Just a few more minutes of Pride and there won’t be any 2SLGBTQQIA+ holidays until Nonbinary Awareness Week begins in 13 days.
Here’s a typical celebration in our neighborhood: “Congratulations to Rice-Bound Britton”.
Separately, does it make sense to congratulate Bitton for choosing a $100,000/year school, even one that absurdly claims to be “ranked as a best value in higher education”? If Britton got into Rice she surely would have qualified for the Bright Futures scholarship, thus cutting University of Florida tuition to $0 from $6700/year. She probably would have qualified for the Benacquisto Scholarship, which also pays for housing, food, textbooks, fees, etc. Rice is ranked #17 by US News while University of Florida is ranked #30. Rice ranks higher, but is it $400,000 higher? ChatGPT, asked which school has the better climate: “For a typical August–May school year, I’d pick Gainesville, FL as the better climate overall, especially for kids and outdoor life. Houston has milder winters, but Gainesville has a more pleasant fall–spring stretch, cooler nights, less big-city heat-island effect, and a less flood-prone feel.” I personally love the art museums of Houston, but can’t remember seeing college kids in them. Air quality is, of course, much better in Gainesville since Floridians don’t spend all of their time and energy refining petroleum.
ChatGPT says that UF is stronger than Rice for undergraduates in some areas, including nuclear engineering (maybe now that we’ve surrendered to the Iranians they will send their future bomb developers to UF?), pre-vet, anything agricultural (AI-proof?), accounting, real estate/construction/development (AI-proof?), education, pre-health other than pre-med, materials engineering, etc. In a lot of engineering disciplines, our AI overlord says that the schools are close, but presumably Rice is less of a herd experience.
A report based on an end-of-May 2026 trip on Norwegian Joy out of Seattle. This report will cover the on-ship environment and I’ll do separate posts for the ports.
We picked this particular cruise because it was one of a handful that visited Glacier Bay and that went round-trip rather than requiring a multi-leg air journey back from Anchorage. As an added bonus, the trip departed Seattle (no need to deal with airport immigration/customs chaos) rather than Vancouver.
Our itinerary:
Cautions that apply to any Southeast Alaska cruise…
The typical cruise ship is designed for the Caribbean and nearly half of her public space will be outdoors. Especially if traveling early or late in the season, these areas will be considered unusable by most passengers and, therefore, the interior public spaces will be more crowded than on a Caribbean trip. We traveled toward the end of the coldest Alaska winter in 50 years and it was still about 10 degrees colder than typical. The outside spaces got little use except when near Seattle/Victoria.
Modern cruise ships are a too big to fit comfortably through the traditional “inside passage” routes. Here’s the Alaska Marine Highway System route:
Furthermore, the cruise lines probably wouldn’t want to pay for a Canadian pilot to be on board for roughly 3 days of any round-trip. Thus, the cruise ships do most of their “Inside Passage” travel outside of the protection of Vancouver Island, for example, and the Pacific can throw much bigger waves at a boat than the Caribbean typically does. If you are prone to seasickness, consider a cabin on a lower deck and close to the center of the boat. These have the advantage of being some of the cheapest cabins on a cruise ship. If you’re determined to splash out on a high forward cabin, just be prepared for your food to also splash out!
Finally, expect the ports to be crowded. A town of 8,000 or 10,000 might receive nearly 20,000 cruise ship passengers on a typical summer day. All of the “downtown” sidewalks are going to be at least as packed as Manhattan sidewalks (not Times Square on a Friday night, but more crowded than an average Manhattan sidewalk). If you want to experience these towns as an Alaskan might, you’ll need to go before or after cruise season and/or do it via air/hotel. If you’re there in June, for example, there is enough light to do a lot of activities after the cruise ships cast off (typically 6-8 pm). This is not to say that the whole idea of Alaska+cruise ship is dumb. A sizable Alaskan town might have only one or two decent hotels and restaurants. The situation is better than when I visited in 1993, but a Hampton Inn-grade hotel remains a rarity. The cruise ship is the only practical means of supporting significant tourism because the hotel and restaurant arrives with the passengers.
