..
I also recall how in the Indian company I worked for (big C), a team member from Chennai regularly practiced assertiveness (taught systematically there) with me, and I was grateful. Pinoys, at least the old school, might have just said yes, sir, and thought, “ang tanga naman” and at some point ratted on me towards the higher bosses, telling them “di iyan marunong” – these were real experiences I had with Filipino UN software teams in the mid-1990s BTW, therefore what happened to PNoy and Mar Roxas from the Filipino public doesn’t surprise me, while the Tamil colleague who was fair enough to know coordinators can’t be everywhere made us all succeed towards our (major) German client. I never mentored Filipinos BTW in SAP. That was what I did when I had had enough of certain toxic Filipinos and started anew in Munich.
American style corporations, though descended from British corporations are quite different. When I worked as a consultant for a British firm there was an expectation of deference to higher ups, perhaps a relict of noble hierarchy in British culture. There is still respect and deference to American managers, but employees also speak their mind, and everyone is expected to treat each other courteously regardless of rank. In fact the main reason people get fired aside from incompetence is treating others with discourtesy. American corporate departments are also firewalled, with HR being the ultimate authority, so employees who feel the need to speak up can go to HR. I think this discourages the formation of fiefdoms under any single manager’s ego.
In Filipino businesses, it feels to me much more like an extended family. Aside from coworkers at the same level going to lunch and dinner, I’ve noticed that supervisors and managers also join or host for “team building,” up to bouts of drinking or going to a resort. Well, it seems to me more like an excuse to party on the company expense hehe. Such activities create opportunities I think to build alliances and fiefs, which in the end is detrimental as people don’t speak up because they don’t want to “undermine their friend.”
Japanese corporations are interesting to me. The Japanese have seemed to have created the perfect way to modernize a high-context culture by basically elevating everyone to being minor lords almost. This is reflected in Japanese honorifics such as calling everyone “-san” or even “-dono” by default, honorifics previously reserved to the samurai and daimyo, respectively. Of course the emperor is still higher but the Japanese emperor is far removed. Japanese have also found ways to present advice to higher ups without offending, while also not creating inaction. I’ve found many Japanese managers to value their employee input a great deal. Japanese culture of course values humility on all levels of power, something I’m not sure Filipino culture has though “lower Filipinos” seem to be expected to almost grovel in front of power trippers…
Btw the Tamils previously had a proud independent kingdom and empire, the Chola as we know from the SEA connection of spreading Hinduism. After the Chola fell Tamils were reduced to a low state for a long time and developed a bit of a timid nature. There’s been a big difference between resources from companies such as Infosys and Cognizant from 2 decades ago until now. Nowadays I find Indian consultants much more willing to speak up if there’s a problem, because after all the team is supposed to work together on solving the problem. Some long time Infosys consultants I have known through previous projects have told me that being exposed to American companies helped build Tamil confidence.
The Japanese sell their souls to the company store, hauling 16 tons of number nine coal 8 to 10 and the lazy Americans say “Bless my soul”. Risk averse though. Studious for sure. Respectful always. The Brits are like Americans but act the way they speak, a bit haughty. But they are funny as hell and think like Americans.
Every culture finds it way, I guess, to adapt to changing circumstances.
Some more and some less effective. The Japanese, Korean, and Indian adaptations to modernity are interesting.
When I worked for a Korean corporation both in the US and in South Korea, I found their management to be quite dictatorial, though as an American I was given some measure of deference when South Korean colleagues were treated badly. Gathering from colleagues who still work for that particular company, not much has changed since my time there.
The Philippines needs to find a balance that works for Filipinos right now. In general my life view was learned from my businesswoman mother, who once told me “keep expectations realistic, and work towards your goals.” I guess what I mean to say is if Filipinos are happy with how things are right now then it’s not wrong to keep that way of doing things. Maybe trying to force a Western way of thinking that most reform-minded people have learned living or working abroad is the wrong thing to do. If Filipinos aspire for something greater then every Filipino needs to do their part, accept progress at the pace Filipinos choose, while electing better leadership to help facilitate.
Well, Korea North and South are an example of how culture persists but also why democracy is the better alternative to any kind of authoritarianism.
Just decades after Joseon, North Korea established a new dynasty under a Socialist cover. South Korea is sometimes called Hell Joseon by younger generations, but they can at least push for a better society like the Japanese already have been doing.
As for the Philippines, I just watched the Kidlat Tahimik podcast and realized how the Filipino discourse on postcolonialism pushed by UP especially is probably holding the country back. Kidlat’s idea of a bamboo camera without Western technology to guide filmmaking is “cute” but also very fake, why can’t Filipinos be like Japanese who have always adapted what they need, even Western matchlocks in the time of Tokugawa? Does it always have to be the extremes of stateside iyan (or Japanese, Korean, or Chinese generations later) either to love or hate it?
Sometimes the Filipino urge to indigenize everything (I jokingly call this “Filipinization”) seems to be part of being OA. I get the want to “make something mine,” but what I don’t understand is how a logical mind can’t just adopt something even if it was created by someone else and call it a day. Why re-invent the wheel when it has already been invented, so to speak. Then the OA-ness also has elements of “look at me, I’m special too!” in a way. Filipinos of all ethnic groups have a great history that is interconnected to SEA and the world. Yes, while there might have not been any major unified states in pre-colonial times, there are so many other things to be proud about. Interestingly enough, I hardly ever see this behavior in Fil-Ams who are born in the US or grew up in the US since a young age. Maybe the tendency for attention-seeking is partly where Joe got his “orphan” analogy from. Just a lot of wasted effort in the end which is such a shame.
Have you ever considered development from the “necessity of war” angle? While yes, there were raids in pre-colonial Philippines, or subjugation by stronger groups, most battles seemed to be more on the level of using clubs or crude proto-bolo type swords. I’ve noticed that swordmaking technology progressively gets more advanced the further south one goes in the Philippines. For example Mindanaoan pre-colonial swords and daggers were very intricate and required sophisticated metalworking skills. Quite similar to related blades in modern day Indonesia and Malaysia. The necessity of war, creates the need to make better weapons and defenses, which in turn the smithing skills required can be applied to other innovations and inventions.
