Brian Gongol

@briangongol.bsky.social

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Make money. Have fun. Clean up after yourself. Mind your business.

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Cubs-Cards on the TV with an ad for BuildSubmarines.com behind the plate. I feel like @kschake.bsky.social willed this into being, and I thank her. (Go Cubs.)

We're experiencing inflation, but more likely due to the shocking things done to expand the money supply in and following the pandemic of 2020 than the rate of unemployment. It's worth a lot of study. issues.eveningpostandmail.com/p/the-myster...

The mysteries of inflationissues.eveningpostandmail.com On the 2008 financial panic, job-seekers, and the inflationary causes and consequences we still don't fully understand

The NATO alliance is a tool for growing more secure, and people who don't appreciate that direction of travel are likely to make grave mistakes about what to value and which strategies to embrace. issues.eveningpostandmail.com/p/thats-what...

That's what friends are forissues.eveningpostandmail.com On group photos, Canada's defense budget, and why alliances are about the journey rather than a mirage

This is no time for doom and gloom, nor for burning it all down. It's time to listen to Teddy Roosevelt and face the future seriously. issues.eveningpostandmail.com/p/face-the-f...

Face the future seriouslyissues.eveningpostandmail.com On the invention of the phonograph, the global financial panic of 2008, and the reason anyone with historical literacy should reject the allure of today's laziest political views

I hate to see people falling for revolutionary myths when they should be learning persistence habits instead. Revolution and overnight success are both overrated. Be sure you're on the right course, then be relentless. issues.eveningpostandmail.com/p/keep-running

Keep runningissues.eveningpostandmail.com On prehistoric hunting habits, the Summer Olympics, and the problem with wanting a revolution around every corner

"A great free people owes it to itself and to all mankind not to sink into helplessness before the powers of evil." - Theodore Roosevelt, 1904 millercenter.org/the-presiden...

December 6, 1904: Fourth Annual Message | Miller Centermillercenter.org

Deterrence only works when it's backed by credibility: issues.eveningpostandmail.com/p/throw-the-...

Throw the book at 'emissues.eveningpostandmail.com On Apple Watches, security theater, and the occasional need to make an example of a bad guy in order to preserve the value of deterrence

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**is a war crime

Russian officials took 46 Ukrainian children from a foster home in Kherson City in 2022. Many of them have been put up for adoption in Russia, a New York Times investigation found. What happened to them, experts say, may amount to a war crime.

46 Children Were Taken From Ukraine. Many Are Up for Adoption in Russia.www.nytimes.com The New York Times traced how a web of officials and politicians aligned with President Vladimir V. Putin’s party carried out a campaign to permanently transfer Ukrainian children from Kherson.

On the most important thing JFK said as President: issues.eveningpostandmail.com/p/because-th...

Because these tasks are hardissues.eveningpostandmail.com On John F. Kennedy, after-school movies, and the resonance of calls to take on challenges

A warning against reading too much into the EF Scale rating of a tornado: issues.eveningpostandmail.com/p/numbers-an...

Numbers and their limitationsissues.eveningpostandmail.com On social-media loudmouths, streaming storm-chasers, and why cheerleading for high tornado intensity scores misses the point

As a resident of the littler metropolis down the highway a bit, I love this about Minneapolis as well. I also think the median American has no comprehension of just how small even most of our Big Cities really are on the global scale.

what i love about minneapolis is it has all the perks of city living while still absolutely losing its shit when a famous person comes to town

Here's where Charles Barkley has visited in Minneapolis so farm.startribune.com The TV analyst and basketball Hall of Famer told the Star Tribune he's glad to be back in town for the first time since 2019.

This one will sit with you for a while.

The most memorable: “If you don’t know which war to prepare for, prepare for WWII. If you don’t know what to buy, buy 155mm ammunition. If you don’t know how much to buy, buy more.”

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2002: kinda creepy that everything we put on the internet is there forever 2024: i wish i could read anything I wrote before 2015 3024: we call the period from 1900-2100 “the dark ages” as paper had acid in it and later they trusted their writing to something called a cloud. Very little is known.

