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After Personally Getting Thing, Rep. Pete Stauber Begins Caring About Thing
As a company policy, we reject schadenfreude in the face of human misery. It's a bad look. They go low, we go high, etc., etc., whatever.
With that established, we will note that it is not funny that U.S. Rep. Pete Stauber (R-MN) recently opened up about his yearslong battle with long Covid. In a letter penned last month to National Institutes of Health Director Jay Bhattacharya, Stauber urged the NIH to keep funding research and trials into long Covid treatments. “I stand ready to work with you to address Long Covid and help the millions of Americans who have suffered from this devastating disease,” he wrote.
It's not funny, even when you consider he wouldn't tell the Duluth News Tribune last week whether or not he got vaccinated during the pandemic.
It's not funny, even when you dig up that 2020 story about Stauber flying on Air Force One with Trump one day before the president tested positive for Covid, and then flying Delta from D.C. to MSP after his known exposure.
It's not funny, even when you read that 2020 Strib clip about his family’s hockey store collecting almost $200,000 in federal loans, including a fully forgiven $47,750 PPP one.
It's not funny, even when you remember that Stauber attended a maskless 2020 party the very same day Minnesota's mask mandate when into effect.
It's not funny, even when you recall that he voted against 2021 Covid relief legislation that he described as “far-left giveaways.”
Not. Funny.
Report: AI Is Coming for Your Job
Bad news for Racket readers who found our recent anti-AI screed resonant: Minnesota workers have the Midwest’s highest exposure to generative AI.
That’s according to a February report from newish progressive think tank North Star Policy Action, which was recently featured by the Minnesota Daily. Generative AI exposure is not, like, your exposure to AI on a day-to-day basis. Think of it more like… exposure to the elements? Your AI exposure is high when half or more of your work tasks could be partially or wholly accomplished by gen AI, meaning that the tech could theoretically, you know, do your job. It would almost certainly do your job less accurately and worse, but nevertheless.
North Star’s report found that 17% of MN’s workforce—roughly 500,000 workers—have a high risk of having their jobs “altered or replaced by AI,” according to the Daily’s Maja Holmen.
Does anyone know if that’s good?
While we’re at it, here’s some more fun job-loss news from North Star Policy Action: Operation Metro Surge was predictably horrible for Minnesota’s economy. “For the first time since 2007, Minnesota’s unemployment rate now exceeds the national rate—4.4 percent compared to 4.3 percent nationally,” Jake Schwitzer writes. Workers are also logging fewer hours than they have in nearly 20 years, with the average private-sector Minnesota worker putting in 32.1 hours per week in January, the lowest that figure has been since at least 2007.
The leisure and hospitality sector—restaurants, hotels, arts—were hardest hit (as you might expect) and the Twin Cities metro lost the most jobs (as you almost certainly expect). And it gets worse: “People who stayed home out of fear and retained their job are not showing up in most of these measures,” Schwitzer writes, meaning that the full picture “is likely to look considerably worse.”
Hermantown Data Center Will REDACTED, According to REDACTED Doc
One of the biggest unanswered questions from our recent deep-dive story into the proposed Google data center just outside of Duluth? How much power the $650 million hyperscale server farm would demand.
Answers did not emerge late last month, when Google’s utility partner, Minnesota Power, filed its data center Electric Services Agreement (ESA) to the state’s Public Utilities Commission. Here’s the page specific to that energy consumption Q…
Very helpful!
“I still don't feel like we know how much energy this proposal would demand, which feels notable,” says JT Haines with the Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy (MCEA). He says MCEA is still reviewing the heavily redacted ESA.
The Duluth Monitor flagged another redacted bit, this one pertaining to "customer benefits" that Arrowhead power consumers will or won't enjoy. It's unknowable for those of us outside Google and Minnesota Power boardrooms.
Car Smashes Into Stanley's, Stanley's Unfazed
Poor Stanley's! Roughly a year ago, the northeast Minneapolis bar was facing the possibility of shutting down for good so MnDOT could make safety improvements to its intersection at University and Lowry Avenues NE.
The longstanding neighborhood bar was eventually spared from the wrecking ball, but... well, speaking of those safety improvements? On Monday morning, the bar posted photos to Facebook of a car that had crashed into the building. In characteristically relaxed Stanley's form, they captioned the images, "Well… that’s one way to get a table." Undeterred, Stanley's opened at 3 p.m.
