Link to the ebike story: https://tedium.co/2022/09/14/e-bike-delivery-trend-nyc/
My car is worth less than two ebike batteries.
The Funny Girl revival's existence, as much as the casting, seems stupid.
Musicals are supposed to be annoying, I assume.
I've been told a lot of the bikes are gray-market versions that can just keep going without pedaling or actively holding down the throttle. (Either imported that way or modified, I guess.) I wonder if they can also disable the speed limiter.
If they are driven by delivery people, yes.
Musicals are supposed to be annoying, I assume.
That's why I sent in two links. I figured some people would enjoy the gossip and others the e-bikes. (FWIW, I'm not a fan of musicals, but enjoyed the first several seasons of Glee until it eventually got too annoying. I was sad when Cory Monteith died).
I've been told a lot of the bikes are gray-market versions that can just keep going without pedaling or actively holding down the throttle.
From the article
The Zoomo site markets a subscription bike with free maintenance available to everyone. In reality, the bike has become a go-to for delivery drivers without the means to buy and/or maintain their own bikes. The company has also partnered with major food and grocery apps, like Uber, DoorDash, and InstaCart to provide lower subscription fees for bikes. Interestingly, these partnerships seem to be partly about limiting liability for delivery apps as Zoomo bikes are limited in their speed to a little more than 15 miles per hour. (Slower than many professional athletes.) Some of the e-bikes owned by independent operators can get up to 40 miles per hour. Some can get to highway speeds.
If I'm reading that correctly the companies are encouraging people to subscribe to a speed-limited eBike, which seems shockingly responsible.
Although 15mph also seems low for professionals. I thought 20mph was a more common ceiling.
8: some of it is by statute. Something that doesn't have a top limit requires a license in some places, or is banned from certain trails (probably not a NYC issue, but it's the big deal locally.)
11: Not just a local or idiosyncratic requirement - there's a Model eBike Legislation that's law in a large majority of states, laying out a class system of e-bikes that limits speeds while at the same time clearly giving them the legal status of acoustic bikes.
With current technology and given New York's congested streets, why should electric vehicles be limited to bikes and (presumably) cars? Why not an electric Handsome Cab?
More labor-exploitative, though, which seems to be the direction we're heading.
Devoutly to be wished:
* One-person microcars that can use bike lanes, for the disabled
* Big-ass commercial cargo e-bikes - could take up most urban deliveries
It's obviously easier to disable people with a car.
How about food delivery robots? https://www.thelantern.com/2022/04/food-delivery-robots-will-soon-return-to-campus/ I followed one around campus the other night.
A little bit of ivermectin will make those go away.
12 & 18 are both very helpful links. Thanks.
Although 15mph also seems low for professionals. I thought 20mph was a more common ceiling.
15.5 is the European limit unless you want to get regulated like a moped, so it's possible some manufacturers are just using that in the US too.
I had actually wanted an update on the Broadway drama, so thanks for this!
The idea that adults carry around Blow Pops is the strangest part of this. I confused Lea Michelle with Lea Thompson so the rest of it was confusing at first.
18.1 - no, we emphatically do not want or need small petrol driven cars going at up to 28 mph in cycle lanes and on pavements. Jesus. If disabled people need cars, they can have cars which are adapted for disabled people and drive them on the road like everyone else. If they need to move on pavements, that is what wheelchairs and mobility scooters are for.
Mobility scooters are bad enough- I've been barged into more than once by them while walking, and they only go at 8 mph. I've seen people in pedestrian areas knocked over or pinned against walls by them. The idea of giving those dickheads the ability and legal right to drive at road speeds in cycle lanes is a terrible one.
(When lived there for a summer 15 years ago...) The Netherlands has lots of small car-like vehicles that follow the laws for motorbikes instead of cars. But the Netherlands also has a weird system where in some circumstances bikes and motorbikes share paths, while in other situations motorbikes and cars share roads, so you only have these cars in the bike paths when they think it's ok.
I have a lot of mixed feelings about Glee (fun for music/theater dorks! SO, so ableist*!) but I have really enjoyed learning about the "Lea Michelle Can't Read" thing** that the internet has apparently been doing for years.
* Hi, 26!
** I don't really understand what kind of thing it is, exactly, but I like it
Some assholes in an F-350 tried to run me off the road on my e-bike today. In my own neighborhood.
You're supposed to shoot him. It's right on the license plate of his truck.
I may have a little bit of that hippie/redneck crossover thing going but I do not have a gun rack on my e-bike.
How does a limiter work on an ebike? No battery power I'd you are >15 mph, or it can't go over that speed using pedal power?
27: yes, same here - small 3 or 4 wheeled things, mostly electric but some ICE. Theyre not common but you see them from time to time. Different issue - the things in 18.1 apparently, judging by the description, are meant to drive in bike lanes and on pavements, so among people on foot, at up to 28 mph.
