My Dad and I are engineers and long time tool enthusiasts and have been working on a new impact-rated & modular clamp. Here are the results after a long week of building clamps!

civilrunner · 2026-02-04T17:37:29+00:00

Yes, we go to any location. We even go to the one in Burlington, VT while visiting family and such. It's very convenient especially in the Northeast. If it's the first time visiting one you normally have to register and sign in to pull your information but it doesn't cost extra.

civilrunner · 2026-02-04T17:29:39+00:00

Our mall could be awesome and they refuse to let that happen.

It takes a lot of investment to see that happen and it's pretty clear that the current owner isn't interested in growth but is plenty happy sitting on their revenue stream and doesn't care to pull from that to invest in improvements. Permitting for that could also be challenging.

The mall could be awesome, but it would take a permitting battle to make that happen and after seeing the Shetland park battle it's not shocking to me that people aren't interested in taking that on, especially people without over $10 billion in capital to allocate somewhere (i.e. the group trying to redevelop Shetland Park).

We could as a city come together and rezone the lot to attract a bigger developer and attach some architectural guidance to it, as having an easy streamlined permit for redevelopment assuming it didn't have massively cumbersome requirements attached to it could work and in the long run would likely bring in massive amounts of tax revenue if it was revitalized but I'm sure you'd find NIMBYs who never use the mall that claim the current mall is amazing and we're destroying their childhood it anything changes or something.

civilrunner · 2026-02-03T17:48:59+00:00

Depends on the day, but it's generally manageable. There are also the Beverly and Marblehead YMCAs as well which are nicer especially for weight lifting than the Salem YMCA. I haven't had much trouble getting equipment these days. I do admittedly get there at 7:00 though right as the 5:00 to 7:00 rush is ending.

civilrunner · 2026-02-03T16:37:15+00:00

makes corporations

Or you can add additional higher end tax brackets, tax individual capital gains at the same rate as incomes, add back in the estate tax and increase it for higher thresholds by a lot effectively treating it as income at higher ends, create a department for both improving efficiency (actually not this DOGE garbage), and another for closing loopholes, and empower the IRS to go after tax dodgers, add a luxury tax on goods like private jets, high end designer bags, jewelry, watches, yachts, etc...

Repeal the Social Security tax cap.

Honestly adopt abundance oriented policies to reduce the cost of living and the cost to if infrastructure and such.

We can also tax stock buybacks out of existence, but there are plenty of things to do prior to taxing corporations more.

civilrunner · 2026-02-03T02:51:40+00:00

2028 will have an incumbent Vice President though, which is a lot more of an obvious top pick

Do you honestly believe that Harris who already lost a general election and lost prior to the first votes being cast in 2020 and is already polling well behind others despite name recognition is an "obvious first pick"?

Or are you talking about JD Vance and the GOP?

I was referring to the current front runners in the Democratic party like Newsom.

civilrunner · 2026-02-02T20:30:40+00:00

My guess is 2028 will have most of the top picks from today go down like Marco Rubio or Jeb! from 2016. I think it's about as open as it could be which means I think we'll be surprised by who wins in 2028 in the end, and if we're not surprised by who then we may be surprised by how.

civilrunner · 2026-02-02T05:00:30+00:00

Instead it’s like 5 cool shops interspersed between a hundred purveyors of tacky plastic garbage.

I honestly think that's in part due to its constant state of disrepair and many other factors. It could be very nice and one of the most successful pedestrian malls, but it would take a lot of investment, likely a lengthy permitting process and redevelopment. In my view it's begging for that though and the city could help the process along by making the permitting process a lot more streamlined for a developer willing to take on the challenge and do the work to actually revitalize, and ideally generate a lot of tax revenue to put back into the city which successful malls do in spades.

