I feel like the impacts of fish farming is kind of overblown to be honest. Especially in this case, the facility is comprised of indoor tanks and is treating the discharged wastewater so nutrient loading that could degrade water quality won't be an issue.

I think dams have a much bigger impact on our marine ecosystem than fish farms.

I left Mass for southern Maine recently.

It was driven almost exclusively by the cost of housing.

Other costs (groceries, utilities, insurance etc), are pretty similar, so thats not breaking the bank. I pay higher state taxes here in Maine (also when I lived in virginia) so that's not it either.

The real difference in cost of living is rent and the price to purchase a home. In greater Boston, rent is tens of thousands more per year. And when you can't save because you're spending your money on rent, it's much harder to purchase a property that costs 4 times what you can find elsewhere.

It's really shitty actually, the locals up here blame the rise in housing prices mostly on massholes who move up here and can afford more expensive housing. This issue is pricing people out of their own communities, hours away.

Who knows, maybe I'll move back eventually, but it won't be anywhere within an hour of Boston if prices don't become more reasonable.

I'm fairly certain the Mashpee are a bit unique among tribes in the US in that the integration forced on them was somewhat "succesful".

They were given a town as a Christian Praying Tribe, so they didnt live on a reservation under federal jurisdiction. Many intermarried and had children with white people so the " more than one-half blood" metric didnt explicitly apply to them all either. Their traditional customs were largely wiped out.

But this was done before 1934, so they weren't on the list that was made when the law was passed.

It's like the government decided the tribe was fully "integrated" by the time they defined what an "indian" was.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mashpee_Wampanoag_Tribe

From the article

> The definition of “Indian” under the Indian Reorganization Act is: "[1] all persons of Indian descent who are members of any recognized Indian tribe now under Federal jurisdiction, and [2] all persons who are descendants of such members who were, on June 1, 1934, residing within the present boundaries of any Indian reservation, and shall further include [3] all other persons of one-half or more Indian blood," according to the department. 

But also

>"The record in this case reveals the government’s systemic, decades-long policy of forcibly dissolving Indigenous tribes and cultures by coercing children to assimilate into what the government defined as “white” society," wrote Kelley. "The Carlisle School, funded by Congress for the purpose of separating Indigenous children from their families and indoctrinating them in accordance with the government’s policy, was an essential component of this system."

Essentially the plaintiffs tried to make the argument that the Mashpee didn't fit into the narrow definition provided by the 1934 law dictating what an "Indian" is.

Judge comes back and says we have a clear cut record of the government forcing the tribe to integrate into society. We know that the government considered them "indians" at the time because otherwise they wouldn't have forced them to assimilate.

Looks like you're right

https://www.mass.gov/service-details/south-coast-rail-project-corridor-maps

The map shows the current line ends in Middleborough. Google maps shows the town does indeed have a large commuter lot, and a fair bit of apartments/townhomes immediately adjacent to the current station.

Now, the state is proposing to move the station to a junction about a mile north so it ties into the line in Taunton.

Honestly I get the frustration on the towns part but in the grand scheme of things, the new line with provide services to tens of thousand of people as opposed to a few hundred that might live in those apartments.

Yeah this was a bad screenshot for the supposed setting.

Later in the episode it shows them walking by a bunch of wetlands and crossing bridges over a slow moving river. Those scenes were more accurate.

I realize it's not super intuitive, but adding more housing, even housing that is unaffordable to most people, has ripple effects that help to reduce the cost of housing for everyone else.

Here's one study, but this has been ound to be true in several others as well.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0094119022001048?via%3Dihub

Biggest pet peeve about microbiome studies is when they say the microbial community is the CAUSE of something.

These studies seem to ignore the very real possibility that diet itself alters the microbiome, so it stands to reason if you have a horrible diet, the makeup of your bodies microbial community will be altered from someone who has a more balanced diet.

It's no different than saying someone with a diet of red meat and potatoes will have a different microbiome than someone with a vegetarian diet. The altered microbiome in a vegetarian didn't cause that person to become a vegetarian, their lifestyle choices affected their microbiome.

There's also been studies that try and link c-sections to altered microbiomes, however they ignore the possibility that the underlying issue that forced a woman to have the c-section in the first place, was the cause of these changes in community makeup.

There's just so much emphasis on the causal link between microbiome and human health that I think these researchers really need to take a step back and think about what they're saying for a minute. I don't know how some of these statements get published in the first place.

End rant.

Edit: to be fair, the study doesn't seem to make the claim the title of the post does. The study just says there are changes in the gut microbiome of people with varying degrees of obesity. The title of this post claims the microbiome affects obesity. These are not the same thing.

I agree the city needs investment in infrastructure but I think the sticking point is that to reduce the traffic issues, they'd have to redesign major portions of the city that were never built with cars in mind in the first place. We're talking 1950s Era urban renewal, razing large sections of the city...

So, we can say that the city shouldn't allow more density because of traffic issues, but the issue isn't actually that people are living in the city, the issue is that the city is an employment/education center people commute in and out on an everyday basis.

To me, it stands to reason that adding density near the employment centers won't impact the traffic issues the same way that building the same number of units outside the city, for people that will be driving to the city.

This apartment is walking distance to the employers downtown, Union Station, restaurants/entertainment, schools, medical centers (although notably no grocery store).

If the city is going to improve, I think they do need improved public transit, not prevent desperately needed housing.

Lots of cities around the country that are around the size of Worcester are investing in rapid bus transit, I think the city should really look into that option.

https://www.itdp.org/library/standards-and-guides/the-bus-rapid-transit-standard/what-is-brt/

This is similar to treatment systems that destroys other tough to eliminate chemicals that persist in the environment, like 1,4 dioxane. They've been around for a few decades but it's good to hear the technology can be applied for PFAS.

Currently PFAS treatment is mostly through activated carbon or resins specially designed to remove it. It's getting more and more difficult to manage this increasing waste stream of the exhausted filter material.

There will be a bigger upfront cost to build these treatment systems, but there will be a point where it's more expensive to just keep using the activated carbon or resin if they exhaust that filter material too quickly.

Yeah the newer Cumbies are stepping up their game but the food is still not nearly on par with Sheetz or Wawa. The shitty pizza and whatever they have on those roller things aren't even close to the fresh sandwiches and sides at those other chains.

The Bigelow Preserve is nice.

There's first come first serve campsites that are free to stay just north of Rangeley in the mountains on a large lake.

I'm not sure about the fishing at that particular lake but there's many more around.

https://mainelakesandmountains.com/story/bigelow-preserve-public-reserved-land

Sturbridge Village

The clothes are itchy, tourists gawking at you all the time, the slumlords that run the place don't provide modern appliances or running water, no electricity, your neighbors have a total lack of basic hygiene, healthcare providers dont even know about bacteria yet, etc etc