🇺🇸 John McGrath 🌎

@AndyMasley Brother I feel you. For me it's other stuff, but I can't stop making things. I kind of presume I will eventually, but 🤷

I'm experiencing full total AI coding psychosis realizing that I can vibecode the best possible intricate interactive visuals for basically any issue I care about

@andrewchen It's not so black and white. I just accept most of it, skim some of it, and when it's dealing with something that's critical to core logic, it's not so much I review as I read and fucking understand it. But mostly I just accept it :-)

One question I've been asking founders is: do you try to review all the code that the LLMs write or do you just accept it? I think it's about 50-50 right now but the momentum is towards just accepting the AI-generated code and I think that number will eventually go to 100% This is one of the most telling indications of how AI-native a team is. It's hard to get super high throughput if you are reviewing every line Poll: what do you do?

Sunset friends, vote @alankennywong for district 4 supervisor! Help San Francisco continue on our upward trend. noahpinion.blog/p/san-francisc…

@Noahpinion @ramez AI aside, the idea that ideas get harder to find is not borne out by history.

Well, OK. Suppose that as we discover more ideas, ideas get harder to find. Whatever resources we throw at the production of ideas -- compute, human researchers, rabbits on treadmills -- we observe that we get log-linear returns from each of those resources. Now assume that ideas themselves are one such input into the production of new ideas. You still get that same old drag from the fact that new ideas get harder and harder to find, but you keep getting a boost from the fact that you have more and more ideas with which to search for the new ideas. (In a Romer model, this is attributed to recombinant ideas. But the principle is the same as for AI recursive research.) Depending on whether the drag exceeds the boost, you can get A) diminishing returns that diminish a bit more slowly than under non-recursive research, B) balanced exponential growth, or C) explosive growth (singularity). Or you can have different regimes where each of these happens.

AI folks who are bullish on AI R&D automation, RSI (recursive self improvement), etc.. What do you make of the argument that basically all inputs to AI show logarithmic diminishing returns? So R&D automation itself is likely to show log-linear returns, meaning that there's a dampening function?

@Noahpinion This is part of the answer to Nate Silver's "it's really hard to know what comes after Trump." natesilver.net/p/2028-republi…

After Trump, the ideology of the GOP base will just become Classic Nazi

@rhennigantx @QuincyEdmundLee No longer true. Batteries with grid forming inverters provide synthetic inertia and fast frequency response, and do so more quickly than thermal plants. These are in use in CA, ERCOT, Australia, and probably many more places at this point.

@QuincyEdmundLee The grid is based on a stable rotating mass that generates 60 hz. Not 59, not 61 but 60. No solar and battery pack provides this stability.

For 20 years, gas peaker plants were the only option for meeting peak electricity demand. Now batteries are 24% cheaper New gas plants are $102/MWh — an all-time high. Why is gas getting more expensive? AI is buying all the turbines for data centers.

And the inverse... techcrunch.com/2026/03/02/cha…

Hypothesis: tons of people, until this week, thought AI and ChatGPT were the same thing, and had never heard of Anthropic. Now they have, and it's the “safe AI company.” Bet they’re seeing a big bump in consumer adoption from that, even above their already nuts growth rate.

I cannot wait until the White House changes hands and all of you ghouls switch back from "you're a traitor unless you bootlick so hard your tongue goes numb" to "the government asking any questions about my offshore fentanyl casino is vile tyranny and I will throw myself in the San Francisco Bay in protest", like werewolves at the last ray of the setting moon.

Now that Obama’s poll numbers are in tailspin – watch for him to launch a strike in Libya or Iran. He is desperate.

@jkeatn @patrickc As long as it's actually called that I'm down

@patrickc we need an English Académie Française

Much as I'm a stickler for "it's" vs "its", I think we have to accept that these words simply have bad UI and that the developers should fix things in a point release.

