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megane_kun megane-kun @lemm.ee

Just an ordinary myopic internet enjoyer.

Can also be found at lemmy.dbzer0, lemmy.world and Kbin.social.

Posts 4
Comments 677
What fruit is tasty on a pizza?
  • I've grown up eating unripe jackfruit as a vegetable, cooked in coconut milk along with a bit of protein, be it some pork or some dried fish. Never really taken a close look at which part of the jackfruit is being used though, but it's the part with the seeds. I enjoy finding the surprise (cooked) seeds since they're really nutty and complements well with the rest of the flavors of the dish.

    Anyways, my point is that unripe jackfruit can make for a good savory topping for pizza.

  • People who grew up in Manhattan (or other heavily urbanised area), how did your childhood look like?
  • Grew up in a sizeable metropolitan area, in a residential enclave surrounded by commercial areas. The "inner" streets in our area are a bit too narrow for car traffic, but was often used as a shortcut by pedestrians.

    We mostly played games on the residential streets, pausing to the occasional pedestrian, or the rare car to pass by. If we do play hide and seek, we can play it through the narrow alleyways of our area or even the nearby commercial buildings (we always agree on the bounds beforehand though). Sometimes, we hang out in the nearby arcade. Rarely, we go to the nearby seaside (as the city is next to the coast) just to hang out, but crossing the really wide eight-lane roads cutting off the seaside makes it kinda rare.

    I've often found myself in places I shouldn't be, like off-limits areas in the nearby commercial buildings, even managed to sneak inside one of the rooms of the nearby motel that one time. There's a lot of things to get lost in around our area and I took it for granted that most things are just a short walk away.

    The place I hung out the most, however, is a bookstore that was just across the road from the end of our street. And since this bookstore is also near the arcade, I'd choose one or the other depending on my mood, and remaining allowance.

  • Philippines accuses Beijing of ‘dangerously’ firing flares near its aircraft in South China Sea
  • That'd be giving in to Chinese provocation. They've been doing this harassment in hopes of the Philippine government giving up and complying with the Chinese demands, or the Philippines getting riled up and firing the first shot. The latter will give China the "moral ground" or at least ammo for their propaganda.

    IMO, what the Philippine military has been doing is a good countermeasure to this harassment: asserting their rights (as per the arbitral ruling, which China refuses to honor), publicizing Chinese aggression all the while building up its defenses and network of allies.

    Punching a bully in the face might feel good, but this bully is also crafty and sneaky, that some care is needed dealing with it.

  • What's the oldest thing in your downloads directory and how old is it?
  • It's a subdirectory that was created on April 2023. Looking inside, it contains a bunch of APKs related to YT Revanced. I kept it there because I can't come up with a better location to move it to. That's basically the same story for almost all of the files that ended up staying in the directory anyways. However, I try to keep try to keep things clean.

    Whenever I visit the downloads directory, I make it a point to try to remember the context in which the files ended up in there. If I can no longer remember the context, I delete it. If there ends up way too many files of "the same class" then I'll try to move them together onto a different location. But if it's a file or two that I can't move elsewhere, it's no big deal.

  • What is your default sort?
  • Subscribed | Scaled. But I sometimes change it to Subscribed | Top 12h for new content (but not too new that there's no discussion yet) or even All | Top Day if I want more.

  • How many questions about condiments or fries can we cram in here before the mods have enough?
  • I didn't realize we're supposed to make poutine out of fries and condiments here. Does fries and red chili peanut sauce and soft tofu count?

    In all seriousness though, I saw some post about ketchup and another about condiment concoctions and pretty much likely missed (or didn't notice) the others.

  • what are your favorite condiment creations?
  • Right now, it's red chili sauce and brown sugar in a 1-to-1 ratio and an optional pinch of instant coffee. I use it as an all-around dipping sauce but it can work as a sandwich spread and cracker dip as well. The chili sauce is quite hot and spicy and the sugar sorts of mellows it out. That bit instant coffee adds a bit of complexity that I can't really pinpoint.

    Prior to that, my usual go-to is a 1-to-1-to-1 ratio of soy sauce, vinegar and brown sugar in a poor imitation of kecap manis and vinegar. I usually use it for fried fish but it also goes well with other fried meats (chicken, porkchops, etc). The brown sugar goes well with soy sauce and the vinegar (especially spiced vinegar that are commonly available where I live) gives it a kick that counteracts the richness and grease of fried meats.