Back to our specific cruise. Norwegian Joy was launched by Meyer Werft in 2017 and holds about 3,500 passengers. It lacks an all-the-way-around walking/jogging track and purports to make up for that with elaborate water slides and an electric go-kart track. None of the “wow” items are useful in the cold. Some experts might say that the ship was designed for ants and needs to be at least three times larger:
Here’s a view from above at Icy Strait Point:
It was warm enough on departure from Seattle that some kids were actually using the main pool:
Consistent with other cruise ships, the hot tubs aren’t actually hot. Instead of the 102-104 that a homeowner might set a backyard tub to, the cruise lines are perhaps setting the tubs to 98 so that a guest can sit in the tub for five hours while consuming 10 alcoholic drinks and not suffer any ill effects. The dream of a hot soak while the Alaska scenery scrolls by must remain a dream.
Buffet
More efficient than Royal Caribbean or Celebrity, e.g., with multiple omelette stations at breakfast so as to reduce queuing, but less variety and somewhat lower quality than Royal Caribbean (much lower than on Celebrity). The Indian section is mostly vegetarian for what that’s worth. Despite a high percentage of Filipinos among the crew, there is no Filipino section. Our 10-year-old liked to sneak down to the buffet and get crepes with Nutella.
The Haven
Norwegian lets you buy your way out of much of the noise and congestion by signing up for The Haven. This has its own spectacular lounge looking out the bow from the 17th floor:
We had a two-bedroom family room that was comfortable for a family of four and came with a “butler” whom we seldom used. Our master bathroom:
The Haven has its own restaurant, which turned out to be the best on the ship (see below regarding the specialty dining options), though they didn’t begin to vary the menu until the last couple of days of the journey. Maybe it is for the best from a waistline point of view, but the bakers weren’t capable of making a decent croissant or danish even for Haven guests. Remarkably, however, they did make some good fruit tarts with custard for the lounge. (It is possible to make a good croissant on a cruise ship because Celebrity does it!) Donuts were terrible, below the standard of a supermarket donut.
The Haven has its own sundeck on Deck 19. It is theoretically limited to guests 16 and older, but on an Alaska cruise there aren’t enough people up there for anyone to want to bother enforcing the rule.
The Haven has its own solarium with pool and not-very-hot hot tub:
The Haven concierges would organize escorts on and off the ship and make use of crew-only elevators to eliminate delays at peak times.
Was the Haven worth it? I would happily go on Celebrity again in peasant class, would willington go on Royal Caribbean non-suite, but I wouldn’t travel on Norwegian except in the Haven (about 2X the cost of a standard balcony room for a comparable-size cabin).
Specialty Restaurants
Most of these are $60 per adult as a supplement to a regular cruise fare.
Le Bistro: the 12-year-old enjoyed les escargots; the 10-year-old refused to “take one for the team”. Pretty good overall, though the baguette wasn’t truly crusty. The desserts were interesting.’
Teppanyaki: our chef, Kurian, was Filipino and a great performer. Food quality comparable to what you’d get at a good “hibachi” place in the U.S., but a more entertaining experience. “These shrimp are from Maine,” our chef proclaimed. “… the Main Dining Room.”
Q Smoke House: Imagine H-E-B supermarket BBQ… then subtract three levels of quality. Nice people, both kinds of music (country and western), fun decor, but apparently the inability to operate a real smoker is fatal to food quality.
Cagney’s Steakhouse: they can’t use a gas grill and they apparently don’t want to use a cast iron pan on an induction burner. Consequently, the steaks had no crust and were a bit soggy. The lamb was overly salted. The Prime Rib would probably be the smart choice since it doesn’t need a crust. The desserts were terrible, e.g., an obscenely huge chocolate cake that room service also delivers and a raspberry crème brûlée that was absurdly over-flavored with raspberry. Ice cream at the buffet would be a better choice.
Entertainment
Performances were weak compared to either Royal Caribbean or Celebrity. Singers and dancers were talented, of course, but they weren’t backed up by a live orchestra. The most popular performers on the ship turned out to be a Beatles tribute band (awesome period costumes).
