Me on January 1st 2025 vs. me on December 31st 2025. It’s been a long year.

In my past life (read: pre-kids and tenure track job), I sang in a band. We recorded this 10 years ago for npr’s Tiny Desk contest. youtu.be/LaW64S85gBI?...

Rode the E Line today with my three-year-old for the opening. Great line and I could see it rivaling the B and D ridership

First real winter bike commute.

While we wait to see what is going on, please note that you can still get most of what is in MEPS microdata from IPUMS: meps.ipums.org/meps/

I moved to Minnesota in June 2023 during a day when the air smelled like a campfire. When I’ve asked longtime Minnesotans about the increasingly severe smoke during our summers, they all say it was never a problem until a few years ago. And wow, this graph has got the receipts.

Just occurred to me: Fall has the same hours of daylight as Winter, and Spring has the same hours of daylight as Summer

Trend that seems like it would have a simple explanation, but I'm not sure does - pedestrian deaths among US children: 1970 - ~2,400 deaths (4.2/100K) 1990 - ~950 deaths (1.8.100K) 2005 - ~380 deaths (0.6/100K) 2023 - ~260 deaths (0.4/100K)

This is great - the federal government supports both homeowners and renters. But support for low-income renters through rental assistance is a direct expenditure always on the budget chopping block. In contrast the homeowner support is hidden in the tax code and people think it's just the default.

The coveted 60 degree bike commute during peak foliage.

Flagship state universities with urban campuses in large cities* HI CA WA AZ NM NE TX MN OH KY Flagships that are in the state’s largest city: WA HI UT NM MN OH VT Did not expect it to skew so heavily west of the Mississippi *subjective

A list of reasons for this in order of importance: 1. Even density. Few high-density neighborhood centers. 2. Streetcar corners. Fewer long main drags. 3. Ease of parking. You’d think this would be #1, but it’s downstream of 1 and 2 4. Winter (minor) But I think we have the bones for walkabillity

Was in Northeast by the river and North Loop and both were *hopping*. It’s like I say about Uptown: it was once an epicenter but if you look at all the new smaller epicenters that have sprung up in the last 15 years, it explains a lot of the falloff beyond “someone fucked something up.”

This weekend, my son and I took the B-Line to Downtown St. Paul to the Science Museum. It took about 40 min from Nicollet. On the way back we took the Green Line. To my surprise, it took about the same amount of time - 43 minutes to downtown MPLS. Why? The Green Line waited at several red lights.

We in Minnesota have not shrugged and moved on. And we in Minneapolis are still reeling from the school shooting at Annunciation, which I assume is already long gone from the news cycle. America.

Circling back on this, I think I’m vindicated! Attendance this year topped both 2024 and 2023 despite only one record day and rising entry fees. The beautiful weather just spread it out. www.mnstatefair.org/about/attend...

But seriously Portland Airport, what is up with this signage?!?!

Fair Transit!

Granted I’m often an over enthusiastic booster of the cities, but I wonder if MSP has underlying structural characteristics that hinder a transit recovery. More job sprawl, more remote-potential jobs, cheaper parking? I don’t know, I just don’t want to quickly lay this at the feet of metro transit.

Three South Minneapolis public schools of the past that closed and are now housing. 1. Louis Agassiz - 38th and Harriet. Closed in 1981 after sustaining tornado damage. Now the site of a few dozen townhouses.

The Berry Budget! Berries happen to be the only food at the union of ‘healthy’ and ‘things kids will reliably eat’

Milwaukee Ave. Minneapolis. More pedestrian streets!

“Seemingly every diverse cultural facet in the city can be found riding the B Line, and it’s the kind of thing that makes you fall in love with cosmopolitanism.” Beautifully said by @blindeke.bsky.social www.minnpost.com/cityscape/20...

A reprise: some insights after 2 years in Minneapolis. 1. As a Minneapolis and Minnesota booster, I appreciate the local spirit and enthusiasm. But I can see how it would get tiresome. However, I think knowing nothing about Minneapolis is far more common than being annoyed at the boosterism.

Some lakes are great. This one is Superior

Ordinarily I think people overreact about weather, but a tornado in South Minneapolis isn’t unheard of www.dnr.state.mn.us/climate/jour...

