Ella Fitzgerald and The Inkspots - Into Each Life Some Rain Must Fall

The Vapist

So we're going after the vaper crowd now are we?

It's sad how the government has gone from chasing after supposed drug pushers to chasing after hipsters with their little car cigarette lighters. When all you have is a hammer, you look for nails. And what brought this on? Some guy maybe died from vaping? We don't even have all the facts, not that that's been a problem.

I thought that this sudden embarrassing display of petty anrcho-tyranny was due to the fact that the President gave up with his drug war and let the Vice-President have a crack at it. That violent  macho energy had to be channeled somewhere. But vapers?  But El Jefe went and fired the Vice-President anyway. So what was the point? What's the point to any of this?

I was skeptical at how the whole thing was carried out too. The President gave a speech and went off on a tangent about vaping, decided he hated it, and then declared that people caught vaping in public should be arrested. You know, that's not how it works. Usually, a law is passed, there's publication, and... ah, screw it. I've long given up thinking that this place has rules. The President says something dumb and out klutz cops have to look busy and produce things for their "quotas". Nothing of note was accomplished. Congratulations everyone.

Duterte was elected because people believed we needed a strong hand to run the government. But if this is what strongman rule peters out to, well it's just sad. You can't allow this if you're going the tough guy act. Duterte should reclaim the initiative. 

Maybe he should find some big name to kill. That usually cheers people up.

11/18/19

Another day, another new lump on my skin. It's not serious.

Sometimes a sign that things are changing for the better would be nice.

Saturation

They say the mind of a child is like a sponge in that it soaks everything up. It's all nice until you're older and the sponge is just a heavy, over-saturated mess. 

When I was younger, it always frustrated me that my elders didn't seem to keen on discussing "complicated" ideas. Now I understand why. When you're just a kid or a teen, there's really not a lot on your plate so you can consume all the new ideas you want. You've got the time and the energy. As you get older however, both these resources diminish along with your patience.

It's not that old people are incapable of learning, it's that they become choosy of what to learn. Time and energy are at a premium so at a certain point, it becomes a time/energy calculation on whether or not to entertain a new idea. What's the in thing nowadays? How about the concept of say, transgenderism for example. To learn all about this new thing, along with its rules and lingo, is taxing on a geezer who only just learned how Twitter works. "Is it really worth my time to ruminate on this?", one might say. Then you have to compare the value of new experimental knowledge versus old tried and true knowledge. Why would you want to learn all about these new, confusing genders when you and your generation got along fine with just two, and maybe the occasional gay here and there? 

Sometimes new knowledge comes with too many negatives. It's not worth learning about international politics, for example, when all it does is make you frustrated upon learning how helpless your country really is. Current events? Too depressing! Just give me the bullet points on who ate bullets this week. Besides, don't we have allegedly competent people in government whose job it is to keep track of these things? 

As another example of things being more trouble than they're worth, social media. If all social media did was feed your envy and anxiety over the lives other people are living, why get into it? As you get older, you ain't got time for that shit. It's not like in high school where you have all day to gossip and make others miserable.

I think I'm slowly but surely reaching the saturation point. Technology is making everything move in such a breakneck pace. Every week brings a new shiny thing we're compelled to ogle at or some new outrage to get worked up on. Everyone is pushing something, whether it be a product, a cause, or their own brand. Nuts to that.

I'll take my own goddamn time.

MrGrimes - Bruxism

Reality

Normally, the courtroom is where party-litigants finally get a chance to air their grievances. But once in a while, some overeager litigant makes their way to the back office looking for anyone who will listen to them. Small talk gives way to long narrations about what the facts "really are" or just how badly they've been wronged.

There's nothing the office drones can do about it except lend a sympathetic ear. Who hasn't been in a position where it seems the whole world is against you? There's a sadness and a desperation in their eyes. I didn't do it. It wasn't me. I was tricked. I didn't mean what I said. I'm telling the truth.

There's something very human about it. Rich or poor, everyone has their own idea about right and wrong. Everyone has their own version of reality where they're the heroic underdog fighting against  the insidious forces conspiring against them. Everyone has their own way of looking at the world and that comes with it ideas on what is the greatest good and what is worst evil. A sense of justice innate in human beings, even among the simplest of us.

However, human beings are limited. They are limited in knowledge of facts. They are limited in understanding. They are limited in empathy for other's position. A persons idea of the world and his sense of justice is not and cannot be the ultimate truth in all circumstances and at all times. People often don't see eye to eye and the world itself will never bend to anyone's vision. The ego reels. It's amazing what the human mind will concoct to avoid admitting that it might be wrong. It will argue. It will scream. It will fight.

What happens when our worlds collide? When one man's vision goes against another? Historically, it usually ends up with someone's skull getting smashed in. But we are evolved and civilized creatures. One of the benefits of society is a justice system, where disputes are settled. Out of the many chaotic, competing versions of reality, a greater order is imposed. After due process, there is at last submission to authority; a reality accepted, often begrudgingly, in the interest of justice and social harmony. There is conformity to the greater ideals society has ordered itself upon. It's transcendental, almost.

Nowadays I'm not sure of anything. Looking back at all the things I've written, I wonder if any of it is still true or if it even was in the first place.

Things are scarcely what they seem.

Enigma - Return To Innocence

Undercover - Never Let Her Slip Away

On Writing

I've had time to reflect. 

