Need a plausible theory for how Minneapolis became the main character of the 2020s

A child of mine, historically a selective eater, just downed his first-ever cheeseburger. After each bite he said “This is the best thing I’ve ever tasted.” As soon as it was gone he groaned “I never want one of those again.” yep, that’s the cheeseburger experience. Welcome to America, kid.

Finally saw an ‘Avatar’ in the theater, in 3D, and like … I get it now.

TIL that Christopher Nolan is red-green colorblind, and suddenly so many things make sense.

silent night, holy night - cool all is calm - sounds amazing ALL IS BRIGHT - wait what round yon virgin mother & child - why is it bright holy infant so tender and mild - it's bedtime sleep in heavenly peace - TURN OFF THE LIGHT FIRST

I just realized that Charles and Mary Lamb's famous children's book "Tales from Shakespeare" was published closer to the writing of Shakespeare's actual plays than to the present day.

“Mary, Did You Know?” or as I call it, “Mansplaining: The Christmas Carol”

The story of this year's re:Invent expo hall is "booth inflation". Two-story palaces with built-in podcast studios! Custom art installations! Theater lighting rigs! Companies are dropping 7 figures on these McMansions.

Really doesn’t get better than seeing your little kids push back from the table with their cheeks still bulging out from their last mouthful of Thanksgiving leftovers, racing off to play with their cousins. That’s what the holidays are all about.

My old Toyota Sienna just transported two fairly large couches across town without so much as needing to have the back hatch tied open. I could easily stuff a queen mattress AND box spring in the back of my 2001 Ford Windstar. Minivans are hilariously useful, no home should be without one.

3 kids in, and I finally have one who likes the taste of amoxicillin. This is a game-changer.

@emilyfreeman.bsky.social and I finally started a podcast! Get your dose of B2B sass wherever fine podcasts are vended (vended? vent? anyway, there's venting): podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/v...

My plan to drive to KubeCon from Charlotte is looking more and more defensible.

I feel like the biggest takeaway from the latest AWS outage is that there’s simply no architecting around them at this point. Even if you are 100% redundant/multi-whatever, your vendors and customers are certainly not. Order volume is dropping no matter what you do. We’re all in this together.

A little encouragement for everyone dealing with the AWS outage today: youtu.be/rK_7ozvm53o?...

Watching an old musical that includes some fight choreography. And I’m again confronted with the sad fact that in modern movies, our fighting looks better but our dancing has gotten much worse. 😢

it's 9 am on a Wednesday and my 3 year old is chilling in pajamas, eating a cup of noodles and watching Spiderman. How do I tell her it only goes downhill from here

There is no such thing as a children’s book

I’m a pretty diehard Tigers fan but I have to admit that a Mariners-Blue Jays ALCS would be insane. I’ve been to Blue Jays games in Seattle before. The crowd is 65% Canadians who sneak down from Vancouver. That playoff atmosphere would be unlike any other.

“Please do not adjust your seat and ask a crew member for assistance” is a grammatically ambiguous instruction. So you want me to do neither of those things? Or I can adjust as long as I don’t ask? Or I can ask if I don’t adjust? Please tell me I’m not the only one who thinks this every time I fly

Planning to stop by All Things Open in Raleigh next week - who else will be there? Would love to say hi and catch up in person!

Apparently the Girl Scouts now give out corporate-sponsored badges which you can earn by completing key life skills challenges like going to see Gabby’s Dollhouse The Movie. Seems fine

pronouncing “vegemite” like “Yosemite” to own the libs

at last, a sign that will REALLY piss off your Southern neighbors

Heartbroken, utterly shattered, to report that today I structured some data and retrieved an actionable business insight

who called it "silicon valley office decor" and not faang shui

May all of our future Wikipedia intros go this hard

Watching Lady & the Tramp with my kids on Disney+. I am STUNNED by how gorgeous the full CinemaScope frame is compared to the pan&scan VHS prints I remember watching on square tube TVs. Seriously, go rewatch the animated classics in widescreen if you haven’t! That art is too beautiful to miss.

A lot of people assumed LLMs would drown out human creators with an infinite buffet of fresh content. In reality they produce ONE kind of content: AI slop. And slop loses its novelty fast, no matter what stylistic sugar is on top. There’s never been a better time to share your own thoughts.

Manager: "What's this milestone 'Living on a prayer' ?" Me: "That's the documentation deliverable." Manager: "What's the status of that?" Me: "We're halfway there" Manager: "Why is progress so slow?" Me: "You fired Tommy" Manager: "So?" Me: "Tommy used to work on the docs"

A common social media interaction I will never understand: Person A: makes easily disproved false claim Person B: “that’s wrong, here is the correct fact+source.” Person A: “OK, but my point stands.” wtf no it doesn’t

a thing about James Dobson is that — unusually for his time — he encouraged evangelicals to go get therapy Meanwhile the rest of his teachings put millions of people in need of therapy Dobson was a therapist RIP to a master of vertical integration

the vibes are shifting bullish on professional software engineers

Harsh truths to save you from ChatGPT psychosis by @forrestbrazeal.bsky.social newsletter.goodtechthings.com/p/harsh-trut... 1. AI will not make you smarter 2. AI will not make you more interesting 3. AI will not make you more creative 4. AI will not make you an expert #genAI #AI

While doing some prep for the new book, I discovered this delightfully befuddled review of “The Read-Aloud Cloud” … “What a strange book this is!” www.ictineducation.org/home-page/re...

It's time to play: entertainment law firm or "Modern Major General" lyric?

Today in normal comments from my children: “Dad, your belly button is really deep. You should store raisins in there so you have something to eat during meetings.”

A random but somehow perfect fact: Edward Packard, creator and frequent author of the Choose-Your-Own-Adventure series, is the grandfather of Superman actor David Corenswet.

Time to start recommending underrated books on this account. Reply with a genre, I’ll give you a rec.

Tom Lehrer influenced me in profound ways - RIP to the greatest of all the musical satirists www.nytimes.com/2025/07/27/a...

My new favorite acronym is "D&A" - in publishing parlance that means "delivered and accepted". The final draft of my very weird novel has officially passed muster with Ballantine and is off to copyedits. Can't wait to share it with you!

We might call this "Oppenheimer-ing": doomsaying about your own product in order to make yourself sound more important.

It occurs to me that our legal and social infrastructure is probably not built to deal with a small number of manic people with access to infinite lawsuit-writing AI. www.findlaw.com/legalblogs/p...

[anduril sales presentation] “While legacy generals are fighting the last war, our innovative new AI models will enable you to fight a weighted average of all previous wars simultaneously”

a thread of harsh truths to vaccinate you against chatgpt psychosis 1. AI will not make you more interesting. AI-generated words may be helpful for your own research. Nobody else is interested in reading them. Assume nothing written by AI is worth publishing. AI will not earn anyone’s respect.

presented without comment

Freeman & Forrest turns one year old today. • 13 amazing full-time team members • 33% of tech's Fortune 100 under contract • More than $1.7 million paid out to technical builders and creators • $0 in funding More numbers from a wild Year 1: www.freemanandforrest.com/blog/3dYzROw...

tired: I took a bribe wired: I accepted a gift from a person with aligned interests inspired: I got a lil stocking stuffer from emoluments claus

the only honest SaaS comparison chart

Vanity metrics? Sir, these metrics encompass the full dark personality triad.