when are we going to get a meta thread? to say it's LONG overdue since the last one would be an understatement.

> Massive L. This is horrifying.

hopefully they keep appealing and bring this up to federal courts, but it sounds like they're content calling it a day since the mandates have been thrown in the trash where they belong so they don't care anymore.

> Try again: https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/fda-approves-first-covid-19-vaccine

FTA: >For Immediate Release: August 23, 2021

considering the mandate was announced on august 16, 2021, he was right that the mandate preceded the approval. no amount of thought police removing posts changes that.

> Of course she does. Employers have ALWAYS had the right to require vaccinations

they ALWAYS had the right to impose new, arbitrary mandates as a term of employment without negotiating it into the labor contracts of union workers?

this is a massive powergrab that the court just rubberstamped.

> It isn't the union's job to do what is right. > > > > It is the union's job to advocate for the rights of the members of the union.

right, just look at the famous teacher's union quote "When school children start paying union dues, that’s when I’ll start representing the interests of children".

of course everyone knows what they REALLY care about is the union leaders rather than the rank and file.

> Article makes it sound like the Jeep driver pulled out of the parking lot and killed this guy.

yeah, not familiar with the area, but the article definitely SOUNDS like it was the jeep's fault. mentions the motor cycle was on the road going one direction, then the jeep came out of a parking lot and tried to go the other direction.

unless there's something not mentioned in the article like the bike running a stop sign/red light, fault looks pretty clear cut.

> This bot needs some tuning…

still better than the automod here.

go for it. there's pictures in the article of him in the capitol building. you can't do that.

so it's been a few years so no clue if these places are still there/good, but laser craze in woburn was pretty good. my all time favorite place in the area was space center in hooksett nh.

have you looked into elks lodges / sons of italy / etc.? they're kind of a mixed bag with a lot of variance from city to city.

some of them are really nice, others not so much. (i've been to A LOT of these venues for wrestling, but not anything in/near canton).

you might also be able to get an event room at a hotel. (no idea what the rates are for stuff like that, but the shows i've been to at hotels like mariot burlington were definitely nicer than the elks/soi)

so the guy hasn't even started yet and we're already making excuses for why nothing will get fixed?

> Hot dog rolls open at the top...

where else would they open? who sideloads a cylindrical object? opening at the top gives it walls so it doesn't roll out.

> But the public transit in this city is still one of the best in any North American city..

small sample size, but it's by far the worst of all the public transit systems i've used. (boston, los angeles, nyc/nj, dc/nova, miami as far as usa goes, then internationally just japan)

> The occasional live show or convention still requires masking, even if the venue does not.

and even those are becoming less and less as sanity returns. anime boston dropped their mandate (and while further away, so did otakon)

before those conventions were relying on the excuse of "what if the city re-imposes mandates", but it's hard to push that narrative when there hasn't been one in over a year.

check their websites for specific info, but at this point everyplace is "do whatever makes you comfortable. wear it or don't".

places with mandates in 2023 are the fringe exception and not the norm.

i mean, have you looked at the posts in this sub about the t?

spoiler: it sucks.

keep that car.

there was someplace i went to last year near the BCEC that was ok. i can't remember exactly which restaurant it was, but i THINK it might have been boardwalk pizza on d street.

(pax is the only time i'm in seaport, and pax sucked so bad last year i didn't bother this year)

fire & ice

that a former governor banned happy hours, and still has so much influence in state level politics that the legislature won't repeal it decades after the fact.

also, that billerica, haverhill, worcester, leominster, dedham are pronounced billerica, haverhill, worcester, leominster, and dedham.

so as we hear about these shortages and see crime rising, how many police officers are no longer at their job as a result of the vaccine mandates? (talking both terminations AND people who simply quit rather than be fired, and am also talking boston city level and mass state police level)?

additionally, are there any numbers for if there are any applicants that the city/state refuse to hire over vaccination status?

> The programs are a joke, in my town the figures needed to qualify for the program are basically poverty wages and they also check your bank accounts. Oh you make above the threshold and have ok not great savings which means you don’t qualify at all, good luck to the middle class in this state.

and now with high interest rates, it's even worse.

like, one of the ones i was looking into last year the income threshold was like 98k, and the savings cap was like 75k (which again, includes any funds being used towards a down payment) plus the usual debt-to-income limit of 50%.

with interest rates where they are, exactly what house in massachusetts is anyone going to be able to buy with a < $98k/year income and a down payment < $75k? (and that's assuming they put literally EVERY dollar they have into their down payment,not even keeping cash on hand for daily expenses/routine bills)

your lender should be able to tell you more about the various programs.

as someone who went through all that stuff kind of recently though, expect to be disappointed. lots of the programs have income limits and "assets on hand" limits that are completely out of line with what houses cost in mass (especially since these limits don't exempt your down payment).

you end up in a situation where the downpayment needed to make the DTI ratios work for an income under their cap will disqualify you for having too much cash available.

maybe the programs work in other parts of the country, but they suck here.

i know when i was looking in boston in 2019/early 2020 (IT), everything i saw in boston was full on site with no remote option.

that commute was a total deal breaker (especially in an industry that realistically should be AT LEAST 50% wfh).

good luck! hope everything works out.

> Physical. Feels like I actually own the game.

it's not just feels, it's reals.

people think they own their digital content until they don't. even outside of service shutdowns, people can find that they lost their entire account due to a ban (which isn't even necessarily from doing anything wrong)

like, in that paypal example those people probably got sorted out eventually, but who knows how long it took. there are also cases where accounts get hacked and there's plenty of reports of sony not being willing to reverse fraudulently made transactions on people's accounts in these cases, which leaves people with the choice of "eat the charges, or do a chargeback and get banned".

a physical disc will ALWAYS work. it can't be revoked, and it doesn't care if sony/ms/nintendo shut down their servers.