You had me till the BuY AnOthER OnE, Pay me imaginary strawman. I do love bikes though, so do the fuckers that keep taking mine.
You have enough money for a pair of bolt cutters.
Yeah Yeah I do have some of those, where you parked again you say?
If you’re big enough, you just need money for a balaclava.
Hmmmm baklavas
I think the point was to contrast this with cars. Having your car stolen is 10x worse than having your bike stolen
10x? What car can be so cheap?
Ironically, a stole one
- kryptonite U-lock.
- locking skewers for the tires, gears, seat and handle bars.
- an ugly color
At this point, they’ll need an angle grinder to get anything valuable off the bike. It’s more expensive but so long its not the standard of ever biker, bike thieves’ll target easier bikes to steal off.
Think of it that way - whoever stole your bike was probably more happy to get it than you are sad to lose it. The total happiness in the world increased. So, whatever.
There it is.
The stupidest thing I’ll read all day.
And the sun’s not even up yet.
It’s a reference to this comic https://knowyourmeme.com/photos/1314087-my-bike-got-stolen-recently
I never know if the artist is serious or not.
Thank you; I had no idea.
I take it that the idea is that it’s supposed to be stupid?
It’s true although it sucks. You could have several bikes stolen a year and it’s still cheaper than a car.
It’s, once again, comes with infrastructure. When I moved to Germany from the country with no bike infrastructure, I only thought of a bike as an expensive stuff, but here I bought a used commuter for 40 Euro and it’s fucking great. I love it, but if it gets stolen, I would be mildly frustrated and buy another one of those for 40 Euro the next day.
With trains, you don’t arrive sweaty, you can’t get run down by cars, and someone else parks it
I ride a bike to work every day. I’m never sweaty. The infrastructure to cycle exists so I won’t get run over by cars.
Where I live I wouldn’t want to bike. Too many freaking hills
Where I live (Oklahoma City), I wouldn’t want to bike for at least 5 months of the year. Between mid April and late October, we are stupid hot and humid. We had lots of days this past summer that either got uncomfortably close to or passed 40°C. Dew points in the mid 20s all summer long. You’ll break a sweat just standing outside for more than about a minute or two.
Can’t imagine what it’s like for those sorry saps in Houston or Florida.
The comfortable temp for biking is significantly higher than it is for walking, especially with the right gear. 40°C is definitely beyond reasonable tho. Planting trees and decreasing the amount of asphalt would go a long way to make it a better proposition more of the year. A societal expectation that you don’t go or do anything when weather gets that hot could bridge the difference. Unfortunately that kind of philosophy is antithetical to capitalism’s demands for productivity.
I live in a somewhat hilly city. That is why I have an electric bike. I’m never sweaty when I arrive at work
Even if the city is flat as fuck you’ll still arrive sweaty if the climate is hot. Take Phoenix for example, you will sweat even if you are in the shade and doing no physical exercise because it’s commonly 46 degrees.
Phoenix is not a great example of how we should design cities. Putting a city in a desert is a bad idea from the outset.
The desert is the only reason it is habitable, if it were less arid the humidity would make it even worse. The largest desert on earth is Antarctica, deserts don’t have to be hot, just low precipitation.
But what deserts do very well is solar potential due to lack of cloud cover and I don’t know why we can’t use solar to power electric rail for public transportation.
Hills are only the problem if you’re not biking regularly. I’m way out of shape, but after a year on living in a country with good infrastructure, hills aren’t a problem for me anymore, really. But first couple of months it was a bit brutal, for sure.
I have an electric bike for the hills.
Where I used to work it was downhill all the way there and uphill all the way back stupid way round of having it don’t want to get to work early.
Teach me the non-sweaty ways. I love my bike, but theres no way I can arrive not sweaty. Before you say go slow, I’m not letting no bus take my god-damn glory.
E bike.
In Germany those are only allowed to assist you up to 25kph, which means they only help you going up hills, everywhere else will be the same amount of effort
30 in Canadaz that’s enough speed for commuting.
An Ebike is extremely helpful, especially if there are hills. Wear a breathable long sleeve SPF shirt. I like hemp and some of the stuff Colombia makes. If your route is safe enough don’t wear a helmet. Shorts and sandals are also helpful. I’ve had some success with lightweight merino clothes as well but they tend to get holey in a few years of frequent use
Only if you live at one train station and work at another.