We had a little protest of UMN faculty and researchers to raise awareness of what this administration is doing to science and universities. Apparently lots of students have no clue. We’ve gotta break through our information bubbles and get the word out to the youngins’.

Great piece about the state of the Washington Avenue Bridge. We need to fix it. This should be one of the most stunning places on campus, but right now it's not. And a security guard sits in a running car at one end 24 hours a day. Also a photo by @evanrobertsnz.bsky.social

Pretty ridiculous April Fools joke here

43rd and Nicollet is really becoming a South Minneapolis destination. What it really needs now is a stoplight or 4-way stop www.startribune.com/steven-brown...

Dr. Denominator does not approve! These sorts of pieces are well-meaning, but the number of cases of something that show up at the ER doesn't necessarily reflect risk if you don't know the amount of risk exposure, and I'm not sure ER docs are doing that calculation. www.nytimes.com/2025/02/21/w...

I wrote a piece in the Minnesota Reformer about how the Trump Administration is wrecking the future of biomedical and public health research by trashing diversity programs and freezing scientific advisory meetings: minnesotareformer.com/2025/03/06/c...

Our genius data guru Dave Van Riper @ipums.bsky.social is on Marketplace talking about why the loss of federal data matters not just for scientific research, but for all of us. www.marketplace.org/2025/02/20/w...

These sorts of stories are simultaneously heartening and unsettling. His campaign didn’t actually do much to hide this stuff. It was out there in the open. Why didn’t people believe it?

I’ll be honest, the common wisdom that “once you get below 0F, it’s all the same” is not true. It does get colder

The solution is pretty clear. We just need to go back in time to make sure Trump never gets his hands on Gray's Sports Almanac

In 2021, a developer in State College, PA proposed to build a 30-unit affordable housing development on the site of a closed bicycle shop. Neighbors complained that it was 'out of scale' with the neighborhood and sued to prevent it. Plans were withdrawn. The reward? A smoke shop.

Elizabeth Wrigley-Field now asking @amyklobuchar.com staff members what steps she is taking to oppose what’s going on in DC. What action is she taking?

I'm with a dozen public health professionals meeting with @amyklobuchar.com 's staff... next to her Minneapolis office. (We thought we had a meeting here but it turns out they don't meet with constituents in person in Minnesota, only in DC?! So we scrambled to find a public space) #VoughtNo 1/

Sure, everything is terrible right now. But can we talk about how awesome winter is when it doesn’t rain?

This moment feels a lot like the first week of March, 2020. Watching a disaster unfold in real time, with enormous uncertainty for what the next days, weeks, months, even years looked like. And I don't have any grand insights other than uncertainty is destabilizing.

I'm not sure there's anywhere on earth with a larger historical temperature range than Winnipeg, Manitoba: -54F - 108F

I moved here in 2019. I'll admit there might be some of the zeal of the convert here, but Minneapolis is a special place compared to so many of the other cities where I've lived. It is very imperfect, but I don't think folks here always appreciate how invested so many people are in making it better.

My hometown-Santa Barbara-closed its main downtown strip to traffic during the pandemic. A no brainer since it had no parking or loading zones to begin with. It’s great, and the complaints I heard about it (bikes go so fast! It’s only for tourists!) were really reaching

I actually do think Minneapolis is maybe unique in its intersection of cost of living and desirability. Lots of the other urban cores that have similar housing markets - Baltimore a good example, Indianapolis a little closer, Milwaukee also - are not as good places to live as Mpls.

North American bicycling conundrum Large cities in which a normal person could easily bike year round: San Diego Los Angeles San Jose San Francisco Oakland Honolulu Large cities with the best bike infrastructure: Montreal Minneapolis Portland Seattle Washington, DC

Wait, how come no one warned me that winter is cold and snowy in Minnesota?

I don’t want to poke holes in an otherwise perfect film, the best of its era, but is the early morning flight to Paris they take in Home Alone realistic? In my experience flights to Europe leave in the afternoon or evening.

Whether June or December, it’s still America’s greatest city

My anecdotal experience is that aggressive driving spiked up during the pandemic and has not abated. If anything it seems to have become entrenched and maybe even spread to people not immediately likely to drive aggressively. But is there any good data on this beyond subjective experience?