kain0m profile

Battery Electric vehicles are a great way to hurt the environment today. MAYBE they'll be net-negative in the long run, but that is 15 years out. Many EVs in the rust belt will never last long enough to reach that.

And then there is the whole "green electricity" lie - about solar, wind, and hydro power being zero carbon. Big picture, they are less carbon intensive than other forms of power, but far from "zero". Especially solar power has a huge up-front energy cost, which at this point is provided mainly by chinese coal plants.

Emissions and global warming are a fantastically complex topic - but I am afraid battery EV's are nothing more than a shiny band-aid on the actual problem. The have the potential to reduce carbon emissions, but only in the best-case scenario. A Tesla operated in Germany emitts more NOx than a Diesel car would be allowed to, and about 80-100g of CO2 per km (which is comparable to an economy car...). And then there is the whole peak-power issue and overrating the grid to compensate for that - leading to gargantuan efforts in infrastructure, causing more CO2...

NB: I work in the development of fuel cells for EVs. The situation is marginally better there, but the only solution is a drastic reduction in individual traffic, combined with high taxation of international transport, reduction of planned obsolescence, etc. As long as we ship most of our goods halfway around the globe, just to throw them away after far too short of a period, we are never going to even make a dent in the climate with EVs of any kind.

If you have a feel for it, of course, this is plenty fine. I'd hazard to guess it is more accurate than the +-15% Range of this Gizmo. Just don't expect single PSI accuracy...

I've seen the Makita pump used to re-seat 33" offroad car tires, so I'd guess yes. But then again, I always have a pressure bottle on hand for seating stubborn bike tires, so I am fine with a floor pump.

I think one of the main misconceptions is that "fast=flow". No, riding bikes is not about being fastest, unless you're racing. It id about having fun, feeling the flow. Going fast is where you get hurt, and hurt badly.

Letting off the brakes is great advice. It greatly increases the stability of your bike, frees up the suspension and your body. And when you find a natural braking spot, HAMMER on the brakes (without locking them up).

By going 5-10% below your limit, you'll get rid of 95% of crashes. And if you're doing it right, you'll get just as much enjoyment. You'll miss the "holy sh*t, I almost just died" moments, but you'll get to ride more since you're not broken half of the time.

Trouble with most trails and especially bike parks I know is that they are too steep. A good bike trail should have less than 5% gradient, yet most are closer to 10%... This encourages either going WAY too fast, or constantly dragging the brakes.

One final tip: stop riding trails when you're tired. If you did six laps of the park, and towards the end of the last one you're hanging on for dear life, just let it be. If your buddies wanna go for another lap, fine, let it be. The last one will not be fun, you're simply trying to survive. And then you get hurt and you can't for a month - it's simply not worth it.

I think the majority of people ride too far back. The front wheel needs much more attention (read: pressure) than we give it intuitively, especially with slack head angles and long bikes.

And then there is the point of ellbows out: It is necessary. But it is also necessary to have movement in both directions.

My way of thinking about this is: On a bike, 80% of the mass is the rider, and 80% of that is the torso and head. If this mass is stuck in any corner, it limits the amount the whole system (i.e. bike + rider) can move before it looses control - this is true in both directions. The same way that a trophy truck has 50% negative travel, the rider needs to be centered in his  or her "travel" - that is arms and legs.

A dirtbike on a pump track is great training for this - you can't move swiftly ony pumptrack if you rely on suspension. Once your riding posture is where it needs to be, you have the ability to "pull the bike towards you" on the uphill part of a hump, and push yourself perpendicularilly off the inclined plane on the way down.

On a FS bike, you want to acheive the same thing - a "resonance" with the bike and terrain. Release pressure on the way up, and push on the way down. This generates the flow in your riding - you work with the suspension, not against it. And it most certainly isn't possible when you aren't centered in your "travel" - because then, you are stuck with reacting instead of acting.

But we are suspect to risks everywhere. Nothing is 100%. I tend to think along the lines of the 80/20 principle. 80% take 20% of the effort / cost / whatever. And vice versa. 

If we all lock ourselves up in our homes indefinitely, is it even worth living anymore? And don't be fooled, there is absolutely zero chance of eliminating this virus, so all we are doing is staying on life support until we have enough people infected and healed to have some sort of herd immunity, where it won't come to significant outbreaks. Trouble is, the time horizon for that is years to decades - New York is on the brink of collapse with its medical system with 100.000 people infected. Takes two weeks on average. So 200.000 infected people per month is what they could sustain with their infrastructure. In a city of 8.4 million. Which means 41 months of absolute state of emergency until everyone would be through - which in and of itself wouldn't be possible.

Bottom line is, were gonna have to find a different strategy than to "flatten the curve" if we, as a species, want to survive this, simply because our current strategy will keep us in a unacceptable state for years. You can reduce social interactions for a few months, then people will start dying because of it. People will starve because of poverty. People will commit suicide. People will loose anything they had if we were to sustain this self-quarantine imprisonment in ours homes for years. At which point, definitely, the cure is much, much worse than the disease.

I think it has a lot to do with entitlement, as well as growing population and wealth. There are simply more people around, who have more "investment" in whatever they do. It is easy to get into a "get out of my way" mood; because we rarely take a step back and realize that none of us are more important than the rest of us. And nowadays everybody is special and important, which doesn't help.

I've come to the conclusion that people are not ment to live in huge crowds. Our brains are wired for small, tightly-knight groups. Anything beyond that can only work with a solid "framework" - our social etiquette. But this etiquette does not adapt fast to changing conditions, like new modes of transportation. If there is any etiquette for any mode of transportation beyond walking, it is that the slower has to yield to the faster one. But here's the catch - nobody wants to slow down for somebody else, and there may simply be no room to get out of someones way. Add to that that bumping into somebody while walking is harmless, but ramming someone full steam ahead on a bike is a terryfying prospect.

The solution? No idea. Rules help to some degree; but they also prevent a social etiquette from forming. We do not question the relation of cars and people, because these two must not interact in everyday life - cars belong on roads, people on sidewalks. Whenever they meet, it has to be regulated (traffic lights, crosswalks, etc.).

The very simple fact is that no matter what we try to do and improve the impact of what we do, the impact is going to be marginal. The only way to have a real impact is to simply consume less and reduce travel and transport. If we continue to ship stuff half way round the world because it is ten cents cheaper than producing locally, we'll never get a real improvement.

Let's not forget that that article is about road racing, where the velocity is almost constant for the majority of time, and the wheels and tires are much, much lighter. It won't translate directly into mountain biking - a road tire weighs little more than half of this cushcore plus insert.

Rotating mass matters significantly in acceleration. Once you are going, it isn't different from non-rotating mass, though. More mass equals more stability - but it is less agile feeling.

Basically, the inertia you feel when you spin up a wheel in the air is what is added to the longitudinal acceleration. It isn't insignificant, for a tire it essentially means that the total inertia is double that of it's weight.

But once you are going, the impact is small. You'll not notice it  grinding up a hill, but you'll notice it in a sprint.