Twitter isn’t and never was useful as an organizing tool. Arab spring was a failure. Twitter is actually more useful to the ruling class than not because it gives a way for the masses to expend it’s restless energy without changing anything.
One of the other interesting twin cities facts is that we have a very large theater scene, one of the biggest in the nation outside NYC.
You should think about Minneapolis. The winters are gnarly, but very few climate change related problems on the horizon, reasonable cost of living, one of the most bike friendly cities in the U.S.
As someone who’s been there done that, this is the worst time to try and get into academics in the humanities. English departments are downsizing everywhere. There’s an incoming “demographic collapse” coming to higher ed by 2026 - i.e. birth rates went down between 2008-2011 by a large degree and that cohort is 25-30% smaller than previous years. A lot of small, tuition dependent colleges are going to fold. In preparation, non-essential departments are cutting people like crazy. STEM and business are money makers, English and History aren’t.
Best thing you can do with a creative writing degree is go into corporate communications/marketing. Find a gig at an agency and do creative writing on the side.
Getting into fediverse platforms has been a godsend. Talking to real people and not dealing with the high percentage of bots is incredible.
This is crux of the issue. The whole websites interface is structured around ads. If you pay to get rid of them, it’s still structured around ads from its most basic level, so much so that simply getting rid of them doesn’t fundamentally change the experience.
Reddit frequently pops up when I look for answers to tech questions.
Technology isn’t an end in itself, it is subordinate to the need to solve problems. I don’t see how we can have relevant technical progress if tech groups don’t consider “social issues” (in quotes because I’m abusing that label to include a lot of things in my head). Although maybe we’re thinking about this at different levels of scale.
The Bible as lame as it is to say. Particularly Ecclesiastes and Job. Absolutely brilliant, beautiful, full of humanity.