Massachusetts – Philip Greenspun’s Weblog

Obtaining some public records in Brookline, Maskachusetts

September 26, 2025September 21, 2025 by philg

“I tried to pry public records from Brookline schools. They stiff-armed me for months.” (Boston Globe, 9/21/2025):

The rub: Because of flaws in our state’s law, theory differs from practice. It takes just minutes to file a public records request, but as I painfully learned, to actually get a request fulfilled may require months upon months of follow-up; a nontrivial sum of money; a lawyer or two; and persistence verging on a pathological inability to let go.

Just after the Hamas attacks of Oct. 7, 2023, the schools superintendent sent out two messages that sparked instant backlash. “As you are likely already aware, violence is escalating rapidly in Israel and Palestine,” began one note, sent to the entire school district community. Though the town includes large Jewish and Israeli populations, the note neither decried the Hamas atrocities nor expressed sympathy to the many affected local families. A separate note to staff recommended an undeniably slanted set of teaching resources. It included links to pro-Palestinian sources like Visualizing Palestine and Decolonize Palestine but no similarly pro-Israel sources to balance them, and nothing on Hamas.

(I’m not sure that it is reasonable to call the October 7, 2023 event “Hamas attacks” given that there were fighters from UNRWA and Palestinian Islamic Jihad involved, as well as “civilian” Gazans. By saying that it is only “Hamas” that wants to destroy the Zionist entity and achieve river-to-the-sea liberation the implication is that if the 6 or 7 remaining Hamas-affiliated Gazans were removed the Gazans would cheerfully accept the existence of Israel.)

On Oct. 16, 2023, when I filed my request, I figured I was just asking for a couple of days’ worth of one official’s emails on a specific topic. Type a few terms into a search bar and done, right?
Wrong. It took more than 18 months to get that modest request fulfilled, and I still don’t have one central document (but I’ve given up). It took enlisting pro bono lawyers; appeals to the supervisor of records, the state team that handles public records requests; countless nagging emails; two speeches and a half-dozen emails to the School Committee. … I refiled the request in May 2024. This time, when it was once again met with silence, I knew enough to appeal after 10 days to the supervisor of records. That office promptly ordered the town to respond.

In July 2024, the Brookline town counsel did send over a document. Only one, but still — a document!
Sadly, it was nothing but an email saying a draft of a Google Doc for the Oct. 7 messaging had been created. All names were blacked out, without the justifications for those redactions that are required by law. Also, I knew the superintendent had received many emails responding to his messages; our local Brookline News had even covered them. Where were they?

Stymied, I finally sought legal help through the Anti-Defamation League’s project on antisemitism in K-12 schools, and it provided two top-notch pro bono attorneys. In mid-December, I wrote to the town counsel conveying, for the first time in my life, the ultimate attention-grabber: “You’ll be hearing next from my lawyers.”

Soon came the count — the town counsel’s office had identified 368 potentially relevant emails — and the price tag: they estimated that at least 39 hours of staff time would be needed to process the emails, at a cost of $926.25.

In April and May of this year, the town counsel sent over four batches of repetitive, sometimes irrelevant emails, sprinkled with a few gems. Several indicated that two senior district staffers had led the drafting of the messages: a senior director of teaching and learning, and the director of the Office of Educational Equity.

Any Massachusetts taxpayer who wants to fund “education” instead of “educational equity” can move to Florida, I guess.

Here’s a page from the Decolonize Palestine site that the school bureaucrats wanted students to read:

In other words, we always must circle back to Queers for Palestine.

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Harvard Square: Queer Stoners for Palestine

September 25, 2025September 20, 2025 by philg

A few photos from Harvard Square, August 2025…

Queers (“Lesbian Summer Camp”) and and “All Are Welcome” Rainbow Flag church:

A Harvard students-only dating app advertisement shows a happy couple that matched via the app:

Stoners (a healing recreational cannabis dispensary in the middle of Harvard Square):

For Palestine, a $7 million house whose fence is covered in “Genocide in Gaza” signage:

(Online property records indicate that the house is owned by two people who both have typically male first names.)

