Huh. This happens to me in a different way with OpenRun headphones. They don’t auto shutdown when disconnected. You have to turn them off because they just stay on until the next time you want to use them.

And then you pick them up a few days later thinking they should be fine, but no, they spent days idling and only have a few minutes of use left.

Sure. Driver’s licence, insurance, maintenance of a used car, and endless payments for gas. It saves a ton of money to own a car, sure.

I live in Canada and come from a rural town with no public transit. I moved to a bigger city with public transit. As a bonus it also has a superior bike network compared to other cities of the region. And I’m very glad not to have to pay for tires, to store the winter tires somewhere, oil changes, parking fees, parking tickets, and unexpected issues.

You know what saves more money than an old car? Not having any car at all.

Funnily having a car is an excellent way to get in debt.

There’s a traditionalist/conservative band in Québec that made a very popular song about this about 20 years ago called “Dégénération”. The song is pretty good but I always hated it because at some point they whine about some young woman that’s always with a different partner and “saves herself” with abortions, saying she secretly dreams of having 14 kids, like her great grandmother. The rest of the lyrics are pretty bang on, but they’re really insisting on the traditionalist aspects and it sours the song for me.

But essentially, the first bits are going like this:

Your great-great-grandfather, he cleared the land

Your great-grandfather, he worked the land

And then your grandfather made the land profitable

Then your father, he sold it to become a civil servant

A few months to a few days. And they leave notices on the bikes before taking them anyway. But the point is, a pole is my least favorite option to lock my bike. It’s dead last in the list of choices.

It’s an “illegal” last resort that means there’s no bike racks near my destination, or they are all full. So just like the meme says, I’m at the stage where if I can’t securely park and lock my bike somewhere, I’ll turn around or won’t go. If there’s space for an ocean of parking for cars, there’s space for a bike rack somewhere.

Yes, and no. Theft can be a strong possibility, but not “all the time”. It depends a lot on where you lock the bike, its value, and how you lock it.

I have had two bikes stolen twice in about 10 years. One was a hybrid worth about $1k. It was locked with a cable by the side of a Walmart in a neighborhood of questionable reputation. It took me about 15 minutes to get in and out and the cable was cut when I came back. The other was also a hybrid worth about $1k. It was stolen while locked with a cable, in the underground garage of my building. However I have another “cheap” bike from a big retail store locked with a very cheap cable lock in the same garage, and nobody stole it.

So now even if my contract says I can’t bring a bike in the apartment, my “expensive” hybrid takes the elevator with me and stays in my living room. I also now use a thick U-lock because cables are risky. But even then I know very well that leaving it locked with a U-lock outside for any prolonged period of time is also risky.

If you have a “nicer” bike than average, you have to be mentally prepared to have it stolen at some point. Not “all the time”, but maybe a few times in your life, depending on your luck and locations.

It’s illegal where I live to lock a bike to “urban furniture”, and a pole is also often not the safest place. If not stolen, it will be removed by the city.

I don’t drive a car and hate them very much, but I have this in common with motorists. Only what I’m looking for is a secure place to lock my bike. Which is somehow often rarer than a parking space for cars.

I got my bike stolen while it was locked by the side of a Walmart, so now I’m much more careful about the “parking situation” and I use a bike share or public transit if I fear for the safety of my vehicle.

TBF I never liked Steam for the fact that I don’t own the games. If Valve vanishes, all the games people ‘buy’ are also gone.

I’m an old PC user that started with DOS and played BASIC games, and I’ve never been a fan of Valve or Steam. They did progress tremendously under Linux and brought a gaming revolution to the system, but they are still a capitalist corporation selling digitally locked products that we don’t really own.

Don’t worry, soon people will all switch (buy buy buy!) to electric cars and the problem will be fixed forever. Unless it’s not economically advantageous to do so. In that case we will keep burning fossil fuel since its cheaper than EVs that would be marginally better. Anyway I’m sure we, or AI, will find solutions soon.

Don’t point out my giant SUV, I recycle and have reusable bags! It’s not my fault.

I’m just pointing out that cheaper energy means people tend to use more. I’m very much for renewable energy and against AI. Just that we also need to find ways to be much more efficient with it. I live in a place with “cheap” renewable energy and we use more per capita than most of the rest of the world. So it’s just something to keep in mind. I’m saying it’s excellent to have renewable energy, it’s excellent to have it as cheap as possible, but it can also lead to waste and pollution in other ways.

