tiffany3

former Texan now living in California. Chief of Staff for Product at Pinterest. Early adopter. Ex-Facebook, Ex-VMware and Ex-Citadel Investment Group.

[Sheel Mohnot @pitdesi]

California elections are next week (June 2), here’s my voting guide.

As usual, the ballot is way too long and asks voters to decide things no normal person should be expected to know. I did my best to figure it out.

My basic lens: competent government, housing abundance, public safety, fiscal discipline, better schools, and less performative politics.

TL;DR:
Governor: Matt Mahan
Lt. Governor: Josh Fryday
Secretary of State: Shirley Weber
Controller: Herb Morgan
Treasurer: Eleni Kounalakis
Attorney General: Rob Bonta
Insurance Commissioner: Patrick Wolff

Board of Equalization, D2: Sally Lieber
US Representative, D11: Scott Wiener
State Assembly, D17: Matt Haney
Superior Court Judge: Phoebe Maffei
State Superintendent: Josh Newman
Board of Education: Phil Kim

Props:
A: Yes
B: Yes
C: Yes
D: No

Statewide races
Governor: Matt Mahan
He’s the most pragmatic, execution-focused candidate in the race, and the only candidate (of 61) that I really like. California needs someone smart and pragmatic who has dealt with stuff that matters: homelessness, permitting, public safety, and budgets. Mahan has done a great job as Mayor of San Jose and is the governor California needs.

On the others:
Katie Porter is sharp, but insufferable and a bit performative... We have enough political theater. We need a governor who can run the state.

Tom Steyer is economically illiterate in the way rich progressives often are. He favors a wealth tax, which would be a disaster for California. We already have a narrow, volatile tax base that depends heavily on high earners, capital gains, and founder outcomes. A wealth tax would push more mobile capital, founders, and investors out of the state, potentially reduce tax revenue, and make the budget more fragile. It feels good to some people politically. It is terrible policy.

Xavier Becerra also worries me. He feels like an old-school machine politics candidate who has held jobs with no evidence that he can actually run things well. California has a serious insurance crisis, and I don’t trust him to handle it. When asked for his plan, he said he would "tell insurers they can’t raise rates." But if you treat insurers as villains that can simply be forced to write policies at politically convenient prices, you don’t get cheaper insurance. You get fewer insurers, more non-renewals, less availability, and more risk dumped onto the state. That is already part of the problem.

He also does not strike me as an effective executive. His time in the Biden administration was widely viewed as underwhelming, and California is too big and too broken to hand the job to a default partisan résumé candidate.

If the general election ends up as Becerra or Steyer vs. Steve Hilton, I would vote for Steve Hilton. I don’t like Hilton’s style, and if Trump endorses him, he’s probably toast in California. But Hilton has genuinely good ideas and is at least thinking about the right problems: housing, affordability, energy, schools, and government failure. He would be a better candidate than Becerra or Steyer.

Lieutenant Governor: Josh Fryday
The race for backup governor doesn't really matter much TBH. Fryday and Tubbs are both smart and pro-housing, I could vote for either of them. Fryday has the idea to build housing on the vast amount of developable land that universities and state agencies sit on top of. Let's do it!

Secretary of State: Shirley Weber
This office oversees elections, business filings, campaign and lobbying disclosures, and state archives. Weber is the incumbent and seems fine.

Controller: Herb Morgan
You could make a reasonable case for Malia Cohen. She seems to have done an okay job, and she will probably win. But I prefer Morgan because he seems more focused on audits, waste, and fiscal discipline.

The mark against Cohen for me: when she ran last time, she said she would audit state homelessness spending. That still hasn't happened.

Cohen is not bad, I just think Morgan is the better vote.

Treasurer: Eleni Kounalakis
She has private-sector experience and has actually built housing. The treasurer’s office touches debt, infrastructure finance, housing finance, and the state’s balance sheet.

Two things I especially like: she wants to hold California’s debt-service-to-General Fund ratio at or below 6%, and she wants to publish a public “California Balance Sheet” dashboard. Make the state’s finances more legible and harder to hide behind accounting fog.

Attorney General: Rob Bonta
He’s fine. I don’t love everything about him, but he is going to win, and I don’t see a better option here.

Insurance Commissioner: Patrick Wolff
This is sneakily one of the most important races on the ballot... California’s insurance market is in real trouble. Homeowners are losing coverage, premiums are rising, and wildfire risk is making the system harder to sustain. The next Insurance Commissioner needs to understand insurance as a market, not just as a political talking point.

Wolff is really smart, knows insurance well, and thinks about the problem from a market perspective. He is also a chess grandmaster, which is not a qualification by itself, but does suggest a certain kind of analytical mind.

Please vote for him.

District / local races
Board of Equalization, District 2: Sally J. Lieber
Honestly, I’m not even sure why this role still exists in this form. It has a weird, random set of responsibilities, and I don’t think voters should be electing people to this office.

That said, Lieber seems to have done a fine job, and I don’t see a strong reason to replace her.

US Representative, District 11: Scott Wiener
Listen, I don’t love everything about him. I disagreed with his AI regulation approach, and I think he sometimes has the standard Sacramento instinct to regulate first and ask questions later.