Speaking of “Free Palestine”, the riverside bike path in front of Harvard Business School:

The local high schoolers still walk past a homeless encampment and under a sacred Black Lives Matter banner to enter their temple of learning:

(Despite a death sentence, renowned graduate Dzhokhar A. Tsarnaev remains alive and well and living comfortably at taxpayer expense, just as he did before bombing the Boston Marathon in 2013.)

Lots of people wear masks, indoors and out. The Staples that closed during coronapanic remains closed and the “social distancing” signs in its mini-mall are still there:

Remember that Long COVID “patients “survivors” are the real heroes:

I stopped into Harvard Bookstore to find an all-white/Asian staff and customer gathering. That’s not to say that Black Lives weren’t richly represented on the shelves, though:

What should one celebrate in a bookstore catering to an exclusively non-Black customer base? Black bookstores:

These photos were taken before Charlie Kirk got shot, but the Bookstore reminds us that if progressives don’t shoot and kill more Republicans, the still-living MAGA folks will “end democracy”:

Also, the “far right” control our elections, there is no need to follow orders from the Supreme Court (they hand out injustice, rather than justice), and the democracy that is about to be ended (or that has been ended?) was poisoned by racism:

Throughout all of this, remember that only a fool would believe that humans are divided into male and female:

When it is time to assign blame, though, it is easy to determine which humans can be classified as “men” (those who have imposed a patriarchy):

Back in Harvard Yard, the university advertises its now-free art museum (more than $50 billion accumulated so far at the “non-profit”) and shows a typical patron:

(I’ve never seen a Black visitor in this art museum.)

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Where are rich people from Massachusetts moving?

September 7, 2025August 21, 2025 by philg

Happy National New Hampshire Day to those who celebrate.

During last month’s trip to Boston, I talked to a private banker who handles mostly $20-400 million accounts. He says that the relatively new Maskachusetts “millionaire’s tax” in which the progressive state finally has a progressive income tax rate (9% for income over $1 million) has provided quite a few of his clients with the final push that they needed to pack up and get out. “It’s happening slowly,” he said, “but it is definitely happening. It takes people a few years to get a move organized.” New Hampshire recently abolished its personal income tax (2025 is the first tax-free year; previously, the state was tax-free only for W-2 earnings) and it lacks an estate tax so I expected NH to be a popular destination (MA estate tax is 16%). It should, after all, be easier to move 50 miles than to move 1,000+ miles. “Florida is still the most popular destination,” the banker replied. “My California clients are moving to Texas, but from the Northeast they’re still going to Florida.”

What else did I see in downtown Boston before and after this conversation? Boston leadership in health care and pharma is evident from all the ads for home delivery of healing marijuana:

The folks who say that they’re passionate about social justice are content to simply stroll by any number of people who are reduced to sleeping on the sidewalk:

What’s across the street from this guy? A law school that says it has a “commitment” to social justice:

The advancement of diversity and social justice is a cause that many attorneys may address in their careers. Suffolk University Law School’s commitment to these important objectives reflects itself in the wide range of courses that address issues of diversity, inclusion, and social justice. While many courses at the Law School reflect these objectives, the courses gathered here are notable in that they are addressed in a particular way to this cause and will be of interest to students who wish to focus their careers on the advancement of diversity, inclusion, and social justice.

Instead of helping their homeless neighbors, however, the law school righteous decided to build themselves a fancy crib:

Michael Dukakis inaugurated a grand Massachusetts tradition in 1988 (US News):

(Unlike Tim Walz, however, Dukakis did not claim to have suffered PTSD after his tank ride.)

The locals were carrying on this tradition on the Boston Common, August 21, 2025:

Also, if you want to see where you non-Medicaid/Medicare tax dollars went to die…

A Downtown Pony:

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It’s still Pride Month in Maskachusetts

July 22, 2025July 11, 2025 by philg

Today at the Norwell, Massachusetts library: “Join Norwell Library for the Pride Month session in our Issues Facing Democracy series part 2 or 4. This time, we will be focusing on the LGBTQ+ experience.” Both June and July are Pride Months? Or maybe every month in Maskachusetts is a Pride Month? (the official calendar says that we are currently in between International Drag Day and Gay Uncles Day)

Here’s the event flyer:

The politically neutral library in this town that is 95 percent white/Asian and that sports a median household income of over $180,000 per year says that they support “equity, diversity, and inclusion”.

