Saturday, July 18, 2026

Deep Thoughts July '26

Robert Frost’s The Road Not Taken.  It’s not about non-conformity. It’s about how we can’t really know where our choices are going to lead us. Not only that, but we’re probably going to regret those choices either way. There is always going to be a road not taken. We only get to live once. Nothing we do is ever going to wholly satisfy us in the end.  From The Index of Self-destructive Acts

Life can only be lived forwards and understood backwards.  Kierkegaard

Memory is a dog that wants to please its master. William Boyd

85% of Americans believe they are above average drivers.


54% of American adults read below the 6th grade level. (~130 million)


Women account for 80% of all fiction sales in the U.S., U.K., and Canada.

62% of all statistics are made up.

MAGA Christianity. Pete Hegseth's pastor prayed for a Democratic Senator's death on a podcast. 

American Taliban.


In South Korea, Seoul Central District Court sentenced former president of South Korea Yoon Suk Yeol to life in prison after he was found guilty of leading an insurrection against the government. 


The only way "talking head" pundits can maintain the attention of their audiences is to ramp up their outrageous behaviors. 


High School history & civics courses are often taught by teachers whose main interest is coaching.  More than ever, democracy demands knowledgeable citizens.


It seems America faces a choice: Either it can have unrestrained partisan gerrymandering, or it can have a democratic republic. It can’t have both.  Henry Olsen


It is unbelievable how many announcers deem sports plays unbelievable.


Why are so many boys often named after the father but girls rarely after the mother?


Know this about your laissez faire attitude towards discrimination. It will eventually get around to you.


The designated hitter rule is an example of Marxist alienation from holistic labor. George Will probably


It’s easy being a humorist when you’ve got the whole government working for you.  Will Rogers


If your pocket buzzes you with a text notification, do you immediately look at it? Ivan Pavlov QED.


The following poem accompanied the Minnesota state seal and 1983 flag. If you love the old flag, this is what you stand for:

The Seal of Minnesota. By Mrs. Eastman.


Give way, give way young warrior,

 Thou and thy steed give way—

 Rest not, though lingers on the hills,

 The red sun's parting ray.

The rocky bluff and prairie land

 The white man claims them now,

...

+ 8 more stanzas in the same vein


Dwight D Eisenhower credited his mother with helping him handle his temper. “She did a lousy job,” recalled one aide.


Congressional pay of 175k is not enough so insider trading is necessary to take care of their family. Mike Johnson


Well over half of Congress are millionaires. The Senate has been dubbed the “Millionaires Club” with 73 of 100 with net worth > 1M


More and more people are investing in Hamburger Helper.


The stock market is not the economy. The top 10% wealthiest American households own approximately 87% of all stocks.


If you are under the illusion that you understand Wall Street, there is this. "Daily DOW options arrive as zero-day trades reach half Cboe index volume"


How's your crypto account doing these days?


Those who teach poetry make more money than those who write it.


Minnesota is the hardest place in the country to get people to move to - or from.  Lee Lynch


I find this disheartening. University of Minnesota golf course's 18 holes will be replaced with 1800 housing units.


The Saturday Strib barely covers the birdcage.


The story of greedflation, that companies raise prices when there’s a crisis, not because their actual costs have gone up, but because with everybody raising prices, who will notice if I get greedy?  Paul Krugman


I’m old enough to remember when we were a serious country.  Paul Krugman


Government service used to value competence. Now the only thing that matters is fealty.


Not so long ago, it would have been called un-American.


Why can't political parties field serious candidates? Why has the bar for our politicians fallen so low?


Kakistocracy.


These days it takes at least 3 pitchers to throw a no-hitter.


$109,700. San Francisco Housing authority low income threshold for "low income" status for a single person.


Not knowing the Second Law of Thermodynamics is like never having read a work of Shakespeare.  C.P. Snow 


An example: A clean room naturally tends to get messy over time unless energy is put into it


The Trump administration has essentially ended refugee admissions to the United States, with only one exception: White South Africans.  Undisguised racism.


