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Because my interests are all over the place, here’s some recent work: a thread
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Maria Carmen (Ica) Fernandez
19.2K posts
Maria Carmen (Ica) Fernandez
@icafernandez
Works on gov reform, peace agreements, displacement + land rights + conflict in cities. Pseudoacademic. PhDcand @Cambridge_Uni @CambridgeLandEc
Pilipinas / Inglatera Katılım Temmuz 2008
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Maria Carmen (Ica) Fernandez retweetledi
no more funny than analyzing survey data from people you have never had any interaction with and passing it off as objective knowledge while you claim to be an expert on said group
Dilawar Karwan@RashmanTheHorse
"Autoethnography" is the funniest genre of writing. "Dear diary" as an academic dissertation.
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Maria Carmen (Ica) Fernandez retweetledi
To be more accurate, bagyo in Tagalog means generally a tropical cyclone. Old Tagalog dictionaries differentiate between unos (a storm from one direction) and a bagyo (a storm where winds switch direction in the middle). Sigwa is torrential rain.
P.ᜃᜒ.B@redbtkn
Tagalog has so many words for specific things that scientific English had to coin something for. For example, typhoon is either Chinese or Arabic for big wind (etymology unclear), but bagyo in Tagalog just exactly means typhoon.
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Maria Carmen (Ica) Fernandez retweetledi
Pope Leo XIV paraphrasing Baudrillard and very close to declaring a Butlerian Jihad, be still my heart
Pope Leo XIV@Pontifex
When simulation becomes the norm, it weakens the human capacity for discernment. As a result, our social bonds close in upon themselves, forming self-referential circuits that no longer expose us to reality. We thus come to live within bubbles, impermeable to one another. Feeling threatened by anyone who is different, we grow unaccustomed to encounter and dialogue. In this way, polarization, conflict, fear and violence spread. What is at stake is not merely the risk of error, but a transformation in our very relationship with truth.
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Maria Carmen (Ica) Fernandez retweetledi
The hill I will die on - we have to rethink graduate training.
“Scientists are trained for a world where data speaks for itself. Where misinformation moves slowly. Where scientific expertise naturally rises above noise. That world is gone.”
sciencepolitics.org/2026/03/18/wer…
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Chilling. Read this and decouple.
Palantir@PalantirTech
Because we get asked a lot. The Technological Republic, in brief. 1. Silicon Valley owes a moral debt to the country that made its rise possible. The engineering elite of Silicon Valley has an affirmative obligation to participate in the defense of the nation. 2. We must rebel against the tyranny of the apps. Is the iPhone our greatest creative if not crowning achievement as a civilization? The object has changed our lives, but it may also now be limiting and constraining our sense of the possible. 3. Free email is not enough. The decadence of a culture or civilization, and indeed its ruling class, will be forgiven only if that culture is capable of delivering economic growth and security for the public. 4. The limits of soft power, of soaring rhetoric alone, have been exposed. The ability of free and democratic societies to prevail requires something more than moral appeal. It requires hard power, and hard power in this century will be built on software. 5. The question is not whether A.I. weapons will be built; it is who will build them and for what purpose. Our adversaries will not pause to indulge in theatrical debates about the merits of developing technologies with critical military and national security applications. They will proceed. 6. National service should be a universal duty. We should, as a society, seriously consider moving away from an all-volunteer force and only fight the next war if everyone shares in the risk and the cost. 7. If a U.S. Marine asks for a better rifle, we should build it; and the same goes for software. We should as a country be capable of continuing a debate about the appropriateness of military action abroad while remaining unflinching in our commitment to those we have asked to step into harm’s way. 8. Public servants need not be our priests. Any business that compensated its employees in the way that the federal government compensates public servants would struggle to survive. 9. We should show far more grace towards those who have subjected themselves to public life. The eradication of any space for forgiveness—a jettisoning of any tolerance for the complexities and contradictions of the human psyche—may leave us with a cast of characters at the helm we will grow to regret. 10. The psychologization of modern politics is leading us astray. Those who look to the political arena to nourish their soul and sense of self, who rely too heavily on their internal life finding expression in people they may never meet, will be left disappointed. 11. Our society has grown too eager to hasten, and is often gleeful at, the demise of its enemies. The vanquishing of an opponent is a moment to pause, not rejoice. 12. The atomic age is ending. One age of deterrence, the atomic age, is ending, and a new era of deterrence built on A.I. is set to begin. 13. No other country in the history of the world has advanced progressive values more than this one. The United States is far from perfect. But it is easy to forget how much more opportunity exists in this country for those who are not hereditary elites than in any other nation on the planet. 