very strange. likely some conscious or unconscious bias happening there. do you look very young? I used to go to that gym years ago and they had issues with some high school kids who were allowed to be there letting friends in the back door and the other kids would make up all kinds of excuses for why they just forgot their ID/barcode.

there is a Planet Fitness downtown

downtown does have basketball courts.

"controversy" as the years (decades?) long plan for complete streets makes small, incremental progress toward 1% of street/sidewalk space being set aside for bikes.

that is a very low quote. I'm surprised they could even buy the hardware for that price 4 years ago, but they probably could not now.

the best course of action is to get 3+ quotes. you will be lucky to get $5k with many people I know paying $12k.

everyone get a dashcam, and everyone get a Tile to track your own car. I would bet the ramming car was stolen.

I think that much of the issue with development could be avoided if you gave advantages to homeowners and disadvantages to landlords. for example, you could make the rule that only houses that are currently owner-occupied can be converted to multi-family without going through the longer process. that way, folks who own their own houses can choose to either convert and sell or convert and remain in one of the units, both of which build wealth for homeowners. meanwhile a landlord would not get that benefit and still have to pursue the variance through the more complicated process. it wouldn't be perfect as people could game in my having a "straw buyer" technically own it for some period of time, but that's a lot of work and fraud, which would prevent most folks from doing that.

I don't know of a good one. I just use a hand grinder that I replaced with a better one for my coffee. it looks like this but I don't know if that one would be good or meet your needs.

I think the main reason the coffee grinders work better is because they have a handle to give more leverage, which means you can grind a greater quantity more quickly than just doing quarter-turn twists.

I find that the best grinders for both salt and pepper are actually handheld coffee grinders.

where are yo getting 2 years?

maybe when we flush all of our politicians with the term limits we just passed, we can convince some Philly city government folks to move here. Philly always seems like Baltimore but with more competent leadership and without the state resource drain that is DC

yeah, open primaries where the top ~4 candidates (regardless of party) go to the general election would be ideal. I think California does something like this.

that said, we know that incumbent name recognition gives and advantage above and beyond an individual's platform. so if you want the best ideas to win, you want to lean slightly away from incumbents

it's interesting to see calls for term limits on politicians be extremely popular, but then when it comes to their locality "ohh no, this is the worst thing ever!".

I wonder if there were some way to tip the scales but not require term limits. for example, maybe after 2 terms, the candidate has to win by 2/3rds majority to hold their seat.

>Open societies with few top down restrictions tend to be more egalitarian

that's not true. Nordic countries have above average top-down controls and outperform "more free" markets like the US in spite of the much higher overall wealth of the US. there is clearly a middle ground that is ideal, simply by looking around the world at developed countries and which ones are most stable, happy, educated, etc.

but if the employer is able to successfully dodge any bargaining agreement and the union isn't willing to strike, then what is the point of complaining that some other conditions are better elsewhere? either stick to the negotiating process, in which of course the company isn't going to give away benefits before they negotiate benefit, or strike. I'm not sure why employees would assume that they're automatically going to get the best compensation right before they bargain for compensation.

this whole thing seems like a big ado about a pretty mundane process.

The whole point of a union is to be able to force unemployer to negotiate in order to avoid a strike. If the union can't get a contract and they're not willing to strike then they're not really a union, or at least their leadership is failing them because they're not using any of the power that they have

then they strike. if they aren't willing to unite to bargain, then are they even a union or are they just employees paying some con-artist dues to call them a union?

uhh, the whole point of bargaining agreements is to sign a contract to lock in pay and benefits (and whatever else is agreed to between the union and the owner). if there is some new benefit to other stores, the unionized one will have to re-bargain their agreement to get it if they want it.

if the union didn't get sufficient pay/benefits, then they need to fire the union leadership because they fucked up the bargaining.

if the union DID get sufficient pay/benefits but the company is raising wages or benefits across many stores just to try to reduce the likelihood that others stores won't unionize, then congrats, not only did you get sufficient pay/benefits, but you also helped out many others by raising worker compensation in a wider area.

you can't expect to get the benefits of both a locked-in agreement AND the benefits from corporate that are given to other locations.

welcome!

I hate the Mosbys and want them both out of Baltimore, but I don't really care what they dress as for Halloween

higher ownership rates are ideal, but investment in the city is also a positive. we can't just wave a magic wand and make everything in the city better, the city needs money to solve root causes.

> intentionally neglecting them to bring down the value in the neighborhoods

that's why I specifically called that out as one of the IFs.

email your council person and say that you want corporate buyers to pay heavy penalties if they do not rent the houses within a year.

well, as long as they're paying taxes and not letting them fall into disrepair, then it can be a positive thing. those are some big IFs, though.

generally, you can tell what is a cheap flip in the city because they will use the cheapest/builder-grade materials for everything. light fixtures, kitchen flooring, siding if there is any. some things you can look at the finishing, like trim and edges of flooring to see if it is done well. laminate floors in the kitchen can either be good or crappy, depending on whether they went with the cheap stuff or not.

avoid tiled floor showers as they will leak if not done right. if the house is really well done with higher than builder-grade stuff, then I would be less worried. don't be wowed by fancy Jacuzzi tubs. it might be nice, but it's not a sign of a high-quality remodel because they're actually not much more expensive than a regular tub.

check the HVAC to see if it is newish. ducting is hard to do correctly, so if it looks like someone cut corners in places, chances are your house will heat/cool unevenly because of poor duct design. personally, I hate ducted heat/AC and think no old house should ever have it retrofitted, but it's not necessarily a problem

the roof is a big one. if they replaced the roof, you're probably in good shape. if they made everything else nice but left the roof alone, they may have been really pinching pennies.

I guess the short version is: if it looks like a house in the suburbs on the inside, it's probably a crappy flip. a good remodel will accentuate the 100 year old architecture, not hide it behind fiber-board and plastic trim.

many grocery stores carry it, like Safeway and Harris Teeter.