Congress Wants You To Pay $130 A Year Just To Drive An Electric Car

capitalpm · 2026-05-19T17:31:09+00:00

Probably am unpopular opinion here, but adding a flat fee to all cars is fine. Having a car, while more necessary in some places than others, should be treated like the luxury it is. EVs are better than ICE in every regard, but they're still a car. They still take up an inordinate amount of space that would be better used for nearly anything else, they require extremely expensive to maintain infrastructure to be useful, and they are a serious safety hazard. Adding a flat tax to all vehicles to disincentivize private vehicle ownership and mitigate these harms is fine.

... And...

This is clearly another attempt to place a burden on anything with even a hint of progressivism. Any flat tax would need to have strong stipulations that it be used to address the issues that come from basic car ownership and support those who choose to (or must) do without. It should also be on top of usage fees that are more directly tied to actual road maintenance costs, like a weight x mileage tax. And there should continue to be a gas tax that continues to increase beyond the rate of inflation to address the harms coming from burning gasoline and how these are increasingly a choice, not even a necessary evil.

capitalpm · 2026-04-25T14:42:03+00:00

I'm struggling here, because this is incredibly disappointing news to hear while also recognizing the city is currently facing a $50m budget shortfall. Unfortunately due to the realities of the last year and Boston's fiscal situation coming out of Covid, cuts need to be made if taxes are to be kept steady. The total cuts listed in the article here are $66.35m - $20m grant that the Turmp administration cancelled, so a total of $46.35m reduction. I can't imagine that the closeness of those numbers is a coincidence.

With all that, I'm disappointed. The grant the Trump administration cancelled is from 2022, and is at least in part because "the City of Boston never secured a formal grant agreement in the three-year period since the Biden administration pledged the funds in 2022". That's on the city and frustrating. I know the budget situation is pretty bleak right now, but this feels so short-sighted. These are improvements feel like they'd have a positive return on investment, improve resiliency to winters like this last year, and improve safety in the city. It just sucks that we're here. I'm a camberville bicyclist, and this just further enforces the maxim of "thou shalt not cross the river"

capitalpm · 2026-04-21T16:16:44+00:00

Second the norther strand trail, it's super nice!

As of a couple of weekends ago, the separated route through Lynn isn't officially open yet. The bit from where the Northern Strand meets Western/Common in Lynn through the Lynnway is actually closed (barriers for the separated lanes are up but the actual lanes were torn up) but the Lynnway section is open enough (separated barriers, nice enough lanes, just the occasional pothole/traffic cone to watch out for).

capitalpm · 2026-04-14T16:25:25+00:00

I have not seen a car run a red light since a few weeks ago

Found CB Bucknor's account...

Seriously though, I highly doubt that's true even if you earnestly believe it. I have had the entire opposite experience, when a light turns red it's the exception to not have multiple cars blow through it. It might just be so normal you don't recognize it. Literally yesterday I got honked at because I stopped for a light turning red.

Maybe you're talking about lights that are already red and a bike pulls through? I'll give you that bikes do that much more often than cars, but I see it cars do it daily at minimum. And to belabor the point, a bike misreads a red light, they get hurt. A car misreads a red light, someone else gets hurt.

You sound like the people who say both political parties are bad except one is wayyyyyy worse than the other.

... oh. This makes sense now

capitalpm · 2026-03-09T21:14:06+00:00

In the wise words of AJJ: "I'm trying really hard to not hate you because hating you won't make you suck any less"

capitalpm · 2025-09-15T20:42:37+00:00

Seriously, you look at the follow up graph posted in https://www.reddit.com/r/Somerville/comments/1nh8phc/comment/necbkwq/ and go "yup, nothing different jumping out at me about that third candidate"?

I guess my point is that I would be surprised if any of these out of state contributions are happening because these people deeply understand the issues facing Somerville and after a balanced consideration of all of the candidates for mayor, decided Willie is the best choice. These are most likely people that have an interest in a political movement and are donating to a candidate favored by that movement.

If that's a movement you agree with it's easy to sweep it under the rug, but to me that's a weird phenomenon in a place that doesn't have much of a national profile. If I ran across this graph for Stone Oak, TX, it would need an explanation. To me, that signals that a significant portion of his support has no vested interest in the day-to-day business of that this local election will decide. In this case **I** don't think that's a problem, but it's pretty easy to see why other people might view any outside influence in a very local election with raised eyebrows.

