Developer of proposed American Legion Highway apartment complex stripped of all affordable units, public open space tells residents it's all their fault www.universalhub.com/2025/develop... #Boston #Roslindale #HydePark #housing
Outdoor author and urban trail builder. Creator of Mind The Moss, a newsletter about walking. Bylines in National Geographic, Mountain Gazette, The Boston Globe, Outside, WBUR, The New Republic, and AFAR. I founded the Walking City Trail of Boston. He/Him.
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Developer of proposed American Legion Highway apartment complex stripped of all affordable units, public open space tells residents it's all their fault www.universalhub.com/2025/develop... #Boston #Roslindale #HydePark #housing
remember folks, we cant have gun restrictions because if we do the federal government will occupy our streets, imprison people without due process, ship dissidents to foreign gulags and things of that nature
South Station is owned by the Commonwealth (MassDOT) and policed by the BPD, MBTA PD, and Amtrak PD. What possible legal pretext could there be for the US military to seize it??
And a Storrowing will still happen. Kinda drives home how silly it is that our approach to road safety is just repeatedly pleading with drivers to slow down and not hit people.
Fellow travelers: Have you ever been kept awake at a hotel by a barking dog? From another room or an adjacent property? If so, I would love to talk with you for an upcoming story! Leave a comment below and we can get the DMs going.
DONATE TO OMAR FATEH FOR MAYOR
Somehow, @bostonglobe.com allowed me to write about mini golf courses and what makes a world class golfscape. www.bostonglobe.com/2025/08/21/l...
I love mini golf, and I love that the Globe paid for a piece on designing mini golf courses
Somehow, @bostonglobe.com allowed me to write about mini golf courses and what makes a world class golfscape. www.bostonglobe.com/2025/08/21/l...
OMFG
Slightly diminish a band: Wheezer
guys itās really not funny that the fbi agent took a footlong to the chest. stop laughing. itās NOT FUNNY that an fbi agent in head to toe tactical gear tried to chase the guy who hucked a sandwich straight at his bulletproof vest but couldnāt outrun him
In the recent episode of Last Week Tonight about all the problems with gang databases, Boston is the first city that John Oliver spotlights as an example. I wish more of us in Boston could acknowledge that we are progressing on a lot of fronts, but not on policing. m.youtube.com/watch?v=rlR8...
Excuse my language but what fucking business is it of the united states government whether Brown undertakes this kind of medical care for parents and their kids who fully consent to it and desire it? Insanity! Pure discrimination in an agreement trollingly cloaked in preventing discrimination.
Chris Smalls to be released and expected to arrive back in US on Friday.
A horrific survivorās account from a concentration camp that should be shared far and wide. This is what Trump, Vance, Miller, and Noem want to inflict upon immigrants and anyone who opposes their greed and cruelty. www.propublica.org/article/vene...
YIMBY and housing abundance folks: What are some orgs that support zoning reform *and* rent stabilization as complimentary policies? (This is for a story that Iām working on.)
YIMBY and housing abundance folks: What are some orgs that support zoning reform *and* rent stabilization as complimentary policies? (This is for a story that Iām working on.)
We need to make "Summer Streets" happen so often that it's just "Streets."
Amazing. Inspiring.
URBAN HIKE TO CHILI'S
šØ This woman tries to call the family of the man being disappeared and ICE will not allow her to get a phone number. One of the āundercoverā mobsters nearly backed into her.
What if riding a train, tram, or trolley could be part of a hiking experience? In Portland, there's a loop trail around the city that utilizes four methods of transit that begin with the letter T. It's called the 4T Trail. So I hiked it and wrote about it. www.mindthemoss.com/p/trails-tra...
What if riding a train, tram, or trolley could be part of a hiking experience? In Portland, there's a loop trail around the city that utilizes four methods of transit that begin with the letter T. It's called the 4T Trail. So I hiked it and wrote about it. www.mindthemoss.com/p/trails-tra...
The Tesla diner is unfortunately in my neighborhood so I took a little peek to see boxes of milk and frozen foods out in the heat. Good luck to everyoneās stomachs.
