2026-01-08 21:00:00
I hear people talking about "skyrocketing" rents, with the idea that rent is going up quickly. This isn't my impression of what's happening, and when I look at the data it's not what I see either. Instead, rents are too high, and they were rising quickly pre-covid, but recently they've been stable in real terms.
Here's the data I know best, the price of a 2br that I calculate on my Boston Rent Map:
The median Boston-Area rent in December 2025 was $3,350. That's up from $2,300 in February 2013, or $3,215 in current dollars. Rent has gone up, but just about matching inflation.
I see the same thing nationally. Here's the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers: Rent of Primary Residence in U.S. City Average (CUSR0000SEHA), adjusted for inflation:
Rent needs to go down, and I'm very supportive of efforts to remove supply restrictions so landlords can stop making windfall profits. But it's important to be clear-eyed about what the issue is: rent has gone up a lot in places where there are the most jobs, then then it has stayed high for the last decade plus.
EDIT: people have asked if this is still true if we exclude the cost of housing from the determination of inflation (since otherwise it's partly circular) or if we compare the cost of housing to median income (to better capture affordability). This doesn't end up changing the picture much: excluding shelter from inflation pushes costs up a little; comparing to income pushes costs down a little.
2026-01-06 21:00:00
Someone asked me which contra dance bands and callers played the most major gigs in 2025, which reminded me that I hadn't put out my annual post yet! Here's what I have, drawing from the big spreadsheet that backs TryContra Events.
In 2025 we were up to 142 events, which is an increase of 9% from 2024 (131), and above pre-pandemic numbers. New events included Chain Reaction (Maine dance weekend), Galhala (women's dance weekend), and On to the Next (one-day queer-normative dance event). Additionally, a few events returned for the first time since the pandemic (ex: Lava Meltdown).
For bands, River Road and Countercurrent continue to be very popular, with the Dam Beavers edging out Playing with Fyre for third. For callers it's Will Mentor, Alex Deis-Lauby, and Lisa Greenleaf, which is the first time a Millenial has made it into the top two. This is also a larger trend: in 2024 there was only one Millennial (still Alex) in the top ten and in 2023 there were zero; in 2025 there were three (Michael Karcher and Lindsey Dono in addition to Alex). While bands don't have generations the same way individuals do, bands definitely skew younger: in something like seven of the top ten bands the median member is Millennial or younger.
When listing bands and callers, my goal is to count ones with at least two big bookings, operationalized as events with at least 9hr of contra dancing. Ties are broken randomly (no longer alphabetically!) Let me know if I've missed anything?
Bands
| River Road | 13 |
| Countercurrent | 11 |
| The Dam Beavers | 10 |
| Playing with Fyre | 8 |
| Toss the Possum | 7 |
| Kingfisher | 6 |
| The Engine Room | 6 |
| The Stringrays | 5 |
| Supertrad | 5 |
| Stomp Rocket | 5 |
| Wild Asparagus | 5 |
| Topspin | 4 |
| The Free Raisins | 4 |
| Northwoods | 4 |
| Stove Dragon | 4 |
| The Mean Lids | 3 |
| Red Case Band | 3 |
| Spintuition | 3 |
| Turnip the Beet | 3 |
| Hot Coffee Breakdown | 3 |
| Thunderwing | 3 |
| Raven & Goose | 3 |
| Good Company | 3 |
| Joyride | 3 |
| The Gaslight Tinkers | 3 |
| Chimney Swift | 2 |
| The Moving Violations | 2 |
| The Syncopaths | 2 |
| The Latter Day Lizards | 2 |
| Lighthouse | 2 |
| Root System | 2 |
| Contraforce | 2 |
| Sugar River Band | 2 |
| The Berea Castoffs | 2 |
| The Fiddle Hellions | 2 |
| Lift Ticket | 2 |
| The Buzz Band | 2 |
| The Faux Paws | 2 |
| Nova | 2 |
Callers
| Will Mentor | 17 |
| Alex Deis-Lauby | 14 |
| Lisa Greenleaf | 14 |
| Gaye Fifer | 13 |
| Michael Karcher | 11 |
| Lindsey Dono | 10 |
| Seth Tepfer | 10 |
| Steve Zakon-Anderson | 8 |
| Bob Isaacs | 7 |
| Darlene Underwood | 7 |
| Terry Doyle | 6 |
