Category: Massachusetts

Trip to Cambridge, Maskachusetts wrap-up (Part II)

by philg

The second (or 11th) part of a report on my April/May 2026 pack-up-patch-up-and-sell-the-condo sojourn among the world’s most intelligent humans. (Part I)

Cambridge is populated by Scientists who closed kids’ schools for 18 months and locked themselves in their crummy apartments for 2-3 years so as to deny a respiratory virus the opportunity to spread and mutate. These same people now voluntarily cram themselves, without masks, into coffee shops that are (1) more crowded than my 100%-full JetBlue flight, and (2) entirely lacking in modern ventilation.

All is not lost, however, because the Scientists do wear their masks at Whole Foods (the employees were about 50% masked):

Having Instacart deliver, thus sidestepping the respiratory virus risk entirely, is apparently not an option. CVS carefully protects precious Dawn and Windex from respiratory viruses by putting them behind locked glass cabinets:

Various retail businesses also protect their workers, and by extension all of us, from ICE and Donald Trump:

The walk home from shopping, with winds gusting over 20 knots, is made safer via outdoor masking:

The brilliance of our AI overlords was on display. I borrowed the neighbor’s ancient Mini and asked Google Maps for directions from U-Haul in Somerville to a car wash. The Tensor Processing Units decided that it would be smarter to instead walk to the car wash rather than bringing the car to the car wash:

Here’s the passenger footwell of a car owner who has lectured me for decades regarding my inadequate level of passion for protecting our environment:

Environmentalist/Hater isn’t the only useful way to categorize people. At Harvard Book Store, one learns that Americans can be neatly divided into racist/anti-racist and fascist/anti-fascist:

At Harvard, we learn that there is also a useful division into Genocidal/Not-Genocidal:

(The advocates for Arabs who call themselves “Palestinians” meet at a cafe named for Luxor, Egypt, thus reminding people that many of the Arabs who were living in the modern state of Israel in 1948 were themselves recent economic migrants from Egypt. For example, Layla Almasri is an athlete who represents the purported country of “Palestine” in the Olympics. She calls herself “Palestinian” despite having been born in Colorado. Her last name, according to ChatGPT: “Almasri / Al-Masri in Arabic is usually المصري (al-Maṣrī), meaning “the Egyptian” or “from Egypt.””)

Related, from the Harvard Book Store’s featured book table in the front:

(Americans won’t read poetry in English, but there is a market for poetry translated from Arabic?)

Aside from observing Islam, what’s going on with spiritual life in Cambridge? The First Church reminds visitors that the church has stolen some land and refuses to either give it back or pay rent to the rightful owners:

What have they placed on this stolen land? Signs that say Jesus is their “center” just above the sacred Trans-enhanced Rainbow Flag that, presumably, Jesus designed.

Kids in the day care that runs on church property learn about the importance of the Rainbow:

The Church says that they want to maximize the number of low-skill immigrants to the U.S. and obstruct ICE’s deportations. Example:

The church also has an entire page devoted to their purported passion for helping African-Americans, the very people who are most harmed by low-skill immigration, according to Harvard economists working nearby:

Black Americans who are descendants of slaves will receive a lot of kind words from this church and will also receive lower wages because of competition from low-skill immigrants whom the church brings to Maskachusetts (though maybe the immigrants will figure out that being on welfare in Massachusetts provides a higher spending power than working at the median wage (Table 4) and, thus, won’t compete for jobs).

A couple of the books left behind by AirBnBers (there was also plenty of masks stuffed into various corners):

At Logan Airport, the world’s smartest humans couldn’t handle the challenge of getting paper towels into the trash:

Floridians, despite being afflicted with low intelligence (according to the smart/full-masked-in-2026 residents of Maskachusetts), are consistently able to master this skill, as evidenced by the cleaner bathrooms at PBI, FLL, and MCO. Speaking of PBI (soon to be “DJT”?), here’s the view during the approach (Singer Island in the foreground, famously home to the MacArthur Foundation’s donor (the MacArthur Foundation set up our development).

Once inside the airport, we see the masked Bostonians waiting for the jet’s return to the Land of Science:

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Trip to Cambridge, Maskachusetts wrap-up (Part I)

by philg

A few photos from my April pack-up-patch-up-and-sell-the-old-condo trip to Cambridge….

