If there was ever a case for eminent domain…
Welcome to my personal journal. It’s mostly about Swampscott. I’m sorry if you came here for something else.
180 followers 219 following 1,033 posts
view profile on Bluesky
If there was ever a case for eminent domain…
Effectively, it’s the same as this one off of Galloupes Point Rd where the easement is open to people who own land that was formerly part of the grander estate but it’s not public. Residents here also have access to a private beach on the other side of the point. All of this is just BS land laws.
Such a weird and disappointing end to this saga. After digging through deeds the town found out the easement was not for the public, but only for those who now own property in what was formerly the Phillips Beach Trust. This was on our open space inventory for at least 5 years? How did it get there?
In this week’s least surprising news: marbleheadcurrent.org/2025/09/02/t...
This is a subskeet about trump isn’t it?
Maybe it’s the exception, but it appears that Massachusetts judges have been pretty onboard with the MBTA Communities Act.
Magically, the people who complain the most about “other” people being too online somehow manage to find and focus only on the weirdest online people that they somehow found on their definitely brief time spent on social media.
Regularly mispronounces fun words. 👋
I have been saying this for something like 15 years and I am so tired, folks: the tactics. Of the right. Don't work. For the left. Because their politics are divisive and anti-community. Ours aren't. They win when politics is toxic and vicious. We win by building solidarity.
Same time next week everyone??
Time to initiate the plan…
It would be hilarious if the first person RFK jr killed due to his attempts to dismember our public health infrastructure was Trump.
Joe Biden outliving him would be objectively hilarious.
It would be hilarious if everyone just still pretended he was dead when he turns up alive. Maybe 3 people would visit him though and pretend they were the ghosts of past, present, and future.
Again, it’s so nice to have local journalism that can do longer form articles with appropriate and accurate context on local topics. swampscotttides.org/top-story/he...
Firing the CDC Director. Restricting vaccine access. Cutting billions in public health funding. Donald Trump and RFK will cost people their lives. Massachusetts protects health care and public health. And we're going to get people the vaccines they need – no matter what.
How though? We need more than a skeet.
I think a lot of pollsters take bad faith “debates” they see online (probably just Twitter honestly) and apply polling data to declare that the bad faith debate is in good faith actually when real people never thought or cared about this question in the first place until being asked on this poll.
Change it to “Do you think it’s reasonable to cut off contact with family members bc they don’t view you as a full person, don’t think you should have equal rights as them, or think you are part of a global conspiracy that steals children and drinks their blood?” And see how people respond.
This is a great example of a poll being designed (intentionally or not) to try and cast a pretty reasonable action as a minority opinion. It’s a bad question because it isn’t specific enough.
I think anyone who is in a “deal making mode” with Trump and thinks that he’ll honor his side of any bargain is probably not someone who we should send to make a deal with him in the first place.
this picture of a mom shoes off sprinting to the Mpls school: www.startribune.com/minneapolis-... By Richard Tsong-Taatarii for @startribune.com, which should be a go-to source for anyone following
Using the ‘I’ word here was certainly a choice.
MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Minneapolis mayor says children are dead after a shooting at a Catholic school.
Well I guess I can finally reveal that my submission for the MA state flag did not advance to the finals. There are a few nicer ones to choose from though. The commonwealth will survive.
swampscotttides.org/top-story/sw...
Should be noted these are just the slides that they put out and not an actual executive summary. It takes so much effort to just get the town to post anything that admittedly I lose steam after getting them to do the absolutely bare minimum.
I’m not sure what would be surprising to people, but here are some highlights.
Sharing this with the public is the second bullet point under the Transparency section of what to do next.
And over 3 months after the DEI contractor’s executive summary was presented to the Select Board, it is now actually publicly available. www.swampscottma.gov/sites/g/file...
My family and I were doing the whole “why is everything so shitty in the US now compared to Europe?” when coming through terminal E last night when doing things like just getting our luggage, but yeah, this could have been part of it too.