People who have read my blog tell me that I'm a good writer. I disagree but I'm glad at some people don't feel the need to claw their eyes out. As I look at some of the older posts in this blog, a lot of them are quite terrible. I don't mean to brag but I'm never satisfied with what I write, to be honest. Still, I'm trying to improve despite the lack of activity in this blog. 

What makes a good writer? There's no easy answer. I'm sure people long ago were well-read and had high standards. Nowadays, it's considered an impressive feat if you can manage to crank out simple, coherent sentences, if Twitter is any indication. I don't pretend to be some genius but in my humble opinion, to be a good writer is to simply avoid being a bad one. Correct spelling and grammar go a long way, especially in this country where English is not the first language. Subject-verb agreement, proper tense, etc. The basics, really. Getting the fundamentals right (most of the time) is important. 

The only problem is writing something interesting.

Brevity is wit. I believe that the most important rule of good writing is to keep things short, brief, and concise. As I look at the stuff I've written in this blog, I find that a lot of the bad crap is due to me feeling the need to "add stuff in". There's this weird mentality in a lot of people, and I say that because I see this pattern often, of feeling the Freudian need to make paragraphs "bigger". 

People feel the need to pad out their paragraphs so they add useless sentences. I'm guilty of this and it takes conscious effort to avoid this bad habit. I think it has to do with aesthetics, thin paragraphs look so naked, like the point being made is not adequately clothed with supporting arguments. There's also the need to "get the money's worth", for a lack of better way to put it. It's like a doctor feeling the need to prescribe medicine for a minor passing ailment, if only to make the patient feel like the trip was worth it (they do it too in their own way).

When I was in college, my professors told the class that the ideal written piece is like a pair of briefs: it should cover only the important bits and leave room for the imagination. Of course, when I proceeded to do just that, I was told that I needed to "expound" more. No help there.

I believe this rule applies to all writing, whether creative or professional. God knows that a lot of professionally written papers need to be trimmed. Legal documents and pleadings are just full of vestigial words and phrases, and redundant redundancies heaped upon redundancies. There's so much redundancy in legalese: "null and void", "cease and desist", "alter or change", "depose and say", "due and payable", "lewd and lascivious", "liens and encumbrances", etc. These doublets are charmingly archaic but damn if they aren't tiresome. It is a practice among lawyers and law firms to charge their clients for the pleadings filed on a per page basis. Could such an inane policy be the source of my torment? 

Here's an example from a tortuous compromise agreement cooked up by some lawyers in one case:

"19. THE INVALIDITY OR INEFFICACY OF SOME TERMS AND CONDITIONS SHALL NOT AFFECT THE OTHERS - The parties hereto commit and undertake to fulfill and comply with the terms and conditions herein contained in all good faith and with the intention of carrying out the main objective of the instant Compromise Agreement of putting an end to the instant litigation. If, for whatever reason, any term or condition herein cannot be implemented or otherwise enforced whether voluntarily or through the compulsory processes of the Honorable Court, the parties hereby agree to treat and regard as valid and effective such other terms and conditions as my not be affected by such invalidity or in efficacy of such other terms and conditions."

What a headache. The first sentence has nothing to do with the title and doesn't even need to be said. If the compromise agreement were made by sensible people, it should read something like this:

"19. SEPARABILITY CLAUSE - If any provision of this Compromise Agreement shall be invalid, illegal, or unenforceable, the validity, legality, and enforceability of the remaining provisions shall not in any way be affected or impaired thereby."

Hmm, but it looks too thin, doesn't it?

Detached

The handful of people who read this blog are wondering why I haven't been writing anything recently. There are a couple of reasons.

Firstly, my work involves a lot of reading and writing, mostly of legal papers. It's all so tedious. The nature of legalese is to torture the reader. Whole paragraphs are used to explain what can be said in one sentence. You can't help but do it yourself. Sometimes the paragraphs don't look "fat" enough to be important, you know?

Naturally, when I get home I just want to chill and watch whatever rancid garbage Netflix has on offer or numb the brain with video games and what have you. Letters on a page I don't want to see.

Secondly, I have become very detached to politics and pop culture. I just don't feel much of anything anymore.

When it comes to politics, I'm at a loss. I'm finally understanding that I don't really understand. I feel like everything I'm seeing is a lie and everything I think I know is wrong. To put it in another way, I'm trying to reorganize the way I view the world, preferably into a way that's less disappointed and angry.

When it comes to pop culture, I'm getting over it. It's all garbage. It's nice to talk about with friends but it's ultimately meaningless. The "new" Lion King movie just made a trillion dollars or something at the box office. You can't help but be cynical. Since Philippine entertainment follows close to American entertainment, there's this "woke" garbage. Everything's moving so fast. It's all so tiring.

Is this what getting old feels like?

Morrissey - Suedehead

A Hole in the Wall

One of the bad things about my new home is that my room is directly beside the street. The noise outside is annoying. Sometimes it's unbearable, especially when the restaurants below decide to bring on the entertainment.

I hate it. It's the same damn songs sung by the same damn people. I can recognize the singers already. If I hear Buwan one more time...

What makes the problem worse is that all the noise comes in through the fixture where the air-conditioning unit is placed. My room practically has a gaping hole in the wall where all the noise comes in. The AC unit does nothing to block the noise. Sometimes, I can ever hear people having conversations on the small path on the floor below or even down the street. Every car passing and every motor revving is a drill in my brain. Maybe that's why I'm so cranky.