| Adina Gordon | 6 |
| George Marshall | 5 |
| Sue Rosen | 5 |
| Cis Hinkle | 5 |
| Mary Wesley | 5 |
| Rick Mohr | 5 |
| Koren Wake | 4 |
| Wendy Graham | 4 |
| Jeremy Korr | 4 |
| Luke Donforth | 4 |
| Susan Petrick | 4 |
| Dereck Kalish | 3 |
| Warren Doyle | 3 |
| Angela DeCarlis | 3 |
| Jacqui Grennan | 3 |
| Maia McCormick | 3 |
| Emily Rush | 3 |
| Lyss Adkins | 3 |
| Janine Smith | 3 |
| Devin Pohly | 3 |
| Claire Takemori | 3 |
| Qwill Duvall | 2 |
| Frannie Marr | 2 |
| Bev Bernbaum | 2 |
| Janet Shepherd | 2 |
| Diane Silver | 2 |
| Chris Bischoff | 2 |
| Ben Sachs-Hamilton | 2 |
| Timothy Klein | 2 |
| Kenny Greer | 2 |
| Isaac Banner | 2 |
| Susan Kevra | 2 |
2025-12-30 21:00:00
When you sell stock [1] you pay capital gains tax, but there's no tax if you donate the stock directly. Under a bunch of assumptions, someone donating $10k could likely increase their donations by ~$1k by donating stock. This applies to all 501(c) organizations, such as regular 501(c)3 non-profits, but also 501(c)4s such as advocacy groups.
In the US, when something becomes more valuable and you sell it you need to pay tax proportional to the gains. [2] This gets complicated based on how much other income you have (which determines your tax bracket for marginal income), how long you've held it (which determines whether this is long-term vs short-term capital gains), and where you live (many states and some municipalities add additional tax). Some example cases:
A single person in Boston with other income of $100k who had $10k in long-term capital gains would pay $2,000 (20%). This is 15% in federal tax and 5% in MA tax.
A couple in SF with other income of $200k who had $10k in long-term capital gains would pay $2,810 (28%). This is 15% in federal tax, 3.8% for the NIIT surcharge, and 9.3% in CA taxes.
A single person in NYC with other income of $600k who had $10k in short-term capital gains would pay $4,953 (50%). This is 35% in federal tax, 3.8% for the NIIT surcharge, 6.9% in NY taxes, and 3.9% in NYC taxes.
When you donate stock to a 501(c), however, you don't pay this tax. This lets you potentially donate a lot more!
Some things to pay attention to:
Donations to political campaigns are treated as if you sold the stock and donated the money.
If you've held the stock over a year and are donating to a 501(c)3 (or a few other less common ones like a 501(c)13 or a 501(c)19) then you can take a tax deduction of the full fair market value of the stock. This is bizarre to me (why can you deduct as if you had sold it and donated the money, when if you had gone that route you'd have needed to pay tax on the gains) but since it exists it's great to take advantage of.
This only applies if it's a real donation. If you're getting a benefit (ex: "donating" to a 501(c)3 but getting a ticket to an event) that's not a real gift and doesn't fully count.
If you're giving to a person, you don't pay capital gains, but they get your cost basis (with some caveats). When they sell they'll pay capital gains tax, which might be more or less than you would have paid depending on your relative financial situations. If they're likely to want to make a gift to charity, though, it's much more efficient to give them the stock.
The actual logistics of donating stock are a pain. If you're giving to a 501(c)3 it's generally going to be logistically easier to transfer the stock to a donor-advised fund (I use Vanguard Charitable because it integrates well with Vanguard), which can then make grants to the charity. This also has a bonus of letting you pick the charity later if you want to squeeze this in for 2025 but haven't made up your mind yet.
[1] I say "stock" throughout, but this applies to almost any kind of
asset.
[2] Note that "gains" here aren't just the real gains from your stock becoming more valuable, but also include inflation. For example, if you bought $10k in stock five years ago ($12.5k in 2025 dollars) and sold it today for $12.5k in 2025 dollars, you'd have "gains" of $2,500 even though all that's actually happened is that the 2025 dollars you received are less valuable than 2020 dollars you spent.
