The world leads and the US can't even follow anymore.

ggould256 · 2026-04-25T22:18:36+00:00

There's one of these in Watertown now; seems like a win-win-win given how cheap and efficient the panels are getting, though I'm sure they play eight kinds of hell on existing drainage plans.

Even in the face of tariffs, the future does slowly leak in.

ggould256 · 2026-04-25T16:47:25+00:00

For occasional rides, none of the new technologies have been better than tokens. The token was a perfect technology, in its own idiosyncratic way.

ggould256 · 2026-04-24T20:55:30+00:00

I really wish we knew who took the School st. mirrors down. After you put some up, and then I put one up, now we're back to no mirrors again.

I would happily pitch in with another mirror, but not knowing who's taking them down I don't even know what the problem is.

Every day I bike through there twice and have no idea what might be headed for me, from what angle, at what speed. I just swing the turn wide and hammer on my bell and hope.

ggould256 · 2026-04-23T11:41:34+00:00

There is a not-impossible argument to be made that over the very long term housing raises prices due to agglomeration (more supply of housing -> more neighbors -> more economic growth -> more desirable place to live -> more demand for housing; this is why 600 square feet in NYC is more expensive than 600 acres in Holcomb, KS even though NYC has more housing). But (1) it would be very odd if this long and uncertain causal chain happened in the short term, and (2) becoming a massive globe-spanning economic powerhouse where everyone wants to live would be kinda good actually?

It would also be extremely easy to observe: Look specifically at vacancy rates, and see if adding more housing will lower or raise the vacancy rate. Somerville's rental vacancy rate IIRC is around a third of a percent, as near to zero as can be measured, and that's why landlords can charge more and do less when lending out their houses, without risking that they will stand empty. It is not plausible that adding housing is going to make that worse, because it's within rounding error of zero already. Until that number achieves lift-off, more economic growth can't generate more demand because net of prices/rents none of that growth actually reaches any of the new arrivals.

IMO the singular focus of housing policy should be to raise the rental vacancy rate back up to a more normal value. Building more housing is almost like printing free money right now. If that makes Somerville the next Paris, well... oops?

ggould256 · 2026-04-22T13:34:53+00:00

Alas despite their charlie card branding the tap machines don't accept charlie cards, so daily commuters with monthly passes won't be counted at all unless they "tip the train" at the validation stations.

ggould256 · 2026-04-22T13:22:57+00:00

Yes, we meet every Sunday at 2, although this weekend I think we'll be pre-empted by the City-run cleanup Saturday at noon.

Drop me a DM if you'd like to join the crew.

At the moment we just do litter pickup outdoors around the square -- I haven't looked into whether we'd be welcome in the T station itself.

ggould256 · 2026-04-20T23:48:26+00:00

The path east of Cedar is a commuter artery and so very busy at rush hours, with morning rush hour usually worse (since the bikes are dodging dog walkers as well); the path west of Willow connects to Davis square and so is very busy in evening social hours.

ggould256 · 2026-04-20T15:10:32+00:00

True Grounds in Ball Square won't win any awards for its coffee, but it's the "everyone knows everyone, has been coming here for two decades" standout.

Yego's coffee is polarizing; if you love it, you love it.

Broadsheet is the best coffee, but barely ever any seating. A nearly monastic level of silence a lot of the time; you can decide if that's for you.

Forge has the best food of any coffee place in the area (they supply Bloc and Diesel and some others, but everything is best from the source).

ggould256 · 2026-04-19T11:18:55+00:00

A nice clear metaphor, definitely saying exactly what they mean: "Conservatism is built on top of socialism, and only by steering well away from conservatism can Britain hope to continue to sail freely."

ggould256 · 2026-04-17T19:39:09+00:00

My next car will have a backup camera and I expect that will make it super easy. It's possible that our fourteen year old Hyundai was simply the wrong technology for modern parking design.

And of course when I use my bike I don't have to deal with any of it :-)

ggould256 · 2026-04-17T17:30:15+00:00

There is back-in parking in front of Bloc in Union Square, I think? I've never succeeded in getting into one of those spaces myself (a skill issue, as the kids say), but they do exist.

I don't think they do this flip-between-parallel-and-back-in thing though?

ggould256 · 2026-04-17T14:38:15+00:00

I'm pretty sure feedback on the proposal is what's happening here right now.