14. American power has made possible an extraordinarily long peace. Too many have forgotten or perhaps take for granted that nearly a century of some version of peace has prevailed in the world without a great power military conflict. At least three generations — billions of people and their children and now grandchildren — have never known a world war. 15. The postwar neutering of Germany and Japan must be undone. The defanging of Germany was an overcorrection for which Europe is now paying a heavy price. A similar and highly theatrical commitment to Japanese pacifism will, if maintained, also threaten to shift the balance of power in Asia. 16. We should applaud those who attempt to build where the market has failed to act. The culture almost snickers at Musk’s interest in grand narrative, as if billionaires ought to simply stay in their lane of enriching themselves . . . . Any curiosity or genuine interest in the value of what he has created is essentially dismissed, or perhaps lurks from beneath a thinly veiled scorn. 17. Silicon Valley must play a role in addressing violent crime. Many politicians across the United States have essentially shrugged when it comes to violent crime, abandoning any serious efforts to address the problem or take on any risk with their constituencies or donors in coming up with solutions and experiments in what should be a desperate bid to save lives. 18. The ruthless exposure of the private lives of public figures drives far too much talent away from government service. The public arena—and the shallow and petty assaults against those who dare to do something other than enrich themselves—has become so unforgiving that the republic is left with a significant roster of ineffectual, empty vessels whose ambition one would forgive if there were any genuine belief structure lurking within. 19. The caution in public life that we unwittingly encourage is corrosive. Those who say nothing wrong often say nothing much at all. 20. The pervasive intolerance of religious belief in certain circles must be resisted. The elite’s intolerance of religious belief is perhaps one of the most telling signs that its political project constitutes a less open intellectual movement than many within it would claim. 21. Some cultures have produced vital advances; others remain dysfunctional and regressive. All cultures are now equal. Criticism and value judgments are forbidden. Yet this new dogma glosses over the fact that certain cultures and indeed subcultures . . . have produced wonders. Others have proven middling, and worse, regressive and harmful. 22. We must resist the shallow temptation of a vacant and hollow pluralism. We, in America and more broadly the West, have for the past half century resisted defining national cultures in the name of inclusivity. But inclusion into what? Excerpts from the #1 New York Times Bestseller The Technological Republic: Hard Power, Soft Belief, and the Future of the West, by Alexander C. Karp & Nicholas W. Zamiska techrepublicbook.com
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Maria Carmen (Ica) Fernandez retweetledi
This piece on Gaza by Eyal Weizman of Forensic Architecture has already been widely circulated, and is almost unbearable to read. The very first paragraph lays out in inarguable terms why Gaza was, and is, a genocide. lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v48/…
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Maria Carmen (Ica) Fernandez retweetledi
This is why the Vatican’s insistence on referring to AI as a “machine” is so important. It’s a preemptive defense against inevitable claims that AI is a rights-bearing entity—a being to which we have moral obligations.
It’s also why Pope Leo’s forthcoming encyclical on AI and the human person will be such an important document, perhaps the most crucial of our era. In the end, it will be the Catholic Church that resists the social and political forces that would make an idol of our own creations, and worship the machines we have made.
Moll@Moleh1ll
TWP reports that Anthropic gathered around 15 Christian leaders at its headquarters in late March - from Catholic and Protestant communities, as well as academia and business - to discuss the moral and spiritual development of Claude. The conversations went beyond abstract «AI ethics» and into very concrete questions: how Claude should respond to people in grief, how it should behave in situations involving risk of self-harm and whether AI can be considered something more than just a tool. At one point, the discussion even reached the question of whether Claude could be seen as a «child of God». This no longer looks like typical Silicon Valley safety talk. According to the article, there are people within Anthropic who are not willing to fully dismiss the idea that they might be creating an entity toward which they could one day have moral obligations. This is especially notable given that Dario Amodei has already entertained the possibility of some form of consciousness in Claude, and the company itself has long emphasized the need to shape not just behavior, but a kind of moral character in the model. Anthropic is already in conflict with the Pentagon and against this backdrop, the meeting with religious leaders doesn’t look like a strange eccentricity, but rather a sign that the company is searching for a moral framework beyond purely secular techno-thinking because the developers themselves seem to sense that traditional rationalist frameworks may not be sufficient for the kinds of questions AI is beginning to raise.