There has to be a solution.

One Step Forward, One Step Back

A sudden downpour marked the end of summer and the arrival of a new set of things to complain about. The time came to stop whining about the intolerable heat and to start whining about the unbearable rain. It rained for only thirty minutes yet downtown, and other parts of Cebu, were flooded. You would think a tropical country would have figured out a way to prevent this from happening. The flood was bad enough that it made front page news. 

I feel like I've been complaining about the flooding problem since forever. It's like Alzheimer's. Every year, the political discourse turns to the issue of flooding and how we should fix the problem. Once the season is over, it is conveniently forgotten by the people in charge. Nothing is really fixed. When the rainy season rolls around again, it's the same thing again. It's a rerun. It's a tired joke that's overstayed its welcome.

But thinking about it, the problem of flooding is never going to be fixed regardless of the yearly rituals of moaning and promises. It's not because our leaders are forgetful or that there's some malice involved. The reason why things like this are never fixed is because the system is so designed against long-term planning and sustained efforts - both are necessary to solve the problem. 

Every few years we elect a new set of clowns into office. What happens to the government programs advocated by the previous set is a a toss-up. If the new rulers were rivals of the last ones, then the programs would most likely be scrapped. All the efforts of their predecessors would be scrapped or, if we're lucky, simply forgotten and left to die a slow death from lack of funding. It's even worse since the people who succeed in politics are all sociopaths by necessity. Especially terrible sociopaths take great glee in tearing down the works of their hated enemies, the people be damned.

What's worse is that due to the shaky nature of our system, the planning of our leaders tend to end at the point of the next election cycle. Long-term planning is unreasonable when you could be gone the next time the cacophonous circus of the next election season rolls around. Thus, the citizenry are doomed to suffer half-assed efforts, and stop-and-start torture.

So the problems persist. This is why I'm not so optimistic about El Jefe's drug war. In 2022, when (or if) Duterte steps down, what happens to his campaign against drugs? Drug trafficking is a constant evil which will outlive all of us. The drug problem will most likely return. There's no guarantee that Duterte's successor, even if he/she be a named "heir", will continue the fight or enjoy the same kind of support which allowed the tolerance of Duterte's methods. What if a rival wins? Then everything would just stop, wouldn't it? We'd all just forget and then whine about the newest knee-jerk "problem" the media decides for the day. Duterte could kill a tens of thousands of the "bad guys" and it wouldn't matter in the long run, the system makes sure of that.

It's all so tiring.

Poppa Guv

The main cause of all our societal angst is the clash between idealism and cold, hard reality. If you read our constitution and the laws on the books, you'll find that it's all very Utopian in its outlook. I believe that the Philippines is a frustrated socialist country that dreams it could be like one of those fancy European welfare states. 

Every country gets the government it deserves. It's a bit too easy to blame the government for all our ills but we are a democracy, are we not? It's not like these politicians came down from a U.F.O. and into office. A missing piece of the jumbled puzzle that is our popular discourse is the role of the citizenry and its relationship to the government.

It all begins with the relationship. To cite as an example, and I'm not sure if this still applies today, the Americans have a view towards government that is different from ours. To the American, rights are God-given or, if you're not a believer, rights are "natural". The rights of a human being are inherent. Therefore, the role of the government is to safeguard those rights. The rights of a person do not depend on the grace of some governing body. As you would expect, this leads to a "people first" view on government. The government serves the people and is ultimately beholden to them. Hence, the stereotype of the gun-toting cowboy/redneck yelling about freedom and giving "the man" the middle finger.

How does the Filipino view the government? Whether through a quirk of history (colonialism), or whether through some kind of innate tendency, the Filipino sees the government as something above him. Government is separate from him. Though the Spaniards are gone, we still act as if our rulers have crowns. It's a very strange thing, it's almost monarchical or feudal the way this country operates. We view our leaders as either good kings or bad kings and the country prospers or suffers accordingly. We are democratic but we clearly believe in a very vertical hierarchy. We believe nothing can get done without the say so from on high. We have a "government first" view.

The attitude of the citizenry toward the government is like a child toward a parent. People, especially the poor, see the government as provider, i.e. "loving mother" or protector, i.e. "stern father". This is why I foresee the trajectory of Philippine society as inevitably ending in authoritarianism. Filipinos want to be taken care of. Personal freedom is not so highly prized and Filipinos tend to hesitate in acting independently. This is why socialism (we'll provide all) and authoritarianism (we kill the baddies) are very appealing. It's due to our doormat nature.

I hope I'm wrong but perhaps this theory will help explain why we ended up with someone like Duterte. Duterte is stern father. He's there to make the bad people go away so we can all have good beddy-byes at night. He'll solve all our problems. See? All we needed was the right leader, a good king. It seems that given enough time, voters will get it right.

Patriotism

Lack of patriotism among the youth is one of those problems that's simply assumed to exist. Ask any Juan de la Cruz on the street if the problem exists and you'll probably get a default "yes". It's a nebulous, immeasurable problem with no clear end state where we can consider it solved.  Really, it's looking like it's just an issue Martial Law Era dinosaurs bring up to moan about because those gosh darn millenials who don't know what it was like back in "those days".