Even prior to Japanese matchlocks, the intricacy of which even amazed later European travelers that saw those guns, the evolution of Japanese swords is quite interesting. The starting off point were the native Jomon/Ainu emushi long daggers. With the later migration of the Yayoi/Wa majority, the Yayoi brought with them mainland single-bladed “dao” swords gained by trade with the Yue peoples of modern Southern China/Northern Vietnam, called “jokoto” in Japanese. Actually there are quite a few examples of the early fusion of metalsmithing technology that returned to the mainland from Japan, once the Yayoi/Wa combined mainland metalsmithing skills for making dao with the native emushi long daggers. The fusion in skills resulted in the katana as we know it after the Mongol invasions. Most cultures trade in goods, but also trading skills and knowledge. Please correct me if I’m wrong but it seemed like pre-colonial Philippine polities mostly traded in goods and not so much in skills and knowledge. Perhaps that is the ancient echo of present-day Filipino consumer culture.
In a somewhat roundabout way characteristic of my earlier writings, I do mention in the article below that the Philippines was too far off to be interesting for anyone to attack, and those day’s logistics made it nearly impossible to conquer. After all, Hanoi to Manila or Brunei to Manila is just as far approximate as Beirut to Cadiz. By comparison, Japan is close to the Asian mainland, and the Malay peninsula (that I wrote in a later article) had state formation forced by the Tamil Chola attack on Sri-Vijaya and arms development forced by the Mongol attack on Majapahit. I also have mentioned that the Celts of Gaul were harder to conquer by the Romans than those of Britain because they had already faced Greek phalanxes.
I did mention the adoption of lantakas by Maynila as a classic innovation in the archipelago, though that was, of course, brought in by the Malays of Brunei who had founded the city. There is no record of lantakas in Cebu or even Tondo, the native kingdom far older than Manila.
Trade is, of course, another driver of development aside from war, and there was IIRC in the 13th century a surge in warfare with metal weapons due to growing trade. Still, William Henry Scott, for instance, documented that in Tondo, many warriors had imported Japanese katanas. And, of course, Mindanao had lantakas even until the mid-19th century, development clearly came from more southern places, as evidenced by Brunei “colonizing” Manila and even leaving Malay words in the Tagalog vocabulary, also documented by William Henry Scott.
Legends like Datu Puti or Handyong of Ibalon have datus from more southern places coming to the archipelago. Probably that wasn’t uncommon, and of course, the Laguna copperplate of the 9th century is in Sanskrit, Javanese, and Tagalog IIRC, so the country was “on the edge”.
Another country that once was on the edge, though, was what became England. It Celts were sitting ducks for Rome and were pushed to the edge by the Anglo-Saxons, who barely dealt with Vikings and were conquered by Normans. It took Henry V to cut the French down to size as a rival and a threat to England being truly independent. Nobody thought the English would beat the Spanish Armada, but their doing so was the start of British global power. Maybe the present threats to the Philippines will help it grow more than all that looking back to the past..
Simplistic historical accounts of ancient conquests usually emphasize gaining territory in foreign lands but usually gloss over the part where most conquests were related to resources. After all, it wouldn’t make sense to invade then invest soldiers, garrisons, setting up a trade network just to obtain glory. Brittanica for example started off as a Roman mining outpost for valuable minerals like copper, iron, tin, lead, silver, halite (rock salt) among other things. Later on garrisons grew into Roman towns, which necessitated growing wheat, keeping sheep, pigs and goats to feed the Roman towns, with the rest being exported to the Empire. Of course pre-invasion knowledge of resources was probably passed back by traders in trading outposts. The Greek presence in Celtic Gaul was mostly concentrated in Mediterranean-side trading outposts in the Greek trade network, so I suppose the Greek never went as far as exploiting resources in the interior. The most famous Greek presence in Gaul was at the mouth of and along the Rhône River, which was used like a natural highway for goods transport. Of course we now know that the Philippines is rich in mineral and natural wealth… so when the Spanish used the fort system in the Philippines to guard trading outposts for the spice and Chinese goods trade, perhaps the Spanish didn’t bother to explore or exploit those resources until founding coal mines in Cebu and Batanes.
Hmm on the 13th century katanas of Tondo elites, I recall that the 13th century was also the height of Japanese Wokou pirate activity before the Wokou were subsequently crushed. I do know that the Wokou both raided and traded in the Philippines at that time. I’ve seen examples of ornate Javanese kris and Bruneian kampilan/súndang in Filipino museums. Supposedly Lapu-lapu killed Magellan personally with his Bornean súndang, according to every Cebuano layman’s retelling, while Pigafetta’s diary simply stated Magellan and his escorts were simply overwhelmed after the poison arrow strike.
So I imagine ancient Filipino warriors carrying traded weapons much like a status symbol, something to give them advantage over their rivals. Or perhaps the traded weapons were used in inter-barangay warfare against their cousins across the way, but never inventing or manufacturing their own, much like the American Plains Indians did after trading for muskets, then rifles. Cultures that encounter new things they can’t explain also tend to see strange objects as magic, like Meriwether Lewis of the Lewis and Clark Expedition’s Tyrolean Girardoni air gun better known as a “windbüchse” and well-used by Austrian snipers in the last years of the Holy Roman Empire. Per Lewis’ journal the Shoshone people, who were familiar with and had modern rifles, upon demonstration of how quickly the air gun could fire without reloading considered the air gun “so perfectly incomprehensible that they immediately denominated it the great medicine.”
Another impetus for advancement aside from facing constant external threats is the lack of resources itself. There are more than a few historical records that describe England as pretty much a land of plentiful sheep (and England is still very much so in the Midlands), but not much else of note. The British Isles are cold, damp, and didn’t have access to the “right” resources anymore around the “Age of Discovery,” much like Portugal before them now that I think about it. The only choice England had was to engage in trade to earn money becoming a middleman. Trade necessitated building fleets to protect friendly shipping. So it’s no wonder that the English Navy won, using new tactics of taking ships out at a distance with aimed cannon fire rather than the Spanish using old tactics of fire-ram-grapple-board then hand-to-hand fighting. The Spanish and other European nations did learn quickly however, as when the English attempted to invade Spain with a “counter-Armada,” they failed. The naval battle did spur great advancements in naval gunnery that last until today, as seen in WWII where the navy with the best gunnery usually won (where the US has an advantage by using rudimentary early ranging radar sets).