The project of most anti-trump conservatives is to just move the Democratic Party a bit more to right so it aligns with things that appeal to them. So there’s that.
I would guess that that name being one of the top blocked accounts on this site and the “why we should all stay on twitter” piece are intimately connected.
I know this place is better because this topic didn’t even cycle for 24 hours before moving on to dunk on a dude supporting this article that is inarguably much much more problematic than the bad take this article was. On twitter, this would be going on for like a week.
There are some online communities that have barriers in switching platforms and that’s a worthy topic of discussion, but the writers for this particular publication and who they like talking to are not one of them.
Remember when republicans, after a stunning defeat in 2020, simply came up with a list of words to avoid saying in 2024 and won narrowly? Oh? That didn’t happen? Hmmm.
Ok - so I'm going to do a real context+write up but for now, here's what some of these things look like. To start my data reference is DCinbox which is ~208,000 official e-newsletters over the past 15 years.
The right’s success in radicalizing people online comes from constantly relitigating “debates” that were previously lost in the “marketplace of ideas” as if those previous conversation never happened or were never allowed to happen.
Constantly reminded of this quote from “So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish” by Douglas Adams: “The storm had now definitely abated, and what thunder there was now grumbled over more distant hills, like a man saying 'And another thing...' twenty minutes after admitting he's lost the argument.”
The DEI contractor’s report was supposedly posted, but the entire menu item to get to that project was removed from the HR department’s page accidentally during the process, so…
Upping this to 50%. Currently engaged in a waiting game for things promised: 1.) The crime stats presentation given to the Select Board to be posted to the town’s website. 2.) The DEI contractor’s executive summary also presented to the Select Board to be posted to the town’s website.
Give me a representative that understands how the internet works.
Do not get me started on the pushback received during the original painting on including the trans colors of the pride flag. Apparently brown was “too hard”.
Our rainbow sidewalks exist this year only because of a private donation from one of the most hated (debatable as to whether this hate is justified or not) former Select Board members in recent history. The town was going to just forget about them. Better than actively erasing them I guess.
It’s not denial, it’s because Matt Y is one of the top blocked accounts on this website so The Argument isn’t going to get great engagement here.
The reasoning one comes up with when one of their friends/writers for The Argument is one of the top 20 blocked accounts on BlueSky.
This is nazi logic. The Nazis would redistribute the confiscated property of Jews to the German populace as an incentive to support their mass deportation to concentration camps.
look what happens when you actually speak to the people living in these neighborhoods instead of ventriloquizing them to make an ideological point: you get a good story www.nytimes.com/2025/08/16/u...
I say this as someone who generally finds Desmas’ work informative and appreciatively nuanced, but a few of the people involved here definitely have some blind spots to the topic they are going to be writing about.
I will repeat that Republicans use polls to see how well their propaganda is working and Democrats use them to see what to say next. $10 says they get a poll result with some conservative/moderate leaning outcome and then make the claim Democrats need to stand for whatever it is.
this is a nice example of @ryanenos.bsky.social's point that when discussing Trump's authoritarian moves, we should start by discussing the *action* and ignore or refuse to take seriously the bullshit justification offered for it
Backed by science, sure, but my reasons mostly involve just being annoyed by said people because they want all the upside of owning a dog with none of the responsibility to the dog or society at large. apnews.com/article/clim...
I may have LOL’d (maybe better categorized as a “grim chuckle” because it’s not actually funny. It’s supremely disappointing when you watch someone you like hurting themselves, but you did tell them so. ) when I read this headline. marbleheadcurrent.org/2025/08/11/t...
the thing everyone is going to have to accept is that the post-trump period, whenever it comes, will not and cannot be a project of national unity, it must be a project of partisan project of renewal, in the same way that reconstruction and the new deal were partisan projects of renewal.
