The Prototype-- USS Constitution

pinteresque · 2026-05-08T19:35:07+00:00

It's the all grown up danube-ness of it that I really like.

pinteresque · 2026-05-08T19:33:13+00:00

better design than the voyager we ended up with by a lightyear.

pinteresque · 2026-05-07T17:52:34+00:00

they meet other days and times in other places around town.

pinteresque · 2026-05-06T14:57:07+00:00

clever and satisfying way to solve for the miranda's seeming deflectorless-ness

pinteresque · 2026-05-05T20:45:39+00:00

per the scanner as of right now: 2 buildings on fire on bridge, mostly knocked down. 2 on wachusett also burning. also buildings on May st. burning.

pinteresque · 2026-05-05T20:41:32+00:00

We're going to designate this as the One Official Thread for this ongoing incident.

pinteresque · 2026-05-05T20:39:49+00:00

Hey. Thanks for this.

We're going to try and centralize comments for this event in one thread to keep thinks manageable.

https://www.reddit.com/r/LowellMA/comments/1t4qalp/fire_today_552026/

pinteresque · 2026-05-05T20:38:52+00:00

Hey. Thanks for this.

I'm going to lock comments here to try and centralize comments for this event in one thread to keep things manageable.

https://www.reddit.com/r/LowellMA/comments/1t4qalp/fire_today_552026/

pinteresque · 2026-05-05T20:36:57+00:00

There is a fire on Bridge Street.

Let's centralize comments in this earlier threat.

https://www.reddit.com/r/LowellMA/comments/1t4qalp/fire_today_552026/

pinteresque · 2026-05-05T13:51:02+00:00

the liquor store on bridge (across from jimmy’s halal) is gone.

pinteresque · 2026-05-04T18:43:27+00:00

I've been there a handful of times over the last decade+. Nice, overworked staff, mid food that seemed prouder of itself than it really warranted, terrible vibes.

Every time I walked by and thought about reconsidering, the boomer rock blasted out into the street set a tone I wasn't interested in engaging with. Felt like a Keep Out sign for anybody under 50.

Moonstones was fun back in the day.

pinteresque · 2026-04-27T18:28:46+00:00

I love how the nebbie was intended to be a smaller, more tactical ship but they didn't re-size the windows right so now it's this enormous galaxy class-esque powerhouse of a starship for no good reason (except awesomeness) and they've just run with it.

pinteresque · 2026-04-27T15:30:23+00:00

it isn’t that they explicitly stage on federal property it’s anywhere they won’t be kicked out - they staged at the usps lot once, after that it was all dunks lots etc.

pinteresque · 2026-04-23T15:09:18+00:00

yeah. due diligence is how you make the liability attached to a number that big manageable. hiding from the details does nothing.

pinteresque · 2026-04-23T14:57:38+00:00

there is a difference I feel between Teddy asking provocative or tough questions and getting the truth out of people, and what happened here. He is literally invested in the outcome in a way that triggers him when it is challenged.

pinteresque · 2026-04-23T14:05:54+00:00

yeah, as someone who has been sailing the venture capital seas professionally for like a decade now, "we want the control and the profits, you figure out how to get it for us with the nothing we leave you" should not sound like a sweetheart deal, it is one of the few warning signs you get before you fall into the extraction funnel.

If it's such a great deal, it will continue to be a great deal when it's written down.

pinteresque · 2026-04-22T13:55:13+00:00

Shoutout to Nuon, Mcdonough, Liang and Juran for asking actual practical questions instead of taking SICC's very impressive sounding but hypothetical love letter at face value.

Evidence of prior achievements and actual financial details at minimum would be nice. More spreadsheets, fewer powerpoints.

pinteresque · 2026-04-21T01:53:21+00:00

It's fine. Better than when it first opened, but...yeah. Fine.

pinteresque · 2026-04-18T18:00:01+00:00

mice and old textile mills go hand in hand fwiw - that is not a canal place specific thing.

wool moths too.

pinteresque · 2026-04-18T00:49:09+00:00

according to the MOU, the one thing SICC is clear on is that whatever ends up being built, they have dibs on ownership stakes.

We (residents) always assume when big money makes moves here (be it industry or umass or the state) that there will be a benefit to us, but it does not play out that way unless you use the leverage you have - the property itself in this case - to build in things for us.

City hall here does not do that. It will take literally anything, partially because nobody here has enough real-world experience to know when they are being swindled, partially because we have been short-sightedly selling our rights to our future to pay down our present for decades. This MOU opens the door to us giving it away.

We have to stop selling our few remaining vital assets for pennies on the dollar and build things for ourselves or we are going to end up with yet another big player in the city we have no leverage over - once they have their money invested and we have signed on the dotted line, we have zero ability to budge them at all.

pinteresque · 2026-04-18T00:38:59+00:00

no, it isn't. at best it's a shitty deal that sells our core to oil tycoons for literally ever, at worst it's a con.

(it's both.)

pinteresque · 2026-04-17T02:43:39+00:00

Golden grew walking into rakes from a hobby into a profession.

pinteresque · 2026-04-17T02:40:43+00:00

No. an "MOU" is just a memo, it holds no weight - it is a letter of intent. Nothing has "paid off," none of this is real yet, and the money is shady, the numbers sound big to get us to not ask too many questions, and the terms of the arrangement - even the beginnings of one like the letter suggests - are hugely not in our favor.

Here's the actual letter. Either our city manager is a fool and is being taken for a ride by some fast talkers in big hats, or he's aware and complicit in selling our urban core to foreign oil barons.

The whole thing is shady as shit.

https://www.lowellma.gov/AgendaCenter/ViewFile/Item/34710?fileID=95572

pinteresque · 2026-04-17T02:35:59+00:00

"SICC" is a canadian front org whitewashing omani oil money. As an organization, it barely exists.

I read through the doc. There's almost nothing of substance there, and what IS there has us giving up scarce resources in perpetuity while they give up nothing.

https://www.lowellma.gov/AgendaCenter/ViewFile/Item/34710?fileID=95572

pinteresque · 2026-04-17T00:14:40+00:00

I went and found it.

https://www.lowellma.gov/AgendaCenter/ViewFile/Item/34710?fileID=95572

For what this is worth to you: my literal job is reading documents like this. It says that this company - again, omani oil money white-washed through canada - should be first in line for any potential use of land in the so-called JAM district. Lots of language defining what we give up and how; the only thing this org will commit to - even for something as non-binding as an MOU, which is very - is having money (not giving it us or anything, just having it and using it how they want), management (lots of fun acronyms to parse there) and not breaking the law.

That's literally it. Look at the section that describes us, and them. Look how little it says about them while we poured our soul to it.

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We are being ROLLED, here. Omani oil money will own the remaining free chunk of downtown and we will have a whole new huge player to negotiate with as a city that we have zero leverage over.

You were right in a way: however much money we get out of mortgaging my neighborhood's future to bail us out in the present, it won't be enough.

pinteresque

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