Kim Stiens

Brewer & Shipley Knower. Not on Twitter much anymore, find me elsewhere:
or or

[Kim Stiens @ranavain]

If you farm oysters, then you could conceivably have a company that trades both in seafood with restaurants, and in pearls with jewelers. I just think that's neat

[Kim Stiens @ranavain]

It reminds me of the way HR people talk about job applicants. What are the good niche job boards, what kind of language do candidates respond to, etc etc. Just look inward. You've applied for a job before. Job candidates aren't some strange species - they're us. We're them.

[Kim Stiens @ranavain]

I get that "accounting" for it in an economic sense is something different, but I think the real answer is kinda easy - if you ask basically anyone in the country, including you or me, "Broadly, do you feel good about the way things are looking?" you'll get a negative response

[Matthew Zeitlin @MattZeitlin]

No one even tries to explain how to account for rock bottom sentiment and a stronger than expected labor market anymore

[Kim Stiens @ranavain]

A great illustration that the proliferation of social media and greater accessibility of information does not create a more informed or reasonable population
cc - @_carlbeijer

[Kim Stiens @ranavain]

SO pumped for this Bernie Sanders proposal - this is exactly what needs to happen. AI models are trained on basically the entirety of human knowledge and creative production - they should be owned collectively for that reason alone

https://t.co/KuU9c7kiLR

[Jane Flegal @JaneAFlegal]

I like this. Imo the affirmative argument Democrats should be making is democratic accountability over concentrated private power. We should focus on what is needed to govern the terms of the buildout (including electricity!), not just blocking it.

https://t.co/QBTbhry70h

[Kim Stiens @ranavain]

@bohumilo @RichardHanania I'd rather we owned the AI companies collectively (and so collectively determine things like research priorities and pricing), than let rich people do whatever they want and cross my fingers that I can afford it in the end

[Kim Stiens @ranavain]

@bohumilo @RichardHanania Unfortunately "AI" won't make the cure dirt cheap, it would still be controlled by a for-profit company that would still need to sell it at a profit relative to its production cost (which may still be very high depending on the cost of inference)

[Kim Stiens @ranavain]

@econobaker @RichardHanania I think those are all good arguments, but none of them are the best one: that all of the major models have been trained on basically the entire corpus of human creativity and production. People should own it collectively because it was created collectively

[Kim Stiens @ranavain]

@okto13er @kevinroose Ed Zitron is not a journalist, his work doesn't meet journalistic standards (and AFAIK he doesn't claim to be a journalist either)

I wouldn't have replied at all but honestly "hapless corporations" was just too funny

[corsaren @corsaren]

Man goes to doctor. Says he's depressed about AI. He fears the permanent underclass.

Doctor says, "Treatment is simple. Read Gary Marcus. LLMs are stochastic parrots—they can't reason out of distribution."

Man bursts into tears. "But doctor..." he says, "I am in distribution!"

[Kim Stiens @ranavain]

@mattyglesias @MattBruenig the real question is what is the biological sex of the Holy Ghost

[Kim Stiens @ranavain]

@mattyglesias @brendanbiles @tracewoodgrains yeah this feels like a thing where there may be plenty of conservatives willing to say the maximalist soundbite (zero spending! drown the gov!) but they absolutely don't support in practice (instead they typically love having gov-backed property rights and some kind of military)

[Kim Stiens @ranavain]

I revisit this like once a year since it was posted. Possibly my favorite thing that has ever been on the Internet

Bonk Bonk!

[grain. death? @grain_death]

earlier this year a random number i don't recognize started sending me pictures of toads

[Kim Stiens @ranavain]

@MattBruenig @JoeGrant1900 Yeah the advent of HDHPs and HSAs are good for one small population: people who max out their 401k each year and want another way to save for retirement tax-advantaged. Otherwise, they're just kicking every problem - from the personal to the macro - down the road

[Kim Stiens @ranavain]

@CharBarnettWV @MattBruenig I think you've described about 5 practices that also suck and also drive up healthcare prices, which we could also end with policy changes. I don't think the 3P position is "the government should handle health insurance, but it's OK if they do a shitty job"

[Kim Stiens @ranavain]

@JoeGrant1900 @MattBruenig If you follow HR at all, you know that employers definitely ARE pushing more high-deductible health plan + HSA combinations

(ACA prices also vary tremendously by state. I pay about $900/mo thru DC small biz exchange and it's one of the best plans available on the platform)

[Kim Stiens @ranavain]

@etubruton @5legparlay @isaiah_bb Which, I guess if twitter isn't the place to have a pointless semantic argument, there isn't one. But that's why people are assuming you are anti-welfare - because this is a distinction very meaningful to people who are anti-welfare, and completely irrelevant to people who aren't

[Kim Stiens @ranavain]

@etubruton @5legparlay @isaiah_bb I understand your point, its just that the distinction you make is only useful if you're delineating between "good" gov payments (stipends that go to deserving, working foster parents) and "bad" gov payments (welfare for normal parents). Otherwise its pointless semantics

[Slick Vaguely @SlickVaguely]

@mattyglesias I keep workshopping "Smokestack Socialist" as a name for my viewpoint but for some reason I'm not getting any takers....

[Kim Stiens @ranavain]

Very funny how many people hate Yglesias so much that they literally can't read what he writes through their red eyes. Incredible number of high-like replies that think they're disagreeing with him (and owning him, to boot)