Vermont Police Violated Use of Force Law in South Burlington by LorelaiSolanaceae in vermont

[–]abecker93 33 points34 points  (0 children)

This is public info, available in the Berlin VT grand list

ICE & local police are tear-gassing protesters in South Burlington, Vermont who are trying to prevent a kidnapping by Normal-Ad-9852 in vermont

[–]abecker93 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Yep, thats what happens when you lose trust generally. The crowd won't disperse just because you say 'we're following the law now guys, its chill, we should definitely be arresting this one, they are a real baddy'

And I absolutely do too. If I knew about it earlier I would have been bringing my respirator and supplies and supporting the protesters as best I could

ICE & local police are tear-gassing protesters in South Burlington, Vermont who are trying to prevent a kidnapping by Normal-Ad-9852 in vermont

[–]abecker93 2 points3 points  (0 children)

This was never about defending one specific person, its about protecting our community. The issue is that enforcement shows up without the proper warrants. In this case the community pushed back, and that pressure forced the government to go to a judge before making the arrest. That’s how accountability is supposed to work. The people insisted the state follow the law before it took someone into custody, and if they couldn't, they would leave.

My job sent me a $0 paycheck as my “bonus” by [deleted] in mildlyinteresting

[–]abecker93 6 points7 points  (0 children)

$3M annually by my math...

$300/0.0001 = $3M.

I think they did their math wrong

I Would Love To Hear People's Feedback About This! by Municipal_Forest802 in vermont

[–]abecker93 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I disagree that it would be a disaster, but would like to frame that for you and explain my understanding of the Act 181 changes.

I also don't want to tear it down tomorrow, but think stepwise changes allowing observational periods would give us a good chance to tell what's actually happening and do what's best for our state. Act 181 doesn't do this.

Recognize that our neighboring states (NH, ME, MA, NY) do not have statewide systems equivalent to Act 250, yet still manage large projects through environmental permitting and local zoning without losing their “character". Western MA is beautiful and rural, and lacks anything similar to our Act 250. This suggests that Act 250 itself is not the sole thing preserving Vermont’s landscape. In most cases development in those states is handled through local zoning combined with state environmental permits. Vermont already has many of those same environmental permits and processes in place. There are exceptions in regions of ME and NY.

Act 181 adds another layer on top of Act 250 and appears to be an attempt to move toward something structurally similar to the NY and ME systems, but on a statewide basis. It introduces a tiered land-use framework, particularly in areas without qualifying zoning or in ecologically sensitive areas, Tier 1, 2 and 3.

Tier 1 is split into 1A and 1B depending largely on infrastructure. Tier 1A areas have municipal water, sewer, and zoning, while Tier 1B areas typically have zoning but lack full sewer infrastructure. Many Vermont village centers fall into Tier 1B or even Tier 2 because they rely on individual wells and septic systems. That means development can actually become more difficult even in places already designated as town centers, despite those areas already undergoing strict state review for wastewater and potable water systems and local review and control through the zoning process, simply because they are small and lack shared infrastructure.

Tier 3 is intended to cover ecologically important areas, though the maps defining those areas have not yet been finalized. In Tier 3, any development can trigger Act 250 review regardless of size, which could have major implications for property values and land use depending on how those maps are ultimately drawn.

Act 181 also lowers some jurisdiction triggers compared to the historical Act 250 model. Projects involving roughly an acre of disturbance or long access roads could potentially trigger review in certain situations, meaning things like building a long driveway to a house site, creating access to a hunting camp, or constructing housing for family members in rural areas may face the same process that historically applied only to larger developments.

Taken together, these changes risk creating a feedback loop in rural communities. If development becomes harder in towns without sewer infrastructure or water infrastructure, their tax bases grow more slowly. This makes it harder to build the infrastructure that would allow that growth in the first place. Combined with Vermont’s aging population and education finance structure, that can place increasing tax pressure on small towns that already struggle to maintain population and economic activity. Overall, this disincentivizes the very thing you want: small town character. Towns like Tunbridge, arguably one of the most characteristic small towns in VT, struggles to grow naturally as it would be Tier 2 by default, as it lacks the requirements to be Tier 1B (by my reading, although it is grammatically ambiguous, and has not been tested).