It started with website templates full of fake reviews and stock photos for “employee” bios and then they just gave them the ability to chat with you. aaronberdofewine.com/2020/03/29/j...
Pg 63 in the open space inventory shows the stairs listed as a right of way. www.swampscottma.gov/sites/g/file...
In Swampscott I have been trying to get answers on why one of our public ways to a beach is locked up with “private” signs all over it, and the road to get to it littered with “Private way” signs. It’s been months since I first started inquiring about it.
I think the protection of public space from private property owners is something that isn’t focused on enough in communities. This manifests itself in selling public land, the erosion of public ways like this example and even down to just protecting sidewalks. marbleheadcurrent.org/2025/08/10/n...
I have to be in Swampscott for a thing this evening and man alive it is utterly, impossibly gorgeous.
It depends…we could have taken the Paradise Rd/1A route and only had 30% no sidewalk, but then would have had to cross at a pretty treacherous intersection with a slip lane. So yes, but only if there was an actually safe route.
Survived this walk with my 7 y/o son from one suburban shopping plaza to another in which 60% of the route contains no sidewalks. AMA.
It’s nice when the main street is closed for a day. Swampscott Humphrey St Block Party 2025
Imagine being one of the Trump voters who still insists that their vote had nothing to do with their own racism. American Nazis: The Aryan Freedom Network is riding high in Trump era - www.reuters.com/investigatio...
really feels like housing affordability is one of the most important political issues of our time, affecting nearly every aspect of our lives, and everyday our mainstream political discourse is about whether sour cream is woke or not
Missed a housing one: 🙂 25-21 An Initiative Petition to Protect Tenants by Limiting Rent Increases www.mass.gov/doc/25-21-an...
Not housing, but special shout out to this guy definitely misreading the metaphorical Massachusetts room: www.mass.gov/doc/25-02-in...
Yes, 4 of those 5 are submitted by the same person. I guess they are in the running for NIMBY of the year. Please note: Just bc they are listed here does not mean they will ultimately voted on. This is step 1 of 3. The rest can be found here: www.mass.gov/info-details...
😬 25-35 Initiative Petition for an Act Reforming the Zoning Process www.mass.gov/doc/25-35-in...
🤪 25-34 Initiative Petition for an Act to Prevent Overdevelopment www.mass.gov/doc/25-34-in...
🫠 25-33 Initiative Petition for an Act Preserving Local Control of Zoning www.mass.gov/doc/25-33-in...
🙄 25-32 Initiative Petition for an Act to Repeal MBTA Zoning www.mass.gov/doc/25-32-in...
🥰 25-03 Initiative Petition for a Law to Allow Single-Family Homes on Small Lots in Areas with Adequate Infrastructure www.mass.gov/doc/initiati...
@massago.bsky.social has posted all proposed ballot initiatives for the upcoming 2026 (proposed law) and 2028 (proposed constitutional amendment) elections. Here are some of the fun ones relating to housing… Emojis are my own. I am not an LLM.
one of the greatest humiliations of rule by these fascists is that, despite having total and complete control over the entire system of american government, the only thing they know how to do is ask for the manager because they're too stupid to understand that they *are the manager*
Sat next to a MAGAwoman on the train this morning that was Twitter scrolling and kept liking, reposting and commenting on things about this and similar items. Her entire feed was just right wing agitprop and there wasn’t a single post about anything else. Like, give me one joke post in your feed.
Probably also why I’m not on TikTok.
My one pet peeve of “the internet these days” is that everything has to be a video now when it could easily be text. Quick instructions on something: 10+ minute videos returned. Quick explainer on something: 1+ hr videos returned. So yeah, I’m too pressed for time to watch your stupid video.
Trying to get at least the slides posted somewhere.
After a number of years of prodding and pushing, the Swampscott PD has finally put out crime statistics in a public forum. This was at a SB meeting and not the general public and yeah, things like breakouts by race are missing, but the right direction. swampscotttides.org/featured/wit...
