What a time to be alive!

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(Edited)

How’s it going @hiveio and @threespeak? I’m sitting down for my evening blog time. This was a really emotionally tenuous day. We woke up to the sound of military helicopters flying directly over our house. The last couple of weeks, that’s something we’re been used to. After lunch, @guthrie and I began making our protest signs. I’ve been deliberating when would be the right time to take him to a march. With endless visuals of police teargassing crowds and shooting protestors with rubber bullets, I was nervous about it. Today was a Defund 10K protest.

We made it out and drove to City Hall downtown. To our surprise, there was only three people there, other than ourselves. Some shoddy organized, I guess it was moved to Bottineau Park, across the river, back towards our house. We gave one of the few protestors there a ride over, and did our thing for a mile or so after a speak by Ilhan Omar. I feel good about exposing my son to this massive sociopolitical change. We did masks and hand sanitizer. Af the end of the walk, our Mayor, Jacob Frey took the worst public shaming I’ve ever seen after announcing that he wouldn’t be cutting the police budget. This is Game Of Thrones level shit and very hard to watch.

After the protest, @guthrie and I met up with @vermillionfox at @caffetto. That has been one of the small comforts of this transformative time. The owner was there, and the doors were open. We saw a few familiar faces; friends from before COVID-19 hit, and before there were riots in the streets. We all hung out in front and waved at @iamredbar as he and his partner came by on their longboards. I ran across to the co-op and picked up a few things and @vermillionfox and @guthrie made their way home. Rain clouds were on the horizon, but I really wanted to get a drone flight in.

▶️ Watch on 3Speak

I swung by a park in NE and waited for the showers to let up. Last night, I tried my first hyperlapse, but foolishly forgot the memory card. At 8K resolution, the file sizes are huge! It was too big for the on board drone memory, so I tried again today. About 12 seconds of video took 13 minutes, shooting photos in 1 second intervals. I just did a slow track in shot of downtown. I also tried for a few VLOG’s, but I was preoccupied with the storm and some weird setting happening with the drone. Still working out problems, but I’m absolutely loving all the experimentation.

Really, that’s the theme of this little freewrite. What a time to be alive! Elected leaders are talking about abolishing the police. A mass pandemic is circulating amongst millions of protestors in the streets. Flying robots are able to follow you while you talk, and take videos of city scapes at 400 feet in the air. Even the photo I used for the this blog post was taken with my iPhone. As I’m writing this, an autonomous robot is sweeping the floor under my feet. Sometimes we take all of this for granted, but I’m so grateful that this is the time I’m alive to see the world change.


▶️ 3Speak



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7 comments
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It's rather heartening to see so many take to the streats in protest, not only in the USA, but internationally. We had some small protests in Mankato, but nothing like what you have in the Cities.

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It is a crazy time to be alive. I would never have guessed everything we would be going through just a couple of months ago. Also, that drone footage was legit. I want to get a drone but have not had the opportunity yet.

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Crazy time to live, if the protests are peaceful then I totally support it.

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Oh yes, I guess future generation will be reading all about this in books and we will be the one who experienced it. maybe like discovery or nat geo channel may take interview of some of us in far future to know what happened with some personal touch away from the govt. records. like it happens now. that they interview people of independence era or some pandemic era.

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The world is definetely going through massive changes and we get to see it all

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Brilliantly narrated. That shot in the last video though. EPIC!

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I have a hard time with a lot of this. I didn't see or hear the full context of the mayor's speech, but I have to imagine it can't be easy striking a balance between removing injustice and maintaining safety for the public. I think it would be foolish to outright abolish the police force without having a plan for how you are going to handle incidents in the absence of a traditional police force.

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