HN user
Agreed.
Massachusetts has a nice page about the Eastern Pearlshell.
https://www.mass.gov/info-details/eastern-pearlshell
In the town of Sandisfield MA, I've found live mussels in the Clam River - which was named due mistakenly identity.
Beautiful sim. Looks like red oak. As someone who has split a lot of wood, wish it could incorporate more of the struggles of splitting logs.
- missing your spot by 6” or more and creating a tiny shard that goes flying - the log you’re aiming at falling as you are in your backswing - getting your maul stuck halfway down the split
What about when you’re splitting a log with a branch and the maul bounces straight back up? Lol
I've been thinking about using an app like this to count parking spaces in a city!
Thank you
I think this is blissfully ignorant. Walmart's model is built on creating prices and selection that are so attractive that it is very difficult to compete. Part of the way they do that is by extracting profits out and leaving only low paid employees locally.
Way more. First, a small business is not just a "family". Their employees are other members in the community. And there's the cascading effect because those folks are using their pay to go to local restaurants, the bowling alley, the hairdressers. When business like WM push prices down and make it so other businesses aren't able to compete, all you get locally is the ~minimum wage salary and the tax revenue. This might be "more efficient", but it comes at a cost to community.
From the comments here, I don’t think people understand how much small retail supports an entire local economy.
With big retail, you get the smallest possible wages and all the profit sucked out to somewhere else.
Finally a real world use case for bitcoin!
Capture the market by not making customers pay full costs => low profits.
Grow revenues without substantially increasing costs (i.e running a loss)
Hope you can turn up the profit dial later.
Seems like the modern way?
Google is not demanding that they censor their comment. Google is telling them that they won't serve ads on their page because of issues.
Funny complaint coming from a site called "Naked Capitalism".
I've been using Z-wave devices since 2017 for the following:
1. Dimmer lighting 2. Door sensors 3. Relays to customize radiant flooring better than thermostats 4. Seasonal lighting (outdoor string lights/Christmas tree) 5. Thermostat
Overall it's been a good experience, however I think the SmartThings app is a pain in the butt and should be a much better experience.
I converted my small (~1400 sqft) MA log cabin house at 1500' elevation to a heat pump as main heat source in 2017. We also added a 8kW PV system at the same time.
It was a great choice, and we've been net negative since installation.
We also get a lot of passive solar via low angle sun through large windows. I think passive solar in winter is a completely under-appreciated benefit. On sunny days in winter we do not need heat for ~10 hours of the day.
We supplement our heat with a wood stove in very cold weather (< 20ºF). It's not necessary, but brings a cozy warmth.
I've started to think about the current use of AI as trend in the 1990s that started moving unimportant goods to be "manufactured in China".
Quality doesn't matter -- money matters. And with AI you can save a lot of money without sacrificing a lot of quality.
No, not at all punishing for future crimes - just acknowledging issues and making sure they get attention to prevent them from getting worse. Local government has very little power to actually undo things that go wrong - it can often takes years, if it can happen at all. The time spent dealing with stupid shit that goes wrong is incredibly wasteful and means time and money is spent on that instead of actually moving the municipality forward. Therefore, the best medicine is equal and rigorous enforcement.
HOA is a whole different ballgame, not the same as zoning.
No, it's actually not at all about forcing people to live the way I (or the townsfolk) want to live, it's actually about making it so that the way you live your life is in harmony with the rules the municipality set. In Massaschusetts towns, zoning laws require a 2/3 vote at town meeting to be enacted - but I'm not sure how it works in MI.
It seems like you folks have never read zoning bylaws which a municipalities use to say what can and can't be done in certain areas. Believe it or not, city planning is incredibly important to ensure that a town can efficiently tax its inhabitants to fund the services that have become an expectation of normal life.
If you don't like your zoning laws, you should get involved in local politics and try to change the things you don't like.
In fact Long Lake Township has a 238 page document that lays this out.
https://longlaketownship.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/Zoni...
Having been a selectboard member in a small town in MA, I can put forth that rigorous enforcement of contracts, bylaws and laws is the best way to avoid issues spiraling out of control to becoming bigger costlier time-sucks affecting more and more people and wasting more of everybody's time.
With many people who push the boundaries, one thing often leads to another, which leads to more costly measures of getting violators back into compliance.
Yes, often the first violation doesn't seem too big, but those violations are often indications of more to come.
Commented on other reply first... please see there.
I haven't watched many of their YouTube, but I concur that Strong Towns knows what's up.
For anyone that doesn't know what a "stroad" is, I hope you look into it. You'll never see the world the same again.
I don't necessarily disagree.
But the issue has been that municipal taxes are a zero-sum game. People expect taxes to stay at a constant level unless they are getting additional services. So allocating more taxes in one place pulls taxes from another.
By not funding retirement immediately, you can keep taxes constant and not diminish current services.