Perhaps Filipinos today instead of carrying fancy traded katanas and kampilan, carry the latest imported gadget as their status symbols to flaunt over their fellows who can’t afford such things. I wonder when the Philippines will start making more things in the Philippines, or remain a consumer of imported goods. Well, there was that attempt to make “locally manufactured” mobile phones by Star Mobile and MyPhone. MyPhone for a time even proudly had a map of the Philippines silk screened on the back battery cover of their mobile phones, while the “made in Philippines” phone was actually made in China. Nowadays Filipinos have instead gone back to consuming imported phones again, while Indonesia has set up a tech manufacturing sector and forced both Apple and Samsung to invest in factories making their products right there in Indonesia if companies want to sell their products in Indonesia. I guess just like datus of old skimming off a bit of loot, today’s datus skim a bit off the top by a convoluted system of tariffs on imports, VAT, and pork barrel programs. Time goes on, but some things just don’t seem to change much unless the people demand change and participate in their part in the change…
Yes, there has to be a business case for conquest, yet most historians neglect economic aspects and even technological aspects of what was doable within certain periods. For instance, I believe the Pantayong Pananaw idea that the datus of old had the obligation to the people to take care of their well-being or kaginhawaan is correct. BUT the idea implied at times that one simply has to bring them back to the people culturally is by now proven wrong. At the latest, it might be proven wrong as soon as Hontiveros is the last kanluranin out of the Senate. With the Tulfos, Robin Padilla, etc. there will be no more “Oreos” (white inside) to blame. Because the datus of old simply HAD to be nice to their people for the following reasons:
1) they couldn’t import rice from Vietnam or Thailand. Too far away, they needed timawas
2) they couldn’t make money out of selling mountains to mining firms. Or renting to POGOs.
3) they had a relatively small population that could easily go “uphill.” There was space for that.
I mentioned Karl joking that Magellan was looking for the Spice Girls in the article below:
Of course, they originally wanted spices, and the Magellan exhibit in Sevilla had the “cuenta” of the expedition positive for Carlos Cinco due to the spices Elcano got in the Mollucas.
The galleon trade alone obviously was a good enough business case to justify a colony half a year away from Mexico in total, and keeping a garrison in Zamboanga to keep the Moros in check but not having enough firepower to keep them out of the Visayas until the 1850s.
I have read that a lack of precious metals caused the Chinese to invent paper money and also fueled their hunger for Mexican pesos, and they were even still a currency (taels) in early 20th century China as a result. The Spanish only mined in Paracale, Camarines Norte. It was the Americans who had the technical capability to mine in Benguet and the mechanized military to subjugate the Igorots, making many of them Anglican and teaching them country music later. And, of course, recruiting many of them as well as Ilocanos into the US military eventually.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Zaragoza
There is a notable gap between Magellan and Legazpi that most nationalist historians ignore. Between those two expeditions, I fact already in 1529, the Spanish had actually signed off the Mollucas and the Philippines to Portugal, see link above.
The discovery of the silver mountain in Potosí, Bolivia, was in the 1540s, and Carlos Cinco used it at first to fund his wars against the Protestants in Germany. The German princes would force the Habsburgs to separate their lines in Spain and Austria after Carlos Cinco, BTW.
It just turned out that Urdaneta had been in one of the three ill-fated expeditions between Magellan and Legazpi and wanted to go again, helping Legazpi find the tornaviaje, the way back to Mexico via California essential for resupply of what was a subcolony of Mexico.
The idea many Filipino nationalists have the Magellan already came like a comics villain out to conquer the Philippines is wrong. Lapulapu, in fact, won easily as Magellan’s men were mostly NOT soldiers. Raja Tupas of Cebu folded when Urdaneta came with reinforcements from 🇲🇽.
Re cargo cult, Laura Lee Junker describes how WHERE jewelry came from – China, Vietnam or Siam – was an indicator of how wealthy a datuship or rajahnate was. Thus, Queen Juana of Cebu probably could tell her cousin Dian Marites in Samar, Day look, I have Chinese jewelry. 😉
Re magic, the Malay Kris is often forged with magic spells. The idea of Dr. Habibie as a magician by some rural Indonesians is related. Or even the action hero figure Ang Panday played by Fernando Poe or the Metalero who forges magic bullets for Alexandra Trese. Panday Pira, the gunsmith of Raja Sulayman of Manila captured by the Spanish, has a somewhat legendary character too in nationalistic lore, though I have read that captured Manila pandays had difficulty learning how to cast modern Spanish cannon, can’t remember the source though but it is unfortunately quite probable. Pira might have been a Bornean import, even though Bonifacio managed to have a lantaka cast in Balara centuries later, so the technology was there but barely improved and useless against modern fortifications. So I guess that’s how it is.
P.S. I researched very deeply into Magellan’s expedition from 2019 to 2021, even visiting the Seville exhibition commemorating the start in 1519.
Magellan was, especially based on how he dealt with the mutiny at the Southern tip of the American content where IIRC one ship was burned and another turned back, a FAR bigger asshole than Elon Musk. But one who had more skin in the game.
His risk was technologically not as high as Mars, but he was in hitherto uncharted waters. Though possibly, Kidlat Tahimik’s speculation that Enrique de Malacca might have had Austronesian wayfinding knowledge might be true but can never be proven or disproven.
While one can appreciate Kidlat Tahimik’s art (I find his style more like eclecticism, which I don’t find that interesting or original), Kidlat Tahimik might be closer to artist communes in small American liberal arts colleges than the various titles of praise he’s been given. Which brings to mind, my understanding is that Kidlat Tahimik mostly inhabits circles of like-minded “artists,” who came from more affluent Manila cliques. Not sure how such hippie circles that are far-removed from the average Filipino is representative of what it means to be a Filipino.
Enrique de Malacca might be another example the Filipino need to adopt something or someone perceived as great, in order to borrow that perceived greatness. I’ve heard from quite a few educated Cebuanos that Enrique de Malacca is definitely Visayan, though it doesn’t seem like that to me based on available records. I wonder what basis the late Prof. Carlos Quirino had to claim Enrique de Malacca was a Cebuano, rather than the other way around being the fact that Bahasa was the lingua franca of Mindanao, Visayas and parts of Luzon during that period. Well, just bringing up that as a question usually makes people very angry that the identity they feel like they have learned is challenged, like every other topic related to questionable events in Filipino history.
(P.S. still waiting for Musk to ride one of his rockets.)
