My Aunt and Uncle lived in Roslyn, WA where Northern Exposure was filmed (I actually got to see a fight between Joel and Maggie being filmed outside on the sidewalk one time when visiting, which was interesting when I caught the scene later when the episode aired). One of my Aunt's repeated stories was about the day they let the moose in the opening credits wander all over town so they could get footage of it. I don't know that she ever watched the show, but she sure remembered that moose.
We also had lunch at the Roslyn Cafe a few times (also in the credits, and some of the episodes) which was pretty damn good, kind of mix between hippie and redneck.
I scared a teen moose on my honeymoon, deep in the Maine woods near the very end of the Appalachian Trail. What a big BABY. He galloped away clumsily, from our lakeside cabin, and tried to hide behind a little barn at the edge of the woods, and then peeked his big, silly head out to see if I was gone. Apparently. And then got scared afresh and jumped into the forest where he belonged. They are very silly animals and FUCKING ENORMOUS. Just saying. Also: we got married on the 4th of July; Mom suggested it. Two seasons in Maine: Winter, and the 4th of July. And every year you get a free anniversary party. It was extremely charming and I wish the actual married part turned out as nicely, but whatever.
ALSO married on July 3rd, 32 years ago. We greatly enjoyed all the fireworks and the extra day our guests had for travel and what not, and temps were very reasonable that day, around 80 or so. Today, it's going to feel like 107 outside, sadly.
I am always amazed at moose - those huge bodies, and what look like very spindly legs. Amazing animals. In Rockwood, Maine, there's a life-sized statue of a moose with wings. It's what I thought of, watching that young one play in the water.
"God I wish the pope would excommunicate JD Vance."
`
But, but... Eyeliner Boy is so super Catholic that he ripped his suit in half and flew to the rescue of that nun that Ice disappeared for no reason while she was literally on her way to church.
Speaking of commies, that commie Mamdani is taking away some of New York's curbside parking to install trash and recycling bins. Oh, the horror! Won't someone think of the poor rats denied all their free food because the city can now haul away efficiently!
ETA I don't know if this is free parking spaces or not.
Remember back when Republicans didn’t *openly* make their whole platform kicking women out the country if they were pregnant and had brown skin and knocking them up if they were white teenagers and weren’t pregnant? It’s going to be “Vance-Rubio 2028 Pee On This Stick,” isn’t it?
Everything I see somehow becomes a metaphor for the Trump administration.
A semi carrying 40,000 pounds of Frank's Louisiana Hot Sauce developed a leak on I-71 Northbound north of Delaware, Ohio and left a huge spill on the freeway.
The metaphor?
When you first hear of it, you laugh because of the absurdity. A Frank's Louisiana Hot Sauce spill.
They couldn't just hose it off the roadway, because officials were afraid of the environmental damage because of the sauce's high acidity, so it's being collected in pools by hazmat crews. Expensive. At least the trucking company's on the hook for all this rather than taxpayers.
And people who drove through it are finding it's almost impossible to get the stuff off their cars. One woman said she spent $30 at a car wash, and there's still bits of it on her car. County officials suggest drivers get in touch with their insurance companies about getting the clean-up done.
If Trump is going to fight the Carroll decision with "all [his] power and strength," what resources is he going to have left to do his actual job with?
“Robyn’s BEEN explaining how they’re trying to increase teen pregnancy — that’s not a joke, it’s 100 percent literally true “
There is definitely a huge movement by Evangelicals to outbreed what they see as the enemy to Christianity. Of course this isn’t unprecedented in world history. Which is all the more depressing.
Randomly did a read on Catholic saints this morning, and it's clear we must reclaim our LGBTQA+ history. People who hated sex? Check. People who were only interested in same sex partnerships? Check. People who were brainy, with all of the intellectual capacity and associated craziness? Check.
Ta, Rebecca. Ta, Martini. We slept in. St. Vincent with NY Philharmonic was one of our very best experiences, ever. I'll post my morning greeting elsewhere.
With all this talk about birthright citizenship, I got the idea to look into some old family records. I never gave it a thought before so imagine my surprise to learn that my grandparents weren’t citizens at the time when my dad was born. She came here in 1905 at the age of 5 and he arrived in 1911 when he was 16. He served in WWI with the US Army 53rd Pioneers at the battle of the Meuse and was wounded in the Ardennes. She died in 1924 when my dad was 2 so she never had a chance to be naturalized. He didn’t get around to applying for citizenship until 1938.
All this info resulted in a brief fantasy of being deported “back” to Italy and spending my dotage on the Amalfi Coast. But then I remembered that my mother’s side has been here since before the Revolution so now I have no idea where I would stand with this new world order.
