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I or AI?

by Jose Dalisay - April 28, 2025 - 12:00am

I’ve recently been asked to talk about literature in the time of artificial intelligence in a couple of conferences in Dumaguete and Manila.

A long learning process

by Jose Dalisay - April 21, 2025 - 12:00am

I recently came across a thread on social media urging Filipinos to boycott the midterm elections next month on the expectation that they will be tainted with fraud, as the 2022 elections were believed or alleged...

Purity and perfection

by Jose Dalisay - April 14, 2025 - 12:00am

Last week, former Commission on Audit Commissioner and senatorial candidate Heidi Mendoza – a staunch exponent of good governance and nemesis of crooks – drew flak from some people who would have been...

The city of stories

by Jose Dalisay - April 7, 2025 - 12:00am

This past weekend, I was down in Dumaguete City with National Artist for Literature Resil Mojares, historian Ambeth Ocampo and scores of other writers for the 2nd Dumaguete Literary Festival.

FIlipinos for nothing

by Jose Dalisay - March 31, 2025 - 12:00am

There’s a part of me that wants to stop beating up on the Dutertes, lest I be accused of being part of the Marcos propaganda machine (which stands to benefit from all this anyway, whatever I say), but like...

Dutch entertainment

by Jose Dalisay - March 24, 2025 - 12:00am

As I’ve mentioned here before, I was a prisoner once – under martial law, for more than seven months, when I was 18.

ICC ex machina

by Jose Dalisay - March 17, 2025 - 12:00am

In playwriting and fiction, we call it deus ex machina – literally, the “god out of the machine” – which has come to mean a miraculously happy or fortuitous ending to a long and agonizing...

Bringing in the no-shows

by Jose Dalisay - March 10, 2025 - 12:00am

Every year, about 100,000 Filipino high school seniors take the University of the Philippines College Admission Test (UPCAT), hoping to get into one of UP’s 10 campuses nationwide. It’s an annual ritual...

Fighting the truth

by Jose Dalisay - March 3, 2025 - 12:00am

Bear with me as I begin this Monday’s piece with a quotation about last week’s celebration (or non-celebration, from another point of view) of the 1986 EDSA People Power uprising.

‘Forthwith’ and other adverbs

by Jose Dalisay - February 24, 2025 - 12:00am

Never in our modern political history has so much seemed to depend on the meaning and interpretation of one word.

The finest of the Filipino

by Jose Dalisay - February 17, 2025 - 12:00am

Following through on my recent piece about our Senate becoming a family show, our constitutionalists probably had the right idea when they decided to amend the Charter in 1940 to provide for a Senate that would draw...

A false horizon

by Jose Dalisay - February 10, 2025 - 12:00am

I don’t know why, but like the proverbial bad penny that keeps turning up (English teachers: note the British idiom), every few years, some Filipino school announces its adoption of an “English-only”...

A relentless questioner

by Jose Dalisay - February 3, 2025 - 12:00am

I don’t know if there’s a Marxist heaven, but if there is, then Dr. Francisco “Dodong” Nemenzo, who passed away recently, must be smiling up there because of the forthcoming launch of his...

A family business

by Jose Dalisay - January 27, 2025 - 12:00am

“The Senate is not a family business,” posted my friend R. on Facebook, and I found myself nodding at what sounded like the patently obvious truth, which somehow seems to still elude our family-oriented...

The punishment theory

by Jose Dalisay - January 20, 2025 - 12:00am

Los Angeles is burning as we speak, with raging fires consuming an area larger than the whole of San Francisco – or, in our terms, about seven times the size of Makati.

Been there, done that

by Jose Dalisay - January 13, 2025 - 12:00am

I was trying my best to sound sober and diplomatic in last week’s column about Donald Trump’s impending return to the presidency of the world’s most powerful country in the world, the United States...

From St. Louis to San Diego

by Jose Dalisay - January 6, 2025 - 12:00am

I’m writing this on New Year’s Day in San Diego, California, where we’ve been visiting our married daughter Demi, who’s been living and working here for the past 17 years.

The young Dodong Nemenzo (2)

by Jose Dalisay - December 30, 2024 - 12:00am

This week I continue with excerpts from my interview with the late Francisco “Dodong” Nemenzo, on his recollections of his genesis as a young intellectual and activist at the University of the Philippines...

The young Dodong Nemenzo (1)

by Jose Dalisay - December 23, 2024 - 12:00am

It was with deep sadness that we received the news last week of the passing of Francisco “Dodong” Nemenzo, the staunch Marxist, nationalist and former president of the University of the Philippines.

In sin and error pining

by Jose Dalisay - December 16, 2024 - 12:00am

It was at an early Christmas lunch when a friend asked if I thought that Vice President Sara Duterte would be impeached, with all the motions now on the table to that effect. I wasn’t expecting politics to...

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