How Small Town Papers Have Kept Community Trust

You’ve no doubt heard the term ‘fake news’, and if you’re like most Americans, you probably don’t trust much of what you hear on TV. It’s a cultural problem that needs a solution, because if what don’t trust the information we hear, it becomes difficult to make decisions; information is the grease that keeps our

Read & Share   sourced from: NPR

Self-Driving Cars Mean Cops Won’t Have Excuses to Pull People Over

Self-driving cars are coming; there’s nothing to be done about it. Automation, in general, is going to radically remake the way we live our lives and our society, and if we look at self-driving cars as one of the early dominoes, the challenge then becomes what are the second, third, and fourth cultural dominoes that

Read & Share   sourced from: Motherboard

Finland has a migration crisis, too: Smart, young professionals are moving out

“They leave Finland because of poor employment opportunities and future prospects. This has been happening for a long time… The difference with today’s migrants is they are better educated and leaving a welfare state that ranks as one of the best places to live in the world according to most indices.” Sound familiar? Finland is

Read & Share   sourced from: Quartz

The life-changing magic of getting a person to change their mind—even yourself

With those we care about, we try and try and try. Sometimes we need to do it ourselves, but we resist. Yes, I’m talking about change, particularly of our minds. And as our knowledge of how our brains work starts to align with observed behavior, we’re starting to get confirmation that changing minds is possible.

Read & Share   sourced from: Aeon

Hi, my name is America, and I have a problem

It is common knowledge that the USA is the greatest country on earth. It is very hard for me to dispute that as a fact because to do so would be less than graceful. The USA has been very good to me. It has provided me with a wonderful public education system which was subsidized

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Minn. cities rethink carnivals, security at local summer festivals

In Minnesota, the fair business is on the move. Where it’s going is yet to be determined, but cultural shifts are forcing the industry to evolve and adapt. And for those that don’t, lower attendance and local irrelevance are the end result. It is perhaps a canary-in-the-coal-mine story for Minot as the North Dakota State Fair is

Read & Share   sourced from: Star Tribune

A storybook finish for an original St. Paul Saint

Here’s your feel-good story of the week; 45-year old Kevin Millar started his professional baseball career with the St. Paul Saints in their inaugural season 25-years ago. Yesterday, he put the uniform on again to help them celebrate and even took an at bat. What happened next is a classic baseball story. Watch below.

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A new player in the meat market… plants

North Dakota is beef country; we run cattle and order steak. But outside of North Dakota in food labs and corporate boardrooms, there’s been a long fought effort to produce beef that doesn’t come from cows. They’re getting closer. Read the article on Quartz about a new plant-based meat substitute that earned a heady praise

Read & Share   sourced from: Quartz

The most forward-thinking, future-proof college in America teaches every student the exact same stuff

There are few debates raging more loudly in North Dakota and nationally than the one over higher education, its value, and its future. But one college has maintained it’s role and is now emerging as a leader in producing capable students, and they’ve done so by through strict adhearance to an old-fashioned idea, the classical,

Read & Share   sourced from: Quartz

Google is positioning its new job-search product as an effort to save America

Disruption in the job market, as well as a general shortage of workers, has led Google to step into problem solving mode for America. Google strength is information gathering and aggregating, and they’re hoping to leverage those abilities into creating an aggregate job board that better connects workers and companies. Quartz has the story.

Read & Share   sourced from: Quartz

Opioid epidemic is swamping U.S. hospitals with 1.3M ER trips, hospitalizations

The opioid drug crisis is one of those issues that might not hit home unless you have a personal experience with a family member or friend, but the trickle-down impacts of the problem are effecting all of us in less obvious ways. And one area where the crisis is putting pressure on our systems is

Read & Share   sourced from: The Washington Post

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What is Progress?

The latest episode of The Good Talk Minot (@thegoodtalk), Jonah Lantto (@jonah_j_lantto) and I dive into the summer line-ups for Arts in the Parks and MSU Summer Theater’s 52nd season. And to close out, the conversation shifts to what is progress? It’s a wily question and not nearly as easy to answer as you might

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New digital citizenship curriculum is an idea worth copying

Here in North Dakota, we occasionally dismiss outside ideas — particularly those from more liberal-leaning parts of the country — because those places don’t identify as closely with our values. Sometimes that’s good; sometimes that’s bad. The story below comes from the Washington state, and it’s absolutely an outside idea that we should be appropriating. Technology

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Is the way we think about charity dead wrong? Watch and consider

We’ve all seen the graphic about various nonprofit organizations that tells us what percentage of donated dollars go towards the ’cause’ and how much goes toward ‘administration’. If you haven’t seen the chart, it’s likely you’ve had the conversation with someone. And if you’re like me — you were probably captured by that quick hit statistic.

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How Technology is Training You to Look at Your Phone

There’s no doubt that the super computers we carry in our pockets are changing the world, but what’s less obvious is the way they’re changing our brains. And when you get right down to it, tech companies are nudging us towards creating habits — err. addictions — that are usually good for them, but maybe

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Self-Driving Cabs on the Way, London trials driverless shuttle service

The driverless future will force us to rethink a lot of the ways we operate in and around our community, and Minot will not be immune to the changes. As evidence, London is already trialing a driverless shuttle program. If it’s there now — we’re probably five years behind here. Get the story from the

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