It is weird when grammar or word count doesn't matter. It's weirder that you think the whole paragraph was dedicated to those two teams.

Lastly, they aren't the oldest rivalries in the the state or the nation.

Oldest? Wouldn't know. Now you're not saying which team has it, which is, at best, thoroughly ironic. Thankfully I didn't say they were the oldest in a definitive way. It was very clear to anyone who speaks English that I'm banking on it but not too dedicated, nor invested. I could be wrong, but I'm not down anything for it. They probably are the oldest in the country. You should spend your time looking it up for me.

Weird to mention words and grammar, but it's well over a hundred years. It dates back to the late 19th century.

Unless English is your second language, and one you picked up late in life, your reading comprehension from the top comment shouldn't be that bad.

That doesn't even make sense. I'm talking about the people who are from here, and it applies to people of all races. Food is not a worthy cause, and talking about it to cope with the harsh reality these people are facing, doesn't make sense.

If you hear, "Hundreds leaving violence to simply escape it, with nothing but their clothes," and you think, "I hope they end up serving me new and exciting food!", you're a bad person through and through.

Have you had real, Ukrainian food? We had an influx of Ukrainians recently and their food is far from "a taco truck on every corner". It's good, like most real, authentic food is, but it doesn't have that lame energy that Americans crave and are mentioning in the comments.

Try to work on your reading comprehension before you start throwing out terms you kind of heard but don't come close to getting.

I don't get why you keep jumping tracks. They don't, so the effort should be put into places that do allow for it. They aren't putting that effort in either. I bike by more places in Somerville, Cambridge, and Boston that are newer but weaker, worse looking, and probably future tear-downs in my own life. The buildings that aren't are ones built a long time ago and with better materials.

Why aren't places that build for multi-family complexes building ugly, dogshit, and flimsy places when they don't have the restrictions you're talking about? There's a reason the three places I mentioned are all within the same city. Expand those and get a real movement going. Not the "movement" you're laying out here.

We do fundamentally disagree, respectfully, but I'm very invested in this as of the past few or so years, when I put the views you have to the test. Views I had as a college student and a little after.

It's what I refer to as numbing, and it doesn't answer any real questions. Like you said, it's lofty, but that's antithetical to the nitty gritty. It's why I think of a book about how politics don't really affect local areas, because local areas have to deal with real, material issues. Republicans and Democrats might disagree on how to handle some things, but they have to keep the trash trucks moving. They have to keep the water flowing.

The idea that we're all equally worthy of aid and help is separate from compassion, which is immaterial, and autonomy, which is another topic. The insinuation that these people need something other than aid or help was never there. I never implied we shouldn't have compassion. I have tons of it. I'm insulted by the insinuation that I'm suggesting something else. Of course I treat people I physically meet respectfully.

I just no longer recognize this bland, post-WW2, grand view that doesn't work. It didn't work then, it doesn't work now. It's a continuation of imperialism since you rarely see the West or developed nations changing. It's always "the other". It just sounds a lot nicer now that it's been workshopped and forced to work - especially when our country started selling off its industry and labor. That's why pro-labor people eventually get met with claims of xenophobia.

In this case, why shouldn't our borders matter? They keep us in just as much as they keep others out, and we would be able to help in the abstract more if we had a functioning society. We'd help more people if we helped them where they were. We help fewer people by being lazy and waiting till they get here, telling them good job, and convincing ourselves we did something.

So you're in the phase where you're growing up. That's fine. I was there too. There's a bigger picture you'll get eventually, when the numbing encroach of something bigger turns everything the same.

You can keep saying that "my" suburb, which is a city, doesn't exist in a vacuum, but I have everything I need here. And, when you say it, it still has the unspoken element of "and it should give way to Boston". Boston built up because companies could take advantage of what was in place. That may not exist, and the problems created today didn't exist before. These are problems we have to manage because of them.

>This entire half of the state

The whole state does, as do other countries. It's due to the financialization of housing as an appreciating asset at all, and increasing populations that aren't sustainable, and that are concentrated in fewer places.

Build a lab in Douglas, MA. But converting more space to lab space to homogenize the world isn't going to help. You're going to whine about this for the rest of your life if you don't recognize the real issue.

>It’s the epitome of “I got mine, fuck everybody else.”

It isn't, but I get why you need to think that.

The right thing, in these cases, is either subjective, or it's the answer to a question framed in a way to get a specific answer. For the basic type of person who thinks efficiency is a humanist value, but hasn't looked at the world around them, I can understand that.

But the main answer is that it isn't getting us anywhere. We can talk about having some sort of system that helps anyone who needs help, if they show up from another country, but rightly so, that system should benefit people already in the area. That's what was said, with the urge that we do this so that people on somewhere like Mass and Cass get help. The problem is that we'll always end up inducing demand or extending this fight.

This isn't zero-sum thinking. It's the fact that when it comes to dividing things, you could always not divide things. Whether or not there's a hypothetical or theoretical sum at the end doesn't matter.

