Grant Kimmerling

gentlemen, rogue, philosopher, founder of ARENA

[Grant Kimmerling @GrantKimmerling]

Based.

[DHH @dhh]

Omarchy is not just a distribution, but it's also a counterweight to all the nonsense that has plagued Linux for far too long. It's a refuge from the clowns and the circus that has been Linux politics since the old institutions got infiltrated. QUACK THAT! 😂🦆

[Grant Kimmerling @GrantKimmerling]

JUST BE CURIOUS

[Grant Kimmerling @GrantKimmerling]

Many lives, many masters… You?

[Grant Kimmerling @GrantKimmerling]

The only truly wasted time, is the time spent wishing you were somewhere else…

[Grant Kimmerling @GrantKimmerling]

Drifting…

a fascinating word.

[Grant Kimmerling @GrantKimmerling]

I’ve been contemplating where some industries will be in a decade and gaming really fascinates me. We may one soon be able to be our favorite character from a movie, show, etc. and play out the narrative arc but influence it and have a completely unique experience and ending based on our actions.

Essentially imagine a game where the gameplay and ending will be completely unique to you.

[Andrej Karpathy @karpathy]

We're starting to leave the territory where you'd test an LLM by e.g. "create an svg of pelican on a bicycle". As one idea to generalize it, I was interested what Opus 5 would do if I gave it the first paragraph of the Lord of the Rings, a 1M token budget (~$10) and asked for three js render of it. Opus went off for ~2 hours and wrote 5500 lines of code that (procedurally) rendered the story. It's kind of janky but fun. But it's a bit mindboggling that the LLM has to place and orchestrate various polygon assets in (x,y,z) coordinates and write code that animates it all, and that it even does anything at all.

I also like this kind of examples because no one in their right mind would ever spend the time to write something this custom but LLMs have all the stamina and patience in the world, so it's an example where we go from "no one would ever do this" to "sure, why not, it's ~free". There might be a lot more. But I'm excited about creating hyper custom worlds that you can imagine dropping players into, e.g. here to participate in the LoTR story as a spectator NPC, or one of the characters, or etc. Something like an ephemeral GTA of X on demand.

Last thought is that the domain of worlds/games exposes a weakness in LLMs: they can't easily audit their work because they aren't able to efficiently and natively perceive videos or play games within them. Here, Opus 5 had to very slowly and painstakingly take screenshots at different points, and it messed up a few times and created a bunch of jank. An example of raw capability (multimodal, gameplay) that I think is still quite lacking.

[Grant Kimmerling @GrantKimmerling]

we live in an age where we get to have a dialogue with the compendium of human knowledge anytime we want. it's so cool

[Grant Kimmerling @GrantKimmerling]

Sounds about right… the one thing all economists agree on… rent control doesn’t improve long term outcomes. It’s that simple.

[Jay Martin 🪾 @jaymart222]

There are 60,000 vacant rent-stabilized apartments in New York sitting vacant that carry rents below what it costs to operate them, three times what the entire tax credit pipeline will produce in a year. Every one could be brought back without a dime of subsidy in months. They sit empty because the state won’t end vacancy control.

And the number grows every year. Roughly 5,000 long-term tenants pass away in their units annually, never mind those who move or are removed for cause.

When a unit turns over, the owner is required to offer it at the last tenant’s rent, which after decades of long-term occupancy is often set well behind the actual cost of housing. Filling it means a renovation of $100,000 or more.

So the math is simple and grim: it’s cheaper to leave the apartment empty than to fix it and rent it at a loss.

We then hand out tax credits so developers can build 99 unit projects, deliberately undersized, on cheaper labor, because construction costs are now so high that subsidy is the only way anything pencils out.

So here’s our housing policy in one sentence: strand the bulk of the existing affordable stock behind rules that make repair irrational, and price new construction so high it only rises on tax credits.

Two systems, both broken, aimed in opposite directions.

Well done, everybody.

[Hon. Vickie Paladino @VickieforNYC]

My official statement on the budget, as read in chambers this evening, before I was muted:

"I’ve been a member of this city council going on five years now. And I’ve voted yes on the budget every year so far. All of them had problems. All of them contained things I didn’t like or agree with. But I’m not here to demand perfection, I’m here to work with what we have — within reason.

Unfortunately, this year is very different. And I must vote no.

