@TheConversationUS

Zinc oxide and titanium dioxide work, don't damage coral reefs, and stick to your face through action on the water. Why is anyone dicking around with anything else? Junk article.

I love this mural by Smug on Mitchell Street in central Glasgow, and I've been known to spend way too much time waiting for some unsuspecting person to be pass through exactly the right spot to take a photo of it!

#glasgow #streetart #mural #smug #glasgowmurals #glasgowstreetart #mitchellstreet #honeyishrunkthekids

@moz @ascentale @xtaran @bikenite

The scenario I'm thinking of is different. No, not looking for full charge and I'm very familiar with the power numbers involved so kindly don't strawman me. But if i'm doing a long ride where I'm at risk of being without power last few miles on a bike that's not much fun to pedal without power, maybe I could stop mid-ride for a beer or coffee and add a bit of charge to the battery to improve my margins. And I'm not proposing to build this myself, my original post was in the context of "well, if the bike comes from manufacturer with pedalling for electric power built in, why not use that for stationary charging too?"

Gives the biker the option of choosing when and where they have to pedal without benefit of battery assist. Doing it deliberately on a planned beer stop beats running out of juice in traffic 3 miles from home.

@moira @ascentale @bikenite

When I tested the folding hand pump at home I found it did ok on skinny race bike tires/tubes, but "ok" means "get enough pressure into the tire you can go home/find a gas station without destoying your tube and rim". Bigger problem was just having to take it off the bike every time I locked up in public.

@moz @ascentale @xtaran @bikenite

That's disappointing to hear. My ebike charger draws 114 watts for charging at 2 amps. Poking around at road bike wattage calculators, that's about the output power required of a roadbike cyclist to sustain 15-17 mph, which is not an outrageous speed or effort. Now, the stationary setup will require less effort because there's no wind or roll drag, but then the conversion of output power to electricity is going to be less than 100%.

@ascentale @bikenite

A7) a little folding pump that mounts on the frame. Yet another thing that when I lock up in public I have to remember to detach from frame and carry with me. Eventually just left it off the bike and stuck a couple CO2 bulbs in my backpack. If I were doing multi-day journeys it might be a different story. Craigslisted that hand pump for $8, woohoo!

#bikenite

@ascentale @xtaran @bikenite

A3) Putting on my engineering hat, I don't see how this can work without being at least a bit lossy vs just pedalling to drive the wheels directly. Yeah, diesel-electric locomotives and some heavier WWII german tanks do this, but that's due to the insane amounts of torque required, which could lug down an IC engine and/or destroy the transmission. Unless you're pulling small freight trains with your bike, I'm not sure what the use case is.

There do exist delivery cargo trikes that actually carry about as much as a small pickup truck, but even there I think mechanical gearing would do fine, and many of them are etrikes anyways, which can already deliver torque from a standstill without bonking.

Now what might be cool is if you could put your ebike into pedal for joules mode, put it stationary on a double kickstand, are recharge your battery while remaining in place. Preferably with a pint of beer in a handlebar mount.

#bikenite

@ascentale @bikenite

A4) I'm not sure it qualifies as plogging, but as I was just getting home one late afternoon I discovered someone had put up a foamboard sign advertising a moving service. So I went home and got my diagonal cutters and took down that sign, biked around the neighborhood and found and removed about 7 more.

#bikenite

@ascentale @bikenite

A5) zero desire for it. just more shit to maintain and hope it doesn't break. also, the odds of it being tuned to the points where *I* want to shift are not high. and my desired shift points will vary with my energy level and familiarity with the route. Also, shifting down because I'm a second away from a steep climb, or because I'm coasting to a red light, is not likely to be handled. Solution in search of a problem.

#bikenite

@jalefkowit

If the iranians didn't manage to remove their punk-level amount of enriched uraniium from bomb target zones, then they wouldn't remain a credible threat (by these and past GOP clowns' terms), would they?

When do we see the reprise of Curveball?