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A visit to Boston/Brookline/Harvard Square

June 20, 2025June 14, 2025 by philg

On my way to Bar Harbor, I stopped in Boston. The federal tax dollars keeping the economy going (higher education, pharma, health care) have resulted in truly horrific traffic jams (4th worst in the U.S. as of 2023). This makes it easy to get photos of all the marijuana-related billboards, e.g.,

The healing cannabis landscape is best seen from the windows of a Saab 9000 (parked just outside my friend’s house):

His Brookline neighbor in a house that Zillow says is worth $3,217,600 (Prius is being charged under the sacred protection of the intersex-and-trans-enhanced Rainbow Flag):

(As the sign notes, refugees are welcome in this neighborhood so long as they are refugees from a diamond mine and have $3+ million to spend.)

The Brookline Police are celebrating Pride, as is the local veterinarian (albeit with a non-trans-enhanced Rainbow Flag):

Outdoor and indoor maskers are saving lives (Brookline and Fogg Art Museum in Harvard Square):

Why get groceries delivered by the Latinx essential workers when one can go to the supermarket and run the risk of SARS-CoV-2 exposure? (Star Market on Commonwealth Ave, next to an abortion care clinic and across the street from an essential marijuana store.)

In case shoppers have forgotten, the supermarket reminds us that “June is Pride Month”:

Next to Harvard Yard, stickers remind us to support “Palestine” and fight Transphobia:

The Harvard Bookstore tells us to “Read with Pride” and reminds us that “America” has been destroyed by the “antitax movement” (taxes having fallen from 2% of income around the time of our traitorous rebellion against legitimate British authority to only 27-37% of GDP today depending on which source you believe (37% source)). Maybe we could be great again if we restored taxation to the level that prevailed when the Founding Fathers were alive?

There were no Black customers in the store when we visited, but if one did come in by accident this book was ready for him/her/zir/them:

Americans no longer need to comply with Supreme Court rulings because the court itself is illegitimate and “lawless” (“no one is above the law” but the law itself is lawless):

The Pride collection did not disappoint:

We exited Boston via Massport’s Hanscom Field, under the sacred Rainbow Flag that was missing its intersex and trans enhancements:

The new Signature FBO is complete (let’s thank part-owner Bill Gates for his role in fighting climate change!), but all of the KBED FBOs are now fully locked down. One must ring a doorbell to gain admittance. It seems that there has been an outbreak of protests on the themes of (1) climate change, and (2) anti-ICE (see “Clarifying the facts about detainee flights” from the US Air Force base that shares the airport).

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Boston Museum of Fine Arts Trip Report

April 30, 2025April 21, 2025 by philg

A friend and I visited the Boston Museum of Fine Arts on April 12, 2025. Our experience started in the coffee shop where we were urged to wash bananas before eating even though no sink was provided for visitors. We were also reminded that “the Black male body … has been … criminalized” (this will be Karmelo Anthony’s defense against his wrongful prosecution for murdering Austin Metcalf?):

How about this task for our future AI overlords: custom stained glass for every house? Here’s what rich people were able to get from Tiffany and John La Farge back in the Gilded Age:

Optimus isn’t ready yet to fabricate the glass, but we can check in with ChatGPT’s response to “Please design me a stained glass window that depicts a happy golden retriever chasing a squirrel with palm trees and orchids in the background”:

(People keep saying that AI will be deflationary, but that makes sense to me only if human wants are finite. If I can get AI to design and install a custom wrap for our car every 6-12 months at a reasonable cost then I would pay for that whereas right now it is mostly businesses with a commercial imperative that will pay for wraps.)

At a van Gogh exhibit, we learned about teenage rebellion in the bad old days: put on a suit and go to work.

