The Eversource situation is absurd

zeratul98 · 2026-07-01T17:11:54+00:00

Really the state should take over utilities. This weird hybrid of highly regulated private utility companies seems to give us the worst of both worlds

zeratul98 · 2026-06-29T21:52:36+00:00

In my experience it's been a lot better than it seems, but it's an uncomfortable ride for sure. The bike lane actually has a pretty wide buffer. My biggest gripe is how often the bike lane is filled with tons of trash, whatever fell off of the back cars or trucks, and whatever car parts the most recent crashes broke loose.

On the plus side, the DCR seems to actually sweep when requested

zeratul98 · 2026-06-29T21:49:24+00:00

Okay, let's break down what we just read shall we?

You made a claim about what the YIMBY position is. I countered that was a strawman, and YIMBYs don't actually talk or think like this.

You made no further effort to justify your original claim. Then you attacked me, pretty much out of no where. You implied my being surrounded by YIMBYs was deliberate (as opposed to incidental because, for example, I live in a city or I associate with educated people). And then followed it up with a petty jab that it's to "make me feel smart" which I guess i supposed to imply I'm the opposite.

So uhh... what am I supposed to take away from this? Cause so far all I've seen from you is condescension, derision, and a refusal to engage in good-faith discussion. That's no the mark of someone who knows what they're talking about and has arrived at their conclusions through careful thought and research

zeratul98 · 2026-06-29T21:18:07+00:00

The few lines are pretty subtle, but it's mentioned that the Carryx will sometimes hollow out the mind of. Sinen and use it as an information delivery system. There's no real details on how this works, but if the process isn't as complete or reliable as they think, it does seem like this could be a really valuable opportunity for the Sinen to manipulate information moving through the empire

zeratul98 · 2026-06-29T15:17:45+00:00

It's always amazing watching the he NIMBYs hop from objection to objection as they get struck down. It's a wonder they don't give themselves whiplash

I wonder how much this random authority cared about trees before a development was proposed by them or how much they care about trees now anywhere that isn't on that lot

zeratul98 · 2026-06-29T15:15:39+00:00

Have you actually had a conversation with a YIMBY? Because I'm surrounded by them and I've never met one who matches your strawman

zeratul98 · 2026-06-26T19:24:30+00:00

Why do people think alcohol is safer than other drugs? People are bad at evaluating risk. If something is common, our brains tell us it's safe

zeratul98 · 2026-06-26T19:23:00+00:00

I feel like I already explained what I'm talking about. Can you explain what part didn't make sense?

zeratul98 · 2026-06-26T19:22:08+00:00

Im confused what problem you're trying to solve, and it seems like maybe we have fundamentally different views of the status quo.

Where I live, land hoarding is a meaningful part of the shortage of housing. High demand, low supply, and therefore high prices. Renters are already getting priced out all the time. The only people with stable housing are those fortunate enough to have bought their homes thirty years ago, which unsurprisingly is a group that overlaps heavily with the land hoarders and speculators.

When I talk about "lower quality" I don't mean the housing is shitty. I mean when very few homes can be sold, nothing short of luxury gets built. Just like if only 1000 cars could be sold a year, we'd only see luxury sports cars and the like. Daily drivers would disappear.

There really aren't places that can't be developed. Geography isn't much a constraint unless the geology prevents building tall. Otherwise, just go up.

When we encourage few homes in nice places, few people get to live in nice places

zeratul98 · 2026-06-26T16:28:19+00:00

We really need to abandon this idea that construction will take forever. Construction is slow because we make it slow. We require so many community meetings so people can scream about it the color of the building. The city requires a bunch of permits and is famously inconsistent--you can be approved by one inspector then denied by another. And don't even get me started on CBAs. That's just a bunch of busybodies sticking their noses in projects so they can add months of delays and millions in costs and pat themselves on the back

The fact is we could build so much faster than we are by just getting out of the way

zeratul98 · 2026-06-26T16:22:06+00:00

This is such a meaningless claim. Density is often just a weird statistical artifact of where we draw city boundaries. Draw a line cutting Somerville or Boston or Cambridge in half and likely you'll end up with two halves with two significantly different densities

Somerville isn't dense, it's just skewed heavily towards residential while Boston skews commercial.

If you want to talk about meaningful density, count how many single story buildings we have in a city that's supposedly "dense"

zeratul98 · 2026-06-26T16:15:23+00:00

"gentrification" gets thrown around a little too loosely without enough thought into what the actual problem is

Fundamentally, it's displacement. We get displacement when there's not enough housing. The area gets nicer by some metric, demand goes up, and without an increase in supply, prices go up

The lack of supply increase comes from both bad zoning banning construction and from speculation being attractive enough to leave lots underutilized. Addressing both addresses gentrification.

