@ashleymcnamara Ashley you are the best and your kid is the best and the combination is the bestest
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Brian Hall
10.1K posts
Brian Hall
@IsForAt
CMO @ Mistral. AI world need some shaking. x-VP @Google, AWS, Microsoft + startup CEO. Seattle native, helpless M's/WA fan. Massie kinda R, MGP kinda D.
Seattle, WA Katılım Şubat 2012
2.9K Takip Edilen11.2K Takipçiler
I’m on vacation and I made the mistake of opening Twitter during some downtime and someone went to the hospital over model access and JavaScript is… doing JavaScript things. Is everyone okay? 😅
Anyway… hello from Hawaii
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@AngieMentink @ChaseWMentink WTAF HAVE I NEVER HEARD OF OPEN NESTERS BEFORE I AM SPRUNG NOW!!! (Sorry for all the calls but seriously that's a real redirection I'm all for)
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Because we are "open nesters" not empty... I can't wait to see the kids over the All Star break... @ChaseWMentink in college playing basketball now (why not baseball?) If you think his handles are impressive you should see him swing it. I am still hoping...
Jarrett Mentink@JarrettMentink
Put together a little video of Chase dribbling when he was a runt until now as a keepsake for him- only took me 6 hours- would have taken a teenager 6 minutes… gonna miss these days in “the garage” — The journey is absolutely the reward! ❤️🏀@mountsihoops @BertoBee20
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Fair disagreement - and an really not trying to be localist or oldest. But I have to say that my great grandparents, grandparents, and parents worked to make this place. (And all my friend s' same) I'm not saying other people can't make it greater at all - but people can't also show up and then say they know the story, the lessons, and the Genesis.
They all came from other places. Scotland, Illinois, and Montana. Oh and Tacoma.
I love our newbies. But don't fk it up without knowing why you wanted to be here yo?
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@d_erasey @minty_hawk This line is esp awful:
"You are not owed the opportunity to live here and live on our parents and grandparents' investment and work."
Freedom of movement is a core human right and liberal value; "if you don't support the right tax policy you don't belong" is an ugly sentiment.
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I stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Brian.
Seattle isn't great by accident. Low taxes and light hands built Microsoft, Amazon, Costco, Starbucks, and the tax base that pays for our parks, schools, and transit.
Newcomers treat prosperity like the mountains: just here, ready to divide. That's how third generations spend the principal and call it income.
Love this city? Learn how it was made.
Brian Hall@IsForAt
Seattle is the best. We love it. We are scared sh-tless about it, though, because there are all sorts of people who moved here in the last 15 years who think they know why it is so great, but don't know how we got here. They are correct that it is geographically perfect, has loving citizens who want all our neighbors to do well, and will invest in schools, parks, libraries, and reasonable transit. They do not know at all that we can do this well because we have been a low tax environment that let this weird corner of the country punch WAY above it's weight because we helped many businesses grow like Microsoft, Amazon, Costco, Starbucks, Nordstrom's, many startups -- and that created opportunity for our kids. You are not owed the opportunity to live here and live on our parents and grandparents' investment and work. these newbies just think this is all manifest destiny and are pissing it away. they didn't make a damned thing, are mostly interlopers (see Seattle mayor), sometimes are lawyers (who can be great, see Gates family, or terrible, see Governor Ferguson) and now think they can redistribute wealth without creating new opportunity. We seriously are at a really risk of becoming economically the equivalent of the third generation of kids who no longer know how to make business and opportunity.
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Really good perspective. I appreciate you for this.
I was on the board of the United Way of KC. I can tell you that we have an ngo issue. I have quit because they did not have visibility into too much spend (as in, as a board member I worried might be liable for fraud), spent money on homeless that made the while situation worse and told people who asked hard questions to quiet down, and seemed to despise their largest donors - in a way that went out of their way to say not accountable to why they were giving money.
We need to build some new city institutions and I'm talking with some people about that.
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Where this whole thing breaks apart (in the search for a practical path forward) is what money being "spent well" means.
I'll give you a federal example: SNAP vouchers. Some people say sodas shouldn't be part of SNAP because they are not nutritious. Others say that sodas shouldn't be excluded on the grounds that most humans of means 1) do not have to make these concessions and 2) sodas can actually be an imperfect, but important source of calories, especially for lower-income areas.
Do you cut that or do you not? It becomes a question of values, right?
What I think the business community gets right: We shouldn't have to wait for an audit to find hundreds of millions gone from King County (why is Dow Constantine the CEO of Sound Transit??) or KCHA (which Zahilay has owned up to at least).
