Mary Donegan

My spouse still talks about what a perfect phone that was & I'm honestly shocked we're not the only people on this earth who remember it.

I love taking trains. And at the YIMBYtown conference, when a woman from AR said I was living the dream taking the train every day, I thought yes. I am. Connecticut is a great place to live.

But it could be a bit better if the boards were right & folks didn't have to guess/go on vibes.

Being an urban planning researcher, I of course approached folks on the platform to chat. 😂 They confirmed yes, the boards do this. Yes, they just go on vibes -- "you get a feeling for when they'll be late" (FTR: you can go to the Hartford Line website and see updates and sign up for text alerts).

There are signs in Meriden telling you to listen to announcements for track assignments -- but the announcements don't list tracks, and because the north and southbound trains came at the same time the southbound never got an announcement.

Picture of CT rail app with HL service alerts

Picture of ctrail Hartford line alerts page on Twitter saying "this account is no longer active"

The trains came! On time! But you have to dig to find alerts. The app's link for service alerts leads to a dead Twitter page -- not the buried page on the Hartford Line website.

Picture of rail departure board. Earliest train departure is listed as 11:35.

Picture of rail departure board. Earliest New Haven train departure listed as 9:03.

Hey @ct-ptc.bsky.social could you look into the issue that the Hartford Line stops of Berlin and Meriden remove train info at least 15-30 minutes before scheduled departure time? Pics taken at 9:24 and 7:42 aren't showing 9:40 and 7:58 departures.

a close up of a man with a beard and long hair saying they are coming Alt: a close up of gandalf from lotr saying they are coming

I saw some in Bushnell Park in Hartford so yes, on their way. TOH seem to be everywhere in highway and rail right of ways.

Reupping this message after seeing about 30 spotted lantern flies on a short stretch of Chapel in New Haven today 😬 felt good to stomp on them but geesh, awful.

Nothing helped me understand how much energy a car uses like having solar on my roof. On a good day my house generates enough for my house + a comparable house -- or my house + my car going 200 miles.

200 miles in an EV = an entire hot summer day of AC, hot water, dishwasher, dryer, etc.

Hello to everyone else who turns into an irrational fire breathing dragon when the heat index hits 100+, I highly recommend hiding in a dark room for an hour in the afternoon to self regulate. 🫠

My kids are at camp with a family from Houston that thought they would come up north for a week to get away from the heat and he was like wtf is this nonsense.

Elections matter and public policy can make a difference. Work we did in 2020 to remove non-medical exemptions in Connecticut has made our state safer for children and hopefully a continued place of good health for all.

ctnewsjunkie.com/2025/07/24/d...

Thrilled that this is how you chose to celebrate my birthday, good job.

Choosing 2025 as the moment to change your registration from Democrat to Republican says a lot about some West Hartford folks.

The incompetence might be the renovation contractors about a decade ago. HVAC was installed with water collection pans -- but the sensors were installed incorrectly so they don't ever empty/alert anyone that they need emptying.

Sadly I'm not on campus enough in the summer (the only time this happens) to empty it. The office next to me has one -- and just leaving it for a week grew an extraordinary amount of mold.

Mold growth on top of book

Mold growth on side of book

Mold growth on front of book

This is the third year in a row that my office has grown mold (I caught it early -- trust, it would have been worse in a week). Every year, EHS comes and cleans it. And every year, university/college/state declines to do anything about the building.

Because who cares about books at a university.

This is the real reason we need density -- and the real reason fascists hate it.

We just put it on the house. Eversource is allowed to take roughly forever to upgrade your transformer and then roughly forever to turn it on -- and no credit until it's on. Hopefully it gets turned on this year. 🫠

But what about the male loneliness epidemic, surely girls and women should be required to respond to ChatGPT flirting? 🙄

Weeks earlier, when I’d messaged Alex, he had said that everyone he knew used ChatGPT in some fashion, but that he used it only for organizing his notes. In person, he admitted that this wasn’t remotely accurate. “Any type of writing in life, I use A.I.,” he said. He relied on Claude for research, DeepSeek for reasoning and explanation, and Gemini for image generation. ChatGPT served more general needs. “I need A.I. to text girls,” he joked, imagining an A.I.-enhanced version of Hinge. I asked if he had used A.I. when setting up our meeting. He laughed, and then replied, “Honestly, yeah. I’m not tryin’ to type all that. Could you tell?”

AI is deskilling our young people to the extent that they no longer have the ability, or at least resolve, to craft their own *texts.*

The widespread adoption of these technologies is actually a form of child abuse. We are systematically destroying human potential

www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...

Mike Kennedy (R-UT) talking about how his children benefited from Medicaid and he himself grew up on SNAP and is now explaining why fewer people should have access to these benefits that helped him so much.

Perfect Republican.

Waiting for the fare hikes for the money losing highways.

#PedBike people!!! The amazing @pedbikeinfo.bsky.social is building a national database on the monetary costs of different kinds of #pedestrian & #bicycle #infrastructure, and needs data from professionals across the US. More info & how to contribute ⤵️
#BikeSky #RoadSafety #ActiveTransport

Cuomo using chatGPT to write housing policy & CT Gov Lamont endorsing Cuomo after vetoing housing policy (that was passed by both houses of the CT general assembly, and backed by advocates and academics) helps understand the endorsement: neither cares about affordable housing.

The "I used AI for brainstorming and research but not for writing so it's not cheating" argument is painfully familiar.

Dorothy from the Golden Girls giving side eye.

Reading summer course paper proposals and feeling old:

"In recent years, many old residential areas in [CITY], built in the 1990s or earlier.... "

In addition to vetoing HB 5002 and SB 8: didn't think I'd have to call an elected Dem Gov in CT to complain about endorsing a sexual harasser in another state (!! why !!) but here we are.

So incredibly disgusted with him and every elected CT state Dem not speaking out against his actions.

🔥 860-566-4840

And the city itself, not what the festival organizers pay out in wages to public works, police, etc.