You can also do this thing called walking. Although I am aware that in the United States that is considered suspicious behavior.
Im from europe, train stations here are a little more than walking distance apart.
The public transit isn’t that great where I live by European standards. I use a Brompton folding bike to make up the difference. It’s great for trains
I love trains but they give me so much anxiety. I have stories of facing harassment on public transport. But it’s not just me though, here’s some idea of why public transport can suck for women or other people in case my anecdotes are just that: https://www.metro-magazine.com/10111994/sexual-crime-and-harassment-on-public-transportation-a-study
California had to make a law for race-based harassment, so it’s not just a one place or just sex-based harassment issue: https://19thnews.org/2023/02/california-introduces-bill-harassment-safety-public-transit-systems/
If public transport can come without being subjected to people and whatever miserable state of mind they’re in, I’d like that. I can at least escape a dumbass in my car, but in a train they’re either right in front of me or nearby for a long time. How do we fix this?
Screw that. I love paying for car insurance, gas, oil change, tires, and random bolts maintenance. There is also the thrill of driving in traffic, and dealing with road rage. There is plenty that makes the car the ideal transportation mode loved by the masses.
My personal favorite is how if someone bumps you and you get the smallest scratch or dent on your door, you now have to be late for whatever you were doing, pull over (impacting other traffic) exchange insurance info deal with possible hostility for that and ultimately have a crappy day because of it.
Stay out of the road with the heavy machinery. Cars won. Get out of the way or get run over.
Scooter, pic unrelated
The Japanese used bikes to defeat the British in Singapore. The Vietnamese used bikes to defeat the Americans in Vietnam. The Chinese used bikes to destroy manufacturing in the west.
I’ll be in the cold cold ground before I use some stupid commie machine powered by rice.
All other arguments for not using a bike are stupid.
Can’t tell if satire
Every time I see this kind of post I just wish they would try to go to work in a +40 degree Celsius environment.
It must be nice to work in a place that won’t mind if you arrive drenched in sweat.
Edit: I love the hive mind
Honestly, no matter the mode of transportation, I’d arrive drenched in sweat in a 40° environment.
Cause you can’t actually GO anywhere on a bike. If you want to go somewhere 200 miles away for a week, it’d take a day and a half each way, minimum, and you can’t bring anything with you bigger than a backpack. It’s also physically strenuous to go literally anywhere, even the places you are allowed to go.
Also, bad weather is a major pain in the ass on a bicycle, but only a minor inconvenience in a car
cities should look like this: bicycle/walking paths, trains, trams and buses. and a tiny road for the rare occasion you actually NEED a car. boom, problems solved. also mixed use zoning, rezone every city so it’s more compatible with a non car centric lifestyle
I never learned how to ride a bicycle, I should really get to it someday. I just walk everywhere I need to go, or use carpooling/bus/subway…
"Cars are freedom! *
Except for the monthly finance payment, the legal obligation to insurance companies, the dependance on oil companies, etc"
**
Unusable by almost everyone that’s disabled, most of the elderly, and cannot carry any significant amount of goods.
Difficult to impossible to carry more than a single passenger as well, which reduces range and energy efficiency steeply when it is done.
You can negate part of those difficulties with variations on the bicycle, including tri and quad bikes, but you still run into range limitations that are incompatible with living anywhere but a city.
The posted text is yet another example of someone with a narrow view of how life actually works outside of their own situation. I used to love riding a bike. Can’t now because of disability, but it also would have made my main job impossible back when I could still work. You can’t ride a bike thirty miles across mountainous terrain in snow and ice to get to a patient’s house. You simply can not do it with any regularity at all, no matter what condition you’re in.
Even in cities, you’re still limited by weather and time.
Unusable by almost everyone that’s disabled, most of the elderly, and cannot carry any significant amount of goods.
Damn, I should call my 80 year old mom and tell her to stop doing her shopping on her bike. She’ll pass it along to all her friends of similar age when they bike to the community centre together, I’m sure.
you still run into range limitations that are incompatible with living anywhere but a city.
Damn, so it only works for 274 million Americans and 555 million Europeans who don’t live rural.
but it also would have made my main job impossible back when I could still work. You can’t ride a bike thirty miles across mountainous terrain in snow and ice to get to a patient’s house.