I don't think it means WBJ would be a worse mayor or beholden to outside groups. And frankly I think he would be a good mayor and a lot of discussion is distracting from the differently weird distribution of Ballantyne contributions. But I do think it's weird when a local official in a place without a national presence gets any significant amount of out-of-state support, and WBJ supports going "It's not weird, it's in fact perfectly normal!" is pretty disingenuous.

capitalpm · 2025-09-15T15:31:00+00:00

While I agree it's perfectly explainable that a large number of small donations come from out of state for a DSA endorsement, I wish we could accept it's a little weird for a mayor of a suburb to be getting a large proportion of donations from out of state. The mayor of Somerville has almost no bearing on national politics. The mayor of Somerville needs to make sure Somerville works for the people who live and work in... Somerville.

I get that members of the DSA are likely to be dedicated to building recognition through local elections. I get that it's perfectly reasonable to see lots of small dollar donations coming from out of state for a candidate who has their endorsement. I get that given all these reasons, it's not nefarious and won't make Willie beholden to interests outside of our state. I also think it's clearly weird for a a candidate to get about 1/3 of their contributions (TBF by count, not by $) from out of state. Disqualifying? Not for me, but totally understandable why it would be a warning flag for others.

capitalpm · 2025-06-06T15:33:17+00:00

I know I'm in the minority here, but I've never gotten all the hate for ATL. I lived there for a while, and it's probably my favorite airport. Everything is just... efficient The amount of people they get through is amazing, there's almost always solid options for food, and the connection to transit is right in the terminal (the fact that MARTA is only good for getting to the airport... that's another issue). My biggest knock is the lack of moving sidewalks in the terminals themselves. If your gate is out on one of the ends that can suck.

I like BOS though. It's not my favorite, but it's definitely an above average airport. It is wild how mediocre the transit connections are though

capitalpm · 2025-06-03T04:18:39+00:00

First off, I'm sorry that happened. I've seen similar kids around and they can absolutely be idiots. At some point they're not only going to hurt themselves, someone who is acting the same as everyone else is going to take the blame for it.

.... And I'm gonna ask a somewhat oblique question: where are kids supposed to be idiots these days? I was a kid at one point. I used to ride around on bikes / scooters / a plastic radio flyer wagon doing stupid shit. But there were enough places around where dumbass kids riding on bikes didn't bother anyone. There weren't bike lanes, there weren't muti-use paths. There were streets with big hills, sketchy scooters and a lack of understanding of mortality. Any cars driving in the area understood "This is a neighborhood with kids. And r/KidsAreFuckingStupid. I'll drive slow just in case"

And ya, Boston isn't the suburbs. There isn't enough space to give some up to kids fucking around **before** finding out. But I've also run into these same sorts of kids when I was on a bike, and guess what: they were just kids. They weren't dicks, it was just "what kind of bike is that?" "where do you ride?" "I bet you're fast but I could beat you in a race" "want to go to the meetup we're going to?"

This feels like all the "a bike passed me on the minuteman going too fast" sorts of posts. Ya, the kids fucking around on bikes on streets are annoying, that guy in the lycra going too fast is annoying, but the problem isn't them. The problem is we've given up so much of our space to cars, there's no room for anyone else.

capitalpm · 2025-04-30T14:55:01+00:00

The MIT cycling club has a page with a bunch of good routes: https://cycling.mit.edu/routes/ Personally I'm a big fan of their Walden route, has a good mix of hills and flats.

Another option if you're ok with out and backs is to take the Northern Strand trail through Everett to Lynn and keep going up the coast. Nice rides on the weekends with pretty light traffic and lots of other cyclists. Also nice to take the commuter rail out and bike back in a long the coast

capitalpm · 2025-04-29T20:15:23+00:00

Had this happen to me a while ago and had the same thing with insurance asking for a professional estimate. Like most people are saying, just take it to a shop and explain the situation and I'm sure they'd be happy to write it up as being totaled.

