I used to agree with the idea that legalizing it would attract epxloitive and abusive managers, increasing harm to (primarily) women. Now I don't. Why? Because the "morally acceptable" workforce is already subject to predatory and abusive managers. Meanwhile, we already have labor slaves, immigrants separated from their passports, smugglers routinely demanding additional pay. You know what the "morally-acceptable" victims can do? Report themselves to authorities and get legal action and protection. You know what people knowingly engaging in illegal activities can't do? Go to the authorities.
Make it legal. Make it visible. Make it taxable and licensable, if so needed. Keeping it in the dark means the workers will heavily skew towards desparation, knowing they're risking legal consequences.
Meanwhile, your whole interstate system was inspired by the German autobahn. Look at an interstate circling a city. Most of them are 65mph, often with minimum 12ft lane width, awkward turns skirting district borders, interchanges every mile or more, and persistent dense traffic. Then look at your middle states with incredibly straight interstates, significantly wider 20ft lanes, miles between exits, no commuter traffic. It's still 65mph except for some brave areas that increased it a whopping 5-15mph in the early 2000s. Absolutely no one in that engineering company concluded 65 was the maximum safe number. It wasn't 80, either. The average car has become far, far more capable and stable than those present in 1974. Try one of those on a current 65mph highway some time.
I do love the Monster on paper (and by ear, and by eye) but I've generally signed off on Ducati for now and the foreseeable future. I could see it being my 3rd or 4th concurrent bike. Even my Honda needs maintenance that I seem to defer a little too much. While I have experience with depreciated Jaguars, I don't have the time to do that luxury maintenance on them all. In good weather, I just want to ride, in bad weather, I handle more pressing chores. But I did chase the sound with a VFR (V4) sport tourer. While Honda has two V2s, they're both sport/race oriented (VTR1000, RVT1000). And yet, I beleive I already have a street bike, so my dream is a 1098 sport, not a monster. Of course, you could always just get a 300 or smaller Japanese bike and have two bikes!
Anyway, since I haven't followed the Monster with any serious thought, I'd recommend just seeing if it's a wheelie machine. The Suzuki Sv650 (definitelynotaMonster) is twitchy in that regard. The SV won't loop in 3rd gear, probably not even 2nd without a clutch-up, but it's known to lift the wheel in spirited cross-traffic turns. Not so deadly, but can still ruin your day.
The weight fluctuation with atgatt struggle is real. The timing worked out well for me where I was down a fair amount after a rough couple years when I picked up riding. Only 10 kilos down though and could stand to lose another 10. While I wouldn't want to wait 2 years, I do acknowledge 50 kilos is a bigger swing. Sometimes the gear is tight in early spring, sometimes it's baggy by fall. Surely I think I'll make it down a full size for next season, but winter takes a toll. With regret at the time, I've already re-bought all my gear at about the same sizes because the first set wore out (all textiles, regular wear and tear, couple mild slides).
I was an adult when I started. I wish I started as a good, but I've accepted starting as a teen would have come with consequences. I've been active on bicycles all my life and credit that for good understanding of bi-cycle physics. Antics on a pedal bike cost less. Learning countersteering on pedals to command lean is invaluable to me. Everybody countersteers to lean, but most people think they're just leaning their torso. They're inducing a countersteer every time without realizing it because bi-cycle geometry is already worked out for the.
Atlas Obscura, though some countries (or just my specific cities) don't have many entries. Neat to see some alternative, often non-commercial attractions. If I had a shilling for every scale solar system walk it's led me to, I'd have two shillings. Sometimes it's just a recommendation for a good view. Sometimes it's a secret vampire bar. Sometimes it's a famous grave. Sometimes it's a little plaque that even the locals forgot about. It's not like these things are really life changing they're just very unique memories tied to only those locations.
Aside from that, if it's a chain restaraunt I have at home, I avoid it entirely. If it's novel to me, I might go for it, but it's usually not worth repeat visits. I don't spend much either, so I try to see what's rated well and locally busy. If a city is known for a cuisine, I'll probably try a different version of it each night - and they're usually all great because they wouldn't still be open if they weren't. This extends to local beer, though again, most countries just don't do artisan beer. I used to log them all in an app, but I never actually seek out my past favorites, so I've successfully converted to just living in the moment on that one.
I'm big on astronomy, even if it's just looking at the sky. If I'm traveling somewhere near dark skies, I'll do a night excursion and spend maybe 2hrs out there. If you check some light pollution maps, class 2 or lower is something I'll travel an hour to go see. The closest class 2 sky to my home is currently 3 hours away. Obviously, weather-depending.