New report from Pew finds 38% of webpages that existed in 2013 are no longer accessible a decade later. This research underscores how critical web archiving efforts are. www.pewresearch.org/data-labs/20...

When Online Content Disappearswww.pewresearch.org A quarter of all webpages that existed at one point between 2013 and 2023 are no longer accessible.

I'm sure he's a citizen, and I'm pretty sure he was born, but I'm not at all sure of the "natural" part anymore. #ArticleII

Continuity often isn't sexy. But institutions are important. issues.eveningpostandmail.com/p/the-virtue...

The virtue of continuityissues.eveningpostandmail.com On the Tonight Show, Warren Buffett, and the smooth transition for the monumental Iowa Hawkeye women's basketball team

The generationally-appropriate exclamation for people of our vintage is "Whoomp! There it is!" I do not make the rules.

Just typed up a pretty good sentence and then said, out loud, "Boom." I am 51 years old.

Contract term inflation has gotten really far out of control -- if the offer contains one page of terms and conditions and the PO comes back with 12, then the customer is trying to get a whole lot of something for nothing.

Yeah, attempting to convey that imposing those vendor requirements on really small outfits like my own for a pretty small contract just isn’t reasonable but bureaucracies gonna bureaucracy

Write something. Because you're in an extraordinarily privileged position to be able to do so, in the grand scheme of things. issues.eveningpostandmail.com/p/the-pen-ha...

The pen has only been mightier for a short whileissues.eveningpostandmail.com On literacy rates, streams of consciousness, and the virtue of writing down what you think

On the skies over Florida, the Serenity Prayer, and what the extraordinary auroral display ought to teach us: issues.eveningpostandmail.com/p/a-grand-sh...

A grand show of lightsissues.eveningpostandmail.com On the skies over Florida, the Serenity Prayer, and what the extraordinary auroral display ought to teach us

Vital food for thought from Atul Gawande in his book, "Better":

On the porcupine strategy, personality cults, and the clear-eyed warnings of the French president: issues.eveningpostandmail.com/p/its-about-...

It's about convictionsissues.eveningpostandmail.com On the porcupine strategy, personality cults, and the clear-eyed warnings of the French president

The proper use of history is to see how the mistakes you're about to make turned out last time. And then, from time to time, to steer clear of them. (Even for recipe cards.)

In retrospect our grandparents perfected this technology and moving on from it was a mistake.

"[M]oderation is one of the good actions, and the state of the soul that produces moderation is a moral virtue." - Maimonides

"A republic such as ours can exist only by virtue of the orderly liberty which comes through the equal domination of the law over all men alike, and through its administration in such resolute and fearless fashion as shall teach all that no man is above it and no man below it." ¹

We are literally just 100 years removed from the son of a President dying because of a blister he developed playing on the White House tennis court.

Like, huge numbers of cases of people growing up steeped in loss from such a young age. And we've mostly fixed it! Maternal and infant mortality are now very low; almost nobody dies of trivial infections or diseases before age 20. Insane. Just ... beyond insane that anyone wants to retvrn to before

"Since this is necessary for human existence, I mean, that man performs good and bad actions by his choice when he wishes, it necessarily follows that he can be instructed in the good ways and be commanded, forbidden, punished, and rewarded. All of this is just." - Maimonides

He's not wrong.

I mean BLUEY is the best prestige TV since THE WIRE

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Brian Gongol

"it was not immediately clear what was causing the outages"

so this 911 outage thing is pretty wild

911 outage reported across multiple US states, officials saywww.reuters.com Several states in the U.S. are experiencing a 911 outage on Wednesday, including South Dakota, Nevada and parts of Nebraska, according to officials.

Every worthwhile movement will attract adherents who want to take it too far. Wisdom lies in recognizing them and rejecting their overreach, without losing sight of what makes the movement worthwhile.

One of the most exquisite explorations of the human condition today is a cartoon show about a family of Australian dogs.