This sounds like a bad idea to me because apparently, hi there entirely justified comment in 29, I am a vicious bigot who desires nothing more than the extermination of all who fail to meet my exacting standards of physical perfection. Ya got me, EM.
34: FWIW, after seeing 29 I was thinking about the question of what does, or doesn't make 26 ableist and my (quite possibly incorrect) intuition would be:
Perfectly fine: "I would be concerned about anyone driving a sizable motorized vehicle in bike lanes at 28mph, and people with disabilities still fall into 'anyone' for that purpose."
Obnoxious: "Can you believe that some people in mobility scooters are obnoxious, and cause problems for people around them, and _that is a reason_ to be skeptical about further attempts to provide access for people with disabilities."
I read 26 as being closer to the first statement than the second, but with an element of the 2nd.
I don't care at all about your opinion about the tiny cars, and if you had expressed it using different words that conveyed a different attitude towards the marginalized group of people you were discussing, I would not have called your comment ableist.
After seeing 34, of course, I have completely changed my assessment, because there has never been a more convincing argument than a stratospherically hyperbolic straw man. My abject apologies.
I have been following the Lea Michele thing with reluctant, ashamed interest. I don't really like Funny Girl or Glee or Lea Michele and I wanted Beanie Feldstein to be a success just because she seems fun and you kind of want the schlubby one to knock everyone dead instead of the telegenic one who is perhaps a jerk. And it just feels so trite for Lea Michele to get to do this. Turducken of camp, irony, and conflict indeed.
I guess just if the blog needed someone who IS a big old walking stereotype fan of musicals to chime in, I'm your girl.
33- The former. If you set the pedal assist to zero, either by choice or above a certain speed, it's just a regular (heavy) bike. It will still go fast down hills.
EM, every time you use lazy and baseless allegations of bigotry in arguments, people are going to react strongly and negatively until sooner or later - probably later - you learn that it is a bad thing to do.
Gosh, thanks, Ajay. That's super helpful advice!
And of course you're right. As you noted, you do not literally want to murder all disabled people just for being disabled, which proves that any accusations of ableist language or attitude in comments you write must OBVIOUSLY be lazy and baseless. Again, my apologies.
Ajay, the tone of your comment about scooters was clearly ableist. I know many of us (myself included) are highly reactive to criticism, but maybe start from the premise that someone you know to be an expert on the subject has insight that you don't?
Smearcase, I second everything in 37, though I did enjoy listening to some of the Glee mashup songs from the first couple of seasons.
I find myself confronted by an impossible choice: taking seriously an argument put forward by a disability rights advocate or one put forward by an asshole rights advocate. The only solution is to become a Republican.
I find myself confronted by an impossible choice: taking seriously an argument put forward by a disability rights advocate or one put forward by an asshole rights advocate. The only solution is to become a Republican.
So impossible that I've committed voter fraud.
I'm still trying to figure out which Republican doesn't have an asshole.
Also I think we all need to be more compassionate towards Ajay. After the incidents described in 26.2, he apparently is in need of trauma counseling.
Also 29 -- that thing you like is making fun of someone for not being able to read -- aka ableism.
Being illiterate is not a disability, and I'm very sure that Lea Michele can actually read.
48: I defer to your expertise, but isn't it likely that a a contemporary American illiterate adult likely has a learning disability? Also I am obviously not concerned about a wealthy celebrity like Lea Michelle. My concern is for all the poor non-famous illiterate people that read Unfogged.
If someone has a learning disabiity, that's a disability- the specific results of it aren't. And the theory (such as it is) for LM isn't that she has a learning disability, it's that she was too spoiled and busy being on Broadway and just didn't learn to read, and now has bffs and tolerant producers and hired assistants to do it for her.
Or text-to-voice tech which I assume is what all the illiterate readers of unfogged use.
I think the current estimate is that +/- 20% of the adult population in the United States is illiterate. I have no idea what portion of that group has cognitive or other disabilities that stand in the way of their learning to read.
I think the current estimate is that +/- 20% of the adult population in the United States is illiterate.
I hadn't realized it was that high. That is depressing (as is this).
A Gallup analysis published in March 2020 looked at data collected by the U.S. Department of Education in 2012, 2014, and 2017. It found that 130 million adults in the country have low literacy skills, meaning that more than half (54%) of Americans between the ages of 16 and 74 read below the equivalent of a sixth-grade level, according to a piece published in 2022 by APM Research Lab.
Don't fret. It's way lower for unfogged commenters: not more than 10% or so.
Sixth grade isn't that bad. You can still read porn and Brietbart.
Technically, cloacas aren't assholes.
There's "functionally literate," "functionally illiterate," etc., but no one thinks of the "unfunctionally literate" demographic overrepresented on Unfogged.
Thanks! "Dysfunctionally literate" might have been better though.