Edward Jensen

Berlioz's Symphonie fantastique is an incredible (or should I say fantastique?) piece of music, but it's just so programmaticly weird. (Spoiler alert: Unrequited love leads to an opium bender, meandering toward the scaffold at the protagonist's own hanging. Yeah...weird.)

#ejnotes

Officially a trace of snow reported at MSP Airport. And with that, winter 2025-26 begins.

#AndSnowItBegins

In this crossover episode, Roy Wood Jr should host (obvs, since the UK version doesn't have a permanent host), with Amber on Ian's team and Michael on Paul's team.

#hignfy #hignfyus

Having watched the original BBC version of Have I Got News For You for many years, I had doubts that a US version would stick.

Have I Got News For You US is quite good. I think Amber Ruffin and Michael Ian Black should go on HIGNFY opposite Ian Hislop and Paul Merton once. That would be excellent.

Has anyone else noticed when using the Claude Haiku 4.5 model in GitHub Copilot (or even Claude Code), that it just loves to create summary documents and plans, but not so much do the work?

Can punk rock save downtown St. Cloud? Nonprofits try to restart the city’s beating heart with an all-ages music venue, a proposed community arts space and other ways to draw visitors.

I hope new leadership in Saint Paul considers this: If you're just laser focused on adding housing to downtown Saint Paul, and forgetting everything else, you're not building a downtown. You're building a subdivision.

www.startribune.com/st-cloud-dow...

And in that pause between pitch and contact - longer than logic, shorter than hope - we remembered why baseball existed long before we judged a sport's value by viral moments and betting apps. It is the romance of failure. The mortal beauty of trying and missing seven times out of 10 and still being considered great. It is the only sport where patience is a weapon, and panic the surest death. You cannot simply run out the clock in baseball; you must face it, pitch by terrifying pitch, until it finally releases you.

Did not expect one of the best paragraphs I’d read about baseball would come from an Irish newspaper

www.irishexaminer.com/sport-column...

The good news: Pitchers and catchers report for 2026 spring training in like what, 4 1/2 months?

Not going to lie, I was pulling for the Blue Jays to win this one (because as a Phoenician, I will always say #BeatLA), but congrats to the Dodgers for the win and consecutive WS titles. Commiserations to the Blue Jays, losing a Game 7 like that must be sheer heartbreak (and exhaustion!).

I'll always be partial to Game 7 of the 2001 World Series being the best (because floater, center field, the D-Backs are World Champions), but dang, last night's Game 7 had it all - and a kid from Saint Paul pitching his heart out for the Blue Jays this postseason (Louis Varland).

Last Call for Old Posts After migrating sites, it’s time to send old posts off into the sunset.

As times change, it's time to retire some of the older content on my blog. It's a last call for old posts

www.edwardjensen.net/posts/2025/2...

In today's @startribune.com, the two leading candidates make their closing arguments:

Melvin Carter - www.startribune.com/st-paul-elec...

Kaohly Her - www.startribune.com/st-paul-elec...

Election Day is in one week. #VoteSaintPaul

The central question for the 2025 St Paul mayoral election is this: Despite the trajectory of the city, does the electorate want to stay with the current leadership to move us forward, or is it time for a change (with all its inherent unknowns)? There are compelling arguments both ways.

It would be interesting to see these here. I have ridden one in Phoenix and they can be quite nice. (In full disclosure, I was originally a naysayer of this tech.)

Today in "and other duties as assigned": Cutting a hole in a steel cabinet www.edwardjensen.net/notes/2025-1...

Site meta: More New Features Some new ideas and new features emerge on the site, just in time for the fall

Oh yeah, I have this blog thing. Some new ideas and features for the site

www.edwardjensen.net/posts/2025/2...

What dreadful software engineering if you put your platform in a single point of failure, and again if you require your stuff to be in constant communication with said platform to work.

Photograph of a pale green door with the number 704 above it and an NFPA 704 hazard diamond sign reading \"DISTILLERY\" with ratings of 2 for health (blue), 4 for flammability (red), and 0 for reactivity (yellow), next to orange brick wall with electronic keypad lock visible.

