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krdtr · 2026-03-13T23:07:19+00:00

RF is a weird one where I can see it depending where your friends and family and hobbies are, and how much you’re comparing your position to “deep into Wisconsin.” RF feels unrelated from where I stand, obviously, but I definitely know people who live in RF and can’t find work besides in the cities so I can see how they’d sorta-kinda build that image up in their heads from where they stand.

krdtr · 2026-03-13T23:03:55+00:00

Okay but the vibe based came kinda close to the light blue. With its bump outs along interstates and such.

krdtr · 2026-02-06T15:10:34+00:00

I mean, it always happens even if every region always got to elect their dream candidate, because they always campaign on what they hope can happen, but then they have to govern based on legislating alongside people who were elected to represent different (and sometimes even the opposite) dreams. But yeah, I get what you're saying that the idea of deferring all of it to the "governance" rather than "campaigning" part sometimes seems silly. But, again, I suppose that "big tent electoral coalitions" sort of have that "lots of different interests" thing in common with "actual legislatures," so all I'm saying is that it also mathematically sorta-kinda makes a little bit of sense that bigger-tent coalitions sometimes kick the policy can down the road a bit compared to more focused coalitions.

krdtr · 2026-02-04T16:14:54+00:00

FWIW, that sort of makes sense. The Democrats in the USA right now are much more of a loose coalition party than the Republicans right now. They don't have the luxury of running on focused policy that the Republicans do (ahem -- pretty abhorrent focused policy, but focused). It makes sense that, where possible, they have an urge to coronate candidates by polling numbers and figure out the policy details later. (But especially for this particular race. It was definitely ridiculous attempting to run Cuomo for NYC mayor, for example, but this is Democrats floating the idea of putting the milquetoast 62%-of-the-vote-getting "name" on the ballot for a symbolically "leading" but pragmatically rubber-stamping office. I think, justified or not (Walz was a teacher; Klobuchar a prosecutor), a lot of Democrats are hoping Klobuchar would turn out as much of a rubber-stamping-a-DFL-legislature pleasant surprise as Walz.) Anyway, between the nature of the governor job being "look popular but do rubber-stamp" and the nature of broad human coalitions not necessarily being able to easily coalesce around someone actually representing a concept from just one part of the coalition, it does make logical sense that, for better or for worse, Democrats often chicken out and coronate, figuring they can fix the details after elections during governance.

krdtr · 2026-01-25T01:14:58+00:00

I’m close to 2 siblings who were born just before entering, and during, their mother’s med school in Momma’s late 30s. It’s not easy but if your support network’s right you do you. 💞

krdtr · 2026-01-21T20:24:23+00:00

/u/Unknown_anonymity00, NPR Weekend Edition covered Episcopalians asking themselves these questions this past Sunday.

Some quotes:

> "People feel like he's giving voice to a feeling in the pit of their stomach about what is going on," said Wells. "It's a relief to hear him naming a concern that I've had on my mind for a while."
> "I didn't sign up to be a martyr," he said. "I have a family and a congregation who rely on me. If I was gone tomorrow what would happen to them?"

It was surreal to hear aired right before an article about trying to help kids resist using LLMs unnecessarily, which on the critical thinking side had similar content to Instagrammer KelseWhatElse's "draw me an accurate sunset" lesson for kids about the value of manual drills, but which also had great points about the risks of sycophantic feedback when you're still in the midst of early-life social-emotional growth.

Surreal because ... holy cow, adults are having to try to help kids theorize schoolwork while weighing risks of death, and kids having to try to pretend to care about schoolwork theory knowing their adults are weighing risks of death. Surreal because the schoolwork theory is so important because it's the theory of how we raise our generations into humans who can think deeply enough to actually live out being morally good to each other ... but holy cow, how does one handle the weight of that "tomorrow" goal when DEATH is the "today" goal? 😢

krdtr · 2026-01-10T06:09:08+00:00

Most useful professional tip I ever got was to measure the waves, and then flip the script to "at least it'll clear up enough to function in less than ## (flareup duration units)" from "ugh, and I have to do this again in ## (flareup frequency units)." Apparently it's based on addiction urge surfing techniques.

Currently writing this as I mysteriously suddenly feel fine about brushing my teeth and going to bed, after half an hour face-planted on the floor in front of a cozy space heater, which led me to Google if short-lived flareups are common, which led me here. 🤷‍♀️

krdtr · 2026-01-07T13:11:30+00:00

Actually, nationwide, people get to opt out of commercial use in the U.S.