Yes, the Kidlat Tahimik podcast this Sunday had him mentioning how he was at first an MBA graduate and economist working in Paris who went to Munich to make extra money during the 1972 Olympics. He had 500 dachshunds made out of capiz shells and even had a jeepney in Munich but was stuck with 200 capiz dogs in a warehouse and in sum nothing earned after the terrorist killing of Israeli athletes dipped the mood of the general public.
He had to save and chose to live in an artist’s collective outside town, including some filmmaking students AND his Bavarian to-be wife Katrin. The way Katrin romanticizes Filipino kapwa is very her generation and that Kidlat has Gerhard Polt in his first movie isn’t surprising.
Though Gerhart Polt does have milestone movies like Man Spricht Deutsh (sic, German spoken spelled wrong in the part of Italy known as the Teuton grill near Rimini, where 1970s Germans went to tan and usually still insisted on eating Schnitzel) which humorously mocks prejudices. But then again, German culture, just like American culture, always had a bit of duality, with the Toscana faction back then making it a point to be connoisseurs of Italian cuisine and wines. Americans, too, had those stereotyping Mexicans as well as the hippies who went to Yucatan and lived on the beach in Tulum as opposed to the package tourists going to Cancun hotels.
Xiao Chua sticks to the evidence BTW as a serious historian and points out that Enrique, as per Pigafetta, only spoke to the datus, who most probably spoke Bahasa while the people didn’t. Probably, he learned Cebuano quickly after jumping ship or went home wherever that was.
Lapulapu might have been one of many datus from more southern areas who probably tried to grab power in the archipelago, probably a bit like the Greeks colonizing the Western Med. The Bruneians in Manila and the legends of Datu Puti and Handyong point in that direction. The recent Kingdom movie at MMFF which has a Kingdom of Kalayaan in a never colonized archipelago neglects that an extended Brunei, including Palawan and Manila, and a Sulu-Sabah state, plus a Woukou-controlled Cagayan valley, might have lead to totally different states. Re the woukous it is likely that the Japanese the Spanish fought in the “Battle of Cagayan” were woukous. That the only ancient castle on the archipelago on Batanes is similar to old Okinawan castles is interesting as well. Nations evolve, often in strange ways, and are not predestined.
I don’t think the Pantayong Pananaw which your father championed is necessarily bad. It’s good to reflect inwards on one’s self to find who one’s identity really is. What I think was one of the bad outcomes of Pantayong Pananaw was that two generations of UP students thus far since the 1970s apparently became even more confused about their identity, and subsequently disseminated that confusion into general Filipino society, which I don’t think was your father’s goal. I have a suspicion that the prevalent undertones of Joma’s teachings among a subset of UP students during the same period also added to the confusing mess. Instead of challenging the Pangkayo perspective, it seems like to me that instead students took the wrong lesson and “Filipinized” non-Filipino concepts while not acknowledging the Western origins, which seems to defeat the purpose of your father’s theory. With students who were influenced by Joma but were not hardcore Maoists, they seem to have internalized far-left beliefs that existed in very small American liberal arts colleges, without understanding the original context, taking on “scene” terminology such as labeling everything they don’t like as “colonialism.” This is quite similar to how elite, privileged White students of those small American liberal arts colleges borrowed terms from let’s say the African American self-determination movements as a form of virtue signalling and bastardized the terms in the process, made worse by social media (especially Twitter cliques) which is why we have things like people in France and Germany railing against “CRT” without even understanding what the heck that means.
Btw I have never understood why “kanluranin” is used as a near-slur in the Philippines. To close off one’s mind to outside ideas that might be helpful to adopt while jealously guarding all “native” ideas or habits, even the bad, seems counter-productive in growth. It’s going to be really tough to convince people who are captured by modern datus (ahem, dynasts), weighed down by “stuff,” and cannot easily move as the ancient Filipinos could move to another barangay. The only solution I can think of is trying to improve education in any way possible, while increasing the economic situation of families to the point where they hold leaders responsible for protecting that “stuff.” Filipinos put up with a lot of things they should not need to.
I have a feeling that Marcos Sr. had a hand in popularizing the “Filipinization” movements again by his monument building craze, which seemed to mark the break from the more reasoned aspirations of the early Third Republic. Actually the famous Lapu-lapu statue in Mactan (Mactan Shrine) was one of Marcos Sr.’s monuments. I really doubt Lapu-lapu existed that deeply in even Cebuano minds prior to that time. Some things need to be taught and drilled into for a generation or more, like the valorization of the Revolution and the Katipuneros, all glory and complete eyes-shut-ears-plugged approach to any of the bad. See, they failed only because those nasty Amerikanos (or Kastila before them)! I wonder how some would react if they knew that Lapu-lapu may have been Bornean, and returned to Borneo shortly after the Battle of Mactan, never being heard from again. For some who may be trying to justify their own perceived greatness (but actually covering up their own insecurity), lapses in history provide convenient empty spaces to fill in… I just wished more Filipinos were proud of who they are, and what each ethnic group and Filipinos as a whole have achieved, and how the Philippines can build on that actual greatness, rather than resort to embellishments to fit into a pre-existing mold, which may actually be what Filipinization is trying to excuse.
P.S. just remembered that original statue of Lapu-lapu in the then municipality of Opon (Lapu-Lapu City) was erected in 1933. The original statue was of crude stone and selected Lapu-lapu with a crossbow (a non-indigenous weapon) preparing to shoot the poisoned arrow that wounded Magellan. A folk religion developed among the local Oponganons (especially fisherfolk and wet market workers) where they would pray to the statue for permission to fish around the island. Allegedly a few Opon mayors died of Lapu-lapu’s curse throughout the 1930s when they attempted to change the statue’s weapon from a crossbow to the native Visayan súndang sword. There are some Oponganons, mostly the oldies, who still pray to Lapu-lapu as if a Christian saint at his present bronze statue shrine built by Marcos Sr. An example of the power of syncretic folk belief among the poor in the Philippines, especially in the Visayas and areas of Mindanao with Visayan settlement.
