Sam Pfeifle

The Department of Homeland Security wants me to "defend my culture" so we're standing on the sidewalk out front and punching people in the face if they can't recite at least one sonnet from memory.

Is that how you do it?

It's just surreal to walk to work on India Street in Portland, beneath the decorations for the St. Peter's Italian Bazaar, with literal Italian flags hanging from the poles and painted on the streets, and have our government telling people to "defend your culture."

The Department of Homeland Security posting "Defend Your Culture" to a nation of immigrants really is quite dark. Mornings with the news these days can be a little rough on the nerves.

Interesting to see celebrity sites now coming around to stuff generally known for a long time as though it's a breaking revelation. Suggests a genuine new level of public sentiment. Maybe he's actually cooked?

Fack.

Free gig if you're in the area. It's even free if you're not.

My favorite part is that every school budget validation meeting forces school boards to not only ask permission to go over EPS, but also to explain why in the text of the article.

Every year I just want to put, "Because the EPS is magical fairyland nonsense."

Thank you. Seems like pretty light spending to me. 17% over EPS is tight to the vest, for sure.

And don't get me started on how farcical "EPS" is and how often that's used as a cudgel against local school boards while the DoE twiddles their thumbs and talks about supporting schools.

Yes? But also sort of no. Teachers have, and have had, pretty good sick time for the duration and can use it in the same way they could since 2021 and they used less of it in 2025.

I don't think that's result of administrative pressures. The union's pretty strong and teachers use what they have.

Very much so.

And I largely agree that it's still the pandemic, but from a school district operations perspective, the covid/sick disruptions with absenteeism by students and staff is just about back to pre-2000 levels now and the administration is largely back to "normal."

There's definitely a school of thought that socializing kids for remote work and digital-only relationships is just as useful, if not more useful, as socializing them for in-person interactions.

It only works at high-school level, obviously, but some parents find leaving 14 year olds home alone easier than getting them to school, given current bussing issues in many districts.

And there's already online-only charter schools; we ultimately decided to refer people there if interested.

Bangor will try an online-only school option this year The program, which will be tested this year with a single class of about 20 students, aims to offer a more flexible learning plan.

We looked into something like this coming out of the pandemic and I was surprised to hear from administration that they couldn't find enough families interested to pilot it. Bangor has the scale to test it out; will be very interested in the results:

www.bangordailynews.com/2025/08/06/b...

Just absolute garbage from the NYT. It takes a really special kind of person to ignore a mountain of evidence and look at one RCT exploring a specific causal finding, and then say that because we didn't see certain brainwave activity at age 4 that $333/mo for every kid would not help the poor.

It's been the "conservative" playbook for far too long now:

1. Call government shitty.
2. Win power.
3. Destroy the government.
4. See! Cut government more by "privatizing."
5. Profit.

Now, locals who DON'T EVEN PROFIT do it because they model their leaders. Destroying for the principle of it.

Yep. This is going to start happening way more regularly. It's impossible to find municipal auditors anymore, and they charge huge money when you do find them, and finding a town finance manager/town manager/town clerk is growing to be impossible as activists cut wages and treat them like drones.

And, yes, I blame the councilors, but I also blame the "normal" residents of Gray, who have just completely checked out of municipal life and have allowed anti-public activists to completely take over town tax discourse. Amazing to watch people bitch about Trump and totally ignore Town Hall.

Gray budget workshop was wild last night. Admin presented a budget (first draft lost in June) with a significant tax cut, but it wasn't enough for newly elected councilors, who proceeded to cut the entire contingency, virtually all staff training, half the library acquisitions budget, and much more.

What's "heavy spending"?

Pointing to a reliever's ERA is ... something.

Yikes.

This race is going to be quite the clown car.

Something about this story is just so sad.

That shouldn't cost much. Is there going to be, like, a cable coming back to earth so we can power an AI server farm with it?

Right? Who's filling that out to say that it was fine?

No.

Remember when you could just buy things and services without them demanding you "tell them how we did"?

I will never understand what my incentive is for giving them free market research.

Seems bad.