Life on board
Internet: Starlink and much higher bandwidth than what Celebrity delivers. WiFi coverage was excellent throughout the ship.
Laundry: After a few days, Norwegian offers a $40/bag wash/fold service. Unlike other cruise lines, however, they bounce the laundry back to you if you don’t laboriously count what you’ve stuffed into the bag. The “bounce” took 24 hours.
Gym: Big and well-equipped, but not at the bow like some cruise ships have and, therefore, not inspiring.
Coronapanic has degraded cruise ship life, according to our cabin steward. Where Norwegian previously assigned one steward per 16 non-suite cabins, after the post-COVID restart the number is 22-24. Guests who previously received two services per day are now cut back to one. Haven guests receive two services per day, but the first cleaning might not happen until after noon. My memory of Royal Caribbean and Celebrity was that the cabin attendant quietly kept track of our whereabouts and would dart into our room 3-4 times per day so as to undo whatever chaos we had created. In the Haven, by contrast, our cabin cleaner was a nice guy but he cleaned on his schedule rather than on ours. Consequently, we were often in the room when it was time for him to clean or do the turn-down.
Some folded-towel art from Ceasar:
What to Pack
Pack some decent binoculars because it is possible to see otters, whales, seals, and other interesting animals from various open decks and even one’s balcony. What’s “decent”? Nikon Monarch M5 8×42 is the cheapest reasonable binocular. You don’t want more than 8X magnification because the ship+your hands aren’t that steady. The M7 costs more and has a wider field of view, useful when searching for whale spouts. The Zeiss Conquest HDX 8×42 is twice the cost of the Nikon M7, has a slightly narrower field of view, and is perhaps worth the money if you love high quality optics. (Confusing, the Japanese-brand binoculars are supposedly made in China while the German-brand binoculars are, according to our AI overlords, made in Japan.)
Pack a European-to-US plug converter because half of the outlets in the room won’t be usable for Americans. Norwegian won’t lend out or sell converters on board because they’ve discovered that Americans aren’t smart enough to understand voltage and whether a device has a switching power supply. To avoid explosions and fires from people plugging 115V-only gear into a 230V outlet they try to prevent this mechanically.
Do you need to see Glacier Bay?
Should you pick a ship/cruise around the requirement of seeing Glacier Bay? It’s useful for crossing the National Park off your life list, but mostly… no. Cruise ships are so large that they can’t get close to the wildlife that perhaps thrives in the National Park relative to some other parts of Southeast Alaska. There are plenty of alternative glaciers that aren’t national parks that are still beautiful. If you are serious about experiencing Glacier Bay it is probably better to fly to Gustavus and do a day cruise into the park on a smaller boat.
A lot of Democrat officials have said that the U.S. Supreme Court’s rulings are illegitimate and should not be followed, e.g., the recent ruling that allows temporarily protected Haitians to be sent home after 16 years in the U.S. Example from a Democrat thought leader: “it’s not something we will ever accept”.
The representative for the High-IQ (TM) crowd in Maskachusetts said, a few weeks ago, that the Court is “corrupt” (Ayanna Pressley has been characterizing the Court with this epithet for some years, according to an X search):
We know a guy in Boston who married a Honduran lady. His wife’s pregnant relatives would come to visit a few months before any baby was due. They’d show up alone at a high-end Boston hospital, e.g., Beth Israel, give birth, tell the staff “I’m undocumented”, and go home with a U.S. citizen and without ever seeing a bill from the hospital (costs covered by taxpayers). Except for three haters, the Supreme Court today agreed (Trump v. Barbara; what did Barbara do that was so bad?) that this should continue. Does that mean the Democrats who previously complained that the Court was illegitimate will now say that it is legitimate?
(Maybe there are four haters on the Court, actually. Brett Kavanaugh, the convicted rapist/murderer of Prof. Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, Ph.D., said that Congress could limit birthright citizenship by statute, but that El Presidente couldn’t do it via executive order. I guess that means Amy Coney Barrett was the deciding vote in favor of virtue, love, kindness, etc. Finally, given that 100% of the females on the Court voted one way and 80% of the males voted another, maybe this suggests a question for Alan Turing’s original male-female Turing Test (“imitation game”). Ask the person of unknown sex (there were just two back then) “A migrant walks across the U.S. border and pushes out a baby. Do you give the baby four generations of taxpayer-funded welfare or take the position that it is the parents’ responsibility to take care of their children and descedants?”)