The subject of patriotism is important, especially considering what day it is today.  It is important to love one's country although the subject of patriotism is hard to discuss. It's difficult because whatever discussion is to be had on the matter inevitably devolves into the usual motherhood statements and embarrassing romanticism of an ideal Philippines that probably didn't exist or probably won't.

First thing's first, there's no need to split hairs between "patriotism" and "nationalism". The terms are different despite being commonly used interchangeably. Regardless, I doubt any Filipino sincerely believes that the Filipino is superior to every other people on earth or that our country is the greatest ever. If anything, Filipino culture has many manifestations of an inferiority complex, such as the fetishization of foreign culture and the strange obsession with breeding with foreigners to produce mixed race Filipinos, but I digress. When I say "patriotism", I mean a simple love of country.

It is difficult to fall in love with the idea of the Philippines. A country isn't just some thought. Nobody ever fought for a country for the sake of it being on a map. There is this tendency to get one's head in the clouds when talking about something as lofty as patriotism. It's easier to understand if you ground it. A country isn't just a place and it's insane to love your country on a purely physical level, as in, love for the land, sea, air, flora, and fauna. The designated tourist spots of the Philippines are wonderful but it's silly to think of fighting for your country as fighting for inanimate objects.

To ground the idea of patriotism to make it easier to grasp, we must think of our country as having an economic dimension and a social dimension. It is economic in that the country is a place where one has the opportunity to gather resources/make a living for himself. It's a place to live and prosper. It is social in that a country is always made up of people. I don't mean just the government, but the Filipino people as a whole, our culture, language, etc.

When you talk of love of country, it encompasses all these things. It's curious how when we are told to love the "Philippines", but to say nothing of loving the people within it. A country is like a franchise, a common investment that we partake in for the common good. It is inescapable that to be a patriot is to cast one's lot into this enterprise with the full trust and confidence that it will be for his own good, his children and his fellow tribe/nation.

That's why it's difficult to be a true patriot in the Philippines. I maintain that the Philippines is a fundamentally fragmented country. We were never one people before we became one country. We are divided in ethnicity, language, region, wealth, and education. I see very little love of country among my fellow man to be honest, and not just from the pesky millennials. Everyone is out for himself. Ours is a low-trust society where the naive will be taken advantage of. At best, nobody gives a damn about the greater whole. Ever heard of the tragedy of the commons? The Philippines is that writ large.

There can be no patriotism if there is no feeling of a shared fate; a shared destiny. 

Patriotism is never a solo thing. If not for your countryman, it's for your posterity. Patriotism requires community and a sense of togetherness. It's never a thing that lives for the moment, either. Patriotism reveres the past and aspires to the future.

Am I a patriot? I'll be honest, probably not. I feel no attachment to anything and I feel like nobody cares about me anyway. Sometimes I feel like an alien, like it's just a quirk of fate that I was even born here. What do I have to believe in? Everyone lives for the moment and the people in charge don't seem to have a vision for the future. In the end, I'm just one guy howling in a hurricane, writing digital words that nobody reads.

Well, happy Independence Day.

フレデリック「オドループ」Music Video | Frederic "oddloop"

Tabletop Tales: Rashomon

I've been playing a lot of tabletop role-playing games lately, mostly the 5th Edition of Dungeons & Dragons, although I've tried 7th Sea, Edge of the Empire and some Legend of the Five Rings. I run games on occasion too and I thought I'd write about my thoughts on "game-mastering" or whatever you call it. 

I'm no expert and there's plenty of guides online already but I figure it's better to write about something I actually enjoy for a change instead of government or whatever outrage du jour is on social media. Maybe other people might find these useful. Maybe not.

The Rashomon Effect

Rashomon is a 1950 Japanese thriller directed by Akira Kurosawa. The premise of the movie is simple: a murder was committed and the account of the incident is told from the perspective of four different characters. Each character's version of events vary wildly given their subjective individual experiences, bias and self-interest. Just like the movie, the same problem of competing perspectives may pop-up at the gaming table.

An important job of the game-master (GM) is to keep everyone on the same page. Everything the players know about their environment and the world depends entirely on what the GM says and how he says it. Players have different mindsets. A player may fixate on a thing you didn't expect him to and then he'll proceed to gnaw on it like a dog on a bone. Sometimes players will miss clues entirely or choose not to pursue them at all.

Then there's the matter of remembering details. Some players take notes while others rely on memory. Now, this is the tricky part because what is worth taking note of or remembering varies from player to player. You cannot rely on your players remembering things. I do not mean it as an insult but it's really impractical to expect them to. They may not know what's important or what it is you want them to consider as important. See, even the storyteller suffers from this Rashomon effect. People can't read each other's minds.

A skipped detail here or there won't hurt the game too bad but sometimes if the players' views widely diverge, you'll end up with competing narratives. Players will then propose different courses of action which may be shot down as impossible by the others, even if it isn't, or decide to make poorly thought out decisions due to misinformation or misapprehension of the given facts. At worst, there might be arguments.

The goal of the GM is to make it clear to the players what is important and what is not. Therefore, he/she must take care to communicate information to the players in an effective manner. I've found some methods to be helpful:

1. Don't say too much. The more words you use to layout the situation, the more useless filler you're cramming into your players' brains. Keep it brief and mention only the very important bits.

2. Speak clearly. You don't have to be the grand Toastmaster of the Rotary Club or anything. It's enough to just speak in a way that people can easily understand.

