7bicycles [he/him]

“Life is a bitter mystery. We can’t give everything away for free. It’s not that kind of country.”

Tautology School Degree. Why not?

I have this but for bicycles and ropes exclusively. First one is out, so I’m rope guy I guess

The hard part about a simple bicycle isn’t actually the bicycle, it’s smooth road. If you don’t have that you have to invent the mountainbike and that one’s not even a 100 years old.

I feel like as soon in the past as the late 80s this is an entirely uncontroversial statement and should there be somebody to look back on it in a 100 years, the period of roughly 1990 to 2020 where the US pretended to care about democracy is gonna be the weird blip

Imagine the reverse scenario happening and how that’d play out

It’s not an improvement over the previous meme but I take any chance I get to post this image

“The Computer never makes a mistake” is true and also probably responsible for people believing LLM-hallucinations uncritically

I do know a few young people are tech/programming wizards but “generally tech savy” people seem to be declining. It’s either you’re really into it or barely know anything outside popular apps.

I feel like we also got a new kind of guy, the tech-forward digital illiterate. They run most of everything.

Considering you said you’re german, I think the whole Idea of “Ehrenamt” and subsidiaries of it runs counter to the entire system that has been built. If we monetize everything, I think it’s fine that people get paid for taking time out of their day and bodies to do good shit.

Basically, don’t do unpaid labour in this system?

More like a Tontine HEYOOOOOOooohhh :(

One of the worst things you can do to the environment folks. Don’t bear children. Don’t invite another being into this madness and suffering.

As is continuing to live so why don’t you follow through on that line of thought here

Like me personally or like societally?

was the handlebar fine tho

Yeah I’d argue this is probably true for bigger pets but the LD50 of stuff on your 2lb guinea pig is hit shockingly fast. Gotta watch out for the small, furry comrades

Buy the cheapest version of it and of you use it enough to either break it or figure out what parts of the design you don’t like it’s a good sign spending a little extra on a better version isn’t a waste.

Agree’d, albeit with the caveat that if it’s about screws, you wanna spend at least some money on the part that actually connects with the screws, so, the bits. Doesn’t really matter all that much if your harbour freight e-motor on your drill burns out, if you fuck up all the screws on whatever you’re working on with shit bits that’s gonna be a hassle.

But even then, that’s like “pay more than the $0 free offer on alibaba” territory of spending. After that, the dimensions and tolerances are fine, it’s just gonna be longevity.

Most stuff on a bicycle for the average person unless it’s carbon, plastics or electronics. Including safety stuff. Some caveat if you wanna huck yourself off a mountain or do like 100kph descents on your roadbikes.

But for the most stuff? The cheap shit works absolutely fine because at it’s core it’s bits of formed metal with threads attached connected by steel wires. Very hard to fuck any of that up to the point it becomes dangerous. I keep seeing parts being rated as SAFETY LEVEL 5 E-BIKE READY as if the metal rod that is my handlebar usually disintegrates once I hit the ludicrous speed of [checks notes] 25kph. Your $2 Alibaba Special V-Brakes are, at worst, gonna have garbage springs so it doesn’t return to not-braking great, but you’re not gonna like snap them in half even if you were a gorilla riding a bicycle.

I’m not arguing pro ICE cars over EV cars, I’m arguing against cars, be they EV or ICE

To get anywhere close to the grid being considered decarbonised (I’m ignoring carbon capture here because that’s not going to happen at any meaningful scale unless we geoengineer shit) all of the materials, all of the manufacturing and all of the building and maintenance would have to be run on renewable energy. Like from the mines of Australia over to all of the plants in china to assembly, for every component.

And to have it make any difference at all, you have to do it within the next 30 or so years. And then there’s still the tyres, also you gotta do the entire shit again for the very climate friendly processing of building roads that withstand cars for give or take a season, extra challenge mode due to the increased weight of EVs. And also then there’s still the tyres.

hopefully the battery tech and infrastructure investments will help pave the way to better solutions.

We’ve already got those, it’s called trains and bicycles, former have been EVs for like a century

3. a self-fulfilling prophecy of pitbulls having a bad reputation and actively being sought out by people who want vicious dogs and who will treat their dogs in such a way as to encourage that behavior.

I’m pretty neutral on dog genetics but tbh it still ends you at the same conclusion; not everyone should just be able to get the dog that kills you

Even if ChatGPT was literally a perfect copy of a human being it would still be 0 steps closer to a general intelligence because it does not fucking understand WHAT or HOW to actually do the things it suggests.

What if we AI passes the turing test not because computers got intelligent but because people got dumber