Jamie Thingelstad

Looking at a Winter Snowstorm warning with 3-5 inches of snow we decided to end our MEA weekend early. We detoured back to Cross Lake and are going to dry camp in the parking lot and head home tomorrow. Also, the Weekly Thing will be delayed a day! ❄️

My Theory of RVs:

All RVs represent a giant set of compromises to make the space work.
The key an RV you love is finding one where you agree with the compromises. 🤔

There is an official station to take a selfie with Split Rock Lighthouse, so we had to stop and take one! Look close on right side of photo for lighthouse. #MNStateParkLife

Gooseberry Falls was great today. Great sights. Lots of fun hopping around rocks. Even with cold weather still a lot of fun.

Mandatory stop at Betty’s Pies outside of Two Harbors. We got Blueberry, Strawberry Rhubarb, Toffee, and Butterfinger slices to have after dinner. Good pie, but they are struggling with their process. Took over 30 mins to get our order.

Always stop at Great! Lakes Candy Kitchen on the North Shore. Business still thriving and adapted to pandemic. Delicious chocolate. Yum.

Lunch at New Scenic Cafe is a must do for us when we visit the North Shore. They have an outside operation during the pandemic and many spots with fires going to keep you warm.

Dinner in Grand Marais at Voyageur Brewing Company. Drinking limited release Devil’s Kettle Dry Hopped with Galaxy Hops, in the room it was brewed. 🍺

We went to Ursa Minor Brewing to get pizza and a drink. I had the delicious Blackberry Shenanigans sour. The pizza was very good too! Happy to have fires to keep warm while we waited outside. 🍕🍻🍬

Rain made our stop at Jay Cooke State Park’s Swinging Bridge far too short. The light was really cool, and the scenery was awesome. We are going to come back tomorrow!

Rainy drive from Cross Lake to Duluth. 🌧

Picked up the Winnebago View for our 5-day road trip. Initial impression of the View is positive. It feels very spacious when the extension is out. The couch/Murphy bed is nice. Drives very well. Looks good too.

A Day In The Life photo challenge submission from Garrison, MN (46.293720,-93.823915) at 12:09 PM CT. 48 °F. Giant fish sculpture along Mille Lacs Lake. #adayinthelife

Tomorrow we are renting this fabulous 2018 Winnebago View and going on a short loop around Northern Minnesota. Duluth, Grand Marais, Grand Rapids, and Park Rapids. It’s going to be a chilly MEA trip! 🥶

The daily chart from The Economist showing the price ranges of the iPhone since launch puts some perspective on the price of the newest iPhones, as we wait for todays announcement of the next new iPhone.

From recent actions I think that we must conclude that Facebook and Twitter have now explicitly acknowledged that their platforms are being used in ways they do not understand, are not able to manage, and without a doubt have an impact in elections. To most people this has been obvious for years, but they have hid behind many excuses to try and avoid any accountability. These two headlines are two days apart.

Oct 7: Facebook Widens Ban on Political Ads as Alarm Rises Over Election
Oct 9: Twitter Will Turn Off Some Features to Fight Election Misinformation

Both of these companies are finally admitting that they are not able to fix the problem here. They have built platforms that others have weaponized, and they are unable to fix it. I think it is important to highlight here that I think Kara Swisher has it right when she emphasizes that people are not abusing these platforms, they are using them exactly as they were intended to be used. Nobody has been hacked. These systems were built to surveil their users, catalog their interests, and then alter your intentions in the direction of an advertiser. The part nobody seems to have considered is that while some people want to sell you toothpaste, others may want to sell you a destabilized government or some deep state conspiracy theory.

The real question here is can they be fixed? If the flaw isn’t an abuse, but is instead an intended use, what is there to fix?

I am happy to see that we’ve finally left the realm of these for profit companies cloaking themselves in First Amendment rights and disavowing that they have any impact in something like an election. (Funny isn’t it that they certainly would be clear that they can get you to buy a different toothpaste though. Those T-Rex arms in full effect.)

I’m in the camp that for Facebook I don’t think there is a fix. I think there is a fatal component in their design and at the scale they are today it cannot be undone. Twitter on the hand I do think could be fixed. Make all accounts cost $5 or $10 a month. At that price bots go away. Get rid of the active users metric that makes them magically inept at finding bot accounts. Get rid of retweets without an additional comment. And clean up the dark corners filled with hate, racism and sexist garbage. Mostly Twitter is small enough that it could still be fixed, and the core user base is addicted enough that they would pay and if 90% of of the garbage accounts went away none of the core users would know anyway.

This weekend I wired up two additional platforms that I’m syndicating to. I’m now sharing to Mastadon and am @jamiethingelstad@mastodon.social. This is built into micro.blog so I decided to turn it on for those that may prefer it.

I also configured Zapier to share the Weekly Thing to Medium. If you prefer Medium you can find jthingelstad there and this is a full share, with all the content. Right now I’m only sharing the Weekly Thing to Medium.

The best way to get all of of my stuff directly is still via RSS or Email.