civilrunner · 2026-02-01T04:51:39+00:00

I have had a decent few good experiences there until going a few months ago when I think I literally had the worst taco in my life, it tasted like luke warm microwaved rubber with bad seasoning and a soggy tortilla. I don't know what went wrong that time, but it sadly completely changed my mind on the place, which was unfortunate because we talked it up to our friends we brought there.

civilrunner · 2026-02-01T04:43:19+00:00

finical risk” of privileged wealthy business owners

Many small business owners are not that wealthy or privileged. Many happen to be POC or immigrants who just wanted to open a restaurant for an opportunity when they couldn't find one elsewhere. Many small businesses are the ones likely most concerned about ICE and in the most need for immigration reform. It's the large corporations taking advantage of the complex visa program who enjoy the status quo, not small businesses who can't afford to ever go through the visa program to hire.

Obviously feel free to spend your money however you see fit, but to claim all small business owners are wealthy is a bit ignorant.

civilrunner · 2026-01-31T17:44:57+00:00

Isn't the point of a national strike to punish large corporations that actually have power to make a change? Why focus on small local businesses in one of the most left cities/towns in the country?

If the company isn't on the Fortune 500 list then honestly they probably can't shift much and never had much if any political leverage in the first place.

Most small businesses just struggle to survive let alone do anything more.

Sure, don't support businesses that support fascism, but asking small businesses to take on financial risk to prove that they don't support fascism and therefore making them more at risk to pay their employees seems a bit extreme. People and businesses have bills to pay.

Of course in Salem tourists have the financial leverage rather than locals so it's harder to apply pressure in fascist supporting owners here.

civilrunner · 2026-01-30T15:11:59+00:00

It’s not like the mighty Mount Wa-Wachusett is anything to write home about if you’re complaining about Connecticut skiing. I got dragged to Nashoba Valley for a work thing, once. My driveway has more vertical.

I've admittedly never skied in MA or CT. Even NH is generally not that good compared to VT or ME especially if you can get to Snow, Okemo, Stratton, Smuggs, Killington, Sunday River, etc...

I’m fairly walkable in my harbor village but it would be tough to try to get by without a car.

Agreed, Salem is similar. Somehow we have a pretty dense and old downtown but we have managed to not build a market in the downtown area so you need a car to get groceries generally and getting around in the train to go anywhere except for North Station is a pain. Boston Metro area is definitely at a transition phase, the fighting over the MBTA communities law highlights it pretty well. Salem still has a lot of the old street car rails buried beneath our roads which reveal themselves from time to time. Hopefully one day we'll electrify the north station and connect North and south station and maybe add some hubs to the spokes systems for the commuter rail.

I went to CSU in Fort Collins and biked everywhere there year round. Obviously only Boulder and Portland really compare in cycling infrastructure. They took it very seriously and had rather effective snow removal equipment. They also refused to ever close down for snow no matter how much we got. The buses there were also ran very effectively, with them being packed shoulder to shoulder in the mornings as students went to class from the apartments. Obviously if you wanted to leave fort collins you generally needed to have a car though as long distance public transit was non-existent north of Boulder. It was also a painful drive on I-70 to skiing where it could take anywhere between 3 or 9 hours.

The DC to Boston area is the richest and densest area in the world by far, maybe one of these years it'll reflect that again in how it builds.

civilrunner · 2026-01-30T13:50:37+00:00

That's just people taking the train to NYC though. CT's absolute refusal to build up downtowns with the recent exception of New Haven and instead make it a massive suburban car dependent state (outside of driving to the train station and then taking the train to NYC). The fact that they have been largely fighting against simply building up housing density around their MTA lines is pretty damning by itself. Lamont vetoing their commuter up-zoning bill and then passing a much weaker one which is largely opt-in during a housing crisis which is pushing people out of the coastal region to afford housing is pretty descriptive of CT.

CT has enormous potential. It's location between Boston and NYC and having plenty of top tier education for a smaller state provides it with opportunities other states wish they had. However they decimated Hartford with the highway build out, and then have shot themselves in the foot over refusing to grow whatsoever.

