Erik Ostrom

“It’s called Law Enforcement, not Law Being-Accountable-To!”

Imagine if police officers obeyed the law.

Anyway, I love this movie.

The most 2003 thing about it, though, is the “hacker” character who insists on being called The Napster because Shawn Fanning stole his idea in college.

Wahlberg AND Theron, and Mos Def, Jason Statham, Seth Green, and Edward Norton. Most of them still around! But 2003 is the only year you could get all six of them in the same movie.

quoteinvestigator.com/2018/01/05/c...

Charlie Croker pulled off the crime of a lifetime. The one thing that he didn't plan on was being double-crossed. Now he wants more than the job's payoff..he wants payback. Along with a drop-dead gorgeous safecracker Croker and his team take off to re-steal the loot and end up in a pulse-pounding, pedal-to-the-metal chase that careens up, down, above and below the streets of Los Angeles.

This is how Paramount describes the plot. But it’s the safecracker’s story! The double-crosser killed her father! Mark Wahlberg is also in it.

I’d forgotten what an exquisitely 2003 cast The Italian Job (2003) has.

A woman walking in the country while looking at her phone. Behind her is a heard of tarantulas. She has no idea. The text reads: Are you unwittingly leading a heard of goats? Put your phone away! Distracted walking sends people to the ER every year. Who knows what kind of power a human being leading tarantulas can amass. We don't even want to think about it.

[on the phone again]

Ma'am, tried the tarantulas, but I think we made it worse.

And they keep talking about how much money buses and trains of #PublicTransit keep losing money??? Seriously people.

MN has over a billion dollar shortfall annually, just on maintaining the state road infrastructure we currently have. And every year it gets expanded. It's already the 4th largest of any state in the country.

It's time for a moratorium on highway expansion.

www.bloomberg.com/news/feature...

Why do people keep thinking they have good personal relationships with the sociopath-in-chief?

Documenters.org: Making Local Government More Accountable All the info you need on public meetings in your town, in one easy-to-search place. Get TRAINED and PAID to hold your local government accountable. Powered by City Bureau.

This is neat: there's a website that archives public meeting summaries and *pays* people to go to the meetings to take notes and upload them. (I think you have to do a training first. They pay $20/hour.)

minneapolis.documenters.org

The two leading causes of death for children in the U.S. are cars and guns, by far.

It should probably be a bigger story that Republicans are actively pushing policies that make both of these problems worse.

I’ve only ever used Lyft, due to Kalanick and information that came out around that time, but I wish I knew whether it was actually any better.

(I did take an Uber once, in Stockholm, when desperate.)

Using AI is “I have an idea,” then other people have already written stories like that, which can be cut-and-pasted together into something that also resembles a story.

Anyone who thinks Americans have a love affair with cars hasn’t seen the lengths they’ll go to to shave seven seconds off their commute.

the brain that can see a face in a wall outlet was always doomed to hear the voice of God in a markov chain

Not fleeing: New report shows more wealthy residents in Mass., 2 years into 'millionaire's tax' Despite previous concerns, Massachusetts' "millionaire's tax" hasn't seemed to deter high-earners from continuing to live here, according to a new study from the Institute for Policy Studies.

MA put in a 4% millionaires tax 2 years ago, & the GOP said we'd miss revenue targets & millionaires would flee. MA collected TWICE the projected revenues, & the number of millionaires went UP 40%.
www.wbur.org/news/2025/04...

Matthew Everett also recommends it! Only one show left: Wednesday 8:30 at the Barbara Barker Center for Dance. (Wells does not dance.)

Anyway, "I Have Griefances" is good, and has almost nothing to do with politics, unless you want it to. It manages the surprising feat of weaving a series of petty grudges and irritations into a loving portrait. I recommend it. Spoiler warning, though: cancer.

What a stupid, stupid time this is.

And how our worst president and the despicable nephew of one of our best are dismantling the research funding apparatus that's enabled much of this progress, in favor of beef tallow, conspiracy theories, and eugenics.

And I thought about how, for decades (centuries?), "a cure for cancer" was common shorthand for maybe the hardest but also the best thing medical science could possibly do. About the incredible strides we've made in treatment. About people I know who've survived it. People who haven't.

Yesterday at Minnesota Fringe I watched a performer I know tell a story about seeing multiple family members get diagnosed with cancer in the course of about a year. 80% survival rate for this cancer, 99% for that one. Who survived. Who didn't.

Thanks for this report!

I love her.

He is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist.

PEOPLE PAY HIM TO SHARE THE THOUGHTS THAT PASS THROUGH HIS BRAIN.

Minneapolis now ranks 2nd worst in the world for air quality. Unhealthy smoke from massive Canadian wildfires choke our skies and spoil our precious summer months.

But we have to do our part.

Using THE HELL out of that art degree