Dubai follows Sharia law and, in theory, people with too much Pride could be executed, but more likely “under Article 409 of the UAE Federal Crimes and Penalties Law, consensual same-sex relations are criminalized with prison sentences starting at six months.”
Canada also combines Pride and Islamic rule:
Toronto Dyke March participants chant “We’re here! We’re queer! Free Palestine is our demand!” pic.twitter.com/b9afLvH1Yu
— The Post Millennial (@TPostMillennial) June 27, 2026
Mayor Olivia Chow screams "Free Palestine" at Toronto Pride parade.
You know, the same two words terrorists have screamed before murdering and butchering their victims. pic.twitter.com/gTA0VTffJL
— dahlia kurtz ✡︎ דליה קורץ (@DahliaKurtz) June 29, 2026
Europeans object to being mocked for their lack of air conditioning on the grounds that, pre-Climate Change, there were at most a few weeks per year when they would have wanted to use it. Note that this is partly due to European tolerance for a wider range of indoor temps than we spoiled Americans. They probably wouldn’t turn on A/C until their interiors were 8-10 degrees warmer than what would motivate an American to open up the WiFi thermostat app on his/her/zir/their phone.
Because of American profligacy with fossil fuels, Europe now has brutal heat waves (example from 1911; one that afflicted Paris in 1757) that make their decision to reject A/C appear stupid, but in reality they are the smart/wise ones.
Maybe, however, there is an analogous situation here in the U.S.: should a house in South Florida be equipped with heat? Outdoor temps drop below a comfortable room temperature for only a few weeks per year, analogous to outdoor temps being higher than room temp in Europe for only a few weeks per year. Houses are well insulated in South Florida because they’re almost all new. There is no historical weather that could reduce the indoor temp of a modern South Florida house to a dangerously cold level. Just as Europeans say that they can deal with typical heat by closing shutters, opening windows, jumping in the local canal, etc., a South Floridian without heat during a severe cold weather event could dig through the closet for a sweater and long pants, use an electric blanket or mattress pad at night, etc. Here’s one of the most extreme cold events that ChatGPT managed to find for Miami, which included a low of 28 degrees:
Running heat in South Florida is incredibly wasteful because (1) it is usually a resistive “heat strip” inside the air handler (the latest houses have fully insulated refrigerant lines in both directions and, therefore, heat pump heating capability), and (2) whatever heat is added to the house will eventually have to be pumped back out using electricity for cooling.
What is the observed behavior? Every house, by code, is built with heat capability. People turn on the heat as soon as they feel uncomfortable. As noted above, the latest houses even have heat pumps, maybe due to federal government tax incentives that encourage this super-wasteful-in-south-florida investment ($thousands extra in capital that lasts 15 years to save a couple of $hundred in electricity every few years).
If Climate Change were to cause South Florida to be subjected to a Maskachusetts-style December, Floridians wouldn’t die like the stoic Europeans. Nor would they get into a brawl at Walmart over space heaters. Houses here are already equipped to handle a multi-day freeze. The damage would be limited to higher FP&L bills (still, probably much lower than in MA, though, because rates here in FL are about one-third per kWh of what my friends who’ve remained Righteous are paying!).
As noted above, we could also explain the apparent difference in preparedness as due to a difference in tolerance for discomfort, with Americans being the wimps!
Related:
Art Palm Beach (cavernous yet nice-and-warm convention center despite record-low (for the dates) overnight freezing temps in the middle of a two-week cold spell, the most extreme since 2010)
Back in 2023 I wondered Where are the gardens and museums created by the Silicon Valley rich? That’s still a good question, in my opinion. Elon Musk is a trillionaire. In addition to voluntarily paying whatever taxes Elizabeth Warren deems fair, why hasn’t he built off-the-charts open-to-the-public gardens near his spaceports? It’s Elon Musk’s birthday today so maybe he will decide to think about the little people for once…
Earlier in June 2026, we visited the Bloedel Reserve, a 140-acre garden surrounding a fancy house that was all built by a lumber executive and his wife. It’s on Bainbridge Island, a suburb of Seattle made possible by the ferry system.