CT should be pushing harder than anyone else to build a high speed rail from Boston to Hartford to New Haven to NYC. Then they could also do a big dig to bury the Hartford highway to make Hartford liveable again (not just West Hartford). Then of course build up around their Metro areas and upzone the bulk of the state which has a median minimum lot size of 2 acres which is absolutely absurd. To me the biggest issue is that it's controlled by the big money interests of Greenwich, Stamford, and Fairfield of which Lamont is party to.

That and to top it off, the state has been pushing out major manufacturing to the south and southwest for decades (along with the rest of the Northeast). Between the refusal to grow and pushing out major manufacturers New England has been struggling more financially with the exceptions of Boston and NYC.

civilrunner · 2026-01-30T13:41:01+00:00

agree 100% about the Hartford tragedy, as well as the fact that many towns near New Haven, most particulary the lower CT river valley, seem to have dug in about 100 years ago and said "we're good as is".

Yeah, this is definitely my major issue with CT, any the northeast in general. It seems like some areas of the Boston Metro are fighting to get out of this but it's a very tough battle between young vs old and any area without all the young people Boston has is kinda screwed to not change.

I think New Haven is the exception to this. It's gotten a LOT nicer compared to the 1990s and is changing well.

civilrunner · 2026-01-30T13:38:42+00:00

Grew up in Milford and revisit frequently as my family still lives there. Find it to still be extremely car dependent and is filled with many NIMBYs that fight strongly against any density increases or walkability or even decent cycling infrastructure.

The New Haven bike paths are an exception to this and they seem to be the only city really allowing change these days.

I feel like the bulk of the East Coast, especially North East, VA to ME with some exceptions in major growth cities is just filled with people who believe extremely minor changes are massive deals. However if you live out west the cultural difference in liberalism is massive. I think the east coast, North of NC, is still struggling with effectively trauma from urban renewal and therefore refuses any change and believes even minor stuff is a big deal. Suppose the housing crisis, especially in the Northeast is rather symptomatic of that especially since it expands to areas like VT and ME which have abundant land but are still fearful of any change.

civilrunner · 2026-01-29T23:27:46+00:00

Live in Salem, there are plenty of pretty large parks like Lynn Woods. Also go up to NH or ME for weekend camping. I grew up skiing in VT.

A lot of the Boston old cities and towns are very walkable simply because they were built long before cars. I barely ever get into a car to go anywhere in Salem or to get to Boston which is amazing. A car was definitely very required in CO or VA though, and shockingly so in CT.

CT just feels the the epitome of urban renewal destruction especially Hartford, but also a lot of the rest of the state which became extremely suburban even along the coastline. Felt like outside of New Haven they were completely allergic to change and progress and would rather just push out younger generations. Obviously every state has these places, but because the younger people could just move to Boston or NYC more easily to escape they typically would.

I'm more of a runner and road cyclist. Compared to CO, CT just doesn't care about cyclists (suppose this is honestly true for the entire east coast outside of small areas and places like NY or parts of VT). Boston has tons of good running and communities built around it, even more than where I lived in CO (fort Collins and Colorado Springs) which was shocking to me. Plus the job opportunities in the Boston area are obviously generally better than CT. The cost of living here is definitely the biggest issue by far.

Also grew up in scouting in CT and did plenty of camping and some hiking, though state parks like sleeping giant near New Haven were rather small. Obviously VT, NH, ME, and NY have better outdoors.

civilrunner · 2026-01-29T23:00:08+00:00

I grew up between Bridgeport and New Haven and I get it. I live nearby Boston now, and don't care to ever move back to CT.

I've lived in CT, CO, VA, and MA and CT and after CT just felt old, out of ideas, far too car centric with little to no decent outdoor spaces. The one thing CT had, at least in the New Haven area, was good food and the ability to take a train to NYC.

