Doing badass things that don't scale got him attention that could be monetized to further bring himself and others up. Goodwill (the business value kind) is a vital component to rapidly scaling a venture. Things that scale come later.
I did a casual bike tour through hundreds of miles of Netherlands and Belgium. We wore helmets, obviously.
Not wearing a helmet is inconsisent with having many standards for reflectors and traffic planning. Although someone maybe slightly more careful, falling on a bicycle means a risk for head injuries. Why not take reasonable precautions, including instructing people that helmets do not add safety to anything besides head injuries? They're not a panacea, but protect against certain classes of injuries.
Anecdotally: When I was a kid, an obscured oily patch of road contributed to a fall to one side, head first, and slide for about 10 feet and the helmet I was wearing cracked instead of my skull. Road rash but didn't die or end up with traumatic brain injury.
Well you can just as much slip on that oil patch and crack your head open as a pedestrian..
Of course those scenarios are very far removed from what actually causes injuries and death.
The Netherlands has a much much lower incidence of head injuries not because they wear styrofoam hats but they realized it's better to stop the trucks and cars from driving into people than in vain trying to soften the impact. Creating secure bike routes just has a tremendously higher return on investment compared to convincing people to wear helmets that bringing them up just labels you a shill in many peoples eyes, a concern troll distraction.
There should be vinyl wrap for bikes that provides a paintable, duct-tapeable substrain for camo tape and radioactive fuchsia and orange also camo ejaculation. Flat (no shine) paint makes a bike even less attractive.
PS: I had a old/ugly bike that I had for 16 years in Davis, CA that I still locked and it was stolen from an apt complex the one and only time I forgot to lock it. There are thieves whom ride around in cargo trucks stealing bikes wholesale, in addition to people whom just "borrow" bikes and dump them whereever.
The idea for Amsterdam
is to make the bike look unique, not always unnatractive, the more homogenous looking and mechanically sound, the more attractive to thieves.
Amsterdam is a smalll place so having a fluro green bike with a number plate of your name welded to the frame is a good deterrent.
Really though it's probably mild steel which is not heat-treatable. Mild steel fairly weak (for steel) but it doesn't get much stronger or weaker from heat exposure and isn't brittle.
High carbon, stainless, and fancy stuff is where you can run into problems. In general you won't see this on car or bike frames, too expensive in bulk.
If it's a newer bike it's probably aluminum which you can usually still weld with impunity. If it was high grade alloy the heat could matter, but as far as I know nobody cares that much about bike frames. Heat treatment, or "seasoning" in the case of some aluminum is expensive.
Source: used to cut up old bikes and weld the frames into crazy chariot contraptions we would tow around
But in seriousness, yeah, I was following very closely behind a fellow who snapped his fork jumping over a bump in the road. I almost went over him. Despite the helmet, he lost memory of the accident. I called an ambulance for him and left my number. He called me the next day asking what had happened.
It was a nice aluminum frame, looked in good condition. Always check carefully for hairline fractures when buying a used aluminum bike.
Maybe that's why my filibus cargo bike keeps not getting stolen. I'm often fairly sloppy about locking it to something. It's heavier than a regular bike, though, you a thief can't easily pick it up.
Protip: "Plasti Dip" spray paint is like vinyl wrap on a spraycan, it comes in all sorts of matte (or even sparkly!) gaudy colors. I think they even sell a desert camo tri-pack. I've seen it sold in car part/accessory shops in Europe.
There is also hydro-dipping"[1] It's usually used to add complex graphics to irregular surfaces, but I imagine they could make "ugly' irregular patterns for something like to this to make it unique and unwanted.
Cryptocurrency evolution may end up looking like railroad track gauges. 1, 2, many in a Cambrian explosion and then mergers/acquisitions into just a few used everyday. The others will be there but little used.
I'm vegan. "Plant-based" is not a panacea and not automatically healthy. This article is one-dimensional when there are multiple health considerations including both cholesterol effects, cancerous compounds in cooking vapors and cancerous compounds like aldehydes generated depending on the amount and time of heating.
In general, olive oil is the healthiest oil to use for frying, both in terms of cholesterol effects and aldehydes. Furthermore, oil consumption can be greatly reduced by good cooking and minimal frying techniques.
The graph in this news report probably started the coconut oil cargo cult, which overlooked its inherent unhealthiness:
Just an FYI that Koch-owned Georgia-Pacific papermills release tons of cancer-causing pollutants including PCBs, hydrogen sulfide, cyanide, formaldehyde, dioxin, acetaldehyde and chloroform into neighboring communities.
WF has been struggling because they helped paved the way for mainstreaming of organic, sustainable, etc. They couldn't pivot really and everyone else was undercutting their high prices and they've been unable to increase profitable foot-traffic to stay alive. Amazon could basically use WF as a laboratory for deploying Amazon Go without having to build grocery logistics from scratch. Hope it works out.
Currently, US wages continue to slide and the middle class shrinks, while the top 8 billionaires own as much wealth as half of the world. This libertarian, trickle-down, union-busting, union-whining nonsense has to stop if people are to realize they're not going to get a fair slice of the pie without resisting corporate greed together. Almost every rich person never gives up a dime without a vicious fight, that's just the way it works. So lower- and middle-income people have to coordinate together to stop working until they are paid what the jobs can afford to make a livable wage.
Exactly. Unions built the middle class. Watch Robert Reich's "Inequality for All" which demonstrates how unions benefit workers. In the old days, unions were formed because robber-barons cheated workers out of pay, much like today. It was a hard-won struggle, with many murders.