(This mini-thread was inspired by an excellent, devastating book that I read recently, about rising homelessness in a major U.S. city which has accelerated development without tenant protections like rent control.)
While slower housing development is less than ideal, I think it's an acceptable price to pay for *not* throwing poor people into the meat grinder, in the name of fixing the housing supply crisis. If politicians or policymakers think it's an acceptable price to pay, then they should say it and own it
As far as I can see it, we've got two choices for fixing the housing crisis, neither of which is great. We can accelerate housing development without rent control and leave poor renters to bear the burden of gentrification. Or we can have slower development with rent control and share that burden.
Almost every politician has the same response when asked about rent control. They deflect and talk about how we need to build more housing. They're not wrong, but they're refusing to engage with a big question: Should we accept displacement of poor renters as the cost of building more housing ASAP?
www.boston.gov/departments/...
Just finished reading the City of Bostonās āAnti-Displacement Action Planā and while thereās a lot of good stuff in there, the absence of rent control is very conspicuous. I realize the state legislature gets to determine whether we can do that here, butā¦we can keep pushing for it.
The Democratic Party has a mailing list of 10s of millions of people. It could, if it wanted to, send out mailers next week to everyone alerting them to this.
Being fact checked is a dying practice, and a privilege every journalist should have.
Anyone who is engaged in housing discourse and advocacy should read THERE IS NO PLACE FOR US by @brian-goldstone.bsky.social. No book that Iāve read in recent years has faced the forces driving our homelessness and affordability crisis like this one. Itās an astounding feat of reporting.
Anyone who is engaged in housing discourse and advocacy should read THERE IS NO PLACE FOR US by @brian-goldstone.bsky.social. No book that Iāve read in recent years has faced the forces driving our homelessness and affordability crisis like this one. Itās an astounding feat of reporting.
āHe said, essentially, that you have a choice between two mandates, people or the market. And healthcare, he opined, could not serve both. This is correct. Similarly, housing cannot serve both mandates.ā www.currentaffairs.org/news/youre-n...
The shortage of indoor third spaces in Boston is especially brutal in the hottest weeks of summer.
TIL Thomas Paine wrote Common Sense in a Chipotle
Another ICE "assault" case unravels. Border Patrol and ICE are arresting US citizens and then after they find out that they are US citizens, they are charging them with "assault" to justify their actions. This is clearly DHS policy at this point. We've seen it repeatedly now.
Thereās a 210-mile urban trail around Chicagoās woods and waters. And you can camp on parts of it. So I went out there, spent 48 hours hiking the trail with its founder, and I wrote a story about it. www.mindthemoss.com/p/city-in-a-...
From @carakelly.bsky.social ā If our neighbors canāt save us now, weāre in trouble. We learned in our reporting this week that this country has outsourced the vast majority of search and rescue to unpaid volunteers. āThe feds say āitās not our problem.āā thebarbedwire.com/2025/07/12/t...
Thereās a 210-mile urban trail around Chicagoās woods and waters. And you can camp on parts of it. So I went out there, spent 48 hours hiking the trail with its founder, and I wrote a story about it. www.mindthemoss.com/p/city-in-a-...
a lot of establishment Democrats have been banking on the assumption that they don't need to message about authoritarianism, civil liberties, etc. because things will simply Get Worse under Trump and everyone will see it. but if the economy holds, they're an opposition party with no clear message.
The reason why a lot of us support pairing pro development housing policies *and* rent stabilization policies (even if this means a less rapid path to density) is because this means that the interim burdens of solving the housing crisis are shared by more people, and not just dumped on poor people.
The retort to this, and the closest that we usually get to an articulation of this argument, is that poor people are going to get displaced either way. So we might as well deregulate, build more market rate housing, and get some dividends. Thatās a position! But again, people should own it.
The thing about Abundance and YIMBYism that I find unacceptable is the implication that poor people should accept being displaced, in the interest of achieving housing density and supply expansion as quickly as possible. If people see that as an acceptable tradeoff, they should say it.
this is good www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnb...