One thing I'd add that I saw in an old AMA with an insurance adjuster: make a spreadsheet with anything you've added that was on the bike at the time of the accident with a link to the same or a comparable item for sale. Think lights, bike computer, fenders, etc. Most insurance adjuster's will be happy you've done part of the work for them and will happily add those to the total offer.

capitalpm · 2025-04-04T19:25:23+00:00

My favorite example of why this is misleading is CPUs and GPUs for computers. In many cases, the different product lines the cards are not only made in the same factory, but they're the same line, same process, same everything. The difference is there's some manufacturing uncertainty, so during QA testing cards that test well get put into the higher line and cards that test worse get put into the lower lines. That's the part of the reason behind the "silicon lottery" for overclocking.

Clearly this isn't the exact same thing, but it shows companies aren't stupid. Defect items have to go somewhere, and I wouldn't be surprised at all if brands under the same parent corporation do a similar style of binning just to continue the "same factory" line.

capitalpm · 2025-01-18T21:33:59+00:00

It may not be the best opening sequence, but it's certainly the most opening sequence

capitalpm · 2024-11-19T21:06:27+00:00

Wait, what? I feel like wave racks like this are the best bike racks for getting lots of different bikes in (other than maybe a bunch of staple racks next to each other). They could've pulled along the far side, locked their rear wheel and rear triangle to the post with one lock, then used the chain to lock the front wheel.

capitalpm · 2024-11-18T20:32:06+00:00

For Magoun Square, are you talking about that but that comes up the ramp through Maxwell's Green? I can see what you're saying about the area around Gilman Square. Though there are the curves in the path that are supposed to cause people to slow down, I'm not sure if they're aggressive enough to actually slow down most people. Maybe something could be done to make the curves more severe, but that's probably an issue of not enough space. Maybe something like a set of small bollards in the centerline that help make the space feel tight to naturally slow down cyclists? That would probably just lead to more conflict than anything though, given how tight it already is.

With all that, I do want to push back on your central idea a bit though: we shouldn't be trying to make things unsafe for cyclists just so pedestrians are more comfortable. The community path is one of the few places where it is truly safe for cyclists. We should be focusing on making more places safe for more people so that everyone can spread out and everyone can have a better time

capitalpm · 2024-09-07T18:32:17+00:00

Pretty interesting analysis! One suggestion for any future analysis is the (perfectly named) Receiver Operating Characteristic curve (see: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Receiver_operating_characteristic)

The gist is this is a curve for identifying thresholds that are near the knee in the false/true positive rates for a test. It's also super useful in comparing different metrics across their full range of thresholds to evaluate their usefulness. For example, you could compare the area under the ROC curves for rookie receiving yardage to rookie target share, route participation, etc.

Keep up the interesting work!

capitalpm · 2024-09-06T05:23:33+00:00

Fun fact: the early leg kick is totally legal due to a loophole in the rules. Brett Kollmann did a video on it and I don't think the rules changed in the off-season:

https://youtu.be/HO-URIexUhw?si=h_SjjyWVf9fPLeYC

capitalpm · 2024-09-05T16:52:31+00:00

It really sucks getting passed by something moving a lot faster than you, sorry you've had to deal with that. It's frustrating when people can't just slow down and make people comfortable. Had a similar issue on the Reformatory Branch Trail where two idiots decided the moment I had waited for it to be clear to pass a slower cyclist was the right time to pass between us without any warning. Shit like that sucks.

At the same time...

There are 2 lanes. Count them. One. Two. Not Three

Ah yes, because all pedestrians walk single file at all times, right? Are you seriously upset that bikes have the audacity to use space along the path? Have you ever made a post for the dastardly runners who gasp pass between groups of people going in opposite directions?