Even in the context of our dysfunctional city government, this year’s budget represents a complete departure from reality, spending more money than we’ve ever spent — precisely when we can least afford it.

We have never seen a larger single-year increase in spending in the history of this city. Requiring not only new taxes from Albany, but pension deferrals and an eight billion dollar bailout from the Governor. And even still, the revenue projections are optimistic at best.

This isn’t a ‘balanced budget’ — it’s budget by bailout. A ticking time bomb.

And it’s the beginning of a fiscal death spiral that our current leadership will not be able to pull us out of, because they lack both the experience and the seriousness to do so.

What will we do next year? And the year after?

The only responsible way for our city to spend more is to grow the economy. New businesses, new private economic development, major investment. That’s how you grow an economy, and get more money into the city budget.

But we’re doing the opposite. Deliberately chasing away everything our city needs to sustain our spending with childish political attacks on very people we need most.

Our tax base is isn’t growing. It’s leaving.

The middle class, the financial sector, and businesses of all sizes are choosing to go elsewhere. And they’re being replaced with low-income foreigners and transplants who require significant subsidies just to survive here.

We’re trading investment banks and small businesses for delivery app drivers on welfare, and nonprofit workers whose paychecks ultimately come from government spending. That isn’t growth.

And when ordinary New Yorkers complain, they’re told to shut up and leave if they don’t like it. And that’s exactly what many are doing.

This is obviously unsustainable. But nobody in this chamber really seems to care.

And what are we getting for our money? We already spend more in real dollars AND per capita on everything from schools to housing to healthcare than anyone else in the country.

We can’t even build a public bathroom for less than three million dollars.

Why would anyone believe that shoveling even MORE money into this broken system will improve anything?

It won’t. I guarantee that we’ll all be sitting here again a year from now, with the exact same problems, listening to the exact same lectures about how the city needs even MORE money, AGAIN.

At what point do we, as a City Council, start to demand results before we allow more spending? When do we demand accountability?

The answer seems to be never. Because this spending isn’t really meant to fix anything. It’s meant to keep the machine going, keep the money flowing into the special interests and nonprofits and the political allies of the Mayor, with no real consideration for anything else.

I realize a lot of people don’t want to hear this, but we are a municipal government, not a sociology experiment or a political slush fund or the United Nations.

We are here keep the lights on, keep the water running, pave the roads, and put criminals in jail. That’s it. And we would be very well advised to get back to basics. Because we’re failing on nearly every count, other than our peerless ability to hand out free money.

Shame on this Council for pretending this budget is anything other than a disaster. I know that my single vote ultimately doesn’t matter here, but nonetheless I won’t put my name on it. I respectfully vote no."

[Grant Kimmerling @GrantKimmerling]

@FareedZakaria @CNN Fareed’s take today on Fareed Zakaria GPS is one of the most eloquent and important takes I’ve heard in years. If you want to understand liberalism and how to fix it… watch.

[Grant Kimmerling @GrantKimmerling]

@nyknicks in 5... and I'm not one to complain... but honestly the Ref calls this entire series have been utterly abysmal, @NBA get it together. Game 4, first half was the worst officiating of any NBA game in history period and full stop. Glad the KNICKS still pulled out the W!

[Grant Kimmerling @GrantKimmerling]

If you are easily offended, you are easily manipulated.

[Grant Kimmerling @GrantKimmerling]

Take a moment and reflect on your “/played” for your phone today… last week… last month… last year.

[Chamath Palihapitiya @chamath]

Key to winning:

Choose to be positive and grateful. Then, just keep at it. Time is the great compounder and will do the rest.

So many people just don’t have the discipline to stay positive and grateful. Then time compounds the bitterness instead.

[Grant Kimmerling @GrantKimmerling]

@Reddit has become a cesspool of mindless groupthink. Post logical critique on a topic that “the message / mob” doesn’t like… insta ban. Insane.

[Grant Kimmerling @GrantKimmerling]

@Jason Family Business by Lawrence

[Grant Kimmerling @GrantKimmerling]

I’ve talked with a number of host cities for the World Cup… nobody is prepared…

[Grant Kimmerling @GrantKimmerling]

@elonmusk No silver bullet… but we desperately need more innovation in social infrastructure.

[Grant Kimmerling @GrantKimmerling]

Many important lessons, only time can teach. Learn to be a companion with time.

[Naval @naval]

Pure software is rapidly becoming un-investable.