JetBlue classifies The Godfather as a “comfort watch”. Nobody at JetBlue loves horses?

Note that this movie doesn’t contain the best line in the series: “‘A lawyer with his briefcase can steal more than a hundred men with guns.”

A Prius drives over the sacred trans flag crosswalk (Central Square):

Compared to Palm Beach County, where apartment buildings and HOA generally ban pit bulls, seeing these loving animals (“A dog owner was hospitalized Saturday afternoon after being attacked by his own pit bull on River Street.”) is a common sight (front of Cambridge Public Library):

A few steps away, observant Muslims are forced to live in a decidedly un-Islamic society. Not only were they exposed to pet dogs (haram), but there is a shameless hussy in the background who isn’t covering her hair:

Had they wanted to sit in front of a bench by City Hall, they would have been forced to sit on the sacred trans-enhanced Rainbow Flag:

Had they gone to Harvard Book Store, they would have been assaulted by a wide variety of books on the subject of a haram lifestyle:

Had they wanted to spent a couple of weeks putting together a 1500-piece puzzle on “Women Power” they would found only a handful of hijabis (this was left in my old condo by an AirBnBer):

If they had done the “Women Power” puzzle they would have been saving our planet:

Perhaps the puzzle was made by migrants? Rust Belt cities such as Buffalo seem to be growing their economy primarily by importing people who will be entitled to taxpayer-funded housing, health care, food, and smartphone. “Know the Value of Immigrants and Refugees” (International Institute of Buffalo):

These 73,886 noble enrichers earned a total of $2.1 billion in 2025. That works out to an average per-capita personal income of $28,422 per year. According to the BEA, overall US per-capita personal income was $76,375 per year. So the majority of immigrants who live in and around Buffalo should be entitled to every form of what used to be called “welfare” (now “means-tested benefits”).

Had the above ladies, presumably migrants, wanted to enter a Harvard building and meet with one of the many virtuous people who say that no human is illegal and that the U.S. should be doing more to welcome migrants, they would have discovered the doors locked against them. According to the best minds of Harvard, the U.S. should allow any of world’s 10 billion humans (revised estimate) to come here and receive four generations of taxpayer-funded housing, health care, food, and smartphone. Requiring an ID to vote is Hate of the First Magnitude. At the same time, there are strict border walls around every Harvard building, with strict computer-enforced ID checks, and nobody can immigrate even for 15 minutes. Trying to visit a friend who teaches at Harvard Law School and also the computer science building:

Speaking of Harvard, the elite Democrats who control the institution and who say that all workers should be unionized apparently won’t pay their own union workers a fair/living wage:

According to the Crimson:

The offer, announced in an email to faculty, would raise salaried student worker compensation by 11 percent over four years — up from Harvard’s previous 10 percent proposal.

In other words, at the current rate of inflation, the workers now on strike would be paid less, in real dollars, four years from now!

That’s enough for today. See Part II for the rest.

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College graduate vs. Immigrant Handyman in Boston

by philg

Happy Harvard graduation day for those who celebrate.

As part of unloading the Harvard Square condo that I bought in 1996, I hired the realtor’s favorite handyman to fix some recessed lights, shim an old Lightolier track so that the heads could be removed (an aluminum frame installed around them was interfering), replace some ancient smoke detectors in common areas, and secure a front door jamb into the rotted frame (over 100 years old?). He charged $1800 for his labor and worked from 9a-3p, including a trip in the middle to Home Depot. When I asked if that was really the going rate, he said that he makes this much every day. If he works 250 days per year, that’s $450,000 per year for the immigrant from Brazil with no college degree.

Gemini: “Harvard graduates earn a median salary of approximately $85,000 to $95,000 ten years after enrolling.”

I previously hired a different handyman whose rates were, I think, a little lower (but that was before Bidenflation). He eventually just started saying “no” to all jobs, however, because he was too booked out. Update: I searched Gmail and found that he was charging $90/hr in 2020.

If you’re going to criticize me for financial irrationality, the situation is even worse than overpaying a noble migrant. The buyer already accepted the condition of the property and I wasn’t obligated to fix anything, do anything, or pay anything. The buyer hired a professional inspector whose job it was to uncover anything substandard. Why did I hire and pay various tradespeople, invest some of my own time in doing stuff such as changing electronic lock batteries with new 9V lithiums, etc.? I just didn’t like the idea of handing over known-broken stuff.

