Here we go again, dressed up as responsibility. This week, The Manila Times reported that the Philippines is considering mandatory social media user verification to curb abuse. The pitch is neat and comforting. Order over chaos. Safety over noise. Names over anonymity. The subtext is even clearer: if everyone can be identified, everyone can be managed. That is not about
Category: Politics
Somewhere inside Malacañang Palace, there is a comforting belief that corruption can be outsmarted by software. Not confronted. Not dismantled. Outcoded. Just add blockchain, say transparency a few times, roll out a pilot, and suddenly decades of theft, patronage, and selective justice politely excuse themselves and leave. It never works that way, but we pretend it does. Yes, Filipinos might
This week I just started reading The Dictator’s Handbook by Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and Alastair Smith, and I am only up to Chapter 2, Coming to Power. That is already enough to make me question my book choices. Some people unwind with novels. Others read productivity manuals. I apparently relax by reading a cold, clinical explanation of why bad
We are not ready for what’s coming, and we still think we’re fine… … and yet we do not realize how much we are f*cked. Not mildly inconvenienced. Not challenged. Effed in the quiet, structural way that only becomes obvious when it is already irreversible. In the Philippines, flooding has been downgraded from crisis to background noise. It is something
Keep your eyes open and keep your mind open.Fear wants obedience. Virtue wants silence.Thinking wants neither. I used to think I was choosing a side. I read what I was supposed to read. I repeated what sounded informed. I learned the tone, the cadence, the approved outrage. I told myself this was thinking. It was not. It was compliance with