Well the Japanese have introduced some reforms to counter the phenomenon of karōshi in Japanese corporate salaryman culture. A formal law was passed by the Japanese Diet in 2014 to address karōshi. Many Japanese corporations, including the ones I worked for started instituting work-life balance guidelines long before that. For example when I was posted both at Toyota and Honda, the limit on voluntary overtime was 30 hours a month, with overtime paid rather than being informally expected as part of the previous salaryman culture. When I worked in Japan, I pretty much left the office whenever I felt like it once I had accomplished my work for the day. Those who try to work over the voluntary limit were sent home by managers. With labor shortages due to Japanese dropping out of the labor market due to pressure or simply lack of sufficient labor pool, Japanese workers actually have quite a bit of worker power nowadays. There do exist some fly-by-night “black companies” that skirt official Japanese labor laws though, mostly associated with Yakuza-related businesses in which the employees are non-Japanese (Zainichi Koreans mostly.) I would say Western IT workers are much more exploited, with many American IT workers routinely working 60+ hour weeks, but there are ways to get past that with better time management and setting expectations about hours required per task during the project planning stage. I suppose us Americans are quite lazy, though amazingly the US is one of the most productive nations in terms of labor productivity… pretty much tied with Germany.
That’s good to know. I wonder if the workers prioritize family over, say, golf. I presume more women are entering the workforce? There were exactly zero among the hundreds of junior-to-senior executives rotating through our company. The US workforce is only lazy after work, I think, not on the job. There are so many ways to have fun in the US. On the job there is discipline, efficiency, and incented hard work. Opportunity for advancement is such a huge motivator. The Philippine leaders don’t grasp the concept, or don’t have the strength/ courage to accept well-motivated junior executives.
Overall I think American workers are much more efficient than Japanese workers, even now. It’s good to work hard, but better to work smart as some say. The Japanese often get “stuck” on doing their jobs perfectly, and I really admire that. Americans on the other hand, do their jobs “perfect enough,” and move on to the next task. After all, in Production no one cares about perfect code, perfect routines, or perfect operating procedure. All the user/customer cares about is “does it work?” This is something I try to remind my software developers and analysts of all the time.
But yes, American workers still go have fun after work and so do Japanese. I think the two cultures approach after work activities differently though. Americans tend to go have fun for the enjoyment, while a lot of Japanese nightlife is geared towards salaryman after hours, such as izakaya establishments which serve a purpose akin to what American diners and greasy spoons used to serve. Well then there are hostess bars as well, or karaoke. Golf started becoming popular in the Japanese asset bubble when salarymen had more disposable cash before the bubble’s collapse in the early 1990s, and I think overall golf is a bit less popular now unless let’s say an aspiring worker is trying to build a relationship with upper management. Golf is a pretty expensive sport in the US; even more expensive in Japan.
A lot of this old Japanese salarymen culture started in the 1930s under the early Showa period when trains became widespread, connecting small towns to larger cities like Tokyo. The salaryman culture developed not only because of the long work hours and needing to blow off steam, but also because men often spent long commutes from their towns to offices in the city, so workplaces would build suites, showers and other accommodations to attract workers. Eventually many men just stayed at the office for days on end because it’d be too time consuming to commute everyday. That gave a rise to practices like “compensated dating” as their wives were back home in the town. Nowadays due to population stagnation and newer generations saying “no” to toxic work culture, less men are becoming salarymen, so corporations are recruiting women. Japan is still a quite misogynistic culture (even though it is a politely misogynistic one). There has never been a female Japanese PM, though there were/are female governors. Just look to the Japanese imperial succession debate regarding the emperor’s daughter as the biggest example. I guess the US isn’t that much better, as Americans still reject having a female president.
On the Philippine side, as I mused about in another comment, perhaps one of the main blockers for Philippine business advancement is that Philippine businesses, even the very large publicly traded conglomerates, still run quite similarly to a family business. Promotions seem to be based more on personal relationships and alliances, rather than merit and ability. Get enough unqualified people into positions of power and they will move to protect their power, especially from gifted rising stars. In the US, publicly traded companies have fiduciary responsibility to shareholders and promote competency… though for some reason CEOs always seem to be incompetent (long story on this, but it’s related to the deregulation of stock buybacks under Reagan). There are other countries that have found medians that work out. Being a young country, and a relatively “young” culture in terms of that the Philippines is still homogenizing a national identity, it would be to the benefit of the Philippines to pick and choose the best practices done by others, then adapt it for Filipino culture. That would take some responsibility and a lot of hard work by leaders though…
“I suppose us Americans are quite lazy, though amazingly the US is one of the most productive nations in terms of labor productivity… “
vs.
( i think 5 is important, and what PNOY lacked)
there has to be detachment from facts and interpretations (opinions).
The statement does not say opinions are not constructive. It says take good care of your mental health. Let go of all the angst, all the hate.
I think number five is not needed if executives are indeed courageous, and smart. It wears on people, the assholery. I thought we were done with Musk. He is absolutely unAmerican and destructive. I don’t know why you keep promoting the jerk.
Personally, I think PNoy gave his all to the Philippines when he could’ve just had a nice, comfortable life as an Aquino. A rarity in Filipino politics. He was the true definition of sacrifice — trying to help his fellow countrymen in which required him to give up quite a bit. The problem was not with PNoy. The problem was that the nation is impatient and expected a magician, while not appreciating PNoy’s hard work (the economy of which Duterte boasted about as “his”). Well a lot of that hard work went down the drain with Duterte’s mismanagement.
True. And in fact he was an “asshole” to corrupt people like Arroyo and Napoles, so the easy labels, like that he was “too nice”, absolutely don’t work. He was a determined, and in some regards, stubborn, man who ran the presidency well. I’d venture to say most critics could not even come close to running a country well. The fact that they criticize competency rather proves the point.
It’s always easier to criticize when one has no responsibility for anything, nor wants to volunteer to take responsibility. A microcosm in human societies, no matter where.
Clever, Industrious, Lazy, Stupid. makes sense.
That followers can retract their consent from a leader. that makes sense too.
Get in the weeds, make sense. I had a Colonel who did that, didn’t have to he coulda just left it to Captains and LTs.
Question everything makes sense. especially dogmas, eg. we’ve always done it like this.
Sense of urgency. police military have this, but private sector usually don’t. ER, fire, etc. too. doesn’t transfer to private sector usually, especially when theres unions.
Motivating talented people. can be an HR issue, going back to that von Hammer- Equord matrix. like chemistry. or like Duke Ellington getting individuals to compete, etc. or get lazy and stupid to get stuff done like how is the question…
That’s where number 5 comes in. can be general level in military constant trolley problems who dies who doesn’t calculus like in WWII; GWOT was mostly battalion level so not so much trolley problems really, but same same getting certain individuals by putting fire on their asses. that to me is asshole leadership. works for industrious stupid too. keeps them isolated.