But most importantly, the single-most-explanative reason why we services have gotten more expensive is because of this ignored tsunami of additional costs caused by the proliferation of the automobile.
State-mandated design and build engineering requirements
Underfunded pensions are a problem only because tax revenue must be spent on maintaining unsustainable infrastructure that was originally built on an expectation of never-ending growth.
If that infrastructure costs were not so high, there would be sufficient money to pay people what they deserved.
I come from Western Massachusetts, which is characterized by smaller populations and lower budgetary allocations. The most significant budget item in most municipalities here is education, followed by road maintenance, which is often extremely costly. In Massachusetts, the basic cost estimate for repaving a standard road is approximately $1 million per mile, and this investment typically only lasts about a decade before it requires another round of expensive repairs.
Bridges are even more financially burdensome. Recently, we replaced a culvert that was so small I could easily jump over it, and yet it set us back $700,000. Keep in mind; we're talking about a town with a population of around 1,000 people, and we have over 30 of these culverts and bridges scattered across our approximately 80 miles of road within a 55-square-mile area. If you're familiar with the region, you might even be able to pinpoint which town I'm referring to.
To add to the challenge, not only do we have to repave our roads every 7-10 years to prevent them from falling into disrepair, but we also have to maintain them for safety, plow them, and salt them for safe travel. Over the past three decades, the expectations for maintaining these infrastructures have significantly increased.
The problem lies in the way taxes are structured, which is based on the combined value of land and improvements (buildings). Particularly in smaller towns and cities, most people are trying to get the most affordable option. This approach encourages sprawl, resulting in substantial infrastructure construction and maintenance costs. In larger cities (unlike mine), the upkeep of water and sewer lines are another considerable addition.
In more suburban communities, we're witnessing the aging of infrastructure that was originally constructed during the early days of the automobile era. The cost of replacing this aging infrastructure is substantial, but growth expectations, which used to help fund these projects, are dwindling. Many people who moved a few miles outside the city center still expect the same level of services without understanding the financial implications. This situation places a significant strain on tax funds, leaving us with limited resources to invest in valuable critical community needs and values.
We now live in a small city in multi-unit building that has ~60 ft of road frontage, and is right in downtown. The building has 6 apartments so has considerable value. But our _infrastructure_ costs are tiny compared to those that live in suburbia. Why are we paying more taxes for helping the city be efficient?
MA GL says you have to tax everyone on their property value - so someone in a 250K house out in suburbia that costs the town huge amounts to maintain their roads, sewers and water, actually costs the town money -- while a downtown 6-unit $1.5M building next to others that use the same services, is a boon.
And what made that possible? The proliferation of the automobile.
We need our tax system to promote density - which means you can spend more tax money on things that matter.
(this has been edited in places by ChatGPT)
I've been thinking about local taxes a lot recently (I've been a locally elected selectman for a tiny town in MA) and realized that the automobile ruined the way we value land, which ultimate ruined the way that municipalities are able to control costs and spend their taxes to add value.
I'd write more, but only if someone responds to this.
I think this is a misunderstanding of the recommendation.
When you're just getting started on something new where the ROI is going to be minimal, it makes sense to not put a ton of effort on perfecting when you do not have a clear understanding what people want/need.
After you have a sense of what people are consuming, and therefore have some measure of an ROI, it may make sense to focus on repeating what worked.
If I am trying to contact a business...
You and I both, but it sure does seem that the majority of their calls/interactions are not this way. So many people can't search/discover content on their own.
I used to feel this way and would make everything linkable, but then I realized that modals are really good at preventing users from getting lost by adding context instead of swapping context.
For example, a user may want to edit a few items items in a list Rather than forcing the user to a new page to do each edit, you can pop up a modal and edit in place. With new pages, the user loses the context of the original list. The page swapping is very disruptive.
People are waking up to the fact that private car ownership does not scale because infrastructure for it is so expensive and there are severe negative impacts to society because of car proliferation.
Additionally the cost to own a newly acquired new or used car has substantially increased over the past few years.
edits: infrastructure, private
The key issue here is the difficult choice between:
a. Incorrectly and significantly disrupting people's lives by locking them up pre-trial when many cases up getting acquitted. This can often sink folk into much worse situations than they were before, creating an endless cycle
b. Potentially releasing some dangerous criminals back into society while they wait their trials
edit: to be clear, I think the likelihood * impact of false positives is way worse than the false negatives
Net metering is still very much available in MA.
Brownberger seems to miss the key fact that you can't run a gas heating system on renewable energy.
Just as in switching to an EV isn't going to make things significantly better, switching your heating to heat pump isn't either:
Some basic tips from a fellow Bay Stater:
1. Any new or replacement mechanicals should be use heat pumps (water heater too)
2. Make sure your house is well-insulated to get the best bang for the buck
3. The grid has the ability to use greener energy as time goes on, and you can also opt in to renewable suppliers (in MA, at least)
4. Add a solar array and with net metering it becomes a no brainer.