Brian Gongol @briangongol.bsky.social · 01/10/2026"People respond to incentives" → one of Greg Mankiw's Ten Laws of Economics 000
Brian Gongol @briangongol.bsky.social · 22/09/2026Useful reminder that the window of "living memory" is wide and always in motion. This guy fought to end slavery and lived to see WWI. He saw the advent of electricity, telephones, powered flight, disinfected drinking water, and radio. Three Presidential assassinations and the 19th Amendment. 100
Brian Gongol @briangongol.bsky.social · 20/09/2026If you properly shuffle a deck of cards, that exact order of cards has never happened before and will never happen again. It's not even close, either: The odds of any exact order appearing are completely unfathomable¹. Some people get this concept because they know math. Others can't figure it out. 100
Brian Gongol @briangongol.bsky.social · 19/09/2026I don't think we acknowledge nearly often enough how much American cities have changed for the better over the last 40 to 50 years. The defining images of cities well through the 80s and into the 90s were crime, vice, and decay. Pop culture was chock-full of depictions of cities as cesspools. 161
Brian Gongol @briangongol.bsky.social · 16/09/2026This is the kind of chaotic, self-indulgent hacking that I remember from the early days of home computing. I weep just a little bit for today's kids, for whom "play around with QBASIC until it breaks" doesn't seem to be an attractive pastime anymore. 000
Brian Gongol @briangongol.bsky.social · 16/09/2026Tonight's lead stories 🗞 (at 00:31 CDT): ABC, NBC, LAT | LA news helicopter crash CBS | Iranian attacks damage US aircraft CNN | House votes to restrain Iran war NYT, BBC | AI risk debate WaPo | Trump tries to close Kennedy Center USAT | Trump fabricates conspiracy theory 100
Brian Gongol @briangongol.bsky.social · 16/09/2026In a saner world, every penny of this price spike would be a symptom of Ukraine closing in on a hard-earned and much-deserved peace as it strikes hard at the infrastructure of its invader. Alas, though that's a good reason, it is only *part* of the story. 010
Brian Gongol @briangongol.bsky.social · 15/09/2026I mean this question sincerely:static.klipy.comWhat The Hell Is Wrong With You People?Alt: Character "Tom Smykowski" from the movie "Office Space" asking, "What the hell is wrong with you people?" 000
Brian Gongol @briangongol.bsky.social · 15/09/2026"Market-watchers wonder: Would apocalypse-driven panic-selling trigger market's circuit-breakers?" 000
Brian Gongol @briangongol.bsky.social · 14/09/2026Yeah, this is one you can feel. I'm not getting the tornado smell (yet), but this is one where a Midwesterner can step outside and go, "Yeah...something's coming". 000
Brian Gongol @briangongol.bsky.social · 14/09/2026I find it helpful to remind myself from time to time that some of the people who are most unhinged on social media might very well be getting *paid* to generate chaos. 100
Brian Gongol @briangongol.bsky.social · 14/09/2026I sincerely struggle to understand the level of self-disrespect that it takes to submit something written by Clippy as one's own work. 010
Brian Gongol @briangongol.bsky.social · 10/09/2026Tonight's lead stories 🗞 (at 22:42 CDT): ABC, CNN, USAT, WSJ, NPR, AP | $5k election claim BBC, DW | Fire aboard ferry in Philippines Reuters, NHK | Iran, US both strike oil tankers CBS | Oil over $100/barrel NBC | POTUS at midterm convention NYT | 2030 Census proposals 100
Brian Gongol @briangongol.bsky.social · 09/09/20264.18" of rain since 6:00 pm in West Des Moines and no sign of stopping anytime soon. 😬 #iawx 000
Brian Gongol @briangongol.bsky.social · 09/09/2026Giving a talk in a pub is dream enough. Getting paid on top of that is just gratuitous! (Does my jealousy show too much?) 110
Brian Gongol @briangongol.bsky.social · 08/09/2026This might be the funniest two-word post in the history of social media. 000