  • what's your favorite thing to put ketchup on that isn't fries?
  • Ketchup on canned tuna, yeah, I've done it. I'd rather have some mayo and sriracha on it, but it's not that bad.

    Ketchup on salad though, I can imagine it, I don't remember if I've actually tried it, but unless we're talking about sweet salads (like ones made out of condensed milk, all-purpose cream, canned fruit cocktail, gelatin cubes and the works), I don't think it's actually that hideous. Heck, I even think it'd go okay with something like potato salad!

  • what's your favorite thing to put ketchup on that isn't fries?
  • There's even a famous place here that serves chicken with banana ketchup by default, and fried sweet potato fries available as a side. And it's actually a decent pairing!

  • How do you pronounce zsh? Sudo? Ssh?
  • Word IPA Notes
    sudo sʏː.doʔ short u (though my accent pronounces it a bit differently); then ‘do’ (as in the note) followed by a glottal stop
    zsh ziː.esː.ejtʃ z-s-h spelled out
    ssh esː.esː.ejtʃ s-s-h spelled out
  • what's your favorite thing to put ketchup on that isn't fries?
  • Fried chicken, mostly. But ketchup goes well with a lot of fried food imo.

  • Atheists of Lemmy, is your partner religious?
  • Oh, a lot of Filipinos can be quite cultural in their Catholicism.

    As far as my own experience goes, catechism in Philippine public schools is more of a guy from the nearby church gives a series of weekly lectures that students don't really pay attention to in order to have their first communion. And then after confirmation is treated more of a rite of passage than anything. Even my peers from Catholic schools aren't that much better either, but they do have allotted time for religious teaching (or indoctrination). As far as people I know are concerned, they don't take it seriously either.

    There is no such thing as a Sunday school here, at least nothing that I know of.

    There might be some people really serious about their Catholicism, but they're few and far between. For a lot of people, going to church is for the Christmas eve mass (on night of the 24th of December), and maybe the Easter day mass, and sometimes even for their birthday (which is basically: go to church and pray for a bit, light a candle, etc.) However, going to church every Sunday is not something a lot of people do. And even when they do, not a lot pay attention to the homily and most just go through the ceremony and motions.

    However, we can be pretty wild with our devotions: the Black Nazarene being the most well-known. Thousands of people flock to its yearly procession. And then there's the infamous vows of being crucified during the yearly Lenten reenactment of Christ's crucifixion in certain town and localities.

    And then there's our love of religious paraphenalia. Lots of Filipino homes have an altar with figures of their preferred saint alongside the icon or statue of the virgin Mary, Sacred Heart of Jesus and/or Jesus on the cross. ‌ This altar also has a candle (unlit, for safety, but sometimes lit for a few hours on certain days). This is also where some novena booklets, rosaries, and other blessed (as in sanctified by a priest in a special prayer at the end of novena masses) religious paraphernalia are placed.

    Despite this outward show of religion, we barely know anything of it. Whatever little we may know of our religion mostly comes to us via whatever our parents teach us, if at all, or that scant cathecism given to us before our first communion. It's no wonder then, that most of us don't have any idea what our religion requires us to believe, or whatever the bible says. The bible might sometimes be part of the family altar, but often, it's just there to gather dust.

    Just a disclaimer though, while I count myself among the people I described, I‌ later on became agnostic. However, only my partner (who is more of a Reddit atheist, btw) knows that.

  • The Philippines chose two mega-dynasties to lead together. Now it’s a family feud.
  • Their "unity" is a lie. Even among the supporters of the Marcos Jr. and Sara Duterte tandem, it is viewed as nothing more than a marriage of convenience. But when it stopped being convenient, it's back to the usual mudslinging.

    I'd also be wary of Duterte's promises with regards to China.

    In the 2016 election, one of his campaign promises involved going by jet ski onto the disputed islands to personally protect them, a promise he later dismissed as just an empty promise and mocked those who bought into it as stupid. His promise of pushing a claim cited in the OP article might as well be one of those empty promises made to increase their dynasty's chances of winning the elections. Their actions show where their priorities and loyalties lie. What was promised to be a "protect our islands" stance, turned out to be an "embrace China" stance.

    Marcos Jr. isn't in the clear either, with the Marcos dynasty trying to whitewash and erase from history their wrongdoing.

    Moreover, his 20 PhP (~0.33 USD) per kilogram of rice promise is just as ridiculous as Duterte's Jet ski promise. As with Duterte's jetski, Marcos delivered a ~600 PhP (~10 USD) per kilogram of onions reality instead and later on, dropping to ~20 PhP / kg (~0.33 USD / kg) as local onion farmers had their harvests.

