Yep. My consumer concerns are less of retail sticker-shock than people not realizing how dependent they are on consumer surplus. Even a few thousand a year in tariff related expenditure can be quite impactful on comfort.

Sticker-shock will happen with the tariff-adjacent removal of de minimis. Right now it’s China, but it was threatened against Canada and Mexico too (officially delayed, whatever that may mean). A $50 per-item charge is going to be quite a surprise to many.

E.g. if Canada is going to be levied like China, then my plan of getting a pair of oversized Cam-Lock kits for my Canadian-made Arkel bike panniers is gone out the window. There’s no way I’ll buy small parts when the total package cost is the same as getting a whole new set of panniers.

Correct, tariffs are not a consumption tax. That fact doesn’t mean prices will not increase, nor does it mean that small increases don’t have a big impact. We, the common people, will have have to go about our lives with less. Maybe wear your shirts an extra day because laundering more regularly consumes more soap. Perhaps it’s going without avocado on your lunch sandwiches. You’ll still have shirts and sandwiches, but you certainly wouldn’t be as clean or as filled. (See the “surplus” chapter of your high-school/undergrad econ books.)

What an absolute beauty of a bike and a story.

I think I recognize that dock. Port Townsend? Should you know the area, what sort of good biking is in the area? I often find myself in Sequim and Port Angeles with time to kill. So far I’ve only done the ODT between the two and could use some suggestions for great rides.

That’s fair. Comparing regular drivers doing typical city trips to commercial big rigs is a bit apples-and-oranges. I wonder how CDL data would compare when the self-driving semi-trucks start putting on miles. Aurora is about to launch in that exact space.

Uber had a net income of 9.86 billion dollars and spent 7.14 billion in operations in 2024. That’s a single transportation company. Do you really think Uber or anyone else is going to ignore researching the technology that could significantly reduce their billions in operations costs?

I’m also not so sure that Europe is 20x safer than the US. A quick search pulled up the International Transport Form’s Road Safety Annual Report 2023 and their data disagrees. The US, even with its really poor showing in the general numbers, is safer than Poland and Czechia (Road fatalities per billion vehicle‑kilometres, 2021). I could see an argument for a 2x gap of Europe outdoing the US, but a 20x? Citation needed.

Why are we still doing this?

Because there’s a lot of money in it. 10.3% of the US workforce works in transportation and warehousing. Trucking alone is the #4 spot in that sector (1.2 million jobs in heavy trucks and trailers). Couriers and delivery also ranks highly.

The self-driving vehicles are targeting whole markets and the value of the industry is hard to underestimate. And yes, even transit is being targeted (and being implemented; see South Korea’s A21 line). There’s a lot of crossover with trucking and buses, not to mention that 42% of transit drivers are 55+ in age. Hiring for metro drivers is insanely hard right now.

They’re definitely keeping all the old comments, even if you “delete” them. What an edit is doing is making a new version of a comment. While this seems strange, it’s literally easier to do on a technical level and provides a layer of safety if there’s a bug in the code (allows recovery to previous data).

Honestly, this seems like a good move from Reddit. If they believe they’re removing a bad actor by a ban, then of course they’re going to prevent a bad actor from interacting on their stuff. Allowing edits post-ban for abuse is not a good outcome.

Don’t like it? Angry at Reddit? Leave and never interact with them again. Pulling that bandage off will sting but you’ll be better off for it.

Here’s a convenient list of affordable cities in the US.

https://youtu.be/IKxR06isoLU

You cannot dive and yet in the very first picture of the station in the OP’s article is a passenger loading and unloading zone at the gates. How could this train station’s design prioritization unduly harm your own disability since they picked a design where you could be dropped off at the entrance? I’m actually curious here because I can drive and I would be harmed (no parking for me) yet I’m willing to let it go in favor of things like front-gate drop-off zones for public and private loading.

You’re absolutely right that different people do have different needs but priority must be given on every project. Not including disabled parking is a choice that does not unduly harm disabled people. Including disabled parking can harm disabled people. Let me explain.

Prioritizing private car infrastructure necessarily means de-prioritizing non-car infrastructure, like these loading zones. Maybe they can shrink the loading zone a bit and get a parking spot or two in, but would that be enough for those who can drive? Maybe they can put the parking in the back, but that’s not every disabled friendly either. A parking structure could address some of that, but where’s that money coming from? Remember, there’s a limited budget and limited land availability. What’s being taken away for that disabled parking?

Prioritization of parking appears harmless on the surface but manifests in unusual ways, which is precisely why I chose “San Bruno Man With Seizure Disorder Found Guilty In Double Fatal Car Crash” as a case-in-point. The disabled man in question, Rodney Corsiglia, felt forced to drive despite multiple doctor interventions and the DMV revoking his license.