I hate the touristy bullshit surrounding them (and the prices), but I do have a hard time resisting rooftop bars. It's OK to be a tourist, but I wish they'd stop lying abouthow classy their fried mozzarella is.
Failing to move back right to stick to a number arbitrarily chosen for esoteric fuel economy regulations predictably incites speeders behind you to make the passing situation 5x worse. Check out India sometime if you want to see the absolute worst version of this. Lorries do 50kmh at best in the inside line. Scooters do 35kmh in the shoulder. The "outer" lane does anywhere from 50kmh to 120kmh between lorries and scooters.
I obey the law. But somehow, this speed differential works just fine here in Germany where people share responsibility and cooperate. Your speed limits are arbitrarirly low for some esoteric fuel economy logic.
German driving skill is far above the average US citizen. Germans expect a Porsche with an itching trigger finger on the high beams to be passing at 200. USians can't be arsed to check their mirrors because they're entitled to the road and anyone going faster deserves a crash. Just look at how much road rage they have because people drive the exact speed limit in the passing lane and get passed on the wrong side.
There's a reason USians are known to buy 1000ccs as starter bikes and yeehaw into a coffin. They generally only need either a 15 hour class or 6 month permit on a 125-250cc to be qualified for any motorcycle at all.
I will support "beginner" bikes forever. 90% of the "little bike" woes of my 250 ended up being skill issues. You know what 250s won't do on whiskey throttles when poor grip on the throttle and poor core body reaction tilts your torso back and pulls a little throttle jolt into a full throttle expedition? They won't power wheelie. I always see them say just use self control, but that's hard to do when your body is physically not experienced for a 3 second 0-100kmh rocket that only contacts your fingers and taint.
I see this often. Going that much faster means an average car still in the other lane simply will not be in the motorcyclists lane at all before the bike passes. The bike will pass while the car just has its tires on the line. The motorcyclist is looking ahead for vehicles already in the same lane. Higher risk? Obviously. But I'm tired of people acting like they're a victim because a bike blasted by and they think "I could have killed that biker" (or "that biker could have killed themselves on my car") while barely on their second signal flash. They traveled 10 car lengths, you got your tires on the lane, they pass, you complete your lane change, they're now 30 car lengths ahead.
That situation does not crash the bike into the changing car. It either makes the bike swerve out into a median or the bike passes without incident. The actual cause of speeding bike crashes in traffic is weaving when dipshits riders switch lanes and inadvertently box themselves into a dead end.
Want to avoid lane-change crashes of any type? Change lanes smoothly and predictable. Use your signal, take 4 seconds to change on the highway, and do not swerve to grab the faster lane every 15 seconds. Be predictable, go home without a collision report. You don't have to give motorcycles special treatment but collision avoidance works the same.
Parked cars enter the travel lane faster than cars on the highway change lanes. Travel speed is irrelevant, rate of change is. Rotating a car 30deg off parallel to leave a space is a faster action. In both situations, I'd be riding the far side of the lane to give as much berth as I can.
I'm not your prior commenter. And no, I dont fly past traffic like that because there's always a high likelihood of someone jumping out into the faster lane. "Open lane pattern" is something to look for. But to not realize how often and how quickly parked cars leave parking spaces is pants-on-head blind
I started with cameras for this reason. Then I found eyeball success with 10x50 binoculars. Now, I bring both because I'm an addict, though I leave the camera tracking mount home and stick to nightscaping.
Not your target audience, but... Bright binoculars (10x50) have kept me happy for nearly a decade for half the price of those telescope options. I do want a telescope, but based on a small sample pool at astro parties, it'll take notably more money to make it worth it to me.
Bino pros: cheaper, brighter, more portable, very little setup, two-eye comfort, terrestrial use, more durable, wider apparent field of view (bigger image), wider image field of view (more stars, easier navigation), prism optic to keep image upright
Bino cons: much less zoom/magnification capability for portable/affordable sizes, hard to see ~half of the messier catalog at all, and I frequently skip the tripod because ei can totally stand there for an hour with my arms holding 2lbs over my head steadily (hubris strikes again), and the combination of reduced zoom/smaller objects makes it harder to enjoy the viewss in Bortle class 5 light pollution or worse.
