Sounds like a lot of people will be full of shit. Literally instead of just metaphorically…

Of what, rust?

Oh, it’s definitely with me. Good bikes are a pleasure to ride and get you there faster, handle well and are generally safer. Clunky cruisers and lesser bikes handle poorly, go slow and shift even worse should they have gears. I still ride the 1987 Bridgestone MB-1: Cro-mo steel, suntour, drop bars. It’s old but nothing shitty about it.

I just don’t get societies that embrace the bicycle but ignore the technology and quality that makes them good.

But are they good bikes though? I’ve been to Amsterdam twice, once in the 80’s and again a couple of years ago. I love the bicycle culture but the bikes themselves, not so much. I saw a few decent ones but they were few and far between the heavy looking cruisers most were riding. I was a transportational cyclist in California for a few decades and my last bike was $1100 new in 1987. Would be a few thousand today and I can’t picture riding anything lesser. My standard commute was a little over 11 Miles, so 18 km…

Uh…you can take a train from New York to Philadelphia today and it leaves like every 20 minutes. Two a day from New York to Cincinnati, but 19 hours. Car would be half that, airplane a fraction. I think it’s less conspiracy and more convenience…

More Roy…

Go full Batty…

150 years ago, most cities were a bunch of unconnected small towns surrounding a central smaller city. They slowly grew together into the sprawl we have today.

https://parks.tualatinoregon.gov/events/pumpkin-regatta/

Tualatin specifically, which is a small city in the Portland Metro…

Ocean Beach is right on the Pacific, very strong currents and huge waves compared to the Atlantic, especially during storms. I suspect it would not work as well. They do the same Christmas Tree thing at the New Jersey shore though…

Having lived right there, like maybe 8 blocks from where that picture was taken. “Sahara” is not far from the truth. It’s all sand, and salty sea sand at that. When it was the highway, sand removal was constant as winds are strong at that beach. A lot of it is steep dunes you have to climb up and down to get to the beach, not all of it has an ocean view. Erosion is prevented by cement sea walls you see on the left side of the picture as well as the fore mentioned dunes. The walls are taller than you might expect. I don’t know if they still do it, but they used to bring in heavy equipment all winter and move tons and tons of sand from the northern part of the beach to the southern part in front of the zoo, then the currents would bring it right back north. When you live in the Outer Sunset district, getting to the rest of the city can be a pain. People there shop a lot in Daly City just south and the Great Highway was super convenient to get there, so I can definitely see both sides of the argument.

The intended experience of a wonderfully detailed open world interrupted often by annoying phone calls…

Noita. I’m so dead. At least it will be spectacular, unexpected or both…

I thought it much more interesting than the more famous “Crash” movie…

Exactly what I was thinking, they even went with a more boring font…

Not the question you should be asking. You should be asking: is the total tax burden justified for what you get?

I’m in Oregon and have no sales tax, but my income and property taxes are higher and my total tax burden is a little above the mean. I think I get a decent State to live in, good roads, fairly functional social net, environment protections, mediocre schools. I think the tax burden is mostly justified…

All over the place, they just don’t get indexed high in search…

It’s not a matter of privacy or safety. It’s a matter of how does this technology benefit me? So far, that’s none at all. I live in a place of low crime, so it’s ability to keep me safer is minor if at all. Police abuse it and the upper classes seem safe from it. I do not see any benefit in it’s current form. Lock it down behind court orders without general police/organizational access and maybe? But I’ll still vote against it…

Why? The forces behind MAGA and Trump have been part of most democracies their entire history. They percolate up every one in a while then disappear into the background noise until next time. McCarthyism looked like the end of the world as well just to disappear just as fast as it came about. Cults of personality rarely outlast the death or disgrace of the founder.

Costco is a huge market so it has many suppliers. I bought a bag a month ago that matched this post: a noticeable amount of empty shells. The next bags were fine. Probably just a wave of product from one supplier.