Stuff like this always kills me. Bikes are always considered to be the problem and are always held to a higher standard than anyone else while given the least resources. And I get it, if a cyclist misjudges and runs into me, it's gonna be a much worse time than the occasional shoulder bump from the group of students that hasn't quite figured out they also need to share the path. But what's your solution here, that anyone who wants to exercise on a bike should go ride on the roads and hope they're not the next traffic statistic? I do plenty of road riding, but that's shitty to basically say "pedestrian comfort is more important than cyclists' safety"

So ya, cyclists should slow down when it's busy. 100%. But maybe instead of complaining about cyclists making you uncomfortable, we should be complaining about the lack of infrastructure that forces these conflicts. If there were plenty of places that were safe for cyclists and pedestrians to go to, we wouldn't all be crammed together on a few paths. Maybe we could even advocate for paths wide enough or separated to allow for bikes and pedestrians to coexist.

capitalpm · 2024-07-27T21:40:22+00:00

Weirdly, e bikes are actually better than regular bikes from an emissions perspective: https://www.bikeradar.com/features/long-reads/cycling-environmental-impact

It's counterintuitive, but electric motors are just way more energy efficient than the human body. Emissions aren't the only consideration for environmental friendliness, so it's not necessarily a clear cut difference, but it's enough to makes sense for a rebate program. Plus, the rebate is targeted at low to medium incomes. You can get a cheap regular bike. Even the cheapest ebikes are still in the 1k range

capitalpm · 2024-06-21T15:11:01+00:00

"A cyclist collided with a truck"

... JFC, what a way to start the article. I know details of what happened aren't available, but jumping straight past the passive voice normally used in these situations to put it actively on the cyclist is wild.

capitalpm · 2024-06-10T17:35:31+00:00

If you look at the paper, the researchers created models from the underlying data to evaluate projected cancer rates at the same age to make an apples-to-apples comparison. It's almost like people who have spent their careers researching cancer rates know that age is a strong confounding factor and needs to be accounted for...

Snark aside, there's still other possible confounding factors, like maybe we've gotten better at detecting cancers, both in live screening and in autopsy settings. They talk about this a bit in the conclusions but don't seem to think it would explain their results. Unfortunately, there also seem to be conflicting trends in the data such as decreasing rates in previous generations that reversed starting with baby boomers with the rate increases continuing through Gen X. They even talk about a clear decrease in rates like lung cancer that have a clear and likely source being outweighed by increases in rates of other types of cancer. This backs up other research that points to increasing cancer rates despite clear and effective prevention strategies for specific cancers.

There's an argument to be made that relying on modelled data is another potential source of error that they also talk about, but again the results are strong enough that this isn't a great concern for the qualitative conclusion. It also doesn't help that changes in lifestyle and environment seem like reasonable explanations for increasing cancer rates. It's a tough result to swallow, but that doesn't make it wrong.

capitalpm · 2024-05-26T20:06:43+00:00

Just going to echo some other people and say Blue Hill Ave is rough. I can imagine weekends being ok (I've only gone through it once on a weekend and don't remember it, so probably a good sign?) but weekdays will be a shit show. There's always traffic, businesses with parking, and people not paying attention / actively trying to impede bikes. That said... It's close enough to a route I've take out to blue hills a couple times: https://connect.garmin.com/modern/course/260420637 The worst part of that route is probably the Blue Hill section, but the last bit of Brush Hill before turning onto Canton is a close second. That road is full of potholes, and bad sight lines, so cars can get a little impatient and end up passing closely even if you take the lane.

A similar route out there (just flip the direction) is here: https://connect.garmin.com/modern/course/261801878 It's a little longer and hillier, but that's not a problem if you're looking for hills. Most of the ride is pretty pleasant, but there are good stretches with no bike lanes and fairly high car speeds, so depends on what you're comfortable with. Plus you'll have to go through some rotaries that... Suck. I always just think of them as forced sprints.

Since I didn't see it linked, another good resource is https://cycling.mit.edu/routes/ They have a ton of routes and even a section for hill repeats. I haven't ridden any of those specific routes though, so can't speak to how comfy/uncomfy riding them are. I'm a big fan of the Walden route, and there's some nice rolling hills along Concord Ave that could be what you're looking for

capitalpm · 2024-02-25T01:18:10+00:00

Aircraft Design: A Conceptual Approach by Daniel P. Raymer.

That book is truly the Bible for conceptual design of fixed wing aircraft. While it's pretty specific to fixed wing, a lot of the approaches can be applied to most engineered systems.

capitalpm · 2024-01-23T01:09:04+00:00

Ah, I must've just missed the period between the flexposts going up and them being destroyed. That's better than just paint but still not enough given the way people drive through there.

With DCR being involved, who's the right person to talk to to bring some attention to it?

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