After they got too old to really use it, they turned it over to the public. Walk through the swamp:
Then over the bridge:
Then through the ferns:
Then arrive at what passed for a “mansion” in the days before trillionaires:
If you’re not a Floridian insistent on warm water, it’s a beautiful view from their back yard:
Everyone needs a Japanese tea house and garden to accompany it:
Speaking of Japanese, how about a moss garden like Saihō-ji in Kyoto?
Land Acknowledgement
The nonprofit that runs the garden admits that the land is stolen. Instead of giving it back to the rightful owners, however, they will somehow “honor” the rightful owners by charging everyone, including the rightful owners, $29 to enter (or $1 for those on welfare who show up with their SNAP card). Reserve in advance because they limit the number of people per hour who enter, a coronapanic innovation that they decided to maintain (or maybe they’re still trying to promote social distancing?).
Who is today’s Anti-Bloedel? I nominated succcessful divorce plaintiff MacKenzie Scott Bezos. Wokipedia says that she gave $26.3 billion to various non-profit organizations, including universities, since 2020. This money, nearly 100% of which was unrealized capital gains, was never taxed by the U.S. Treasury or Washington State (with its fresh new capital gains tax that gave us Jeff Bezos, the Starbucks billionaire who said he wanted to pay more tax, et al.), has apparently disappeared without even a ripple in the waters of the various lakes of crises facing the U.S. Perhaps some nonprofit executives have enjoyed higher salaries as a consequence, but the issues she claimed to care about at the outset of her giving (“racial equality, LGBTQ+ equality, democracy, and climate change”) have all gotten worse. Elon Musk ran away with all of the money and he isn’t Black. Scott Weiner, who represents the full Rainbow Flag spectrum, was recently attacked in San Francisco. Donald Trump was elected to a second term as President (proof that “democracy” doesn’t exist in the U.S.). Climate change, as evidenced by the fully baked Europeans, has gotten far worse. If Sam Bankman-Fried was an “effective altruist” maybe MacKenzie Scott Bezos can be characterized as an “ineffective altruist”? Or maybe altruism simply isn’t effective in the aggregate?
Here’s hoping that MacKenzie Scott Bezos will build herself a magnificent mansion with gardens and, following her death in 2070 (she identifies as female and, therefore, due to all of the disadvantages that women suffer, is likely to live only to age 100), will donate it to the public.
No more performative empty words for me while Europe suffers through temps over 100 degrees (in the units that God prefers). There IS a sacrifice that we Americans can make and be part of a global solution. With the help of graphic artist N. Vidia, I prepared posters and distributed them around our neighborhood:
Gemini (“you can help” makes this consistent with #climatechange and exhortations to recycle plastic), ChatGPT, Grok, Claude (“small but meaningful act” is a nice touch).
Because I am a terrible human being, I posted the above in various places on X. Most of those who responded did not process these are satire. Empty words and useless gestures have become so common among the righteous that it seems entirely believable that a group of American progressives would organize a campaign like the above.
Ruby Beach is the traditional headline attraction for this part of the park:
Due to the government’s refusal to charge market prices (see What if our National Parks charged Navajo prices?), the beach is crowded and the facilities, in this case outhouses without running water, are grossly undersized for the number of visitors. We were there well before peak season and look at the line:
The beach is dog-friendly, though!
Kids love the tide pools here:
Imaginatively named “Beach 4”, however, had a larger and sadder animal-related sight: two dead whales, one a baby humpback and one a young gray whale. A worker at Kalaloch Lodge blamed Donald Trump for the whales’ deaths. How did Trump kill the whales? By authorizing increased ground fishing, e.g., for halibut, which she said interfered somehow with the density of the food that these whales like to eat. ChatGPT:
What she has right: gray whales are bottom feeders. They eat seafloor invertebrates, including amphipods, by scooping/sucking sediment, and bottom-contact fishing gear can damage some seafloor habitats. NOAA describes gray whales as primarily bottom feeders eating benthic and epibenthic invertebrates such as amphipods.