Remember waaaaay back when the time one of the Carolinas get nicked for racial redistricting 'cause all the emails talking racist redistricting meant they really were racially redistricting and ot just rethug redistricting, and the quisling six laid out a plan for them to JUST NOT SAY THE N WORD when you make your plans and all good? Keggers' opinion tries to do that for anti birthers ummm... anti birth right .... OK, not that either ... anti 14th Amendmenteers. Just get rid of that pesky law saying the 14th amendment says what is says and then the Q crew can say it doesn't say what it says, see?
That Mark Twain piece is great. I am completely blanking on the name of the Black football journalist who wrote a draft film script of Huck Finn as viewed from Jim's perspective (long before Percival Everett's novel), but I have read excerpts from it, and in that scene where Huck pulls a prank on Jim, he has Jim fully aware of what Huck's doing and playing along in a way that turns the tables on who's pranking whom.
Gawd, these assholes love to make dubious assertions that they think they can take credit for. Fucking Kegsbreath has the nerve to assert that the deployment of National Guard troops in DC has led to lowered crime. Of course, there is no evidence of this happening.
"The presence of more than 2,000 National Guard troops in Washington, D.C., since Aug. 2025 has had “no measurable effect on violent crime,” according to a new report by the Niskanen Center.
The researchers described the deployment as “an expensive tool” used in “the wrong places for the wrong types of crime.” They cited the $607 average daily cost per Guard member in the nation’s capital, compared with $384 in pay for Metropolitan Police Department officers...."
A nuanced analysis. The Niskanen Center is "nominally" a libertarian think-tank, but they're rated ( by the Media Bias/Fact Check site as pretty centrist, altho' a bit on the left of center. They have been deemed to have "High" credibitilty when it comes to fact reporting.
Thank you for the Keli Dailey piece on Mark Twain, it was a cathartic read.
I grew up in rural Minnesota and didn’t have any minorities as classmates until the 9th grade!
But even I remember reading both To Kill a Mockingbird and Huckleberry Finn and understanding that the South doesn’t look rosy through either lens, and that the humanity and dignity of the black people in the books was the point.
The real danger of Twain is questioning our biases & assumptions.
But in the same way some people don’t “get the point” of narratives from The Lord of the Rings to Starship Troopers, there are always going to be people who can’t identify satire, and instead think the tongue in cheek mockery is celebration.
In reaction (partially) to Starhip Troopers, the SF author Norman Spinrad did a book called *The Iron Dream*, a really really bad action potboiler "written" by an alternate world Hitler, who went into SF writing in the 1930s instead of politics. Full of severely over the top descriptions of fascist-type "heroics", and an in-universe afterword discussing the insanity of the story and how nobody could possibly take such tripe seriously. AND THE CHUDS STILL GODDAMN MISSED THE POINT.
The Twain article was wonderful. I read Huckleberry Finn at various points in my life (and a large portion of his output. I think it was a private project of my 20s). The moment when Huck says “I will go to hell” is such an important point in the book. That is the moment when you realize that Jim, thru his humanity and ability to keep love in his heart and give love to Huck, has healed a huge wound in Huck’s heart. I knew someone like Jim when I was a small child (it was a woman) and bc of her humanity and love I survived neglect and cruelty.
Moose calf making his own fun: https://martiniambassador.substack.com/p/splish-splash-moose-calf
And your meme chat: https://open.substack.com/chat/posts/20febd05-1ece-4da7-a609-a912aa4fd84c
Wishing you a good 4th. It belongs to us, the people.
The Moose is large
with a mighty rack
if you see one coming
stay back!
A møøse once bit my sister!
I like the calf's feet, the mooseltoes.
Today I learned mooses can get the zoomies.
Joy.
Mookse zoomies! So many young animals doing them!
This needs the Northern Exposure theme music played at double speed.
My Aunt and Uncle lived in Roslyn, WA where Northern Exposure was filmed (I actually got to see a fight between Joel and Maggie being filmed outside on the sidewalk one time when visiting, which was interesting when I caught the scene later when the episode aired). One of my Aunt's repeated stories was about the day they let the moose in the opening credits wander all over town so they could get footage of it. I don't know that she ever watched the show, but she sure remembered that moose.
We also had lunch at the Roslyn Cafe a few times (also in the credits, and some of the episodes) which was pretty damn good, kind of mix between hippie and redneck.
"kind of mix between hippie and redneck."
`
Hippie-billies.
We had them in North Carolina.
Both sides wore bib overalls.
Moose zoomies!
Moosies!
Baby moose is loose!
Those animals seem designed by committee, built like a gravestone sitting on a card table.
All shits and giggles until one decides to hump your Honda Fit.