Reposted by Brian GongolAndy Craig @andycraig.bsky.social · 04/09/2026In 1924, the perfectly healthy 16 year-old son of the incumbent president of the United States got a blister on his foot playing tennis and died of sepsis because there were no antibiotics. 11885160
Brian Gongol @briangongol.bsky.social · 01/09/2026I've been to a lot of baseball games, and very few have been a much fun as the PCA game on Saturday. It's just delightful to watch someone who's on fire like this guy. 000
Brian Gongol @briangongol.bsky.social · 29/08/2026One of the hidden hazards of all this trust that ordinary people are being asked to invest in AI-generated "answers" is that sometimes you need to be told that you're asking the wrong question altogether. ⤵️ issues.eveningpostandmail.com/p/the-way-yo...issues.eveningpostandmail.comThe way you make someone feelOn Maya Angelou, bullet lists, and why even the thought of writing some checklists should be a gigantic red flag 011
Brian Gongol @briangongol.bsky.social · 29/08/2026Downgrade a movie: Dr. Strangelove, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Have Modest Affections for the Bomb 000
Brian Gongol @briangongol.bsky.social · 28/08/2026A whole lot of people are failing the Bugs Bunny Test, and that's bad news for us all. ⤵️ issues.eveningpostandmail.com/p/the-honor-...issues.eveningpostandmail.comThe honor code of a cartoonOn celluloid, worthy adversaries, and the reason Bugs Bunny stood as the perfect caricature of America 000
Brian Gongol @briangongol.bsky.social · 26/08/2026At a time when other rich and famous people are feverishly chasing immortality by biohacking and putting their names on buildings, Dolly Parton has assured herself of a much more favorable place in popular memory by choosing the purely human route. issues.eveningpostandmail.com/p/a-gentlepe...issues.eveningpostandmail.comA gentleperson and a scholarOn Robert Burns, childhood literacy, and why Dolly Parton will have a much higher place in history than the biohackers 000
Brian Gongol @briangongol.bsky.social · 25/08/2026File under "Shocking, Yet Utterly Unsurprising" 000
Reposted by Brian GongolLibrary of Congress @librarycongress.bsky.social · 25/08/2026The Library is devastated to learn of the passing of Dolly Parton, a music legend and titan of children's literacy. Her Imagination Library program has earned multiple Library Literacy Awards and, in 2018, she visited us to donate its 100 millionth book to our collection and host a story time. 🦋❤️ 194335167164
Brian Gongol @briangongol.bsky.social · 25/08/2026You don't have to be a fan of country music (I'm not) to appreciate that she's a national treasure and one of the most honorable public figures we've had in modern times. Her efforts on behalf of child literacy alone should guarantee immediate and unimpeded access to the VIP entrance in Heaven. 000
Brian Gongol @briangongol.bsky.social · 25/08/2026So, when this kid gets the advice to "Call your mother" someday, does this human being think she's entitled to the contact? 000
Brian Gongol @briangongol.bsky.social · 22/08/2026Optimist: The cup is half full Pessimist: The cup is half empty Water supply engineer: You wouldn't believe how many times we've recycled that water 020
Brian Gongol @briangongol.bsky.social · 21/08/2026Too many people are getting wrapped up in exaggerated projections of catastrophe and not enough seem alert to what happens when bad things happen in smaller doses. (Yes, I'm talking about people cooking their brains on AI.) ⤵️ issues.eveningpostandmail.com/p/a-degree-o...issues.eveningpostandmail.comA degree of harm is still harmOn marketing budgets, the telegraph, and the problem with letting all-or-nothing thinking replace sober consideration of serious harms done in limited doses 000
Brian Gongol @briangongol.bsky.social · 20/08/2026I get very cartoonish ejection-seat fantasies when I think about people who try to smoke or vape on airplanes. 010
Brian Gongol @briangongol.bsky.social · 17/08/2026Democratizing the arts is exactly as important as democratizing STEM. And it starts young. 000
