You'd want them angled to pick up the sun in winter anyway.

Besides, even if you assume zero output from the panels from December to March, you're still getting a benefit the other eight months of the year...

> I’m getting a lot of value for that tax money.

Yeah, this is something that people should be paying more attention to. It's not just about how much you're paying but whether the value you get out is worth what you're putting in.

Americans like to pretend we're all rugged individualists, but very few of us are actually living that kind of life. Not even the "Live Free or Die" guys mocking OP.

My partner got COVID for the first time in the Fall. Fortunately, she was asymptomatic, and I somehow never caught it from her.

Isolation tips: I don't know what your home layout is like, but, if there's a guest bedroom, camp out in there for the duration. Try to minimize your time in common areas, and wear a mask when you leave your quarantine room. Ventilation is hard in the winter, but if you can air out the common areas once in a while that can help. Try a Corsi-Rosenthal box, they're inexpensive and do a great job at cleaning the air. (Our house has a lot of airborne particulates from our pets -- setting up a box in the living area cut down that down almost entirely, and MERV 13 or higher filters will do the same for virus particles.)

My understanding is that vaccination protects against those side effects, although lack of good studies means we can't say definitively how good that protection is. There's definitely an effect, but the studies don't entirely agree on how strong it is. I think the best studies put the case rate at something like 1-2% of vaccinated people who get COVID experiencing Long COVID symptoms in general. (I don't think enough data exists to say how prevalent any specific Long COVID symptom is.)

So assuming you were vaccinated, try not to worry about it. The odds that you have Long COVID at all are pretty low, and the odds that you specifically get stuck with brain fog are even lower.

Sad that this is the only comment so far pointing this out.

And by "the smallest companies", what that means is "companies where there are no employees other than the owners".

They're not, is the thing. Schools passing out chest binders is as real as the "litter boxes for furries" thing.

It's covered by a Somebody Else's Problem field.

I mean, there are lots of poles that don't get hit either.

That's because there's no rational explanation for why people keep hitting this one pole.

When it comes to layering, that doesn't just mean pile on more cotton hoodies.

The absolute most important thing is moisture control. Cotton holds on to moisture, so having cotton on, especially right against your skin, means your sweat clings to your body and cools you off. Wool and synthetics will wick the moisture away and let it escape out of the gaps in your top layer.

Investing in proper winter base layers will go a LONG way to improving comfort in the cold!

All-seasons are great for everything except steep hills that ice over and active blizzard conditions. Anybody who needs winter tips probably doesn't need studs.

Seems to me a lot of these smaller communities would be well served by merging to pool resources

Aroostook and Washington counties both have really poor access to medical services. That's been true for a long time, but it's gotten significantly worse due to COVID-related burnout driving people out of medical professions.

It's the illusion of consumer choice. Your electricity is always coming over Versant lines from Versant plants no matter what. These middle-man companies can only make a profit by charging more than Versant.

Heh, that's usually how it works for me.

It's a scientific phenomenon called "lying with statistics".

Remember when the argument for dropping the mandates was "if we give people a break, they'll be more inclined to comply if we need to do them again later"?

Our leaders should not be in the business of trying to psychoanalyse the population like this. They should be noticing a problem and implementing the solution that we already know would work.

Re-instituting mandatory masking would reduce the incidence of all three viruses that are contributing to this surge, but nobody in power is even floating the idea. An absolutely disgraceful dereliction of duty.

You've gotta layer. The general rule is that you have a wind/waterproof outer layer, a moisture-wicking inner layer, and then mid-layers that trap heat. Don't forget a warm hat, gloves, and socks. I have to emphasise this because it's easy for someone coming from warm weather (I moved to New England from Hawaii, myself) to think you just need to toss a big coat on top of your fall outfit, but that won't be enough for the really cold days and you'll overheat on the slightly-less-cold days.

If you're just going from your car to the grocery store and the weather is clear, not too far below zero, and not very windy, you can probably get away with like a long underwear/undershirt, heavyweight pants/flannel shirt, and a lined vest. Depending on the style of collar your vest has, add a scarf. But I always take an actually good coat in the car even when I don't plan on needing it. Lots of reasons you might have to get out of the car for a while.

If you're actually walking to and from places, you need a good coat on top of the basics. Cold is cumulative, an outfit that's good for fifteen minutes is not gonna be good for an hour. And then there will be weather where even the short walk between the store and the parking lot requires proper bundling, like when the wind whips up or there's any kind of precipitation.

EDIT: I also want to mention that I never had issues with SAD, but some people do. You can get special lamps or light bulbs (not the same as the "daylight balanced" ones) that are designed emit more UV to stimulate the hormones that some people have shortage of during the dark months. They're more expensive, but the folks I've known who experiece SAD swear by them.

> The rules are written for infrastructure we just don’t have.

This is the answer to like 90% of "why are Mass drivers the way they are?" questions.

Internet speeds will vary depending on your actual address, but you should be able to check what's available from the local ISPs before signing a lease or mortgage. I believe most of Eastport has decent cable internet coverage, but I don't know about Jonesport. Calais and some of the neighbouring towns have fiber, though. There's a municipally-owned fiber utility that has a contract with Pioneer.

There has been a skyrocketing murder rate... by which I mean increasing from like one murder per year to four.