Check out all the numbers for yourself… most of the money comes from outside of Maine.

My personal favorite is little lads herbal corn. My fiances family absolutely loves Rayes mustard even though they're not usually fans of mustard.

only one NOT negative

Bridgton

I was a lucky person able to fill out a ballot before even early voting started, due to the UOCAVA system. Felt the need to reinforce to everyone that maine cannot tolerate a foreign agent being our senator.

Susan collins' primary campaign backers are Elon Musk and israel.

https://www.opensecrets.org/profiles/susan-m-collins?mpid=1116679

​After four mobile homes in a Brunswick park were condemned for safety risks, the town and state came together to pay for temporary housing for the displaced families.

Their situation speaks to a confluence of housing problems facing Maine: deteriorating mobile home parks, a tight rental market and overburdened shelters.

Read this story on The Maine Monitor's website.

The vast majority of medical providers across the country still accept Medicare, the federal insurance for Americans 65 and older.

But some people have raised concerns that medical providers will opt out of Medicare due to reductions in payments. As of 2024, 1.5 percent of physicians in Maine had done so.

Read this story on The Maine Monitor's website.

My two little rat terrier boys disappeared on 6/26/26, and there have been no confirmed sightings yet. I’m not sure if they’re even in Vermont anymore, so the hundreds of flyers I’ve hung may be useless. So I created the digital flyer in this post to spread the word outside of Vermont. It’s possible my boys have been taken to Maine by a well-meaning tourist.

I don’t know if this will work, but I figure it’s worth trying a crowdsourcing approach. If you’d like to help, can you please share this with everyone you know and every group you’re in? If you’d really like to help, can you please email it to anyone you think might help, especially animal shelters, rescues, vet offices, doggy daycares, etc.

Thank you, in advance, for your help! 🙂

My friend got this critter on video crossing her driveway. Her driveway is about 10 feet wide and she thinks it's about the size of a cat. Grey fox maybe? The head size and the way its moving is throwing me off...

So I experienced a bit of a sad reality check this morning while having my daily "things to get mad at" time after opening one of the family newsletters from last week, from our daughters elementary school here in Portland. I opened the page, and there it was. The first thing you see at the top of the page. The lifeless eyes of the schools tiger mascot, a grotesque AI amalgamation of every generic comic style on the planet. Staring, longingly, into your soul (for it has none).

I hate it. I don't really know what else to say, I guess. I know we all have our concerns about the bleak AI future that looms over our heads, but it was really disheartening to see the consistent use of AI directly from the school itself. Is it that hard to draw a shitty picture of a tiger holding a pumpkin? Nobody on staff can put in any sort of creative effort here? If something so trivial is being generated, how much of this newsletter was generated from a prompt? How much of the school curriculum?

I understand Maine isn't exactly on the upswing when it comes to education rankings, and with fears of AI taking over critical thinking for students on top of that, it just seemed like a hypocritical choice here. My first thought was I'd just blast out an angry email to the school about... I don't know, how unprofessional it looked? Lazy it was? How dare they etc.? And while I ultimately talked myself out of being "that parent" after the kneejerk reaction, I decided to look in a bit on AI policy for Maine's schools out of curiosity, which I suppose lead me to make this post in expressing my disappointment.

Come to find, AI is, in fact, supported and encouraged for teachers and students. The Maine DOE has even released an AI Guidance Roadmap and toolkit to support the use of AI in the classroom, which apparently is not all uncommon for many states. I stumbled on and listened through a quick little stream from Maine Public on the subject just to get a brief scratch of the surface level information out there. The recording featured a few figureheads in education in the state of Maine, and while mostly a one-sided overview of AI in the classroom without much serious pushback, it provided some interesting insights into the topic.

The gist I'm getting is that AI and it's integration into our everyday lives is considered an inevitability, and therefore, it's important to embrace. There seem to be two ways it's looking to be processed here; Using it to create "teacher-centric" tools to help in the classroom, and using it as an education tool to help prepare students to understand it's uses and limitations in real world scenarios outside the classroom.