But this race is not close for me.

Saikat Chakrabarti is an economically destructive populist. He supports a wealth tax, backed Prop D with $500K of his own money, and seems far too comfortable with the idea that San Francisco can tax its way out of dysfunction. That is exactly the wrong lesson to take from the last decade. SF does not need more anti-business symbolism. It needs more housing, more jobs, cleaner streets, better schools, and a government that can execute.

Connie Chan is also not the answer. Her record is too NIMBY and too aligned with the old SF politics that got us into this mess. She has opposed or slowed housing, resisted streamlining, and was opposed to the recall of Chesa Boudin. She represents less housing, higher rents, and more veto power for neighborhood obstructionists.

Wiener is imperfect, but he has been genuinely pro-housing, pro-transit, and pro-abundance when those positions were politically hard. That matters. He is the best choice in this race.

State Assembly, District 17: Matt Haney
He’s good and unopposed.

Judge of the Superior Court: Phoebe Maffei
To be honest, both candidates seem fine. You could just as easily make the case for Alexandra Pray. They are both experienced.

State Superintendent of Public Instruction: Josh Newman
This is another important one. Newman has good ideas, including learning from the “Mississippi Miracle,” focusing on basic literacy, and being open to school choice.

I also strongly agree with him that we should not be electing this position at all. It should be appointed... voters do not have enough bandwidth or information to evaluate this role!

Board of Education: Phil Kim
His top goals are student outcomes and safety. He also voted to bring algebra back. It is insane that this was even controversial, and even more insane that it passed narrowly. He was on the right side of it.

SF Props
Prop A: Yes
This is the Earthquake Safety and Emergency Response Bond. It authorizes $535 million in bonds for seismic upgrades and emergency response infrastructure.

I hate spending money, and I especially hate when people pretend bonds are free - they are not! The city says this won’t raise tax rates, but that does not mean it has no cost. Taxpayers are still committing to repay principal plus interest. In this case, the estimated repayment is about $933 million over 26 years for a $535 million bond.

That said, bonds are probably the best way to fund long-lived emergency infrastructure. Earthquake safety, fire response, and emergency facilities are exactly the kind of things that can justify debt financing. I haven't been able to figure out if we REALLY need it but I'm going to say it's important enough that I'm ok paying for it.

Prop B: Yes
I don’t feel strongly about this, but it fixes a weird quirk in our law. San Francisco has a two-term limit for mayors and supervisors, but it is written as a limit on successive terms. So you can serve two terms, do something else for a while, and then come back.

Two terms should probably mean two terms.

Prop C: Yes
This is a very slight adjustment to San Francisco business taxes. It helps small businesses while raising rates on larger businesses to partially offset the cost.

The main reason I care is that Prop C is that it's a foil to Prop D. Both change the same tax code, so if Prop D passes but Prop C gets more votes, then Prop C gets enacted instead.

Stupid California politics, but here we are. Vote yes on C.

Prop D: No
Saikat and Bernie Sanders call this the “CEO tax,” but that’s misleading. It’s really a business tax, mostly through the gross receipts tax, with the rate tied to executive-to-worker pay ratios. It would raise some tax rates by roughly 800%.

This is emotionally satisfying to some, but would be economically destructive. It could cause companies to shift jobs, headquarters, or revenue out of SF. Companies that stay may hire less, pass costs to customers, or avoid expanding here.

The revenue may also get tied up in court, while businesses face years of uncertainty.

SF needs more companies choosing to be here, not another reason to leave. Vote No on D.

---

It took me a long time to research all this. The fact that voters are expected to have an informed view on every race and measure is part of the problem. California has too many elected offices, too many ballot measures, and too little accountability... but here we are, so vote for the least crazy path toward a more functional state, please!

[Yishan @yishan]

For Earth Day 2025, the world needs a reset on climate thinking.

The first scientists who spoke out about climate change did so according to the facts and evidence, fighting harsh pressure from industries and denialists.

But climate activism become more about political tribalism, social justice, and virtue signaling.

I have spent half a decade now working with other climate entrepreneurs to do everything possible to fight the battle against climate change.

And in that time, many of us have found that the Left is as bad as the Right when it comes to standing in the way of making real progress against this problem!

Today’s politics are about vibes and tribes, not facts and evidence.

Nowhere is this more on tragic display when it comes to climate policy and public discussion.

In a scientific field so vastly complex and multidisciplinary as climate science, we can ill afford this!

On this Earth Day 2025, we need a new era of climate thinking, one focused on practical solutions, real experiments, and the evidence they yield.

Climate is many things, but it’s not about social justice. It’s not about decolonization. It’s not about capitalism or marxism. It’s not about the patriarchy. It is not about the bad guys vs the good guys. It is about gases in the atmosphere.

Carbon footprint is not a moral sin, it is not something we need to “atone” for.

It is a technical problem, a detail we missed, and a physical problem to be solved like any other.

We are living together on a Spaceship Earth and we missed a key detail managing our atmospheric control systems. It is not a moral or social issue, it is a technical problem, and we need to solve it.

