Learning out Loud in Milwaukee, WI

Author: Greg Boone

  • Reducing dependence on Amazon

    A couple years ago, I fell in love with Amazon Subscribe & Save. I thought it would be handy to have more toilet paper, shampoo, cat litter, and other things we use on the regular shipped straight to us when we ran out. It worked better for some things — like cat food and litter,…

  • Open letter to Sen. Cory Gardner of CO

    Dar Senator Gardner, It’s a good thing your President bailed you out on taking action to end child separation. Despite the fact that he said it was only something Congress could do, he managed to end his own policy of separating children at the border. I still wonder, sometimes, when I see children peacefully strolling…

  • Getting ready for (almost) 100 miles

    On Saturday I’ll be riding 88.6 miles around the Denver metro area. It’s part of the Denver Century Ride, an annual one-day cycling event with several distances, including a full century. I’m riding with two friends who are also doing their first distance ride ever. I’m balancing nervousness and excitement, trying to keep in mind…

  • Battle of the Bands, a crossword

    I recently read first in a series of posts by The NY Times Crossword writers about how to make a crossword. It kicks off the series covering the most important part of a crossword: the theme. I was inspired enough by it to try my hand at creating my own crossword. I’m calling it Battle…

  • 99PI takes on Gerrymandering

    I’ve been fascinated by Gerrymandering since I took it up as the topic of a Human Geography class in my sophomore year of college. It’s an amazingly complicated topic that is often oversimplified. It’s also suddenly in the national spotlight. Three Supreme Court decisions this year will shape how we talk about redistricting and representation…

  • Do you remember?

    I just finished Do You Remember, a podcast chronicling the life of the band Hüsker Dü, from Minnesota Public Radio’s The Current and have to say it was a great listen. It’s a short, five episode series, featuring interview audio from all three members of the legendary punk band, including what is probably the last…

  • Leaving 18F

    Today was my last day at 18F, the startup-like agency inside the U.S General Services Administration I joined back in September 2014. When I joined I wrote: “Working with a team of talented individuals to create a more open, transparent, and accessible government is a cause close to my heart.” That’s still true. It’s also…

  • Native Son

    A couple years ago we found a copy of Richard Wright’s famous novel Native Son tucked into the corner of a Goodwill’s book section. It sat on the shelf and in the queue of both our long reading lists until I finally decided to pick it up this year. I’ve been a pretty slow reader lately…

  • How to be blinded by privilege

    Yesterday in the wake of another comedian and powerful person, Sen. Al Franken, being accused of sexual indiscretions, a piece I saw shared by a lot of smart people was by Lindy West in the New York Times called “Why Men Aren’t Funny. Eventually, I found time to read it and I largely agree with…

  • What I learned setting up WordPress on cloud.gov

    Since around June, I’ve worked on 18F’s cloud.gov product and this week marked my last quarter on the team. We end every quarter with a so-called “innovation and planning” sprint. The product managers do the planning and the team members do the innovating. Innovating in this context means working on parts of the product that…

  • On trains, health care, and misfiring democracy

    When we lived in Hungary we noticed a curious thing about their train network. Our city had about 68,000 people in it yet only had one train per day to the capital city, Budapest. If you couldn’t make the early morning direct train, to take a region train to the much smaller town of Dombovár…

  • Why I’m on the Medicare for All train

    2017 has been the year of people visiting us in Colorado. It’s also been the year of health care. This year we’ve re-established primary care and have been hunting down a strange set of symptoms I’ve been experiencing. None of it is particularly concerning. I don’t have a terminal condition. It’s really just run of…