Patrick Schmidt

The boring but more likely bigger problem with AI is how attractive it is to mediocre, miserly people who will accept the enshittification of anything if it saves money. And it's the plausible result because we know all too well how many people will make that trade-off.

I suspect food manufacturers are just trolling American consumers now.

I think of him as our society's equivalent of the head of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation. IYKYK.

After the bulldozers take down the ballroom and arch, we'll need to send them to turn the golf course into a peoples' park.

Very, very few politicians are also this smart and sincere.

The people pushing this garbage are just untalented and lazy losers who assume the rest of us must be untalented and lazy losers too.

Well, let me tell you, this is either brilliant (a lie to make the leadership paranoid) or utterly treasonous. I'm going with the latter.

I have a recent story about this. My family dined Saturday night on a patio, on an unusually warm night in Minneapolis. Three young Somali-American women were at the table next to us. They chatted, laughed, and enjoyed their meal. We did, too. It was a great evening in a great state. /fin.

What is the impact of the Ukraine war on US gasoline and diesel prices? None.

Trump has been clear about the job qualifications for the position, and she met them.

Here's a big fat lie from my local (state senate) Republican candidate.

And judges would rush to grant them Qualified Immunity, as there is no prior case law on this exact scenario, probably.

dennis hastert and jim bakker in the same day feels like an apology for dolly and tim curry

It's Nobel Prize week! Time for your annual reminder that 72 years after Alfred Nobel died, economists got Swedish bankers to endow an econ prize "in honor of Alfred Nobel," against Nobel's descendants' wishes. Media now pretend the econ prize is as newsworthy as the phys/chem/med/lit/peace prizes.

NEW / HUGE: Louisiana, Arkansas, Alabama sued nearly three dozen abortion pill providers + a pharmacy and The states asked the Supreme Court to be able to sue New York, Massachusetts, and California to challenge their telehealth shield laws @autonomynews.co storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

Watching a @constitutionctr.bsky.social preview of the the Supreme Court term, and @gregstohr.bsky.social says we've been "spoiled" with big cases the past couple years. Court watchers, please try to remember the stakes, to real people, in cases. They aren't primarily there for your amusement.

What a great day for traditional rivals to face off in Big Ten football. You know, like UCLA vs. Maryland and USC vs. Oregon.

I've given up on Eric Clapton, but every fall, I just have to try to separate the art from the artist so that I can soak in his rendition of "Autumn Leaves".

I'm tired of the baddies in this story arc--Putin, Xi, Trump, Netanyahu, etc. It was good that they wrote some minor characters, like Orban and Maduro, out of this season, but the whole series needs a reboot.

Here in Minnesota, we talk about the weather a lot, though in a fact-of-the-matter way. The Northeast apparently needs to make it all about them and their feelings.

We are the baddies.

The best argument I've heard for a Harris candidacy.

This is basically a push poll and Zohran still beat it.

I worked about 9 months, part-time, writing radio commercials for a station in rural Pennsylvania. There were 2 women doing sales and they were tapped out, so I was a new supply of creative ideas. I got to know every business in a 20 mile radius.

This hits hard for a Minnesotan on the last day of the state fair.

Neville Chamberlain: "We're going to have peace for our time, and I'm going to have memories for a lifetime."

"What's the story, morning glory? : The Garden as Oasis"

It's better than zucchini season.

#UsedToBeAHooters (Mall of America, or if you'd prefer, Mall of Southern Canada, September 2026)

Federal minimum wage in: 2009: $7.25 2010: $7.25 2011: $7.25 2012: $7.25 2013: $7.25 2014: $7.25 2015: $7.25 2016: $7.25 2017: $7.25 2018: $7.25 2019: $7.25 2020: $7.25 2021: $7.25 2022: $7.25 2023: $7.25 2024: $7.25 2025: $7.25 2026: $7.25 Folks, it's time to raise the damn wage already.

Breaking news: The Trump administration is threatening to cut off executive agencies’ cooperation with the Smithsonian. An Interior Dept. letter threatened the institution “under current leadership” with loss of support for sourcing artifacts and more.

Live footage of US sailors on shore:

Just muttering to myself today: America's long decline reminds us no constitutional text, however clear and commanding, can lay a foundation strong enough to withstand tectonic shifts of culture and corruption.

For more than a year, the National Park Service has been quietly working to parcel off a corner of Yosemite National Park and give it to a private developer. The shocking directive reportedly comes directly from Trump officials. www.notus.org/agencies/tru...

Lake Ontario is hereby renamed after the Latitude Lines that comprise pretty much all of Canada's landmass and LITERALLY NOTHING ELSE, FEDS

What are the chances that Trump directly ordered this detour, saying, "I learned from an old friend that there's no better way to recover than to enjoy the company of some nice young escort girls"?

Dolly Parton yesterday. Tim Curry today. All the greatest 80 year-olds are being taken from us, while the worst remain.

You can build all the gaudy ballrooms you want and gild every statue with shitty gold leaf and slap your fuckin name and image on every building taller than 1 floor. But it's stuff like this 👇 that'll be how our progeny will know who was a good human and who was not.

posted in the lefty folk group chat

In recent years, I have asked my students to debate the merits of a system with a symbolic presidency or monarch, whose role it is to be an apolitical unifier. When they couldn't imagine it in the USA, I had them suppose it was Dolly Parton. Do we have any such person now? I'm not sure we do.

Moody Ultramarines

He makes Mayor Pete look like a minor leaguer at this communication thing.

In. Freaking. Sanity. It is not a "defense" budget if it leaves millions upon millions vulnerable to poverty and disease and the country weaker and weaker because we don't invest in the engines of our strength, growth or greatness.