St. Paul has great water. It’s cold, refreshing and tastes good. Reminds me of the gin-colored cold water in Lake Superior. The official title of the water department is St. Paul Regional Water Services. Fine with me, just so when I go the tap, there it is, the best water in the country.

Why, I have been remiss. The unspoken charm of our town is the water. And I have gone to the taps all over Europe and the United States, finding no equal to what awaits me at home.

So, the other day, working in Siberian conditions, the guys in yellow vests, probably gals, too, were digging down to a busted pipe in our neighborhood. You can always tell when work is being done in the winter. The streets get slushy. They make a mess. More importantly, neighbors email each other wondering about water pressure. We are immensely pleased to learn that we aren’t the only ones with no water coming out of the tap. We always want it to be the work underway, not a leak in our basements. We do the same thing during power outages.

Whatever they were doing took them most of the day. Around dinner time, signs of life appeared. Out of the taps came a hissing sound as the pipes bled air. The toilet bowls rumbled. Not long after there was water, haltingly at first, a furious sputtering, a bit discolored. Understandable. I don’t know what they encounter down there.

By later in the evening, all seemed well. Still a little air bleeding and spurting, but for all practical purposes, she was up and running. I let it run just a bit — looked clear to me — and then slogged down a big glass of urban America’s best.

The next morning, I made coffee as usual, the coldest water possible being the key to good coffee. Then I went to the dentist and returned home just in the nick of time, if you know what I mean. I was in gastrointestinal distress and there being no other way to put it, from both ends at the same time. Holy mackerel. Maybe I had been too close to a kid who was under the weather. Or maybe I just caught a bug, but holy mackerel.

“Hey,” I heard from beyond the closed door. “Did you swallow a hunk of cigar again?”

“No.”

I never think poorly of our water and was hesitant to cast any blame. Nor did I wish to start an email blast to the neighbors, not wanting to bring up the topic of any similar reports. I suffered only briefly and what came over me didn’t last more than 30 minutes and I was back to normal and remain so.

The next day, I saw one of the Regional Water Services’ dark-blue pickup trucks in a different neighborhood. I was curious. I stopped and rolled down my window, gesturing for the occupant to do the same.

“How I can I help you?” the driver said. He wore a yellow vest.

“When you guys repair a break in a pipe, how long before I should drink the water in my house?”

“I’d let it run a couple of minutes.”

“Minutes?”

“Yeah,” he said, “let the air get out of the system. The water might be a little brown.”

I interjected that it was.

“Minutes?” I asked.

“Yeah, a couple of minutes,” he said. “Then it should be fine.”

“Thank you,” I said.

“No problem,” he said, “you have a nice day.”

What a pleasant exchange. No politics. No ICE. No taxes or fraud or Siberian temperatures. No angst or litmus tests or cops or undercurrents of complaining about anything from either party. Just a guy asking a water guy what the deal was. And he said minutes.

I’ll let that be a lesson to me. It’s damn good water, but best to let it breathe.

Joe Soucheray can be reached at jsoucheray@pioneerpress.com. Soucheray’s “Garage Logic” podcast can be heard at garagelogic.com.

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This time last year, the hottest Chinese tech product was DeepSeek’s market-moving artificial intelligence model. In 2026, it’s something far simpler: an app for people worried about dying alone.

The bluntly named “Are You Dead?” platform rocketed to the top of the app-store charts in China before going viral globally. The interface is almost aggressively plain. Users, largely people living alone, tap to confirm they are still alive. Miss two days in a row and an emergency contact gets notified.

Besides its provocative moniker, there’s a reason the app went mega-viral without spending a dime on advertising — and didn’t even have to pretend to be a buzzy new AI product. Its surge coincided with the nation’s birth rate plunging to its lowest on record, at a time when marriage figures are falling and divorces are ticking up.

While many assumed it was developed for elderly users seeking to hold on to their independence, it was actually created by a team of Gen-Z developers who said in interviews they were inspired by their own experiences of isolating urban life. One-person households are expected to swell to as many as 200 million in the country by 2030.

These demographic changes aren’t unique to modern China, but they’re definitely not the kind of publicity Beijing wants right now. The platform was quietly removed from Chinese app stores this month. In a culture where frank mentions of dying are seen as taboo and inauspicious, the creators also said on micro-blogging site Weibo that they were planning on rebranding. The new international name, “Demumu,” is a Labubu-fied riff on the word “death.” It didn’t catch on as expected, and the developers are now crowdsourcing a new idea via social media.