(The $1800 doesn’t include the $20 sandwich that I got for him at the bakery around the corner.)

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The Righteous of Lincoln, MA celebrate homosexuality on Eid al-Adha

by philg

Today is Eid al-Adha, a “U.S. Holiday” according to Apple:

How do progressive Democrats choose to celebrate what Google AI says is “the second and holiest of the two main Islamic festivals”? They’ll be getting an early start on Pride because #OneFullMonthIsNotEnough (friend’s photo; he moved to Florida a year ago and is putting the finishing touches on unloading his house in Maskachusetts):

Note also that irrigation is limited to one day per week because, in what should be the wettest time of year, they’re already running out of water. (What do people with postgraduate credentials do in response to running out of a resource such as water? Promote accelerated population growth via low-skill immigration.)

What does ChatGPT say about this scheduling?

I asked for a clarification and received “my earlier “some are LGBTQ themselves” was about identity and lived reality, not a claim that orthodox Islamic law permits male-male sex.”

Asked if there is an “Islamic law” that isn’t orthodox and that does permit male-male sex, ChatGPT responds by citing a handful of individual writers who offered personal opinions on the subject, not proposed or adopted “laws” in any jurisdiction.

Boston by contrast (from the mayor at https://www.facebook.com/share/r/1GW7HVCExF/?mibextid=wwXIfr):

From the governor, celebrated for being a lesbian by state-sponsored PBS:

AOC fights the patriarchy by wearing hijab:

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Boston’s white working-class suburbs have been transformed into multi-cultural wonderlands

by philg

As part of my April 2026 move-out-of-Cambridge experience, I went to the Home Depot in Somerville, Maskachusetts. Four “youths” were riding full-size e-bikes around the aisles. The checkout lady appeared to be a Somali and was in full Islamic attire. One of the young clerks was white and Following Science (wearing a surgical mask to protect him/her/zir/theirself against an aerosol virus), but mostly it was an environment that would have been alien to a working-class native-born American.

I remember Somerville as a white working-class suburb when I arrived at MIT in 1979 and we would head over to Somerville Lumber in Bennett’s station wagon to buy loft-building supplies for my dorm room (I don’t think MIT ever charged me for the wall damage done by the toggle bolts!). ChatGPT says that it was 95 percent white in 1980 vs. about 60 percent non-Hispanic white today.

Malden was another bastion of the white native-born working class. Today is at least 43 percent immigrant, as shown on this January 2019 PDF (perhaps Malden is up to 50% by now; MA was at 17% in 2019 (below) and today is closer to 20%).

The transformation seems to have occurred well prior to the Biden-Harris open borders period. Here’s some 2016 data on “newly diverse places” (as of 2016, non-Hispanic whites were already a minority in Malden):

Some specifics regarding Malden from the above, again using 2016 data:

Note that the newly diverse communities don’t include places where the decision-making high-income elites would be likely to live (Cambridge might appear to be an exception, but the city maintained an Underclass of Color even in the old days). It seems that the white working class in Massachusetts (voters without a college degree) actually voted against a continuation of the Biden-Harris open border policy by voting, in a narrow majority, for Donald Trump 2024. Naturalized immigrants are more likely to vote Democrat than native-born Americans. So it seems that the native-born white working class of Massachusetts voted solidly against this transformation and yet it was imposed on them.

Consider the effect on someone who grew up in Somerville or Malden and was 20 years old in 1980. This person is now 65 years old and, if still in his or her hometown, part of a literally alien society. Here’s old white guy/Senator Ed Markey at the Malden Islamic Center:

Maybe this particular old white guy wants to talk about the “victims of Gaza”, which the mosque seeks to support, but does the average native-born white person want to do that? In order to live in a society that resembles that one in which the Somerville or Malden Boomer grew up, he or she would have to move to The Villages (NW of Orlando), which is roughly 95 percent non-Hispanic white and only 5 percent foreign-born. (Moving to Florida isn’t as much of a financial win for a Maskachusetts peasant as it would be for an elite. Social Security income isn’t subject to state income tax, for example, and the state estate tax exempts the first $2 million in assets.)