@circlecrules @growing_daniel @aakashgupta A lot of blocks look like this: imagescdn.homes.com/i2/IJyCWGLqjZ9…

@growing_daniel @aakashgupta Its nicer when they paint them different colors. Trees would help but its a.big sand dune.

The people dunking on this photo have it exactly backwards. That’s the Outer Sunset, somewhere between the 30s and 40s Avenues. Those rows of identical stucco boxes were built by Henry Doelger, who from 1934 to 1941 was the single largest homebuilder in the United States. His crew finished two houses per day. Before Doelger showed up, this was literally sand dunes. Maps labeled the entire western half of San Francisco “Great Sand Waste.” Nobody lived there. Nobody wanted to. What changed: the Twin Peaks streetcar tunnel opened, the FHA started backing mortgages for middle-income buyers, and Doelger figured out assembly-line construction on 25-by-120-foot lots. He sold homes for $5,000. Adjusted for inflation, that’s roughly $125,000 to $175,000. A working-class family could buy one on $32.50 monthly payments. Those “cookie cutter” homes used redwood framing, which is why they’re still standing 85 years later while many luxury developments from the same era have been torn down twice. Doelger built roughly 25,000 of them across the Sunset and into Daly City, where they inspired Malvina Reynolds to write “Little Boxes.” The reason 90% of SF looks like this is because 90% of SF’s housing was built to solve an actual problem: where do tens of thousands of postwar families live? The Painted Ladies on Alamo Square and the Victorians in Pacific Heights survived the 1906 earthquake. They represent maybe 10% of the city’s housing stock. The Sunset represents the city that working people actually built and lived in. Here’s the math that makes this photo funny for a different reason. Those Doelger homes that sold for $5,000 in 1939? Median sale price in the Sunset District is now $1.63 million. That’s a 32,500% return. The Sunset is currently the most competitive neighborhood in San Francisco, with homes selling in under two weeks, often above asking. The “ugly” part of San Francisco turned out to be the best real estate investment in the city’s history. The fog-covered rows of stucco that tourists never photograph generated more household wealth than the Victorians everyone puts on postcards.

@growing_daniel @aakashgupta Whoever took this intentionally chose the most banal street in SF, on the greyest day possible (saying a lot). We live in one of these on the other side of the park, in the Outer Richmond. Lots of trees. No greige (paint is cheap). Bonus, these are blocks from GG park. Its nice.

@aakashgupta Okay but it’s ugly

SF teacher's union isn't negotiating in good faith. Every day they delay costs the district ~$8M. Teachers need a better contract but the district has budget realities they'd be irresponsible to neglect. District has compromised, union needs to as well. sfchronicle.com/sf/article/tea…

@BadriSridharan @johnrhanger It's not even biting a bullet, they're just better. Nicer to drive, cheaper to own, charging infra fine in many places and improving rapidly. They do fine in the cold too. We love our. caranddriver.com/features/a6034…

@johnrhanger Americans should just bite the bullet and buy EVs as much as possible. They will quickly find that EVs are vastly superior.

Full-electric vehicle (BEV) sales in Turkey skyrocketed 80% in 2025! Diesel car sales are down ~40%, and gasoline car sales are down ~17% since 2023! BEVs market share jumped from 10% in 2024 to 17% in 2025! ember-energy.org/latest-insight…

Trump’s America.

@RealJacobPerry I’d refuse. It’s an illegal order. I’ll publish an article on this tomorrow.

Death to early decision, death to legacy admissions! Colleges and Universities talk a big game about ethics, public service, etc, then run themselves like the Trump administration. Next they'll start issuing meme coins and selling NFTs and gilded sneakers. nytimes.com/2025/12/10/opi…

So in maybe 50 years human reproduction will consist of clones being raised by robots. Cool cool. lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v47/…

These talks should have collapsed. Fossil fuels cause climate change, not to say that amounts to a lie. nytimes.com/2025/11/22/cli…