Elon Musk poisoning an entire city to power an AI supercomputer that's calling itself Mecha-Hitler is why billionaires shouldn't exist.
Transit people: I'm scheduled to take the Texas Eagle Amtrak from San Antonio to Dallas in early August, during one of the hottest times of the year. Is this a bad idea? (The alternative is taking an intercity bus.)
In case you are looking for a good article from a mainstream outlet that lays out what's actually in the murder bill, I sent this USA today one to my family members: www.usatoday.com/story/graphi... - Most of them said that it was really helpful for them.
Of course it was Ed Flynn who cost us this grant
For no particular reason, I re-watched THE THIN RED LINE last night, for the first time in almost a decade. It's hard to think of another movie from the 90s that's aged this beautifully. And sadly, I think it would be impossible to make this kind of film today. A tragic and transcendant masterpiece.
Boston, I'm happy to report that after a brief hiatus due to sport injury recovery, I'm revving up my Night Hike series again for summer! On 7/14, we'll trek across the golf course at Franklin Park and visit some of the park's hidden wonders RSVP below walkingcitytrail.substack.com/p/walking-in...
Boston, I'm happy to report that after a brief hiatus due to sport injury recovery, I'm revving up my Night Hike series again for summer! On 7/14, we'll trek across the golf course at Franklin Park and visit some of the park's hidden wonders RSVP below walkingcitytrail.substack.com/p/walking-in...
Here are the leaders... people like this person.
Date idea: The Battle Of Algiers and chill
He went from literally 1 percent to 43 percent. That never happens. When somebody pulls that off, people donāt need to be fretting about it or attacking it; they need to ask why and see what they can learn from it. https://trib.al/v2TuX7w
That story sparked the discourse, yes, but Iām taking about a broader pattern of inconsistent editorial rigor thatās been building for several years; fueled by the idea that liberal viewpoints are over represented in legacy media while conservatives are suppressed.
dragonflies should breathe a little fire, just enough to light a cig
Itās a grueling day and thereās a lot to be upset about, but Iām begging progressive elected officials to not engage in public doomerism. People look to you for hope. Itās okay to not broadcast the full extent of your feelings about the current moment.
Once again I have no use for any doomerism. Sadness, anger, and grief - I understand, I sympathize, and with ya. " Its over" " We're cooked" " US's final season" Fuck off.
3. Corporations that publicly endorsed Trump's megabill: 3M Altria AT&T Charter Communications Chevron Cisco Comcast Delta Airlines Door Dash Great Clips Hair Cuttery T-Mobile Uber United Airlines UPS Verizon
The most messed up part is that even this wonāt be enough to satisfy them. They are addicted to greed and grievance. They will demand more tax cuts and subsidies. More prisons, cops, and punishments inflicted upon the rest of us. They will keep trying to take everything from us until we stop them
If I were running for office right now, I would unapologetically run on taxing the wealthy like never before in U.S. history. Not just because it would allow us to raise the standard of living, but also as a correction of this grand scale theft from the American people.
Begging progressive electeds to not engage in doomerism. Even if the substance of this is true (and to be clear, I support AOC and share the horror) itās not helpful coming from a high level politician.
I've had some tough jobs in my time. Stuff like drywall finishing, caregiving for developmentally disabled victims of institutional and family abuse, and stocking shelves at Target overnight. I'm glad I don't have to do those things anymore, but I'd happily do any of them before taking a job at ICE.
trump shouldāve been in handcuffs in jan 2021 and there is no way to quantify just how much human suffering will result from the disastrous decision to slow walk his prosecution or even avoid it altogether
Yes! And Iād make that clear too
ideal Dem tax policy in three bullet points: - they fucked everything up - we're going to fix it - we're going to make them pay for it
True but in this case, taxing the hell out of the rich and creating a new and better safety net would be good for society and good for vengeance.
Taking power back, taxing the living daylights out of the billionaire class, and building a new safety net would be good for society and also the best revenge. Those two things donāt often go together.
Run on the most left and progressive policy ever. FDR on steroids. Bernie on steroids. More AOCs and Zohrans. Do not yield a single inch to centrist scolds
Can we call it fascism now?
