PDD Geoguessr #30: Minnesota and the Presidential Election

Matthew James Nov 17, 2024 No Comments

Minnesota 2024 presidential election results by county.

Minnesota’s electoral college votes have gone to the Democrats since 1976, longer than any other state. But unlike Washington D.C., which went 90% for Harris and has given its three electoral votes to the Democrats since 1964 (but is not a state), Minnesota’s politics are a bit more complicated. In its most simplistic form, the strongly left-leaning Twin Cities metro area counters the right-leaning Greater Minnesota population, with a few urban areas creating pockets of blue. But that’s the simplistic version. This post looks at the Minnesota results at the precinct level and includes three Greater Minnesota Geoguessr challenges. One visiting the precincts where Trump had the highest margins of victory, another for the precincts that went most strongly to Harris, and a third for precincts split right down the middle.

Read More


Politics

Ripped at O’Gilby’s in 2004

Slim Goodbuzz Nov 16, 2024 No Comments

[Editor’s note: For this week’s essay we’ve once again pulled out a relic from the archive of Slim Goodbuzz, who served as Duluth’s “booze connoisseur” from 1999 to 2009. Twenty years ago the Sultan of Sot paid a visit to the O’Gilby’s, 511 E. Fourth St. in Duluth’s Central Hillside, and composed this article for the November 2004 issue of the Ripsaw magazine. O’Gilby’s closed in May 2008; the location is now a parking lot.]

The great thing about being an alcoholic in a region with so many bars is that there is one to fit each of my moods. No matter what I feel like doing, there is an establishment that caters to that specific type of fun. O’Gilby’s isn’t the kind of place you go to see live music. It isn’t the kind of place where you go to try to pick someone up. It isn’t a place where you go to dance or to participate in illegal gambling. No, O’Gilby’s is the kind of place you go to when you just want to get plastered and sit around like an Ethiopian with flies on your face. And tonight I’m having the time of my life.

Read More


History ,

Complete Auto Repair & Service Review

Chester Knob Nov 16, 2024 No Comments

The auto shop known as “CARS” on Howard Gnesen Road in Rice Lake, across from a cemetery full of Zimmermans, is really great.

Read More


Recommendations ,

The Well Informed Choose Ice Refrigeration

Gina Temple-Rhodes Nov 15, 2024 3 Comments

A recent post about a curious-looking implement with the Duluth Coolerator brand name led me down a surprisingly challenging research path. When did people (in Duluth and elsewhere) stop using “ice boxes” and start using modern electric refrigerators?

Read More


History

Illustrating Hunger and Homelessness: Mary Baumgartner

David Beard Nov 15, 2024 No Comments

Art by Nelle Rhicard at reframeideas.com.

A group of University of Minnesota Duluth faculty, students, and community artists came together to explore strategies to communicate the stories of frontline workers in housing and food insecurity. For example, UMD students met Mary Baumgartner who worked at the Chum Food Shelf in Duluth.

Read More


Random

If a dog farts in Duluth …

Paul Lundgren Nov 14, 2024 No Comments

The television miniseries Category 6: Day of Destruction premiered on the CBS network on Nov. 14, 2004. Part one includes a reference to Duluth at the 21-minute mark.

Read More


Videos

Philosophy and Dungeons & Dragons

David Beard Nov 14, 2024 No Comments

Four philosophers and a philosophy student composed a panel discussing “Philosophy and Dungeons & Dragons” at Loch Cafe & Games on Nov. 13.

The juiciest talk was about the attempts to grapple with “race” in fantasy gaming. In the 1980s, in the Basic Edition of D&D, races and classes were conflated into a single descriptor. One could be an elf or a wizard or a dwarf or a fighter. “Professions” were sorted out from “races,” allowing an elf wizard to exist, but also leading to conversations about racial essentialism.

Read More


Random

Chalamet utters the word Duluth in recent interview

Jim Richardson (aka Lake Superior Aquaman) Nov 13, 2024 No Comments

Around the 43-minute mark, Timothée Chalamet talks for a couple minutes about visiting the region, specifically the Duluth-Hibbing axis. He made the trip alone while preparing to play Bob Dylan in the current biopic. The Bob Dylan house gets a mention around the 47-minute mark.


Videos ,

Mithrandir Trail Wildlife Footage: Winter 2024

PDDTV Nov 13, 2024 No Comments

A single trail camera in Voyageurs National Park captured an array of critters from January to May during the mildest winter on record at the park

Read More


Outdoors, Videos ,

What is this?

Jeremy Stone Nov 12, 2024 6 Comments


Random ,

EmbalmingEva – “Mouth Open Wide”

PDDTV Nov 11, 2024 No Comments

“Mouth Open Wide” is the latest music video from the Duluth synth act EmbalmingEva. The musicians, Galalee Wright and Jesse Hatten, directed, shot, edited and performed in the video.


Music, Videos

PDD Quiz: Alan Sparhawk Projects

Alison Moffat Nov 10, 2024 No Comments

In honor of his recent solo release White Roses, My God, this edition of the PDD Quiz looks back at Alan Sparhawk’s many musical collaborations.

A current events PDD Quiz comes your way on Nov. 24. Please submit question suggestions to Alison Moffat at [email protected] by Nov. 21.

Read More


Random ,

These Extraordinary Days

Tone Lanzillo Nov 09, 2024 No Comments

In the introduction to their book The Future We Choose: Surviving the Climate Crisis, the authors wrote, “The world is on fire, from the Amazon to California, from Australia to the Siberian Arctic. The hour is late, and the moment of consequence, so long delayed, is now upon us. Do we watch the world burn, or do we choose to do what is necessary to achieve a different future? Who we understand ourselves to be determines the choice we will make. That choice determines what will become of us. The choice is both simple and complex, but above all it is urgent.”

Christiana Figueres and Tom Rivett-Carnac talk about the various climate events that have contributed to a more fragile planet over the past fifty years. The populations of mammals, fish, reptiles and birds have declined by 60%. Half of the world’s coral reefs have disappeared. Also, the Arctic summer sea ice is rapidly shrinking.

Over the past several months, we’ve been reading about the extensive wildfires in California and Canada as well as the ever rising temperatures in Phoenix and other parts of the Southwest. And now, we’re watching wildfires in Oklahoma, historic heat records in the central region of the United States, new hottest night records in Indonesia and Thailand, and a year’s worth of rain fell in 8 hours in Valencia, Spain.

Read More


Random ,

Thoughts on Obstetric Violence and a Call for Stories, Art, Etc.

David Beard Nov 09, 2024 No Comments

Recently, I wrote on this site about Caesarean section, trying to nail down my thoughts and my questions around C-section, especially the ways that it seems statistically over-prevalent in the United States. I am trying to wrap my brain, too, around questions of consent — what does it mean to consent to C-section in a context where a doctor recommends it.

Read More


Random

Postcard from the Lighthouse at Duluth, Minn.

Paul Lundgren Nov 08, 2024 3 Comments

This 120ish-year-old postcard shows the Duluth Harbor South Breakwater Outer Light on the Canal Park side of the Duluth Shipping Canal during a storm.

Read More


History , ,