> FITN has its benefits for the state.

Certainly.

With that said, am I supposed to support NH being first every year...."because we said so"? I don't really see why we should be perpetually special even if it is beneficial to the state.

Something can be good for the state and also not really make any sense in terms of fairness.

> back around 1970

Yeah, and it's not 1970 now. Appearances, and average behaviors of people who look a certain way (or like a certain thing), have changed slightly. Another fun one - ~43% of millennials have at least 1 tattoo vs 13% for baby boomers.

> The guy in the picture is not what I'd call "dressed for success".

Well no, he looks pretty poorly groomed even for his style. Of course, I'd wager being in a fight and the jailhouse photographer aren't catching anyone on their good days, either.

As for the general hairstyle sort of thing - plenty of the professional class looks like that today, that wouldn't stand out at all in the average tech company, and those guys are pulling down $200-400k comp much of the time.

> Answer this: You think the guy in the picture will look like that when he goes to court or if his case goes to trial? Of course not! His lawyer will make sure he's dressed in at least a jacket and tie. Probably have to pick it out for him. No green hair either.

Sure. Some areas of the world change slower than others, and law loves it's traditions, procedures, and symbols - and the intelligent person in a courtroom plays the part when in one.

I go to a lot of concerts, used to work some too.

You know the crowd you typically don't have a problem with? Metal fans. 10,000 "scary-looking" people that make that guy look mild for appearance, and nearly all of them will behave just fine.

Meanwhile, you have some show that gets the buttoned-up middle age suburbanite out like a contemporary/pop country act or classic rock acts, and it'll be a shitshow from before the doors even open. Police/security will barely be able to keep up with the number of people needing to be thrown out or arrested.

It's not anything to do with political correctness or "wokeness", it's simply that if that sort of appearance was ever much of an indication of average behavior, it certainly isn't these days. (this guy excepted, clearly).

I think there's two questions:

• Are for-profit utilities a good thing - Probably not, especially as many currently function. At minimum, they need tighter regulation or better market design/structure.

• Are the things you're holding up as examples a significant part of the increase in your utility costs this year - Nope.

The latter is basically my objection to your framing.

> need to pay $644M of dividends to shareholders with our money for three quarters in 2022

Their dividend last year was $0.6025/share, this year it's $0.6325/share. I'll also note that dividend payments are a big part of the market appeal of a utility company - they're not and can't be high growth businesses. They're supposed to pay out a modest, steady profit to shareholders.

> give their CEO a 28% raise in one year?

It's not particularly clear to me that the CEO got a 28% raise. This indicates the previous guy made $19.8m in 2019. So has this guy received a 28% raise from last year or a 70% pay cut from the last guy?

Realistically, the answer is probably neither given how much of their pay is tied to stock grants/stock market performance, but it's why I find these kinds of metrics - especially on a year to year basis, dumb arguments.

> CPI is not directly linked to profit margins.

Percentages? No. Nominal dollar values of those profits? Yes, it pretty much is.

> "but they're just passing on the rates they're paying"

Yes, that's accurate, at least for the part of your bill that's seen a huge hike.

> reread the three bullet points I noted.

I've read them, I just don't think they're a very definitive representation.

For example, the difference in earnings between Q3 '22 and Q3 '21 appears not to be anything to do with actually increased earnings, it's just that they had $63m in fines in Q3 '21 that they didn't have in Q3 '22, revenues were almost the same.

Beyond that, the company has drastically changed size over the past few years. A far larger company should probably make more money.

> The top nine of these companies—whose fiscal calendars line up with the regular calendar—have seen their net incomes rise a total of nearly $250 million to over $13.8 billion in 2022’s first three quarters

So profits are up <2% this year? That's less than inflation. Doesn't seem like they're reaping any special profits this year. Sounds a lot like they're...not really the reason prices are skyrocketing.

I'm not saying they're great, altruistic firms, but they're largely not really responsible for your bills increasing either.

If you work in-person in MA and own in NH, you get to pay NH's high property taxes + MA income tax.

There's a number of things not called taxes but that basically function like one - high car registration fees, for example.