You don’t have to make a false dichotomy where it’s either one or the other.

EDIT: Just to give you an example. People know here that our energy is “renewable” and cheap. So when we’re asked to reduce usage during peaks, there’s a few people yelling at the top of their lungs that we just have to build more dams, flood more land, and that “water will always flow in the turbines anyway”.

Have you read it? Translated or in French? Because this is a list of facts, with a conclusion addressing what you are pointing out. It’s literally from the government of the province.

Le Québec, avec son climat hivernal rigoureux, connaît des besoins élevés en puissance électrique lors de périodes de grand froid, alors que toute la population doit se chauffer simultanément. Ces épisodes, appelés périodes de pointe de puissance, ne durent que quelques heures par année, mais exercent une pression sur le réseau.

Translated: The province of Québec, with its cold climate, has high energetic needs during the peaks of extreme cold periods, because the whole population has to heat their homes at the same time. Those periods, called power peaks, are only lasting for a few hours every year, but are putting pressure on the network.

Also, those places have summer. Most of the population in Québec and Norway don’t live in an arctic tundra.

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If the electricity bill would be lower people would use more energy and switch to electric cars real fast. I’m sure some people would not change their habits, but I’m inclined to think a lot of people would just use more and care a bit less about trying to use it as efficiently as possible.

Just take cars as an example. Everyone wants low gas prices, but when gas prices are low, people are buying bigger cars that consumes more gas/energy. Another example are places with renewable energy powering the grid, having cheaper electricity, but also ending up using more per person.

The province of Québec is one of the biggest consumer of electricity per inhabitant in the world, behind Iceland and Norway. Source in French.

Those places have super high percentages of cheap renewable energy being generated, but they also consume much more per inhabitant. Sure, if we cover the earth in solar panels, reservoirs, tap geothermal, and have enough energy to waste for everybody, and every manufacture. But this takes resources, space, batteries, and ends up polluting too. The less we need, the better it is for everyone.

I’m not saying we don’t need renewable nor deserve lower bills. Just that the actual system of consumption cannot only be reduced to “more cheap renewable energy”. I’m in Québec and energy is mostly renewable and relatively cheap here. But we also can’t just continue to build giant reservoirs visible from space to quench our insatiable appetite for electricity. We’ll have to learn to use less energy too; be more efficient with what we have. Not just convert everything to renewable and call it a day.

And gamers will still pay for them, apparently.

“It will help regulate overpopulation”

-Billionaires

I was wondering about the instances when she borrowed a runabout and when the terrorism happened but someone’s gonna have to remind me.

Once she brought back a few Bajorans that were still prisoners since the war, including Li Nalas.

Another time she kidnapped a single Barojan scientist to force him find a cure against a terrorist bioweapon.

What am I missing?

No, but since you’re mentioning it I might try. I’ve been so disappointed by the franchise that I didn’t bother looking into SNW, but just having someone that seems to be on the same page suggest it makes me want to at least give it a try.

Thanks for the suggestion, and the detailed rant!

I’m on the same boat. Apart from Lower Decks, I can’t watch the new shows. I keep hoping a new show might fix it, and be for me, but the longer it goes, the less I’m interested in Star Trek.

Lately I’ve been thinking about unsubscribing from all the Star Trek communities, as all the discussions and hype about the new shows is making me think I’m no longer a trekkie. I loved TNG, DS9, VOY and tolerated ENT, but the new shows are clearly not made for me.

And all this because we refuse to slow capitalism down. The most important question on everyone’s mind when there’s elections is the economy and money. We need economic growth. Can’t tax billionaires. Can’t stop the consumption machine. Economic growth!

The sad thing is that most people are willing to relocate to avoid the effects it will have on them financially. It’s not because it could help to mitigate the change; they won’t move into a 15 minutes city. We’ll just perpetuate the sprawl elsewhere and continue what we have always done before.

It’s even more sad when I look at images of natural disasters, and beyond the immediate lost of lives, seeing people lose their things and run (drive) to buy even more things produced by the very system that is causing more frequent and intense natural disasters.

Beyond legislation and enforcement, it’s been disappointing to try to explain those things to people around me for decades, hoping they will make the connection, only for them to end up being mad at high gas prices. Also, that survey asks about inside the US only. What if people from one state don’t want immigrants from another state? It’s gonna be interesting to see when the next inevitable question in a decade or so will be if people are willing to become climate refugees in other countries, and if citizens of other countries are willing to accept them.