Brian Gongol @briangongol.bsky.social · 16/08/2026My goodness, I don't even care about birds, but this thing is art! 000
Brian Gongol @briangongol.bsky.social · 15/08/2026Tonight's lead stories 🗞 (at 03:00 CDT): ABC, CBS, CNN, NYT, AP, S&S | USS Lincoln deployment BBC, Reuters | M7.7 earthquake in Indonesia RFE-RL, DW, RFI | 5 years of Taliban control in Afghanistan NBC | Health care CEO assassination trial WaPo | POTUS campaigning in New York USAT | Amelia Earhart 110
Brian Gongol @briangongol.bsky.social · 15/08/2026If we want an honorable fighting force, high-quality recruits, and an effective defensive shield in a world of ambitious adversaries, then we have to ensure that both environment and leadership rise to the level that will form the right outcomes. ⤵️ issues.eveningpostandmail.com/p/reasonabil...issues.eveningpostandmail.comReasonability and dutyOn worker bees, job skills, and the 000
Brian Gongol @briangongol.bsky.social · 14/08/2026The pressure drops inside big atmospheric storms can be fascinating. 010
Brian Gongol @briangongol.bsky.social · 14/08/2026At some point, to cast a ballot for Count Binface is to act out of real self-respect. Life is strange like that sometimes. 131
Brian Gongol @briangongol.bsky.social · 13/08/2026We send out company Christmas postcards every year. I just got one back today for an insufficient address...postmarked in 2024. (Address obscured by me today.) On one hand, I respect that it came back eventually. On the other, how has this just been floating around in the system for 20 months? 020
Brian Gongol @briangongol.bsky.social · 12/08/2026This recollection is true, and the fights were tedious. They seem particularly so in retrospect, now that some of the very same cast of characters seem unconcerned about the return of "spheres of influence" as an organizing principle. 020
Brian Gongol @briangongol.bsky.social · 12/08/2026The Axios writer's take on this AI "use case" is painful. Sure, you can ask AI to generate a cast of characters or a plot summary -- but for most widely-read books, one already exists on Wikipedia or in another reference somewhere. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Las...en.wikipedia.orgThe Last of the Mohicans - Wikipedia 100
Brian Gongol @briangongol.bsky.social · 10/08/2026This had never occurred to me before, but what a clever way of self-adapting for someone who's on the autism spectrum. A public service I wouldn't have expected to emerge from a newspaper column. 110
Brian Gongol @briangongol.bsky.social · 05/08/2026This is emphatically true. I had a delayed flight last week because thunderstorms were going through DIA and the downburst detection was activated. You know where I was happy to be? On the ground, completely safe from downbursts! The delay was merely the visible cost of risk mitigation. 140
Brian Gongol @briangongol.bsky.social · 04/08/2026I realize that using a digital medium to document three enduring and insurmountable advantages of the printed page (and e-ink) might seem a bit ironic, but you're welcome to print this article on paper and read it there. My feelings will not be hurt. ⤵️ issues.eveningpostandmail.com/p/in-light-o...issues.eveningpostandmail.comIn light of the written wordOn e-ink, The Onion, and the almost insurmountable advantage physical print will always have in a head-to-head competition with print on a screen 000
Brian Gongol @briangongol.bsky.social · 03/08/2026Ha! I know a fake when I see it: We don't have the technology to build these yet. 010
Brian Gongol @briangongol.bsky.social · 31/07/2026static.klipy.comCaptain Caveman Out Of GasALT: Captain Caveman Out Of Gas 000
Brian Gongol @briangongol.bsky.social · 28/07/2026For millennia, no degree of power or wealth could buy the simple perfection of a store-brand cheddar cheese cube microwaved atop a Triscuit. I defy anyone to say we're not living better than kings. 020
