>The biggest black spot in Western Massachusetts is actually the Quabbin Reservoir

Yes, though there are also lots of large parcels that haven't been inhabited in a century or twp and many of which are now preserved - it was pretty much all farmed at one point, but now only the rich river floodplains and select hilltops are, so there are huge tracts of more difficult terrain that's regrown woods with only old foundations and stone walls. And trails. Lots of trails.

>It's not an issue with electricity it's an issue with the bikes being in close proximity to each other

You could design to handle that in the sense of preventing one burning from putting adjacent ones in thermal runaway.

Of the places to charge these things, an outdoor location dedicated to that purpose would by far be the best, even if there are a bunch of them there.

>The photo is a bit exaggerated, but to be fair most drivers go out of their way not to see any cyclists queued up when they want to make a turn through the bike lane.

Which suggests that having a queue there is probably not a good idea to begin with.

It would make more sense to have the cyclists in a bunch that can clear out quickly and then make vehicular turns possible.

The objection to having bikes in a bunch would be that cars can't pass them, but at busy hours passing cars only get momentarily ahead anyway - even with care to keep filtering past stopped traffic appropriately slow and careful, net progress on a bike can approach twice that of a car, so the few rounds of leapfrogging before the car is left permanently behind is only needless churn and repetition of a slight, but non-zero risk that can eventually add up to an incident.

Probably it would all be smoother if everything just moved at bike speed during busy hours, and passing bikes was something that drivers only tried to do at hours when the lights weren't causing car backups.

>This means that passing is common. Passing today requires entering the vehicle lane
>
>Passing on a divided bike lane can be pretty inconvenient. For anyone that goes, try to scrutinize this part of the design.

Exactly. Physically confining cyclists is a win for drivers, but bad for cyclists.

Build this, and you'll probably see lots of folks opting for the car lane instead - which is fully legal in Massachusetts, and quite appropriate at the volume of usage depicted in that picture.

An actually useful bike lane is space that we can use when being passed by cars at the hours where that's actually possible, and space that we can leave when that's what is required.

Plus confining cyclists to a fixed, second class space fails to match the desire to use subsidies to get people who would not currently bike onto an e-bike - e-bikes break the idea that bikes have different needs from cars, as they put even less-athletic folks in that uncanny valley between cherished beliefs of distinction that were never true to begin with.

And that's even before getting into the intersection conflicts...

As others have explained it's based on the original price degraded by age.

But the age table stops at 10% for five years and older.

Both of your vehicles are are over 5 years old, so you're really just seeing the difference in their original list prices

Perhaps that things level off after 5 years seems unfair. On the other hand, we could ask what the value of the vehicle should have to do with the tax amount at all. It might make more sense to base the taxes on the impact of the vehicle, at which point older is perhaps actually have more impact than newer.

It may be simplest to look at the value is being used as a proxy for ability to pay and the reduction is capped so that everyone ends up paying something.

Like most tax policies, it's imperfect in many ways - but good luck getting agreement to move to a different imperfection.

>Could they make this shit any more confusing?

What they're doing, which is treating it like any other tax refund, actually is the simple thing, since it's just applying all the ordinary rules, the way most people assumed they would.

OK, those ordinary rules are complicated (but only if you itemize, which most don't)

But this particular refund check not being "special" compared to other refund checks is the simple thing.

Want to argue it shouldn't be taxable at all? Well, that wouldn't go over too well, because it actually is a refund of taxes paid, and for a handful of people it is very large refund - which is to say money they've never paid federal taxes on. So if you were going to make it not taxable for little people, but still taxable for the handful who got big checks, then you have to go make it complicated again by writing new limit or phaseout rules.

That's why ruling it should be treated like any other refund check is the simplest thing that could have actually worked.

>I know it’s a hot take but neither Springfield or West Springfield have a real waterfront district

When I think about it, I'm struggling to think of anywhere on the CT river that has much of a waterfront district. Maybe Holyoke where it's been heavily engineered?