There's a reason why "moosey" is a slang term for "large". Mooses are really, really big.
More likely to attack you than a bear. Grumpy lil' bastards, they can be.
We have camped in both moose and bear territory, and I’ve often said that a moose attack is scarier than a bear attack, to me.
I’ve had more than one chance to be fairly close to a moose, and they are huge and make me think of dinosaurs.
ETA: they are also amazingly graceful, especially considering their gigantic size.
Baby mooses are not that small
But even so they get more tall
Towering over one and all
With hearts a large as cannon balls
Long legs!
"Moose Calf" sounds like a town in Alaska.
And why not? There's the town of Moose Jaw in Saskatchewan and Moose Factory in Manitoba.
Wait, they make mooses in factories? How did I not know that?
Babby zoomie moose has his own swimming hole! Look mommy, I can make the splish-splash!!
Baby moose! Baby moose!
I scared a teen moose on my honeymoon, deep in the Maine woods near the very end of the Appalachian Trail. What a big BABY. He galloped away clumsily, from our lakeside cabin, and tried to hide behind a little barn at the edge of the woods, and then peeked his big, silly head out to see if I was gone. Apparently. And then got scared afresh and jumped into the forest where he belonged. They are very silly animals and FUCKING ENORMOUS. Just saying. Also: we got married on the 4th of July; Mom suggested it. Two seasons in Maine: Winter, and the 4th of July. And every year you get a free anniversary party. It was extremely charming and I wish the actual married part turned out as nicely, but whatever.
My birthday is the 4th. I was 4 when I figured out it was not about me.
Congratulations! You are officially much smarter than the Chief Executive of the U.S.A., who believes everything is always all about him.
🙌🏾
We were married on the third, and we always appreciate all the celebration!
ALSO married on July 3rd, 32 years ago. We greatly enjoyed all the fireworks and the extra day our guests had for travel and what not, and temps were very reasonable that day, around 80 or so. Today, it's going to feel like 107 outside, sadly.
God knows there's never a restaurant open, so fireworks are just fine!
I think getting married on the 4th would be a great idea! The fireworks cliche alone would be worth it.
Mooselet!
I am always amazed at moose - those huge bodies, and what look like very spindly legs. Amazing animals. In Rockwood, Maine, there's a life-sized statue of a moose with wings. It's what I thought of, watching that young one play in the water.
So if Rocky and Bullwinkle had a love child .....
We need Neil the Seal.
"God I wish the pope would excommunicate JD Vance."
`
But, but... Eyeliner Boy is so super Catholic that he ripped his suit in half and flew to the rescue of that nun that Ice disappeared for no reason while she was literally on her way to church.
Oh, wait; no he didn't.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jun/30/ice-nun-detained-released-texas
Speaking of commies, that commie Mamdani is taking away some of New York's curbside parking to install trash and recycling bins. Oh, the horror! Won't someone think of the poor rats denied all their free food because the city can now haul away efficiently!
ETA I don't know if this is free parking spaces or not.
Remember back when Republicans didn’t *openly* make their whole platform kicking women out the country if they were pregnant and had brown skin and knocking them up if they were white teenagers and weren’t pregnant? It’s going to be “Vance-Rubio 2028 Pee On This Stick,” isn’t it?
Everything I see somehow becomes a metaphor for the Trump administration.
A semi carrying 40,000 pounds of Frank's Louisiana Hot Sauce developed a leak on I-71 Northbound north of Delaware, Ohio and left a huge spill on the freeway.
The metaphor?
When you first hear of it, you laugh because of the absurdity. A Frank's Louisiana Hot Sauce spill.
They couldn't just hose it off the roadway, because officials were afraid of the environmental damage because of the sauce's high acidity, so it's being collected in pools by hazmat crews. Expensive. At least the trucking company's on the hook for all this rather than taxpayers.
And people who drove through it are finding it's almost impossible to get the stuff off their cars. One woman said she spent $30 at a car wash, and there's still bits of it on her car. County officials suggest drivers get in touch with their insurance companies about getting the clean-up done.
The Trump administration in a nutshell.
If Trump is going to fight the Carroll decision with "all [his] power and strength," what resources is he going to have left to do his actual job with?
Fighting the Carroll decision with all his power and strength is going to consist of watching a judge say, "Release the funds!" and whap his gavel.
Plenty of resources left over for the actual job.
Same as always. None.
“Robyn’s BEEN explaining how they’re trying to increase teen pregnancy — that’s not a joke, it’s 100 percent literally true “
There is definitely a huge movement by Evangelicals to outbreed what they see as the enemy to Christianity. Of course this isn’t unprecedented in world history. Which is all the more depressing.