The French family that van Gogh painted literally went extinct (though only a conspiracy theorist would say that they’ve been replaced by migrants):

Visitors and staff had both voluntarily entered the crowded museum in reliance on inexpensive face masks as protection from aerosol viruses:

Children learn about art, and the importance of voluntarily entering crowded indoor environments while wearing a mask, from a docent:

The museum posts the idea that the ideal life for a woman is to have “autonomy”, defined by “with no kids or husbands”, so that they can “explore their identities”:

The museum had organized an exhibition by a Black artist who was an expert on Blackness and social justice. Wikipedia says that he married a white woman and then the two of them moved to Black-free Mexico. It would have been interesting to discuss this body of work with Black visitors to the Museum of Fine Arts, but I didn’t see any during my three hours there.

I posted the following on Facebook with a prefix of “Team of Harvard PhDs labels two bathrooms:”

(A loyal reader here and on Facebook pointed out that the discourse on restrooms and gender should properly be posted in multiple languages and also Braille. Given the recent influx of migrants to Maskachusetts, why not versions in Arabic, Haitian Creole, and Spanish?)

A Trump-hating, Musk-hating, Hamas-loving MIT PhD read the “Team of Harvard PhDs” prefix literally:

I don’t see any evidence of Harvard or Ph.D.’s being involved. Is it safe to assume that you are just making that up, or do you actually have information related to that? (For non-Bostonians, it’s worth noting that Phil is having his hissy fit at the MFA, which is not affiliated with Harvard… and is not even particularly close to Harvard)

A Manhattan-based immigration/asylum profiteer responded

Who cares.

to which I followed up with

who cares? How about the intellectual elites who wrote the epic-length sign depicted above? … like Jeffrey Epstein, that sign didn’t hang itself. And I don’t think it wrote itself either!

(The idea is that people who follow Joe Biden’s example and fly the trans-enhanced Rainbow Flag don’t actually care about Rainbow Flagism?)

Over lunch, my Boston-based friend (highly educated and paid) said that all of the young people in Gaza should be entitled to move to and live forever in the U.S. When I asked why those who attacked Israel get priority over poor, sick, disabled, and elderly folks in the poorest African countries, she said that they too should be able to move to the U.S. In fact, “I don’t think countries or borders should exist.”

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Rich People in Massachusetts live like Poor People in Florida

April 29, 2025April 29, 2025 by philg

I woke up in my friend’s $2.5 million house in Brookline, Maskachusetts in which the warmest room was 60 degrees (April 11) and stepped out into the slightly-above-freezing overcast weather to see powerlines and a 32-year-old Volvo (note the cheap chain-link fence in the background, which would never be able to get HOA approval in Florida!).

My epiphany for the day: rich people in Massachusetts share many lifestyle aspects with poor people in Florida. A partial list:

live in dilapidated substandard old poorly-insulated housing
drive cars more than five years old
sit on old worn-out furniture
probably don’t have cleaners
can’t afford to get repairs made to their houses (high costs relative to income)
no HOA to answer to
suffer from climate-induced discomfort due to (a) unwillingness or inability to pay for heating to 72 in the winter, (b) an entire lack of AC or unwillingness or inability to pay for cooling down to 74 in the summer
regular power interruptions due to above-ground powerlines
walking distance to marijuana store (medical-only in Florida, typically in grungy neighborhoods)
shop in a CVS or Target where everyday items are locked up and security guards roam the store
likely to vote Democrat
wait on lines

Note that poor people in Massachusetts often, at least in some ways, live more like rich people in Florida:

enjoy modern well-insulated buildings (built or gut-rehabbed recently with taxpayer money)
heat and cool to comfortable temps all year (heat included in the free rent and A/C affordable due to compact apartment size and good insulation (also, a lot of stuff is affordable when one doesn’t pay rent))
reliable underground power
perfect condition plumbing, electricity, and HVAC (public housing is professionally maintained and there is no cost for services)

Here’s a CVS nestled among the $2-4 million houses:

Even the $2.89 Suave shampoo is too precious to be left in the open.