Dr. Austin told Corsiglia he should not be driving because his seizures were not controlled and he did not have full awareness of them. Corsiglia had difficulty accepting the recommendation and wanted to drive because he lived alone, felt he needed a car for transportation, and had a new truck even though he did not have a driver’s license.

– People v. Corsiglia, A145944 (Cal. Ct. App. Mar. 7, 2017)

Being a local in the area, I fully understand Corsiglia’s argument and he has a point. There are no protected bike lanes, the sidewalks are a mess, there’s exactly one bus every hour that’s daytime only to the train station across the street from where the collision occurred. There’s no way he can reasonably function without a car, which is good because the train station where he murdered two people does have disabled parking. And that’s the issue: San Bruno prioritizes disabled drivers while excluding every other disabled member. It’s a decision the city, county, and state can and often makes. It’s also a decision that killed.

Pushing the “what about the disabled people” is exactly how cars get prioritized above people’s needs, disabled and abled alike. It’s counter-intuitive but pushing disabled parking and induces parking demand which, even in totally unreasonable circumstances, pushes disabled people to drive even when they shouldn’t need to.

Like blind people? Or those who cannot afford a mobility van because a 10 year old used one is priced at $35k? Perhaps you mean those who suffer from seizures?

Let’s focus our limited budget into personal vehicle infrastructure that certainly wouldn’t force these suffering people to drive. It works, bro. Trust me.

Even if it was a quarter million bucks, it would quickly pay itself off. Keeping a taxi car available and operating 24/7 is a big deal for operational costs. $25/hour on a $250k device is a recovered in just over a year. It’s all profit after that.

This is a good, and quite common, question regarding congestion pricing. The fact of the matter is those with less means often cannot afford a car. It’s usually not their car if they’re driving into a city (e.g. a work truck).

But let’s say we have low-income people who do have a car and need to drive for whatever reason. There’s programs for that. Two of them.

• If you’re a low-income car owner, you get reduced congestion pricing. It’s 50% off the normal fare. They can drive in and pay less than affluent drivers.
• If you’re low-income, you would qualify for the Fair Fares program. It too is 50% off for subways and busses. That prices trips to well below the cost of fueling a car into NYC.

Congestion pricing is also funneling money into metro services, meaning the affluent drivers are actually making low-income access to transportation cheaper while also improving reliability and service levels to those riding transit.

Low-income residents stand to win the most with congestion pricing. Personally, I would focus more on how to better help businesses with legitimate car needs, like dog groomers, mobile mechanics, delivery workers, etc. For example, zero fare for businesses licenses at nighttime periods (to encourage shifting delivery schedules). Programs like that could help small business, which in turn helps boost the income of low-income employees.

You’re not off the mark. Honestly not a bad overview to squeeze into a few sentences. Here’s some extra detail for those who remain more curious.

The circuit complexity reduction happens by changing the math behind the radio signal. Much like how you can describe a vector in cartesian coordinates (a point in x, y) or in polar coordinates (a point in angle and length), choosing how to represent the radio math allows for different techniques to arrive in the same answer. That’s what the author did: he picked a polar modulating scheme over a quadrature modulation scheme. (Note, there are even more mathy ways to modulate a radio signal, but those are what the author is presenting to us.)

The author’s choice avoids generating unwanted frequencies that must be filtered out before amplifying. That’s components on the board that don’t need to be designed nor exist. A solid win.

The drawback? Polar modulation is non-linear in frequency space. What that means is certain frequencies are over-represented and others are under-represented. Imagine playing notes on a piano where some keys are very loud and others you could hardly hear them. That’s the unwanted non-linearity.

Herein lies the trick: what’s bad can be turned into good. Power amplifiers typically need to be linear. Imagine a piano that works fine but the auditorium’s loud speakers make it sound terrible. Those loud speakers would be a non-linear amplifier. The trick is that it’s possible to match the modulator’s non-linear behavior with a power amplifier’s non-linear behavior to end up with a clean signal! A non-linear piano and a non-linear loud-speaker can produce beautiful music! This engineering trick unlocks all kinds of non-linear power amplifier architectures (that’s the “C/E/F” described in the article) which are drastically more energy efficient than linear ones (linear designs max out around 65% efficient).

Given the username, I’d say that is the case: https://terptheatre.org/

"TerpTheatre is both a source of information about theatre interpreting and a tradition of theatre interpreters in the shadowed strategy. "

I’ve thought about tube vs tubeless with regular riding, like commuting, and have a slightly different conclusion. For the record, I’m 100% tubed and still haven’t managed to give away sealant that I got for free.

Tubeless has two nice commuting/regular-riding benefits. First is when there are frequent encounters small punctures, like thorns or steel wire. The maintenance time benefit of tubes disappears quickly in this case. Minor punctures with tubes can be mitigated with puncture resistant tires or liners, but that compromises ride quality and speed.

