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Editorial Opinion

Greedy for gold

On July 26, President Rodrigo Duterte delivered his final State of the Nation Address—but that was hardly the most momentous thing that happened that day. About an hour later, an ocean away, Lupang Hinirang blared through the Tokyo International Forum for the first time in Olympic history. Hidilyn Diaz, with her hand over her brow…

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Opinion

Hello, open-source!

As a computer engineering student, I have always been interested in software, hardware, and everything in between. The only way to understand how things work is to deconstruct them and see the genius behind everything. To do that, I had to go away from the proprietary, closed nature of products from companies like Apple and…

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Opinion

Beware of their luck

A crisis is a lot of things.  It is a time of distress that disrupts routine, a crucial circumstance that could change the future. It is a test of minds, grit, and will. It is a uniting moment—a situation that often needs alliances to solve the matter at hand. It is all of us bracing…

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Opinion Opinion Feature

Abandoned state

For the past five years, we have seen how our dream of finally achieving change in this country has slowly slipped away from our hands. Even the smallest hope some of us had eventually faded by increments. Back in 2016, right before the national elections, we were repeatedly promised that “change is coming” just like…

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Editorial Opinion

At a standstill

“What we’re seeing is by June 14, our supply will begin to normalize.” Sike. Vaccine czar Carlito Galvez Jr.’s prediction seemed to have been too optimistic. It is the middle of July, and the country’s supply of COVID-19 jabs is hardly normal: shortages in a handful of local government units recently had to put their…

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Opinion Opinion Feature

Eternity feels boring

What would you do if eternity was given to you?  A good thing about living alone is that intrusive thoughts such as this come naturally. You could be reading a book, cooking dinner, or watching a K-drama about a 999-year-old fox who has a year left to become a human, and getting one would seem…

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Opinion Opinion Feature

A garden and a lifeless rock

For most of human history, Earth was the only world we had known to exist. From our ancestors’ eyes, they resided on an island amid a sea of countless stars, their mark on the world as delible as footsteps on a beach. We know now, of course, that Earth is but one of eight planets…

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Opinion Opinion Feature

A lease on life

Back when I was still in senior high school, walking back home to San Nicolas was one of the highlights of my day. Having studied in a Chinese school in Tondo, I would wind past shops in 168 Mall, tiptoe over polluted gutters with funky smells, always with my bag held tightly in front of…

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Opinion Opinion Feature

Brick by brick

It was a regular Thursday afternoon rush and I was looking forward to going home for the weekend. I was crossing the corner of Vito Cruz with my bag full of laundry when it happened. I barely registered the small, nondescript man coming from the opposite direction. As we crossed each other’s paths, he inched…

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Opinion

Can’t you read?

It was over a year ago, right before COVID-19 took over headlines indefinitely, that the major news item was about reading comprehension—or lack thereof. Let me jog your memory: in December 2019, people threw a fit when a 2018 Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) report found that among 79 countries surveyed, the Philippines placed…