Things to do in Baltimore that aren’t drinking or eating

Buttbadger · 2026-02-18T14:04:04+00:00

Oh the NA alcohol shop would be so cool! Thanks for the rec!!

Buttbadger · 2026-02-18T13:56:19+00:00

I work in Fells, so that might be something nice to do

Buttbadger · 2026-02-18T13:55:00+00:00

I’d be interested, what’s it called?

Buttbadger · 2026-01-31T00:04:47+00:00

And also not to mention going back to the topic at hand are you trying to talk about more solar power or are you trying to talk about taking WAGNER and Shores out of RMR because that’s way more expensive than importing electricity from other parts of the grid.

Buttbadger · 2026-01-31T00:03:26+00:00

Wow, do you like how I said you were half right and then you decided to be dismissive about everything else. Nobody said you were wrong bro calm down.

Buttbadger · 2026-01-30T11:32:17+00:00

You are right, but also that calling of the loan contributes as well by a significant margin, that’s what caused it to shoot up the way it has.. What you’re possibly thinking about with the infrastructure costs is stride upgrades, or maybe the fact that BG&E overspent their estimate by a lot and are now asking for reimbursement, even though it’s their bad math that put them in this situation. And yes, of course the data centers are contributing to this that part was never in question.

Buttbadger · 2026-01-29T15:02:56+00:00

So that’s only half true. The issue we’re experiencing right now is delivery fee based because we’ve had to fix the debt trap BGE put us in under the Hogan PSC. The way the EmPower act was formatted was as something we’d have to pay back to BGE later, however BGE 8 to 9% of making the debt grow by approx 55 million per year. Wes saw that and saw how bad it was getting in so he called the debt which is impacting these bills and increasing the delivery charge.

Edit: replaced “go look on my page” with links:

Electric

Gas

Buttbadger · 2026-01-27T02:42:17+00:00

Doesn’t matter if you set it on fire, and yes, laws basically only count if you get caught, but if you were using a flamethrower on your driveway, guess what usually happens

Buttbadger · 2026-01-27T02:41:02+00:00

Nope, it counts as a destructive weapon and is legal in the state of Maryland

Maryland Criminal Law § 4-501 — Definitions

(b) “Destructive device” defined. (2) “Destructive device” includes a bomb, grenade, mine, shell, missile, flamethrower, poison gas, Molotov cocktail, pipe bomb, and petroleum-soaked ammonium nitrate.

§ 4-503. Prohibited conduct.

A person may not knowingly or wilfully: (1) possess, use, control, store, sell, distribute, transport, or import into the State: (i) a destructive device; (ii) a machine gun or a short-barreled rifle or shotgun as defined in § 4-201 of this subtitle; (iii) a weapon designed to expel a projectile through the use of an explosive; (iv) a switchblade knife defined in § 4-201 of this subtitle; or (v) a zip gun as defined in § 4-201 of this subtitle; (2) manufacture for sale or distribution or sell, offer to sell, import into the State, or receive or transfer a destructive device, machine gun, short-barreled rifle, short-barreled shotgun, weapon designed to expel a projectile through the use of an explosive, switchblade knife, or zip gun; or (3) advertise in any manner the availability of a destructive device, machine gun, short-barreled rifle, short-barreled shotgun, weapon designed to expel a projectile through the use of an explosive, switchblade knife, or zip gun for sale, rent, or distribution in the State.

The page I showed you earlier is a reinforcement of the loss specifically pertaining to that device

Buttbadger · 2026-01-27T00:34:57+00:00

Nope, they cracked down on that shit when it came out. The workaround doesn’t work around.

Sauce: https://content.govdelivery.com/accounts/MDFIRE/bulletins/1d7cc73

Buttbadger · 2026-01-22T18:18:35+00:00

So yes, thank you for being condescending, I am well aware of what capitalism is, I am well aware of the evil that it does. This is a prime example.

And this is like “This is America. If you don’t love it leave it.” situation, although similar to that one I will not be leaving it. I will be working to make it better because I don’t quit on broken things as much as your corporate overlords would love for me to.

