I write on politics, history, culture; also a speechwriter. All my stuff is at quezon.ph
Joined April 2007
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18 Nov 2016
"Out from some timeless wintry fog shambled the hairy old beast - history - big with memories." --Simon Schama, on Churchill's funeral.
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My column today looks at one idea getting closer to being, even as another idea is rapidly shaping up to make it obsolete. Can the Bangsamoro coexist with a Mindanawon super-identity?
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Manuel L. Quezon III retweeted
Jun 13
when mount tambora in indonesia erupted in 1815, the volcano killed all 10,000 tambora people and wiped out their culture entirely. their extinct language was uniquely non-austronesian & we only know about it from a 48-word vocabulary list collected by colonial officials in 1814
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Jun 13
USA. A breakfast counter. The waitress recommended the biscuits and gravy, and when the plate arrived, I thought something had gone wrong in the kitchen.
I say this with shame. The dish looked like a construction site after rain. Pale mounds. Gray ladle-fall. Speckles I could not identify.
In my land, the eye eats first. A meal is arranged like a garden. This meal was arranged like weather.
"Is it… finished?" I asked, carefully.
"Honey, that's what it looks like."
The man beside me was already eating his. He did not look up. "Just try it."
I am a man who has charged hillsides at dawn. I raised the fork. I tried it.
I must now formally apologize to the biscuits, the gravy, the waitress, the kitchen, and the entire breakfast tradition of the American South.
It was magnificent. Warm. Peppered. The biscuit drank the gravy the way a field drinks rain — THAT is why it is shaped like that, you fool — and every mound I had insulted was a soft fold of comfort that my homeland, in eight hundred years, never once thought to invent.
"Well?" the waitress asked.
"I judged it," I confessed. "By its appearance. I am ashamed."
"Everybody does, hon."
Everybody does. A national dish that forgives you for doubting it. It expects the doubt. It waits for you on the other side of it.
Do not judge the gravy by its face. Judge yourself, for hesitating.
I order it every Saturday now. I no longer see the construction site. I see only the garden.
It was a garden the whole time. The eye must be trained.
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Jun 13
Google got tired of all the vibe coded simulators built on 3d tiles and said - screw it, flight sim on web, free for all - no need to burn api credits. The deeper lore here is that flight sim has long been an easter egg feature exclusive to the legacy earth pro desktop app.
Jun 12
Prepare for takeoff. ✈️ Flight simulator is now available globally on web to all users. goo.gle/4fBYnWO
We've recently added many our most powerful professional desktop features to web. Elevation profiles, new import types, but there's always been one other feature you've been asking us to add to the web version of Google Earth, just for fun...
Where will you fly? Share your best maneuvers, views, and flyovers with us!
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Manuel L. Quezon III retweeted
This guy continues to explore previously unseen depths to the word "delulu." 🤪
Jun 13
Senator Alan Peter Cayetano has likened his group’s struggle at the Senate to the hardships faced by former Senator Benigno “Ninoy” Aquino who was martyred in 1983, raising the famous “Laban” sign to stress that they have to keep on fighting.
READ MORE: inqnews.net/CayetanoLabanNin…
ALT Senator Alan Peter Cayetano has likened his group’s struggle at the Senate to the hardships faced by former Senator Benigno “Ninoy” Aquino who was martyred in 1983, raising the famous “Laban” sign to stress that they have to keep on fighting.
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Jun 13
Gene Shalit, ‘Today’ movie critic and purveyor of puns, dies at 100 washingtonpost.com/obituarie…
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Jun 12
Why public transport isn't necessarily something that hsould be run like a commercial proposition: it has uncommercial objectives and purposes.
Seoul's subway system loses nearly 800 won (5 cents) on every passenger it carries, according to figures released Friday by Seoul Metro.
koreajoongangdaily.com/korea…
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Jun 12
An interesting note on fashion and how its quick changes today points to a ever-changing-thus-shifting effort to situate one's self in the social hierarchy.
Jun 11
It's the opposite. During the mid- to late-19th century, suits were the uniform of clerks and administrators. Those higher on the social and economic ladder — such as lawyers, doctors, and politicians — wore the more "gentlemanly" frock coat with a silk top hat. In fact, Labour Party founder Keir Hardie caused quite a stir when he showed up to work on his first day as a Member of Parliament while wearing a tweed suit to show his allegiance to his working-class constituents. The press was shocked, noting that he wore a "cloth cap in Parliament" (a tweed deerstalking cap, rather than the silk top hat).
