Mike Plunkett

Writer and editor. #education, #healthcare, #cpg —- YES. Now playing in Tucson.

[Mike Plunkett @mjmplunkett]

Need a #freelance writer/editor/storyteller who gets #education, #healthcare and a little #SaaS on the side? Let’s talk! (And I promise to share photos of my dog in our welcome call.) https://t.co/vKDZGEpXXx

[Mike Plunkett @mjmplunkett]

@2024dion The folks along Ward Parkway also “deputized” themselves to close streets to local traffic. No one dared stop them.

[Daniel Jeffries @Dan_Jeffries1]

This is rapidly turning into the Population Bomb of our time.

When people make policy based on non-existent future events happening, they do more damage than the thing they try to prevent.

China's one child policy came out of the madness of population decline fears in the 1970s and did untold damage to their society and now guarantees a huge drop in their population that no amount of frantic breeding will fix any time soon.

Turns out, it's also a lot easier to force abortions and sterilizations than it is to force people to make love and make children.

What happened with the Population Bomb? Well just like now, it's always a lot easier to see a problem and very hard to predict a solution. People didn't see the Green Revolution around the corner that made it possible to feed everyone.

That's what humans do. We invent. We adapt.

Most folks are great at seeing things going wrong and really really bad at seeing the solutions that will develop along side those problems as we adapt and learn.

What evidence do we have of this mass jobs apocalypse? A few folks who work in AI telling us it's inevitable.

Why do we think these folks are any better at predicting the future than anyone else? Because they work in AI! Of course, this is ridiculous. Work in AI and predicting the future are orthogonal skills. Actually most people absolutely suck at predicting the future and the accuracy of predictions drops precipitously the farther out we get because trillions of variables are changing all at once.

Just because you're a bridge engineer and know everything about building bridges does not mean you know anything about the impact of bridges on society and how they will change the world.

Gutenberg thought everyone would print Bibles with his new invention and it turned out people wanted to print secular texts and that changed the nature of society and accelerated knowledge development.

We live in an era of mass hallucination where everyone is shouting all the time like they have some secret ability to see deep into the future and predict the end of the world. It used to a be a work of a few cranks and crackpots but now everyone gets to be one.

Unfortunately, the leaders of AI are the cause of much of this fear. They're doing a better job than most other industries' worst enemies with their messaging.

Maybe they should hire some of their genius AIs to help their comms department because they're sucking at it. Apparently access to super human AI does not make for good judgement about basic PR 101.

Remember what Yoda said, "difficult to see, always in motion is the future."

We have too much irrational fear in today's society and it's contagious and often a self-fulfilling prophesy.

We really need a return to hope.

[Mike Plunkett @mjmplunkett]

I would add Kansas City to this list. Their insular culture was a shock to the system.

[Aaron M. Renn 🇺🇸 @aaron_renn]

Worth noting that other major river cities have similar dynamics to St Louis: low growth, geo-political fragmentation, insular cultures that make it hard on outsiders, tremendous urban assets that haven’t catalyzed much. See: Cincinnati, Louisville.

[Mark Cuban @mcuban]

I’ll keep on saying it for the people in the back. DOGE had the right idea. Reduce spending enough to slow down the economy. A slower economy means interest rates come down and if things slow enough, the fed reduces rates to juice the economy and debt repayment gets far cheaper and the debt comes down with any growth

Where DOGE screwed up is that they tried to do it all at once under the excuse the Dems would kill it. Cutting spending and firing hundreds of thousands all at once has a disproportionate impact on small cities and states. That makes it’s far far harder for interest rates to enable growth

If they had planned it out, gave the country a chance to plan and get ready for the cuts , then it truly could have worked. And worked well enough they could have cut more than they did. And with the lower rates , the deficit could have been reduced with lower debt interest costs

Add to this all these tariffs , simultaneously, and someone is going to get fired. Probably Lutnick.

Unless Trump shows up in the week or two after the tariff hits and gives us a removal of the tariffs , or even an across the board 10 pct tariffs , that at least is less inflationary.

Less inflationary means at least a little better chance the fed can lower rates.

As long as those tariffs are in place , and active , it’s going to be hard for inflation to come down and for employment to stay up

That’s the fed mandate. Employment and inflation.