What progressive ppl in policy have told me: Yes, you can want more financial visibility and all that's fine, but when you add so much friction to distribute resources they don't end up getting distributed to the people that need them the most. Imagine if we had to submit a Concur expense report for buying a new pen (any startup would crumble under operational burden, even if it's the "prudent" thing to do).
So, to me, this becomes part of trying to find a broader agreement on what the social contract in Washington State will be. Are we going to fund pensions or not? Are we going to give kids free meals or not? Are we going to make businesses wait months and months to get a permit because they forgot to put up a required sign upon inspection and now they have to wait a couple of weeks to open (this happened to someone I know).
To think we can tax our way out of the problem is naive. To think we can cut our way out of the problem equally so. And as long as both sides keep putting their hands in front of their eyes, we are fucked.
I'm sorry for the ramble and I appreciate your sincere engagement here--I've found it productive.
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Seattle is the best. We love it.
We are scared sh-tless about it, though, because there are all sorts of people who moved here in the last 15 years who think they know why it is so great, but don't know how we got here.
They are correct that it is geographically perfect, has loving citizens who want all our neighbors to do well, and will invest in schools, parks, libraries, and reasonable transit.
They do not know at all that we can do this well because we have been a low tax environment that let this weird corner of the country punch WAY above it's weight because we helped many businesses grow like Microsoft, Amazon, Costco, Starbucks, Nordstrom's, many startups -- and that created opportunity for our kids.
You are not owed the opportunity to live here and live on our parents and grandparents' investment and work.
these newbies just think this is all manifest destiny and are pissing it away. they didn't make a damned thing, are mostly interlopers (see Seattle mayor), sometimes are lawyers (who can be great, see Gates family, or terrible, see Governor Ferguson) and now think they can redistribute wealth without creating new opportunity.
We seriously are at a really risk of becoming economically the equivalent of the third generation of kids who no longer know how to make business and opportunity.
Nate Silver@NateSilver538
Agree that the Pac NW is among the more underachieving "squares" relative to it's underlying geographic advantages but it's also quite remote. Also Seattle is like the most beautiful city in the world 30% of the time but one of the cloudiest places in the world the other 70%.
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@camilomoresala @minty_hawk DUDE - you were engaging well and had good ideas. the last person I don't know personally on this site that I would accuse of AI work is Minty. as any smart person should uses AI to help - but Minty is the Seattle area goat for me in actually looking into things.
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Thanks for your AI answer, I guess? I mean, if I wanted to discuss with an LLM model, I could just have this same conversation with Claude...that particular third paragraph is pretty telling, it sounds nice in theory, but it kinda tells me you've never really talked to someone in city/state government. Also, I DID say that the housing issue is self-inflicted, so yea.
Also, we have about a ~3bn shortfall. Do you really think your 3 proposals get us there?
Finally, have you talked to an actual high school teacher lately? I would love for you to say to them: "The money arrived; the outcomes didn't" and see what they tell you.
I'm all for reviewing the untouchables (i.e. K-12 education funding), and even amending the constitution to give us more flexibility, but again, none of what you are saying is actually concrete enough to change the conversation, and if you can see my original inquiry to Brian, that is the whole point of me trying to engage in good faith here.
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It's a combination of things. A big jump was the fact that we’d been underfunding K‑12 education for years (see the McCleary decision), and then had to put billions more into basic education to catch up. Also, healthcare and other core services have gotten a lot more expensive. The insinuation I’ve seen is that most of the growth has been in admin/politicians’ salaries, which just doesn't make sense.
My biggest criticism of WA/Seattle politicians, outside of not being more militant about eliminating corruption or stronger financial rigor in places like KCHA, is that we didn’t build enough housing and now we’re paying for it. Things got way more expensive across a bunch of categories, but housing is the big one, and expensive housing flows straight into higher labor costs and higher costs for public services.
Multiple things can be true: WA politicians are unnecessarily antagonistic towards businesses, our tax system is deeply regressive because we don’t have a broad‑based income tax, and we should be allowed to ask as voters “what can we cut?” without being characterized as monsters. But if you complain about taxes, you should also be ready to propose an alternative mix of taxes or spending that you’d actually support.
Since I've answered your question in good faith, I must ask you now...what would you cut?
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@01UWGRAD @camilomoresala well, yes. I guess that seemed obvious to me! :-)
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@IsForAt @camilomoresala I like everything you’ve written. You forgot an important concern. Enforce the laws on the books.
