Welcome back to The Flyover, your daily digest of important, overlooked, and/or interesting Minnesota news stories.
A, I'm Regulatin' Here!
Genie, meet bottle? Senators Erin Maye Quade (DFL-Apple Valley) and Eric Lucero (R-St. Michael) are leading a bipartisan effort to limit how the artificial intelligence industry operates in Minnesota, reports the Minnesota Reformer's Michelle Griffith.
How exactly would they do that? Well, writes Griffith...
Minnesota senators on Monday considered five measures to regulate AI, including a bill (SF 1857) stating that companies that create AI chatbots—like ChatGPT—ensure minors do not access them, and a bill (SF 1886) requiring that companies disclose when a person is communicating with AI ... One of Maye Quade and Lucero’s bills (SF 1120) would prohibit the government from requesting reverse-location data, which many law enforcement agencies use when they do not know who specifically committed a crime.
It's nice to see lawmakers attempting to do literally anything to regulate big tech companies, who for whatever reason (it's money) are generally allowed to do whatever the hell they want regardless of how bad/dangerous/misinfo-spreading/privacy-invading it is. (Groups like the Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy are fighting back against the 10 proposed AI data centers in Minnesota, for which local leaders have mostly rolled out red carpets.) And Maye Quade and Lucero aren't strangers to this stuff, either; the duo co-authored a bill regulating the use of deepfakes to influence elections that became law in 2023.
"The Lives Left Behind"
We try not to highlight A1 Strib stories in the Flyover too often; they're the state's largest newsroom, and you can easily navigate to their homepage to see what the big piece is on any given day.
But there are times we feel compelled to break our own arbitrary rule. For example, there's today's feature from Emma Nelson and Jp Lawrence, who write about the "lives left behind in Minnesota" after family members and friends are detained or deported. (Here's a gift link.)
The reporter duo spoke with people like Mercedes, whose husband, Paco, was taken as he walked to his car and who hasn't left her house much since. "In their bedroom, she keeps a table with a bottle of his cologne, his shampoo and his Bible. In the corner there’s a piggy bank, filled with money Mercedes and Paco were saving for their daughter’s quinceañera," they write.
There's also the couple from Prescott, Wisconsin, who were detained and deported to Ecuador. It took about a week for their American friends to find them; those same friends have assumed responsibility for the couple's bills, and for selling their car, and for packing up and delivering their belongings.
There are countless stories like this, of course, but Nelson and Lawrence write that few people have spoken out for fear of retribution. And the toll is both emotional and practical—not just the trauma of having a loved one taken from you, but often the loss of income, or additional legal fees. It's well worth reading about the experiences from some of the very brave people who spoke with the Strib about it on the record.
Food News Lightning Round
Phew, lotta big food and drink news over the last 24ish hours. Let's run through some of it quickly:
- Roughly three years after closing its Northeast taproom (and two after pissing off legions of faithful DM drinkers by attempting to crowdfund a taproom in Maple Lake) Dangerous Man will return to Minneapolis. DM is heading for the former home of HeadFlyer Brewing (861 E. Hennepin Ave.), which announced its closure last month.
- Chef David Fhima has quietly closed his downtown Minneapolis restaurant; Fhima's last day was March 8. Long a downtown booster, he tells the Strib that the future of Fhima's could be elsewhere: “People have a lot more choices today. They don’t have to go downtown in order to eat. I’m a city guy, but [the suburbs] have been good to us, and I think that’s Fhima’s next move.”
- Lonely's Bar, a new spot from Zhora Darling's Eric Odness and A1A Inner Peace design studio's Erik Hamline, will open in early May at 117 SE Main St. in Minneapolis—that's the former home of Pracna on Main—according to Bring Me the News. Pracna on Main opened in the 1890s, making it Minneapolis's oldest bar until it closed a decade ago. That's more good news for Main Street; I'm a fan of Cabana Club, which opened along that stretch last year in another long-empty space.
- Just last week the New York Times told us that the "allure of 'slop bowls'" is fading; nevertheless, Minnesota will soon get its first two locations of Cava, the king of yuppie slop bowl chains, according to The Development Tracker. The Mediterranean fast-casual brand is opening one location near the University of Minnesota campus inside The Station on Washington and another at The Shops at West End in Saint Louis Park.
Wayward Chicken Captures Hearts, Minds
God help us, but we love a quirky animal story, and KARE 11 has a classic of the genre from—you guessed it—Boyd Huppert.
In Truman, Minnesota, about 130 miles southwest of the Twin Cities, a wayward chicken wandered into a city public works shop about a year ago and never left. They named her Noodles, and she spends her days supervising the Public Works team, laying the occasional egg as a thank you for her lodging.
Noodles, it must be said, is a stunning bird—Huppert's "Land of 10,000 Stories" reporting doesn't get into this, but after some preliminary Googling I think she might be a Barred Plymouth Rock chicken? Anyway, we all love Noodles, and you can watch her segment in full below.