Finally, a New England senator says that the U.S. is short by hundreds of hospitals for the existing population. At the same time, it makes sense to continue bringing in 1-2 million legal immigrants every year to add to the population that is facing the hospital shortage:

Related:

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Bostonians blame Trump for their biotech slump

by philg

Nearly everyone in Boston expressed hatred for President Trump v1.0, despite the fact that 2017-2020 coincided with great economic times for the city and state (the final year of Trump’s first term wasn’t so great due to the self-inflicted wounds of lockdown and school closure). Now that the Massachusetts biotech industry is sagging, they’re blaming President Trump 2.0,

First, are the good times over? The Wall Street Journal says that they are:

Massachusetts experienced a slight decline in its roughly 65,000 biotech research-and-development jobs in 2024 after years of mostly strong increases, including during the Covid-19 pandemic, according to federal data. The numbers indicate that job losses continued through at least June, while hiring remains sluggish.

By the end of September, nearly 28% of greater Boston’s laboratory space sat empty, according to the latest estimates from real-estate firm CBRE.

Folks in Massachusetts who decry inequality are especially upset that some federal money is being spent in places that aren’t as rich as Massachusetts:

“Every stage of the life cycle has been impacted by policy or regulatory uncertainty this year,” said Kendalle Burlin O’Connell, chief executive of MassBio, an industry trade group. The impact has hit startups especially hard, she said.

A continued downturn poses risks for a region where workers will put up with sky-high real-estate costs if they can land high-paying jobs. Massachusetts faces competition from other states and China, which are eager to peel away talent and investment.

“There are states and countries chasing us every single day,” Gov. Maura Healey said in an interview.

On the federal front, the Trump administration has terminated tens of millions of dollars in active grants in Massachusetts this year, according to Grant Witness, an independent group of researchers tracking grant terminations and reinstatements by government science agencies.

Also, while Massachusetts gets the most National Institutes of Health funding of any state on a per capita basis, changes are afoot. The NIH announced a strategy in November to promote “broad distribution and geographic balance” by spreading around future research funding.

(Does the governor have any experience in building or attracting businesses? It is unclear. “Massachusetts’ Attorney General Maura Healey becomes 1st lesbian elected governor in U.S.” (state-sponsored PBS) doesn’t explain the governor’s background other than “she is lesbian”.)

A friend who is a senior administrator at Harvard was spewing venom at Donald Trump in April for “cutting NSF funding” and thus destroying Maskachusetts. I refrained from pointing out that Congress sets NSF funding levels, not the president, no matter how much of a hater he/she/ze/they might be. Instead I asked her why she expected Boston biotech to stay on the gravy train given that Boston biotech hadn’t developed any drugs that are significant to the average human. She responded with “CRISPR”. I refrained from pointing out that most of the work on CRISPR was done at UC Berkeley and in Europe (the Nobel winners were Jennifer Doudna (Berkeley) and Emmanuelle Charpentier (variety of European institutions, including Max Planck, which has a single American outpost… in Jupiter, Florida), but did note that there isn’t any widely available treatment based on CRISPR. She said that there would be, but for Donald Trump’s interference.

I did ask why she expected Boston biotech to continue standing under the money shower if Boston hadn’t developed any of the recent blockbuster drugs. I said maybe investors, including NSF, would keep pouring money in if Boston-based companies had developed Ozempic. She corrected me: Ozempic was developed in Boston (ChatGPT says it was developed by Danes in Denmark working for Novo Nordisk; related drug Wegovy is also from Novo Nordisk; related drug Mounjaro was developed in Indianapolis by Eli Lilly). It occurred to me that today’s Boston Soviets have a mental attitude just like our charicature of 1970s Russian Soviets, i.e., any failures can be blamed on outsiders (the U.S. for 1970s Russians; Donald Trump for Bostonians in the 2020s) and any inventions worldwide can be attributed to heroic local Soviets.

Maybe Boston-based companies developed whatever class of drugs whose sales were comparable to GLP-1 ($75 billion/year)? The last time the pharma world had something of similar value was with the statin, discovered by Akira Endo at Sankyo in the Japan section of Boston and turned into an FDA-approved pill by scientists in the Rahway, New Jersey section of Boston at Merck. (I’ve always been a statin skeptic, incidentally; if a blood test shows high cholesterol because a human is fat and sedentary, a pill that changes the blood test result without changing the fat/sedentary problem doesn’t seem like it will lead to immortality.)