Pro to smart telescope: even if it's aligned a little poorly, the tracking should keep targets in view for a several minutes. Untracked, they might only be there for a minute. Based on my experience with a ~80mm lens, ~1m long telescope. For me already being familiar and taking a dozen attempts to acclimate to the flipped image, I was able to keep it on target fairly well initially and continue to find new targets with a slight miss of the auto alignment.
I built a parallelogram mount. It's rare for me to take it out on dark sky trips due to bulk of the mount and recliner chair, but when it's out, the stability makes for a beautiful image. A regular tripod setup is tough to get views overhead, though a ball mount and counterweight on a 1m beam is an easy compromise
I do appreciate the one time I saw the Orion nebula from an Observatory through a ~24" dobsonian scope, but that's a lightyear beyond my budget.
disables lane assist
presumably by people who changes without signals
No. By people who adapt their lane position to the situation, like cooperatively riding shoulder lines to not be mirror to mirror with a truck in the middle of a desert. By people driving vehicles that can't consistently pick a lane position. By people who have experienced the camera wrongly identifying a tight dashed line as a solid line and reacted aggressively. By people who have tried to fight lane assist politely, had the vehicle fail to allow it, exerted extra pressure on the wheel than should have been exerted at highway speeds, then had the system suddenly detect the input and relinquish control, jerking the whole car into the line or further. By people who've driven a system that picked a lane position based on the lines, came up to an exit lane cutout, had the vehicle glide into the new larger "center" and point off the road, then had the vehicle realize it lost the lines and relinquish control as you suddenly got pointed at the crash barrier, all in under a second (aka the Tesla method, disengage prior to crash, deny responsibility).
I have an older car (not a tesla, either) that has a system that stays disabled when I turn it off and isn't even a persistent lane assist, but more of an emergency drift correction system. I set it to vibrate the wheel without actually steering.
I wonder if it's a reverse bear-gun-spray situation. Bear spray is more effective than guns against bears because people avoid shooting bears out of empathy. Could police be more likely to go straight to non-lethal pain with gloves?
I used to agree with the idea that legalizing it would attract epxloitive and abusive managers, increasing harm to (primarily) women. Now I don't. Why? Because the "morally acceptable" workforce is already subject to predatory and abusive managers. Meanwhile, we already have labor slaves, immigrants separated from their passports, smugglers routinely demanding additional pay. You know what the "morally-acceptable" victims can do? Report themselves to authorities and get legal action and protection. You know what people knowingly engaging in illegal activities can't do? Go to the authorities.
Make it legal. Make it visible. Make it taxable and licensable, if so needed. Keeping it in the dark means the workers will heavily skew towards desparation, knowing they're risking legal consequences.
Because the bag adds bulk to the tool, helping avoid being lost in the box, and stapling it directly to the instructions didn't work
To be fair, Google maps also put me on a mountain trail 10 years ago
Obama renamed Denali and this guy's been crying to prove anything Obama can change, he can change faster
I get it, it's the only experience you've known, so it must be right.
[USA] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Maximum_Speed_Law
Meanwhile, your whole interstate system was inspired by the German autobahn. Look at an interstate circling a city. Most of them are 65mph, often with minimum 12ft lane width, awkward turns skirting district borders, interchanges every mile or more, and persistent dense traffic. Then look at your middle states with incredibly straight interstates, significantly wider 20ft lanes, miles between exits, no commuter traffic. It's still 65mph except for some brave areas that increased it a whopping 5-15mph in the early 2000s. Absolutely no one in that engineering company concluded 65 was the maximum safe number. It wasn't 80, either. The average car has become far, far more capable and stable than those present in 1974. Try one of those on a current 65mph highway some time.
I do love the Monster on paper (and by ear, and by eye) but I've generally signed off on Ducati for now and the foreseeable future. I could see it being my 3rd or 4th concurrent bike. Even my Honda needs maintenance that I seem to defer a little too much. While I have experience with depreciated Jaguars, I don't have the time to do that luxury maintenance on them all. In good weather, I just want to ride, in bad weather, I handle more pressing chores. But I did chase the sound with a VFR (V4) sport tourer. While Honda has two V2s, they're both sport/race oriented (VTR1000, RVT1000). And yet, I beleive I already have a street bike, so my dream is a 1098 sport, not a monster. Of course, you could always just get a 300 or smaller Japanese bike and have two bikes!