Despite striking a nerve in Beijing and around the world, the product’s concept is annoyingly good. I’m jealous I didn’t think of it. As Big Tech and startups race to come up with the next hit AI application, the most common complaint I hear from actual humans is that many of these tools are solutions hunting for a problem. I don’t need a model to summarize a two-line message from a friend, and having software interpose itself in basic intimacy can feel more intrusive than helpful.

“Are You Dead?” does the opposite. It’s not trying to be clever, but purely practical. It offers a small sense of security to people living solo — even as its existence makes plain a rising loneliness epidemic. The name, a dark twist on the popular “Are You Hungry?” food delivery platform, channels the nihilistic Gen-Z humor of the lay-flat generation. Online, many Chinese youth didn’t treat it as offensive, but rather as a kind of memento mori.

Efforts to force AI into more facets of our life have rightly commanded the spotlight. But across Asia and beyond, eldercare tech is poised to boom. Beijing has been touting the silver economy as a future engine of growth, pointing to seniors’ rising spending power and willingness to adopt new digital platforms. Rather than discourage these innovations and the uncomfortable questions they raise, the government should welcome these tools.

In the U.S., the American Association of Retired Persons forecasts that older Americans’ spending on technology will rise to $120 billion by 2030, despite 59% of adults over 50 feeling it isn’t designed with their age in mind. There’s a ballooning opportunity globally for developers to tap into this market and ameliorate that disconnect.

But the deeper debate unleashed by the app’s virality is something that will be even harder for the industry to address: Is technology making us more or less lonely? Globally, social media has made it much more convenient to avoid meeting in-person. In China, super-apps have optimized everything — you don’t have to say a word to a real person to hail a ride or order delivery meals and essentials. And in the pursuit of AI supremacy, people are working longer hours, driven by a grueling (and technically illegal) 996 culture that encourages more time away from home.

DeepSeek was China’s splashy tech moment; “Are You Dead?” is the hangover. The no-frills check-in app didn’t top the charts because of brilliant engineering. It went viral because it translated demographic and social anxiety into a push notification. Beijing can scrub it from the stores and its creators can try to Labubu-fy “death.” The underlying demand it exposed for connection won’t disappear.

It’s also a warning shot for the AI industry: The next hit product likely won’t be built on summarizing our conversations. It will be one that confronts why we’re having fewer of them. In the race to make machines more human, China’s first breakout app of the year just asks if you still have a pulse.

Catherine Thorbecke is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering Asia tech. Previously she was a tech reporter at CNN and ABC News.

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Today is Saturday, Jan. 31, the 31st day of 2026. There are 334 days left in the year.

Today in history:

On Jan. 31, 1988, Doug Williams, the first Black quarterback to play in the Super Bowl, led the Washington Redskins (now Washington Commanders) to a 42-10 victory over the Denver Broncos and was named Super Bowl MVP.

Also on this date:

In 1863, during the Civil War, the First South Carolina Volunteers, an all-Black Union regiment composed of many who escaped from slavery, was mustered into federal service at Beaufort, South Carolina.

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In 1945, Pvt. Eddie Slovik, 24, became the first U.S. soldier since the Civil War to be executed for desertion as he was shot by an American firing squad in France.

In 1958, the United States entered the Space Age with its first successful launch of a satellite, Explorer 1, from Cape Canaveral.

In 1971, astronauts Alan Shepard, Edgar Mitchell and Stuart Roosa blasted off aboard Apollo 14 on a mission to the moon.

In 2000, an Alaska Airlines MD-83 jet crashed into the Pacific Ocean off Port Hueneme (wy-NEE’-mee), California, killing all 88 people aboard.

In 2001, a Scottish court sitting in the Netherlands convicted one Libyan and acquitted a second in the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland. (Abdel Baset Ali al-Megrahi was given a life sentence but was released after eight years on compassionate grounds by Scotland’s government. He died in 2012.)

In 2020, the United States declared a public health emergency over the new coronavirus, and President Donald Trump signed an order to temporarily bar entry to foreign nationals, other than immediate family of U.S. citizens, who traveled in China in the preceding 14 days.

In 2023, Boeing Co. delivered its last 747 wide-body jet to a customer, capping more than a half-century of production of the iconic jumbo jet.

