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.
I’m from the previous generation so to me it wasn’t Timon & Pumbaa, but rather Baloo (and Mowgli) signing in French about the bare necessities: Il en faut peu pour être heureux. Vraiment très peu pour être heureux. Il faut se satisfaire du nécessaire.
I’ve only heard shōganai by westerners describing life in Japan, and then while watching videos of the tsunami in 2011. And as others have said, it may be a reference for you, but isn’t it just a common saying? Common enough that someone from the other side of the planet knows it, but not your reference.
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.
I was in vacation in Guadeloupe, trying to rent a bike on a small island, when the guy at the rentals asked me what I was doing for a living. I stayed vague and just said I worked in IT but it was enough to move the conversation about his broken printer and the fact that he had to buy a new one. He asked if I could take a look at the broken one, I replied that I was on vacation, and he said that it wasn’t very nice of me. There was no language barrier as we both spoke French natively, but I’m socially awkward and maybe it was just a joke. I’m still not sure if he was just making small talk, or expecting me to check the printer.
I obviously didn’t, and I recommend touring the island of Marie-Galante on a bike, it’s worth it.
It’s getting easier to get computers without Windows but for a while, it was nearly impossible. You didn’t have to go out of your way to pay the license, as its price was conveniently included with the computer. No choice but to pay for the license.
In fact, there was even a movement demanding Microsoft to refund the price of the license, and protests.
Unfortunately it’s still very common to pay the Microsoft tax when someone buys a new computer. Most people pay for it whether they want it or not.
Wars are a much better investment.
Expensive is relative.
I was going to make snark remarks on the fact that a lot of people live in hostile environments and it’s not super sustainable because we need climate control year round in every building and cars, but I live in Canada and it would be pretty hypocritical given the fact that I need climate control most of the year too. In fact, sometimes in winter when I watch the endless ballet of machinery burning oil to plow and move the snow, I wonder why we go through such trouble to live here.
I guess we get used to a lot of things. However 42C is too much for my taste. I go vacationing in the Caribbean where it’s usually around 30C, and it’s pretty much my limit.
Sometimes it can happen, depending on your lifestyle. I work in tech and live alone. I come from a rural town of 7000 people. When I was a teenager in the 90ies, I wanted to live in a group of towers of a trendy neighborhood in my province’s biggest city. They are connected to an underground mall with a grocery store, a cinema, a pharmacy, multiple restaurants, etc… To me it seemed prestigious and useful to be able to live in a place without going outside for errands.
Ten years later I moved into that city but in a peripheral neighborhood. Then another few years later, I needed to move again and ended up in a tower near the ones I wanted to live in when I was a teenager. I didn’t even realize it at first. I just needed a place to live. But one day while coming back from the grocery store and exiting the tower complex, I realized that I wanted to live there twenty odd years ago, and now I go shop there while living two streets away.
But now that I traveled a bit more in the recent years, there are other places in the world where I have this feeling of “I could/I want to live there” and I know it’s probably not going to be possible. Also, as nice and tempting as other countries and cities are, it’s already not easy to find a place to live in your own country right now, let alone in a desirable neighborhood of another country.
The one at work forces me to use Windows and Teams. The one at home lets me tinker with open soirce and gives me the freedom to do what I want.
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.
Sorry but this got me thinking about a punk rock song in Québécois from when I was was much younger.
Between my teeth there is a piece
Of popcorn that is stuck
I don’t know what to do
It’s the fourth toothpick that I destroy
The third time that I vomit
I’m going straight to hell
All my friends are turned at me
Even the police is here
Security perimeter
It’s chaos
Meanwhile outside
Wondering what is going on inside
My fans are hailing me
Please no pictures
In Québec they were a bit more diverse and also named lots of places after saints.
IBM made ads for Linux in the beginning of the 2000s. Most were a bit weird.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7ozaFbqg00
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vggF3VIzVpI
Here’s one with Sisko (Avery Brooks): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJA9eiUktcA