I think "feeding goldfish to zoo bears" is my favorite news story of the day. Brown bears are apparently less picky than other zoo animals. www.startribune.com/edina-lake-g...

Non-profits, including colleges, typically include suggested donation amounts based on past giving. The low option is usually what you gave last year, with a couple more ambitious requests, maybe 1.5x and 2x. This year a couple of my old colleges really went for it, asking for 16x and 30x!

What's alt text? Why is it important on Bluesky? How do I write it? Where am I? What's going on?

I saw a listing on Zillow in St. Paul that features a hallway linen cabinet & drawers combo that is identical to one in my house, down to the drawer pulls There must have been an era when everyone wanted closets and they were willing to turn hallway space into closet space

It's not intentional but I channel Mr. Deltoid in A Clockwork Orange when I'm talking to my cats: A bit of nastiness, yes? A spider plant knocked on the floor, yes? And who could have done that? Certain cats were mentioned, but nothing could be proven of course.

When I remarked on the unicycle's corn dog valve cover at the State Fair's bike corral, a man in a cow costume produced another corn dog valve cover and gave it to me That's a statistically improbable sentence, but 100% true

Glad Elias was found, didn't know he was missing

I just typed "speak of the 😈" How long before I say "speak of the smiling imp" aloud? Wondering what changes to speech/verbal communication have already occurred thanks to emoji

My recent visit to the Minnesota State Fair reminded me that Minnesotans really love their personal space Apologies to all the people I cut ahead of in line, how was I supposed to know you were in line? And all the people who asked me if I was in line when I was standing 10 feet away from the line

Wednesday Addams' coat is not exactly an Inverness cape, but it's close enough, Sherlock

Evidence on my deck suggests that the chipmunks are dining on hackberry galls, which if I identified them correctly, would contain hackberry nipplegall psyllid nymphs Yum?

I'd never seen any Stone Roses videos before and now I know why

As a former longtime 4-H kid, I feel it is my sacred Minnesotan duty to inform everyone that Wednesday, August 27th is the LLAMA COSTUME CONTEST which will take place at 6:00 pm in the Warner Coliseum. Go forth and plan your State Fair visits accordingly. 🦙👒🥇

go ahead and triple that entendre, im not driving

I was at a brewery earlier and they were playing what I thought was just the absolute worst 1990s cutout bin pop punk rejects but my friend told me that style is in again, sure enough all the songs were contemporary

I received an earlier emergency notification, I didn't screenshot it, but it was something to the effect of, "the transitway is closed at Canfield" Didn't seem worthy of an emergency notification I was in that area, and there was a police officer at Canfield and Como

You can love your country and hate your government

I woke up with a song stuck in my head but I didn't know any of the words I finally remembered one line: it was the Alan Parsons Project, "Eye in the Sky," a song I don't think I've ever gone out of my way to listen to before and very different from my usual playlists

I will be on @kare11.bsky.social tonight to talk about the St. Paul ransomware attack, the Interlock group behind it, and what cities and organizations need to know. 10pm Central! 📺

There's a group of people building gers (or yurts) in Como Park, it looked like fun!

I'm looking for more details on a very specific topic, but search results 6-30 are all just AI rehashing the first 5 search results Or possibly AI rehashing other rehashed AI results

AI scientists at Osric University have discovered that smashing two words together can produce extra letters: blue + berry = bluebberry

I have a lot of emails from St. Paul Ward 4 candidates via ActionNetwork ActionNetwork claims all their lists are opt-in but I did not opt-in to any of these messages I'm particularly curious about the many messages from @coleforward4.bsky.social I know I could unsubscribe, it's the principle

Google Local Guides, never change: "I can't believe I didn’t know there was a Japanese garden in the Twin Cities metro area until recently. After learning about this garden on TikTok, I knew I had to make the trip to Bloomington to check it out." 🤦

I got an ad for a Lake Geneva getaway, but it turns out there's a Lake Geneva...Wisconsin? That was a disappointment Then again I live not far from Como Lake, which I enjoy but also fails to live up to its namesake