And we will not solve the problem until we actually start solving the problem!!

There are many many solutions, and whether one “side” prefers one vs the other is not the point. The point is whether it works and gets us closer to our goal. For example:

Reforestation is effective at carbon capture and can be done almost anywhere by anyone!

Natural gas is actually a great replacement for coal and amenable to carbon capture and sequestration!

Solar power is great where there is a lot of land and sunlight!

Nuclear power is great where there is little land and a highly-skilled workforce!

Nuclear waste is a solved problem!

Wacky windmill designs are provably inferior to large maximally amortizable 3-bladed designs!

Really big dams are great but limited by available geography!

High-voltage long-distance power lines need to be built to connect production and consumption!

Stratospheric aerosol injection is affordable and effective and not the same thing as causing acid rain pollution!

Finally, advocating carbon drawdown is not saying we don’t need to reduce emissions, so stop with that silliness! (Liking pancakes doesn’t mean you hate waffles!)

All of these things (and many more) all fit into a giant portfolio of solutions that contribute to solving the problem.

If this is a climate EMERGENCY, start acting like it: support all possible solutions, try out all experiments, and don’t give in to despair!

Climate change is a problem we DESERVE: finally, as we climb our way up the Kardashev scale, we have reached a milestone where our activities are great enough to affect the planetary atmosphere and ecosystem. And of course we didn’t do a perfect job on our first try! We are lucky that we’re only a couple degrees off!

We can fix this, if we focus on solving the problem!

We will succeed if we focus on evidence-based problem-solving, and not be distracted by passing political and social fads.

It’s 2025, and it is time for us to stop making climate change a proxy issue for our other political and social debates.

Those debates aren’t going to go away any time soon. Some of them are timeless. And plenty of them are worthwhile debates.

But climate change is a separate problem on its own, and it’s a problem we can solve. And we deserve, all of us, to live on a planet that’s healthy and beautiful - and it will be even sweeter, if we are the ones who helped make it so.

After all, if we are going to visit other planets, it’s best to make sure our own house is in order first.

[tiffany3 @tiffany3]

Wordle 214 3/6

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[tiffany3 @tiffany3]

Selling a triplex in Napa! Would like to do an off market deal if anyone is interested. Consistent cash flow, one unit is an Airbnb (monthly rental).

[tiffany3 @tiffany3]

My mom is trading crypto now. No big deal. WAGMI.

[Sahil Lavingia @shl]

Experiencing a loss of taste? You may have COVID or NFTs.

[tiffany3 @tiffany3]

I think today's Ghostbusters Vignette will be a Graham cracker with crumbs
https://t.co/zsvOb9M6N8 @bigheadhq

#GhostbustersNFTs #GhostbustersAfterlife

[Ryan Petersen @typesfast]

Last night Flexport brought a taco truck to the Port of Long Beach as a big thank you to the ILWU laborers there working like crazy to clear this container backlog. A thread on what we learned! /1

[tiffany3 @tiffany3]

I'm excited to be an investor in Terraformation, which is driving one of the most promising solutions to climate change today!

You can invest too at the same terms, as little as $50: 
https://t.co/HL1JYbexPw

[Yishan @yishan]

In June, Terraformation raised $30M in our Series A from @maxaltman, @sama, @sunrock, @JTLonsdale, @Benioff and others.

Now, you can also invest at the same terms. As little as $50, no matter where you live or what your net worth is: https://t.co/fNinYuFlJm

[tiffany3 @tiffany3]

Love this recognition, and hope it opens the door for more diversity of talent.

[Ali Partovi @apartovi]

4/ Solving puzzles under pressure shouldn’t be the only way to prove your potential. Tech is inherently a creative endeavor, and creative people don’t conform.

[tiffany3 @tiffany3]

Check out my new NFT! https://t.co/dYFJNOTeGC

[Michelle MiJung Kim (she/her) @mjmichellekim]

Donate to @napawf_atl. Please.

[tiffany3 @tiffany3]

@antoniogm @benedictevans +1, FLoC please. These "privacy changes" are more esoteric and it's harder to grok the overall implications as a user. Does this create more of a monopoly and revenue for Apple and Google?

[Alexis Gay @yayalexisgay]

every single park hang in San Francisco

[MeidasTouch @MeidasTouch]

📺 NEW VIDEO

Lindsey Graham is not going to want you to retweet this #LyingLindsey

[Paul Graham @paulg]

"Everyone must be tested, every couple of days, with $1, paper-based, at-home tests that are as easy to distribute and use as a pregnancy test."

https://t.co/M33H4rK6Oi

[Linsey Marr linseymarr.bsky.social @linseymarr]

Important finding by a lab with deep experience in this type of research: SARS-CoV-2 survives aerosolization better than other coronaviruses and maintains infectivity in aerosols for at least 16 h. Probably contributes to greater aerosol spread of COVID-19. /1

[Ali Partovi @apartovi]

Calling future tech leaders: https://t.co/NtZZaM7cas.

[tiffany3 @tiffany3]

@APatelThompson Tell them someone in their schools got it.