2. Repetition is key. If there's something you want the players to know or remember you have to mention it a couple of times from different sources. You have to be subtle though and not seem like you're bullying the players into doing something.

3. Do a recap. I find that it helps to do a recap of events at the start of every session. There, you can emphasize the important persons, places and things of the campaign.

It's easy to get caught up in the game-play bits and forget that playing tabletop RPGs is also an exercise in communication. It's been difficult, personally, but I expect people used to public speaking and speeches will have a better go at it.

Surviving Mars OST - Rockets

Fallout: New Vegas Analysis : House Ending

In Fallout: New Vegas, the player can choose to ally himself from among three different factions: New California Republic, Caesar's Legion or House. Allying with different factions will lead to different endings.

A lot of people end up choosing to side with House. It's a reasonable choice. House was the man who saved Las Vegas. He's intelligent and charismatic. He seems to have things figured out, which is more than you can say for the corrupt and incompetent bureaucrats of the NCR. House is strict but he's not outright cruel like the Legion. He has a plan to restore New Vegas and maybe even colonize space. What a visionary! He may be a ruthless and unfeeling dictator but hey, nobody is perfect.

The Question

Humanity rising from the ashes of the old world to create new societies is a constant storytelling element of Fallout. These new societies run the gamut from backwards, spear-throwing tribes to Mad Max style raiders with spikes and leather to cultures revolving around some misunderstood relic of the past. It's all good fun.

However, there is a underlying thread running through these new societies, a dreaded question haunts each and every one of them: Will they repeat the same mistakes? War never changes, after all.

That the NCR and the Legion represent certain bad things from the past is obvious but they deserve their own separate posts. With House, it's not immediately clear what he represents. He is not manifest destiny America like the NCR nor is he an old school conquering civilization like the Legion. To best understand House, one must stop trying to tie him to a historical analog and simply look at the way he operates, the way he treats those around him and the way he deals with those who stand in his way.

Don't Mess With the House

House serves no god and answers to no man. He rules New Vegas alone and rules as he sees fit. He is a force unto himself. He operates through cold logic, always calculating the odds. He's ruthless when dealing with obstacles and threats.

The Brotherhood of Steel, for example, is a serious threat to House. The BoS is dangerous to him for a couple of reasons: they have the knowledge to figure technology out quickly, they have impressive weapons technology of their own, and their philosophy is to keep dangerous technology out of people's hands. Since House's regime practically runs on robots, he'd want them nipped in the bud before they become a complication. To remove the BoS, the player must find the BoS bunker and either turn the bunker into a slaughterhouse by gunning down every last one of them or turn the bunker into a tomb by initiating the self-destruct sequence. Either way, a lot of people are going to die but at least with the second option, you can't hear the screaming.

This is the part when some players break with House. This is curious since the player has probably been doing some killing up to this point. But bandits and raiders are a different story, eh? If killing the BoS isn't genocide, it sure does seem close to it.

I mention this particular episode since we're trying to figure out House. If it isn't immediately obvious to the player now, House doesn't really much care for people.

More Machine than Man

The common argument to justify siding with House is that he's the best hope for humanity. However, House doesn't care about humanity at all but only cares about New Vegas. Consider this: sweeping aside the romantic image of Las Vegas, how does it operate?

Historically, Las Vegas is widely known for one thing. Its image isn't exactly squeaky clean and it's called "sin city" for a reason. Las Vegas is a gambler's mecca - it runs on vice. There's something both wonderful and terrible about Las Vegas. I've been to Las Vegas and I was amazed at how in the middle of this harsh and barren desert, a great gleaming city stood defiant.

New Vegas, as it is portrayed in-game, is a place where people go to get money sucked from their wallets. New Vegas has no industry to speak of and exists by profiting off of people's vices. While the Strip is a dazzling place full of entertainment and luxury the likes of which are unheard off in the wasteland, it is surrounded on all sides by slums. The dregs of humanity are kept at bay by a wall patrolled by securitrons armed with machine guns. Only those with enough caps are allowed in. New Vegas is kept in order by police bots while anarchy reigns just outside its gates.

House's lack of humanity is also well portrayed in-game through your dealings with him. He's just a face on a screen. He interacts with the outside world rarely and only through robot agents. His own casino, the Lucky 38, is empty and accepts no guests. Even before the war he was an eccentric genius who was a recluse. Hell, his girlfriend is just an A.I. personality hooked to a securitron. His dealings with the courier is purely on a professional level.

But so what? What does all of this mean? Well, it loops back to the question. Is House repeating the same mistakes of the past? One of the main themes of FONV is the problem of technology in the wrong hands. Its retro-futuristic designs are more than just aesthetics. The atom was supposed to usher in a new age of progress but only brought death and destruction instead. Science without morals was extensively covered in the DLC Old World Blues. We see humanity grow in leaps and bounds in terms of scientific discovery but fail because human morality and ethics couldn't catch up.

With house we have the promise of order and progress but lack the increase in human welfare that ought to go with it. Order and progress come only on House's terms and his terms are only for the good of New Vegas. It is tragic that New Vegas is a supposed to be this center of prosperity while just outside people live absolute squalor. If you don't have the caps, House doesn't care. If you're no use to House, he doesn't care. If you get in his way, well too bad.

Greed is Good?

I've read that House is supposed to be a critique of anarcho-capitalism or capitalism in general. While I don't wholly agree, I believe there is some merit to this. When House brought the tribes of Vegas to heel, he turned them to his "employees" to operate his casinos. House is basically a promoter of a one-of-a-kind experience. He offers services in exchange for your cold hard caps. No money? Then get your poor ass out the door.