USAID cuts killed people. That’s the truth. NY Times


Cruelty is the point.


We lead the world because, unique among nations, we draw our people—our strength—from every country and every corner of the world.  Ronald Reagan


Any policy designed to help people gets labeled socialism. Look it up. Social democracy is not socialism.


Very, very few Americans are socialists but very, very many say "hands off my Social Security and my Medicare".


In most states, if no one else is at an intersection, it is legal for a bicycle to treat a stop sign as a yield.


The fake AI generated image that broke my camel’s back: an image of Sandy Koufax pitching right handed. 


AI = Outsourcing your brain.


There's a high probability that you are suffering from Nomophobia.


Whereof you do not know, thereof you must remain silent. Ludwig Wittgenstein If our politicians followed Wittgenstein’s advice, we would hear little from them.


The U.S. is becoming irrelevant to the rest of the world. e.g. "Europe is done with American Big Tech".


The American Military-Industrial-Complex, aided and abetted by this administration, is endangering our security by resisting the obvious transition to drone warfare because $4 million Patriot missiles and billion dollar battleships are more profitable than a $35K drone. It is a betrayal of America in the service of money and ego.


I believe that Don Caesar would love to give thumbs up/thumbs down after each UFC bout.


22 specialists.


Humans consistently show a preference toward moving counterclockwise.


Right now, a faraway region of the universe is pulling the Milky Way and neighboring galaxies toward it. We’re technically moving at blistering speeds of around 1.3 million miles per hour in its direction. 


Almost always, ascending to the presidency represents service and sacrifice, not profit.


$2.2B


Sadly, we have learned to excuse what we should condemn. Where is the outrage?


Writing stabilizes thoughts; it allows you to see connections that thoughts alone cannot.




Copyright © 2026  Dave Hoplin



Friday, July 10, 2026

Organ Recital

Three years ago I plied you with my emergency gall bladder surgery experience and it's deterioration so extreme the National Museum of Health and Medicine inquired about the specimen. (I might have imagined that). I vowed never anything like that pain again. Man proposes and God disposes, so I should not have been surprised by my next pain chapter, a ruptured appendix, sending me into the same hospital and a room with nearly the same lovely view of the James J Hill house and the Basilica.






My appendix, in the words of a surgical nurse, was no longer an appendix but rather a blob of acute inflammation heading toward abscess, a phlegmon, kind of a cute name for something so nasty.

[Findings suggest a contained, perforated appendicitis with phlegmon/developing abscess] 

It caused me to wonder how many necrotic organs I can produce and surrender before the entire vessel goes that route.  Both the gall bladder and appendix seem like minor, mostly useless organs one can do without. So it seems unfair that they can cause such extreme pain and threaten your life.  Compared to the sibling organs in the abdominal cavity, these two are pretty small potatoes, so to speak, not even meriting redundancy like kidneys or lungs or eyes. But my gall bladder was gangrenous for Pete’s sake and the appendix was about to rupture with peritonitis a real possibility. Another near run thing.  How many of those do you think you're allotted?

I was under the assumption that an acute appendicitis sufferer was wheeled into an OR, cut open, sewed up and sent home with an ice cream cone. But medical procedures have apparently advanced since 1955. Nowadays, surgery is something to be avoided if at all possible. Knowing a few surgeons, this is quite amazing to me as they seem to live to cut you open. Instead, the treatment was mega intravenous doses of the antibiotic Zosyn plus liter upon liter of Ringers lactate. After a couple bloody IV's, my arm looks like I'd been in a knife fight and came in second. I went into the hospital with a high fever, stomach and back pain and feeling generally pretty rotten. I confess I was pretty sure this was all kidney related but after a CT readout the UR soon put my self-diagnosis to rest and sent me on to the ER and 3 days in a hospital bed. A lesson - if you are your own medical or legal advisor, you have a fool for doctor or lawyer.

