Tonipi2020

PINOY!

[Tonipi2020 @tonipi]

Happy birthday to VP Leni Robredo, the next President of the Republic of the Philippines!

(As early as 22 months ago, I was already and proudly wearing pink!)

#HappyBirthdayVPLeni #LetLeniLead2022
#LeniKikoAllTheWay #IpanaloNa10ParaSaLahat

[お侍さん @ZanEngineer]

ハーランド、全部AIじゃないかってくらいウソみたいなゴールでスーパーストライカーすぎる。ブラジル敗退も納得。

[Ryan Alba @_alba__]

Carl Tamayo:

[@amuse @amuse]

https://t.co/5tedBik5II

[Aaron Rupar @atrupar]

here's Michelle Obama's entire speech commemorating the opening of the Obama Presidential Center, which in part served as an extended (tacit) rebuke of Trumpism

[Aaron Rupar @atrupar]

here's Barack Obama's entire speech commemorating the Obama Presidential Center. He reflected on his administration's successes and failures, critiqued the moral rot of contemporary America, and outlined a positive vision of the future -- all without ever mentioning Trump

[Aaron Rupar @atrupar]

here is Mamdani's entire speech at the Knicks parade, which is easily the best speech I've ever heard at an event of this sort

[Thea Tan @imtheatan]

🚨₱332 Billion Later: The Price of Falling on Deaf Ears

I wrote about this before; but now, there is a video from 7 years ago about House Majority Leader Rolando Andaya Jr’s expose.

This whole mess went down during the Duterte administration, but the warnings completely fell on deaf ears.

Despite the massive red flags brought to light by Andaya Jr., the Duterte admin did nothing and the issue was swept under the rug.

1. Andaya exposed that ₱75 billion was secretly added to the 2019 DPWH budget.

A DPWH official testified under oath that this money did not come from their agency; it only appeared after the budget went through the DBM.

2. Out of that insertion, ₱14.5 billion went to flood control.

In total, the government allocated a staggering ₱332 billion for flood defenses in just three years (2017 to 2019).

Yet, heavily hit flood-prone areas continued to suffer.

3. While areas devastated by Typhoon Usman received virtually no help, over ₱385 million was funneled into six specific flood and drainage projects in Casiguran, Sorsogon — the hometown of the politically powerful Hamor family.

✳️ The Casiguran breakdown:

Himaoyon Flood Control (₱75M)
Lungib Seawall (₱80M)
Somal-ot Seawall (₱100M)
Cagpagol River Control (₱45M)
Suji River Control (₱25M)
Poblacion Drainage System (₱60M).

4. The main contractor landing these deals was Aremar Construction Corporation.

Corporate records revealed a massive conflict of interest: one of Aremar’s main incorporators was married to the daughter of then-DBM Secretary Benjamin Diokno.

5. To bypass scrutiny, a firm called C.T. Leoncio Construction allegedly acted as a conduit.

They won around ₱2 billion in Bicol infrastructure projects but secretly passed the actual work and profits over to Aremar.

6. Andaya produced actual deposit slips proving that over ₱70 million (including a single transfer exceeding ₱11.4 million) was moved directly into Aremar's bank accounts, which major anti-money laundering questions for the banks involved.

🔸What happened to Andaya after:

Following this intense expose, Andaya faced heavy political backlash and survived multiple assassination attempts, including separate incidents where his vehicle was shot at in 2018 and 2021.

Tragically, before his findings could ever lead to any real accountability, he was found dead from a gunshot wound to the head at his residence in June 2022.

🔸Where it stands today:

Because everything fell on deaf ears back then, absolutely nothing happened.

No final court ruling ever established criminal liability, and those accused denied any wrongdoing.

But the core question remains: if the government spent ₱332 billion back then, why are Filipinos still drowning in floods today?

Video source: https://t.co/ivVh4xrNs7

[Lala Rimando @lalarimando]

The Ateneo townhall on June 16 was raw, heavy, and deeply necessary. 3 basketball players took the floor, detailing the scenes and their "chicken encounter" with Rene.