If builders could come up with plans to make really good, aesthetic housing, that's build solidly and densely - like you'd find in Back Bay, Charlestown, or Beacon Hill - people would change their tune. They aren't. McMansions they're building are the result of a lot of things but they could always design them better. There's no legal requirement for them. Large housing isn't just a McMansion, and this part of the country can show that in older, wealthier areas.

The suburbs don't exist in a vacuum, of course, but Boston doesn't either, and it was never elected king, or set as the only place that matters. Boston's status as this regional hub or anchor city is happenstance and a result of bad planning, due to the congregation of larger industries - industries that are flimsy and end up being volatile. Dense populations benefit them, and conversations around how to build up to suit their needs aren't around the benefits of people.

>They can suck it up, and help contribute to more housing supply to increase the overall stock of the state.

Or they could not, showing that your outlook is in a worse position and built on flimsier ground. That's what's happening now. Continuing on like you've all but cemented your views and you're waiting for history to catch up is naive.

>Not sure why it’s always up to the cities to build everything

It's not. For years, I've said that if companies are coming in, they should be made to go to plenty of places around MA. Plenty of towns that would benefit from one lab being put in. Plenty of rejuvenation to happen.

The second I say that, people go on about how workers there wouldn't like it, or it's not a sure bet, changing the conversation, again, to how we can appease corporate interests.

>Never mind the fact that said suburbs only really gave value because of their proximity to said cities

Sounds like you're more just dismissive of anywhere that isn't a big city. Lead with that. Let people know what's really at the core. I like my city that's a suburb, but really a city. If Boston fell off the map, I wouldn't leave. Maybe the idea that people like their town is foreign to you. Maybe you grew up here and are in the phase where you hate it. Maybe you didn't grow up here and don't understand how this part of the country has deeper roots than, say, California.

They don't relate to playoffs. They're rivalries. Many are really, really old - like Medford and Malden, I believe; probably the oldest in the state and maybe country. Old enough that one doesn't even really consider if the teams should go against each other. Some are new because it's just tradition to have a rival, and instead of having it built on something real, they just play it up. And in years to come, it'll get to the same place.

Where's that getting us?

This boils down to "you know what would really help, is giving one political side everything they want without restriction". It's very clearly helping by one political view and no other, while claiming anything else is the enemy. There are plenty of problems with housing and zoning restrictions but most people don't realize why a lot of them are in place - for better or worse. The housing stock that's built now is built by builders who have no real sense of architecture or planning. They'd rather build a McMansion if it got them paid more.

All of this is ignoring the silly claim that it's conservatives whining when MA is solidly blue, but most towns don't handle things like some sort of caricature people expect.

Humanitarians are far from perfect, and their numbing views are predicated on a lot of things they claim to dislike (imperialism, views of superiority, and so on). No one said "humanitarianism is great" other than humanitarians, or people who haven't really looked at the course of history.

Never mind that in order to help people, you should either help them where they are, since it'll always be cheaper, or you need to prepare. In this case, we aren't even prepared for our own people to live a proper life as expected in decades prior.

>it's expanding the state's capacity to handle anyone in need of housing.

It shouldn't help anyone in need of housing. It should help people with closer ties to the actual land and community.

Diversity is more than consumerist choices, but if all you're concern with are things that don't matter, I can see why you'd arrive at that position.

Sounds like something boring people would want.

Why is it that whenever there's a story about people escaping extremely bad situations, a host of comments focusing on how it improves their lives in such a banal way pop up. It's always food. It's like Poe's law of raw, neoliberal appeals on social media.

>These immigrants are going to bring the world's cuisine to MA.

The world's cuisine is a lot simpler than Americans think. Most of it is shitty street food served in a building with chairs because Americans don't know better.

A lot of labs moved in because of the large amount of talent here, but that large amount of talent is still a small percentage of the population. Lab space would homogenize a lot of the limited physical space, and its influence would be bad.

Thinking that Boston should be #1 in everything means a lot of exclusion to other places, but we have plenty of places in MA that could get lab space. The only problem is people switch gears and start talking about how no one would live there - as if a) that's a problem to be solved with government planning or b) it wouldn't get it started where it would make those places a little bit livelier.

Why would it be worse? We're one country.

Not everyone in the suburbs has that sort of job, and not everyone in the suburbs is from somewhere else. The individual towns never signed up for this and are a lot weaker on their own, but the appeal to pressure from the top to develop Boston into a larger city is stupid. Boston has plenty of space it itself can develop but isn't.

Yes. Are you under the impression there's some sort of qualification you need to possess and present lmao.

You're asking Reddit, which is mostly people probably not even from MA. They only really know Boston.

Barack Obama, but not because he’s a man. That’s stupid. Because he’s Black.

Dumb.

I'm not. You can check my recent history where I've said that I'm voting no myself, why I'm voting no, and why I think the question contributes to a dividing malaise that makes us feel detached. This question was never a slam dunk and the bigger implications behind a vote weren't considered. I always assumed it would pass but we still share a state with those people, like myself, who voted no.