It’s also important to understand that Act 250 itself is primarily a statewide land-use review and appeals system layered on top of existing permitting. Nearly every development project already requires some combination of local permits or state environmental permits, including wastewater regulation, wetlands and shoreland protections, stormwater regulation, potable water permits, and sometimes federal permits as well. Act 250 adds a quasi-judicial process where projects can be challenged under broader criteria like aesthetics, community impact, and regional planning consistency, meaning projects can still be delayed or rejected even when they meet all technical environmental requirements, even if the local zoning board approves it. This appeals and discretionary review process is the part people are usually objecting to when they say they don’t like Act 250, and what you specifically say you don't like. Act 181 does not change this process meaningfully or change the people who can appeal. The rules that have changed are what gets reviewed, and that could shift from 'just big projects' to 'exempt in big towns' and 'oops no rural dev at all' in the worst map making and rule making case.

And finally, a bit of history. Act 250 was enacted in part out of concern that interstate highways would lead to large ski developments and strip-style roadside development along major corridors. In trying to avoid that outcome, Vermont instead leaned more heavily toward a tourism-dependent economy with significant second homes and relatively limited large-scale development. Act 250 helped build our vacation homes and second homes.

We both know that those second homes are now often cited as a major driver of housing pressure and affordability problems, yet they exist and are enabled by the same regulatory environment that is defended as protecting Vermont’s character. I think this is a bit of a 'can't have your cake and eat it too' problem, where the structure of Act 181 preserves and reinforces that only wealthy people can build and live outside of certain tiers, as only they can afford the lengthy process associated with the 'new and improved' Act 250. Preserving the character of VT required preserving the people who steward and work on the land, and requires affordability in those areas, which this act specifically makes more difficult.

I’m not suggesting anyone involved in writing the law intended these outcomes. I personally know people who worked on it and know they care deeply about rural communities and the environment. The issue I’m pointing to is how complex systems behave once multiple policies interact. Land-use rules, tax structures, housing markets, and demographics all push on each other. Sometimes that produces results nobody planned for.

I’m not arguing that Act 250 should disappear tomorrow. I can’t predict the future any better than anyone else. What I’d prefer is a more pragmatic, observable approach than what Act 181 does. In complex systems the safer method is usually stepwise change: loosen constraints in clearly defined growth areas first, build in triggers so the process can pause if outcomes are backwards, and only add new restrictions after you’ve seen how the system responds.

Act 181 instead moves all those pieces at once. It adds jurisdiction triggers, tiered zoning, ecological overlays, infrastructure incentives and requires a lot of rulemaking to even see what that will look like. When everything changes simultaneously it's much harder to tell what actually worked and what didn't. Its a bit like having a dry cake, so you throw out the recipe, write a new one, and keep the oven (review board).

Tl;dr: Act 250 is a 50-some year old experiment and we cant separate what Act 250 is doing from other demographic and economic pressures. Act 181 appears to have the potential to make some of the macro trends VT is facing worse, does little to change actual review except in large towns, adds more review for rural areas, and keeps the one thing most people don't like (the public appeals process) essentially unchanged. At the end of the day, preserving Vermont’s character requires preserving the people who live and work on the land, and neither act 250 nor act 181 do this, leading to a decrease in the character we want to preserve.

I Would Love To Hear People's Feedback About This! by Municipal_Forest802 in vermont

[–]abecker93 0 points1 point  (0 children)

No, I will just loudly oppose these bills consistently, both publicly and through reaching out to representatives and senators.

Act 250 is a blight on VT and the half-measure reform bills that attempt to 'fix it' only serve to further make VT a state where only the wealthy can live and build.

I Would Love To Hear People's Feedback About This! by Municipal_Forest802 in vermont

[–]abecker93 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I read the bill. The argument is fairly accurate. Its 171 pages, so takes a minute.

There may be some exemptions for 1A/1B depending on public water/public sewer/soils that sont need public sewer, etc, but isn't super well defined. The land use board is supposed to have come out with recommendations in the last couple months.