Today’s birthdays:

Composer Philip Glass is 89.
Blues singer-musician Charlie Musselwhite is 82.
Actor Glynn Turman is 79.
Baseball Hall of Famer Nolan Ryan is 79.
Actor Jonathan Banks is 79.
Rock singer John Lydon is 70.
Actor Anthony LaPaglia is 67.
Actor Minnie Driver is 56.
Actor Portia de Rossi is 53.
Actor-comedian Bobby Moynihan is 49.
Actor Kerry Washington is 49.
Singer Justin Timberlake is 45.
Country singer Tyler Hubbard (Florida Georgia Line) is 39.
Musician Marcus Mumford (Mumford and Sons) is 39.

An indictment unsealed Friday afternoon gives more details about what prosecutors allege about nine people federally charged in a protest at a St. Paul church.

Three people were initially charged, and then a grand jury indicted them and an additional six people. The indictment was filed in federal court Thursday and made public after arrests Friday.

Protesters disrupted services inside Cities Church on Summit Avenue near Snelling Avenue on Jan. 18. They said the acting field office director for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Minnesota serves as a pastor at the church.

Among those charged are Twin Cities activists and two independent journalists. Community leaders and politicians have spoken out strongly against their arrests, and media groups have raised concerns about the arrests of journalists.

“I am feeling so disappointed, but not surprised that peaceful protesters and journalists were arrested today,” said Marcia Howard, a Minneapolis resident, mother, veteran and president of the Minneapolis Federation of Educators Local 59 on Friday. “This affront to the First Amendment feels like a full frontal attack on the Constitution of the United States.”

The Trump administration has condemned the church protesters.

“Make no mistake, under President Trump’s leadership and this administration, you have the right to worship freely and safely,” U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a Friday video statement. “And if I haven’t been clear already, if you violate that sacred right, we are coming after you.”

‘Operation Pullup’

Nekima Levy Armstrong holds up her fist after speaking at an anti-ICE rally for Martin Luther King Jr., Monday, Jan. 19, 2026, in St. Paul. (AP Photo/Angelina Katsanis)

The indictments came after a magistrate judge rejected prosecutors’ initial bid to charge independent journalist Don Lemon, formerly of CNN.

Charged are Twin Cities civil rights attorney Nekima Levy Armstrong, St. Paul School Board Member Chauntyll Allen, independent Twin Cities journalist Georgia Fort, Hennepin County Attorney’s Office lobbyist Jamael Lundy, Twin Cities activist Trahern Crews, along with Lemon, William Scott Kelly, Jerome Deangelo Richardson and Ian Davis Austin.

They are charged with aiding and abetting injuring, intimidating and interfering with exercise of right of religious freedom at a place of worship, along with conspiracy against right of religious freedom at a place or worship. The indictment makes the following allegations:

Levy Armstrong and Allen, “with other persons unknown to the grand jury, organized the operation targeting the church, which they dubbed ‘Operation Pullup’” and promoted on their Instagram accounts on Jan. 17. They and the other seven people charged “entered the church to conduct a takeover-style attack.”

On the morning of Jan. 18, the nine people gathered with 20-30 other people “for a pre-operation briefing” led by Levy Armstrong and Allen in the parking lot of the former Cub Foods on University Avenue in St. Paul.

Levy Armstrong said Thursday that their concerns are not only about immigrant rights, but also about racial justice and constitutional rights.

“When we had the Cities Church protest, it was triumphant for the people because we took a stand by going directly to the power and saying, ‘This cannot stand. You cannot serve two masters because the whole foundation of the gospel message is to love thy neighbor as you love thyself,’” she said at the Thursday press conference. “And Minnesotans have been loving our neighbors and putting our bodies on the line while ICE has been attempting to destroy our neighbors.”

School board member: Worried about kids

Lemon began live-streaming on “The Don Lemon Show” and “explained to his audience that he was in Minnesota with an organization that was gearing up for a ‘resistance’ operation against the federal government’s immigration policies, and he took steps to maintain operational secrecy” by reminding people “to not disclose the target of the operation,” the indictment said.

During a discussion with Levy Armstrong at the briefing, Lemon thanked her “for what she was doing and assured her that he was ‘not saying … what’s going on’ (i.e., was not disclosing the target of the operation).”

St. Paul School Board member Chauntyll Allen speaks during a September 2023 news conference at the State Capitol in St. Paul. (John Autey / Pioneer Press)

Allen led people in chants they would use at the church, including, “This is what community looks like” and “ICE out of Minnesota.” She directed people to “stay bumper-to-bumper” and confirmed everyone had the address.

As a school board member, Allen said Thursday that her focus is on children who are afraid to go to school, to their neighborhood stores and their sports games.

