Let’s Visit the MN Prepper Expo

Welcome back to The Flyover, your daily digest of important, overlooked, and/or interesting Minnesota news stories.

Meet the Friendlier, More Casual Minnesota Preppers

Last month, the Morrison County Fairgrounds in Little Falls hosted the third-annual Minnesota Prepper Expo. Over three days folks could meet a variety of doomsday authors, shop end-times products, camp onsite, and take classes on things like medicinal plants, water purification systems, salt-curing meats, and developing the best “survival mindset.” 

Preppers don’t have the best rep—alleged assassin Vance Boelter was described as one in recent court documents. What Izzy Wagener finds while attending the expo for Minnesota Reformer? A bunch of mostly chill people skillsharing and preparing for events like power outages, pandemics, and weather disasters, all of which have happened and probably will happen again. 

Event organizers expected to attract 1,000 or so preppers but Saturday topped out at about 100 attendees. Still, Wagener notes that she met a wider variety of people than she anticipated, from naturalists to artisans to atheists. Printed schedules included warnings that hate speech and verbal attacks on “political affiliation, race, religion, culture, sexual orientation, gender or identity will NOT be tolerated”—a nice gesture from an event that apparently drew Christian gun nuts and agnostic hippie upcyclers in equal numbers.

“[I’m] not so much a survivalist as I practice the second-greatest commandment, love your neighbor as yourself,” Francis Majeski, a Trump-voting, god-fearing cordage expert and homemade shoelace maker, tells Wagener. “I get to know my neighbor across the street, even though his son ran their car into my garage.”

Reminder: Companies Only Endorse Money

And boy, are they lovin’ that "Big Beautiful Bill" Trump signed signed into law this past Fourth of July. Heck, the White House paraded out an entire page of endorsements, complete with quotes from companies that mean absolutely nothing... 

3M supports the passage of the House budget reconciliation bill and specifically applauds the permanent extension of current rates for Foreign-Derived Intangible Income (FDII). This extension is crucial for maintaining a competitive edge in global markets and fostering innovation within the U.S. By incentivizing domestic manufacturing and retaining valuable intangible assets stateside, FDII plays a vital role in driving economic growth and job creation.

Translation: Maplewood-based 3M loves paying lower taxes, often referred to by companies as “pro-growth policies,” and is super excited for deep tax cuts on the U.S.-patented items they plan to export; and, as a top government contractor, cozying up to Trump makes plenty of PR sense. What a win for the people!

They’re not the only Minnesota-based company applauding the bill, of course. Brooks Johnson at the Star Tribune has a nice roundup of the local corporations dropping endorsements like they're on a LinkedIn profile. That includes Minneapolis-based Great Clips and Eden Prairie-based Winnebago Industries.

Local Man Threatens to Sue Elon Musk

Water is wet, the sky is blue, and Grok is still horrible. And yet, Twitter’s AI chatbot has gotten even worse, no doubt thanks to tinkering by the site's "anti-woke" owner. Yesterday Grok went on a pro-Hitler tirade, spewing all kinds of bigotry and hate, including referring to itself as the "MechaHitler." But that wasn’t the only thing Grok was up to before being temporarily disabled for hate speech deprogramming. No, the AI bot was also busy giving step-by-step instructions on how to break into prolific Twitter shit-stirrer/political commentator/former Minnesota House candidate Will Stancil’s home and rape him. It even gave time windows based on his online posting activity—scary stuff.

Stancil has since retweeted a few posts that've inspired him to lawyer up. Please do!

Labubu Chaos Coming to MOA?

Maybe! The unconfirmed rumor started on a MOA Facebook post teasing Miniso, a Chinese home goods store coming soon. That led to people suggesting the mall add a Pop Mart, the Chinese company responsible for the viral/highly coveted/kinda scary Labubu dolls, to which MOA replied with a whole bunch of emojis in the comments and a coy denial of any new news via Bring Me the News. MOA also used emoji eyes toward suggestions to add Primark and responded “WE HEAR YOU!” to a UNIQLO request, so who knows. Folks looking for the blind-box dolls aren't SOL, however, as you can already find them at events at Ta-Da Daa in the mall and in vending machines at Rosedale Mall.