So if you're moving for financial reasons, make sure you've done the math to make sure it works for you - rather than just being attracted by a slightly lower rent or property price. It certainly does result in a lower CoL for some, but not all situations.

Beyond money....as of ~2012, 42% of NH was born in NH, 25% of NH was born in MA, 17% of NH was born in another Northeastern state, 17% was born elsewhere in the US or out of the country.

Anyone who claims that NH is particularly hostile to people from MA (or elsewhere) is lying to you.

That said, as with anywhere - don't move somewhere and then demand it conform to be exactly like the place you moved from. Sounds like that's not you.

> Department records suggest the five homicides reported this year and in 1960 could be the most ever, Acting Police Chief Jon Murad said in an email. Because the department's older records are incomplete, he said he couldn't be sure.

So pretty much the most since we started keeping accurate records.

Yeah, the entire rest of the city had....6 homicides, from a skim of that list.

Herter Park parking lot is big and has no curbs/light poles. Wouldn't recommend if you aren't legally allowed to be practicing, though. (have a license / have a learners permit + with a licensed driver).

Realistically, that's just pushing deck chairs around on the Titanic. The city can either build a fuckton more housing, or the city can cripple itself by pricing workers out of the area and coming up with increasingly absurd methods of trying to privilege certain groups of workers over others.

Beyond this, I'm not particularly convinced that someone living in West Roxbury has a better grasp of the issues facing East Boston than someone in Chelsea does.

I'd say the bills that result from it and the difficulty of finding a practitioner (especially one on your insurance if you don't have the $$$ for out of pocket/out of network) that's taking new patients are far larger obstacles for most.

Being involuntarily committed is/should be basically for if you're actively suicidal (or homicidal, I suppose). There's certainly cases where I can imagine it's a significant deterrent, but I also can't see a system where that isn't an available tool as reasonable either.

> As many people know, if you're involuntarily committed you lose your right to legally own a firearm,

I would generally suggest changing this to "with some kind of determination of illness by the institution" to at least reduce the chance that your rights are limited by just the opinions of one practitioner. If you got put on a 72hr hold and their opinion at the end of it is...."you're fine", that obviously shouldn't disqualify you.

I'd also prefer to see that have some kind of time-related sunset. If you were involuntarily committed once 20 years ago and have had no further interactions with the wrong side of the law/mental health interventions - I don't think that says much about your mental state now.

If you were involuntarily committed 6 months ago....you probably shouldn't be owning a firearm right now.

Where I do think gun control makes for a significant deterrent to accessing mental healthcare is in places that potentially put receiving any mental healthcare as a potential disqualifier for firearms ownership. NYC for example - requires disclosure of all mental healthcare received and medications, and is likely to try to refuse to issue a permit for any history.

It's not that zero airports are located out in the middle of nowhere, it's that the premise that it's the norm for airports to be out there is misleading at best.

I will admit that I had more of the North American context in mind, as other countries do land-use and planning in very different ways.

> Tokyo Narita?

Haneda does double the volume and is both very close to Tokyo's "center" and in an extremely urban setting.

No, you're misunderstanding the point.

Your graph is how far they are from the downtown of the largest urban center in their region. Not the population density of the area where they are.

You're entirely correct - most airports are not as close to the largest city center of the metro area as Boston's.

However, this doesn't mean that they aren't located in a dense urban area regardless.

For example, your graph says Newark Airport (EWR) is >10 miles from the city center of NYC. Sure, this is true.

However, it's located right next to two of the largest cities in NJ, Newark and Elizabeth, with the runways coming within 2 miles of both of their city centers, and high population densities to match.

Broadly, this is very similar to the environment of East Boston and the level of impact on the population, and certainly as much "within the heart of a city neighborhood" in terms of location as Logan is.

The same is true of NYC's other airports and my other examples.

Or more locally, Montreal tried this (Mirabel).

Failed so hard that it's no longer used for passenger service at all and half of it is now used for motorsports.

Realistically, it pretty much only works if you forcibly close the old airport (Stapleton/Denver), or if the old one is so limited that it really can't meet demand even if it stays in full operation (Midway/Chicago).

> Unlike most major airports, Logan remains located within the heart of a city neighborhood, which is still home to thousands of residents.