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1/ thank you and I mostly agree with you.
2/ we collect PLENTY of money. I don't disagree with you that maybe things can be more progressive, but WTAF the money is there. it's just not being spent well. could we raise more smart-ly? yes. but the problem is everyone who pays a ton knows it is not being spent well.
3/ Go look at the combination of lawsuit spend and state-employee union spend and tell me there isn't more than a billion to save.
4/ this is a big one. maybe THE big one. the deficit (oh my we just raised taxes more than we ever did and wow are now surprised we don't have enough money) is a spending problem not a revenue one. Let me give one small example, that I will admit is small but is true. I say this as someone who has had two kids through two different public school systems (and one Lakeside). There are socialists fighting over how to give mroe free food to schools. we do not have a problem there. nearly every kid who needs food gets it. during covid they shut down teaching to feed. and it was right. this is performative. from the governor to the county to the mayor all trying to spend money that isn't solving a problem.
that's one of the big problems
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All these things you mentioned are things/policies I agree with. I don't expect you to read the replies that I've written to other people here, but for me this is all downstream of housing. To me, this is greatest policy failure of the last 25 years at the city/state level...fueled by NIMBYs who are also opposed to any tax increase 🙃
My greater contention here is that none of these get us on a path to financial sustainability (save for your education admin recommendation, which many teachers I've talked to and I believe even the Seattle School District Superintendent have highlighted as issues).
For homeless/housing: All these things you mention cost money. So you want zero-tolerance on homelessness, you got to put them somewhere (treatment centers or jails). Where is that money going to come from? Same with vouchers...great idea! where is that money going to come from?
How much has litigation cost WA state? How much of that mitigates our ~3bn shortfall?
You are right, these things are a fine start (and fairly common sense to me). But we still need a progressive tax structure, one which we don't have today.
Can that come without the antagonizing and "eat the rich" self-defeating discourse? Yes! And I actually think if we realized that both sides have to cede, that business is good, but that the state needs to be properly funded, we would actually be on our way to solving this issue (which will take decades), instead passing/repealing taxes and wasting our energy there.
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@djw172 @minty_hawk @d_erasey Minty said it better than me. Seriously, almost all of my best friend and best colleagues are first or second gen here and I love that. thanks for giving me the benefit of the doubt David - I am definitely not railing against people who moved here.
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@minty_hawk @d_erasey Agree, thanks. I am less confident we'd find a strong correlation between "people who assume prosperity is permanent" and "recent arrivals" than @IsForAt seems to be (especially holding age constant).
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@minty_hawk @djw172 @d_erasey how do you say things so much better than I try every time. you are the best Minty. Seattle Fist Bump!
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Brian Hall retweetledi
this comes up with any private company or gov leader - how do we preserve and grow what is ours when working with models and have sovereignty.
Satya Nadella@satyanadella
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Schools: less administrators, focus on teacher to student ratio.
homeless/housing: focus on three things: drugs and mental health issues on the street can't be tolerated. Vouchers for teachers, fire fighters, and police so they can live in the cities they serve. Make it easy to build and make money from apartments (versus crazy regulations).
Pass laws to stop the lawyers from profiting by suing cities, counties, and states into oblivion.
Support businesses.
That would be a fine start.
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Brian, I'll ask you the question that I've asked every entrepreneur that has expressed concern about our fiscal situation in Seattle/WA: What would you do differently? Where would you cut from? Do you know how much of the budget is admin vs. say Education (K-12 is constitutionally mandated to be funded).
Having friends on both the policy and startup side, my number one observation is that they are both shaking fists at each other, but no one is actually having a thoughtful conversation about the sacrifices both sides have to make.
So again, you are a bright guy (I don't mean that facetiously). What would you do different?
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show me a more perfect Seattle picture that doesn't have an orca in it...
Paul Ed Roberts@Pauledroberts
shit aboud to get real
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@IsForAt Very difficult (probably impossible) to be a low-tax haven and world-class big city.
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Between his industry commentary and true-life health amazeballs commentary - I am nominating Daniel for Twitter man of the year. I can't believe I get to learn from him for free - and it's fun.
Daniel Newman@danielnewmanUV
OpenAI demand is fungible. Even if this $AAPL thing takes it down in flames, that demand for intelligence and compute flows to Anthropic, Gemini, Grok, $META etc. This is important to understand because FUD narrative will suggest OpenAI collapse will have a lot of downstream implications that do not truly exist. 🙃
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Brian Hall retweetledi
Someone should invent a version of Outlook that can search for emails and find them.
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