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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: August 9th, 2023

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  • I will say, part of that ignorance, apathy, and laziness is an intentional part of our existing society. You can’t spend the time to research every single product you ever buy, because many are stuck working several job, basically everyone is juggling their work, family, and social life.

    A couple months back, I tried putting some effort into finding a printer that had all of the qualifications I wanted.

    • usb printing, no network needed

    • laser

    • color

    • not a brand that will fuck you over (looking at you HP)

    • within a reasonable budget of $300-$400

    And such a product just doesn’t exist. Brother comes close, but the market straight up isn’t producing good things. So at the end of the day all I can do is either get shafted at the local print store, or suck it up and get an inferior product.

    But going back to the OP, it’s so much worse with cars because we have a car-centric society. You NEED a car in this place to have a normal life. Our cities and transportation have been intentionally designed to fuck over everyone not in a car.

    So there is inelastic demand. The manufacturers can do whatever the fuck they want and get away with it.






  • As to why a Scientology-owned group would care about such a matter, 404 Media suggested that it could have to do with Scientology E-meters, or electropsychometers. The Church of Scientology describes the machines as an “electronic instrument that measures mental state and change of state in individuals and assists the precision and speed of auditing” and that only a Scientology minister or training minister should use. 404 Media noted that some people collect the devices and, oddly enough, you can find E-Meters sold on eBay.

    “My hunch is that the Scientologists think granting the hacking community permission to dig into their E-Meter software will expose the whole operation as snake oil. The request is like so many other anti-Right to Repair arguments: Manufacturers are afraid that access to repair materials will expose some of their other dirty secrets,” Chamberlain said.



  • We need to allow more mixed zoning so that we don’t have to travel 20 minutes by bike to get to the store, alleviating the drive to ride as fast as possible.

    Not only would that eliminate the need for speed, but it would also reduce the overall number of trips taken by bike. Less trips means less crashes. Same goes for cars.

    Add it to the never ending list of benefits to mixed use zoning.



  • I don’t think safety courses and licensing are a huge barrier to entry though, unless we let them be.

    Training and licenses generally aren’t free, and e-bikes are already pretty expensive. It would add quite enough of a barrier to entry to dissuade more people from switching to them, which is something the environment cannot afford. We honestly need to be doing everything in our power as quickly as possible.

    And yes, training and a license would indeed make a difference with how riders conduct themselves. Including wearing a helmet or paying attention.

    I’ve seen plenty of car drivers on the road who presumably have a license, yet they don’t wear seat-belts, don’t pay attention, turn in places they shouldn’t, speed, etc. The first step should be infrastructure changes to increase the number of protected/dedicated bike trails (which in turn allow accidents to happen safely), built in speed limiters, rules on helmets and speed, mixed use zoning to reduce trip count/speed/cars, etc. Such changes don’t have an impact on barrier to entry or and only a negligible effect on our freedom.

    Traveling by bike is one of the few ways you can travel without having the government involved in some way, or at least minimally involved. I’d like it to stay that way.

    And like I said earlier, most of these injuries are to the rider themselves, which means they were probably doing something stupid in the first place. People are going to be stupid even with a license and training, so we may as well design around it as a first step.


    I have a cat. It likes to get into things I don’t want it to. I could theoretically teach it not to do so, but the far simpler option is to keep the layout of my house and my things such that it can’t get into things in the first place. If I keep the closet doors shut, it isn’t getting in. People are stupid, and similarly, we should design our infrastructure to account for that. It’s why speed bumps exist after all.


  • We are at a point in time in which we can’t afford to wait any longer to switch away from fossil fuels, and e-bikes are one of the ways to do so. The barriers to entry should be minimal.

    The majority of e-bike injuries are to the rider themselves, and due to inattention/falling off. That’s not something that training or a license will really help with. Speeding and not wearing a helmet on the other hand, those are things easier to catch/deal with.