Anyway, since I haven't followed the Monster with any serious thought, I'd recommend just seeing if it's a wheelie machine. The Suzuki Sv650 (definitelynotaMonster) is twitchy in that regard. The SV won't loop in 3rd gear, probably not even 2nd without a clutch-up, but it's known to lift the wheel in spirited cross-traffic turns. Not so deadly, but can still ruin your day.
The weight fluctuation with atgatt struggle is real. The timing worked out well for me where I was down a fair amount after a rough couple years when I picked up riding. Only 10 kilos down though and could stand to lose another 10. While I wouldn't want to wait 2 years, I do acknowledge 50 kilos is a bigger swing. Sometimes the gear is tight in early spring, sometimes it's baggy by fall. Surely I think I'll make it down a full size for next season, but winter takes a toll. With regret at the time, I've already re-bought all my gear at about the same sizes because the first set wore out (all textiles, regular wear and tear, couple mild slides).
I was an adult when I started. I wish I started as a good, but I've accepted starting as a teen would have come with consequences. I've been active on bicycles all my life and credit that for good understanding of bi-cycle physics. Antics on a pedal bike cost less. Learning countersteering on pedals to command lean is invaluable to me. Everybody countersteers to lean, but most people think they're just leaning their torso. They're inducing a countersteer every time without realizing it because bi-cycle geometry is already worked out for the.
Stay shiny side up, wherever the road takes you.
Atlas Obscura, though some countries (or just my specific cities) don't have many entries. Neat to see some alternative, often non-commercial attractions. If I had a shilling for every scale solar system walk it's led me to, I'd have two shillings. Sometimes it's just a recommendation for a good view. Sometimes it's a secret vampire bar. Sometimes it's a famous grave. Sometimes it's a little plaque that even the locals forgot about. It's not like these things are really life changing they're just very unique memories tied to only those locations.
Aside from that, if it's a chain restaraunt I have at home, I avoid it entirely. If it's novel to me, I might go for it, but it's usually not worth repeat visits. I don't spend much either, so I try to see what's rated well and locally busy. If a city is known for a cuisine, I'll probably try a different version of it each night - and they're usually all great because they wouldn't still be open if they weren't. This extends to local beer, though again, most countries just don't do artisan beer. I used to log them all in an app, but I never actually seek out my past favorites, so I've successfully converted to just living in the moment on that one.
I'm big on astronomy, even if it's just looking at the sky. If I'm traveling somewhere near dark skies, I'll do a night excursion and spend maybe 2hrs out there. If you check some light pollution maps, class 2 or lower is something I'll travel an hour to go see. The closest class 2 sky to my home is currently 3 hours away. Obviously, weather-depending.
I hate the touristy bullshit surrounding them (and the prices), but I do have a hard time resisting rooftop bars. It's OK to be a tourist, but I wish they'd stop lying abouthow classy their fried mozzarella is.
Failing to move back right to stick to a number arbitrarily chosen for esoteric fuel economy regulations predictably incites speeders behind you to make the passing situation 5x worse. Check out India sometime if you want to see the absolute worst version of this. Lorries do 50kmh at best in the inside line. Scooters do 35kmh in the shoulder. The "outer" lane does anywhere from 50kmh to 120kmh between lorries and scooters.
I obey the law. But somehow, this speed differential works just fine here in Germany where people share responsibility and cooperate. Your speed limits are arbitrarirly low for some esoteric fuel economy logic.
Oh, so just another faux-populist distraction. I don't even see the epstein files comments anymore here
German driving skill is far above the average US citizen. Germans expect a Porsche with an itching trigger finger on the high beams to be passing at 200. USians can't be arsed to check their mirrors because they're entitled to the road and anyone going faster deserves a crash. Just look at how much road rage they have because people drive the exact speed limit in the passing lane and get passed on the wrong side.
There's a reason USians are known to buy 1000ccs as starter bikes and yeehaw into a coffin. They generally only need either a 15 hour class or 6 month permit on a 125-250cc to be qualified for any motorcycle at all.
I will support "beginner" bikes forever. 90% of the "little bike" woes of my 250 ended up being skill issues. You know what 250s won't do on whiskey throttles when poor grip on the throttle and poor core body reaction tilts your torso back and pulls a little throttle jolt into a full throttle expedition? They won't power wheelie. I always see them say just use self control, but that's hard to do when your body is physically not experienced for a 3 second 0-100kmh rocket that only contacts your fingers and taint.