How one views this operation is the crucial point separating players who support house and players who don't.

Supporters of House will point out that when House isn't applying violence, as he sometimes does, his interactions with the tourists of New Vegas is entirely consensual. House isn't putting a gun to people's heads and ordering them to gamble their money away. It's all "legal" in a sense. However, what is legal is not necessarily moral and it's not good to confuse the two. If a man wants to buy heroine to get high or kill himself, is it moral to sell it to him?

Look, whether or not people were going to prosper with nuclear power isn't an issue in the Fallout series. The promise was there. The issue is whether or not people could deal with the enormous responsibility. I believe House failed and that his vision is flawed in a sense that it will not bring humanity to an enlightened and prosperous age. House's modus operandi is exploitative in nature and any "prosperity" he brings about will only go to the rich few who can afford the high price tag. It's sad that House boasts that he could eventually colonize space (not for free, of course) while so many people are still suffering right outside his lawn right now. Hubris, much? The only time House cares about the slums is if it causes too much trouble for the tourists, in which case, he won't hesitate to bust some heads

So the past repeats itself in a way. Humans exploiting other humans, people eating each other. Wealth is everything and greed is good. It's a world without compassion ruled with an absolute dictator's iron fist. This time it's all coated in a veneer of  being civilized, consenting adults in a free market. FONV wouldn't be considered deep if it didn't challenge our beliefs. A lot of people support a free market economy but what if raising the standards of living was no longer the goal of the free market? What if it became soulless and oppressive? What if charity was no longer a consideration?

House could easily help mankind with the tools at his disposal but altruism isn't in his blood. Altruism has it's own problems and isn't exempt from criticism in the game. It isn't profitable, for starters - just look at the Followers. Charity is often abused and at worst, only enables bad behavior.  House, however, takes the opposite to the very extreme. 

In Conclusion

There's perfectly good reasons to support House, he's not all bad. House will bring progress if it would mean him profiting from it. His regime is peaceful and stable at least. House will ensure humanity will survive enough to be useful, like cattle.

It's really up to the player. In terms of mankind's continuation, House is a good bet. In terms of mankind living in a golden age, it's unclear. At least the wealthiest will. Nothing is free when it comes to House.

Humanity will benefit if only incidentally. It's only rational, at least, that's how House would see it.

The Matrix Revolution

One of the more amusing things El Jefe's drug wars have produced is this curious thing called a "drug matrix", a new nonsense term to go along with "drug personality", "criminality", and other purposefully tedious and vague verbiage.

Way back in 2016, the president unveiled his "drug matrix" wherein persons involved in the drug trade were revealed. It was a high profile affair as it concerned drug lords within the infamous New Bilibid Prison and Senator Leila de Lima. But what is a "drug matrix"? A drug matrix is basically a chart which shows the names (and faces if we're being fancy) of people involved in drug trafficking and also shows their links to one another. It's not unlike an organizational chart one would find in a private corporation. Here's a cleaned up, "professional" version:

The matrix makes constant references to the president's rival Senator De Lima but hey,  it could just be a coincidence.

What's amazing about the president's cheap-looking whiteboard chart is that everyone seemed to believe that the information on it was accurate, if not, the truth. How did the president arrive at his conclusions? Who knows. It's on a chart with text, lines, and scary-looking mystery silhouettes. It's like an episode of C.S.I.! It looks like serious police work so it must be true!

The police have followed in the president's footsteps and have been making matrices(?) of their own. Apparently, this is how they operate now and they have a matrix for everything. I heard a few weeks ago, on the radio, a police officer being interviewed about some dead guy or something. "He was in our matrix." he said. Well, I guess that settles that. He was in THE MATRIX and only really bad dudes are in the matrix. Who's hungry?

Maybe people believe it just because of the way it sounds. Judging by the way campaign season is going, it's obvious Filipinos are tragically very easy to impress. If it sounds official and vaguely scary, sure. Personally, I find it funny. When I hear "the matrix", I tend to imagine people in trench coats chasing each other on the roof while dodging bullets in slow motion. In reality, however, people are being shot in fast motion and there's no waking up from the simulation or anything like that.

Imagine: death via powerpoint presentation.

Black Banshee - Teen Pregnancy

Dragnet

It is much easier to measure efficiency in a factory than a bureaucracy. In a factory, it's a matter of input versus output; how much can be produced from how much material. In a government bureaucracy, it's not as straightforward. 

There is the tendency to rely on numbers to gauge  how effective something is. It's only natural. People like big numbers and charts with arrows pointing up. It works for private businesses for the simple reason that profit is easy to measure. It's different in government since nothing is constant and predictable.

It's better to give an example. In the courts, efficiency is measured in the number of cases disposed of per month. It makes sense. However, it does not take into account that it's not really up to the courts to decide how many cases get resolved in a month. Maybe the trial gets postponed. Maybe the parties decide to compromise. Maybe the compromise doesn't push through. The best you can do is make an estimate. This system isn't necessarily bad. One side effect though, is that some courts tend to hold off on promulgating decisions if the month has a sufficient amount in order to load it onto the next month's numbers. It produces minor delay but it shows that such a system can be gamed to make the reports look good.

