Posts by Moz
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A.Zee is good. And he has playlists which makes it easier to use youtube as a radio :)
This week I've also discovered Aurora and Agnes Obel, which are not at all like rap, more pretentious art student chick, but worthwhile nonetheless. And they've been around long enough that there's a reasonable body of work to listen to (yes, I know, that also means you all discovered them five years ago). My interest is limited, though, by the overuse of piano.
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Up Front: Why a Woman is Like a Bicycle, in reply to linger,
overrepresenting extreme reactions, & especially at the negative end of the bell-curve of opinion
Very much so. And especially because the positive end are more likely to say "hmm, could this be misinterpreted? Perhaps I should tone it down". I could easily have responded to Emma by professing undying love and a desire to shower her with kisses... but in the context of getting heaps of abuse online, I think it's better I just went for "thank you".
I'm happy that Patreon has decent comment feeds for the most part - it turns out that trolls aren't willing to pay a dollar a month for the privilege.
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On behalf of "all cyclists", I would like to say you shouldn't claim to speak for all cyclists.
What's that, you didn't? Well... um... good.
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I'm sorry. And also somewhat sorry that I asked.
But... not sorry that I have managed to avoid twitter for the most part.
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Up Front: Why a Woman is Like a Bicycle, in reply to Bart Janssen,
so many people think the tweet is about cycling.
So much so that you get anti-cycling responses.Has anyone objected on the grounds that it's appropriation? You just can't know what it's like to be a woman merely by riding a bike...
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I'm glad you've (re)popularised this, it bears repeating.
Some time ago I suggested to Andrew Geddis on PA that he might like to try cycling for this exact reason and his response was "no, not convenient". But it's something I regularly suggest to men because it really does give you that "Schrodinger's Motorist" experience, as well as the whole gamut of heckles and micro-aggressions (although when it's done with a couple of tonnes of metal travelling at 60kph it doesn't feel very micro).
So many more parallels: cyclists are expected to dress a certain way, but however they dress it's wrong. Lycra is comfortable and practical but lycra louts are awful, anything other than orange reflective road-hazard is the wrong colour, but why are you whining about spending so much on clothes? And why can't you look like everyone else?
Also, people will complain vigorously if you suggest any change be made to accommodate your particular needs. Often they say "it's always been like this" which is much more clearly bollocks than it is when women suggest similar things. Which is not to say that it's not also bollocks when said to women, just that "always" and "invented in 1913" is egregious.
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Hard News: Friday Music: Rolling Funder, in reply to tim,
I can't imagine why anyone who would leave monetization on in this scenario
Did they say something that makes you think this will be optional?
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Legal Beagle: If Australia Jumped off a…, in reply to Ian Pattison,
I like the idea of people being asked more often what they would like.
I like citizens juries for that, rather than "based on what you've heard lately, what's your gut reaction to..." which is way too often what is actually done. Deliberative democracy, in other words, of the sort that parliament is supposed to represent but all too often doesn't. Nick Gruen blogs on that subject at ClubTroppo from time to time (example) and I think it's worth trying.
The deliberative approach also has the advantage, per select committees, that there's more space for a variety of opinions to be considered rather than just reacted to, and for work sharing to mean that no one person has to grind through thousands of offensively put submissions (in some ways select committee staff have it worse than facebook moderators because they really do have to look at every submission. I'm told that the standards are generally higher but that's compensated for by the vigor with which the depths are plumbed).
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Legal Beagle: If Australia Jumped off a…, in reply to Ian Dalziel,
just taken filled in and returned, or people who don’t give a toss could pass the form onto someone else
This was a real concern in Australia, as it was difficult to find out whether your form had been posted, and AFAIK impossible to visit an office, get a form, and return it on the spot. For some people who "didn't indicate a preference" (there was no voting) that was because they never saw the survey form. Postal voting is hard to do well, perhaps even harder than online voting.
I quite like politicians declaring that they can't make an important decision and passing it to the voters, but I'm aware that that also magnifies the problems that representative democracy is supposed to ameliorate. I don't want my humanity subject to popular vote (again) or even a major campaign to get politicians to vote on it (again). But... that is often the least worst option, because it tends to only be used when the problem is already severe. Viz, one common reason politicians don't want to take a public stance on an issue is a vehemently held position by some voters. Referendums at least have the advantage of anonymous voting.
Australia also has the useful recent counter-example of the Victorian euthanasia legislation which was both controversial and passed inside parliament without too much public ugliness.
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is a "citizen's arrest" of a tourist driver a three-strikes offence?
If you're unlucky it could presumably be all of them. To wit, assault, kidnapping, threats, probably a bit of wilful damage and something under the causing injury sections. IANAL, of course.
There's a whole lot of law that I get exposed to as a cyclist that has caused me to read actual books and stuff.
Because one thing I've learned is that almost no police you see in public are lawyers or have any great knowledge of the law. Like most people, they know the stuff they need to do the common parts of their job and sod all else. So a cop driving round will be good at speed limits and utterly useless on, say, the legal limitations that apply to bicycle trailers (they must be no more than 12.5m long, 2.55m wide and 4.3m high, weighing not more than 3.5 tonnes unless the rider has a heavy vehicle license (because the law really is bonkers on the subtle differences between motorised and non-motorised vehicles)). This is all, naturally, subject to correction by anyone who actually knows the law.
Actually, one day it would be handy to have one of the beagles do a post about load carrying bicycles and bicycle trailers, because there are things I've never really been able to work out. Like, how many people are you allowed to have riding a single bicycle? Does an articulated bicycle count as one bicycle, a bicycle with a trailer, or "please don't let this go to court, now move along"?