Where the claim likely breaks down: the major NOAA explanation for the recent gray-whale starvation/mortality problem is not “more groundfishing,” but localized ecosystem changes affecting access to and quality of prey in the northern Bering and Chukchi seas. NOAA says those prey changes caused poor nutritional condition, more deaths during migration, and fewer calves.
The “Trump allowed more fishing” story that is in the news mostly concerns opening Pacific remote island marine monument waters to commercial fishing, far southwest of Hawaii, and a broader deregulatory push. That area/policy is not the northern Bering/Chukchi gray-whale feeding ground, nor the Olympic coast. A federal judge later blocked the Pacific monument rollback, according to 2025 reporting.
Also, the key Alaska/Bering Sea bottom-trawl habitat regime was not newly created by Trump. The North Pacific Fishery Management Council says Bering Sea measures adopted in 2007 and implemented in 2008 “froze the footprint” of bottom trawling and created major trawl-closure areas, including around St. Matthew Island, St. Lawrence Island, and Nunivak/Etolin/Kuskokwim Bay. On the West Coast, NOAA says the groundfish plan has long included habitat protections, including more than 100,000 square miles closed to bottom trawling or all bottom-contacting gears since the 2006 Amendment 19 action.
Regardless of who killed them, the poor animals ended up as backdrops for tourist phone images:
(If Greta Thunberg were still interested in climate change, rather than Gaza, she might be interested to learn that ChatGPT says “Arctic warming → less/changed sea ice → less high-quality bottom-dwelling prey for gray whales → malnutrition during migration” is a plausible explanation.)
This beach also has some great tide pools:
Our base was a cabin in the Kalaloch Lodge, somewhat rustic but the having a kitchen was awesome. Be sure to stock way up on groceries before heading here, though, because the on-site store has a limited selection. The restaurant is reasonably good, but all of these remote places struggle with the fact that the American workforce no longer contains a significant number of people willing to travel to a seasonal job, even if that job is in the middle of a world-class national park.
The weather, mid-50s in early June, was perfect for this Pitbull of the Oberland (Bernese Mountain Dog):
The woods on the other side of the road have some hiking trails.
Adult bathhouses are community spaces that were historically frequented by gay men in the 1970s and ‘80s where people could engage in sexual activity or relax after going out to bars. They were banned in Minneapolis in 1988 during the AIDS epidemic.
The ban was for public health reasons due to a mistaken association between men having sex with 50 new male friends and contracting HIV/coming down with AIDS. Thanks to Science, the ban has been repealed.
In order to protect public health, a member of the 2SLGBTQQIA+ community cannot legally bring a poodle-in-a-bag into a restaurant.
What does Science say about whether a toy-poodle-in-a-bag can be brought into a bathhouse? Is that a risk to public health?
Let’s ask AI to tell us what the financial stakes have been. Asked “What has been the total cost of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, over all of the years since it started, to the U.S. taxpayer in 2026 dollars?” ChatGPT answers:
A reasonable order-of-magnitude answer is about $1.25–$1.3 trillion in 2026 dollars in federal taxpayer spending from FY1981 through FY2026. … A rough allowance for state Medicaid shares and other nonfederal public spending would likely push the total to around $1.35–$1.45 trillion in 2026 dollars
Grok:
Roughly $1 trillion or more in nominal (unadjusted) dollars through ~2025/2026, likely $1.2–1.5+ trillion when adjusted to 2026 dollars. … This is direct government spending; it excludes private insurance, out-of-pocket, lost productivity, or indirect economic impacts (some older studies estimated broader burdens in the tens to hundreds of billions for specific periods). … Exact figures require summing detailed yearly tables from KFF/CRS/HHS (available in their reports), but the scale is clearly in the trillions when fully adjusted and projected.
I don’t see how the inflation adjustment can be correct. If $1 trillion nominal has been spent starting in the 1980s then the 2026 dollar figure should be higher. Spending $1 in 1981 is equivalent to spending $3.85 today (offiial CPI).