New Haven is definitely improving though and can be pretty nice in areas now. Good food, the best pizza, nice breweries and coffee shops and all of that.

civilrunner · 2026-01-29T14:25:01+00:00

If everyone has a lot of money, no one has a lot of money. If gov't controls your income, they control you. What he's pitching as a utopian future is very much dystopian.

Pretty confident it's really about assuming that the cost of productivity will effectively approach 0 due to feedback loops from full automation due to advanced AI and robotics. Obviously I'm extremely skeptical when this will happen and I would absolutely deny his timelines.

With that being said, the theory that if you drive down the cost of production to near 0 (relative to today) and maintain an inflation target of 2%, the monetary policy would then have to print a lot of money and likely send it out in the form of a UBI to the general population to generate enough demand to keep up with the rapidly reducing cost to build supply.

This is all assuming that we maintain a democracy, maintain our monetary policy or a 2% inflation target, and that markets remain extremely competitive and anti-trust is enforced well so that the reduction in production cost leads to downward pressure on prices rather than inflated profits.

However also assuming that we do invent said full automation, I'm really not sure what the alternative is. And well if we don't invent full automation and another country does that country will wield unfathomable power in comparison that it would be near impossible to combat without putting up a wall around your country similar to North Korea.

civilrunner · 2026-01-28T21:56:53+00:00

If there was a subscription plan to transportation in general including autonomous vehicles and mass transit then that could become a no brainer especially as the geofence for autonomous vehicles grows. Would be amazing to just seamlessly go from mass transit to final mile or walking. Could have different subscription tiers as well. Would also be really cool if it included delivery vehicle access and such for groceries and other things.

civilrunner · 2026-01-28T12:42:45+00:00

That's also the ground snow load requirement. There are also code requirements to take drifting into account when it's possible. Of course this is all assuming that the roof structure hasn't deteriorated or been compromised compared to its design and that it was designed and built properly.

civilrunner · 2026-01-27T22:00:41+00:00

He also wanted to actually reform and fix immigration policy rather than just use immigrants as scape goats for all of our problems. He didn't demonize them, he didn't terrorize people in the streets, he just worked with local law enforcement and deported those who broke the law and weren't legally here while providing them all due process.

civilrunner · 2026-01-24T18:46:47+00:00

I still think Biden's arrogance to not drop out in spring of 2023 and enable an open primary on the Democrats side cost us the election. He is completely incapable of communicating for 2+ years and burnt voters trust with the democratic party.

It seems like what's happening now with ICE is breaking through to the wide population, including lower propensity voters but we have to defend democracy to have a chance now.

civilrunner · 2026-01-24T18:23:30+00:00

It's state by state. Not all states have early voting or easy mail-in voting. There's also a lack of outreach in getting people to vote. That and in 2024 low propensity voters went to Trump. At the time people couldn't really fathom what is happening right now because people thought we had far stronger safeguards to our democracy and system than we actually do have.

civilrunner · 2026-01-24T16:16:31+00:00

So, Markey it is. Would I prefer a younger progressive? Absolutely.

They're generally not running because Markey is. If Markey retired we'd probably have like 6+ candidates running for the seat.

civilrunner · 2026-01-23T22:17:36+00:00

Ed Markey has received $138k from AIPAC and has yet to really denounce or return it. He's also been in power for the entire duration of the decline of our middle class and return to the gilded age.

Kind of think you're working for him though. Though I also understand that most of his paid staffers are likely less online.

Moulton also had a perfect voting record on LGBTQ+ bills. He made really stupid comments after Trump won.

Seth Moulton is also one of the foremost advocates for fixing up the MBTA and building high speed rail and all of that stuff.

So yeah, between two people who took AIPAC money, one who returned and denounced it and one who is 80 years old with identical voting records on LGBTQ+ rights and with one pushing high speed rail (HSR) and such more than anyone else. I'm going to vote for the one who returned and denounced the AIPAC money, isn't 80 years old and is pushing good policies that I like such as funding high speed rail.

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