If I were running for office right now, I would unapologetically run on taxing the wealthy like never before in U.S. history. Not just because it would allow us to raise the standard of living, but also as a correction of this grand scale theft from the American people.
Iām really fed up with the mediocrity of our elected leaders here in Massachusetts, from the state house to the senate to the governorās office. And I donāt understand why we keep electing and re-electing these people, who proved themselves incapable of meeting the moment long before *this* moment.
States, unlike the federal government, cannot have deficits. The massive cost shift from the feds to states for both Medicaid and SNAP, will just lead states to either massively cut, or just abandon altogether, these programs.
The perfect recovery food
48 hours of thru-hiking on Chicagoās Outerbelt Trail. A beautiful and unique urban hiking experience. We meandered along hidden creeks, saw wildlife, and combined camping with thin-crust pizza (the popeās favorite!) and other delicacies. Editors. Interested in a story about this? Letās talk.
this is exceptionally well done, h/t @anildash.com www.youtube.com/watch?v=NjgI...
Senate interrupted by someone screaming: You people are awful
Heading to Millennium Station to catch a train to Calumet, where Iāll meet up with the trail builders behind Chicagoās Outerbelt, hit the trail, and spend the night camping at a nature preserve. Itās a steamy one today. Stops at air-conditioned venues near the trail are likely.
New urban trails are popping up in more U.S. cities each year, and some of them are massive. But whatās rare is an urban trail that offers access to campsites: allowing you to thru-hike an urban trail. This week, Iām in Chicago to hike and camp on the Outerbelt Trail!
For all the coverage of Zohranās primary victory, I havenāt seen as many words dedicated to the walk across Manhattan that he led. So I wrote about the walk and why itās emblematic of the kind of politics we need right now. www.mindthemoss.com/p/putting-th...
For all the coverage of Zohranās primary victory, I havenāt seen as many words dedicated to the walk across Manhattan that he led. So I wrote about the walk and why itās emblematic of the kind of politics we need right now. www.mindthemoss.com/p/putting-th...
WOW. It's great to see this resonating with so many people! If you liked bronxite1910's comment, you also might like this piece I wrote about Zohran Mamdani's walk across Manhattan. www.mindthemoss.com/p/putting-th...
Zohran: Imagine living in a city where you can afford your rent, your groceries and even a meal at a restaurant now and then without much stress Eric Adams: Imagine a platypus so powerful that it could destroy the city. We need more cops
You started to see a ton of this during the first trump administration; and itās only accelerated since: politicians and media figures creating an idea that there was some grand conflict between Muslim and Jewish Americans when they are consistently allies who are far far from the primary source ofā¦
ICE has kidnapped the manager of the popular Suya Joint, a West African restaurant in Boston, and his family need our help to cover his legal fees. Please contribute and share if you can:
Losers doubling down on acting like losers apnews.com/article/new-...
Just did some fiddling with maps and found something interesting. The length of Zohran Momdani's walk across the length of Manhattan is around 16 miles. In Boston, walking from the southernmost point in the city to the northernmost point would be roughly 16 miles. Just saying.
Meanwhile, soaring cost of living does drive working class New Yorkers out
"This being on TV I consider a victory for the shitposter community"
"I feel like people misunderstood my $250,000 for Cuomo for real enthusiasm" belongs in the Louvre
Iāve felt this way for a long time but given the wave of fear mongering about ālawlessā and ādirtyā cities, this feels like a good time to be aggressively enthusiastic about urban life.
Iām going to start being more vocal about how beautiful cities like New York are; how living in a city means seeing people at their best, worst, and all the places in between. And how that can bring us closer together.
Papi will be taking MY seat, DONāT MAKE ME FIGHT YOU
With "He looks TERRIBLE," the transition of Trump into a Real Housewife is complete
"NYC's business community appears to be abandoning its grudging support for former Governor Andrew Cuomo and organizing more desperately around Mayor Eric Adams in a last ditch effort to block Mamdani in Novemberās general election." (Story worth reading) www.semafor.com/article/06/2...