madi mcvan (@madisonmcvan) — Bluesky Profile

1 day ago

or, relatedly, the same experience of trying to talk to my irish grandmother on the phone as a child. just saying "yes ma'am" and "okay" and hoping for the best

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1 day ago

i have a distant cajun uncle who i quite literally cannot understand when he speaks english. it's feels like when i try to watch derry girls without captions

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1 day ago

a louisiana man!

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1 day ago

Your rising power bill is fueling some sweet, sweet profits for Minnesota utilities • Minnesota Reformer The 110 investor-owned utilities included in the report had an average profit margin of 12.8% from 2021 to 2024 and 14.6% in 2025. Xcel and Otter Tail were in the top 40 both years.

Xcel Energy’s electric subsidiaries earned about 17 cents on the dollar in 2024 and about 15 cents on the dollar in 2025.
minnesotareformer.com/2026/03/12/y...

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1 day ago

The bill creates a menu of policy options for cities to choose from that would further boost housing density and supply, like eliminating minimum parking requirements; permitting affordable, workforce and senior housing developments to be larger than generally allowed; subsidizing city fees for homes valued at less than $500,000; or allowing even more multifamily construction in commercial and residential areas.

Larger cities must adopt more of those policies than smaller cities, and can count the policies they have already adopted.

Other areas of the bill do apply across-the-board — like allowing accessory dwelling units, or ADUs, on every residential lot in the state. ADUs are secondary living spaces on a lot, often called a mother-in-law suite, carriage house or backyard cottage.

Here’s some of the what the bill would do:

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1 day ago

Housing advocates hope third time is a charm for zoning reform in Minnesota • Minnesota Reformer A bipartisan coalition of lawmakers and advocates are entering the third year of a legislative campaign to slash local red tape and open up new areas for development in the hopes of increasing the sup...

Last year’s push to remake zoning in Minnesota in order to build more housing died after fierce opposition from local governments.

Now, the same coalition is back with a narrower version of the bill, and the largest city government lobbying group has changed its tune. Will that be enough?

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1 day ago

okay so kyler starts this year, vikings get bounced in the divisional round, and then we spend four months debating whether they should let him walk and go with JJ or extend kyler. can't wait!

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2 days ago

I had gone to the local ER, expecting a run-of-the-mill gallbladder removal that would have me back at work by Monday. Instead, they shipped me down to the big regional hospital in Fargo, North Dakota, where an MRI showed a gallstone, yes, but also a 9.5-centimeter tumor wrapped tightly around the main bile duct and several major blood vessels in the liver.

The gastrointestinal specialist was in the room with my wife and me when the radiology report came back. I watched his face drop and his entire demeanor change as he read through it for the first time.

He was an affable guy roughly the same age as me. “We just don’t see this in guys our age,” he said.

I was diagnosed with cholangiocarcinoma, or cancer of the bile duct. As far as cancers go, it’s an especially brutal one: The five-year survival rate is around 10 percent, and most people diagnosed with it are dead within a year. That was going to be me.

Cholangiocarcinoma is deadly in large part because it is so rare: There are only about 8,000 new cases in the U.S. each year. Cancer treatment advances patient by patient, clinical trial by clinical trial. Each patient is a new data point. When there are few data points, the science advances very slowly.

“There are some chemo and radiation therapies that can slow it down a little bit, maybe buy you some extra time, but nothing that can kill it,” the GI doc explained. “The only way to cure it is to cut it out completely, either by surgically resecting the liver or doing a full-on transplant, but by the time most people are showing symptoms, it’s too late for either of those.”

“Is it too late for me?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” he said.

For Slate, I wrote about what it's like to get a terminal cancer diagnosis when you're 42. slate.com/life/2026/03...

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1 day ago

i'll have to check them out!

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1 day ago

seconded. the sports bar scene is awful here (IMO!!!) but beckett’s is great. they’ll even put on sound for texas football for me as long as there isn’t a conflict. tiff’s in st. paul is good too as long as you pick a time not filled with college students lol

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2 days ago

Holly 😭😭😭

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2 days ago

my dog growing up was named shiner :)

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2 days ago

i simply cannot summarize ken paxton in skeet form. read the wikipedia or just search him on the texas tribune or texas monthly websites.

my actual take on this race is that if paxton wins, it signals that trump's singlehanded control over MAGA is slipping. paxton is post-trump MAGA.

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2 days ago

folks...this texas runoff. you've got incumbent sen. john cornyn, who has trump's endorsement, vs. ken paxton, who claims to be the actual MAGA candidate and whose "legal issues" section on his wikipedia page has four subsections. and paxton might pull it off en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Pax...

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2 days ago

Immigration judges speeding up removal cases involving Somali people • Minnesota Reformer On Jan. 30, as immigration attorney Matthew Mockenhaupt was representing a client in a hearing, his email inbox flooded with calendar invites from the court. He’d never seen the court schedule so many...

Immigration attorneys say their Somali clients are having hearings rescheduled months or years earlier than planned, apparently in an attempt to speed up deportations.

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3 days ago

Judge finds ‘compelling and troubling’ evidence of racial profiling by federal agents in Minnesota • Minnesota Reformer A U.S. district court judge in Minnesota found “compelling and troubling” evidence that federal agents racially profiled Somali and Latino residents during the immigration crackdown known as Operation...

Judge finds ‘compelling and troubling’ evidence of racial profiling by federal agents in Minnesota minnesotareformer.com/2026/03/11/j...

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3 days ago

Pentagon bars press photographers over ‘unflattering’ Hegseth photos Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s staff took issue with photos taken in a rare briefing last week and decided to shut out press photographers from two subsequent news conferences.

Pentagon bars press photographers over ‘unflattering’ Hegseth photos (gift link)

"...members of Hegseth’s staff told colleagues that they did not like the way that the secretary looked. Hegseth’s aides decided to shut out photographers from the two subsequent briefings at the Pentagon."

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3 days ago

Report: 50 Minnesota school districts still using 'seclusion' rooms • Minnesota Reformer This practice is banned or extremely limited in 21 states.

For the first time, the Minnesota Disability Law Center set out to document seclusion rooms, photographing more than 80. The 50 school districts maintain 194 registered seclusion rooms across 100 school buildings across Minnesota, according to the records. minnesotareformer.com/2026/03/11/r...

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3 days ago

HUH?

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4 days ago

The New York Times ties components in the U.S. Tomahawk missile that killed children at the elementary school in Iran to Ball Aerospace Technologies in Boulder.

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1 week ago

Q&A: Author Khaled Hosseini on his book being banned in a MN high school • Minnesota Reformer Gov. Tim Walz and his DFL colleagues in the state Legislature have touted a law passed in 2024 that “banned book bans.” But school districts in Minnesota are still limiting students’ access to books....

going through my stories from 2025 for awards submissions and i think this interview with khaled hosseini may have been the highlight of my year

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1 week ago

I've been thinking about the Rangers' decision to display One Riot, One Ranger, and what it says about who this team is for. So I wrote about that. It's a big ol' bummer.

www.dmagazine.com/sports/2026/...

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1 week ago