Andy Barr

Millennial American back in Seattle after 4 years in Ankara.

🇺🇸 | Data

Cybersecurity and Longtermism

[Andy Barr @andy_barr_data]

The security factor is a needed part of the H1-B discussion.

While we are much freer now in 2024 on X, from ~2008 until 2022, tech was a conformist space where HR departments would dump you for the slightest public wrongthink.

We have some historic mistakes we can correct now.

[Robert Parham @kn_owled_ge]

Teaching in the age of LLMs:

I failed 4 students, for the first time ever. I also gave more A+'s than ever before.

In previous years, students realized after the first or second HW that they weren't in Kansas anymore and needed to work hard.

No more. Just solve it with LLMs.

But then the midterm arrives, and they can answer 0 of 40 questions. Do they reform their ways? Nah, they just decide to "give up" on class, assuming they'll get a B, or a C, or whatever, because they submitted HW and got decent grades on those. And never before have they encountered a professor who will dare fail them.

The flip side is that the most "agentic" students now have the world's best tutor at their disposal. They deeply understand the material and aced my (intentionally very difficult) exams. As if we live in "The Diamond Age".

Inequality galore.

From my vantage point, "the permanent underclass" appears to be about agency, not assets.

[Andy Barr @andy_barr_data]

@bendellwerry Please add me.

[Andy Barr @andy_barr_data]

@Hcp1Hcp @MsMelChen That is not the case in Central Asia.

Those places were highly observant a few generations ago, and now they are mostly not.

[Andy Barr @andy_barr_data]

@RodeoProfessor People are often surprised when I explain that many American STEM graduate programs end up graduating cohorts where the vast majority are foreigners.

Given the amount of public funding they get, this is indefensible.

[Andy Barr @andy_barr_data]

@realObamaSucks @WatchfulWaiter1 It's called being 18 and seeing an ad saying they desperately needed volunteers.

I was assigned a Christian family from Myanmar, and helped the father figure out buses and stuff.

Ended up observing a ton about the whole system, and the industries that pop up around it.

[Andy Barr @andy_barr_data]

@StephenM The UAE has done very well bringing in talented people from the world without giving them votes let alone welfare benefits.

[Stephen “The Yellow Dart” Schutt @schuttsm]

part of the problem is that the visa recipients drink the kool aid and think "because this visa says 'high-skilled', I'm actually 'high-skilled' compared to the population at large"

if you are born here, you don't get a high-skilled visa because you don't need one. not because you're not high-skilled 🤦

[Nina Varsavsky @ninavars]

¿Lo entendí bien?
Marruecos es lo suficientemente estable y desarrollado como para ser coanfitrión del Mundial 2030, pero no lo suficientemente seguro ni desarrollado como para que nosotros podamos mandar de vuelta allí a sus inmigrantes ilegales.

[Andy Barr @andy_barr_data]

@USLaborIG @DOLOIG I have been quantifying some things in academia. Is there someone on your team I can talk to?

[Andy Barr @andy_barr_data]

@elonmusk The Senate waited until filing deadlines for primaries were passed for most states of the upcoming elections.

There are only 6 red states where people can still file to be a primary candidate in 2026 - Alaska, Kansas, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, and Wyoming.

[Andy Barr @andy_barr_data]

You could ask the same to South Korea and North Korea.

Strong laws, order, fairness, security, and culture make a huge difference.

Lebanese people struggle in Lebanon but often thrive in fair societies.

It is the same situation with Somaliland.

Corruption turns otherwise normal people to animals, focused on survival rather than the future. Those effects only get more entrenched if allowed to fester for generations. And it fills societies with hopelessness that makes long term development impossible.

[Andy Barr @andy_barr_data]

@tyler And that is not for lack robust, modern ID systems.

You can find hundreds of Digital ID projects around the world in various stages of testing in this visualization.

https://t.co/2wZZZpTrnV

[Andy Barr @andy_barr_data]

American taxpayers fund universities that graduate cohorts of majority non-Americans.

Universities pay STEM PhD students. Even private ones get most of funding via gov research grants.

PhD seats are very limited, so each international graduate is an American who doesn't receive this highly specialized training in critical fields like battery science, aerospace, or biotech.

https://t.co/alrW0pjJIt

[Andy Barr @andy_barr_data]

@PFIRorg American universities don't seem to feel any obligation to graduate Americans from STEM graduate programs.

I put together this data because it is hard for most people people to grasp the scale of it.

[Andy Barr @andy_barr_data]

@9mmsmg I have repeatedly suggested minimum visa bans to the Anglosphere for all of those involved. Extradition too.

Nothing else will stop them.

[Andy Barr @andy_barr_data]

@Stutterfly19 @WomanDefiner Plenty of schools also manage to hire people here illegally ("undocumented").

https://t.co/7cZITSPbGR

[Andy Barr @andy_barr_data]

The whole "Refugee Convention" is a scam.

Only the US and European countries enforce it on themselves. None of the Gulf accepts it, nor countries like India or Indonesia.

Once someone claims "asylum", they are not supposed to be deportable, even if they commit crimes.

It is unenforceable. What is the UN going to do? Sue?

[Andy Barr @andy_barr_data]

@Oilfield_Rando https://t.co/btgcDUZA8M

[Andy Barr @andy_barr_data]

@Oilfield_Rando https://t.co/J4QQTWKOP4

[Morse Research @Morse_Research]

Project Grant (B) (2021)

Awarding Agency: Department of Agriculture

Recipient: Somali Bantu Community Association (Lewiston, ME)

Amount: $416,652
Outlayed: $416,652

Purpose: The Somali Bantu Community Association of Maine's (SCBA) BFRDP is a large standard grant project with the long-term goal of assisting limited-resource Somali Bantu beginning farmers and ranchers in sustainable agricultural production and viable business ventures.

In fall 2020, the organization began the transition to a 104 acre farm in Wales, Maine. It is becoming the home to our community's agricultural programs with a 99-year rolling lease.

District: ME-02

https://t.co/L3GMLhxjrd