Except uh...many of them. They might be located further from downtown (or not), but many major airports are surrounded by heavily populated urban areas just like East Boston. Pretty sure if you go down the list of large hubs you'll wind up with more in that category than not. NYC, LA, Chicago, Miami, SF/Oakland, etc.

Places like Denver where it's really out in the middle of nowhere are rare, and even having it out in the low-density burbs isn't that common.

The MBTA looks to have....4 IT openings? None of which are in particularly low-level positions.

If they're just hiring temp/contract low-skill help for a project, I'd imagine they'd be using recruiters and staffing agencies like that, yes.

Yes. Was just referring to if you actually physically work in MA.

Do you work in MA? Because if you do, you're going to be still paying state income tax to MA.

And BDL/Hartford.

Which seems to be often not thought about by many, but has way better service than Manchester or Albany and is as close or closer than Boston....and with fewer traffic issues + cheap parking options.

Obviously, still not very close if you're actually up by Burlington.

Also often has pretty good Denver rates with 3 carriers running it direct out of there. (United, Frontier, Southwest).

Estimates vary, but most I can find peg the EV1's at $80k+ in production cost per car, which would be more like ~$150k+ today.

Are you going to pay for $150k for an early Nissan Leaf with even worse battery longevity? Probably not.

Now, you can argue that the cost would have come down somewhat further with bigger production scales, but it's still quite far from where it needed to be for what they had to offer.

That's probably more a Massport question than a MBTA one.

It's been tossed around as an idea and in some studies but as of now it's not something that has any serious plans to happen.

• Fixed-guideway services can run in a narrower right of way (or tunnel) at higher speeds without crashing.

• Capacity/bunching - A bunch of separate smaller vehicles is much worse. Passengers don't/can't distribute themselves efficiently and leads to heavy delays and varying loads between cars. This is part of why the Green Line is going to much longer vehicles on the Type 10's.

• A broken down bus in a narrow tunnel/right of way isn't really any easier to remove.

• You still can only get to it from the ends of that tunnel/corridor, so it's not like it can just pull over out of the way or have others go around it.

• A bus long enough to handle the capacity loads of a train, is not a bus that's going to be easy to just remove via city streets.

• If anything it's probably harder, because you still need to steer it.

• Operational costs - More operators needed. If you think full automation is possible, you're still talking a lot of duplication of guidance systems/sensors with more lower capacity vehicles.

And if you try to solve all those problems while not running "on" rails - your concept will eventually just turn into a rubber-tire metro, like you see in Montreal. They work fine and have some pros/cons, but there's nothing about them that's easier in the senses you're talking about.

Eh, it's not exactly a very fairly written piece.

For example:

Describing the area of Lincoln St/Brighton that was affected as some kind of thriving neighborhood is.....roughly equivalent to describing Mass & Cass as home to lots of independent entrepreneurs. It was primarily slaughterhouses, stockyards, and industry. There were a handful of non-industrial properties at each end of Lincoln St that got taken out.

There's probably few places less pleasant in the country to be than Lincoln St in the early 1950s unless you had no sense of smell or sight.

The claim that the Pike somehow divided North Allston from South Allston also seems....questionable at best, as it was just as divided pre-Pike. Exact same crossings, exact same placement. Actually, the ped bridge from Franklin, shitty as it is, I think amounts to a net increase of connectivity vs the pre-Pike condition. The "steep Cambridge St bridge" is one short flight of stairs/ramp at Mansfield/Lincoln as the only added obstacle from the pre-Pike condition.

I could go on.

There's certainly valid points in the article, but there's also a whole bunch of not very objective writing that I'd argue doesn't inform very well.

Uh, a lot of them. If your employer is large enough to offer benefits in general, it's probably going to have some kind of retirement account option.

Anyway, a 401k isn't money. It's just an account you can put money into with tax benefits for retirement. A worker at Walmart is unlikely to be able to save more than the IRA contribution limits, which is an account they could open on their own.

Google suggests Walmart will match up to 6%, which is decent but nothing exceptional. Regardless, that's basically the entirety of what their benefit amounts to.

If you make $15/hr, and save 6% to max out the match, with Walmart's match it's like you make....$15.90. Not exactly earthshaking.