May be because it's a silty, shallow river that's not really navigable.

Hartford has parks by the river, but they regularly flood.

In the pioneer valley it's just farmland (much of it restricting access) and out of the way boating.

Turners falls has on park above the dam and decaying industry and path along the canal below

Brattleboro has maybe one restaurant with a deck overlooking it but other than that it's rail yards and lumber, on the NH side it's just abandoned rails/trail with Hinsdale on a bluff far away and above.

Historically being skipped by the railroad meant the commercial death of a city, people (especially in the cities that won the railroads) likely assumed the same would be true of the interstates.

Turned out of course to be more the opposite - you want good access to one, but to NOT have it going right through the city chopping it up.

> I make just a tad too much to get any help through the Health Connector. Outside of my mortgage, it's my biggest expense.

it may be worth the extra time when you do your taxes to verify that you didn't end up actually qualifying for an after-the-fact premium tax credit, even if you didn't quality for assistance ahead.

>What was the logic that the state decided to use pre-tax and not post tax salary?

Just about every tax-related rule is (ultimately) based on your adjusted gross income, not your "post tax" income

So for example, you pay federal taxes on the money witheld or that you're going to have to send in to use to pay those very taxes

You qualify for various refundable and non-refundable credits based on your AGI

In the year-end version, this is, too - MA may be using raw income for advance (montly) subsidy calculation but at the end of the year you can calculate if you're due additional reimbursement from the IRS, and that's based on your AGI relatively to the federal poverty level (up to several times it)

Your real beef should be with this employer that's only offering a sub-standard plan.

It's worth looking into if they they could file an amended return for a previous year including such forms, but I'm not a tax expert; I just do my best to stay on top of my own stuff, which so far has been about actual independent consulting rather than needing to push back about an ordinary job mischaracterized as a contracting relationship - which is to say I know those forms exist but hope to never be filing them.

No way a "gas station stocker" is an "independent contractor"

They should file forms SS-8 and 8919 to dump this back on the misclassifying employer

https://www.irs.gov/forms-pubs/about-form-8919

As an actual independent contractor (who exercises actual control over the time, manner, equipment, techniques, etc of my highly specialized client services), this stuff grinds my gears - not only because such grotesque abuses cheat powerless unspecialized workers, but also because they trigger reactions which make it harder for those of us who are truly independent and enjoying the benefits thereof to stay in business.

Her: hey let's meet at the bean

Him: the where?

Her: [block user]

>Yes people definitely weigh as much as cars and trains and horses

It's not intuitive, but a shoulder to shoulder crowd of people actually does weigh more than a bumper to bumper traffic jam

Pedestrian bridges are calculated for a loading of around 90 pounds per square foot, basically a person occupying 2 square feet (for comparison elevator capacity is typically 2.3 square feet per person). And having watched from a window high above as people crowded onto a bit of the FDR closed for the fireworks, people really will pack in like that at times.

A typical compact car might be 15 feet long, closest you're going to pack them is 16 feet each. The kicker is that they're still taking up the full lane width of 10 feet.

So basically a car occupies 10*16 = 160 square feet of roadway.

Using the pedestrian loading standard, 160 feet would be a load of 14400 pounds.

But a fully loaded compact car has a gross weight of no more than 4000-5000 pounds - well less than half as much, closer to a third. Some vehicles weigh more, but not as much per area as you might think, and the extreme cases have their own rules with regard to bridges.

Even if you ignore the lanes and pack the cars in side by side, they still have less weight than the load factors used when designing for people.

Trains you say? The trains that ran on the Brooklyn Bridge were lightweights compared to today.

>This is why I don't go to the mall.

I won't deny that I felt lucky that I managed to get my twice a year desire to visit the Hampshire Mall out of my system a week previous.

But the reality is that there's more danger in driving to the mall than in being there - road fatalities in MA are twice as common as homicides, and the majority of homicide victims were (even if through no fault of their own) parties to an existing conflict - death as an uninvolved homicide victim like this is horrifying in its violence and randomness, but extremely rare in the scope of risks we face in our everyday lives.