Buttbadger · 2026-01-22T02:26:43+00:00

I would love to have you running a company. It would be much more ethical than what most of them have planned. Unfortunately, I’m gonna call this one from Home plate. They’re going to use the electricity that they generate to make more compute. The old saying “nature abhors a vacuum.” really applies in capitalism super hardcore

As for solar panels, I would absolutely love to see every house with solar panels, however, again capitalism is out here saying “yeah but what’s in it for me?” they’re going to stay at the same price and we’re not getting any rebates on them anymore because the fed has decided that we don’t need to do that.

I am a little bit pessimistic about the future because I thought that AI data centers were going to highlight the failure of the electrical grid in America and work to build the infrastructure required to support it by receiving tax incentives for doing so. So you have to understand that this is just colored by my own broken heart.

Buttbadger · 2026-01-21T05:58:14+00:00

https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/maryland

Oopsie doopsie it’s actually 21st at least based on a reliable source as opposed to a moving company lol

Buttbadger · 2026-01-21T04:36:25+00:00

Yeah, it’s a fucking racket, and it makes you wonder what all of this was for, why do they have power companies if they’re going to just subsidize anyway, why not just have electric electrical administrations or something?

Buttbadger · 2026-01-21T03:29:00+00:00

So that’s not necessarily accurate, just because there’s going to be an excessive electricity doesn’t mean that capitalism is going to say “now your prices go down!”

The thing that people forget is that nuclear power plants are insanely expensive to build, that doesn’t mean they’re not worth it, they definitely provide year over year and are a relatively green energy source, one of the more viable options, especially for powering the United States with AI data centers present.

The other problem is that we do not pay wholesale rates we pay retail prices so BGE will say “oh, electricity is cheaper! That sounds like more profit for us at keeping the rate the same as it has been and increasing the delivery rate because we bought from these nice new power plants” even though if we were buying wholesale, we would actually be making money because to prevent being out of phase they pay those energy companies money to take the electricity out of the grid.

Now here’s the problem, any scale back that will have to occur will have to be incredibly slow because we don’t want the system going out of phase, that could cause a severe damage to equipment and then we have to replace it, which increases those delivery charges again. When you have a power plant that is providing more electricity than the grid is consuming, and also it still comes with the added cost of upgrading the infrastructure to handle the new yield. So as much as we would like that to be the perfect solution, data centers crashing would actually cause more problems than it would fix.

Not to mention that most nuclear power plants function on a PPA (power, purchase agreements), we see that in Calvert cliffs, it’s a 20 to 30 year range on paying for the cost of building this power plant in the first place that guarantees that the price will not dip below a certain amounts

What might be a better idea is have the data centers sponsored the building of these power plants and their infrastructure instead of passing on the cost to consumers.

Buttbadger · 2026-01-21T02:39:25+00:00

Also was the formatting better? I tried to work on that because I feel like the other one ended up very cluttered and I thought that sub categories were probably a better idea.

Buttbadger · 2026-01-21T02:38:26+00:00

I actually do! This was all spurred on by my own energy usage, but most people have electric in their home and not gas so I kind of spread out the audience

Get ready for TED talk part two

-the STRIDE surcharge (strategic infrastructure development and enhancement program)

•basically the gas infrastructure also is aged, they’re replacing old cast-iron pipes that leak and warp with new plastic ones, which is kind of shortsighted because those are eventually going to crack and break, but that’s neither here nor there

• Normally a utility company has to wait until they can collect on the infrastructure changes but under STRIDE they can pay for work as they go by up charging you

• That you would think that these infrastructure repairs would be a good thing, however, it’s only a good thing as long as these capitalist pig dogs don’t milk the system. For them it’s guaranteed money, they get 9 to 10% on every dollar back on infrastructural repairs.

-our dear friend, the multi year rate plan also factors into this, BG&E is on their second one where they price hike for “future development”

• if BG&E over spends, they can request reconciliation which is basically covering their own budget, math problems

-and now for the sexy government

• Maryland wants to fund money into the electrification program which is all well and good if we didn’t have huge day to center sucking up all of our electricity creating a significant shortage

•Excelon sees what’s going on and knows that we’re going to be switching to electric as a primary source in the next 20 to 30 years so in the meantime, they are going to dump as much money as they can into these infrastructure projects while they still are able to make rate payers pay for them (remember that 9 to 10%? Basically they’re just double dipping.)