ChatGPT on inflation-adjusted NSF spending, showing modest growth during Trump v1.0, a bump during coronapanic, and a sag that began during the Biden-Harris administration (money was diverted to supporting migrants?):

The Harvard employee’s focus on NSF might be misplaced. Consistent with the WSJ’s reporting, it seems to be NIH that funds more biotech. NIH’s total research funding is about $27 billion, much larger than NSF’s entire budget. NIH will fund clinical trials and NSF won’t.

Given that Americans were so passionate about avoiding death from disease during coronapanic, while remaining indifferent to being killed in car accidents (imagine the lives safe with my 35 mph computer-enforced speed limit!), from lifestyle choices such as consuming alcohol and marijuana all day, etc., it surprises me that NIH funding hasn’t doubled, in real terms, since 2017. Maybe the explanation is that the entitlement/welfare/migrant-welcoming systems consume all of the growth in government spending.

Probably the real explanation for the Boston slump is that the boom was too good to last, as one WSJ source said:

“There was so much money that the sector got overbuilt,” said Alexis Borisy, founder of Boston-based Curie.Bio, a biotech venture firm that has raised more than $1 billion for early-stage biotechs. “If there was a good idea, there’d be 10 companies all built at the same time to go do it.”

It’s still interesting to me that Bostonians felt that it was their right to claim an ever-expanding share of federal tax dollars and of GDP, despite not having delivered any medications that improve the average American’s health or life. The Righteous of Maskachusetts are quick to criticize “white male entitlement”, but what is a more “entitled” attitude than expecting to stay on the gravy train after decades of underdelivering?

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Fiber-to-the-home arrives in Cambridge, Massachusetts

by philg

Cambridge, Maskachusetts turned down a fiber-to-the-home deal with Verizon FiOS roughly twenty years ago. Rumor had it that Comcast was funding some pet projects for politicians and, therefore, Verizon couldn’t get authorized to compete with Comcast (not yet “Xfinity”).

As part of the process of unloading my old condo in Harvard Square, I tried to figure out if fiber-to-the-home had become available without me noticing. The answer is “sort of”. More than 90 percent of the city is remains a Comcast-only (Xfinity) territory. But the city has provisioned symmetric gigabit fiber to city-owned public housing apartments. Those entitled to public housing pay $35/month for Internet that those who pay property tax could only dream of having. (It might actually be free for those who refrain from working; there is a Digital Equity Plan to relieve people of this $35/month and multiple full-time “digital navigators” get paid to help those who don’t work maximize their enjoyment of free or near-free Internet.) Jesus pointed out, “The last will be first, and the first last” (Matthew 20:16). This translates to “gives [public housing] residents access to the highest internet speeds available in Cambridge at the lowest cost.”

The person who pays $100/month in rent (including utilities) gets faster and more reliable Internet than the person who lives in a $10 million house on Brattle Street and pays property tax. The taxpaying chumps will get hit for $100/month by Comcast for comparatively terrible service.

What does a person who hasn’t worked for four generations do with Gigabit fiber? Streams multiple movies and sports games in 4K:

What do Cambridge officials work on besides keeping their tax cattle in an Xfnity ghetto? Mayor Sumbul Siddiqui was born in Pakistan and might have enjoyed fiber-based Internet there if her family hadn’t chosen to enrich us here: “Fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) internet is growing rapidly in Pakistan, with over 2.6 million subscribers as of February 2026.” (Google AI). City Hall was hosting a “Sexual Assault Awareness Month” event instead of a “Escape the coax ghetto” event:

Here are some of the shirt-based messages:

The one with the Star of David was almost next to a sign showing that future Cambridge residents will be, like the current mayor, primarily Islamic:

(Note the nod to the native-born Blacks in the background. Their lives matter and also they have already been replaced by migrants (see Replacement of Black workers by migrants in Cambridge, Massachusetts from MLK, Jr. Day 2026).)

Why would the mayor highlight sexual assault instead of the monthly assault of residents paying high prices for inferior Internet? Wikipedia says that her family never got out of taxpayer-funded housing (Rindge Towers and Roosevelt Towers; sometimes enrichment by migrants means native-born taxpayers have to pay for the migrants’ apartments for 20, 40, 60, or a few hundred years (multi-generational)). So, from her family’s perspective, Xfinity’s monopoly and decades-old infrastructure is irrelevant.