We should absolutely not accept shootings or other homicides at any rate.

But driving carefully and defensively makes more practical difference than refusing to do ordinary things would.

>And now seeing this just puts my fear and worry into reality.

We absolutely should not accept things like this happening.

But in terms of managing fear it's useful to keep two things in mind:

1. Road fatalities in Massachusetts are twice as common as homicides; you're more likely to be killed on the way to the mall than once there
2. Homicides in Massachusetts are less than half the national average

And those numbers are looking at homicides overall, which are dominated by situations where there is an existing and known (even if one-sided) conflict between the parties. A bystander being killed is shocking and horrifying, but it is also even less common - the rate of "random" homicides is really very very low in terms of the risks we face when going about our lives.

>Is that the famous Ox Bow?

No. More exactly, it is "an" oxbow, but not "the" oxbow of the area.

In the right kind of soil situations rivers do this - once there's the slightest hint of a bend (and when isn't there?), the water at the outside has to flow faster and so scours more and increases the bend creating a "meander" which can eventually become an "oxbow".

"the" oxbow was like this, but one day in 1840 with people watching the river cut right through the narrow part forming a new channel. Today that oxbow is only really connected at the southern end and is essentially a lake rather than part of the river, and so not an oxbow. (the several times diverted Mill River does drain into it though)

Left to its own devices this one would eventually do that too; though it may not be left to its own devices. If you look at the area overall, Mount Tom, Mount Holyoke, Sugarloaf, Mount Warner and Mount Toby etc are confining. But where exactly the river cuts through all that rich silty floodplain farmland has been variable over geological and even historic time.

>Your right I should have used the term illegal aliens thanks

No, the people this article is about are present legally to await their hearings.

Since you have no idea what you're talking about, further debate would be pointless.

>Over a million people crossed the border illegally last year is that ok?

The people in question did not enter illegally.

They are asylum applicants who made themselves known to and were recorded by the federal government at the border, and then were released to await their hearings in accordance with law.

That is literally how asylum law works - a law which they are following, but an aspect of law you are demonstrating complete ignorance of.

>Agreed we need to prevent them from entering the country unless they follow the property procedure.

You overlook that following the proper procedure is exactly what the people in question have done.

They are asylum applicants who have been paroled in accordance with law to await their hearings.

These are not "illegal imigrants" trying to hide out of sight but persons known to and recorded by the federal government who are legally present while awaiting their legal hearings.

The numbers are indeed an issue. But making false statements (intentionally or ignorantly) about their status does not help the discussion in the slightest.

>Some mattress companies if you buy from them will take your old one for free.

Not everyone getting rid of a mattress is replacing it though - some are moving and/or downsizing and don't need as many mattresses at the destination.

Proper manufacturer responsibility links to the origin, not the purchase of a replacement

>It's all parks of the NYC parks green acres.

Wrong

> Central Park is entirely different due to it's size but no normal Nyer would be there after dark.

Wrong again, tons of ordinary people there in the evening

So now that you've proven you have no clue what you're talking about, goodbye.

>All of NYC parks are operated by the Parks Department and closes at Dusk.

You have no idea what you're talking about.

See parks' own website

Central Park famously closes at 1am.

And yes, you can get a ticket if you're there - after that, not before.

>Judge said something along the lines of unless signs say otherwise, public parks close at dusk.

Judge was making stuff up likely based on memories of their own teenage years

That's why you go to court prepared with documented facts

Of course, it's possible that the particular park you were in actually did close at dusk.

>parks are supposed to close when the sun goes doen so that's probably why

That's common in the suburbs, but not in the city.

Many of NYC's parks are open until 10pm or 1am; 9pm for playgrounds though it does vary on a case by case basis - check out the park's department's own website.

I do suspect not wanting people there after dark may indeed be a factor.

But it is not correct in general to say that NYC parks close at dusk - unlike the suburbs, most really don't.