I find it so tiresome hearing about how cyclists are supposedly more entitled than motorists (or the other way around, since cyclists say the same things about drivers).

Drivers routinely roll through stops, jockey for position, move erratically or dangerously, block crosswalks or bike lanes, distract themselves on their phones, get upset when mildly inconvenienced by having to underspeed behind a cyclist taking the lane for safety, etc.

1. Being entitled and breaking the law to get places faster is universal; I think uou’re just acclimated to drivers doing it.

2. The infrastructure is so car-oriented and bike-hostile that following the law often disadvantages cyclists or puts them at risk. That doesn’t justify, say, biking fast across a crosswalk, but sidewalk-riding on a 4-lane road without bike lanes? IMO it does.

3. There’s bias here in treating the worst cyclist behaviour as being something condoned by cyclists at large. Kind of like if someone said “drivers just want to drag race around town”.

It’s hard not to see this as ignorance given how easy it is to look up the great safety record of these laws (i.e. right there on the Wikipedia page).

The “Idaho stop” (red as stop, stop as yield for cyclists) is a thing in several jurisdictions, and research shows it is as safe or safer that way.

Still ought to follow the laws, but there’s reason to want those laws to be different.

I feel that about the Fediverse too, despite being highly technical. Picking a server involves trust (e.g. that they won’t go offline and take your account down with them), but you’re just exposed to a list of servers with no idea who runs them. Plus, the server name shows up in your handle, so it affects one’s public persona and people care about that.

I’m on Lemmy through lemmy.ca which feels like an authoritative “Lemmy for Canada”, but… it’s just some random individual person who snagged the domain name. They seem great but I have no assurance that something weird won’t happen with it later.

Sleep Powder is the only one IMO. 75% hit rate and an expected 2+ turns of effect means it’s a good gamble vs a stronger opponent, plus it’s practical for catching Pokemon.

Well, that and Gen 1 Toxic + Leech Seed is pretty fun…

I’m an IGH convert who I think has just flipped back to the derailleur camp again. I have a 2013-ish Montague with a Nexus 8 that I love, but it lacks the gear range for the steep hills here. So I’ve been looking at more performant ones, but I want to be able to lock up the bike, which rules out Rohloff. I also want drop bars, which rules out the Enviolo (which at 380% gear range is still kinda at the edge of what I’d like for the hills here). So the Alfine 11 is the only candidate, but word-of-mouth is that they’re less reliable than I’d like…

I also just got a rear flat the other day, which reminded me how it is more of a pain with an IGH. I was able to slide the tube in without detaching (or even misadjusting) the shifter cable, but… still. It also makes keeping multiple wheelsets much less feasible, which I’d like to do as a compromise to avoid needing to have more than one bike to do both roads and gravel.

I guess what I’m coming around to is the difference between “low maintenance” and “serviceability”. An IGH (particularly with belt drive) needs no routine maintenance, but servicing it is a big hassle. A derailleur needs regular cleaning/lubing, but, any part that wears out or breaks is one I can easily replace myself. Now that I don’t commute and I live somewhere it’s trivial to hose down a dirty bike before putting it away, the routine maintenance seems fine, and I’d rather have a bike I can fix myself no matter what happens. If I weren’t intending to sometimes (and super securely) lock up the bike in public, the alternative of saving up for a Rohloff would probably have me undecided again.

That said, I have an Enviolo and Gates belt on our family e-trike and it is fantastic there.

Mullvad is dropping support for port forwarding as of July 1st (a lack of which cripples torrenting), so this actually no longer a good option. I’m miffed about it since I just set it all up a couple weeks ago. I haven’t done my research to see if there are any trustworthy VPN providers left which offer port forwarding.