    Of note here is the fact that the Marcos Jr. held the post of Secretary of Agriculture at the same time as him being President until November 2023. Meanwhile, the price of (well-milled) rice is around 60 PhP (~1 USD) per kilogram—thrice what was promised. For context, the average daily wage is around 620 PhP (~10.33 USD).

    Not that Duterte had the best handling of the economy, it was however, overshadowed by his bombastic statements and pro-China stance.

    I personally would have enjoyed watching their (word) war of the dynasties if it were not for the healthy chance that one of them would win (because any politician opposed to both practically obliterated and rendered irrelevant).


    NOTE:

    All currency conversions were made assuming 1USD = 60PhP

  • Botanists vote to remove racist references from plants’ scientific names
  • I thought the term sounded familiar, and it is!

    It came into our language via the Spanish, and came to mean some sort of an ogre who tends to hang out on trees, smoking cigars. Yikes!

  • Do you ever feel the "dormant person feeling"?
  • I sometimes get that feeling when I run across someone's personal blog, and it hasn't seen updates in quite a long while (yeah, like in ten years or so). However, as with most of the other replies here, I tend to just assume they've lost interest and moved on.

    I've had some blogs like that myself, and I'm certainly still alive (I hope, lol!) Some of them already gone with the sites themselves like Multiply, if you ever remember that, also, Friendster blogs—all this in the late 2000's and early 2010's. Then there's some Wordpress blogs I used for a while back in 2015~2018. I just got lazy, lost interest, and so left them in the dust.

    Thus, yeah, I simply assume they're doing just fine, and have just moved on with their lives.

    However, there's a different feeling for when I browse the blog/social media profile of someone I definitely knew has already passed on. It hits different. It's like a frozen snapshot of their life. Their final post just there. A lot of times, the final post doesn't even indicate anything. Their lives just went on as normal until it didn't, and it just hits me differently than someone who I would just assume have just stopped posting.

  • Do you ever feel the "dormant person feeling"?
  • The way I've been using (and heard it being used) is more about the act. For example: "Nakiki-usyoso ka pa dyan! Pumasok ka na nga!" ("You're even spectating over therel! Come right back in, you!")

    There's another word, usisa, which I would characterize as more like "to investigate, to look into" but is also akin to usyoso in a way I just can't put my finger on. I think it got conflated with usyoso as the colloquial uzi (from usisero/a, "someone who is overly-curious") took hold (example: "Uy! Wag ka ngang uzi! Kita mo na ngang nag-aamok na yang si Mang Torio eh. Pumasok ka na dito, bago ka pa madamay dyan!" ["Hey! Stop being an onlooker! You already see Mang Torio running amok. Come back inside before you get involved."])

    I'd use neither to refer to the feeling of "wanting to find out about someone I'm spectating on" though. Personally, I'd just use something like na-intriga ("got intrigued/curious"). For example: "Na-intriga ako dun sa nabasa kong blog kagabi. Ano na kayang nangyari sa kanya. Huling post nya 2020 pa, tapos depressing pa yung post." ("I'm curious about the blog I read last night. I wonder what happened to them. Their last post was on 2020, and the post itself was depressing.")

  • Singapore's baby bust: Record low births in 2023 deepen demographic crisis
  • If you have such a problem with too many people existing, do something about it. IDK.

  • What life hack is so simple yet so effective, you're shocked more people don't know about it?
  • I've started doing this when I noticed the space savings. First, I've done it with underwear, then with my undershirts. Now, only those shirts I need to be ironed (and immaculately folded) don't get rolled.

  • What life hack is so simple yet so effective, you're shocked more people don't know about it?
  • Wait, what? Peel avocados? ‌ Just why?

    But then again, I grew up eating ripe, if not nearly overripe avocados, the kind whose flesh would turn into mush if you try to grab them. So, yeah, I would just slice the avocado in half (going around the pit), remove the pit, and then scoop out the flesh.

  • Singapore's baby bust: Record low births in 2023 deepen demographic crisis
  • Both can be true, that we're experiencing record low birth rates globally and that the global population is still increasing at the moment.

    How?

    1. While birth rates in many countries have fallen below replacement rate, it's still not zero, which means people are still having babies.
    2. Due to advances in health science, the death rate has fallen.