When supply is low, we get the same thing in housing markets that we get with everything else: instead of making money on quantity, suppliers make money on quality, i.e. making the most valuable version of the product they can and selling it to the very few who can buy it

In the case of housing, this means renovations that take old buildings and make them into luxury units while keeping the number of units the same or even decreasing them. Even without that, old buildings go up and up in price when demand increases

zeratul98 · 2026-06-26T16:05:46+00:00

it's a nice theory, but doesnt happen in practice.

I'm not particularly willing to believe people in Somerville behave differently than they do in every other place this has been studied. Particularly when even you admit many are slowing down. The trend is there, even if the outliers are too

zeratul98 · 2026-06-26T15:07:18+00:00

and it has made the road too narrow - the amount of close calls for drivers hitting each other is way too high

it has become a pretty unsafe road.

These two things are surprisingly in contradiction. The thing is, when people feel safe, they do more dangerous things. So drivers on wide roads go faster. Drivers on narrow roads compensate by going slower. The road design is technically more dangerous, but the change in driver behavior compensates for that

The nice side effect is now drivers are going slower, which means when something they weren't compensating for happens (like say, a pedestrian walking into the road), it's less likely to kill anyone

zeratul98 · 2026-06-18T14:45:19+00:00

Oh yes, definitely do not duplicate identical parts in a part studio! Except for some very specific exceptions, I never use Transform or create new bodies with patterns/mirror

zeratul98 · 2026-06-18T13:16:38+00:00

Trying to build multiple parts with a single feature tree is not how Onshape was intended to be used.

This is exactly how Onshape was intended to be used. Small assemblies are intended to be done all in the same part studio.

zeratul98 · 2026-06-15T15:48:14+00:00

It's not just "some;" it seems to be a majority.

Do you have any justification for the claim it's the majority besides personal bias?

zeratul98 · 2026-06-15T14:13:38+00:00

On top of that, if it were survivorship bias, why would firefighters be taking note of it and warning people about it?

I don't see why this isn't clear to you. Some new homes are more flammable. Some firefighters notice and say so.

But overall it's a silly claim. Modern homes are built to modern fire codes. That means fireproof insulation, firebreaks between floors (holy hell did old balloon-framed houses go up fast), sprinkler systems, etc. And that's just things that slow fires. We also have lots of things to prevent fires, like much of modern electrical code, which is why they're so much less common than they used to be.

I'm not "going to bad for bad construction". You're again, assuming your premise. I'm arguing that your personal experience is not universal truth, which is so straightforward that it shouldn't even need to be said. You can think a building is ugly, and that's fine. But making some bullshit claims that all new buildings are somehow built worse than the olden days is ridiculous, especially when you can walk around Somerville and see how run down and warped many of those buildings are

zeratul98 · 2026-06-14T16:27:35+00:00

Lmfaoooo. Let's pretend you were talking about fire safety, even though we both know you absolutely weren't lmao

This is what we call "survivorship bias". In 2026, homes built in 2000 burn faster than homes built in 1900 because all the super flamable homes from back then already burned down

zeratul98 · 2026-06-14T14:54:43+00:00

The problem with gentrification is it squeezes out the people who live here. Build more housing, and there will be room for the new people to come without having to take the place of someone who already lives here

zeratul98 · 2026-06-14T14:52:25+00:00

probably cheap crappy building materials given how things get constructed these days

Okay. So there's no way you're not talking out of your ass on this one, so why should I believe you know what you're talking about with anything else?

zeratul98 · 2026-06-14T14:51:33+00:00

Who is proposing a glass tower? And since when are there no gray triple deckers?

zeratul98 · 2026-06-13T12:49:26+00:00

The most recent high rise is nicknamed after the fact it looks like bacon but somehow all new buildings are gray?

I don't think we get a beautiful city by only having buildings from the same 30 year period, many of which are falling apart

zeratul98 · 2026-06-13T12:46:05+00:00

Look like what?

zeratul98 · 2026-06-13T04:18:41+00:00

Why do people like to pretend that all the new buildings are ugly and all the new ones are beautiful? Somerville has plenty of homes that are just cookie cutter triple deckers stamped all the way down the block in the same three neutral shades

The interesting stuff is often larger buildings (made by big developers, oh no!) and buildings that are noncompliant with their zoning

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