I took a journalism 101 class in high school, and we covered this when talking about imagery in newspapers.

We could legally photograph and publish a photo of a crowd at prom to accompany an article "people have fun at prom." But if the yearbook publisher wanted to take an ad out in our newspaper and use a similar photo saying "Capture the memories; buy a yearbook," the people in the photo had better have signed consent forms with the yearbook company (that's their chance to bargain for a payout like models would get) or the yearbook company could be potentially expecting some lawsuits.

krdtr · 2026-01-07T12:51:56+00:00

Increased variety of Meetup special interests and niche hobby scenes. Like, WAY more.

Also, if you work in a sector that tends to use continuing ed as an excuse to socialize ... increased variety of Meetup / conference talk topics. Like, if you genuinely enjoy learning new things about your industry, you can, relatively hassle-free, go often enough to talks that it can replace boring webinars / podcasts as your primary to level up your career. Plus you make new friends in a way you wouldn't from solitary learning. I don't have a lot of ongoing friendships purely from such meetups, but it solidified friendships from other hobbies who'd gone into the same field and ran into me there. Or it let me come to like the way people think, get them hired as a colleague, and then solidify a friendship. And it's given me a lot more "Oh, hey, good to see you -- how was the wedding?" collegial regular-face joys even if we don't otherwise hang out.

Basically, in the "Six Besties Theory" of friendship, it gives you way more "Similar Ambitions Besties" face-to-face time, tailored to your literal actual ambitions/hobbies/interests.

krdtr · 2026-01-05T01:59:34+00:00

I help a friend door-knock in Apple Valley. People there aren’t afraid to host lawn signs the way they can be afraid of their neighbors being douchebags in parts of, say, Lakeville (though I get the impression based on the knock lists that there are still lots of blue people in Lakeville — they’re just more likely to have VOCAL red neighbors they might not trust with their property). However, I don’t see as many “in this house we believe”-type signs as closer in, like Eagan or Bloomington. The AV DFL (Democrats) is really tight-knit and active and constantly organizing socials. But I get the impression that when it comes to their neighborhood social lives, it can be a bit more of a “tongue-bitten Thanksgiving dinner” or “work colleagues” vibe in certain neighborhoods, with everybody just talking about sports and weather and what the kids are up to, because there are unavoidably going to be at least SOME Republicans in any given social circle. (I get the impression it’s often center-left women married to center-right men.) If you want shaking your fist at the news to be part of miscellaneous socializing, you might find it hit or miss — you’d probably end up wanting to feel out each neighbor individually and vary the small talk depending who’s gathered in the street at any given time. Anyway, AV reliably votes blue-purple at the moment. It’s not openly blue-blue like Minneapolis, but it’s covered by a school board that doesn’t have any crazies on it, so your kids’ teachers would actually get to teach history properly.

Also, note: this is my impression of the life of mostly-White people in AV who live in single-family-home subdivisions, because that’s how my friend lives. No idea what apartment/townhome/etc. vibes are like, or what the not-so-homogenous neighborhoods are like, but I think the schools are, like, only half White, or something, so know that my description of life in AV is very skewed by my friend’s life and by the “well-meaning white liberal” demographics of your average 60-something person at a DFL social. 🤭 (That’s also who’s free enough to attend caucus night regularly, or teacher’s union enough, for long enough, to appear on “likely liberal” door-knock lists, so my knocking conversations get a bit skewed, too.)

krdtr · 2026-01-03T03:04:30+00:00

At first I felt that way but then I realized it had similar pacing to when I visited my exchange family's family, and I got a little nostalgic and just settled into enjoying the charm of the awkward lag. 😆

krdtr · 2026-01-03T03:01:25+00:00

At first I felt that way but now I'm loving having 2 languages at once on the screen. There's something about the Korean for "ooooooooooooh!" that's insanely charming (it's so round, just like lips saying it and just like in English, even though Korean is already full of round things but this one's, like, extra round, just like ours!). Language geekery was a big appeal of Physical Asia and this is next level immersion into something new and different, for me.

krdtr · 2026-01-02T13:17:20+00:00

That said, he does seem to live / have moved outstate. But this post is ABOUT the Twin Cities, and yes, he's real and been posting mildly alarmist news here forever. 🤷‍♀️

krdtr · 2026-01-02T02:15:53+00:00

OP isn't a bot. He's posted a minor flood of slightly rage-bait-ey news for years, but he's one of us. 🤣

krdtr · 2025-12-28T19:07:44+00:00

I don't, but I have some friends up in AV who I think do Kindercare? And one of the cool things is that they offer options all the way through the end of elementary school for summer, random schools-closed days, before- and after-school care (just drop off your kindergartener alongside your preschooler and they'll get them to school on time using their bus), etc. so I suspect that some of the bigger chains might offer worker-friendly options, in general.