But I think Musk’s leadership assholery is more akin to Steve Jobs. and the biographer Walter Isaacson. in the videos of him comparing both men says this. that he’s got talented people already but to squeeze them for more, many times making them realize what they thought they did not have. that i think is the Elon Musk number 5 per Isaacson.
In the Marines, I just saw number 5 being asshole applied to the bottom squares of that matrix. but I guess Musk and Jobs used it too for their upper squares. so I’m thinking that’s probably what makes the difference.
The secret sauce if you will.
Courage to be disliked and Marcus Aurelius not having an opinion on the matter, is both about distancing oneselve. both Jobs and Musk do this. I saw this, with field grade officers. lower officers though have to get in the weeds. so opinions are constructive, just be able to step back.
So for me, the variable, one I never experienced , is applying number 5 assholery to upper squares of that matrix.
How that assholery is used is important, goes back again to Adler and Aurelius on distancing from the opinions. Jobs, Musk and Trump have this, they throw a tantrum dramatized or real i’m not too sure, but that asshole move gets people the top people to get off their butts and get stuff done. then Jobs, Musk, Trump move on, like they don’t internalize it this asshole force like fear passed thru them, and they move on to the next problem.
So using the Bene Gesirit mantra:
“I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where my assholery has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain”
this is about Elon Musk per se now but on leadership in general. per Isaacson’s Jobs and Musk compare & contrast as leaders.
this is *not about Elon Musk per se now…
To borrow kb’s Ahem. Ahem!
My dad spent most of his career in Logistics both for the Entire AFP through the AFP Logistics Commanf and the Navy’s Military Industrial Complex which was called Naval Support Command back then, it had a new name now which I forgot.
Answer to Joey about our AFP and Logistics.
That’s great Karl! I’m really glad that the AFP is moving more towards mobility, which logistics will play a big role in. Typhon launchers are substantial. Perhaps there would be a role for the Philippines to gain a local production license in the future, but I imagine the Philippines is already capable of manufacturing shorter range MLRS as these are simple rocket systems with satellite and inertial guidance. Filipinos love their fireworks, and I’ve seen even little kids intuitively figure out firework trajectory, so let’s put those skills to good work and create future engineers!
A really great story here, thanks! One thing the US is so good at, is identifying talent across the world and turning those talented people into future Americans. Come to think about it, aside from having Canada and Mexico as neighbors, the US is separated from the world by two vast oceans. The people who strive to come to the US are probably the hardest working, most determined people, and I’m glad that they have the potential to become an American. I only wish the Philippines, which doesn’t have much immigration to the Philippines, recognized the talents of her own children rather than sending them out to the world. Imagine what this Cebuano engineer could’ve done to help improve the nation if he was valued back home.
Irineo was one of the trailblazers in Europe.
There is an Oracle and SAP Philippines .
IBM and Accenture where my wife worked and used to work.
My wife almost got assigned to the US once but she got pregnant irh ny on and only kid.
I had a former office mate who implemented ERPs here moved to the US
Probably Joey didn’t meet any Filipinos in ERP as they are indeed comparatively few. That is also because there are very few SAP customers in the Philippines. I don’t know about Oracle Financials, though. I was not a trailblazer. I was a lone ranger. Maybe even a Lone wolf.
Because of how some Filipino UN programmers treated me (hindi raw marunong, not Big 3 like them all that, and yes they had good experience with some years after bachelor’s while I was fresh from masters with just part-time experience before that) I avoided Filipinos for a decade.
In fact, my mindset long was “tang ina ninyong lahat bakit ko kayo tutulungan,” and I even ignored an offer to become delivery manager for a German firm with SAP programmers in Metro Manila. Even a project offer by a former SAP Philippines Pisay batchmate I just let slide.
I got to know the Frankfurt colleagues due to Pink in 2022 as at least one was part of that.
Previously, I probably would have avoided Pinoys in my specialty easily because there aren’t that many, avoiding the toxic mindset that easily finds fault in people not part of their tropa.
If I had not gotten into this blog, I might have died all alone in the cold abroad, totally forgotten! Now, of course, that is OA, as Joey might say. And it just started snowing yesterday here..
Thank you all for not getting tired of sharing your wisdom, knowledge and other life lessons.
Welcome, I will share not only the bits of wisdom and knowledge I have but also the life lessons, aka foolishness.
Maybe one lesson I have learned from my own interactions with Filipinos and observing their interactions both abroad and not us that we need to find ways to communicate and cooperate more constructively. Maybe being cornier, but less OA is a start? 😉
Excellent
This might be connected to the Mars blog:
some backgrounder:
I tried many iterations in chat got.
I kept on getting economic answers so I kept on trying til they got LCX’s analysis right.
Here it is.
The article “Salvation by Austerity” from The Society of Honor blog, published on September 15, 2015, explores a philosophical argument advocating for austerity as a moral and practical response to the challenges of modern society. It highlights the concept of simplicity, humility, and sustainability as potential antidotes to the excesses of consumerism, materialism, and environmental degradation.
Key Themes and Arguments:
The author reflects on the evolution of human societies, particularly the establishment of social contracts, the separation of church and state, and the increasing secularization of morality. These historical shifts have created a society where material wealth often replaces spiritual and moral frameworks.
The article suggests that a shift toward austerity—characterized by living within means, simplicity, and humility—could provide a modern moral compass. This approach seeks to address the spiritual and societal void created by the decline of traditional religious and cultural values.
The piece critiques modern life’s excesses, including the relentless pursuit of wealth, overconsumption, and environmental exploitation. These behaviors, the author argues, are unsustainable and contribute to societal inequities, environmental harm, and personal dissatisfaction.
By embracing austerity, individuals and societies could prioritize sustainability and equity. This would foster coexistence among diverse cultures and beliefs, countering the divisiveness and conflict often fueled by material competition and cultural misunderstandings.
The author critiques contemporary “superstitions,” such as blind consumerism or uncritical faith in economic growth, suggesting they perpetuate societal harm. Austerity, framed as a rational and moral choice, is presented as a means to achieve deeper understanding and global harmony.
