Open Street Map is legitimate. In bicycling communities, Strava is the gold standard app for tracking rides, and it uses Open Street Maps on the backend. It’s always super accurate for me, even for fairly obscure bike trails off the beaten path.

Interesting article. I appreciate that it included the example of a couple in Jersey City, NJ being forced to move because of increasingly exorbitant rent. That article could have been about me personally. I lived in a shitty overpriced 1br apartment that overlooked the Holland Tunnel. Rent was around $2200/year, but they wanted $2700/year for us upon renewal, and after we said no, they upped it to $2900/year when offered to the general public. This was June 2022, and a quick look on their website suggests similar units sell for $3300/month now. I make a decent living, but that increase was way too much for me. That was the final straw to get me to move out of NJ entirely and down to the relatively more affordable DC area. It was similar for many of my neighbors. The NYC area will always have a special place in my heart, but there’s only so much you can take before you begin looking to alternatives.

I’m mixed on this. I really don’t want the market even more fractured with yet another streaming service in the mix for MLB games. Ten years ago, it was simple albeit flawed. Subscribe to cable TV if you live in the market, and the RSN has all the games. Today, if you want to watch all the games, you have to bounce around between the RSN, but then a dozen different streaming sites too with games on Apple TV, YouTube, MLB Network, Peacock, ESPN, potentially Netflix, etc… I just want to load up the MLB app, pay a reasonable annual fee, and stream all games without blackout restrictions, but such a service doesn’t exist (legally). Aa a result, I find myself caring about the product less and less with each passing year.