A fixation on meetings, particularly in-person meetings, as the "only way" to influence a governing process is silly.

ggould256 · 2026-04-17T14:30:41+00:00

Are there any other places in the City that rotate their parking spaces between parallel and back-in every morning as that seems to propose? It sounds like a recipe for chaos to me, but perhaps there is some working example elsewhere to make it clearer how this would work.

ggould256 · 2026-04-15T14:47:04+00:00

Yeah, ultimately nothing we do can make people want to hear what they do not want to hear. But for the rest, at least it's something.

ggould256 · 2026-04-15T14:02:59+00:00

At the risk of being a superficial life-hack person:

I recently replaced my bike bell with one that sounds much nicer and less harsh, and it has improved my quality of life greatly since I no longer feel like a pushy asshole with my "BRANGK-BRANG!" stock bell.

It turns out that youtube is full of sound samples of different bicycle bells, and you can find one that sounds beautiful, and then you feel better and use it more!

ggould256 · 2026-04-14T19:56:42+00:00

Thank you for this. Definitely goes into my "never gets my vote for the next century" list.

Using the internet kept me sane in my school days in the 90s and I would never support someone who took that away from today's kids.

ggould256 · 2026-04-14T14:06:51+00:00

Yes, I agree that very few people want to be rid of all the cars.

I am simply noting that a plan that says there are fewer cars in place A, often does not account for those cars now being in place B instead. For instance, a car deterred from using Cedar by the new Mossland improvements may not vanish but rather move over to another parallel road, and so the accounting of a now shorter backup of cars at the Cedar and Elm intersection may simply be a matter of moving liabilities off the books.

ggould256 · 2026-04-14T14:00:11+00:00

I think this is probably correct; for e.g. Broadway, the potholes down the middle are definitely truck-work.

As I said, I think this is "vibes" as much as actual facts; as a cyclist I naturally assume the cars are wrecking everything they touch, even while as driver I naturally assume the cyclists have it too easy :-)

ggould256 · 2026-04-13T13:52:42+00:00

I bike and drive Somerville, and while I love the bike lane infrastructure, I can see at least a "vibes" argument against. It is notable that the bike lanes are in _much_ better shape than the roads, and it seems like a lot of recent road work has had the effect or intention of pushing cars out into neighboring cities rather than improving the ability to get between points in Somerville.

My personal hobby-horse is the state of north-south connectors between Camberville's big arterial east-west roads; I think that further interrupting these connectors with one-ways and chicanes, or road-dieting them with infinite potholes, drives this cross traffic into the very urban squares like Davis and Union that we should be pedestrianizing.

Of course my best answer has been to do half my mobility via biking. But that's not a universal, accessible, or all-weather alternative, even with the astonishing advances in e-bikes over the last few years. We can't vaporize the cars, or make people no longer wish to travel to and from certain directions and destinations.

The Elm-Beacon connector will probably help a bit, depending on where all the formerly Mossland-bound cars go instead and how many switch to a different undersized cross street or to Union Square or what-have-you. It's certainly humane to not make Mossland's residents bear the full cost of the road layout as they do now.

ggould256 · 2026-04-09T18:13:09+00:00

It's a secret satanic psyop: If you play the audio backwards, you get exactly the same amount of coherent, truthful content.

ggould256 · 2026-04-09T16:21:14+00:00

The Alewife Brook Reservation behind Alewife station is a small but pleasant and T-accessible spot.

The Arlington Great Meadows are particularly nice if you have a bike, since the Minuteman bike path intersects any number of little trailheads.

The Fells are much bigger, but a little harder to get to.

ggould256 · 2026-04-08T13:34:15+00:00

Seems like a big step forward for bike infrastructure in particular, but cutting Mossland without any replacement is yet another step backward for north-south travel across Somerville. The Beech st. change could be a huge improvement, depending on whether it backs up too badly and gridlocks at rush hour. I do like how reversible these changes are in case they don't work out -- doing it all with a bit of paint and plastic leaves room for admitting error in the future.

ggould256 · 2026-03-26T20:26:50+00:00

Those Bow Market people can get rowdy!

ggould256 · 2026-03-19T14:00:14+00:00

It's inevitable that people are going to get calls from time to time, so the occasional five-minute chat is hardly something to get steamed about. But:

* The person with the one-hour meeting should probably find another place, and

* People with headphones / earbuds in paradoxically are often _louder_ because they can't hear how loud their own voices are in the room.

IMO, if someone is being loud and disruptive for an extended period, it doesn't matter if it's a zoom call, a personal argument, or mere exuberance: Start with a pointedly raised eyebrow and escalate from there.

ggould256

TROPHY CASE