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Won't Anyone (Always) Think of (Only) the Small Businesses?
When it comes to unsurprising news, “city’s actions anger small business owners” is the “dog bites man” of municipal reporting. Yet because they bark so loudly, those shopkeepers never have much trouble getting coverage.
Take Dee DePass’s report in the Star Tribune on a Minneapolis City Council committee meeting held Thursday. The committee voted to send a much-needed Hennepin County reconstruction plan for Lyndale Avenue to the full council.
The plan, which would include the first full reconstruction of Lyndale since 1934, follows years of community engagement. Yet the story focuses on area business owners, prominent among them 27th & Lyndale Flower Bar owner Andrea Corbin, intent on delaying an overdue project. Assertions like “two years of road construction along Hennepin Avenue … shut 67 shops and cost the area an estimated $50 million in lost revenue” are presented without scrutiny.
Streets, which have many cars driving over them, need maintenance, as anyone who’s ever gotten a flat because of a pothole can testify. And this project relies upon $9 million in federal funding that can’t be saved for a later date.
Speaking as (ahem!) an area homeowner, let's rip the damn band-aid off, work with businesses to address their needs during construction, and stop pretending this is all about bike lanes.
AI? No Thanks, I'd Rather Use the M(AI)L
Sending things via the U.S. mail? Rocks. Getting things via the U.S. mail? Possibly rocks even harder! But unlike those of us who typically use USPS for (just by way of example) belatedly mailing Father's Day gifts and Menards rebates, mail artists send prints, illustrations, zines, stickers, and collages to each other across the country and the world.
For MPR News, Gretchen Brown sat down with local mail artist and zine maker allison anne, who has connected with artists all over the world thanks to mail art. The correspondence art movement took off in earnest during the 1960s, but it's experiencing a resurgence today, Brown reports, as people look for ways to connect with one another offline. (Also, it's like, the exact opposite of generating and disseminating garbage AI images.)
“It’s the pleasure of doing the work, and the joy of connecting with others and building something, and that's been transformative for me,” anne tells MPR. “I really feel that mail art changed my life.”
Wind Energy Efforts Left in Lurch Will Cost Minnesotans Millions
In April, the federal government stopped completing routine security reviews of wind energy projects, effectively halting 250 of them. According to a recent report from St. Paul-based think tank North Star Policy Action, four of those stalled operations will directly impact Minnesota, costing the state 1,200 in construction jobs and potentially 4,400 jobs total. That's around $120 million in wages and benefits down the drain, not to mention that these programs would produce 1,119 megawatts of clean electricity to the state—enough to power 300,000 homes.
This Minnesota Reformer article explains how the Trump administration has gone about attacking wind power projects (Trump himself also has a longstanding personal beef with ‘em). “Minnesota has spent decades building one of the strongest wind energy economies in the country, and the federal government is now actively dismantling that through a permitting process turned into an indefinite roadblock,” North Star’s Aaron Rosenthal tells the Reformer's Brian Martucci.
And, as a cherry on top, Martucci notes that the rush to build energy-sucking data centers to feed AI use may compound the impacts of this wind power bottle neck. Great!
Hero Party Animal, 20, Has Hundreds of Busch Apple Beers Seized by Killjoy Cops
Before we get carried away praising this contemporary Smokey and the Bandit-esque highway folk hero, we must chastise them for the reason they got busted this week by a Minnesota State Patrol trooper: texting and driving, which is bad. But ya know what else is bad? Being a cop (could full-stop there...) who takes sicko pleasure in killing the party—this is what the Beastie Boys were fighting against!
In this case (beer pun?), the party-animal Crookston driver, 20, had 100+ Busch Light Apple beers seized by the troopers while getting cited for possessing booze as a minor; the Minnesota Department of Vehicle Safety then mocked them via the social media taunting you see below.
Crookston-area driver who's old enough to die in any of our pointless, profiteering wars? We applaud your effort to down dozens upon dozens of disgusting beers, one of the few remaining rights/pleasures we've got left in this hellhole country. Troopers? Slap their wrist for the texting thing, sure, but don't play us for fools: We know you'll all be blackout drunk this weekend on Busch Light Apple sourced from the evidence locker.
Burt Reynolds weeps.
