Anise (they/she)

No. Being politically active is of the upmost importance to me right now. I’m exhausted, but this election year is a matter of survival for queer people.

That’s weird because all except prusa are Chinese made. My issue with Bambu is that it is a closed ecosystem, but they are undeniably very capable machines.

Look no further than the world’s militaries for this. They drill drill drill until soldiers react automatically without having to think about how they will react in a hostile situation. Its not enough to learn what to do once if you want a fast response.

I am a healthy adult and I’m also continually enraged at the state of sidewalks in my area. When I walk my dog there are some routes I simply cannot take because the sidewalk just… ends. I think some lots extend all of the way to the street and it’s up to the property owner to put in sidewalks and many simply don’t. If I walk across their lawn to get to the next private sidewalk I get yelled at for messing up the grass that they spend “so much time and money” maintaining; fine, it’s your property and I’ll stay off, but what a waste of resources. Unless it’s a particularly quiet road, I shouldn’t have to walk in the street. The city-maintained sidewalks that do exist are a travesty: no curb cuts as you noted, tree roots that create huge steps, holes, and some have no curbs so people just drive on the sidewalk. The city doesn’t want to do anything about it because these are either privately “maintained” and they can’t, or it costs money and they don’t want to.

I do think that mobility scooters should come in off-road versions because I’ve never seen one. I don’t see why $3000 can’t buy something closer to an electric ATV with knobbly tires, full suspension, and a torquey motor that can mount curbs like a boss, but it’s a chair format and is limited to fast-walking speeds so that it isn’t a car. It’s probably a low-volume issue.

Requiring CDLs for these huge monstrosities would finally put pressure on automakers to return to more reasonable car bodies and it would make sure that people who have to drive big vehicles at least are qualified to do so. Traffic tickets should also scale with the size of the vehicle since a speeding Range Rover presents different risks to the public than a speeding Smart Car.

Real investment in walkable cities and suburbs is the harder solution but the better one. If you could walk your kid to preschool that eliminates a car trip. Walking exposes you to the elements, but walking speed doesn’t amplify rain, cold, or heat like biking does. Zoning laws should allow a preschool, a grocery store, a pharmacy, a community space, and a hardware store to exist within easy walking distance for you. Bike paths should connect you to the next community. Miles of uninterrupted residential-only zoning is choking our planet.

I’m sorry, I had assumed you were a young student. I hope that things get better for you.

I’ve been there. Hang in there, adulthood is better.

Bikes are an order of magnitude less dangerous by virtue of being an order of magnitude less massive.

So what you’re saying is pogo sticks and stilts are fair game?

I keep coming back to Mint+cinnamon as my daily driver and debian+xfce on older hardware. They just work and both distros and DE are simple and familiar coming from win10. There are enough built-in customization options for me to get the desktop looking how I want it but I don’t have to spend a day configuring it if I don’t want to. It might be a basic choice for basic people, but I was up and running in about an hour and after a month of not booting into windows I wiped that old drive to make room for data. I may switch over to LMDE at some point, but that is more philosophically motivated than an actual need.

There’s something to be said for simplicity.