Read Fire Aim is no way to govern. If there’s a plan. Show it to us

[Double Down News @DoubleDownNews]

Everything That's Wrong with Liberal Centrism in Under 3 mins

As told by the late great David Graeber

[Mike Plunkett @mjmplunkett]

Wow, @George_Friedman is gonna be pretty spot on about the cycles.

[Mike Plunkett @mjmplunkett]

💯!

And the corollary is when it gets hard in DC (and it will), stick with it. To summarize Pastor Glenn from Grace DC.. “DC can make you or break you. If you’re lucky, it’ll do both.”

[Josh Sorbe @joshsorbe]

My advice for young professionals?

Move to DC. Live in the group row home. Build the work wardrobe. Find the free happy hours. Say yes. Walk around mall at night. Take the metro. Chill in Logan Circle. Be a menace in AdMo/U Street.

Move to DC in your early career. No regrets.

[Mike Plunkett @mjmplunkett]

@joshbarkey @ManfredGrem This applies to freelance writing as a whole. You have to write yourself into a level that get clients to see you on par as them. Otherwise, don’t be surprised they started or ended with AI or their nephew who needed something to do during summer break…

[Mike Plunkett @mjmplunkett]

@Camp4 @Camp4 was in Boulder yesterday and made it to Gabee. It is as good as advertised. Bought Jamaican Blue Mountain beans, which I rarely find around. Fantastic!

[Mike Plunkett @mjmplunkett]

@Camp4 I’ll be in Denver/Boulder for 6 weeks starting next week. Adding them to the list.

[Mike Plunkett @mjmplunkett]

There’s also the two biggest invisible technologies: the clock and the calendar. Time is our biggest shared agreement.

[George Mack @george__mack]

Underpriced idea: Invisible technologies

Once you see it, you can't unsee it

[George Mack @george__mack]

Underpriced idea: Invisible technologies

Once you see it, you can't unsee it

[Jay Rosen @jayrosen_nyu]

We're not living in two realities, says Jon Stewart. That whole way of thinking has got to go.

[Mike Plunkett @mjmplunkett]

I’m celebrating my 8th wedding anniversary today because I decided to still go to a party after the 42 bus got delayed in DC. Then I decided to go to St. Arnold’s and sat across this cute girl with Nutella in her teeth. Major butterfly effect for which I’m so grateful.

[Kevin Dahlstrom @Camp4]

September 1989.

A college student decides at the last minute to attend a school event. While waiting in line he musters the courage to say hi to a cute girl. The moment passes and they go their separate ways without even exchanging names.

Fast forward 35 years.

I’ve been married to that cute girl for 27 years.

🦋It’s an example of The Butterfly Effect—the idea that small actions can set off a chain of events that lead to BIG things. It's named after a story of a butterfly flapping its wings and causing a hurricane.

By uttering one word in 1989 I flapped my wings... and set off a chain of events that changed the course of my life.

The Butterfly Effect impacts our lives more than we recognize. In a complex world we can’t always connect cause & effect but…

We CAN flap our wings.

[Mike Plunkett @mjmplunkett]

This was the best morning news team by far. RIP Sam Rubin.

[World Citizen @WorldCitizenLA]

The #KTLA Morning News Dream Team
...back in the day. RIP, Sam Rubin.

#FBF

[Mike Plunkett @mjmplunkett]

@tdcromwell @jenni_gritters It was realizing that my “calling” was a series of callings that kicked out the last bit of the dark side mentality. It’s wild how much of the conflict narrative permeates EVERYTHING in journalism.

[Mike Plunkett @mjmplunkett]

@jenni_gritters It was harder than I realized but it took being in a university marketing job surrounded by a lot of ex-journalists and saw the double trauma (newsroom and higher ed), that it helped me embrace the real identity of a storyteller.

[Mike Plunkett @mjmplunkett]

@MelissaMesku @kellycwilde That’s exactly it. At this point, a liberal arts education works best with the merging or studying and living. Students can learn to understand lived experience rather than anticipate it. And you’d save on all the real estate, which is the real costs.

[Mike Plunkett @mjmplunkett]

@MelissaMesku @kellycwilde @MelissaMesku I have a theory based on my time in higher ed that matches your book. We’d solve about 80% of higher ed’s problems if we moved the avg age of college freshman from 18 to 28. In part this lets college be about liberal arts and lets 20-yr-olds figure out what to do.

[Food Mosaics @foodmosaics]

You can watch #TheFutureFood @CapitalFactory today using this link: https://t.co/avrkbbCPBx