FYI 45 kph on a non-motorized bicycle is not really “freakishly fast”, that’s a normal downhill speed on your average middle age guy’s weekend workout. And I think this concern is already addressed by signed speed limits.

The spirit of my complaint is that we should just appropriately license them. If practically that means a new class of license then yes, that’s how you license them.

Just license them in accordance with their capabilities. All the bad press about ebikes lately is running cover for government negligence over lack of normalizing them into existing licensing frameworks, on behalf of the automotive lobby that knows if these vehicles aren’t given an appropriate legal niche they will instead end up being seen by society as dangerous scofflaws and ultimately banned or legistalted out of practicality.

Use your brains. Ask why the discussion doesn’t revolve around appropriate licensure and infrastructure, and instead revolves around how to get rid of them.

I’m a cyclist and I’m against this. If they’re effectively electric motorcycles then just license them as motorcycles, end of story. People are getting brain fog over the fact that they’re cheap and popular with kids. We don’t speed cap any other vehicles, we just license them appropriately. Let’s just continue doing that. It’s wacky to me that this isn’t obvious to most people.

Cars can go even faster and actually do kill thousands of people, but god fucking forbid we talk about slowing those down because we’re so normalized to their violence that we’re blind to it. I agree with the person you replied to, this is monumentally stupid. Give micromobility their own infrastructure, repurpose space currently given to cars. We’ve gotta stop pearl-clutching over sustainable progress.

I could critique this one for a paragraph too but I don’t feel like being so miserable :P And at least it doesn’t have any imaginary technology. So long as that’s a train in the… Tube thing.

I’ve done some solarpunk art myself and could ramble about it for many paragraphs if I let myself. Some people are concerned purely with aesthetics but I like to spend a lot of time thinking about how the society and culture and institutions in that imagined world inform the scene, directly and indirectly.

I’ve noticed that at some point solarpunk imagery got infiltrated with jetson-style hovercars. Which besides being imaginary technology are kind of just an individualist, capitalist transposition of motonormativity (Automotive normativity) into science fiction. Futurism is one thing, but they aren’t very solarpunk. More of an Overwatch-liberalism type of fantasy.

Just take their license and their car and make them report to a probation officer for a while. The first things I learned about driving is that the car can be considered a lethal weapon and that driving is a privilege.

I love and use rails-to-trails myself, but I can’t shake the feeling that they’re essentially motornormative culture scapegoating cyclists to bury any possible hope of reviving rail networks. The carbrained planner says “No you can’t put the rails back in, you’d displace the cyclists!” While displacing cyclists every time they choose to exclude cycling infrastructure on streets.

Oh, it was a bit. Yikes you had me triggered lol

“Trains wouldn’t work in the US, we’re too spread out”

Meanwhile, we did have a near-ubiquitous rail network a century ago and destroyed it.

Meanwhile, the US road network is the single most economically expensive undertaking in human history and has achieved complete ubiquity in almost every lived location in the country, all of it costing more per mile than your average rail line, much of it literally poured over old rail line.

Meanwhile, Europe is the size of the US and achieves equivalent rail density with far less investment.

Meanwhile, China is larger than the US, has an order of magnitude more people, an even more dispersed population, and achieved high speed rail ubiquity in less than two decades.

Anyone who tells you ubiquitous rail cannot work in the US because of our size and density is either disingenuous, misled, or ignorant.

edit - Or they’re doing a bit!

I think this is what boomers do now instead of making despicable me minion and ghost rider memes.

Slaps roof of big tent

“This baby can fit so much resentment.”

My great aunt’s hobby for the past 40 years has been extended family geneology. Apparently before she started my (American) family thought we came from like two places, she’s mucked that up and proved that we’re total European mutts with at least 8 origin nations and also thrown at least one of the original supposed origins into question. She’s found a slave-holder in our lineage, several failed homesteads in the pacific northwest, and multiple names on the monument at Ellis Island.

I love my local rice bowl food truck, but I know damn sure there’s less than $5 of food in their $15 servings and am about to do the same as you.

This one looks more like an eclair to me

Just take care not to mistake rugged individualism for anarchism!

Absolutely, but so does everything else.

Drop all support for Iran war, pivot fundraising mechanisms away from Israeli influence, use bully pulpits and media to keep Epstein in the news cycle, direct more national funds to local DSA candidates, rotate gerontocracy out of party leadership, etc…

I don’t really mind them doing stuff like this too, though.

Sorry, best I can do is an adult autism diagnosis and recommendation to cut ties with your parents.