https://www.vermontpublic.org/podcast/brave-little-state/2023-03-09/how-many-airbnbs-are-taking-away-from-vermonters-its-complicated

They ran a story on the short term rental surge and how it's impacting the housing crisis less than a day after you posted this comment, FYI.

I've seen that study, too. As the article mentions, it's possible the discrepancy is a result of demographics--i.e., people who can't afford to hire movers are more likely to rent a uhaul, which means the uhaul data will be weighted more heavily in favor of states that people with less money are likely to move to.

Unfortunately, all this data is proprietary, either owned by uhaul, or united van lines. I'm not aware of any independent researchers gathering broad, normalized market data on this. I'd be very interested to see it, if it's out there.

I agree 100%! We are in agreement.

But it would be very odd for even a good chunk of those Biden voters to agree with the police chief's "let's go Brandon" stance. The Venn diagram of Biden voters and people who dislike Biden is by no means a circle (I should know--I'm one of them), but as far as I'm aware, the "let's go Brandon" crowd does not include very many Biden voters.

If election results are any indicator, then that's not true.

The town has a lot of very vocal and visible jackasses, but if we're talking about the number of people, they are the smaller group, measurably so.

The one you linked used absolute number of people, not people per capita. The result is that it's essentially a list of states according to their population size, split into states with net population loss and gain. That's why the top four "loss" states are 4/6 of the largest-population states, and the top two "gain" states are the remaining 2/6.

The article I linked is one month old, and is an analysis of the entire previous year. It also normalizes the data per-capita, rather than just giving absolute numbers.

It literally is special, though. Vermont has the highest per-capita number of people attempting to purchase property of any state. Source.

Per the source, it isn't even close. We're 10 full percentage points higher than the runner-up (Oregon).

The housing crisis is impacting the entire country, and yet it is measurably impacting Vermont worse than any other state. Anecdotally, my wife and I experienced this first hand. We attempted to buy a house last year, having saved up a healthy sum for a down payment, and receiving full pre-approval for a loan that put most homes on the market in reach. Unfortunately, the very fact that we needed a loan was essentially disqualifying. Vermont's market is currently so over-saturated, that every single home received a cash offer, and the cash always won instead of financing.

Isn't this the case with most products, though? Currently, the only real way for companies to track which people purchased a recalled product is if they made the purchase with a customer loyalty card of some kind (containing contact info for the customer).

This is the sane take.

People reported getting sick from a particular batch of flower. So, the government agency responsible for regulating this product tested a sample and issued a consumer protection warning based on its findings.

This kind of response does not happen without a regulated consumer market.

It's the ultra-bright, daylight-spectrum LED lights.

They shouldn't be legal. Every single driver with those LED lights that are as bright as ordinary high-beams should fail inspection and be required to upgrade to road-safe, mellow-spectrum lights.

I feel like it's gotten worse in the last two years. Not sure if that's because it suddenly became the default for new cars, or if it's due to the influx of people who have moved to Vermont during COVID.

More than anything.

It feels like the grief is barely beginning. I know we'll still have "normal"-ish winters for the most part in the coming years (by which I mean it snows, and the snow sticks) but they're clearly becoming less frequent and less powerful.

It's like an aspect of my childhood that I had good reason to believe would always be here is dying.

I count six covered bridges!

The sixth is a bit less obvious; see if you can find it. :)

Also, really interesting to see how Hubbard Park hill was almost completely treeless! Here are some more photos showing what that looked like, including an aerial photo from 1927.

Well, not "a system" of beliefs and moral values. More like the entire broad concept of "systems of beliefs and moral values," specifically within the framework of organized religion.

Glad that we're in agreement about the analogy not being perfect.

I think it has to do with a perception that the harms outweigh the goods.

This is not a perfect analogy, but it's the best I can come up with right now: opioids have helped a lot of people. They're extremely effective painkillers that can help people during periods of significant difficulty (e.g. when recovering from a surgery).

Their prolific, poorly-regulated usage has also fueled an epidemic of addiction and death. As a result, a lot of people have justifiably negative feelings about opioids.

For the same reason that every media outlet has always called every similar race the moment that polls close: the polling errors in the days/weeks leading up to the election would have to be orders of magnitude beyond anything reasonable in order for the prediction to be wrong.

The result is that if they don't call the race, someone else will, and they have a strong capitalist incentive to be among the first to accurately call the race.

> people are getting killed

...

> an ill-gotten catalytic converter can “typically” fetch between $50 and $250 when sold to an unscrupulous recycling facility

https://ktla.com/news/catalytic-converter-thefts-which-vehicles-are-targeted-the-most/

Good god.

Is anyone else freaked out by how late the frosts have been this year? Up until about a decade ago, the first frost came in the last week of September, like clockwork. In Central VT we'd have had fifteen frosts by now, and nearing the point where it dropped below freezing every single night. This year we've had...three frosts, I think? Including last night.