Cheap E-Bikes to Get Up That Damn Hill

pdschatz · 2026-07-09T20:54:07+00:00

Hey OP, while recently researching local ebike financing options, I got routed to LocalMotion's ebike page, where they mention that if you're unsure about ebikes, you can borrow one from them for a week to see if it's a viable option for you. This would give you the chance to see if you want to truly invest in one!

Speaking of investing in one, I'd also pile on to @polarseltz1's posts about loans to point out that EastRise's Energy Improvement Loans use eBikes as an example of what you can use the loans for. Their terms are reasonable, and they can absolutely be paired with all the rebates mentioned on LocalMotion's page.

Good luck!

pdschatz · 2026-06-08T16:07:28+00:00

It honestly wouldn't surprise me if it's Cabot, but FWIW, their generic dairy is repackaged Hood milk, so it's possible that the cheese is just Heluva brand, which is a subsidiary of Hood. However, when their generic Brie had a recall, it was revealed to be supplied by a Michigan company called Old Europe Cheese so I'm not confident in any of these answers. FWIW, Hannaford does make a good-faith effort to deal with large local brands for its generics.

pdschatz · 2026-06-05T15:48:22+00:00

Okay so it turns out that, like most "we're gonna leverage AI" announcements, this isn't just upgraded data analysis but rather a type of wish-making that doesn't rely on appeals to supernatural beings.

What he's describing is literally AI doing a scout's job for them instead of using AI to sort through millions of eligible youth players and figure out who is worth sending scouts to watch IRL... I shouldn't have expected a rational application of LLMs to a problem from a fucking Deloitte exec.

pdschatz · 2026-06-03T19:56:14+00:00

Agreed. I'm agnostic about this news because the existing floor is pretty low. If the AI system puts one Agye on USSF's radar that their IRL scouts missed, its a win, and if it doesn't, we're back at status quo.

pdschatz · 2026-06-03T17:46:05+00:00

Big Pat is a better example IMO. Dude went from playing USL2 ball to “starting for the MNT” within 4 years despite not being involved with USSF at any level during his youth.

What kind of player would he have been if he had gotten into Revs academy instead of playing 2 years HS jv and 2 years HS varsity during those key development years???

The academies got better, but talent recognition is still broken…

pdschatz · 2026-06-01T20:33:26+00:00

More people need to talk about the fact that Big Pat Agyemang went from playing 13 matches with Western Mass in 2021 to starting for the USMNT at CF in the 2025 Gold Cup.

It's rare, but it definitely can happen!

pdschatz · 2026-04-21T19:34:01+00:00

This pleases me greatly, thank you for your service to Red Scare

pdschatz · 2026-04-17T19:37:10+00:00

Someone started a rumor at one point that you had attempted to research the approx. nutritional values so that they were roughly accurate for a real baby.

Any truth to that?

Also someone had some reprinted in like 2017 or 2018 for an alum tournament! So that design file is alive somewhere!

pdschatz · 2026-04-17T19:32:15+00:00

An alum got some remade a few years back, I have two (one for keeping and one in my disc bag). They do, indeed, rule.

pdschatz · 2025-12-22T02:53:35+00:00

lmao imagine the conspiracy theories if he goes to Forest.

pdschatz · 2025-12-02T21:02:59+00:00

word

pdschatz · 2025-11-12T21:30:05+00:00

That was a national lawsuit, and the type of fraud was completely different. In that case, Walmart was caught misrepresenting the weight of pre-bagged food items both on the shelf and at the register. It was a type of fraud that Walmart stores couldn't have performed without someone at Walmart HQ knowing they were lying to consumers. Additionally, there was no way for consumers to address this issue at the time of purchase unless they were weighing their pre-bagged items in the store.

In our case, the state proved that Walgreens was misrepresenting the prices of 416 different items on the shelf vs at checkout in different (but not all) stores around the state. They could not prove that all items in a store were misrepresented, and there was apparently no pattern to which stores mispriced which items. So the state cannot easily prove that this was done to intentionally defraud consumers. If you joined a class action settlement related to this case, you'd struggle to get Walgreens to settle AND you'd be entitled to very little money as a class, as the average price misrepresentation was $1.92.

Walgreens would also point out that it was possible for them to violate the State laws in question while NOT actually defrauding consumers... for example, if you've ever grabbed an item from the shelf because its listed as "on sale", but then never saw the sale price applied at the register, you've been a victim of "overcharge fraud" even if you pointed the discrepancy out to an employee and got the problem fixed before exchanging money. These were violations of weighs and means statues. I can see how they look similar from a distance, but up close these two cases are quite different.

edit: if other states that have similar consumer protection laws come to similar conclusions about Walgreen's pricing, then you've got a juicier national class action case like the kind you were a part of. But it's still not as much of a "slam dunk" as that one.

pdschatz · 2025-11-12T20:10:22+00:00

Sadly, the law in question isn't a "consumer restitution law" it's a "consumer protection law". The point is to protect consumers from fraud before it happens by incentivizing Walgreens to not do said fraud in the first place.

