I'm so confused right now - you guessed correctly that I live in a loud city, so don't you also trust me that a plane flyover is occasionally way louder than anything else around this loud enough city? It's not my first flyover - I've never had warning of them before, so let me inform you that the two seconds it took to see this on the subreddit was far more pleasant than hearing a two second long explosion in the air that disrupts my meeting and thinking, "Why is it that the entire metropolitan area needs to know that there's a baseball game happening in downtown?"

Why in the world should I know that it's Openings Day? What even is Openings Day - is it the day of the first game? I know there's something called "pre-season" - is it the first day of pre-season, or is it the first day of the normal season? If there's an event at the stadium that's not a baseball game before the season, is the day of that event the Openings Day? Do I get off work? Is there Closings Day?

Seems reasonable to inform people - it's loud and disturbing and annoying. If I had a baby at home who was taking a nap, I'd want to know to expect to not get anything done at 2pm today.

It's not mine. Maybe it was morning brain fog, but I kept trying to interpret it as a "Missing" poster, and I just couldn't tell what they were looking for. A poem about posters, as everyone here has quickly surmises does make a lot more sense.

I didn't mean fully noise-proof, but noise-reduction to what the levels were before Starlight opened.

What more do I want? In addition to the one-on-one fixes, they mention some structural solutions, like barriers, that I wanted them to consider proactively, rather than now that they were being shut down.

And, while I understand they did everything they could do to reach out for one-on-one repairs, I can also sympathize with a resident who doesn't want to engage with the institution that made their living space louder: if my next door neighbor started playing drums throughout the day, I'd be skeptical of their attempted solution of "thicker doors", and be more in favor of "stop playing drums".

The Starlight should've reached out to the building owners, and the city, proactively before these noise concerns started. Maybe they did, but the article's quote makes it sound otherwise.

I get that, but I don't think it falls on residents to figure out how to provide a noise-proof community. This is on the zoning board, and on Starlight for not handling those inevitable concerns from the very beginning.

Yeah, he seems more appropriately called a "serial killer", than a "fur trader".

I have not received these emails. Where are they going out to, and what do they say?

Staties?

Sweet! Glad this could add some context! I would hope that any student or faculty would be understanding that you don't know how to process their documentation, if you asked them for someone you could contact to figure this out.

I used to do this as the Treasurer of several MIT clubs, for events we'd run. MIT specifically told us we should say this was a tax exempt purchase, and to provide the appropriate document to the restaurant we were ordering from. We'd have to make the payment with our own credit card, and log the expense with the receipt to get reimbursed.

It was kind of a big deal to us broke college students, because we might not get reimbursed for tax on the order - MIT would (sometimes) say that tax shouldn't have been taken if we followed the correct process, so they wouldn't pay for it. For a $1000 catering order, that meant something.

I don't drive, but that doesn't seem unreasonable to me at all. I would venture to predict that upwards of 95% of cars that are unmoved 1 minute before their meter is up will still be there after the meter's time has run up. And, if that happens, it is their job to ticket the car.

So, if there was a 95% likelihood that your job needed you in one minute, wouldn't you wait there?

I like this, and even think that non-free events run by non-profits should be allowed, but I think mods still need to be active in setting limits:

What if there's a free open mic Tuesdays and Fridays? Can they advertise three or four times every single week? That seems excessive, unless there was sustained interest from the subreddit.

If, every week, there's a discussion about the upcoming performers, and the posts get upvoted, then sure, post again later this week and next week and the week after. If the posts end up in the negatives a few times, then it's spamming to not wait a little longer to advertise again.

So, like, I think it should be modified to

1. Allow fewer posts for recurring events.

2. Allow posts for non-profits even if they have an affordable entrance fee.

3. A warning to frequent posters that they should be cognizant of the interest shown to their past posts on the subreddit so they can avoid spamming.

I would recommend you not decide where to move based on someone's allegations about "poor customer service". I've never noticed particularly bad customer service in Cambridge or Boston.

They are the ones who currently give out tickets, but others, who might not be armed with lethal weapons, could do it instead. The city has many employees.

I'm not a cop. To be honest, it's not cops I want to be bestowing comically large numbers of traffic tickets.

That was fast.

Yes please!

Sounds like a firework that went off wrong. Which was probably everyone's guess, anyway. Do you know if any emergency personnel arrived?

Lol, I love David Mitchell, but had not seen this one.

I can't tell if you're joking - is this for real?

That was the vicinity it sounded like it was coming from to me - maybe in Greene Rose Park?

Edit: We heard it from Main St.

That was my initial thought. But firework would certainly be the most parsimonious exclamation - maybe we both live close to the event?

>Because it's basically impossible to run truly low income housing at a profit in a city.

I didn't say it needed to be low income housing. For-profit companies are coming into this city and jumping through the AHO hoops in order to provide affordable housing, so it's quite evidently profitable.

As for low-income housing, if developers are unable to provide true low-income housing in the city, then of course city-run housing at a loss is not a waste of resources. It gives people homes, which, as you said, were "impossible" for a for-profit to run.

>when you say "city run", you mean owned/subsidized and operated, right?

To be honest, I don't care. Leaving it to for-profit developers seems like a recipe for housing to disappear as soon as it ceases to be profitable, but whether the solution is a public/private partnership, or a city-owned/contractor-managed situation, or a fully city-owned-and-run project, it would ameliorate the situation.

Just look at this current proposal: we passed AHO years ago, but companies decided it wasn't affordable, so we needed active legislation to appease them. So, it's clearly not obvious what policies we need to appease developers, so who says the policies we put in place today will lead to affordable housing for more than a couple years? City-run initiatives ensure longevity, even if it stops being profitable for a time.

I can't imagine what you mean by waste of resources - the developers are "paying for everything" because they can make money off of the housing they build. And not just a small amount - they're jumping through hoops here to get approved under the AHO because this is a lucrative gig, presumably. Why would the city not be able to run housing at least not taking a loss?

What exactly is Cambridge's median income? I expected, after the AHO passed, for Cambridge to maintain that as a readily accessible number, so that it's possible to validate that a developer is in compliance. However, I can't find such a number published officially with Google searches.

It seems this specifically applies to anything that the AHO would already apply to - aka where 100% of the units are rented at 1/3 of 85% of median income. As long as that's true, I'm for it.

I do, though, wish the Council was doing more to ensure housing for those below that line. 85% of median income seems to exclude such a huge number of residents of our city, so it seems concerning that this is held up as the cheapest Cambridge can make housing. The city should be pushing for (a) city-run housing, (b) radically cheaper housing solutions, especially for minority communities who've lived in our city for centuries, and (c) pressure on landlords to create processes to rent-to-own.