It will be great if someone behind the scenes hoodwinked RFK jr and Oz to do our industry a solid and something positive comes of this, but I will remain highly leery as it progresses.
The company I work for was one of the 60 that signed on and I certainly have mixed feelings about it not because of the supposed goals and “policies”, but because of the potential motives of those organizing it. This sums it up well: thehealthcareblog.com/blog/2025/08...
Recently, the CMS announced a voluntary commitment to better transmission of health data throughout the industry and though I could at best be described as a “light casual user” of LinkedIn, I have never seen that platform more heated about it.
It doesn't matter if Sydney Sweeney's ad was a Nazi dogwhistle or not. All that matters is that right-wing media is controlling the national conversation. Here's a ticking clock of the Sydney Sweeney jeans panic. www.garbageday.email/p/the-right-...
[movie narrator voice]: Imagine a world where we don’t send all of our runoff water directly out to the ocean after it floods our streets which causes an overflow to the sewer system *by design* to take raw sewage out with it. e360.yale.edu/features/cop...
When people say “Defund the Police” they mean maybe some other government service that doesn’t have the power to kill or detain you can handle being a lost and found service including for your missing pets which is something police departments do quite a bit!
![Screenshot of a local Facebook group post: Swampscott Nest Anonymous participant [anonymized name] your Santander debit card is at Swampscott Police Station. I found it at the Gulf station on Essex Street in the tire filling station.](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:bvackxss7ydqm2caksj4id4b/bafkreid6qrdcsl7domitmnkmjcaszqsz73zinl5zralnmfbmv6klnv7sqm@jpeg "Click to view full size")
Marblehead NIMBYs are having a party to celebrate losing grants because they are failing to adopt 3A and the attendee list is all public. It’s just a list of people who were active FB commenters over the past couple of years juicing themselves up on NIMBY vibes. www.evite.com/event/0333O4...
As someone who is highly sympathetic to noise complaints, these people are aiming to become the least sympathetic complainers about a project that was at the outset only going to run for 3 months total and converting away from generators is part of analysis. swampscotttides.org/top-story/re...
Every time someone says “did you hear about [something in the news]” I go through some weird mental calculus to try and determine how much I should talk about it without sounding insane and usually just end up only saying “yeah, that’s wild, right?!”
The headline kind of reads like the Globe wants other New England states to follow in their footsteps with not actually listening to trans people or their caregivers.
I developed a hypothesis over a decade ago that if you are a musician and you get interviewed by NPR (not doing a tiny desk concert or something like that), you are solidly past your popularity peak.
Also would love for a single f*cking journalist writing an article about a perceptions poll to also give context on how close or far away from reality the some people’s perceptions are. Like, is this random man’s misunderstanding about DEI true or not? No idea! They don’t state either way.
It is still wild to me that we as a country simply continue to refuse to believe that discrimination can be systemic, despite all the evidence, and can only intellectually grasp the idea that some people are just bigoted and that’s the way it is.
The unfortunate thing about us as Americans is that it is only when we see people actively being physically harmed that we believe discrimination could possibly exist in the world. apnews.com/article/poll...
Swampscott received the 2025 Housing Choice Designation which is pretty cool. Hello grants. www.mass.gov/news/healey-...
Case in point here…and uh, if you started a petition, your name will be on it.
Also this influx of people using the “anonymous” commenting feature is a weird bc: a.) it’s not actually anonymous b.) anonymity online serves a real benefit to marginalized people who otherwise wouldn’t have a voice, but this is just neighbors taking passive aggressive snipes at each other.
I swear people in this town like choosing a side more than they like actually addressing real issues. It’s pretty embarrassing.
People are spending inordinate hours arguing about this on Facebook in Swampscott via anonymous posts (I don’t think they realize admins can see who they are), but this 👇👇 little detail…the actual potentially lawbreaking one, is not in the conversation for some reason.
