apple juice

• Stephen Miller Is Going for Broke "Violence is not the cause of Trump and Miller’s desire to use state power to crush their opposition. It is the pretext for which they transparently long."
• ‘A Precarious State’ skims the surface of our urban condition People keep sending me the video
• Is The Bread in Europe Better For You? I’ve been asking this question ever since our trip
• What Neuroscience Teaches Us About Reducing Phone Use A couple of simple tips

This is partially a test of the new blogging plugin I just installed. I pulled a laptop out of recycling and have been wanted to get more experience using Linux as a true productivity device and not something to just screw around with. There is a surprising amount of little functions and workflows that one takes for granted having been pretty Mac-exclusive for so long.

Metro Transit

I still strongly believe in the necessity of a good transit system to help create a livable city, and Metro Transit has definitely had it’s ups and downs over the past 10 years. We are still living through the construction of the green line extension in our backyard. I’m going to be one of the first people on that train when it opens in 2027. I’m hopeful that the blue line extension will proceed, and hopefully not all of the delays and lawsuits and nonsense that the green line faced.

Anyway, I’ve been trying to make some more trips on Metro Transit. I want to shout out the excellent app simply called Transit it provides the real-time information and routing information I’ve always wanted. If I could only buy and store tickets in there I’d be set.

Today’s trip was easy. Train was on time. Everything was chill on the train. Multiple Metro Transit employees around.

The $6 we spent on fares sure beats the $60+ uber or parking options. Just can’t wait until we have access to a stop within walking distance!

“The Minneapolis music scene has been adored by fans around the world. And many of the local Black artists — Prince, Jimmy Jam, Morris Day and the Time, Lizzo and others — who subsequently earned national acclaim were already staples on KMOJ before the world met them.”

Important article about KMOJ’s future in the startribune – I still believe radio matters and MSP has a strong culture of independent radio. I’ve been heartened to hear that The Current has been making progress towards their goal of 5,000 new subscribers, and I’m hopeful that KMOJ is successful in raising the funds they need to be a fixture of the Minneapolis music scene well into the future.

Fitting choice for the Oxford English word of the year. From The Guardian:

If you want to witness the last vestiges of human intellect swirling down the drain, hold your nose and type the words “skibidi toilet” into YouTube. The 11-second video features an animated human head protruding from a toilet bowl while singing the nonsensical lyrics “skibidi dop dop dop yes yes”. The clip has been viewed more than 215m times, and spawned hundreds of millions of references on TikTok and other social media.

Source: Is doom scrolling really rotting our brains? The evidence is getting harder to ignore | Siân Boyle | The Guardian

The collective action required to solve this problem is massive.

I wonder about this prediction, Writes, and Write-Nots. AI has had an enormous impact on student and professional lives already, and it is only likely to get more pervasive as it becomes more integrated into all the tools you are already using. Pretty soon, people will need to consciously choose tools that don’t include AI generation by default. Once it gets to that point we just accept that it is part of our lives and move on. Rarely do we consciously add the friction, the hard work back in.

“I’m usually reluctant to make predictions about technology, but I feel fairly confident about this one: in a couple decades there won’t be many people who can write.”

I could certainly benefit from writing more, I actually do enjoy the process of writing, trying to explain my thoughts, but rarely find the focused time to do it.

Great title, scary article. Is this happening out there in the real world?

How to survive the broligarchy

Uff dah, as we say up here.

I’ve resisted posting anything about the election because I’m not sure I have organized my thoughts in any particular way that makes sense. I read and liked this piece though, and I hope to see more thinking, writing, planning, and action like this proposal from Matthew Yglesias.

I don’t know that I agree with all of it, but I want to amplify the point: The democrats need to rebuild the platform and also learn how to talk about it again.

A Common Sense Democrat manifesto – by Matthew Yglesias:

Nine principles for Common Sense Democrats

My goal here is to write these principles down at an adequate level of abstraction such that they don’t become a policy laundry list. They’re also not supposed to be a straitjacket. Different people have different views and different priorities, and principles need to be loose enough to accommodate some differences.

Anyway, it’s worth a read.