New year, new thread.

The bone of contention is the original album artwork one of the remaining band members insists is their intellectual property, and was used -- without their express permission -- in creating a vinyl reissue.

MANILA, Philippines — The Bureau of Immigration (BI) is looking into reports about a Norwegian businessman who walked out of a public consultation after residents expressed opposition to a planned P20.3-billion artificial intelligence (AI) data center, and cursing members of the local media in Oton, Iloilo.

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Residents opposed the project after Robertsen allegedly gave unclear answers, prompting the latter to walk out.

When approached for an interview, Robertsen was caught saying: “If you don’t have a brain, just f**k, go away.”

What a mess :(

There's an epidemic of AI music flooding social media, like "Michael Bennett" and "Jada Monroe", and boomers can't seem to get enough of it, but who's behind it and what are the implications for real musicians? And what does the Philippines have to do with all of this?

Oh, fuck. We're seeing fake OPM artists, I'm seeing slop almost everywhere -- including San Miguel Corporation now using LLM-generated ads -- and now this, an imaginary Aretha Franklin lookalike allegedly created by a virtual assistant... in this country.

Only someone with considerable depth of knowledge in American culture and pop music is capable of conceiving this type of content far beyond the understanding of most Filipinos. It has to be an expatriate.

And the huge size of the operation indicates this cannot be done by a single person but a syndicate, and they're raking in millions through Adsense and Spotify payouts, not only heavy engagement on social media.

I would love to see further investigation.

In other words, fucking Starscream is engaged indirectly in land speculation.

The survey also showed that net trust for Australia stayed moderate with +29 percent (48% much trust, 20% little trust), “neutral” for Israel, with -5 (30% much trust, 34% little trust), and Russia, with -8 (28% much trust, 36% little trust).

Meanwhile, net trust for China stayed “poor” at -16, receiving only 25 percent of trust and 41 percent of “little trust” from Filipinos. Palestine remained at -19 (18% much trust, 37% little trust), while Iran at -23 (19% much trust, 43% little trust).

What cop logic!

No mention of solar, I notice.

Manila (AFP) – Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos, who declared a national energy emergency this year, said Monday that nuclear power might hold answers for a country paying the highest electricity prices in the region.

Marcos made the suggestion in a wide-ranging State of the Nation speech that placed spiralling energy costs and inflation, driven by the war in the Middle East, centre-stage.

"Perhaps it is time for us to revisit nuclear energy production," Marcos told the joint session of Congress.

"We will ensure it is safe. We will ensure the good benefits of nuclear energy will be explained properly to the public."

The Bataan Nuclear Power Plant -- the only nuclear power plant in the Philippines -- was completed in the 1980s but never launched due to corruption issues and safety concerns.

The Philippines has conducted exploratory talks about nuclear energy with numerous countries including Japan, France, Russia and the United States.

Marcos offered no specifics about his atomic energy plans, the Philippines announced a deal with the United States in May 2024 to train Filipinos how to build and operate nuclear power plants.

Carlo Arcilla, former director of the Philippine Nuclear Research Institute, told AFP reintroducing nuclear energy into the conversation was a "no-brainer".

"While it's true that we have hydro and geothermal, these are not enough. We've experienced a lot of brownouts, especially in the Visayas," he said, referencing a region of the central Philippines that is home to more than 20 million.

"I hope the president follows this up with concrete action," Arcilla said.

Energy Secretary Sharon Garin said in March that the import-dependent archipelago planned to boost the output of its coal-fired power plants to keep electricity costs down as the war wreaked havoc with gas shipments.

Marcos separately unveiled a raft of measures aimed at providing relief for the country's embattled middle class, including exempting those earning up to 350,000 pesos ($5,670) from income tax entirely. The previous threshold had been 250,000 pesos.

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