It is appropriate that there’s an NFPA 704 safety square on a door with an address of 704 E Minnehaha Ave

#StPaul #InsideSafetyJokes

The defining feature of downtowns is that they are major entrepreneurial and cultural centers. If you remove those, then you just have something generic like "Downtown Meadows" or "Riverside Preserve". If you have that, downtowns lose the competitive advantages they have - what's the point then?

Saying "we can convert vacant office buildings to residences" just removes necessary commercial infrastructure. The block where I live is going 100% residential. These are major missed opportunities, and St Paul will be feeling them for generations to come.

So you want to bring 20K more residents to downtown Saint Paul? Great! But unless you focus on the commercial infrastructure as well, you're just building another suburb, where we have to commute out to work, shop, play.

Try again.

#stpaul

It reminds me of my downtown Phoenix advocacy days, when the Very Serious People there thought that downtown would be made immensely better if we added a bike lane here and there, not focusing on actual urban issues, economic development, and the like.

#StPaul #StPaulElections

Joe Soucheray: If you list St. Paul’s 100 most pressing needs, bikes come in at 101 Five candidates for St. Paul mayor were asked where they stood on the proposed bicycle trail along Summit Ave. Three had the right response, Soucheray writes.

I rarely agree with the Pioneer Press columnist Joe Soucheray, but he is kind of right: of all the issues facing St Paul, seeing the Summit Avenue bike trail built (which I do think is a good idea) is pretty far down on that list. www.twincities.com/2025/10/11/j...

Look: I know from my wealth of urban advocacy in Phoenix that the answers to a city's woes won't come from City Hall. But City Hall can bring collaboration among different sectors to build on a city. That's where we need to go.

#StPaul #EddieOnStPaul

As some big names sit out St. Paul mayor’s race, others ponder city’s challenges Key voices such as the St. Paul DFL and St. Paul Chamber of Commerce are not endorsing anyone

I think this is the sentiment among many in Saint Paul - given the headwinds the city is facing (not to mention the macroeconomic headwinds the State of Minnesota has - more on that later), there really is no leadership in the city. From @frederickmelo.bsky.social: www.twincities.com/2025/10/05/a...

When he was with the St Paul Saints, his surname was very apropos. Unfortunately.

News article screenshot showing people queuing outside a Social Security Administration building at 5907 W Kings, with headline "A whistle-blower says DOGE put critical Social Security data at risk." by Nicholas Nehamas reporting from Washington, published 2 hours ago. The article states "Members of the Department of Government Efficiency uploaded a copy of crucial Social Security data to a vulnerable cloud server, the agency's chief data officer said in a whistle-blower complaint." Photo credit: Adriana Zehbrauskas for The New York Times.

The actual news item notwithstanding, it's always interesting how this one Social Security office in northern Glendale, Arizona, is the default editorial image for the Social Security Administration in the @nytimes.com.

Ramstad: The get-growing drumbeat just got louder in the Twin Cities The latest MSP Regional Indicators Dashboard shows the metro area and state behind its competitors in economic and job growth. It’s time to make Minnesota vibrant again.

New ideas and new perspectives bring new flavor and new life to cities, and that's to be celebrated, not feared. "The way we've done it" is not a sustainable or successful approach going forward. www.startribune.com/ramstad-the-...

As a rare individual who moved to Minnesota from somewhere else, not the other way around, it's been challenging for me to become involved with communities here. This story in today's @startribune.com seems to prove that point.

YouTube video by Bachstiftung J.S. Bach - Cantata BWV 248 "Weihnachtsoratorium" (J.S. Bach Foundation)

Back in Phoenix, in the midst of the long summer, I'd listen to the JS Bach Christmas Oratorio. This summer in Saint Paul, with endless heat and acutely smoky skies, an encore is warranted. This is a nice recording:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4An...

#EJnotes #ChristmasInJuly