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2025-12-28 21:00:00
I like writing retrospectives for things I'm involved in, especially if I'm likely to be involved in them in the future: it's a good place to set thoughts down so I can find them again, link materials I'm likely to want, and collect feedback from others (but also: fill out the feedback survey!). As a bonus, they can be useful to other people who are doing similar things.
I've written ones band tours, failed attempts to limit covid spread, and dance weekends; Saturday night I ran the music for the 2025 Boston Secular Solstice, so here's another one!
This was the tenth Boston Secular Solstice in the Ray Arnold tradition. These go back a bit over ten years, and have been an opportunity for the rationality / lesswrong community (with some effective altruism representation) to gather, sing, and consider hard truths.
We were in in Connexion for the second time, and I continue to be very glad to no longer be trying to squeeze this many people into our house! They didn't charge us, because this is the kind of event they'd like to encourage, but you could consider sending them some money to help them maintain the space.
Over time the singing at these has been trending in the direction of being mostly my family: this year Alex sang three (and was great!) but all of the others were me, Julia, and Lily. While it certainly is convenient for practicing to be working with people who live in my house (or, in my case, are myself) I'd love to have a wider range of singers here. Let me know if you'd like to be on the list of people I reach out to in ~October to ask if they might be interested in leading any songs this year.
Same goes for music: Max accompanied three of these on guitar, and I'd love to have more volunteers if this sounds like it might be fun! If we had enough people we could do things like play the melody of the tune, or add harmonies.
In past years I've had a somewhat elaborate setup, including footdrums and breath controller overlays. This year I decided to try doing at most two things at once: singing plus guitar or piano. This made the sound setup simpler, and the overall production a bit more folky. Anyone have preferences in either direction? By default I'll probably stick with the simpler thing.
We had some issues getting the people speaking amplified well: a lot of them just weren't close enough to the microphone. I think next time we should ask them to come early enough that we can spend a few minutes with each one on mic technique. I should also just plan to adjust mic positioning for each speaker instead of expecting them to handle it themselves.
Similar attendance to past years; I counted about 45 people.
As in past years, I used my VSL1818 8-channel audio interface to make a multitrack recording, and then mixed it down to stereo. I set up two hall mics, on opposite sides of the room, and panned them hard left and right in the mix, and these are the majority of what you're hearing.
Here are the songs and speeches we did this year:
Most likely not actually by Harry Dixon Loes. I think this worked well as an opener, because it's well known and easy to sing. Getting people feeling like what we're doing is singing together is very important in an opener.
Lots of people know the Ghostbusters theme, and the Harry Potter parody of it is fun. The connection between Potter and the rest of the evening is a bit hard to contextualize for newer folks, though. Kazoos were fun, but this is one where we should have tried to all get in a room together first to run through.
I'd love someone to write a "Circle, shrink and shrink" song with a verse about ancestors, one about nature, etc.
When I was younger and more into traditional science fiction the idea of sending physical humans out into space seemed very clearly a thing humanity was building towards. This feels much less resonant to me now, though I do still really like how the song sells the idea of intense effort towards a goal you will not live to see achieved.
The original song is in seven and has many aspects that make it tricky for group singing, so a few years ago I worked out a cross-genre cover, recasting it as more of a gospel song. The hardest part for me is not rushing it, since it sits best around 85bp and I have a very "contra dance speed" musical aesthetic.
This song has a lot of words very quickly, which makes for a bit of a chaotic group singing experience. Though perhaps apt given the topic of the song.
We cut the Zombies verse this time. With where it fell in the program it was a bit too silly.
One of the approaches to group singing is to have melodies that are written to be really easy to pick up, which praise music uses extensively. Given how much Secular Solstice draws from religious traditions it makes sense that a praise-style song would work well in this context, though there's also just something that bugs me about it aesthetically. I think it's coming from how the religious traditions that use praise music are some of the ones that feel least resonant to me personally?
A poem set to music, which we do most years. I think it would have been moderately better with subtle accompaniment, to help hold the group together.
Earlier Skyler had told us he would be inserting something false later in the program, and asked us to call him on it if we heard it. Several people tried, and Lily's was my favorite.
This is the version Julia and I put together for the 2023 solstice. The original has some parts that aren't sung, and has some very complex bits melodically; this one is easier for the group to follow.
