• 11 Posts
  • 393 Comments
Joined 2 years ago
Cake day: December 9th, 2023
  • supersquirrel@sopuli.xyztoBicycles@lemmy.ca•What's your dream bike like?
    1·
    2 days ago

    For me where I live while I would love an ebike, the bus system is free and is pretty frequent so I will just take the bus up the brutal hills and mostly bicycle along flat routes even though the surrounding area isn’t flat. I am lazy when I bicycle even though I still obviously get exersize from it lol. Yes though, at least in my narrow usecase scenario an electric bicycle might actually take more work to use, or it might be closer than you would think at least. I am not really lifting the bicycle up too much vertical and maintaining a leisurely pace on flat ground takes almost no effort so…

    I would still love an electric version though, some day!

  • supersquirrel@sopuli.xyztoBicycles@lemmy.ca•What's your dream bike like?
    5·
    2 days ago

    Beat up dahan folder I got off craigslist for a hundred and change.

    Coupled with the free bus system around where I live it makes a normal bicycle obsolete, there is no practical reason to take my non-folding far superior bicycle out if I am using it purely for transportation.

    Reasons My Dahan is my dream bicycle

    1. I am tired just got of work, bus rolls up and I can finally get on and zone out, but the bicycle bus rack is full. It actually isn’t that big of an inconvenience I can wait another 15 minutes for the next bus (what happens if by an unlikely chance that bicycle rack is full too though?) but when you are deep in that “just got out of work” energy 15 minutes can feel like an eternity. My dahan, I just shrug, fold it up and take it onto the bus as cargo.

    2. If someone steals my Dahan, oh no! Damn you jerk! I am crushed. It already looks stolen, it isn’t worth anything really though it works perfectly fine.

    3. The small wheels actually make sidewalk navigation easier and lowspeed dodging of pedestrians a breeze.

    4. Literally anybody with a car can give me a ride, no matter the situation. This coupled with the ease of using a bus system with the Dahan fires normal bicycles in my opinion as transportation devices. If I go downtown to the bar to meet up with friends, I can take the bus or bike into town and then get a ride back with anybody who is going in the direction I live, the Dahan folds and sits in the rear seat of any car no problem.

    In no respects is my Dahan an engineering marvel, the handlebar is always a bit wobbly because of the folding mechanism, the smaller wheels give much less stability though the bicycle rides confident and smooth, the chain will come off sometimes and I have to wrestle it back on, nothing on the bicycle besides the seriously solid cargo rack (kudos to Dahan on that, it is a very practical stock accessory to throw on) is anything to write home about, but that is the beauty of the bicycle and what makes it my dream bicycle.

    My dream is that one day this type of bicycle (electric powered or not) becomes so popular that the used market price drops to the point that stealing them isn’t even worth it because they are everywhere.

  • supersquirrel@sopuli.xyztoEurope@feddit.org•Forging ahead: Russia sidesteps sanctions to import Austrian machinery [via Spain] for making howitzer barrelsEnglish
    10·
    5 days ago

    This machine resulted in the unnecessary deaths of countless Ukrainians, the businesses and more importantly the people responsible should be criminally charged or punished through economic sanctions to the highest degree possible full stop.

    Historians will write about a willfully indulged fantasy that howitzers were obsolete during this war that resulted in a stalemate occurring where Russia could not win despite its massive artillery advantage at the outset and up until recently Ukraine was specifically not being supplied anywhere enough artillery ammunition for some reason…

    This needs to be investigated from many different angles and this isn’t some Russian conspiracy, I am sure there is that involved don’t get me wrong but no this was a much more base desire to profit off of war while holding the means to decisively stop said war at bay from a country of people trying to defend themselves. Also throw in a heap of techbro idiots who represent a long tradition of fools who are smart at things that aren’t war (or even logistics?) believing they have found the secret to fundamentally change the basics of armored combined arms warfare that has been shown to be brutally effective over and over again throughout the 20th and 21st century… and you get a very disturbing picture.

    155mm howitizers are not a new technology, but the west seems to have magically remembered all of a sudden how important they are… after Ukraine already figured out how to produce it themselves with a minimal amount of help from a country or two like Denmark (thank goodness they did!).

    Hold the people that enabled this accountable, it is vitally important to the security of your homes and to an internationally shared desire (clearly not by the leaders in power, but decisively by the obvious expressed desire of normal people all over the planet) for peace rather than war.