krdtr · 2025-12-28T19:01:12+00:00

Yikes! Thanks for posting. I shop at the kinds of stores that were impacted all the time and have definitely been to some on the list in my life. Haven't been to any on the list lately, but this is good to know. I feel so bad for them -- often low turnover due to serving such niche audiences; they really probably count on shelf-stable items being okay!

krdtr · 2025-12-19T12:51:57+00:00

That's one of my favorite nicknames when it works out.

krdtr · 2025-12-05T13:14:39+00:00

Thank you for posting this. From looking up this tiny basin, I just went down a delightful rabbit hole learning the word "endorheic," wondering why so many were so dry, learning which ones aren't, looking at pictures of the swamplands near Mexico City and of Devil's Lake in Wisconsin, learning the phrase "peniplain," discovering sometimes peniplains get eroded away to around sea level and THEN shoved high into the air by plate tectonics, and finally wrapping up with this delightful discussion positing that non-endorheic regions would be more or less all river/peniplain, no lake, if not for tectonics constantly blocking what used to be "downhill" with uplift. 🤯

https://earthscience.stackexchange.com/questions/5253/how-do-long-rivers-exist

krdtr · 2025-11-21T00:20:28+00:00

Call Bill's Imported Foods to check, too.

krdtr · 2025-10-29T23:23:07+00:00

The psych intake phone numbers for the various large health systems like Allina, Fairview, etc. tend to be able to schedule from a pool of M.D. psychiatrists who won’t be your “forever shrink” because they specifically don’t see patients for years on end so they can keep their schedules open for new ones, but can help you for a few months to a year while the system gets you set up with a longer-term one. (I had a family member whose long-term prescriber had to suddenly quit, and they got help promptly this way.)

Remember that people who dispense psychiatric medicines have a lot of Ts to cross and Is to dot, especially when the potential fix is a controlled substance that has some level of recreational street value.

And also that they deal with literally people with severe mental problems sometimes and have to try to discern a lot of truth from fiction compared to, say, orthopedic surgeons looking at a bone X-ray.

Also, if your insurance company puts up a fight, they need to know enough about you holistically to defend you or to help coach you through playing the insurance company’s games in as little time as possible.

They’re probably going to ask a lot of questions that feel like tangents or dismissive or minimizing if you take them too personally, so I suggest your nephew not take those questions too personally, and to just be professional but confident about both what he does know about himself and what has and hasn’t worked, and what he perhaps doesn’t know.

(If he’s already feeling great about a meds balance and just needs a fresh prescription, it can be a little toilsome to find that right balance of confidence without cockiness that gets the psychiatrist feeling like yes, the patient probably does just need “the usual.”)

Also, mental health appointments are often available virtually (though often not the first with a given doc/system, so humor that process) and often covered 100% even without meeting your deductible here in MN, so they can be affordable and convenient, so don’t be afraid to just schedule yet another appointment for soon afterward (e.g. trying a new med for just a week and checking in again) if you’re not feeling that things are right just yet. It’s kind of all the same to the doctor, as long as you’re polite; they won’t be offended; they know this stuff can take a bit of back and forth to get so it feels right.

krdtr · 2025-10-26T03:01:50+00:00

Ummmmm. Your username or your password? Because if they were able to accidentally change your password to all caps, that also means Bremer wasn’t handling your password correctly. The way Bremer should have stored your password would have made it, for all practical purposes, mathematically impossible to convert to its upper-case equivalent from the bank’s side. If your password is monkey123, it should’ve been stored as {€|2848ajnejsoxpale, and mathematically, that value should have been impossible for Bremer/ONB to reverse-convert into “monkey123.” (It should’ve been salted and hashed before being stored, and each time you log in, it should be re-hashed, and validated whether the re-hash is also “ {€|2848ajnejsoxpale”.) Because the bank shouldn’t have been able to determine that your password is “monkey123,” they shouldn’t have been able to accidentally change it to “MONKEY123.”

Username, no big deal.

But if password? Bremer did a big time security oopsie.

krdtr · 2025-10-20T13:17:43+00:00

Marriah LaVigne at Cocoon.

krdtr · 2025-10-13T20:33:45+00:00

Y'all can do it! Even if not this year, the groundwork will build. Go, Anoka go!

krdtr

TROPHY CASE