David H. Montgomery reports about Minnesota politics and government for the St. Paul Pioneer Press. The opinions expressed here are solely those of David Montgomery and do not reflect those of the Pioneer Press.
People I know often complain about how Google searches seem less helpful than they used to be. Instead of just results for your search, there’s AI chatbots and lots of little modules inserting summaries, infoboxes, news articles, other searches, and more. “I miss when Google was straightforward,” one friend told me today. Well here’s a little secret: Google still can be straightforward. You just…
My 2023 was an eventful year, to say the least! In March, my partner and I bought a new house. In August, we got married. In September, I started a new job. October saw a major overseas trip to Scotland and England. This post is not intended as a full summary of these major personal events. Instead, I hope to catalog some of my more public-facing achievements of the year, as well as a few…
Rappers don’t write their own songs any more. That doesn’t mean they didn’t compose their songs. Just that there’s no writing involved. Instead, many rappers use a method called “punching in,” where they go into the studio and mumble improvisational gibberish over a beat — again and again, refining each line until they nail a take, then move on to the next one. The end result is a rap song, from…
A perennial source of discussion in certain corners of the internet concerns what parts of the U.S. are part of the Midwest. As a permanent resident of those online corners, and a current or past resident of Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska, South Dakota and Minnesota, I can tell you all the major fault-lines — whether Pittsburgh or Buffalo or Louisville are Midwestern, whether the core of the “Midwest”…
This page will — over time — collect short recommendations of great pieces of content that I particularly enjoy or appreciate. This is a work in progress. Additional entries and categories will be added in the future. Great essays Great video essays Great short stories and comics Great essays “ How Stewart Made Tucker ” by Jon Askonas (2022-10-05). Quote: “Stewart and Colbert were right. In the…
I get regularly asked for advice by people who are looking to get jobs in journalism, either college students or people looking to switch careers. There’s no one perfect way to accomplish this, but — assuming you have at least the basic skillset for the type of journalism you want to do — here is the advice I give. 1. Have a personal website This website must have: A) An “About” page with a…
The Electoral College has been controversial long before Donald Trump won the 2016 presidency with a minority of the popular vote, and even longer before he fulminated against his 2020 Electoral College loss. In a historical irony, though, the most vocal 19th Century opponent of the Electoral College was another brash, outsider populist, one who President Trump has spoken of as an inspiration :…
This post is adapted from a thread I wrote on Twitter . To truly understand American politics in the age of Trump, you need to understand liberalism — but not as most Americans use the term. In the U.S., “liberal” is used as a synonym for “progressive” or “left-leaning,” but we’re idiosyncratic that way. Most of the rest of the world uses “liberal” to refer to ideas coming out of “classical…
It started as a joke: an online petition asking President Donald Trump to merge the rural, sparsely populated states of North and South Dakota into a single state , dubbed “Megakota.” “i think itd be pretty cool to have a state called MegaKota so yeah,” a North Dakota user of change.org named Dillan Stewart wrote . It’s self-evidently silly — not to mention disrespectful to the state’s namesake,…
This post was originally written as a series of tweets . In the middle of the 18th Century, France had some real big problems with its national debt. But one publisher was sure he had the solution: a little bit of self-sacrifice. As recounted in Rebecca L. Spang’s delightful history, The Invention of the Restaurant: Paris and Modern Gastronomic Culture , in 1778 the Gazetin de comestible — “a sort…