it is actually questionable whether ethanol is actually better. it takes a lot of energy to produce and transport. some studies actually have it being worse than gasoline.

interesting. most people are very disconnected from their food source. the idea of killing, skinning, and eating something is weird to them, then they eat some meat from the grocery store and never think about the fact that the meat once had skin.

it is funny to watch the evolution of false information gradually change over the course of months.

they probably do mean OSB, but OSB is NOT equivalent to plywood, especially not in this application.

>The idea that the city needs to be the center of attention is wrong

spoken like a true boomer. if you look around the world at the locations where the planning is optimal, they focus on the city center first. this is not disputable, but for some reason boomers can't understand that things like density, or location of services, matter when it comes to transit.

>Lastly I think forming new "towns" or settlements, in the surrounding counties, are easier to insert good public transit than trying to re-fit extant urbanized areas

not even remotely true. if you're talking purely about building the transit line, then sure. but if you're talking about the number of people served by the line per dollar, then you're not even close to correct. moreover, your claim would only be true if tax/subsidy structure was such that new development was forced to either be along existing lines or to build new connections and not be spread-out mono-zoning.

you couldn't be further from correct on all measures. your way of thinking is why transit in the US is broken and why cities are not livable and are choked with car traffic.

all of our transit, then and now with the red line, is "boomer transit" designed to connect suburbs to a city, which just takes at face value the argument that everyone should live in suburbs and work in cities. the result of that attitude is why our city, like many in the US, has a problem with livability. we have county people choking traffic in the city with their daily commutes and somehow we keep kowtowing to the needs of non-city residents to the detriment of city residents.

transit should connect adequately within a city before it reaches out to the suburbs. our light rail is 30mi long. it would be far better to have 6 separate 5mi long lines blanketing the city, with bus routes feeding people into those light rail lines.

or more importantly, we have to reassess whether light rail even makes sense in the US. grade separation is the difference between functional and dysfunctional transit. you can look at every light rail line in the US and rank them best-to-worst and you'll find that the better they are, the more time they spend grade-separated. at-grade light rail is always shit in every US city because the US gives cars (often from the county) priority over everything else. a light rail could work well if we did like other countries do and have the lights automatically synch perfectly with the light rail (well, AND if transit agencies like MTA could hire and retain train drivers)

100 units would add less than 1% to the population.

Station North Tool Library

the better question is whether or not they are effective. it's hard to measure.

most catholic churches in cities actively support immigrants. church charities tend to reflect the values of their community because a church is a bunch of people getting together. if the clergy does not do what the members of the church like, the church will close.

you're such a fucking asshole while being so obviously wrong. why? just to troll? I don't get it. if you lived in mt vernon, you should know that the majority of houses are brick, even though it is one of the neighborhoods with the highest concentration of brownstones (link). same with res hill. that's why I had to ask whether you knew what a brownstone was.

you're such an asshole while being so incredibly wrong. yes, there exist brownstones, but they are a minority of houses in the neighborhoods where they exist, and most neighborhoods have none at all.

how many brownstones are there in sandtown? how many in westport? how many in highlandtown?

tell me which neighborhood has the most brownstones? mt Vernon is still mostly brick. Bolton hill is still mostly brick. reservoir hill is still mostly brick. the neighborhoods around druid hill park are mostly brick. maybe you should actually visit a neighborhood and not just drive the main thoroughfare where the brownstones are.

1. what are you defining as a brownstone?
2. what percentage of baltimore rowhouses do you think are brownstones?

not sure why someone downvoted you. maybe they misread it. anyway, yes, a brownstone is a type of rowhouse and there aren't very many in baltimore.

I think Rowhouse is the most common. someone might have said brownstone, but that's not very accurate for most baltimore houses.

how many city vehicles? which city vehicles? are the city vehicles patrolling a set pattern? putting them on city vehicles is great for finding abandoned stolen vehicles, but you need a defined pattern in order to catch someone like shown above.

but I agree that is only one piece of the puzzle, you also have to get the police to take action.

in addition to my previous comment, I would like to say that if a house starts out livable (some basic heat, some basic running water, and a roof), then the cost of fixing it up can be a lot lower because a homeowner can live there and fix it up themselves gradually. you can get away with a lot of non-permitted renovations when you live there and do it gradually. if you hire a crew to come in and gut it, you will get shut down if you try to re-plumb, re-wire, etc. a house without a permit. but if you want to re-run the electrical to a room in your own house on the weekends, nobody is going to know or care.

so, if you're not making much money, you can get a cheap place that is minimally livable and gradually fix it up for probably half the cost of doing a full gut, though you probably won't get as much resale value out of it because it will still look old, even if you have replaced the plumbing and such.

>would be if the work got done

the "if" is the key there. look at a neighborhood where people have gutted and rehabbed a house with private money. the sale price of such a house is roughly the cost to rehab it plus the initial purchase price (sometimes it makes a profit, sometimes it's a loss).

in neighborhoods where the sale price is below the rehab price, you see such houses either being done through a charity, or people losing money on the sale (high foreclosure rate of rehabbed houses).

it's about $150k. just look at that house ($10k ish) and look at what a fixed-up one sells for in the same neighborhood. that will tell you what costs.

the process is a mess of paperwork.

for sure, I didn't even notice they were trying to turn across me until it was too late. I have an inclination to tell people when they're wrong, but I'm not trying to get shot so I usually just avoid problems.

I use a Tile. I hide it in my car where nobody would find it. I also keep one on my keys, one in my bag when I travel. knowing where your stuff is is fantastic.

the problem is that we have an incredibly low rate of actually catching such people. Scott's crime plan called for a lot more license plate scanners so this bullshit could be shut down, but Scott as been a complete failure so far.

yeah, I had someone get out of their car to yell at me for crossing in crosswalk with a "walk" light illuminated. they genuinely thought that traffic turning left always had the right of way over pedestrians, and it upset them so much that they were wrong that they felt it necessary to stop, get out, and yell at me.

people think other places have bad drivers because they see aggressive driving as bad driving. I have to explain to people that Baltimore is on a whole other level of bad driving where it is aggressive, impatient, crazy, AND incredibly unskilled.

reminder to everyone to get a dashcam. nobody should be driving in this city without one

also, get a tile or an airtag with the speaker removed. they cost like $20 and you will be able to track your car for 1+ years on a single battery, and the Tile Pro has a replaceable battery, anywhere it goes in case it is stolen. no subscription, nobody else can track it.

remember when candidate-Scott promised more license plate scanners so that we could catch carjackers, shooters, etc.? pepperidge farm remembers....