When I was in college in Ann Arbor there was a zine/comic called Doochisuck that had stark black & white artwork and always a great story and I'm sorry I never met the writer/artist it was really fantastic

Wow the insurance-chasing roofing companies are out today

A tale of two weeds: - Creeping bellflower. Invasive. I've pulled hundreds and hundreds of them in my yard (not particularly effective, but trying to keep them from going to seed) - White snakeroot. Native. Historically interesting (it may have killed Lincoln's mother?). Letting it take over

The only Superman movie I want to see is Superman III: - computer hacker - evil billionaire - supercomputer becomes self-aware - goofy as hell

Interesting opinion piece from Gautam Mukunda in today's Pioneer Press: "Beware: AI's an ultimate yes-man" tl;dr: LLM tools are designed to give you the answers you want to hear, even if they are wrong But when talking about ideas to counteract this he gives the most fucked-up example:

Imagine if LLMs came out with a "not sure, but here's my best guess? You should verify this information" we would have stopped hearing about them instantly. You know like how we ignore scientists

My neighborhood has a cutesy monthly newspaper, the Park Bugle. The front page story on the latest edition is about the candidates for the upcoming Ward 4 election. I think the paper really failed to serve its readers by copy-pasting content from candidate campaigns and failing to investigate.

"NIMBY undertones" is such a damning Midwestern headline: share.google/ISsi9sYxxeQ1...

I don't know if it is specifically a Michigan idiom or more generally Midwest but years ago I found the expression "a couple three" (as in "a couple three beers") really odd but also charming and I've leaned into it

Opinions are like AI add-ons, everyone's got one and they're mostly terrible

I was at Urban Growler last weekend with 3 faculty members from the University of Minnesota. I noticed a signed "Row the Boat" oar above the cash register "I guess P.J. Fleck has been here before," I said They gave me a weird look. "Who?" I explained. They seemed annoyed and changed the subject

Bananime: anime where all the human characters are bananas Is this anything?

The NYT article says it's a 10 million dollar defamation suit, but the FT and the WSJ say it's a 10 billion dollar defamation suit

I am unreasonably enraged by this, as there are many different milkweeds that monarch butterfly caterpillars eat: "'[Butterfly weed is] crucial for monarch butterfly survival, because it's the sole food source for their caterpillars.'" www.marthastewart.com/july-perenni...

The r/dataisbeautiful people deserve to be trolled this hard because they frequently confuse "visually interesting" with "meaningful" and "effective communication"

My neighbor lapped me (mowed his lawn twice since I last mowed) I guess it's time to mow?

Is there a way to disable the "How was your experience?" screen after a Zoom meeting? I've never answered it. I'm never going to answer it. I'm it about 6 Zoom meetings per day, or around 1500 per year

I guess the new thing in coffee is that you have to know your roaster by name, and your roaster has to know the grower by name, and your roaster has to have have a photo with the grower in Honduras or Costa Rica or Colombia or wherever The coffee is really good but it's a little exhausting

This is the best. I love that Goldy has a shiny gold suit for such occasions: racketmn.com/goldy-gopher...

This spring: oh what are these cute little red bugs, how vibrant This summer: I must destroy the evil red bugs before they kill again The lily leaf beetle is a relative newcomer to Minnesota and will destroy your lilies: www.mda.state.mn.us/plants-insec...

Strib headline: "Driver towing fish house dies after collision with pickup near Aitkin, Minn." I apologize, I've only lived in Minnesota for 11 years of my life, but wtf is a "fish house"?

Me: Mel Brooks still has 1901 years to go until he's actually the 2000 year old man Her: You should tell him that. I bet he's never heard that before

Thinking about this letter nearly two months, astounded by the writer's belief that it was his duty to remove an anti-fascist flyer: "As a responsible middle-class citizen, I removed the defacement from its unauthorized and aesthetically unattractive location." www.parkbugle.org/letter-to-th...

Fuckin renaissance man