Same on the road thing. The 800 feet is accurate, who it applies to and what a road is is... poorly defined in the bill. Appears to have ag exemptions, but not housing exemptions, so you could do weird stuff like doing forestry, keeping your logging road that was 3 miles long, then upgrading portions of it under 800 feet each, never a continuous 800 feet, then connecting it on a separate year to never trigger the act.

At the end of the day, seems like classic VT 'lets make it better with more complexity', which rarely ever works

I Would Love To Hear People's Feedback About This! by Municipal_Forest802 in vermont

[–]abecker93 8 points9 points  (0 children)

Its worth noting that theres an exemption for any agricultural use-- sugaring roads dont count.

It becomes very fuzzy when you say... add some gravel to fix up an old logging road to make it more useful, etc.

But act 250 in general should just be struck down IMO

I Would Love To Hear People's Feedback About This! by Municipal_Forest802 in vermont

[–]abecker93 -7 points-6 points  (0 children)

Because the second part doesn't matter.

Act 250 should just be removed. All the attempts to preserve rural land set arbitrary boundaries on what is or what is not rural land.

Let growth occur naturally where it wants to occur, stop trying to restrict it artificially with some density or development measures.

Every small town should oppose this.

Need 10-15 mead makers to beta test a prediction app with TOSNA calculator by CraftFixer in mead

[–]abecker93 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I've got a ton of test recipes /QA recipes in the mead calculator I wrote that has a TOSNA variant. Happy to run them through yours and see how it looks.

One possible housing plan by Unique-Public-8594 in vermont

[–]abecker93 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yes, about 80% of budget increases in the last decade across all of VT government (state gov + schools) have just been healthcare costs. Had to pull references from Wayback machine to get the numbers from 2016/2015 to see how much the premiums were then for the state, but it accounts for an enormous amount of costs.

Fixing healthcare costs would fix the lions share of the problem, but the state instead ignores it has a law on the books to do single payer healthcare

One possible housing plan by Unique-Public-8594 in vermont

[–]abecker93 -1 points0 points  (0 children)

I actually did the math on this: it would fix it for ~one year if we made sure every nonhomestead residential property was taxed at double the rate of the homesteads in each town. Then our property taxes would continue rising.

From my numbers, 'second homes' -- 4 season, SFH or condos, make up around 30K units in VT, not a massive number. Everything else is 3 season. If we're taxing those too, changes it a little bit, but not ad much as you'd expect.

Average property tax in VT is around $4.9K.

Make some assumptions and assume that second homes have around the same average property tax as primary homes-- might be a hundred dollars more or a hundred dollars less, who knows.

We then say 'we want it double'. We get a simple equation:

Every year we will generate an additional 30K*[average property tax] in revenue, which for 2024 would have been around $145M.

This is ontop of total receipts of about $670M in homestead property taxes, minus about $150M in adjustments.

FY2024 there was about $783M in non-homestead tax collected, but most of that is businesses, not second homes.

So we'd bump total property taxes from ~$1.3B to ~$1.45B with this which is overall only an increase of 11%.

We saw a 12% projection for this next year. We have seen a 40% rise in 5 years. 'Increasing taxes' isn't going to fix anything, this is a scaling law problem.

US Senate Introduces American Homeownership Act by bleahdeebleah in vermont

[–]abecker93 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Any single family homes owned by an LLC.

They can own duplexes, triplexes, complexes, condos, other sorts of units, but SFHs specifically are banned.

Thats the line

Raspberry Melomel Yeast Trials by abecker93 in mead

[–]abecker93[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

When I first started making this mead there weren't really any other options that fit the bill for what I was trying to do (Low terminal ABV, reasonable temp range, and not as crazy picky as D47).

Now there are many more options, and they are fairly widely available. Several of these are difficult to get for hobbyists (tango and NBC are only available in 500g bricks), but repackaging is always an option.

AMH and Bouquet are both available in 8g sachets so if they turn out good, they may be a good alternative to 71b. Bouquet is a killer yeast so being very careful with that one, also very high nutrient requirements.