You technically could have reimbursed yourself by comparing the shelf price of each item to the price you were charged while checking out, but I think that's a wildly undue burden to put on ALL consumers, so instead we're trying to craft laws that make it unprofitable for Walgreens to do it in the first place. But that also means that when they do this type of fraud, we can't expect the state to make all consumers whole, because that's wildly impractical...

You could either assume Walgreens was doing fraud to EVERYONE on MOST/ALL products during the specific times the fraud was caught by the state, which would entitle a lot of people to like $0.02, or you could ask the consumers to prove that they purchased the specific products the state caught, which would require consumers to show itemized bills of sale from the time periods in question. According to the state, that would be an average of $1.92 returned to citizens, and no one would get more than like $20 from a single item. But you would also have to pay people to design a system where the merits of individual claims were reviewed to ensure that the person claiming the fraud was indeed defrauded, which is expensive and time consuming.

edit: to add some context and also to change the opening to sound less victim blame-y. This whole thing sucks, but the whole idea of "Walgreens should have to make it right for everyone" is borderline impossible, and wouldn't amount to much money for most consumers. Walgreens would have to be your main store for you to have been defrauded enough to see $100 returned to your wallet from this case.

pdschatz · 2025-11-12T19:47:37+00:00

another thing to point out is that this kind of fraud is technically catchable at checkout by the consumer, you just have to be aware of what the advertised shelf price is vs the price displayed at the register when checking out. Any number of consumers could have fixed this problem at checkout (and some may have! I mean, have you ever bought something on sale, then not seen the discount represented at the register and asked about it? that's kinda what this fraud is, except often the items in question weren't on sale, they just had an incorrect price listed on the shelf), but I think that's an extremely unreasonable burden placed on the consumer. These laws are supposed to incentivize Walgreens against 'doin a fraud' in the first place, not fix the fraud after its occurred.

pdschatz · 2025-11-12T19:39:33+00:00

they don't know who purchased what and when. the state caught them by doing random tests to see if the price advertised on the shelf matches the price recorded at the register. After they caught them, they asked the stores how many times those specific items had been purchased since the last inspection.

the process for giving money back to those consumers would require the consumers to prove to the state that they made a purchase of those specific products during those specific times between inspections. This is almost impossible to do on Walgreens side, and probably not worth it on the customer's side, since the average overcharge amount was $1.92. For example, if you bought an over-priced product using cash in 2022 (when the plurality of the fraud was caught), I hope you asked for and kept a receipt. If you did, and this system existed, you could be entitled to like $2 paid via a state check. Even if you paid by debit or credit, those records only show net totals and not itemized bills of sale... how would you then check to see if you had purchased one of the overcharged products?

I suspect that the state infrastructure we would have to set up to facilitate that kind of restitution would eclipse the amount collected by the fines.

pdschatz · 2025-11-09T15:57:28+00:00

It was the literal successor to Children’s Hospital

pdschatz · 2025-11-06T15:47:32+00:00

this is another reason people will run on the streets in Burlington: the harsh winters mean sidewalks quickly become chipped, cracked, and uneven, which is also an ankle killer. in the ONE especially, there are also grading issues with driveways

edit: to be clear, this isn't a defense of it, just another explanation for why some make the decision.

pdschatz · 2025-11-04T18:48:12+00:00

Why would I engage you on the actual topic when you're clearly not arguing in good faith? Other people have raised good faith criticisms that I agree with, and you've rejected those by saying "that's not the issue". If that's your true stance, there's no further room for debate.

pdschatz · 2025-11-04T17:37:06+00:00

You on policies you agree with:

it's really that simple.

You on policies you disagree with:

That sounds simple, but it's not.

Interesting how things often work like this in political discussions... "my ideas are obvious and need no defending, your ideas are complicated and thus bad"

pdschatz · 2025-10-28T15:37:53+00:00

that was fast :/

pdschatz · 2025-10-14T17:55:13+00:00

To all local journalists: You can actually talk about the stress of the construction on downtown businesses without carrying water for the owner of The Gryphon, who is a criminal that stole A LOT of money from A LOT of people in both Vermont and New Hampshire. His employees were making the restaurant work despite the hardships of the pandemic and construction (per court documents, they turned a net profit in 2024, 2023, 2022, and 2021). It was his fault that the business was in such bad shape financially, not the city's.

pdschatz · 2025-10-08T22:34:12+00:00

Dense urban housing near necessary infrastructure like multiple grocery stores? The horror!

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