Senator #RisaHontiveros welcomed the decision of the Department of the Interior and Local Government (#DILG) to strip Bamban, Tarlac Mayor #AliceGuo of supervision over #LocalPolice, citing her ties to “criminals.”
When I saw this web story about ‘terraforming Singapore’ I was floored. What a great use of the web to tell a story about a country, land use, sand, environmental degradation, and the price of ‘progress’. Singapore’s success, skyscrapers, comes at the cost of literally mining and eroding some of our poorest neighbors’.
This story is so important and had to be told. Oh and it also won some awards! Proud of the friends who put this together
I found this article irritating. Singaporean small country insecurity and exceptionalism is still deeply Western-centric. It’s all look at us, we are better / different
LinkedIn types are celebrating it and saying ‘Singapore is better because we don’t have culture wars/ identity politics’
Well that’s different from ‘not being allowed to have identity politics’, or ‘identities’, but I find it nauseating that dominant group people think this is great
I don’t think anyone needs lessons on anything from Singapore. Literally nowhere else is a microscopic city state island nation with a deep port. LA is 1.82x bigger than us. A Taiwanese minister once called Singapore ‘a very deeply irritating booger’ (more melodic in our shared Hokkien: pee sai). Now that’s the Singapore think piece I want to read
Don’t get me wrong, Singapore is wonderful within some constraints. If you’re fine with boundaries and limits, and your identity gives you some privileges. However I would not recommend it to anyone who is any type of outside the box person. There’s a special type of soul crushing you can expect, one that I will take the rest of my life to unravel
Majority of Singaporeans aware of net zero concept, but less clear on national climate targets: study
Research finds that only 15 per cent of respondents know of the city-state’s goal to achieve net zero emissions by 2050. Singaporeans also lack understanding of the types of action – for example, switching to a plant-based diet – that can bring about larger impact on cutting emissions
“Singapore is one of the most expensive cities in the world, but it does not have a minimum wage. Housing prices have surged, and many Singaporeans say social mobility has dropped considerably. Others complain that freedom of expression is still tightly controlled, if less so than before.”
Fairly certain my life trajectory will not really be possible in today’s Singapore (re social mobility)
The thing im maddest at him about is in pretending that he did so much for lgbt rights (repealed 377A, pfft) but in practice really made queer life harder for queer people there in so many other ways. So I don’t like the stories that attribute ‘liberal values’ to his era
"When the Singaporean government asked local writers if they would agree to having their work used to train a large language model, it probably did not expect the country’s tiny literary community to react so fiercely."
It also frustrates me sometimes that my compatriots don’t understand the position of privilege they’re in. Mostly, my peers from back home have absolutely no problem getting jobs in almost any country in the world. We have almost no visa problems either. The world is, quite literally, our oyster. But the brainwashing and the material comforts are so strong that it makes it very difficult to leave. I’m certainly guilty of that myself (I’m often moping about how much easier things are back home)
If any of this resonates: here’s some info I wrote on the logistics. You have to find the job yourself, but once you do, it’s pretty straightforward (and very few other foreigners have it this easy)
Dear #Singapore friends (and let’s be honest, on mastodon that’s mostly @skinnylatte): a friend of a friend is visiting Singapore, and is looking for recommendations for pescatarian-friendly fine dining besides sushi. I don’t do a lot of fine dining when I’m there, so don’t have much to offer myself.
@skinnylatte awesome, thank you! Non-fine dining options should be helpful, too (for me, if not them). Nobody can eat at nothing but fine dining restaurants, right? Right‽
@skinnylatte just noticed that Boneless Kitchen is on the list. I’ve been wanting to try them for a while! Darn, now I need to plan another trip to Singapore…
🧵 A flurry of execution notices have been issued these past few weeks. It is of course horrific every time a notice is delivered to a death row prisoner and their family, but what’s especially troubling in these cases is that all these prisoners are currently party to a joint application to the court, filed even before the first execution notice was issued.
[5] We are also aware of effort by the Attorney-General’s Chambers (AGC) to further expedite the joint proceedings beyond timelines that are already unusually tight. This is no mundane administrative hiccup; these are human lives we’re talking about.
[6] Singapore’s bloodthirsty drug control regime continues to make a mockery of life, and the state refuses an honest reckoning with the immeasurable human cost of these cruel laws, from the families that are devastated to the torturous conditions prisoners suffer on death row.
The only way to protect the lives of the over 50 people on death row is by declaring a moratorium on the use of capital punishment in Singapore.
It says a lot about my upbringing when my EIGHT-year old brings home a test paper (not sure of the reason, she doesn't sit an English test till she's 11), and my instinctive reaction was, She could've got full marks for that. 😬 #Singapore
And now my 11 year old is in the midst of her first exams in secondary school, and I tell you, it's taking all of my willpower to hold myself back from saying things that are unhelpful.
A few brave Singaporeans unfurled this banner in front of the iconic Marina Bay Sands, in a country where any public protest is illegal without prior approval and approved protests are only allowed at one park (and the authorities already said all registered protest applications relating to Gaza will be denied)
If they were foreigners they would almost certainly be deported. As citizens they’ll definitely see some legal action
I mean this is a country that put a man in jail for 15 days for holding up a smiley face sign (they’ll say ‘he should have chosen the fine, but that’s not quite the point)
I grew up being told (by teachers!) that if I made my political opinions known I would almost certainly be sued out of existence and out of my pants. That’s why I am awed by the people back home who do choose direct action
A sliver of old Singapura survives at the eastern end of West Coast Park off a now largely sandless Pasir Panjang. Here, the survivors of an extinct archipelago gather their wits and wounds to claim a tiny fraction of the space they once roamed, a weekend refuge from which they can launch their bodies from the confines of the mainland into channels, reefs, fairways and shoals that are mapped into their minds and forever buried in their hearts.
How to utilise your Climate Vouchers under Singapore's enhanced Climate Friendly Households Programme
HDB households will be able to claim S$300 worth of vouchers that can be used to purchase 10 types of energy- and water-efficient household products, with new additions such as direct current fans, washing machines, and water closets
There are so many excellent veg / vegan restaurants in Singapore now. Stuff like this is super interesting to me. (I also like Herbivore for vegan ‘yakitori’, VeganBurg for vegan ‘chilli crab’ and Boneless Kitchen and Warung Ijo)
I’m not vegan but I stay on top of new openings to make recs to friends (and also to try). Vegan food has come a long way.
It’s still pretty hard to eat cheap local food outside of a very narrow class of South Indian.
every 'hawker centre' (collection of street food vendors) in singapore will have at least 1 chinese vegetarian spot for buddhists. however, the food will be quite different from what vegetarians from other cultures might expect.
there may also be 1 veg south indian stall, but vast majority of our indian food in sg is not veg (looking up the migrant / caste history of who made it there, it's obvious why).
some stalls will offer impossible / beyond in wantons and stuff but it's not common
