Having "historical preservation" in a city with ~1 generation of buildings in it is certainly something
20.02.2026 14:07
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Having "historical preservation" in a city with ~1 generation of buildings in it is certainly something
Yeah I think the AI productivity gains before Q3 2025 were probably minor, but since then they’ve been real.
A lot of that belief is from my own use cases, though!
Definitely feel like there is a Bayesian undercurrent here - earlier in 2025 when OBBB was salient, structurally higher debt costs were blamed on fiscal policy/fed debts.
Not sure the first-order interest rate data have changed much (no delta in the spread since summer) but beliefs on AI have!
In part because these firms are held privately, they do have some ability to be selective with the information they release.
But when a firm doubles the eval its raising at in just four months (like Anthropic just did), that can only happen when the numbers look good.
The CEO of Anthropic, Dario Amodei, spoke about this at length, in public, in the podcast that Tim linked to.
See also this reporting on OpenAI's "compute margin:" economictimes.indiatimes.com/tech/artific...
This is why its important to pair volatile taxes with long-run capital projects, rather than services. Both JumpStart and the SSHD were built with this principle in mind, but its important not to abandon that vision going forward!
The social housing developer will be a great case study in the importance of strategic implementation. The tax used to fund the developer is likely pro-cyclical and highly volatile.
Smoothing over revenues through strategic investments will be key to building a consistent pipeline of projects.
Also, "subsidizing" is really the wrong word - the "Uber" model is not exactly what is happening here. Uber ate losses to build network effects, which aren't really applicable here.
They're running losses training future models, but the marginal cost per query < marginal revenue per query.
It's totally plausible that some or all of these companies experience considerable contractions. Anthropic and OpenAI as dedicated AI companies are particularly vulnerable.
But there is just huge demand for these products (and they're improving every day).
All of the leading AI companies (Google, OpenAI, Anthropic) have the same basic business model - excellent gross margins on each unit of inference (API/subscription payments/ads - compute) and then huge fixed costs associated w/ training the next model.
In general, being able to secure massive capital investment is the strongest possible credible signal that a given venture is lucrative under capitalism.
Regardless, Anthropic reported 14B in annualized revenue 3 days ago: www.anthropic.com/news/anthrop.... Enterprise customers.
This is also fundamentally beyond the actual point of contention here - whether people are buying AI.
They are! AI companies now have massive revenue streams growing at absurd multiples YoY.
Less sure about the 2020 map, but I don’t think the 2027 map is correct. The NE 45th St lines have a cumulative headway well under 10 minutes.
Even just the 31/32 lines (which are mostly identical) alternate their 20 minute headways to hit 10 minute intervals themselves.
Apple hasn’t exactly hidden that Siri is very much behind the frontier on this stuff!
www.cnbc.com/amp/2025/12/...
Positive spin says that this is an opportunity for solar to fill late summer gap (and these figs do ignore off-grid/rooftop). But pretty skeptical that this is a big opportunity, climate models can barely tell whether annual hydro gen will go up or down, irradiation in Sep/Oct is a bigger lift.
Yeah, hydro situation is interesting. On demand side, should see relatively less in the winter, relatively more in the summer.
Hydro supply is less than demand for both winter and summer currently, but for the former, that may change in the future, w/ latter gap growing. Data is pulled from EIA:
The reason to levy taxes against "tech workers" is simply because they have the ability to pay due to their high salaries.
For folks outside the labor market, the tech boom in Seattle has just meant higher costs without seeing commensurate benefits. Policy has to intervene to "lift all boats."
This, famously, is why Pike Place Market was converted into high-rise apartments, offices and hotels back in ‘71
Presumably though he’s going to be Exec until the inevitable Governor/Senator run, though
RCV 2027: Local Editorial Boards Hardest Hit
This is correct, the car was coming up 55th. The bike lanes that would have been installed would not have changed anything there.
To me, the most frustrating part of the episode is that that “compromise” just ended up worse than the status quo ex-ante.
South of 65th St, they literally just removed parking to widen travel lanes. They somehow made it worse for kids walking to school, bikers, *and* residents wanting parking!
One of the funny things about this whole saga is that the Hawthorne Hills Community Council decided to oppose the lanes, despite 35th not being in Hawthorne Hills.
The HHCC then dissolved until last year when they resurrected to oppose the Bryant NC, which is also not located in Hawthorne Hills!
Katie Wilson has been elected Seattle's next mayor
www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news...
Is there a reason why they would be turned off?
Katie Wilson "identifying as a Socialist" really says more about how Seattle voters view Socialism than it does about how she will actually govern.
The platform she actually ran on is/was much more moderate than, say, Lorena Gonzalez's 2021 platform.
For sure. There will be many odd coalitions that break up these two blocks!
The last two years of the Harrell administration saw the Mayor pushing back against the excesses of a centrist-dominated council - with little getting done.
For Wilson to break the stalemate and make progress, she'll need to put forward an agenda both factions on the Council can live with.
Both Wilson and Harrell broadly "ran to the center" of the Seattle electorate. For Wilson, that meant distancing herself from past comments on public safety issues and past views on homelessness. For Harrell, that meant a series of labor-friendly contracts and tax-positive policy pushes.
Mayor-elect Wilson will be working with a divided City Council. Mercedes-Rinck, Foster, Lin and Strauss will make up a left block, while Rivera, Saka, Juarez and Kettle will make up a centrist block.
Joy Hollingsworth, somewhat in the middle, is likely to be a decisive vote on many issues.