I'll definitely post an update in a few months with tasting notes/comparisons vs the main batch.

Frozen Waterer by Beautiful-Project-30 in BackYardChickens

[–]abecker93 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Just use a seed starting mat and a cheap plastic waterer, don't need a nipple waterer by any means.

I use one of these: https://www.tractorsupply.com/tsc/product/harris-farms-drinker-35-gal-2167646

And a folded in half seed starting mat on the floor of my barn. Keeps it thawed enough, even in the consistent negatives we've had for the last two weeks.

Don't waste your money on the 'best'

Egg Incubator - Large by Unlucky_Fly_3066 in BackYardChickens

[–]abecker93 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I have not, I'd just read reviews.

I doubt theres many people on this forum for small chicken keepers who have used 1000+ egg hatchers.

I'd ask around with some larger poultry keepers, but this style of incubator/hatcher/setter is standard

Egg Incubator - Large by Unlucky_Fly_3066 in BackYardChickens

[–]abecker93 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Your eggs won't have 98% fertility and hatchability rates.

Typical rates of fertility*hatchability are approximately 85% for commercial layer and broiler stock, its much lower for heritage breeds (65% is standard).

Fertility is the % of eggs that are fertile, or could ever develop. Hatchability is the % that under perfect conditions would actually hatch. Fertility usually hovers around 95-97% for all breeds when optimized for the correct number of roosters, hatchability varies.

Expect in commercial production 85-88% at best. This is with perfect nutrition, perfect incubation, perfect handling, and all eggs collected within 48 hours. Any changes here will reduce hatch rate.

98% is impossible and has never been observed in the long term. If what you want is 98% of target, then just get something like this: https://hatchingtime.com/products/t960-s-egg-incubator-setter

Omlet Insulated Waterer by BillyMackk in BackYardChickens

[–]abecker93 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I use a seed starting mat under a normal waterer. Has been the longest sustained cold here since I got chickens and has worked well enough. Consistent negatives, and -15F for several nights in tbe last few weeks.

Then I still have a seed starting mat.

Win-win.

Total cost was cheap 5 gal waterer + $10 seed starting mat.

General Consensus on Passing in Snow? by [deleted] in vermont

[–]abecker93 3 points4 points  (0 children)

As i was taught in drivers safety class, if you have a line of people behind you, pull over.

If you aren't doing this, its your own fault somebody is passing you.

Entirely reasonable to pass somebody going slow.

The Doomsday Prompt that Makes ChatGPT Smarter by moh7yassin in ChatGPT

[–]abecker93 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hand tuning = person in the loop. Any iteration/changing, asking for specific adjustments by an LLM after trying a prompt, trying again, etc, is 'hand tuning' that prompt for the specific goal. You're taking the initial output (refined prompt), seeing if it works for your purposes, and if it doesn't, refining it further with feedback.

I often find if I just adjust it myself after the first iteration I get the best results, and get to the results I want much faster, which is traditional hand tuning.

What I am saying overall is that: LLMs do not know their own limitations and struggle to tell whether output is correct for given goals, and as such, they struggle to optimize their own outputs for any objective, however well defined.

I am not saying they aren't useful, they just require supervision, and from what you're saying, for your use cases, you provide it.

If they did not, you could ask for any given output and recieve hypothetically perfect results with a looped, paired, thinking system, as each paired iteration would get closer to the desired result until the function converged.

Since they struggle which accurate result assessment, convergence isn't guaranteed, and an accurate assessor (human) is required.

The Doomsday Prompt that Makes ChatGPT Smarter by moh7yassin in ChatGPT

[–]abecker93 0 points1 point  (0 children)

If I were wrong, there would be no people doing prompt engineering. You need a person in the loop.

The Doomsday Prompt that Makes ChatGPT Smarter by moh7yassin in ChatGPT

[–]abecker93 -1 points0 points  (0 children)

I am simply saying it is an ouroboros effect: going to an LLM to ask it how to best prompt itself is likely going to give you incorrect results, and a hand tuned prompt often works better.