The worst example of over-reliance on raw numbers is the travesty that is the "quota system" of the police. The police are given "quotas" by their superiors on how many arrests they should make per month. Right off the bat, one can see the problem with this system. How can you make a quota of how many arrests ought to be made per month? What is this based on? Are they implying they know with certainty how many crimes are committed in a given time and in a given area? Suppose that there's a lull in criminal activity, what then?

The problem with this quota system is that it encourages the police to arrest as many people as they can whenever they conduct a raid on a drug/gambling den. They call these raids "one time, big time" operations. I don't know why they call it "one time" as they do it many times but they're not kidding about the "big time" part. A lot of people get caught in these raids and a disturbing number of them are simply bystanders. It's like fishermen with a trawl net catching everything they can leaving destruction in their wake. The quota has to be met. Of course, the number of actual convictions isn't used as a measure of effectiveness, no, that's the prosecutor's problem. The police don't care. You could be dragged off to jail just by being at the wrong place at the wrong time.

In their haste to arrest as many people as they can, the police also tend to make a lot of mistakes. Evidence is often lacking. Suspects have to wait in the filthy and overcrowded jails before their case gets called to trial. When the time comes to explain the arrest, the judge is going to know eventually when a suspect is a mere bystander who was just out to buy a pack of sugar. Outside of raids, you have people arrested without a proper warrant just by looking sufficiently suspicious. The irony is that nothing can kill a case faster than a wrongful arrest. In which instance, it is just a massive waste of time for everyone involved.

But we need to get those numbers up, don't we? How else would the brass know if these deadbeat cops are earning their pay?

There has to be a better way.

Title Goes Here

There are many posters and tarps advertising new political groups all over the streets these days. It's election season after all, and these groups spring up like weeds only to disappear once it's all over. What caught my eye was that one of these posters had a lead candidate promoting himself as "Engineer Juan de la Cruz". Well good for him but does that mean he's planning to build a bridge or something? It didn't say what kind of engineer he was.

Traditionally, it's always been lawyers and doctors who swagger around with their titles. Nowadays, professionals from other disciplines are doing it too, not just our engineer. Accountants are trying to get in on it although adding "Accountant" before your name is probably not going to make you sound like a fun person. "Teacher" has a more noble air about it, don't you think? "Architect" is more iffy. These aren't jokes; people are doing this. 

For all the "pinoy pride" posturing, Filipinos don't think much of their own countrymen. It's always assumed that the typical Filipino is dumb, untrustworthy, or both. That's why people wear their titles in defiance as well as pride: "I am not one of the common rabble!", "I am intelligent and trustworthy!" If only that were the case. These titles denote profession. At most, they prove that you're smart enough to pass a board exam but if someone goes around calling himself "Attorney So N. So", how do I know if he's a good lawyer or a bad one?

Titles are treated as proof of character but it's not a guarantee. The den of vultures picking at the carcass of the republic are all supposedly smart people on paper. The President, who is a staunch advocate for summary executions, is a lawyer though you can be forgiven for not knowing that.

Still, people cling to their titles as a means to let others know that they're higher up the social totem pole and therefore have the right to tell you how to live your life. This is why the media made a big stink a few days ago about Imee Marcos. Imee Marcos, daughter of the late Ferdinand Marcos, claimed to have graduated from Princeton University. She didn't. A politician lying? Say it ain't so. A sheepskin from Princeton would be an awesome status symbol better than any Italian handbag. It was the same story with her brother too, who didn't earn a degree from Oxford University despite claiming he did. Their illness must be genetic.

I wonder if it's the same in other countries. I don't recall people doing this in the United States. Maybe doctors but I don't know.

Nobody tells you their title outside of professional settings unless it's to impress you. People who do this are basically selling themselves and the advertising can have different effects depending on the market. The D and E market would be very easily impressed as a title is something they aspire to and see value in. Just tell them you're a doctor and they'll assume you have two cars, two houses and two wives. The upper classes wouldn't be as impressed as they've sampled other products but a degree is still considered a bare minimum requirement to prove competence in something at least.

Don't think that I'm hating on accomplished people. I'm just skeptical. People who feel the need to drop their title constantly are suspicious. It's like a killjoy pulling rank on you. I don't have a fond experience of such people. I won't give names but I know this woman who would constantly remind everyone around her, in case they forgot, that she was an "attorney". She was a bully who did this to intimidate others. Never mind the fact that she had never stepped in a courtroom for half a century and probably had no more right to practice law. 

Everyone has something to sell, including themselves. Only doctors impress me but only because I know I'll need them sooner or later.

Just be you, for Christ's sake.

Thoughts on the Drug War

It's has been almost three years into the Duterte presidency and almost three years into his glorious war on drugs. Doesn't feel much different yet everything has changed.

Who We Are

It's a given that people have been killed in this war and we can only assume they were guilty. Good luck pinning this directly on the president. Nothing would ever be put to paper. 

Still, the president's critics and the usual vinegar-drinking scolds from the church wail about all the blood on his hands. It's all pointless and I don't know why they continue to do it. The president was upfront about what he was going to do. He ran his entire campaign promising to summarily execute the drug dealers and he won! What are we to make of that? We must accept that all of this has the approval of the majority of the Filipino people. You can't take the president down by pointing out that he's doing exactly the thing he said he was going to do.

