David Harris

Some tweets about chess. Some tweets about software and electronic trading. Made of cells. Loads of ‘em.

[Freddie Sayers @freddiesayers]

Note to elements of the British Right:

Relentlessly broadcasting how awful your country is to the rest of the world is not patriotic. It’s the opposite, and it has real-world results.

Twitter-brained right wing politicians from America to Israel to Argentina lap it up, with all its declinist hyperbole, and eventually use it to move against us.

They may say that they love the old country and want to help you “save” it but ultimately they will act in the interests of their country, not ours.

If you hadn’t realised this yet, look at what has happened with Javier Milei: using “decline” rhetoric that could have been lifted from this website as a pretext to retake the Falkland Islands. All with the apparent blessing of American Republicans.

These people are not your friends!

[David Harris @cellsatwork]

@dieworkwear @DaveTrynn Solving it doesn’t kill it … people still play out solved endgames

[David Harris @cellsatwork]

@Fl33tabix @TacticallyMatt Yeah it’s more an aggressive/risky financial optimisation with little margin for error that has gone spectacularly wrong than “asset stripping”.

A cockup not a conspiracy

[David Harris @cellsatwork]

@David_Brown9 @AndyJudge “Asset stripping” can only go so far with a football club anyway - any hint of a relegation battle will damage the value of their asset severely.

Yes they’re clearing trying to financially optimise but I think the final depleted squad was as much cockup as conspiracy

[David Harris @cellsatwork]

@TomChivers @jessesingal Right but it gets confusing when people start gasping at “self sacrificing” behaviour

[Jon Stokes @jon_stokes]

I think the feed is now tuned to making you feel something like the following: "Everything is stupid and my enemies are winning. I can still fix it tho if I keep posting."

[Auyon Siddiq @auyonymous]

VAR is supposed to make referees more objective, but it has exactly the opposite effect because refs can decide when to deploy it.

VAR has to be triggered automatically for any of this to make sense. Or do what the MLB does and give each team two VAR challenges per match.

[David Deutsch @DavidDeutschOxf]

The social media ban is Kemi's only mis-step so far, but it is a huge one. Extremely cruel, nanny-state, Starmer-like bludgeoning interference in personal and family life. Worse than school VAT, worse than farm tax. Unenforceable but will teach millions of teenagers that they are criminals and that the state is their malevolent enemy.

[Sam @perceptions420]

It's funny how almost everyone who has piled on Tao for this quote with reference to his superior g also somehow seems to think the guy has poor metacognition lmao. Read the mf's blog and you come away thinking that he probably pours an ungodly amount of time into math

[David Harris @cellsatwork]

@jamesharrigan @MeganTStevenson Should read @davidbessis book for an alternative explanation

[David Harris @cellsatwork]

@Rameshchess @CholaChess You would love @davidbessis book, is pretty much what you describe in the context of math learning

[David Bessis @davidbessis]

Reading *the details* about mathematicians' childhoods is an anti-talent-pill.

[David Bessis @davidbessis]

@CoFore856 https://t.co/XpxytkGrlK
(or read my book)

[Simon French @Frencheconomics]

One of the stronger arguments the current Labour leadership could make is that GDP per capita has been stronger since the 2024 General Election (annualising at rate of +1.1%) than the rate achieved over 14 years that preceded it (+0.8%). Yes, a small sample size, and the jobs picture looks considerably worse since 2024, but still would be one of my "lines to take".

[Collingwood 🇬🇧 @admcollingwood]

I think we should all applaud Donald Trump this morning. He accepted the Big L far earlier than I thought he would. This takes a big man. Most wouldn't have done it. Given he has accepted Iranian terms as a basis for negotiations, it seems possible that no agreement will be reached when the US media and political class get stuck into the implications of this. But 10 out of 10 to Trump for doing this before a land invasion and much greater economic pain (yet minus a million for getting into this trap to begin with.)

[Governor Newsom Press Office @GovPressOffice]

The Vice President is abroad campaigning for a dictator.

The President is threatening to wipe out an entire civilization.

Congress is on recess.

This is a total collapse of American moral leadership — at a historic scale.

[Gandalv @Microinteracti1]

Right then.
Let me explain something very slowly, because it appears some basic logic has gone missing somewhere over the Atlantic.

No serious nation in the history of warfare has spent fourteen months insulting its allies, threatening to annex their territory, siding with their common enemy, and then knocked on their door expecting them to come running to rescue a catastrophe of its own making. That is not how alliances work. That is not how anything works.

You abused the UK. You threatened Canada. You tried to grab Greenland. You called the EU an adversary. You praised Putin, the one man every serious NATO ally has spent decades preparing to fight. You hosted Kremlin officials in the Capitol. You undermined European elections. You abandoned Ukraine. You imposed tariffs on your closest partners. You did all of this loudly, proudly, and on camera.
And now you are surprised that nobody is returning your calls.

Here is a question worth sitting with. Why do you think that is? Is it possible, just possible, that when you treat your allies like enemies for over a year while cuddling up to their actual enemy, those allies might update their opinion of you? Is that concept too complicated? Does that require more working memory than is currently available?

You did not plan this war with your allies. You did not consult them. You did not build a coalition. You started a conflict, watched it go sideways, and then got on your knees asking for help from people you spent fourteen months calling weak, corrupt and irrelevant.

NATO is not what it was. Not because Europe changed. Because Washington made crystal clear which side it is on. And it is not ours.

You want European boots on the ground? Start by explaining why America is more aligned with Moscow than with Brussels. Take your time. We will wait.

Gandalv / @Microinteracti1

[Jon Stokes @jon_stokes]

The lesson of this incident is the exact opposite of what 99% of you will take from it. An that lesson is: LLMs are nowhere close to AGI, & your subjective experience of them as something like AGI via a chatbot interface is the result of intensive prompt & context engineering.

[Illia Ponomarenko 🇺🇦 @IAPonomarenko]

This.
Is.
Horrifying.

[Phillips P. OBrien @PhillipsPOBrien]

Watching Trump teeter on the edge of blowing up the world economy because of a combination of hubris, strategic incoherence, mendacity and outright stupidity, might be the most extraordinarily depressing thing I have observed in my entire life, or read about in any other period.