Meanwhile, Ateneo president Fr. Bobby’s responses showed a glaring lack of appreciation for the bigger picture. It's 2026, yet leadership ignored how social media can be a tool for truth, transparency, and humanity.

Instead, they were forced to face their own community, in flesh and blood, as pent-up emotions were laid bare.

In this thread, I share my notes so I will not forget — the details, the lessons, the stories.

https://t.co/MmXk2U17sY

[NBA @NBA]

EVERY NBA FINALS MVP, EVER 🍿

Add the most recent Bill Russell Trophy recipient, Jalen Brunson, to the list 🧡🏆

[Maryiam @MaryiamAi]

THEY JUST STOLE YOUR IPHONE.

The thief turned it off instantly.

In the "Find My" app, you see it's offline.

Your bank accounts, your private photos, your entire life... in their hands.

That phone will just be a brick if you activated these 3 SETTINGS: 👇

[The Wolf Man @iTheWolfman]

Radio Taiso (Radio Gymnastics), a Japanese sport frequently recommended by trainers, is highly effective for maintaining shoulder health, correcting posture, and strengthening the shoulder girdle.

[Ihtesham Ali @ihtesham2005]

A TV writer with no philosophy degree read Aristotle, Kant, Bentham, and Scanlon back to back, built a sitcom around what he found, then explained in one book why the trolley problem is no longer a thought experiment and the people who need to understand this most are the ones building AI.

His name is Michael Schur.

He co-created Parks and Recreation and Brooklyn Nine-Nine. But The Good Place was the project that broke him open. On the surface it was a comedy about a woman who accidentally ends up in heaven. Underneath, it was a philosophy seminar. Every episode was built around a real ethical framework. He had to actually understand all of it to make any of it funny.

After the show ended, he wrote the book anyway. He called it "How to Be Perfect." It begins with the most honest opening line in any philosophy book ever written: Should I punch my friend in the face for no reason? No.

That is not a joke. That is his method. He starts with the obvious and builds toward the impossible.

Here is the framework he built, and why the most dangerous people in tech right now are running exactly one of the four schools of thought without knowing any of the others exist.

The first school is Virtue Ethics. Aristotle built it around 350 BCE. The question it asks is not "what should I do?" It asks "what kind of person should I be?" The idea: become genuinely good, and good actions will follow naturally. You build courage. You build honesty. You build practical wisdom. Then you trust the person you built.

The second school is Deontology. Kant built it in the 18th century and it is the exact opposite. Kant did not care about the person. He cared about the rule. His version: act only in ways you would be comfortable turning into a universal law. If everyone lied whenever it was convenient, the concept of truth would dissolve. So you never lie. Even if the truth gets someone killed. The rule is absolute because the moment you make one exception, it stops being a rule.

The third school is Utilitarianism. This is the one that should stop anyone building AI cold.

Jeremy Bentham invented it in the late 1700s. The principle sounds beautiful: the right action is whichever one produces the greatest good for the greatest number of people. Pure math. Pure outcome. Intention means nothing. Only consequences count.

Schur runs it through the trolley problem, the most famous thought experiment in philosophy.

You are driving a runaway trolley. Five people are tied to the main track. You can pull a lever and redirect it to a side track where only one person is tied. Do nothing and five die. Pull the lever and you kill one to save five.

A utilitarian says pull the lever. The math is obvious.

Now the same problem with one change. You are on a bridge above the track. A large man is standing next to you. The physics are clear: if you push him off the bridge, his body stops the trolley. Five people live. He dies. The math is identical.

Almost nobody will push the man. Even people who pulled the lever instantly in the first version refuse.

The utilitarian has no answer for why these two situations feel different. The numbers are the same. The outcome is the same. The only thing that changed is whether you are using another human being as a tool.

That gap between the math being correct and the action feeling monstrous is exactly where AI ethics collapses every single time.

The fourth school is Contractualism, built by the philosopher T.M. Scanlon. It asks the question that Kant's rules and Bentham's math both miss. What principles could be justified to everyone affected? Not the majority. Not the person with the most power. Everyone. Including the one person who ends up on the shorter end of the calculation.