Randomly did a read on Catholic saints this morning, and it's clear we must reclaim our LGBTQA+ history. People who hated sex? Check. People who were only interested in same sex partnerships? Check. People who were brainy, with all of the intellectual capacity and associated craziness? Check.
The church belongs to us, bitches!
Ta, Rebecca. Ta, Martini. We slept in. St. Vincent with NY Philharmonic was one of our very best experiences, ever. I'll post my morning greeting elsewhere.
With all this talk about birthright citizenship, I got the idea to look into some old family records. I never gave it a thought before so imagine my surprise to learn that my grandparents weren’t citizens at the time when my dad was born. She came here in 1905 at the age of 5 and he arrived in 1911 when he was 16. He served in WWI with the US Army 53rd Pioneers at the battle of the Meuse and was wounded in the Ardennes. She died in 1924 when my dad was 2 so she never had a chance to be naturalized. He didn’t get around to applying for citizenship until 1938.
All this info resulted in a brief fantasy of being deported “back” to Italy and spending my dotage on the Amalfi Coast. But then I remembered that my mother’s side has been here since before the Revolution so now I have no idea where I would stand with this new world order.
Remember waaaaay back when the time one of the Carolinas get nicked for racial redistricting 'cause all the emails talking racist redistricting meant they really were racially redistricting and ot just rethug redistricting, and the quisling six laid out a plan for them to JUST NOT SAY THE N WORD when you make your plans and all good? Keggers' opinion tries to do that for anti birthers ummm... anti birth right .... OK, not that either ... anti 14th Amendmenteers. Just get rid of that pesky law saying the 14th amendment says what is says and then the Q crew can say it doesn't say what it says, see?
That Mark Twain piece is great. I am completely blanking on the name of the Black football journalist who wrote a draft film script of Huck Finn as viewed from Jim's perspective (long before Percival Everett's novel), but I have read excerpts from it, and in that scene where Huck pulls a prank on Jim, he has Jim fully aware of what Huck's doing and playing along in a way that turns the tables on who's pranking whom.
What comes before Part B? Part-ay! (I stole this from an episode of Scrubs).
Gawd, these assholes love to make dubious assertions that they think they can take credit for. Fucking Kegsbreath has the nerve to assert that the deployment of National Guard troops in DC has led to lowered crime. Of course, there is no evidence of this happening.
Link: https://www.militarytimes.com/news/pentagon-congress/2026/06/02/national-guards-dc-deployment-has-had-no-measurable-effect-on-violent-crime-report/
"The presence of more than 2,000 National Guard troops in Washington, D.C., since Aug. 2025 has had “no measurable effect on violent crime,” according to a new report by the Niskanen Center.
The researchers described the deployment as “an expensive tool” used in “the wrong places for the wrong types of crime.” They cited the $607 average daily cost per Guard member in the nation’s capital, compared with $384 in pay for Metropolitan Police Department officers...."
Here's a link to the actual report: https://www.niskanencenter.org/washington-dc-crime-decline-and-its-lessons-for-american-policing/
A nuanced analysis. The Niskanen Center is "nominally" a libertarian think-tank, but they're rated ( by the Media Bias/Fact Check site as pretty centrist, altho' a bit on the left of center. They have been deemed to have "High" credibitilty when it comes to fact reporting.
Thank you for the Keli Dailey piece on Mark Twain, it was a cathartic read.
I grew up in rural Minnesota and didn’t have any minorities as classmates until the 9th grade!
But even I remember reading both To Kill a Mockingbird and Huckleberry Finn and understanding that the South doesn’t look rosy through either lens, and that the humanity and dignity of the black people in the books was the point.
The real danger of Twain is questioning our biases & assumptions.
But in the same way some people don’t “get the point” of narratives from The Lord of the Rings to Starship Troopers, there are always going to be people who can’t identify satire, and instead think the tongue in cheek mockery is celebration.
In reaction (partially) to Starhip Troopers, the SF author Norman Spinrad did a book called *The Iron Dream*, a really really bad action potboiler "written" by an alternate world Hitler, who went into SF writing in the 1930s instead of politics. Full of severely over the top descriptions of fascist-type "heroics", and an in-universe afterword discussing the insanity of the story and how nobody could possibly take such tripe seriously. AND THE CHUDS STILL GODDAMN MISSED THE POINT.
The Twain article was wonderful. I read Huckleberry Finn at various points in my life (and a large portion of his output. I think it was a private project of my 20s). The moment when Huck says “I will go to hell” is such an important point in the book. That is the moment when you realize that Jim, thru his humanity and ability to keep love in his heart and give love to Huck, has healed a huge wound in Huck’s heart. I knew someone like Jim when I was a small child (it was a woman) and bc of her humanity and love I survived neglect and cruelty.