I see this often. Going that much faster means an average car still in the other lane simply will not be in the motorcyclists lane at all before the bike passes. The bike will pass while the car just has its tires on the line. The motorcyclist is looking ahead for vehicles already in the same lane. Higher risk? Obviously. But I'm tired of people acting like they're a victim because a bike blasted by and they think "I could have killed that biker" (or "that biker could have killed themselves on my car") while barely on their second signal flash. They traveled 10 car lengths, you got your tires on the lane, they pass, you complete your lane change, they're now 30 car lengths ahead.
That situation does not crash the bike into the changing car. It either makes the bike swerve out into a median or the bike passes without incident. The actual cause of speeding bike crashes in traffic is weaving when dipshits riders switch lanes and inadvertently box themselves into a dead end.
Want to avoid lane-change crashes of any type? Change lanes smoothly and predictable. Use your signal, take 4 seconds to change on the highway, and do not swerve to grab the faster lane every 15 seconds. Be predictable, go home without a collision report. You don't have to give motorcycles special treatment but collision avoidance works the same.
Parked cars enter the travel lane faster than cars on the highway change lanes. Travel speed is irrelevant, rate of change is. Rotating a car 30deg off parallel to leave a space is a faster action. In both situations, I'd be riding the far side of the lane to give as much berth as I can.
I'm not your prior commenter. And no, I dont fly past traffic like that because there's always a high likelihood of someone jumping out into the faster lane. "Open lane pattern" is something to look for. But to not realize how often and how quickly parked cars leave parking spaces is pants-on-head blind
I started with cameras for this reason. Then I found eyeball success with 10x50 binoculars. Now, I bring both because I'm an addict, though I leave the camera tracking mount home and stick to nightscaping.
So the answer to which route is "yes"
Not your target audience, but... Bright binoculars (10x50) have kept me happy for nearly a decade for half the price of those telescope options. I do want a telescope, but based on a small sample pool at astro parties, it'll take notably more money to make it worth it to me.
Bino pros: cheaper, brighter, more portable, very little setup, two-eye comfort, terrestrial use, more durable, wider apparent field of view (bigger image), wider image field of view (more stars, easier navigation), prism optic to keep image upright
Bino cons: much less zoom/magnification capability for portable/affordable sizes, hard to see ~half of the messier catalog at all, and I frequently skip the tripod because ei can totally stand there for an hour with my arms holding 2lbs over my head steadily (hubris strikes again), and the combination of reduced zoom/smaller objects makes it harder to enjoy the viewss in Bortle class 5 light pollution or worse.
Pro to smart telescope: even if it's aligned a little poorly, the tracking should keep targets in view for a several minutes. Untracked, they might only be there for a minute. Based on my experience with a ~80mm lens, ~1m long telescope. For me already being familiar and taking a dozen attempts to acclimate to the flipped image, I was able to keep it on target fairly well initially and continue to find new targets with a slight miss of the auto alignment.
I built a parallelogram mount. It's rare for me to take it out on dark sky trips due to bulk of the mount and recliner chair, but when it's out, the stability makes for a beautiful image. A regular tripod setup is tough to get views overhead, though a ball mount and counterweight on a 1m beam is an easy compromise
I do appreciate the one time I saw the Orion nebula from an Observatory through a ~24" dobsonian scope, but that's a lightyear beyond my budget.
Fool, not setting an upper limit. What if it was so big it could download a car?
No. By people who adapt their lane position to the situation, like cooperatively riding shoulder lines to not be mirror to mirror with a truck in the middle of a desert. By people driving vehicles that can't consistently pick a lane position. By people who have experienced the camera wrongly identifying a tight dashed line as a solid line and reacted aggressively. By people who have tried to fight lane assist politely, had the vehicle fail to allow it, exerted extra pressure on the wheel than should have been exerted at highway speeds, then had the system suddenly detect the input and relinquish control, jerking the whole car into the line or further. By people who've driven a system that picked a lane position based on the lines, came up to an exit lane cutout, had the vehicle glide into the new larger "center" and point off the road, then had the vehicle realize it lost the lines and relinquish control as you suddenly got pointed at the crash barrier, all in under a second (aka the Tesla method, disengage prior to crash, deny responsibility).
I have an older car (not a tesla, either) that has a system that stays disabled when I turn it off and isn't even a persistent lane assist, but more of an emergency drift correction system. I set it to vibrate the wheel without actually steering.
And I use my turn signals religiously.
I wonder if it's a reverse bear-gun-spray situation. Bear spray is more effective than guns against bears because people avoid shooting bears out of empathy. Could police be more likely to go straight to non-lethal pain with gloves?