    These two factors, especially decades earlier, mean that population hasn't yet fallen. However:

    1. Non-existent humans will not produce babies.
    2. The older the population is on the average, the higher the death rate will be.

    This means that if I don't produce offspring, my non-existent offspring will not produce babies. The less babies are produced, the older the population would be, and the higher the death rate will be. If current trends continue, the death rate will overtake the birth rate, and the population will shrink.

    Outside of a worldwide disaster that kills off people of child-bearing age, population will still rise before it levels off and then fall off as more and more people find less and less appealing to raise children. This is just a consequence of us humans not dying immediately after childbirth, and us humans as a whole making offspring at a certain age (say, 20 years old). These two factors explain the lag between childbirth figures and population growth.

  • Out of Context DnD @lemmy.world megane-kun @lemm.ee

    “Out of respect for them, I'll attempt to cremate their remains using that large oven there. I'll also throw in some herbs to try to mask the stench.”

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    Out of Context DnD @lemmy.world megane-kun @lemm.ee

    "Can I process this into white crystalline powder and pack them into small sachets?"

    Context and explanation

    I was playing a utility bard who has become the sole healer in the party. The DM was kind enough to give me a few homebrewed tweaks to help me play this role better, including but not limited to some tweaks and spells (Healing Word tweaks, Beacon of Hope, and such, but most importantly for this story: Revivify) and I'm extremely thankful for that.

    Now, there was this session where we got our hands into quite a hoard. I no longer remember the details, but there was a sizeable quantity of diamonds. Me, ever being the dutiful healer, asked the DM if I can have the diamonds ground into what I described as "white crystalline powder" and then have them individually packed into small sachets, ready for when I need to cast a revivify spell.

    Cue the rest of the group looking at me as if I were a weirdo. Not realizing what I've just said, I went "What? It's for revivify, is there anything wrong with that?" to which someone helpfully explained the unfortunate drug-related implications. How I intended to package the diamonds: small sachets containing roughly 300GP worth of diamond powder pretty much resembled how some illegal drugs are sold off in the streets. I tried explaining my reasoning: the diamonds in the haul are too large, and cutting them into 300GP portions is too much work. It's better to have them ground into powder and then weigh individual 300GP portions. However, I might have dug an even deeper hole for myself because of that.

    What made this story even funnier in hindsight is that my bard had this backstory of running away from a small-time crime group (bards in the morning, burglars in the evening--my bard playing the role of the lookout and field medic) which turned out to be a part of an even bigger crime syndicate, which our DM kindly reminded me about.

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    Photography @lemmy.world megane-kun @lemm.ee

    Sunrise peeking through the hills

    Sorry for the title. This post is just me really for me to show off a selection among the photos I took from that trip. I don't think I did the place justice though, as it was really awesome experiencing it in person. At any rate, if there's a better place for posting photos like these (casual cellphone photography), please let me know.

    More photos from the same trip below. Please click on the thumbnails for the full-size version.

    [!Image](https://i.imgur.com/nGS59xW.jpg) [!Image](https://i.imgur.com/eUyXRg0.jpg) [!Image](https://i.imgur.com/EYARnPl.jpg)

    [!Image](https://i.imgur.com/6Gkn7lx.jpg) [!Image](https://i.imgur.com/GbevQln.jpg) [!Image](https://i.imgur.com/EkzBlKy.jpg)

    [!Image](https://i.imgur.com/1Erc6bQ.jpg) [!Image](https://i.imgur.com/pu97Bv5.jpg) [!Image](https://i.imgur.com/Bg7DcwU.jpg)

    I used my phone camera (Xiaomi Redmi Note 11 Pro 5G [2201116SG]) for these pictures. Some editing was done via GIMP in an effort to correct some photos' alignment.

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    Using Lazada Philippines on the Web Browser is a Pain Recently

    The accompanying screenshot is taken from a chromium browser. The URL is indeed correct: "punish." It's as if I'm being punished for not using the mobile app.

    I've already accepted that I will encounter such a window, and that slider prompt almost constantly when I'm using Librewolf, but having tried accessing it via a Chromium browser, it's the same. Did I break any of their "necessary" trackers?

    I try not to use the mobile app because it's such a resource hog, on top of its UX‌ being annoying and confusing, and I'd rather just ditch Lazada than to use their mobile app.

    I've got no love for Shoppee either, so I guess I'd just end up saving money (rather than buy stuff), lol!

    Anyways, is it just me or is your Lazada.ph's web experience as bad as mine?

    ---------- Edited post title to remove the unintended link.

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