Andrew Barrett

How things are is not how things have to be. Unless, of course, how things are is already awesome.

[O’Shea Jackson Jr @OsheaJacksonJr]

I saw it. Now you have to see it. His name is Samuel. And he…is a king.

[Amelia @amelia_tweetz]

Imagine if a woman president crashed the economy and started a war with no end in sight, and her biggest, seemingly ONLY concern was building a ballroom and redecorating the White House.

[Valerio Capraro @ValerioCapraro]

The Pope is making exactly our point. LLMs “may imitate or even simulate, but they do not understand.”

This is the core epistemic fault line.

Most AI evaluation is still based on one assumption: if a system statistically approximates human behaviour, then it is close to human intelligence.

But approximation is not intelligence.
Simulation is not understanding.

LLMs can produce the right answer without knowing why it is right. They can simulate empathy without feeling. They can imitate judgment without responsibility. They can generate coherent explanations without having a world to which those explanations are accountable.

Stop confusing behavioural similarity with cognitive equivalence.

Human understanding is embodied, affective, relational, motivational, and normative. It is not just the production of plausible text.

*
Full paper in the first reply

[Alex Crawford @AlexCrawfordSky]

What a speech…. He deserves another award for the speech

[Gabriel Zucman @gabriel_zucman]

Hello @JeffBezos, since you question the results of our studies on the unfairness of the US tax system, please allow me to remind you of the main conclusions of our work, the most comprehensive research to date on this issue.

[Andrew Barrett @ABarrett_GP]

The idea that EVERYTHING must be montised to the absolute max is exactly why cricket has lost so much of what made it so great. Ironically, it's also a very impoverished way of looking at the world. It doesn't have to be this way.

[Firdose Moonda @FirdoseM]

There's a lot of unhappiness about ticket sales for the #SAvENG New Year's Test. I did some digging around the numbers. The local allocation is tiiiiiiiiny as CSA look to monetise the match, which I suppose is fair play to them.

https://t.co/JPd4EBQjpz

[Caitlin Johnstone @caitoz]

So the list of humanitarian institutions who accuse Israel of genocide now includes:

1. The UN
2. International Association of Genocide Scholars
3. B'Tselem (Israeli)
4. Physicians for Human Rights-Israel (Israeli)
5. Amnesty International
6. Doctors Without Borders
7. European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights
8. Human Rights Watch
9. International Federation for Human Rights
10. Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention

The list of humanitarian institutions who say Israel is NOT committing genocide in Gaza includes:

1. Nobody
2. No one
3. Zero
4. Nothing
5. Nada
6. Zilch
7. Fuck all
8. A complete absence
9. Diddly squat
10. Bupkis

[NASA @NASA]

A new milestone for humankind: The crew of Artemis II are now the farthest any human has ever travelled, reaching a maximum distance of 252,752 miles from Earth.

This surpasses the previous record set by Apollo 13 in 1970 by about 4,102 miles.

[Chen Weihua （陈卫华） @chenweihua]

Age of No Shame. Assassinating and kidnapping foreign leaders, which are both acts of terrorism, is normalized. Bombing and invading countries and violating sovereignty and territorial integrity and defying UN Charter and international law is normalized. Targeting civilians and bombing schools and hospitals is normalized. Embargo on a small island neighbor to starve and impoverish Cuban people normalized. Gaza genocide is normalized. We are living in a fucking dark age of barbarism.

[Frank Mugisha @frankmugisha]

I have said this for years: homosexuality is not foreign to Africa—homophobia is. Efforts to fund and export intolerance into our societies, endangering LGBTQ Africans, are largely supported by the West.

[Craig Mokhiber @CraigMokhiber]

The US is poised to commit the crime of aggression (called “the supreme international crime” and “the crime of crimes” at the Nuremberg Tribunal) against a sovereign state that has not threatened or attacked it (Iran) on behalf of an oppressive, genocidal, foreign apartheid regime (Israel), and, in the process, to murder innocents, waste billions in taxpayer dollars, put US military personnel at risk, make Americans less safe and their economy more difficult, and perhaps provoke a regional conflagration in the process. All this against the will of the majority of the American people, and simply because the Israeli regime and its proxies in the US have instructed the US government to perpetrate this crime. This is your “democracy.”

[Middle East Monitor @MiddleEastMnt]

"The president of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), Mirjana Spoljaric Egger, has warned that the destruction in Gaza represents a collapse of all international standards. “What we have seen in Gaza exceeds all legal, ethical, moral and humanitarian norms,” she stated in an interview with Dutch newspaper NRC, this week.

Spoljaric Egger said that Gaza illustrates the rapid deterioration of international humanitarian law. “Gaza may have provided the most tangible evidence of the erosion of international law,” she explained. “I visited Gaza twice within twelve months. The hostilities never stopped. There was not a minute when you didn’t hear gunfire. When your body did not feel the shelling.”

Spoljaric Egger recalled that on her return visit, she no longer recognised the area: “I could no longer orient myself. The first time, individual buildings were attacked. Every neighbourhood was hit, but not completely destroyed. When I returned, nothing was left.”

During the interview, Spoljaric Egger described the killing of 15 ICRC colleagues in Gaza, whose ambulance was struck by Israeli fire. “It was difficult to look at the photos of that event. More than difficult, I couldn’t look at them; I’m devastated. Perhaps also because I saw my colleagues there working during the hostilities. This is something that should never have happened.”

On the legality of the military campaign, Spoljaric Egger said: “We cannot accept warfare that leads to this situation.”

When asked about Israel’s claim of acting in self-defence, she responded: 'That is no excuse for breaking the law. You have the same situation in your national legal system. When someone murders a member of your family, that does not give you the right to kill their family members. That is simply not how it works. It is exactly the same principle.'"

https://t.co/9S8kU5wBX3

[Andrew Barrett @ABarrett_GP]

He genuinely seems to have a complete lack of any decency whatsoever.

[Jo @JoJoFromJerz]

Donald Trump is so nuts, sometimes we forget how racist he is, and so racist, sometimes we forget how sexist he is, and so sexist, sometimes we forget how stupid he is, and so stupid, sometimes we forget how evil he is, and so evil, sometimes we forget how corrupt he is, and so corrupt, sometimes we forget how incompetent he is, and so incompetent, sometimes we forget how depraved he is, and so depraved, sometimes we forget how nuts he is.

[Andrew Barrett @ABarrett_GP]

@HuwGriffinRugby @louwjl Agree. Very good. Very well done. 💪

[Lee Brown @leebrown2]

Goosebumps! People often ask, is Shakespeare still relevant? Here is a great example, from the Steven Colbert Show, in which Sir Ian McKellen delivers an extraordinary speech. Shakespeare’s words are timeless, urgent and important.

#Shakespeare #ianmckellen #stevencolbert

[I Love Melville @ilovemelville]

Happening tomorrow!!! So exciting #MyMelville

[I Love Melville @ilovemelville]

It’s official. The Melville Art Mile is back, and this time, it’s the Grand Opening! 🎨✨

December was just the warm-up. Every First Thursday, we are transforming Melville into Jozi’s living, walkable gallery. https://t.co/Ll8FChcXd8

More info at https://t.co/FutMe8Hwow

[Andrew Barrett @ABarrett_GP]

RT @Siviwe_G: Congratulations to the Matric Class of 2025 for a record breaking pass rate.

Nationally, the NSC pass rate is 88% - the high…

[Andrew Barrett @ABarrett_GP]

@yeahthatsharry @MbekezeliMB From DBE data. For example, here is Alex. 10 years ago there was was 60-40% split between maths lit and pure maths. Now its close to 80-20%.