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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: August 7th, 2023

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  • This is actually making me want to visit Paris.

    I never seriously considered visiting Paris before, because to me it was just another western city choked by cars. In fact, I go to other countries with the intention to move around using bikes and public transit, and I’m disappointed if it’s not possible.

    So, since the city and the mayor started to “roll out the red carpet” for bikes, I’m much more tempted to go there. It seems more pleasant. I would rent a bike, slowly explore the city, and see how they are transforming it to be more human.

    Also, I speak French natively and it’s been pretty entertaining to see all the comments on social media from pro car people. One thing that came up frequently was that removing cars and replacing them with bikes would “wreck Paris”.



  • A friend was recently complaining that cyclists were (also) complaining when he was walking on bike paths, but the city itself asks pedestrians to walk on bike paths because there’s often no sidewalk. There’s space for 4 lanes of cars plus parking on both sides, but not a sidewalk and a bike path, it’s one or the other.

    In don’t remember the guy’s name right now but there was an infamous cycling advocate a few decades ago that was against bike paths because it put cyclists into a specific space instead of making everyone share the streets that were already existing. I kind of wish his way of thinking won. Instead of pushing cyclists, pedestrians, people with strollers, people on scooters and all of the “not a car” forms of transport into the margins of a street, we should give the street to everyone, and force people with cars to share and care for everyone.

    I know it’s fantasy and unfortunately cars will always be given most of the space, even when road dieting, but it would have been nice.


  • Never run your car in an enclosed space as the fumes could kill you. Run it outside instead, where you can slowly kill everyone around.

    There’s definitely nowhere for the dangerous fumes and gases to accumulate outside. It’s not like a billion other cars rejecting fumes in the enclosed atmosphere will do anything that harms us, like it would if we were enclosed in a garage.


  • My mother bought a new car. As I am the tech person she asked me to setup the system for the maps and all that.

    Well, turns out that in order to give internet to the car, she needs an app on her phone, registered with her name, address, phone number, and all the personal info you gave to the sales person. No app tracking you means no maps in the car.

    I gave up because it was telling me that I didn’t enter the correct personal information. Fuck that shit.



  • Bell Canada. They have salespeople doing door to door. They also “partner” with landlords to setup little kiosks with salespeople in the hall of big buildings. Like, you’re getting home, pass the RFID lock for tenants only, then there is a Bell representative waiting for you next to the elevator.

    But with Bell it’s not just their marketing. Once they sell you something they change the terms and/or charge you a different amount than what was agreed.

    If you discuss this with one of their salesperson, they will claim that Bell has changed and promise everything will be fine this time if you take a new contract with them. But spoiler, they don’t change and are always just more aggressive with their marketing.

    Sometimes I feel a bit bad for the salespersons because they are often immigrants or young people that have not been fooled by Bell yet. They are enthusiastic but end up getting told to fuck off by people that have experience with Bell. I’m usually polite but very firm with them.

    EDIT: Same with Hello Fresh. I have never used them but since some salesperson knocked on my door to try to sell me their services, I will make sure to never buy anything from them.



  • Nothing surprising to the people in this community. It’s crazy to see how people are very much sold to the idea of cars, even if they don’t like to drive one.

    Recently I was in the comments of an autonomous vehicles community about how some car manufacturer chose Waymo’s “self driving” tech over Tesla’s, and one popular and revealing comment went like “I can’t wait for self driving cars, I’m so tired of driving!”

    To me this is pretty sad, but apparently it’s better to invest billions in a technology to have multi-tons vehicles wasting energy driving one person around, rather than invest in public transit. Some people hate driving but still can’t see anything wrong with this excessive car culture.


  • If you speak French you can consider Guadeloupe as a possibility.

    Of course there’s cars everywhere but it’s entirely possible to travel there without a car.

    There are municipal buses from the airport to multiple cities. There are also ferries to go to the multiple islands. The island of Marie-Galante can be cycled, and is very nice.

    I spent a few days in Le Gosier, Pointe-à-Pitre and Grand-Bourg, and I never needed a car.

    On the opposite side, avoid SXM.