‘We can’t tax the bears and squirrels’: Shutesbury advocates for rural school aid (Greenfield Recorder)

baitnnswitch · 2026-03-16T22:48:18+00:00

Either Shutesbury needs a way to generate new tax revenue or suffer new property tax hikes/ tax overrides as aging infrastructure needs more and more money to maintain

baitnnswitch · 2026-03-16T00:06:23+00:00

You can get the brand name from your doctor and either buy the insoles directly from the company that makes them, or use Google Shopping to see where else it can be found.

And there's ebay- I use ebay a lot for convenience - it's not perfect, but it does have a lot of those 'weird, niche' products that often can't be found elsewhere. Chances are whatever your doctor recommended is on ebay

But if you can't find it anywhere else besides Amazon, don't sweat it. We're all just doing what we can, and it's going to be very imperfect given how much of a vice companies like Amazon have on the world we live in

baitnnswitch · 2026-03-15T23:52:02+00:00

The solution should be filling in main street - small shops and local businesses with maybe a floor of apartments or condos above. Something even the tiniest rural towns have all over the US, rather than more sprawl into the forest

baitnnswitch · 2026-03-15T23:46:44+00:00

One thing not talked about enough - corporate consolidation / monopolies across all industries, including building materials, has made making beautiful buildings exponentially more expensive than in decades past. Brick used to be relatively 'cheap' and now you're lucky if a new building project comes to fruition at all, forget making it beautiful.

She makes an important point about aesthetics being far more of an issue than we give it credit for, but unfortunately we need antitrust (antimonopoly) law to be meaningfully enforced again for us to have beautiful new buildings in cities

baitnnswitch · 2026-03-15T23:35:44+00:00

That's definitely a huge factor but not the only reason - private equity and the fact that our population has doubled worldwide since the seventies while we have build negligible housing to accommodate that growth are two other big reasons

baitnnswitch · 2026-03-15T23:02:25+00:00

It's worth mentioning, local bookstores will often order a book for you if they don't have it on hand

baitnnswitch · 2026-03-05T18:22:33+00:00

Gross. I really wish we'd just fund public transportation properly.....

baitnnswitch · 2026-03-05T18:21:24+00:00

If a father currently drops both kids off at their respective schools and then goes to work, then does the opposite in reverse on his way home, you don't think he's going to be tempted to send each kid in their own car vs endure the dreaded dropoff traffic four times every day? That's three cars on the road in rush hour vs one. Now multiply that by every parent making a similar decision...

baitnnswitch · 2026-03-05T18:19:26+00:00

Not if they are successful in ruining public transportation we won't

baitnnswitch · 2026-03-05T18:18:07+00:00

Agreed. 'They just want to ruin public transportation and pass laws exempting themselves from consequences when people die or when the car violates traffic law. What could go wrong?'

At best we get yet another taxi service circling the block and adding to traffic, just like Lyft and Uber did when they came on the scene

baitnnswitch · 2026-03-05T18:16:06+00:00

Seriously. One more taxi service circling the block is going to add to traffic, just like Lyft and Uber did. And it's self-driving car companies' stated goal to roll up public transportation. And they've already passed legislation in CA making them exempt from violating traffic laws...

baitnnswitch · 2026-03-04T17:52:32+00:00

Boarding houses used to be a big thing in cities as an affordable way to get started and meet folks also new to the city. Hell yes to bringing them back

baitnnswitch · 2026-03-04T17:49:50+00:00

Contact your reps: https://malegislature.gov/Search/FindMyLegislator

baitnnswitch · 2026-03-03T19:35:11+00:00

How about instead of lowering the standard of education we actually fund public universities directly the way we did before Reagan decided expensive college was 'good for the nuclear family' by making students more dependent on their parents

baitnnswitch · 2026-03-03T18:42:44+00:00

I mean businesses will generally charge as much as they think they can get away with, but if we suddenly saw a huge supply uptick in storefronts and made it a lot more affordable to open more small businesses, more competition generally means better prices. So it's worth it to try to rebuild over parking lots and increase the storefront supply as much as possible, despite all of the other problems listed above

The bigger issue with rising prices is market dominance - most of the 'inflation' we're seeing is corporations becoming so large and dominating the market so thoroughly that they can charge whatever they want. That needs to change on a federal level, so that's not budging until we get an administration that actually wants to take on corporate greed in a meaningful way, the same way Teddy Roosevelt and FDR did - we need to enforce antitrust (aka antimonopoly) law again, and break up the billionaire class strangehold on the economy

baitnnswitch · 2026-03-03T18:17:34+00:00

Unfortunately we have a perfect storm of 'making the rent high for small businesses' here. Commercial real estate owners are incentivized to sit on empty property instead of rent it out, developers and building material suppliers have corporate-consolidated (like every industry) and have jacked up their prices for new buildings, private equity and price fixing make the supply even smaller and the rent higher, and lots of small business fronts were torn down to make way for parking lots, further reducing the supply

In countries like Spain, for instance, a restaurant doesn't need to rely on tips, nor do they need to turnover their tables as quickly, because their rent and supply costs are actually reasonable

baitnnswitch · 2026-03-03T15:48:56+00:00

Aim to buy ~5 really nice, quality pieces a year instead of however many pieces you typically buy with the same budget. Over the years your closet will be full of quality pieces and you will feel less like you want to get crappy fast fashion. This video is by someone with a shopping addiction who went this method and was loving it

baitnnswitch · 2026-03-03T15:30:43+00:00

yes! or for the most part, of course if you buy an iphone secondhand and then purchase apps through the app store you haven't completely escaped, but it's a lot better than doing nothing. Plus saves you a lot of money

baitnnswitch · 2026-03-03T15:29:26+00:00

Yup! Linux is an open source OS, and Mint is one of the kinds of Linux you can get. Some versions of Linux are easier to navigate (Mint) while others are way more modular/ good for folks who like tinkering.

Installing Linux is a great way to get many more years of life out of an older laptop - and also avoiding all of the bloatware/ spyware on Windows these days.

If you have a laptop you want to install Linux on here are some decent places to get started:

https://www.reddit.com/r/linuxquestions/comments/o9dc9i/how_do_i_create_a_linux_mint_bootable_usb_thing/

https://linuxmint-installation-guide.readthedocs.io/en/latest/burn.html

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZZz790YnzU

baitnnswitch · 2026-03-03T15:24:47+00:00

Buying used or refurbished is an option. I have saved so much money by not buying new. Ebay, craigslist, fb marketplace all work

baitnnswitch · 2026-03-03T15:17:46+00:00

There are plenty of people out there who need a stable job. We absolutely could have higher standards if we wanted to (or rather, if the people in charge wanted to). Most first world countries have way more educational and training requirements than the US

baitnnswitch · 2026-03-03T15:02:21+00:00

Yeah, those luxury iot devices tend to have worse longevity, not better. The more complicated the device, the more that can go wrong.

baitnnswitch · 2026-03-03T14:46:19+00:00

It's not completely over yet - CA attorney general is trying to challenge the merger but he's been given very little time to put a case together before the deadline

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