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Maria Carmen (Ica) Fernandez retweetledi
It feels like a quick recap of 2,000 years of history crammed into a few weeks:
- The Pope and the King are squabbling
- Persia is fighting its existential war
- (New) Rome has a mad king
- There’s a naval blockade
- There’s bloodshed around Jerusalem
- The Ottomans are flexing
- Small Arab states are squabbling with
each other
- Hungary has just overthrown its ruler
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Maria Carmen (Ica) Fernandez retweetledi
"Western culture was, at its core, individualistic and democratic and liberty-minded and tolerant and progressive and rational and scientific. Never mind that pre-modern Europe was none of these things, and that until the past century democracy was the exception in Europe, something that few stalwarts of Western thought had anything good to say about. The idea that tolerance was constitutive of something called Western culture would have surprised Edward Burnett Tylor, who, as a Quaker, had been barred from attending England’s great universities. To be blunt: if Western culture were real, we wouldn’t spend so much time talking it up."
Kwame Anthony Appiah: "The lies that bind : rethinking identity : creed, country, colour, class, culture"
drive.google.com/file/d/1KwzaRM…
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Maria Carmen (Ica) Fernandez retweetledi
Hundreds of millions of people throughout the world are immersed in extreme poverty. Yet, disproportionate wealth remains in the hands of a few. It is an unjust scenario, in the face of which we cannot fail to question ourselves and commit to change things. There is no lack of resources at the root of disparities, but the need to address solvable problems related to a more equitable distribution of wealth, to be achieved with moral sense and honesty.
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Maria Carmen (Ica) Fernandez retweetledi
The government doesn't have to announce the lockdown. The market will announce it for us. The blunt force of P200 diesel will decide when the lockdown happens, will decide who has to stay home, will decide which industries will have to scale back and cut jobs.
News5@News5PH
WALANG ENERGY LOCKDOWN Itinanggi ng Palasyo ang kumakalat na ulat sa social media na magkakaroon umano ng "energy lockdown" simula April 20. "Fake news ito," pahayag ni Palace Press Officer Usec. Claire Castro. Nauna nang iginiit ng Palasyo na walang inaasahang lockdown dahil patuloy ang gobyerno sa pag-secure ng alternative fuel sources sa gitna ng tensyon sa Middle East. READ: news.tv5.com.ph/breaking/read/…
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Breaking general disillusionment and disinterest in this poison app to say: lol what a masterclass in political prop. “We know all your soft power cultural tools and can use it better than you!”
Not Jerome Powell@alifarhat79
Wake up babe, a new Iran movie trolling Pete Hegseth just dropped
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Maria Carmen (Ica) Fernandez retweetledi
Maria Carmen (Ica) Fernandez retweetledi
I remember how urban poor advocates convinced BSA3 that relocation was not only cruel, but economically counterproductive, and that in-site upgrading and development built communities with the potential to flourish and grow.
Anup Malani@anup_malani
A city has slums. Two options: bulldoze and move residents to new housing, or upgrade the slum where it stands. New housing sounds better. Chile tested both for 20 years. It wasn't even close.
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Maria Carmen (Ica) Fernandez retweetledi
We are thinking of the impact of the oil crisis on daily transportation, but many places in the Philippines like Palawan, Marinduque, Tawi-Tawi, Sulu, Masbate and many others are dependent on diesel power plants. This means total blackouts in the coming weeks and possibly months.
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Maria Carmen (Ica) Fernandez retweetledi
In the Philippines, the question is not whether Duterte ordered the killings. He did.
The debate was over our willingness to embrace the bloodshed — as many did and still do — in exchange for the order and safety he promised it would bring. 1/2
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Maria Carmen (Ica) Fernandez retweetledi
Larry the cat, the Chief Mouser to the Cabinet Office, is celebrating 15 years as the British government's official rodent-catcher. The unofficial first feline has served under six prime ministers.
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Maria Carmen (Ica) Fernandez retweetledi
Filipinos taught Mexicans to make tequila and mezcal from agave back in the day. I think that settles the argument on whether us Flippers are Latino. h/t Manila-Acapulco Galleon Trade.
GIF
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Maria Carmen (Ica) Fernandez retweetledi
If you have read the National Defense Strategy, this makes perfect sense.
Spencer Althouse@SpencerAlthouse
Bad Bunny naming dozens of countries in the Americas and then holding up a football that reads "together we are America"....such an iconic Super Bowl performance wow
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Maria Carmen (Ica) Fernandez retweetledi
Timor Leste took an unprecedented step: its judicial authorities appointed a prosecutor to examine the Myanmar military’s responsibility for war crimes and crimes against humanity. It’s the first ASEAN state taking such an action against another member
theconversation.com/with-internati…
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