Jay Agonoy

So, the Tiktok ban is made in effect an hour before midnight. I wrote a story about how we’re realizing the effect of this restriction on VTuber NewsDrop.

What I regrettably didn’t notice is that we can change regions in the account settings prior to the ban. That setting could have prevented us from being part of the affected accounts.

I tried other methods but I think Tiktok is compelled to stop everything for users in the US. Even if you get successful working around the geo-restrictions, there’s no way you’d be able to change your Tiktok region now. It’s best to wait things out until we’re able to get back to our casual brainrot habit again.

There are pieces of history which I am still not familiar with: Some of these include the legislation process of the Religious Instruction Bill (authored by Mariano Jesus Cuenco of Cebu) and Barrio Maligaya, both set in the 60s.

I was kind of familiar with Barrio Maligaya when I read a snippet of a story behind it during the pandemic. Seeing it adapted as a documentary film (for the second time – the first one was in the 80s) is beneficial for me to understand the first among the community development projects that my faith, the Iglesia ni Cristo, has established.

After “Ang Paglisan” (The Exodus) was screened just this afternoon, I was more interested in going to that specific place and see it for myself.

Back to the Religious Instruction Bill (which we will refer to as Cuenco Bill) – Having entered Catholic school to finish my elementary, I’ve seen what could be its effect to all public schools should it be passed. Even so, during my time in 3rd year high school, we had a subject about Religion whose instructor is a member of another Christian church.

That was the point “Ipakipaglaban ang Pananampalataya” it wants to share across its viewers after it was screened alongside the earlier film I mentioned.

As we are called by faith to rally for peace, this is a great time to look back at why my faith rallies on the streets as called. Here’s a summary of why we are rallying again, years after the last one held at Shaw Boulevard, Pasig in 2015.

Welcome to the airport, where we have departures upstairs and arrivals at the ground level. I had everyone called here (not really) so you won’t give any excuses that there’s no need to announce something (I just don’t want to hear it at the moment).

When I had talked about wanting to go to WordCamp Manila as media, I was both excited to attend a major WordPress event, and still leaning to keep supporting Matt Mullenweg’s vision of WordPress for the future.

I then continue to move along, but at the end of the day, we see how either everyone tells me that Matt is a Mad King or either Matt tells everyone that he’s enlightened.

The year 2024 is a revelation for me to keep a distance towards what I perceive as bad actors (my gut feel tells me so), and unfortunately after all that’s been said and done, WP Engine wins against Mullenweg, the latter was still seen making hissy fits, and the future of the WordPress ecosystem is becoming stubbornly questionable to me (what words should I describe the feelings I have?).

Don’t get me wrong, WP Engine is under the behest of an investment fund and does not contribute fairly to WordPress (drawing Mullenweg’s ire) is also a jerk. If only they did what they were supposed to do in the first place, we won’t have this kind of unwarranted, unwanted anxiety and vitriol.

I get the sentiments, but my opinion is that WP Engine should get rid of its “WP” part of their name, and Mullenweg should tone down on his control of WordPress as time passes. Automattic? WordPress Foundation? WordPress.org? WordPress.com? We all attribute it to the same guy, Mullenweg.

I want to move to Ghost, as soon as possible. I’m happy to use it despite the technical requirements in order to run it. Except that the webhost where this site is hosted has something in it that keeps me from fully going Ghost. I’m currently in touch with my good friend Pat on how to sort the dilemma so I can start migrating platforms (once again).

So yeah, the announcement: I’m going to move my website from WordPress.org to somewhere else. That somewhere else is currently a fork of WordPress, ClassicPress. It’s a bumpy start, the media picker doesn’t work well as we speak, but as long as this website’s out of the WordPress ecosystem, I think I should be fine. (I need to find an easier way to back up all my blog archives from as early as 2010 though.)

I’ve used WordPress after ditching Blogger (spammy) and Tumblr (they continuously fail to give me back my access after my phone got snatched), but just when I thought I’d be comfortable with the way things are going, no, I am not.

I’ll need more time, but I expect to at least migrate my personal stuff away from the WordPress ecosystem next year (and if you’re using WordPress, as long as you’re not using WP Engine, you probably should be fine either).