Oh no, it doesn’t work for everyone all the time everywhere. Since this isn’t a perfect solution for everything always, we should just completely ignore it and never use it.
I do 90% of my trips by bike, but sometimes I have to work at a construction site or a factory complex or some other middle-of-nowhere place, so I go by car. But when I go grocery shopping, or to a cafe, or out for dinner, or to my friends nearby, I go by bike. Most of the time I go to the DIY store, or clothes shopping, or just for fun, I go by bike.
And when it doesn’t work, I take the car, but it’s by far the minority of trips.
I completely agree with your arguments, but may I kindly ask you to not use such aggressive tone? This place is generally very kind, and it is saddening to see aggression coming from seemingly nowhere. The same arguments can be listed politely.
Their tone is downright pleasant compared to much of lemmy
Wanna some good old Internet toxicity?
Bruh I live 26 miles from where I work by car, and 21 miles by biking per Google Maps. And most of it is highway travel. It would make my commute over 1.5 hrs.
It is the dream if/when we can move closer though.
if entire cities were designed around these the way they are with cars, everyone would be fine with it and you would live less than 6 miles from where you work.
**
Distance. An hour commute or a 20 minute trip to the grocery store. We killed walkable neighborhoods so now here we are. Trapped.
You can do what I did and move to another country. It just takes a lot of time, work, and money to get there (though money can accelerate the former two, in some cases).
I’d love to. And the brain drain is already beginning. College is cheaper and just as good over seas. That’s always the first stage because you never get all the kids back.
Open your own grocery store. Or allow others to do so.
I would if I could. But I can’t beat Walmart prices an hour away on Transit.
That’s why you don’t see 15 minute cities anymore. Capitalism already figured out that a few large stores allow you to hire more efficient numbers of employees, buy more for less, stock better variety, pass along some of the savings to customers and still make more profit than building lots and lots of repeated commercial infrastructure throughout residential areas. A return to that model would require more employees in low paying service jobs, and would sacrifice lower prices and better variety. Ironically, it would be far faster to use a car to skip from store to store to look for the best deals and the specific brands you want. I suppose we could also get rid of capitalism at the same time, but I’m not holding my breath. As much as I like the idea of walkable infrastructure, it comes at a cost that I am not sure many would be willing to pay.
It’s very weird that it works all over Europe, but for some reason it’s too expansive for America. It’s almost like it’s not an inevitable course of actions really actually.
But we can’t have 15 minute cities because…that’s tyranny somehow?
15 minute cities are about as organic as “two weeks to flatten the curve”. There’s a reason they don’t exist, it’s not a practical idea. Just like every other idea children come up with.
That used to be the model. Go look at old pictures. Those people were not walking hours to get groceries.
Correct, they’d use a horse or a mule. Cars are an improved horse. Walking and biking are hobbies at best.
Yeah, except all of those old European cities and newer Soviet built ones had (and in most cases still have) everything close to 15 minutes away.
The fact is goes as far as as fast as you can isn’t really a good thing. Also collisions are more likely to kill you.
…aaand we’re back to adjusting our speed to suit the circumstances.
Cities are inhospitable, but mostly because they’re built around 1 tonne death traps as opposed to other means of transport
You won’t be able to adjust it very high. And what is a better solution than 1 ton death traps? Is it trains? No. That would require rebuilding every city in America to be like 4 buildings and nothing else and the places where it would work already have it like new York. Is it buses? No. They are already in place and nobody uses them. So tell me, what is the actual solution besides cars?
My problem is that I have terrible balance on a bike, and the last time I tried to ride one I had an anxiety attack. I still am strongly for bike usage, though.
What about an electric scooter? Or honestly tricycles with a big cargo spot on the back are pretty sweet so long as you have the space and aren’t going up any crazy hills (could get an electric tricycle thoo).
At the end of the day though, I love bicycles but they can’t work for everyone… which is why the hope for most American cities at least is in busses. I know everyone hates busses and they are usually considered the least cool thing ever but honestly they are the future for mass transit in the US. We ripped out all the streetcars which is heartbreaking but I think busses are the closest practical replacement.
LONG LIVE THE BUS
I’ll admit that I’ve considered an electric scooter, but I haven’t gotten around to it.
deleted by creator