(Note that folks in Maskachusetts don’t seem to be serious about discouraging what we now regard as sexual misconduct. Age of consent is 16, which means that everything Jeffrey Epstein is established to have done would have been legal in Boston. (He admitted to some sort of sex act with a 16-year-old.) It would be almost impossible to prosecute an Epstein imitator in MA because he could raise the “she consented” defense.)

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The incompetence of HVAC installation and maintenance in Massachusetts

by philg

The 11-year-old high-end Carrier system at our old Harvard Square place failed in the hot summer of 2024. It was probably some sort of leak in the outdoor unit, but it was tough to say for sure. In Florida, this would have been repaired for about $6,000 via installation of a new outdoor unit and recharge. In Maskachusetts I got estimates from $24,000 to around $40,000 to replace both air handler and the outdoor unit. (This might have been a $12,000 project in Florida for top-of-the-line variable-speed gear.)

The company that quoted $24,000 was rated 4.9 stars in Google Maps. They’re an authorized Carrier dealer. They said that they needed to do $thousands in additional items in order to satisfy the building inspector. My suggestion that a building permit wasn’t needed because they were just replacing existing equipment was laughed off. They ran new coolant lines and, despite me begging them not to, decided to monkey with the hydroair system that sends hot water up from a basement gas-fired boiler into the attic where the air handler lives. Because the attic is technically unconditioned space, even though it never gets very cold (poor insulation in the old wooden house underneath allows heat to rise), the circulating water must have some antifreeze in it.

When the winter arrived, the hydroair system didn’t work. The only heating was from the heat pump, ruinously expensive at some of the nation’s highest electric rates. The company came back and said that we needed about $10,000 of work. The circulation pump was failed, which is why fluid wasn’t circulating. The boiler was from 2003 and should be trashed. At a minimum, everything attached to the boiler needed to be replaced. I called the plumber who’d installed the boiler. He came by and said “Your HVAC people are idiots. They filled the pipes with 100% glycol, which is too viscous for the pump to move. I drained it and refilled it with 50% glycol like it is supposed to be and everything works fine now. Your boiler doesn’t need any service and is working perfectly.” He sent me a $1300 bill (would have been $500 in Florida, but this guy is kind of a genius and Massachusetts is truly a paradise for anyone competent in the trades).

It’s finally time to sell the old unit. The market for short-term rentals in Cambridge never recovered to its 2019 level. I was never going there except to fix stuff. The family wasn’t interested in spending time in Maskachusetts. What did the lawyers working on the closing find? The HVAC company never closed the building permit that they pulled in 2024 and for which they said that thousands of dollars of extra work were required. (Ultimately, it did get closed, but not without multiple follow-up emails and calls from me. The HVAC company called the inspector and he actually did come by within a week, but he marked it as a “rough inspection”. The permit wasn’t closed and the HVAC company never checked to see if it was closed.)

(Note that the cost to heat and cool this 1400 sqft. condo, thanks to high utility rates in Massachusetts and low quality construction, is actually higher than the cost to heat (one week per year!) and cool (to 72 degrees; no Jimmy Carter austerity here) our 5400 sqft. house in Palm Beach County.)

Loosely related… this lamppost sticker from Harvard Square would make a good tagline for an HVAC business:

Also, a friend’s daughter got into a summer math program at Boston University. She is required to live in a BU dorm as part of this program. Faculty, staff, and students at BU are such experts on Climate Change that there are 31 pages of results from Google when searching for this string on the BU site:

How did the climate change experts prepare their own campus for the brutal heatwaves that are now hitting Boston regularly? (example) They failed to install air conditioning in their dorms.

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Building 6-story apartment houses in single-family neighborhoods in Cambridge

by philg

As part of cleaning out my old Harvard Square condo, I learned that the City of Cambridge has embarked on a plan to increase population density, a rare situation in which the people who advocate for open borders also do something about accommodating the new arrivals and their kids and grandkids.