Schur's conclusion is the part that people who live inside growth frameworks and optimization loops will resist the hardest. None of the four schools is correct on its own. Each one has a scenario where following it perfectly produces something most humans recognize as evil. Pure utilitarianism justifies harvesting one person's organs to save five dying patients. Pure deontology says you cannot lie to the murderer asking where your friend is hiding. Each system, taken to its logical extreme, becomes a machine that produces monsters while generating perfect internal justification for doing so.

The way out is not picking the right framework and following it harder.

The way out is using all four as lenses. Ask what Aristotle would do. Ask what Kant would allow. Do the utilitarian math. Then ask Scanlon's question: could you justify this to the person it hurts most?

Where those four answers overlap, you are probably on solid ground. Where they pull in different directions, you are in territory that deserves far more than a two-hour board meeting.

Schur also coined a term that has been stuck in my head since I finished the book. Moral Exhaustion. The feeling of living in an age where you can know, in real time, every ethical implication of every product you use, every company you work for, every piece of code you ship. The gap between what you know and what you can actually change becomes so large that the easiest response is to stop asking.

He says that response is understandable. He also says that choosing not to ask is itself a moral choice, and the consequences of that choice scale in exact proportion to the power you hold.

A person building a product one billion people will use is not operating at the scale where shrugging is a neutral act.

The people who built the most consequential technologies of the last decade were not evil. Most were genuinely trying to do good. They ran the utilitarian math. They saw a billion users. They saw engagement numbers that looked like impact. They optimized for the greatest good for the greatest number and did not notice until much later that the people being turned into variables in the math were still people.

Schur read 2,500 years of philosophy and the lesson he came out with fits in one sentence. You cannot use a single framework because every single framework, followed perfectly, eventually produces the wrong answer.

The people who cause the most damage are not the ones who do not care about ethics. They are the ones who found one framework they liked, felt good about it, and stopped asking.

The trolley problem is not a thought experiment anymore.

It runs on servers. It gets optimized overnight. And the people making those decisions right now have never once asked what Scanlon would say.

[Belle Enriquez @iamsouperwoman]

A Gentle Reminder :

Magnitude 7.2 earthquake will instantly collapse Metro Manila's bridges and flyovers, cutting the capital into four isolated islands and blocking emergency responders.

To prevent total paralysis, the MMDA’s Oplan Metro Yakal Plus divides the metropolis into four independent, self-sustaining quadrants, each equipped with its own pre-designated master evacuation camp and emergency field hospital.

THE NORTH AND EAST QUADRANTS: THE HEALTHCARE HUB

The North Quadrant serves as the capital's primary healthcare refuge, encompassing Quezon City, Caloocan, Valenzuela, San Juan, and Mandaluyong. If you are caught in these areas, you must look for open ground away from dense commercial zones.

The designated primary evacuation camps for this sector are the sprawling Veterans Memorial Medical Center (VMMC) Golf Course and the expansive UP Diliman Grounds, while emergency field hospitals will be rapidly deployed at both the VMMC compound and the Quezon Memorial Circle.

Meanwhile, the East Quadrant acts as the high-risk Valley Response Zone, covering Pasig City and Marikina City—the two localities directly hugging the active fault line.

Because of their extreme proximity to the epicenter, residents here must immediately route to Marikina Boys Town, the Red Cross Compound in Marikina, or the ULTRA (PhilSports Complex) in Pasig, with emergency medical operations centralized at the LRT-2 Santolan Station Depot.

THE WEST AND SOUTH QUADRANTS: COASTAL REFUGES AND FINANCIAL SAFETY NETS

For those located near Manila Bay, the West Quadrant covers the City of Manila, Malabon, and Navotas. This dense, historic sector relies heavily on the Intramuros Golf Course to serve as both its primary evacuation camp and emergency field hospital.

The thick, historical stone walls and wide-open greens of the golf course provide a much-needed structural buffer zone, keeping evacuating crowds safe from collapsing high-rises and crowded residential blocks.