Some harsh truths must be accepted. We cannot go on pretending that our greatest ideals are life, democracy and justice. The values espoused by the moralizers in the media are not as commonly shared as it is thought. It's all been tried. It's passe. It doesn't work. Everyone knows this so they went with the guy who said nuts to that and he'd do it his way. His critics crying about the death of democracy or whatever, don't really mean it anyway. They have their own agenda and championing old values and other lost causes is only good if it can get you elected. Who knew what would follow the EDSA era would be the cynical era? It's not so bad, for me anyway. I prefer people to be truthful. It's great that people have dropped their masks and shown their true colors. No more lectures about the rule of law or the preciousness of life. Anything and everything can be bargained away, any act can be rationalized. It's about raw power; realpolitik. Perhaps, it always had been.

You Seriously Don't Think We Can Win, Do You?

In three years when (or if) Duterte finally steps down, will the war continue? Can the troops fight without the great leader providing encouragement (and potential pardons)? I doubt it. One glaring flaw of Philippine democracy, and perhaps democracies in general, is that leaders change often and it can be hard to sustain long term projects since a new set of rulers brings in a new set of power players and cronies to infest the government. It's even worse here since politics is so personality driven and reliant on personal loyalties and not loyalties to institutions.

What if the next idiot who comes along decides that his big deal is going to be green energy or whatever, and decides to put the drug war on the back-burner, then what? Well the drug lords are going to come back, of course. What nobody realizes, least of all the dutertards, is that you cannot literally kill the problem of drug addiction and narcopolitics. I'd argue that the problem of drugs is just as much a spiritual and cultural problem as it is an economic one. Duterte's solution is the crudest solution of all and is not in any way sustainable. Cut the branches and even the trunk but the roots are still there. Other than killing, he has nothing else. Desperate people still want their fix and pushing that garbage is easy money.

What does victory even look like? Do people sincerely believe Duterte can solve the drug problem by killing every single drug dealer in the Philippines? The government can't even put down any of the communist/Muslim rebellions in the countryside for more than fifty years but we believe it completely eradicate drugs once and for all?

When the new kid in town comes along, the druggies will roll back in and it'll be as if nothing happened. Without El Jefe constantly rambling about drugs on the airwaves, people will forget about the problem. Always forget.

However, the word is that the president's daughter is considering a run for the highest office in the land. Now there's a very interesting topic: "political dynasties as a means to guarantee continuity in a cyclical form of government". If his daughter wins, the war could continue and I would be wrong. Alas, political dynasties vs. democratic elections is a topic for another day.

What I Feel

What do I think of the drug war, personally? To be honest, I don't care. I have already disabused myself of any notion that the country is some progressive heaven and its people saints.

I don't mind. It's just the world I live in.Do you blame the rain cloud when you get wet?

All I can do is hope nothing bad happens to me or people I care about.

MARS

One of the benefits of my job is that it allows me to observe the legal system closer than most people. One thing I have observed is this strange phenomenon that seems to happen whenever a particular criminal case has a lot of media attention focused on it. For academic purposes, let's call this the "Media Attention-Retardation Syndrome".

Media Attention-Retardation Syndrome (MARS) is a disease wherein people involved in a criminal case, from the public officials to the concerned parties, inexplicably drop thirty (30) points of IQ whenever the case is under intense media scrutiny or "goes viral", to borrow modern slang. It is theorized that the attention of the media produces among its victims a strong psychological response that causes forgetfulness, lack of focus, lapses in judgment, and other mental problems similar to those caused by extreme sleep deprivation. It may be thought of as a form of performance anxiety.

MARS is difficult to detect as it does not always affect people in all ways and at all times. It is possible it may not occur in some people at all. It is certain, however, that the likelihood of MARS is proportional to the intensity of the media attention. If the criminal case is featured on the national news or if a prominent politician is involved, sudden onset retardation is practically guaranteed.

For example, sufferers of MARS in the police force will inevitably and spectacularly bungle their investigation of the high profile crime. Whether or not the police always bungle their investigations and that we're only noticing it in that particular instance is a fair question, however. The police, in an effort to maintain the appearance of competence, begin to inform the media of their "findings", including their fantastical theories based on shady sources, lists of suspects who they may or may not be planning to question, and all the evidence they have collected so far. The wisdom of telling the public, and possibly the perpetrators, of your every move is not an issue. The importance of looking busy is paramount. It has been observed that the imposition of any time limit by a superior or politician dramatically increases the chance of MARS. Occasionally, the police may lock up the wrong person but they're only human.

MARS also affects suspects of the alleged crime. Suspects will exhibit erratic behavior and/or theatrical outbursts. Suspects may call for a radio interview or even a press conference to loudly proclaim that they're are innocent and that they have absolutely nothing to hide, no sir. They will then proclaim that "only God can judge them", "the truth will set you free", or any other such tedious platitudes. In severe cases the suspect may voluntarily "surrender" to the police despite still maintaining innocence and surrender being technically impossible since a case has not been filed yet.

A prosecutor suffering from MARS may suddenly forget the difference between preliminary investigation and inquest. Judges affected by MARS may come to realize or hallucinate biases against the party and inhibit themselves from the case. The lawyers file longer pleadings that read more like a madman's rambling manifesto. MARS may even cause delusions of grandeur as lawyers inexplicably begin to do their best impressions of Jack Nicholson in A Few Good Men.

It's a nuthouse.

Trying

There are never enough hours in a day.

Morissey - Everyday Is Like Sunday