A mini-Target next to Boston University ($100,000/year):

The streetscape:

Within a few steps of my friend’s expensive house, a marijuana store and ads for marijuana delivery:

After the kids have learned about the importance of marijuana, they can do a longer walk to the TimeOut Market and learn that Spring is Queer and also one should wear a mask while ordering:

Wait on lines? Here are the self-described smartest people in the U.S. waiting 1.5-2 hours because they apparently can’t figure out how to brew coffee at home:

How about the “Vote Democrat” part? On a $3 million house around the corner:

And my last photos from Boston, an outdoor masker riding a bicycle, an airport masker of uncertainty gender ID, and the airport shop reminding 60-year-old married females (a group with an unfortunate tendency to vote Republican) that they can have great sex (“romance”) by suing their husbands and becoming divorced females (reliable voters for Democrats; see also Valentine’s Day Post #3 for the sexual adventures available to AARP members with the courage to sue):

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A walk to the bookstore in Brookline, Massachusetts

April 26, 2025April 23, 2025 by philg

Happy Independent Bookstore Day to those who celebrate. A follow-up to Why does every “independent” bookstore have the same political point of view?…

I posted the following images on Facebook with no words other than “A walk to the bookstore in Brookline, Massachusetts..” (neglected to include a third period for the ellipsis)

The results were far more dramatic than I had expected. Let’s look at only the comments on a single photo:

Don Hopkins, a software engineer old enough to have worked at Sun Microsystems, kicked off the thread:

(I don’t know anything about Lulu DeParis. I think that she lives in Maskachusetts, but this may not be her real name. And, in fact, I don’t know with any certainty that Lulu DeParis is a she, other than the inference from the name “LuLu”.)

The thread continued despite nobody having any idea why “LuLu” had reacted to the photo (maybe it was a mistake?).

The software expert says “obviously she wanted…”:

I unwisely offer an explanation of why pictures relating to Rainbow Flagism are interested (“Never complain, never explain”, said the pre-Islamic British, and how right they were!):

Don Hopkins then trots out a hero/heroine of transgenderism from the world of nerds. Seth Gordon, a Maskachusetts-based software engineer (his/her/zir/their profile says “Studied Women’s Studies Minor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)”), chimes in with the assumption that the residents of Maskachusetts are, indeed, as intelligent as they claim to be:

I point out that folks in MA set up COVID-tagged death rate as the measure of a group’s intelligence and, by that metric, the residents of MA are not intelligent. The reference to a transistor nerd, of any gender ID, gives me an opening to cite William Shockley:

Don Hopkins doesn’t seem to read the “Classically” part of my statement as referring to the dark past and also “a person” as applying to 100 percent of those who are gender-confused:

Don produces some pictures from the late 1970s when VLSI design rules were fat (3000 nm (“3 microns”) vs. 3 nm today) and electrical engineers were thin:

Mark Day, MIT PhD, pronouns on his LinkedIn profile, chimes in to note that I am “wildly prejudiced”. Don Hopkins pulls in David Levitt, last seen here in Did Albert Einstein ever say anything about empathy? and notes that I am “a hateful bully”:

What is the opposite of being a “hateful bully”? Going back to all of someone’s recent Facebook posts and asking “do you hate gay people as much as you hate trans people? Why or why not?”:

He posted the same question as a comment on this post, which is literally about the weather:

(My response: “I certainly hate whoever was responsible for the steady rain and high-30s temps that afflicted me during my April visit to Boston!”)

I’m sure that Don Hopkins’s opinions of me are substantially correct, but I do find it interesting that pictures, without comment, of the righteous lifestyle are so upsetting to the righteous. You’d think that they’d be proud of their Rainbow-/mask-enhanced streetscapes.

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Lunch with an aircraft mechanic in a rich Boston suburb

April 22, 2025April 13, 2025 by philg

I invited an aircraft mechanic friend to meet me in Lincoln, Maskachusetts, a center of righteousness, for lunch. We sat at the bar so that he could watch the end of the F1 race in Bahrain. Towards the end of the experience, he said “I really like our waitress. If you brought her home and found out that she had a penis would you run away or just say, ‘Well, it’s 2025’?”

Loosely related, while walking around the Allston-Brighton area of Boston after dinners, I learned that even in a one-party state, people can disagree. Should there be a class war first or does the war against Israel take priority? Bostonians do seem to agree on the need to stock up on marijuana, and backup marijuana, before going to war:

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