Starting in 2025, the city began allowing developers to build 6-story apartment buildings/condos in neighborhoods that had formerly been restricted to single-family houses:

There is no requirement that the new apartment buildings be anywhere near public transit or that they make any provision for parking (i.e., competition for street parking spaces is about to hit Olympic Team levels, though maybe the Tesla Robotaxi will ameliorate the issue?).

I talked to a lady who lives in West Cambridge, which has a suburban feel. “A developer bought an 1890 Victorian house and is putting up a 54-unit building,” said said. “It’s 1.2 miles from the nearest T stop. There’s hardly any bus service except at rush hour. There won’t be any off-street parking built as part of this.” How do the Biden-Harris voters in the neighborhood feel about living next to people receiving subsidized housing (20 percent of the units must be “inclusionary”, i.e., rented or sold at below-market rates to the fortunate few)? “They’re fighting the project tooth and nail by claiming that the old house is historic and can’t be demolished.”

I remain mystified as to how those who decry “inequality” can support these programs in which a handful of people are selected to pay nothing or almost nothing for housing while the vast majority of others who are equally situated in terms of income, etc., are doomed to pay market rates (i.e., live 45 minutes away from anywhere that is considered nice).

Most of Cambridge is poorly served by public transit. The subway stations are widely separated. The subway itself doesn’t run fast or go most of the places that people need to go. Bus service is slow and infrequent, though the former “Dudley bus” was renamed in 2020 to “Nubian Station bus” (background). Google AI:

Nubian refers to an indigenous ethnic group and the ancient civilization from the Nile valley region spanning southern Egypt and northern Sudan. It describes people, languages, and cultures originating from this area, which is known for a history dating back to 3100 BC. It is also used informally to describe Black culture, people with dark skin, or specific livestock breeds.

Can anyone think of an example of a portion of an American metro area, population 2 million or larger, that has been built up to an average 6-story height, or higher, that doesn’t have horrific traffic jams? The advocates for higher density seem to assume that everyone in young, healthy, fit, childless, and happy to walk 1.2 miles through slush and/or in 10-degree temps. Or perhaps that the fit young parents will bundle their young children up like Eskimos and load them into $7,000 Dutch cargo bikes that get stolen every six months.

Trying to get to a friend’s house in Brookline from practically on top of the Harvard Square T station at 7:14 pm, i.e., after rush hour:

It was 54 minutes by public transit and add another 15 minutes for a more typical Cambridge location that wasn’t so close to the T. This should be a 15-minute drive, which shows you how much the mobility of people in the Boston area has been reduced by roads being narrowed, more people getting cars, population growth, etc.

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Marijuana and book stores in Harvard Square

by philg

Happy 4/20 Day to those who celebrate. Photos from a January trip to Cambridge, Massachusetts…

The marijuana store for the 2SLGBTQQIA+ that opened in 2022 seems to have closed.

Leah also has a specific audience in mind: “Those of us who are often left out of things.” By that, within the cannabis industry, she means consumers who are older, or identify as LGBTQ, or women of any age. “That’s who I want to educate. That’s who I want to learn to believe and know that they can be a part of the cannabis community and culture too.” The programs she has in mind for the second floor at Yamba Boutique reflect that, including demonstrations and lectures that integrate cannabis with healthy lifestyles, from yoga to cooking and sex-positive practices.

For someone who has spent a lifetime trying to remove stigmas and upend stereotypes for herself and others, Yamba Boutique is a logical step. Leah began her career as a social worker, counseling teenage mothers like she and her mother before her, having gotten pregnant at 16 and 14, respectively. “I wanted to try to remove the stigma that we have as teen moms, that we are nothing and that our lives are gonna be ruined.”

Last week:

The “Marijuana for LGBTQ” store is being replaced by “Marijuana for Everyone” (don’t forget that marijuana is “essential”, which is why adults in Maskachusetts were able to go into a weed store and mingle while it was illegal for children to attend school).

For anyone who isn’t too stoned to read, there seems to be a new bookstore in the Square (note the two Rainbow Flags in the windows, a Biden-style trans-enhanced Flag and one with an innovative diagonal stripe pattern):

“No Kings; No ICE; No Fear; Immigrants are welcome here”. Looking through the window I observed at least five people in the store wearing masks. The person in the photo was my favorite. He/she/ze/they would remove the mask, sip his/her/zir/their coffee, and then put it back on repeatedly.

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