Second, every moment of your time isn’t created equal. Time when traveling is not as fungible as maintenance time. I can schedule tubeless maintenance. I cannot schedule when I get a puncture. Tubeless is zero delay or just a quick pump-up compared to patching a tube. Even catastrophic punctures are a wash; both setups need a new tube.

What setup to use really does come down to “it depends.” Are you always cutting it close to get to where you need to go, but are good with routines? Consider fast tires in a tubeless setup. Do you struggle to maintain your bike or are always early to your destination? Marathon Plus tires with butyl tubes would be a solid choice.

As for me? I only carry patches for most of my rides. It works on every one of my bikes and I’m not usually riding somewhere with less than 15 minutes of buffer time. Although it does suck to patch a tube when riding at night. That’s a suck I’m willing to take.

I’m unconvinced. The LBS can still work on Buffalo bikes. They can still repair tubes, true wheels, fix pedals, replace spokes, fix chains, change brake pads, etc. They may not have unique parts, like the AK2 freewheel, but it’s far from being unable to repair most bicycle failures.

I think Evan found an upset businessman who’s in the business of selling Black Mambas. They’re in that same situation as a local doctor that’s been displaced by Doctors Without Borders. And they’re upset that they have to compete with WBR. The complaint is understandable yet it doesn’t absolve them of their own failures.

No bicycle donation program is going to survive on a single LBS or two near a city. If I were to buy a kid a Black Mamba and it breaks down, then the kid has to take it into the city to repair it at that one shop with high repair prices. What’s far more likely is the kid will stop using the bike and sell it. Kids-in-school objective failed.

Note, this is also why WBR only operates in places where there is insufficient bicycle support. There’s no need for WBR to donate and sell bikes if there’s already a healthy local bicycle market. You can’t buy a Buffalo Bicycle and WBR doesn’t want you to have one. Instead go buy a Surley or a SOMA or a Rivendell. We have a robust LBS network. WBR operates where there’s nothing.

And, IMHO, the Black Mamba isn’t a great rural bicycle. It’ll work but it’s far from ideal. By donating to WBR, I know it’s the best bicycle that will go to some kid. I know that it’ll survive long enough for that kid’s few more years of school. I know that it’ll be strong enough to be passed down to their little brother or sister. And I know their village has a dude with a wrench to fix a flat and adjust a pedal. Such robustness is worth the extra $50 over a Black Mamba.

I’m not a fan of this article, mostly because Evan Christenson contemplates the darker side of charities working in underdeveloped countries without actually exploring them beyond criticizing WBR. It’s, likely unintentional, FUD propaganda.

It should not be a shock to find out that charities have overhead and many of them have unfortunate side effects. For example, Evan brings up Doctors Without Borders as a charity with lower overhead and a leader less compensated. That’s true, but did you also know they sell your personal information when you donate to them? That’s part of how they lower their costs. Also they provide doctor services for free. What does that do to the doctors who are there trying to make a meager living? DWB is undermining what little medical infrastructure the country has.

Is that a bad thing? Is it a good thing? That depends on you, the donor’s, perspective. Selling my data to provide more doctor is fine with me. Same with undermining the countries’ medical market because it’s a temporary thing and usually in a crisis where not providing help is definitively worse.

I’ll continue donating to WBR because their expense ratio is acceptable, even good, for physical good imports given the shipping overhead (aka bribes) in Africa. Admim is ~15% and fundraising is ~23%. Everything else goes into the bicycle and into families with kids who cannot afford one. That’s a lower margin than buying just about any good from your local shops, and it’s lower than many other charities working in Africa!

Vietnam is a counter-example with quite effective bicycle troops. Their army and insurgency was supplied with bicycles on the Ho Chi Minh trail.

I don’t believe the machine gun is intended to be fired while on the move. You’d have to be grabbing that grip at your crotch, aiming without the sights, all the while peddling and steering. That’s quite the tall order. Even under ambush conditions you’d want to get out of the area ASAP, something a bicycle would do better at than on foot.

My presumption is this is intended to be a fast and light machine gun placement. Speedy deployment and movement of machine gun nets without needing to carry all that weight, let along carrying a machine gun’s diet of ammunition, on your back is quite an advantage. Dismounting to get behind the gun isn’t a high bar nor particularly slow. I’m sure a soldier could be sending lead downrange in a matter of seconds. Essentially the same role as light infantry support vehicles today.

The recoil wouldn’t be that bad. Apparently the M1895 was loaded with 6mm Lee Navy at around 2,200J muzzle velocity and a cyclic fire of 450/min. That’s quite manageable. In comparison, the M249 is a shoulder mounted gun of 1,800J, 850/min. That’s 50% more recoil to manage without a bicycle frame to support the firearm.