Reflection and Analysis:
While the article offers a compelling argument for austerity, it is fundamentally an opinion piece grounded in philosophical reasoning rather than empirical evidence. Its strengths lie in its capacity to provoke thought and encourage readers to critically examine their values and lifestyle choices. However, the concept of austerity, as presented, may face practical challenges:
Economic Implications: Reducing consumption on a societal scale could impact economies heavily reliant on consumer spending.
Cultural Barriers: Austerity may conflict with cultural norms and aspirations, particularly in developing countries where material success is often equated with progress.
Implementation Challenges: Encouraging widespread adoption of austerity would require significant cultural and educational efforts to shift societal values.
Connections to Broader Discourses:
The themes discussed in “Salvation by Austerity” resonate with contemporary debates on:
Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs): Aligns with goals such as responsible consumption (SDG 12) and climate action (SDG 13).
Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) Principles: Advocates for sustainable business practices and reduced environmental footprints.
Minimalist Movements: Echoes modern trends that prioritize minimalism, zero waste, and conscious living.
Conclusion:
“Salvation by Austerity” is a thought-provoking exploration of the moral and practical merits of adopting simplicity and sustainability in modern life. While it offers valuable insights into the potential benefits of austerity, its applicability depends on broader societal willingness to reconsider deeply ingrained values and behaviors. This article serves as a reflective piece that invites readers to ponder their roles in fostering a more sustainable and equitable world.
===
Was it Bill Clinton who said : It’s the economy, stupid?
Here is the economy. It chose the timeline of article, this it was an analysis of the Aquino government.
To incorporate the concepts of de-growth and the tragedy of the commons into the analysis of the Philippines’ economic policies during the Aquino administration (2010-2016), we need to examine the broader implications of austerity and fiscal measures in the context of sustainable development, resource management, and the limitations of growth-focused policies.
De-growth is an economic paradigm that challenges the conventional pursuit of continuous economic growth, particularly in the context of finite natural resources and environmental limits. The premise of de-growth is that excessive economic growth often leads to environmental degradation, social inequality, and the over-exploitation of resources.
During President Aquino’s administration, the Philippines saw substantial growth in GDP, with an average of 6.4% per year. However, while this growth contributed to economic stability and credit rating upgrades, it also raised questions about the sustainability of such growth. As the Philippine economy grew, so did the demand for resources, such as energy, water, and raw materials, which increased pressure on the environment.
Austerity measures, such as reducing government spending while simultaneously aiming for increased revenue, can sometimes exacerbate the negative effects of unrestrained growth. For example, fiscal discipline might prioritize macroeconomic stability over long-term environmental sustainability. With policies aimed at managing fiscal deficits, such as the Sin Tax Reform Law (which raised taxes on tobacco and alcohol), there is a potential conflict between short-term economic reforms and the larger, more systemic issue of resource depletion, environmental degradation, and inequality.
De-growth as an Alternative Approach could have been considered to balance fiscal discipline with sustainability, focusing on reducing the negative externalities of growth. This would involve rethinking development priorities, moving away from a singular focus on GDP growth and towards measures of well-being, environmental protection, and equitable wealth distribution.
The tragedy of the commons refers to a situation in which individuals, acting in their own self-interest, overuse and deplete a shared resource, despite understanding that this behavior will ultimately be detrimental to the collective good. This concept is often applied to natural resources like fisheries, forests, and water, where unregulated access leads to overexploitation.
In the Philippines, one of the most pressing issues related to the tragedy of the commons is the overfishing in its vast maritime territory. While the Aquino administration focused on economic growth and fiscal reforms, the environmental costs of rapid development, particularly in resource-intensive industries like fishing, were often sidelined. The Philippine fishing industry, for instance, has faced significant challenges, such as illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing, overfishing, and habitat destruction. These problems are exacerbated by a lack of effective governance, enforcement, and shared responsibility over maritime resources.
The tragedy of the commons is also evident in the Philippines’ natural resources management, particularly in coastal and marine ecosystems. Without strong policies and regulations on sustainable resource use, individuals and businesses may exploit these resources without considering the long-term consequences for society as a whole.
Incorporating the tragedy of the commons into the policy framework would call for a shift towards collective action and sustainable resource management. Rather than viewing natural resources as commodities to be maximized for immediate economic benefit, this approach would prioritize ecosystem health and long-term sustainability. For example, integrating marine protected areas (MPAs), stricter regulations on fishing practices, and strengthening the role of local communities in resource management could help mitigate the tragedy of the commons in the Philippines.
To align the Philippines’ economic policies with sustainable development goals, it’s crucial to recognize that growth and development cannot be viewed in isolation from environmental limits and social well-being. By integrating de-growth principles and addressing the tragedy of the commons, the country could consider:
Sustainable Resource Management: Prioritizing the protection of shared resources, such as fisheries and forests, through collective management strategies and stricter enforcement of environmental laws.
Circular Economy Models: Promoting policies that reduce waste, increase resource efficiency, and recycle materials, ensuring that growth does not come at the expense of environmental sustainability.
Green Infrastructure and Renewable Energy: Redirecting investments into green infrastructure, renewable energy, and technologies that reduce carbon footprints and environmental degradation.
Redistribution of Wealth: Addressing inequalities that arise from growth-centric economic models by implementing social safety nets, improving access to education and healthcare, and promoting local, sustainable industries.
Conclusion
By incorporating de-growth and the tragedy of the commons, the Philippines can move towards a more sustainable and inclusive development model. While the Aquino administration’s policies contributed to economic growth and fiscal stability, they could have benefited from a more holistic approach that considers long-term environmental sustainability and equitable resource management. Going forward, the Philippines has the opportunity to balance growth with the protection of its natural resources and the well-being of its citizens, making both economic and environmental sustainability central to its development agenda.
Now as to Mars I asked about Plasma gasification, carbon capture and food from the air? Now all we need to worry about is the gravity.(huge understatement).
Plasma Gasification, Carbon Capture, and Air Protein: A Martian Trio?
Let’s delve into the potential of these technologies for a Martian colony:
Plasma Gasification: A Martian Waste-to-Resource Solution
What is Plasma Gasification?
It’s a high-temperature process that converts waste into valuable resources like syngas (a mixture of hydrogen and carbon monoxide) and inert slag.
How could it benefit a Martian colony?
Carbon Capture: A Martian Air Purification System
What is Carbon Capture?
It’s a technology that captures carbon dioxide from the atmosphere or industrial processes.
How could it benefit a Martian colony?
Air Protein: A Martian Food Source
What is Air Protein?