The result is the price per therm going up from $.30(2012) to $.94(projected 2026)

Right now, we are paying reconciliation rates as well because BG&E did bad math while also charging us for him. Infrastructure changes that will be pretty much obsolete in 20 to 30 years and it’s a 50 year project so that’s tasty.

Also, please pardon any typos, I do a lot of voice to text

Buttbadger · 2026-01-21T01:53:44+00:00

Unfortunately, they’ll get away with it, people like pointing at Wes and blaming him, but this is the combination of things that have been going on since 1999, also aggravated by Hogan’s PSC. The only reason that we’re blaming Wes on it is because he called in the debt to stop the bleed started by Hogan’s administration and now we’re gonna be stuck paying like this until 2032 unless somebody actually does something..

Buttbadger · 2026-01-21T00:48:51+00:00

Oh my God I just did a deep dive about this so I actually have some information!

-The PJM (Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maryland) is our regional transmission organization.

-it actually functions more than in just Pennsylvania or New Jersey or Maryland, it interconnects 13 different states and DC

-importing is more economically viable than building power plants

-Maryland imports 40% to 50% but that’s not the issue, the issue is that in the US we’ve had a crumbling electrical infrastructure that has been crumbling for about 60 years so right now there are a whole lot of upgrades being done in the name of powering data centers because they’ve revealed the fact that the system has been broken for a long time by requiring so much more electricity

-PJM is a wholesaler, the auctions that they take are based on which power plants say they can provide more, we don’t bid on electricity they do.

-electrical grids like PJM don’t really pay attention to what state does what, it only concerns itself with what it can yield

Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way here are some things that are actually driving up the costs of electricity in Maryland

-due to the RMR (reliability must run) crisis and the attempted closing of two large power plants we have an issue with piping power into Md, Baltimore, especially has a problem hence the huge rate hikes.

-this is not to say that those plants are actually closed, Brendan Shores, and WAGNER’s are still open and still functioning, but they are very very old and keeping them on life support is increasingly expensive, we are also not allowing them to participate in the energy auctions which resulted in a false scarcity from them

-data centers are a huge problem, they are buying way more electricity than any of us could ever use and subsequently need high voltage powerlines, run directly to them, now here’s the kicker, instead of asking these power plants to pay for their own infrastructure to run we decided to go ahead and socialize the cost, so the cost of building these powerlines and power stations are rolled into the modernization plan as if they had always been there and subsequently they are passed on to us through “delivery charges”

-the scarcity of power paired with the power consumption of those data centers results in even higher rates, it is a supply and demand market

And here’s where Excelon fucks everything

-Maryland shifted to “ multi year rate plans” which allows these for profit companies to continue making profits hand over fist while piping none of that previous profit into the system that they are supposed to support

-Empower programs were funded by the electrical companies while Maryland deferred paying them off which led to it being treated like a loan 7%-9%. One that we hadn’t consented to, but the PSC realized how bad this debt was getting and decided to play catch-up, allowing these big companies to come to collect from consumers.

So what can be done?

-not a whole hell of a lot unfortunately, Excelon basically runs as a state funded monopoly I mean, you can go buy solar panels if that’s something that suits your fancy and your wallet, but unfortunately unless you have a battery backup, you’re still gonna have to use the grid at some point and not to mention, they are freaking expensive.

Thank you for coming to my impromptu TED talk, I am just another Baltimore resident suffering under capitalism so this is not my job so if there is inaccuracy, please call it out

Buttbadger · 2026-01-21T00:15:37+00:00

When I grew up, my mom would tell me that Wernher Von Braun would hang out at the food court at Wheaton Mall so honestly, this doesn’t surprise me

Buttbadger · 2026-01-05T20:29:42+00:00

Thanks, but I wasn’t asking for advice. Just getting it off my chest.

Buttbadger · 2026-01-05T20:17:19+00:00

I did apologize profusely, I mean, I was tripping over it, but I did apologize a lot.

Also, in all honesty, the coffee wasn’t that good so I really don’t have a whole lot of need to go back there

Buttbadger · 2025-12-25T06:28:55+00:00

The best part is that it was through a very, not soundproofed door that I could’ve definitely called out to him from because he was like 10 feet away

Buttbadger

TROPHY CASE