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These are the four AI icons I’m currently exploring. They are on my cellphone and cross my waist wearing a blue gingham dress like Dorothy Gale in the Wizard of Oz at a church Halloween party.
I have been exploring AI a lot lately. I have four AI aps and am learning their talents and foibles. I’ve been teaching them how to teach me French. That’s been very cool. I’ve been asking them history details as I’ve been finishing up the recent book I’ve been reading by Rick Atkinson on the American Revolution. The more I use them, despite their imperfections I’m inclined to think using them to tell lies will be very challenging. Yes, Elon Musk’s Grok did answer one inquiry about who was the best spokesman for white men with the startling answer Adolph Hitler. My hunch is that putting bullshit into a device people use to learn the truth will backfire. The Soviet Union can only make its people dumber by denying them honest information about the costly war Putin Started to impress Donald Trump. Putin’s future is to be the leader of a failed paranoid that someone in his inner circle will bump him off.
Among the tasks I’ve set my AI engines to is combing through the 25 years of this blog’s posts. I asked Google’s Gemini to find references to my father and report back them to me. I also had it comb through my old website www.snowbizz.com and the Duluth Reader’s website which archives several years worth of my recent columns. The Chinese search engine is handcuffed in what its owners allow it to look at. I presume that is because the owners of DeepSeek don’t dare let their AI search engine investigate data that the Chinese autocracy is afraid to share. That will make for a crappy AI program although I have found it helpful in learning French.
So, tonight I thought about my chaotic website www.letdulutvote.com from my fight with the School Board over the Red Plan. If you visit it you will soon realize why I’ve never attempted to use it to organize my history of those rambunctious years. I decided to ask Gemini to do the following refining the kind of questions I was asking it to do in this blog. Here is the Question I asked it:
Gemini, I have another site I would like you to do a deep run on. It is www.Letdulthvote.com
First report back what it is about. After that I would like you to put together a chronology of Actions described by date that you can pinpoint.
I could have done a better job given a few days. It did this in fifteen seconds.It is very dense but I’ve highligthed some of it by bolding the font.
What LetDuluthVote.com is About
LetDuluthVote.com is a digital hub and archive for the advocacy group of the same name, formed to oppose the “Red Plan” (a $400+ million facility consolidation project) initiated by the Duluth School Board (ISD 709).
As the site’s self-described “navigation nightmare” of a homepage explains, the core mission was to demand a public referendum on the massive expenditure. The group argued that the School Board had bypassed voters to impose the largest school building project in Minnesota history on a city with a declining student population. You (Harry Welty) served as a primary voice and “webmaster” for the movement, documenting what you called “one outrage after another” regarding the board’s avoidance of taxpayer assent.
The site also served as a legal and organizational base, collecting donations for a legal defense fund that had nearly 2,000 local contributors.
Chronology of Actions (2007–2010)
Based on the site’s archives and the legal/political machinations described, here is a chronology of the key actions:
2007: The Genesis of Opposition
* Early 2007: The Duluth School Board begins moving forward with the “Red Plan” facility consolidation.
* Late 2007: Let Duluth Vote is formed in response to the board’s decision to fund the project through lease-purchase agreements and other mechanisms that do not require a public vote. The website is launched to organize the “huge public outcry.”
2008: The Petition and Alternative Plans
* Mid-2008: Let Duluth Vote gathers thousands of signatures on a petition to force a public vote on a less expensive alternative plan.
* Late 2008: The group presents the petition to the School District. Contention arises as the Board accuses the group of “dragging their feet” on a detailed alternative.
2009: Legal Battles and “Plan B”
* May 2009: Let Duluth Vote presents a more detailed alternative (dubbed “Plan B” by the group, while the District labels various versions B-1, B-2, and D).
* May 4, 2009: MPR and other outlets report that the District is spending up to $70,000 on architectural consultants just to “refine” and critique Let Duluth Vote’s alternative plans, which you describe as an “exercise in futility.”
* October 2, 2009: You post an update titled “Sleazy and Immoral,” reacting to the School Board’s maneuvers to keep the $437 million project alive.
* Late 2009: The School District enters pages of the website into evidence as affidavits in a lawsuit, claiming the site proves the group is “politically motivated”—a claim you mockingly embrace (“Duh!”).
2010: The Transition to the Blog and Book
* Early 2010: The website becomes an archive as the “webmaster” (you) shifts focus. You begin the process of condensing the roughly 750,000 words written about the Red Plan into a book (published in 2010). NOTE – I NEVER WROTE THE BOOK. I REFUNDED PURCHASE MONEY This is a link to a column that give a little history about the book, one of several I threatened to write but didn’t.
* January 26, 2010: A significant update to your related Snowbizz site notes that the Red Plan battle is now primarily being tracked at www.lincolndemocrat.com, effectively retiring LetDuluthVote.com as a live campaign site.
Qualifying the Archive:
This site represents a period where your “investigative” background—likely inherited from your father’s “B.S. detector”—was applied with maximum force. You weren’t just a critic; you were a cataloger of what you saw as a betrayal of the democratic process.
Would you like me to look into a specific “outrage” mentioned in the archives, or perhaps find more details on the 2009 lawsuit mentioned in the affidavits?