On the other hand, the South Quadrant covers the sprawling financial and residential districts of Makati, Taguig (BGC), Pasay, Parañaque, Las Piñas, Muntinlupa, and the municipality of Pateros.

If the disaster strikes while you are in this sector, the primary evacuation sanctuary and field hospital operations will be entirely centralized at the Villamor Air Base Golf Course in Pasay City.

STAY IN THE QUADRANT

When "The Big One" hits, forget going home. Roads will be impassable, bridges severed, and falling debris lethal. If you are working in BGC but live in Quezon City, do not cross town. Your absolute survival mandate is to stay put and head to your current sector's nearest evacuation point—like Villamor Air Base for the South.

REMEMBER THESE PUBLIC GOLF COURSES

The MMDA’s decision to utilize golf courses like Veterans, Intramuros, and Villamor as primary disaster hubs is brilliant. In a catastrophic urban earthquake, the number one cause of casualties is not the ground shaking itself but falling debris—collapsing concrete walls, shattering glass facades, and snapping overhead power lines.

Golf courses are massive, wide-open green spaces completely devoid of potential debris Furthermore, these terrains provide perfect, clear zones for military helicopters to land safely, allowing emergency personnel to drop off critical medical supplies and airlift the severely injured when all roads are blocked.

Surviving "The Big One" requires clear-headed planning, not panic. Understanding Oplan Metro Yakal Plus provides the advantage needed during the first 72 hours of complete isolation. Memorizing these four independent quadrants and their open-air assembly points is key to survival.

Please share this information with your family and friends.

#radarPH

[The Old World Show @theoldworldshow]

This is one of my favorite books of all time, and one I recommend to everyone who asks for a recommendation whenever I get the chance

It paints a beautiful picture of the very different world that used to exist, one where greatness was still prized more highly than equality and equity, and so men did great things

They built magnificent homes, gorgeous palaces, and immense empires. New men built businesses the scale of which had never been seen, and the old elite pushed high culture to its greatest flowering. Those who were talented could and did rise, and those who were incompetent quickly lost it all and fell away

It was a world of consequences good and bad, of rewards for excellence and punishment for falling behind

It was a world of pride and hauteur, but also of public faith and policy rooted in a deep and abiding belief in Christianity

It was a world before tax policy punished the competent for the benefit of the incompetent, a world before the disastrous equality of the present

And in this book, Emmerson shows what that world looked like, good and bad, and how it functioned

Such is the best way to jump into remembering that a different world used to exist

[Barry Gutierrez @barrygutierrez3]

Daming kwento tungkol sa future Senator na nag name-drop sa isang rally nung estudyante pa siya para huwag ma-aresto. Here's the original article in the Philippine Collegian about it. Sorry kung mahirap basahin, zoom in na lang. 🙂

[Ꮆ Ꭵ Ꮛ @gesperas]

Ipapaalala ko lang po ang sinabi ni Mayor Vico Sotto:

“Hindi lang sila basta naglalaglagan, gusto nila magulo ang kwento. Gusto nila lituhin tayo. Gusto nila na di na natin malalaman ang totoo.”

"These are people who are really capable of lying without batting an eyelash."
https://t.co/w2hoo9sV3L

[Crane @aradesh_]

Here’s a better list of the top 100 novels than The Guardian’s, by William H. F. Lamont. Honestly, although dated in some places, it is very good.

[Hannah Ty @hannaaahty]

'IPAPALIPAT KO NA LANG ISA SAMIN'

WATCH: Sen. Loren Legarda was seen talking about the ongoing numbers battle in the Senate, telling DILG Secretary Jonvic Remulla that she could simply transfer one senator from their camp so the Gatchalian bloc would finally have 13 members.

[Tonipi2020 @tonipi]

@asero831 @jesusfalcis Wahahahahahahahahahahaha! Susme 🤦‍♂️

[BookNote @BookNoteApp]

10 books to fall in love with history:

1) Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World by Jack Weatherford