The only song we do every year, marking the transition back out of the dark part of the evening's arc. Boston version.
Same mildly trimmed version as last year.
The timing is a bit tricky, but it was helpful that this was our second time. It also helped that with Lily leading (and living in my house) we could practice it together more times.
I like this one a lot, but I'd also be interested to hear something similar where a group in a similar position took positive expected value risks that didn't work out. It's much easier to give credit for success.
I like the mood of the song, though the advisibility of the amateur salvage operation depicted is seriously questionable. Even if it's worth $250k "floating at the dock" it will need major repairs to get to that point, and the risk to the participants is significant. Perhaps ships belong in "Circle, Shrink and Shrink"?
We've been singing this Pete Seger song to end the program for several years now, and I continue to like it.
2025-12-27 21:00:00
As part of the general discourse around cost of living, Julia and I were talking about families sharing housing. This turned into us each writing a post ( mine, hers), but is it actually legal for a family to live with housemates? In the places I've checked it seems like yes.
While zoning is complicated and I'm not a lawyer, it looks to me like people commonly describe the situation as both more restrictive and more clear cut than it really is. For example, Tufts University claims:
The cities of Medford, Somerville and Boston (in addition to other cities in the area) have local occupancy ordinances on apartments/houses with non-related persons. Each city has its own ordinance: in Medford, the limit is 3; in Somerville, it is 4; in Boston, it is 4, etc.
As far as I can tell, all three of these are wrong:
Medford: it's common for people to cite a limit of three, but as far as I can tell this is based on a misunderstanding of the definition of a lodger. Medford:
Since a shared house typically does function as single housekeeping unit (things like sharing a kitchen, eating together, no locking bedrooms, a single shared lease, sharing common areas, and generally living together) this is allowed.
Somerville: the restriction was repealed two years ago.
Boston: defines family as "One person or two or more persons related by blood, marriage, adoption, or other analogous family union occupying a dwelling unit and living as a single non-profit housekeeping unit, provided that a group of five or more persons who are enrolled as fulltime, undergraduate students at a post-secondary educational institution shall not be deemed to constitute a family." Then they define a lodging house as "Any dwelling (other than a dormitory, fraternity, sorority house, hotel, motel, or apartment hotel) in which living space, with or without common kitchen facilities, is let to five or more persons, who do not have equal rights to the entire dwelling and who are not living as a single, non-profit housekeeping unit. Board may or may not be provided to such persons. For the purposes of this definition, a family is one person." I read this to say that a group of people (even students) who live as a single housekeeping unit don't make something a lodging house.
This isn't just my reading zoning codes: a similar question came up in Worcester in 2013: City of Worcester v. College Hill Properties. The MA Supreme Judicial Court ruled that the unrelated adults sharing a unit together did not make it a lodging house because they were a single housekeeping unit and rented the whole place.
In other places there may be different restrictions, but everywhere I've looked so far it looks to me like this kind of shared housing, where a group lives together like a family even if they're not actually related, is allowed.
2025-12-25 21:00:00
The world is divided into plain text and rich text, but I want comfortable text:
Let's say I want to send someone a snippet from a blog post. If I paste this into my email client the font family, font size, blockquote styling, and link styling come along:
If I do Cmd+Shift+V and paste without formatting, I get no styling at all:
I can deal with losing the blockquote formatting, but losing the links is a pain.
What I want is essentially the subset of HTML that can be represented in Markdown. So I automated this! I made a Mac command that pulls HTML from the clipboard, passes it through pandoc twice (HTML to Github-flavored markdown to HTML), and puts it back on the clipboard. I also packaged it up as a status-bar app:
You can run it by clicking on the icon, or invoking the script:
$ normalize-clipboard
Which gives:
Alternatively, if I actually want Markdown, perhaps to paste into an LLM interface, I can skip the conversion to HTML:
$ markdownify-clipboard
I'm pretty happy with this! It's open source, on github, so you're welcome to give it a try if it would be useful to you.
Note that I haven't paid for an Apple Developer subscription, so if you want to use the pre-built binaries you'll need to click through scary warnings in both your browser and the OS. I've documented these in the README, though an advantage of building from source is that you don't have to deal with these.
This was my first time using Platypus to package a script as a Mac app. It worked well!
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