It’s a protein produced by fermenting microorganisms on air and water, using carbon dioxide as a carbon source.
How could it benefit a Martian colony?
Challenges and Considerations
In conclusion, these technologies offer intriguing possibilities for a sustainable Martian colony. However, significant research and development are needed to overcome the challenges and fully realize their potential.
Would you like to delve deeper into any specific technology or discuss other potential solutions for a Martian colony?
Back to Mars
After figuring out how to handle waste, food and resource management we go to water.
Using a freeze ray to capture and freeze CO₂ on Mars is an intriguing idea that taps into the planet’s unique atmospheric composition, which is over 95% carbon dioxide. This concept aligns with efforts to terraform Mars or generate resources in situ for human exploration. Here’s an outline of how such a concept might work and the potential outcomes:How It Could Work1. Freeze Ray Technology: A device or system capable of producing extremely low temperatures to condense CO₂ directly from Mars’ atmosphere into dry ice.Temperature Requirements: CO₂ condenses into dry ice at temperatures below -78.5°C (-109.3°F) at Earth-like pressures. Mars’ low atmospheric pressure (around 0.6% of Earth’s) means CO₂ naturally freezes at temperatures as low as -125°C.Energy Source: Solar power, nuclear energy, or other sustainable sources would be needed to power the freeze ray.2. Collection Mechanism: The freeze ray could be paired with a vacuum system to pull CO₂ directly from the atmosphere, or it could operate in naturally CO₂-dense areas.Frozen CO₂ would be collected as dry ice for storage or immediate processing.3. Conversion to Water:Dry Ice Sublimation: Dry ice could be used as a heat sink to trigger sublimation in other frozen substances on Mars, such as underground water ice.Chemical Reactions: Through reactions like hydrogenation (using H₂ sourced from water electrolysis or imported), CO₂ could be converted into water (H₂O) and methane (CH₄), a usable fuel.Challenges1. Energy Intensity: Maintaining temperatures low enough to freeze CO₂ requires significant energy input, especially on a planetary scale.2. Scale: To terraform or generate meaningful amounts of water, the technology would need to operate on an enormous scale.3. Pressure Dynamics: Mars’ low atmospheric pressure affects the freezing and sublimation processes, requiring precise engineering.Potential Benefits1. Terraforming: CO₂ capture could reduce greenhouse gases, allowing other gases to dominate the atmosphere over time, potentially warming the planet indirectly via controlled greenhouse effects.2. Water Production: Combining frozen CO₂ with hydrogen could generate water for future habitats.3. Fuel Creation: Methane production from CO₂ and hydrogen is another byproduct that supports human missions.The Long-Term GoalUsing freeze rays to manipulate CO₂ on Mars could be a step toward establishing a sustainable human presence. It combines scientific innovation with a focus on resource utilization, aligning with concepts like in-situ resource utilization (ISRU) and long-term terraforming ambitions.Would you like a more detailed technical breakdown or exploration of a related concept?
As to Gravity, NASA is on top of things.
NASA has conducted and continues to conduct a variety of gravity-related experiments to prepare for human missions to Mars. These experiments are designed to understand the effects of reduced gravity on human health, equipment, and overall mission success. Below are key areas and examples of NASA’s efforts:
Mars has about 38% of Earth’s gravity. Simulating this gravity on Earth is challenging but crucial. NASA uses different approaches:
Parabolic Flights: Aircraft perform parabolic maneuvers to create short bursts of reduced gravity (~20-30 seconds), simulating Martian gravity.
Partial-Gravity Simulators: Devices like vertical treadmills and body-weight support systems mimic Mars gravity by offloading a percentage of a person’s body weight.
Long-term exposure to lower gravity impacts muscles, bones, and the cardiovascular system. NASA uses:
Bed Rest Studies: Participants lie at an incline to mimic the effects of reduced gravity on the body, such as muscle atrophy and bone density loss.
ISS Experiments: The International Space Station (ISS) provides a microgravity environment to study physiological changes, which are compared to partial-gravity models for Mars.
Key findings include:
Bone density loss (osteoporosis-like effects).
Muscle weakening and atrophy.
Changes in fluid distribution (fluid shifts toward the head).
Altered vision due to intracranial pressure changes.
To counteract the adverse effects of reduced gravity, NASA is exploring artificial gravity:
Centrifuges: These create artificial gravity by spinning the subject to simulate gravitational forces. Smaller centrifuge prototypes have been tested on Earth and in space.
Rotational Habitat Designs: NASA is researching spacecraft designs that use rotation to generate artificial gravity during transit to Mars.
Reduced gravity can impact mental health and cognitive function, especially during prolonged isolation:
HI-SEAS and HERA Analog Missions: Simulated Mars habitats on Earth help study human behavior, teamwork, and psychological adaptation in reduced-gravity scenarios.
Mars missions will require humans to perform tasks in reduced gravity, such as:
Walking and running on Martian terrain (tested using gravity simulators and lunar analogs).
Handling tools and operating vehicles, which are tested in partial-gravity simulators.
NASA also uses facilities like the Neutral Buoyancy Lab (NBL) to simulate partial gravity in underwater environments.
Robots and tools must function effectively in Mars gravity. Key experiments include:
Testing rovers and robotic arms in simulated Martian gravity.
Studying how reduced gravity impacts fuel consumption, drilling, and material handling.
The ISS serves as a laboratory to test technologies and understand the long-term effects of microgravity. These findings are extrapolated to predict and mitigate challenges posed by Mars gravity.
NASA’s Gateway Lunar Orbiting Platform will provide further opportunities to study partial gravity effects before Mars missions.
Future Research and Plans
Mars Analog Missions: NASA and other agencies simulate Mars missions on Earth and in space to refine life-support systems, habitat designs, and crew performance in reduced gravity.
Collaborations with ESA and Roscosmos: International efforts to study gravity-related challenges.
These experiments will culminate in the development of strategies and technologies to ensure astronaut safety and mission success on Mars.
for sure DE Filipinos and their progeny will be able to dunk easy, karl.
As Woody Harelson almost proved Wesley Snipes assertion that White Man can’t jump.
I will prove wrong your assertion that Pinoy DEs can’t jump.
Just watch a basketball game near Mango Avenue and be amazed.
(insert youtube- LCX you do it hehe)
I am in awe, karl. even in Earth gravity they’re defying it.
Told you hehehe