The saga is not over by any means. I continue on a twice daily antibiotic regimen with pills that cover the palm of my hand. And I must visit a surgeon in a couple weeks for another CT scan and an assessment, where the penchant to flash the scalpel may be too great to overcome. 

... to be continued


Copyright © 2026  Dave Hoplin 

Friday, July 3, 2026

You Can Call Me Al

My lifelong friend died today. We were high school classmates and the ties held for 60+ years. He had Parkinson's, a cruel disease. His death leaves a huge hole in my heart joining the several others from recent months. Al lived most of his adult life in Hawaii so our friendship was for the most part long distance, an iFriendship. He grew up in a small Minnesota farmhouse with 5 siblings, each one brilliant - not a dud in the bunch. He majored in Humanities but the job market for a philosopher was weak so he went into computers. In his fifties, he went to law school in Illinois and took on a lot of pro-bono cases. Closer proximity in those years more easily allowed us to connect face-to-face. When his wife died and his Parkinson's had been diagnosed, he moved back to Hawaii. 

He had a remarkable mind and our regular conversations were wide ranging - family matters; bragging about kids and grandkids; book recommendations and deeper discussions on the latest book to grab us; the disease and its effects; the ridiculousnesses of growing old; remembrances of things past; the state of the world - and occasionally how we wanted to face death. This was (naively) abstract for me but of course Al had no illusions. His brother had died from Parkinson's and he could measure his steady decline. He was realistically seeking a dignified way to die. 

One remarkable conversation near the end centered on the poem Deseo by Claribel Alegria that spoke to us. 

I want to enter death
with my eyes open
my ears open
with no masks
no fears
knowing
and not knowing
serenely facing
other voices
other airs
other paths
forgetting my memories
detaching myself
being reborn intact.


I miss my dear friend.

Copyright © 2026  Dave Hoplin 


Saturday, June 20, 2026

Off the Beaten Path

I've ridden my bike over several thousands of miles of Twin Cities and surrounding area bike trails.  Usually I ride well known and well used trails, but once a month or so, usually with a friend, I seek out something(s) specific to investigate.  A "theme" ride. Off the beaten path.  





Here's a sampling.



Breweries (only as far as the parking lots)


Bronzes. Kirby, Rod, Harmon, Herb, Hubert, Mary Tyler Moore, Ole Bull, F. Scott, Leif Erikson, Goldy


Polling places  



Carnegie Libraries.  St. Anthony Park, ...


Repurposed Fire Stations.  Theater and 2 restaurants





Cemeteries and Memorials 

    Fort Snelling Cemetery  


    Hillside Cemetery  


    Oakland Cemetery  



    Victory Memorial Drive  


    

    Sheridan Memorial Park  


Murals & Outdoor Art 





Frank Lloyd Wright designed  


Bridges - Stone Arch, Lowry Ave, Hastings, Robert St, NP & 10th Ave, Swing








Railroad yards and Airports.  Camden , Holman





Control Data (former) facilities 


Parks  

    Powderhorn   



    Boom Island  



    Battle Creek  



    Raspberry Island  


Neighborhoods

    Tilsenbilt 


    Milwaukee Avenue 


    University Grove  


    Ramsey Hill  



    Red Cedar Lane  



    Lustron Steel Home  


    Marcy Holmes  





    Crocus Hill  



    Gingerbread House 



    Lowry Hill  



       Nicollet Island  




Nordeast  



Swede Hollow  


Museums

    Twin Cities Model RR Museum  




    Charles Babbage



    Weisman



    MIA



    Swedish Institute  



Mansions    

    James J. Hill




    McKnight  


    Pillsbury   


Reservoirs and Water Towers.  Highland, Washburn, Witches, St Paul




Smokestacks  





US Bank Stadium evolution  


Farther afield.  Chicago, Hastings, Lanesboro, Cannon Falls, Menomonie, Stillwater, Owatonna, Douglas, Glenwood ... 



Oddities  









Copyright © 2026  Dave Hoplin