This is true based on actual surveys and my own anecdotal experience working polls. It's one of the big reasons people want election day to be a holiday so that young working people can get to the polls.

I also have to admit that progressives I feel undermine the process of trying to engage young voters with the "mainstream dems are just as bad as republicans" noise which creates a disaffected voting bloc. How many posts revolve around "don't vote for mainstream dems because it rewards the party that didn't choose our specific candidates". Most importantly for the current state of our country I want to point out the large volume of the "protest vote for Bernie Sanders and/or don't vote at all" in 2016.

This seems like the best answer and should be higher.

FTR the hedge looks like a clearly established boundary, even if it isn't the legal property line. Like reading OPs post I thought it was just some scrum unimproved land between the houses but if you look at the aerials or street view (from 2012) it was clearly built as a border. How it ended up so far onto OPs property is a great question. Not sure why it wasn't built at the property line.

I am not in the habit of saying never, so maybe you are the exception, but this just isn't true in general.

RI sent out applications for mail voting to everyone. Applications. Like you fill it out and return it (postage paid) and you then get a mail ballot.

I saw many many posts like yours on various social media about getting ballots in the mail when every time they were applications, not ballots.

If you want to say that's a huge waste of money just to try and get voter engagement, that's fine but reasonable people could disagree.

I also had a few people show up at the polls who had requested mail ballots and got really fucking pissed when I told them they had to do a provisional ballot so that it could be reconciled against their mail ballot so that it wouldn't be counted twice - but that it would count if they hadn't sent in their mail ballot. Yeah, turns out every one had already voted by mail.

The system isn't perfect but it works much much better than people think in terms of voter fraud.

I don't want to get into a protracted argument, but the presidential primary system for POTUS is different than primaries in general. First to the pole while on a country wide tour collecting votes has some real flaws. But, it does weed out extremists. This is just true.

If you want to say that party insiders determine the narrative particularly for POTUS, that's fine, but it's the position of the extremists that this happens and they are excluded because of it.

I have a hard time seeing someone like McKee as voted in by ideologues or extremists. Unless there is such a thing as extremely meh.

The primary system outside of Trump largely leads to more moderate candidates, not more extreme. This is borne out over almost the entire history of the country. Yes there are some exceptions but especially since the Civil War it's been true - marked exceptions would be FDR (but not as clear cut as you might think) and you could also make an argument that Reagan was extreme, though this seems more obvious in retrospect than it was obvious in 1980. You need to look at some of the candidates who lost primaries.

Anyone who says democratic POTUS candidates need to be less "extreme" are actually Republicans.

I did. Here's a very long post about it. I actually left my job in Cambridge partially because I couldn't take this commute anymore even on a hybrid (1-2 days a week in office) schedule.

I worked in Kendall but would get off the train at Charles/MGH then walk across the Longfellow for a nice start to the morning. This will be long.

I would drive to Attleboro and take the train from there which made my experience a lot worse. The MBTA is well known for wanting to do big impressive infrastructure additions instead of basic maintenance. In the case of my commute, that means their desire to do a brandy new train station in South Attleboro instead of just fixing what is there for now. South Attleboro is a lot more convenient than Attleboro. I know look on a map and it's 5-10 extra minutes just plan but it's a high variance 5-10 minutes and if you want to make the train you have to plan on the worst variance. I'm still mad about the MBTA fucking over all of us with this asinine decision. You can probably tell.

If you commute from Providence Station you will have a much better time but longer commute. You will have a better time because you can take Amtrak instead of the commuter rail if you plan, and Amtrak is a much better experience. I couldn't justify using Providence Station because of the time to get there plus the extra time the train takes to get from Providence to Attleboro. The Amtrak though is a bit faster, and a bit more enjoyable, less of a crunch (as it does not stop at all the local stations on the line).

My experience is with the Commuter Rail though so let me tell you. It's fine. It is packed as hell now. If you have trouble with Covid-related (or general) crowding, it can be a problem. If you commute together with your partner, a bit less of a problem as you can take a double seat and avoid randos (enough of whom are assholes to make this a bit of a stressor). You will want to be back for your train home early to get a seat. Seriously, you have to be one of those people standing at South Station waiting for them to announce the track 10 minutes before the train leaves. At least for the rush hour trains. Otherwise more than a little chance you will be standing at least until Sharon, and almost no chance you'll be able to sit together.

The red line is running at something like 70% capacity with all of the MBTA problems. Like a lot of things, on paper (8 minute instead of 6 minutes headways IIRC) sounds like no big deal, but you feel the difference. And the average headway has a lot lot lot of standard deviation. Some days I waited as long as 25 minutes for a red line train. Then it would be overpacked. And of course, have two empty trains behind it. But, you can't always count on that so everyone packs into the first one that arrives.

What this adds up to is that you just have to account for a lot of time. So sure, on a good day, you might have:

Home to Providence : 5 minutes

Wait at Station: 5 minutes

PVD -> South Station: 50 minutes

South Station Walk and Wait: 5 minutes

Red line to MGH: 5 minutes.

That's not too bad. But you will find you don't want to cut it too close to catch the train, so you actually make the first 10 minutes 20 (give yourself 10 minutes to get there and plan on arriving 10 minutes early). Slow days even the express MBTA can take over an hour. Catch the timing wrong and you will be at South Station for 20 minutes. Get a red line train with shitty doors and you will spend 5 minutes at Park St as they constantly open and close (OK this is an exaggeration but god damn it felt this way some days). Now you are looking at an additional 30 minutes for you commute and frankly it sucks but I have a real problem with patience and might not be the best person to talk to about it. Also I'm a stats nerd so I actually tracked my commute times door to door and they were anywhere from 1:20 (good train luck including it being 5 minutes late which allowed me to catch it by a hair in Attleboro and took red line all the way to Kendall instead of morning walk) to 2:45 (missed train at SS due to slow red line from Kendall to South Station, this was not an outlier though it happened three times) Average was about 2 hours with the walk and 1:45 without. Again this is drive from Pawtucket to Attleboro, Express commuter rail (skips a few of the local stops) to SS, red line to MGH, walk to Kendall.

Some days I would drive to Quincy and just take the red line. This was more for if I was doing something in the evening and didn't want to risk missing the last commuter rail at 11). That was great in Covid-era traffic but sucks now. I also tried doing the drive to 128 station mostly because I like to shop at Wegman's but the fact that you can't get there easily from 95 (you have to go through the split or through very busy backroads in Norwood/Canton) makes it too high variance to plan.

Oysterfest though not sure the kiddos are into oysters

Counterpoint it's still a hole in the ground so maybe a better developer and plan was in order.

Just to harvest downvotes I'll suggest that Tortilla Flats actually meets this criteria. If authentic Mexican is more important than the American stuff on the menu though you should look elsewhere.

I was a not before November guy for the lingest time but it seems like we are getting more of these deep chill 2-3 day things in October.

If you can take getting a little wet I still would recommend heading down to Beavertail or at least doing Ocean Drive in Newport and stop at Breton Point. It's still nice to be by the water even when it is cold and wet, at least for me.

The Audrain Auto Museum is pretty cool, and you could combine that with a mansion or two. Then you could head over to Broadway (as mentioned Fastnet or Pour Judgement or other places) and see what you like there, or head down to Thames. Go to the brick Alley and get some comfort food. Whatever.