With time, everyone wore the suit. By the early 20th century, those who owned the means of production wore the same uniform as those who managed them. Blurring this distinction can seem meaningless today, but it was quite a big deal in the early 20th century. Even manual laborers who wore more utilitarian clothing to work — chambray shirts, blue jeans, chore coats, etc — had a suit for religious services on Sunday. Thus, the suit was not a symbol of domination, but rather hid class markers.
To be sure, there were distinctions in how people wore suits and where they bought them. In London, businessmen could be distinguished by whether they bought their clothes from a "City tailor" or a "West End tailor" (the West End being the higher-grade option reserved for those with money). But these were relatively minor and only for the trained eye. Relatively speaking, class symbols today are significantly more obvious not only through the different grades of quality, but also logos and general aesthetics. Hence, to some degree, why fashion changes so rapidly today — people are constantly shifting their social position.
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Manuel L. Quezon III retweeted
Jun 11
Korea had no coking coal, no iron ore, and the WB advised against it
Park built it anyway with reparations money from JPN and put ex-general Park Tae-joon in charge, who framed the project as repaying a national debt
POSCO became one of the world's most efficient steelmakers
Sometimes you just gotta do it
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Jun 11
My Korean friend said he noticed all of his white friends used warm lighting, but his Asian friends used colder overhead lighting at night.
He thought for a minute and said that he preferred the warm lighting because "at night you just don't really need to see everything in the house I guess."
Interesting how even lighting reflects cultural values (productivity, for instance).
Jun 11
You can figure out everything you need to know about someone by their home lighting temperature
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Jun 12
🇨🇳 How the Chinese depicted the flag of Persia/Iran during the Qing Dynasty.
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Rare colorized photo of the mock battle of Manila, 1898. #rp612fic
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Jun 11
CONGRATS AGAIN to "DREAM A LITTLE DREAM OF ME REIMAGINED" by Talissa Mehringer, an Honorable Mention, Internet Archive’s 2026 Public Domain Film Remix Contest 🏅
A short music-film remix celebrating 1930s choreography, lavish sets, and the versatility of early screen performers.
Watch the full short film ⤵️
archive.org/details/dream-a-…
#PublicDomain #PublicDomainDay
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Manuel L. Quezon III retweeted
Jun 11
In late 1800s, pencil makers wanted their products to stand out as premium and reliable. Around that time, some of the world’s finest graphite was coming from China, and manufacturers looked for ways to connect their pencils with that reputation. Yellow already carried strong imperial and royal associations in Chinese culture, so companies began painting pencils yellow to suggest luxury, quality, and sophistication.
One of the most influential examples came in 1890 when the Austrian company L&C Hardtmuth introduced its famous Koh-I-Noor pencils. The bright yellow design helped market them as high-end writing tools made with superior graphite. The branding worked so well that other manufacturers soon copied the color, and yellow gradually became the standard look people associated with pencils.
(Not every pencil became yellow, but the color became deeply tied to the idea of a dependable, high-quality pencil. More than a century later, many pencils around the world are still painted yellow because of a marketing strategy rooted in trade, symbolism, and the global reputation of graphite from Asia.)
© Witty Historian
#drthehistories
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Manuel L. Quezon III retweeted
23 Aug 2020
INFOGRAPHIC • Who was who in the Katipunan—including clerks, mechanics, and secret agents: malacanang.gov.ph/wp-content…
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Manuel L. Quezon III retweeted
3 Aug 2024
Here is the link to the national anthem comparison: our anthem paya tribute to three pieces: the Spanish anthem, Verdi’s Grand March from Aida, and the French anthem. archive.org/details/Philippi…
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Manuel L. Quezon III retweeted
28 May 2019
You can find these charts and additional information in the book, "Heroism, Heritage, & Nationhood," which you can download free in Archive.org. archive.org/details/heroism-…
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Manuel L. Quezon III retweeted
28 May 2019
#PhilippinesFlagDays What our Proclamation of Independence on June 12, 1898 had to say about the design and appearance of our flag (in the original Spanish, and in English and Filipino translations):
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