Robert Cole

Just posing him for pictures weekend at Bernie’s style?

That golf doesn’t play itself.

A little girl in Portland, OR after being tear gassed by ICE. what the actual fuck.

Situations like this are unbelievable to my coworkers and friends here in NL, and it’s hard to capture just how much all of it was a factor that is hard to express in words when asked “so why did you move to The Netherlands?”

“It’s all the little things that add up” doesn’t really convey it.

Insurance wouldn’t cover a GLP-1 for me, because I wasn’t diagnosed as diabetic. After trying unsuccessfully to lose weight for years, I decided enough & got in a cash pay program. On my dad’s side it’s back to the 1700’s for a male to make it out of his 60’s. Diabetes last 2 generations.

and well?

REP. OMAR after being attacked with liquid: “We will continue! These fucking assholes are not gonna get away with this! Here is the reality people like this ugly man don’t understand — we are Minnesota Strong. We’ll stay resilient in the face of whatever they might throw at us.”

my grandmother, an Auschwitz survivor, was Anne Frank’s neighbor in Amsterdam, and Oma thinks this comparison is perfectly apt

All agreed.

The fact that these reasons are all a feature and not a bug to the federal government is also indication of how far we have fallen.

Also interesting since adapting a car for a lower body impairment can cost more than a whole bike for the same, and sport shops over here even sell house brand hand bikes.

Plus the whole being able to actually go places in a wheelchair or motorized scooter because the infrastructure is there.

Might need to invest in these for Rachel... she's on her second flat and the rest of us have had zero.

Ooh! Ooh! I know!

People riding bikes in a separated bike-lane. On most streets, it’s not separated, it’s not really safe.

4. If you’ve never ridden a bike for transportation (as opposed to recreation)—and especially if you oppose safe bike lanes—spend a week riding a bike to work and other places you’d normally drive to. On one of those days, take your kids with you. Think about how you felt on every part of the trip.

Exploring the area we now call home (Zeeland, NL) with the family.

We had a Christmas bunny visitor this morning!

@dailybunnies.bsky.social

But a big issue is not just the fight against the infrastructure in the US, but at least where we were a sizeable portion of the population believes that cities inaccessible by anything but a car is a feature not a flaw.

Before we moved we tried to advocate and work with the local groups and city leaders, but outside of them it’s like pushing a wet noodle.

And now we’re in a place that it is faster to jump on my bike to go to the pet store and buy cat litter and cat food (last night) than driving.

I regularly send pictures of my bike rides these days to my daughter’s former Science Olympiad teacher (I was the wind power coach) along the lines of “I hear wind power will never catch on.”

I'll also throw out that my kids both have standard pedelec e-bikes here in the NL, which are limited to 25km/h (~15mph), which is the only class treated the same as a bike.

Also, the 750W limit in the US is rife for software unlocks. For just getting around I'm not sure why >250W is needed.

So where's that take us? Well, part of the issue here is media conflating them all as the same (Class 1 / 2, e-dirt bike, fatbikes) either intentionally or because of the understanding issue above. When column-inches and broadcast seconds matter they're not going to try to explain the difference.

Parents don't care

Growing up I had several friends with gas mini dirt bikes. I think the same parents that would get a kid a gas dirt bike and let them ride wherever are the same that would get a kid an electric dirt bike and let 'em rip.

Tacking on to E-bikes are Expensive, I (well, insurance) just paid as much for a replacement Bosch 500Wh battery as a whole new fatbike would cost after a theft incident. That makes the scales on a used bike just tip further.

E-bikes are Expensive

A good new e-bike in your LBS is easily €2k. Going back to the research and understanding, there just isn't a decent sub-€1k option that most LBS's carry. The LBS service aspect here then no longer applies. Getting a used e-bike is a challenge as above.

Understanding

Back to language in part, but also social media and peer pressure influence come into play. A kid may pressure the parents to get a fatbike for the "cool" factor; a parent who is making an effort may think they're doing a good thing because on paper the fatbike looks "better."

Cheaper

For anyone extremely cost-sensitive, it may be a fatbike or no bike. Sure, used e-bikes are a thing but that requires time and research to find. In some cases that may be with parents that don't speak the local language. It's easier to just go buy one online.

I think there are a few things at play -
1. They're cheaper. A fatbike can be had (new) for <€700.
2. The parents don't understand.
3. Regular e-bikes are expensive.
4. Parents don't care.

That said, my thoughts on how we got to fatbikes and e-dirt bikes taking over and media conflating them with regular e-bikes takes me back to ending up with a 14.4k modem when we asked for a 28.8 or 33.6k for Christmas, because "it's not worth the extra money," and my dad didn't care to understand.

First up, I'll say fatbikes are a menace here too.

There is definitely a prejudice of "who" has a fatbike as well (for the most part, yes this is a generalization). The "who" is typically seen as a kid who wants to look cool and not follow the rules.

Seeing recent threads from @gravelinfluencer.bsky.social and @bikabout.com about e-bikes (or e-dirt bikes as the case may be), I thought I would throw in my thoughts as a parent of a now-teenager and pre-teen that just moved to a safe place to ride a bike from a not-safe place.

“Auto te gast” is a nice one.