@petergleick

Hochul loves her some pork project. Yeah, promising that this will reduce power billing rates to retail customers. Someone wanna post a bond on that that pays out should it shockingly have massive construction cost overruns that have to be paid off by the NYPA retail customers? Yeah, this is a total pander to AI data centers at the expense of regular customers, who are pretty much a captive group.

For those small NY upstate communities vieing to land this boondoggle, understand that there is zero plan for moving the spent nuclear fuel elsewhere, because America has none and will not have any in our lifetimes, if ever. Signing up for this means turning your little hamlet into a nuclear waste dump for the rest of your lives. Good luck with your real estate prices. The spent fuel stays on site, needing water-based cooling for decades. If the water cooling system breaks for some reason (hello fukushima), the spent fuel starts cooking off and you get an aerosolized plutonium event.

@jawarajabbi @skinnylatte

Would have been scarier if you'd dressed up as PG&E execs. Or california pulbic utilities commission members.

@eniatitova

A newish option on the east side of the city is to ride the waterfront bike trail from the baseball ballpark to the new park across from the basketball arena (lots of features constructed with girders from the old bay bridge), then go on to the new (last year or two) Crane Cove park. There's also a small public sculpture garden about one block inland a block north of the basketball arena. You can rent from the bike hut at Pier 40 and bike between ballpark and marina, then along mccovey cove and pick up the waterfront bike path at the lefty odoul bridge. Avoid event days at either the ballpark or arena, though it's usually fine mid-afternoon for an early evening event. Except when the dead cover bands are in town.

If you want to add another 2 fairly safe miles, on returning to the bike hut, keep going along the embarcadero, switching to the bike lane when it becomes armored. Then grab a snack at the ferry building, one mile back to bike hut.

@skinnylatte @eniatitova

I second this one, was going to post the same (minus the coffee). You go on a 30 foot wide esplanade-type flat MUP to the presidio, only one sketchy unsignalized spot from cars exiting a parking area, then you're in the presidio on a 30 foot wide packed dirt MUP. Weekend sunny afternoons things can get crowded, incuding lots of off-leash dogs. Fridays late afternoon/early evening you have the food truck crowd at fort mason, milling around in stupid ways, some of them are drunk. If you have the energy it's worth doing the short and fairly easly climb up fort mason for the views from the highest point of the MUP.

@moira @ascentale @enobacon @bikenite

There was a person in days of yore that promoted a regeneratative power trailer. That's where I was coming from initiallly. But I will ask you this now: if you want to have 2nd battery capability, why the fuck would you stick it in a draggy trailer instead of bolting it on to your frame, or just sticking it into your backpack for hotswap when the time comes?

@moira @ascentale @enobacon @bikenite

"You charge the battery, like any other battery."

It doesn't work the way that you want. You always lose more power from friction and the general energy loss from pedaling. You're looking for something from nothing, and that exists only in some old disney movies.

@moira @ascentale @enobacon @bikenite

The physics do not work for regen braking or any other kind of perpetual motion machine BS. Involving ebikes, or not.

@ascentale @enobacon @moira @bikenite

A3a)

meh, the only thing -e about that trailer is that it's a custom fit to a specific ebike. You don't need a custom fit, most trailers will work fine. I'm using a trailer designed to carry a couple small children, that has a spring-loaded coupler to by rear axel. I don't use it for that instead I cut away a bunch of the shielding to make it more convenient. I've carrried some heavy loads on it (not quite qualifying for the carryshitolmypics), but it's never shoved around my rear wheel. #bikenite

@ascentale @bikenite

A8) Last long ride, on an endangered route, stopped off mid-ride midafternoon for a smashburger with bacon&PBR and eet vas gooood.

#bikenite #AltTxt

@ascentale @Brownian_motion @bikenite

A4) Side kickstand on my ebike is bloody convenient. Yeah, it rattles a bit, tried to damp its noise with string in the gaps and thick tape, but that didn't work. So now I just live with it. 69 lb bike that can't park anywhere it wants, yeah, kickstand. #bikenite