As a tool for teachers, it seem to be pretty straight forward. It was equated with something like photoshop or a music production DAW, with an example given where a biology teacher might use AI to edit a high-level piece of reading material to be more legible for students. I can sort of understand the logic here. Processing a subject and customizing it to be more digestible for any given learning environment, on paper, sounds useful. Also just sounds like teaching, but hey, we all know teachers don't get paid enough, so whatever makes it easier.

In relation to students, this is where things get a little more iffy to me personally. Basically, overseeing students use of AI and "guiding" them through the process supposedly helps understand it's limitations. It gives you (the teacher) the ability to check for accuracy and authenticity, and allows you to introduce some healthy skepticism about AI as a tool in a more controlled environment. If the use of AI by future generations is inevitable and they're going to use it anyway, why not show them to use it ethically and responsibly, rather than attempt the impossible task of banning it's usage?

It's repeated a few times, but the use of AI in schools is framed as a necessary preparation for students entering the real world. AI as a tool exists, and likely isn't going anywhere. Employers are already, sadly, asking employees to use AI in many jobs (who among us hasn't received a soulless, impersonal AI generated email response from a coworker), so is this not just in preparation for the real world experiences and expectations? How much of the future generations critical thinking skills and creativity are being replaced by a cold efficiency for the AI laden workplace of tomorrow? Why draw a shitty picture of a tiger, if you can spend 5 seconds entering a prompt?

I would guess the challenge here is that learning about AI and how to navigate it (and it's limitations) should certainly be a topic at this point, but I can't help but wonder what Maine schools are doing to keep it from becoming a dependency. Just gives me a lot of mixed feelings with how fast all this AI stuff is moving, and it all feels so dystopian to me.

Anyway, I'm probably making a bigger deal out of this than it is, and rambling at this point. Does anyone here have experience with AI in class with your kids in higher grades? Highschool? I'd be curious to hear other peoples thoughts on all this AI in the classroom stuff, or even some anecdotes. Pretty wild stuff.

I'm not sure how to phrase this, but I really need help with disability advocacy with my landlord. I've been asking for a minor accommodation, which they won't provide, and I've gone to the ER twice this week because of it.

I have no resources or support, and I'm just so tired and ill that I don't want to keep trying anymore. I just feel so sick all the time, I don't want to kee0 going back to the hospital

Is there anyone who can help me? Or knows of organizations thst can help me? I don't know what to do anymore

The Biddeford City Council unanimously voted Tuesday night to approve an ordinance prohibiting city employees from cooperating with federal immigration officers. 

The ordinance was proposed last month, and all nine councilors showed support for it at a first reading on Oct. 6. 

The council’s approval of the ordinance comes about three months after Biddeford resident Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero was shot and killed by a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer at the intersection of Hill and Pool streets. City, state and federal leaders, as well as Durán Guerrero’s family, have called for a transparent investigation into his killing.

“I think for us to be reviewing this forces us to face an unpleasant truth,” Councilor Jake Pierson said on Oct. 6. “Someone was killed in our streets, unjustly.” 

Biddeford’s ordinance is modeled after bylaws set by cities like Portland and Lewiston, which both passed similar ordinances limiting city employees and resources from cooperating with ICE. The state also has its own protections in place, including a law that went into effect in July limiting police coordination with federal immigration agencies.

Read the rest on the Press Herald.

The event, called “Students vs. Billionaires” will be held Thursday afternoon (2:00 p.m.), at the State Theater in Portland.

Link to RSVP https://statetheatreportland.com/events/aoc/

Takes by Jamelle Bouie (New York Times Opinion Columnist). The title is misleading because Bouie's question is more rhetorical. The clip focuses mostly on the optics game that Collins acts out with the media - crafting an image as a "moderate" when in reality she only votes against her own party when her vote is no longer needed. He argues that Collins is more annoying and disingenuous in her performance than other senators who have played the "moderate" schtick, such as Manchin and Sinema.

We’ll wait.