“I’m willing to do everything in my might to protect all of these children in the Twin Cities,” she said. “They should not be exposed to this. And we need serious accountability right now, and we need ICE out of our city so that we can go back to safety and we can start the healing process.”

People entered church in 2 waves

Levy Armstrong instructed people that the “first wave” of people into the church should enter “essentially in an undercover capacity and position themselves around the church sanctuary,” not sit together and not wear “anything that is activist-identifying,” the indictment said. She said people wearing “anything activism identifying” should enter with the second wave.

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They drove to the church, with Lemon — who was still livestreaming — telling Richardson, “Don’t give anything away.”

The second wave of people into the church were led by Levy Armstrong and Allen, “which the first wave of agitators then actively joined.”

Jordan Kushner, Levy Armstrong’s attorney, said Thursday that it’s “central to the First Amendment that people have a right to protest.”

“This was a peaceful event,” he said. “Free speech can make people uncomfortable, and yet the federal government has totally distorted the case and made it look like there was some kind of persecution of people for their religious beliefs, which has nothing to do with reality.”

Indictment: Chants, whistles, stairs to childcare blocked

The indictment said Levy Armstrong interrupted the pastor as he was beginning his sermon “with loud declarations about the church harboring a ‘director of ICE’ and indicating that the time for Judgment had come” Other people in the group joined in by yelling and blowing whistles.

“(A)ll of which quickly caused the situation in the church to become chaotic, menacing and traumatizing to church members,” the indictment said.

Levy Armstrong, Allen, Richardson, Lundy, Crews, Austin and others “led and/or joined … in various chants, including, ‘ICE Out!,’ ‘Hands Up, Don’t Shoot!,’ and ‘Stand Up, Fight Back!,’ while gesturing in an aggressive and hostile manner, which congregants and the pastor perceived as threats of violence and a potential prelude to a mass shooting,” the indictment continued.

The nine people charged, according to the indictment, “oppressed, threatened, and intimidated the church’s congregants and pastors by physically occupying most of the main aisle and rows of chairs near the front of the church … and/or physically obstructing them as they attempted to exit and/or move about within the church.”

A congregant reported to responding police officers that some people blocked stairs leading to the church’s childcare area, “and made it difficult and hazardous for parents to retrieve their children.”

Austin “loudly berated the pastor with questions about Christian nationalism and Christians wanting to have their faith be the law of the land,” the indictment said, adding that Kelly chanted, “This ain’t God’s house. This is the house of the devil.”

Kelly approached a woman who was with two young children “and demanded to know in a hostile manner why she was not involved in and supportive of the takeover operation,” screamed “Nazi” in congregants’ faces and asked child congregants, “Do you know your parents are Nazis? They’re going to burn in hell,” the indictment said.

Kelly said Thursday that he’s a veteran, an activist and “a man of peace, standing for the dignity of all Americans, of all humans. Why am I being persecuted for this? Make it make sense. Americans, I ask that you remember the Constitution. You remember that this nation was founded on liberty for all.”

Lemon’s livestream scrutinized

Journalist Don Lemon, talks to the media after a hearing at the Edward R. Roybal Federal Building in Los Angeles on Friday, Jan. 30, 2026. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)

The indictment said that during Lemon’s livestream, he “observed that the congregants’ reactions were understandable because the experience was ‘traumatic and uncomfortable,’ which he said was the purpose.”

Lemon, Richardson and Fort “approached the pastor and largely surrounded him … stood in close proximity to the pastor in an attempt to oppress and intimidate him, and physically obstructed his freedom of movement while Lemon peppered him with questions to promote the operation’s message,” the indictment said.

Lemon stood so close that the pastor’s hand grazed him, to which Lemon said, “Please don’t push me.”

The pastor told Lemon and the others to leave the church. They did not. After most of the congregants left, some of the people who’ve been charged and “other agitators” chanted, “Who shut this down? We shut this down!”

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Lemon “posted himself at the main door of the church, where he confronted some congregants and physically obstructed them as they tried to exit the church building to challenge them with ‘facts’ about U.S. immigration policy,” the indictment said.

A minivan full of children was preparing to leave the church when Kelly walked in front and “angrily yelled at the occupants.” Levy Armstrong and Fort stood in front as Fort interviewed her, the indictment said.

Fort, a journalist for more than 17 years, said Friday, after she made her initial court appearance and was released from custody: “Documenting what is happening in our community is not a crime. And the questions that were asked a few weeks ago on a Sunday morning by concerned community members, those questions still need to be answered. And as a journalist, I am committed to continuing to follow the story until their questions are answered.”