After becoming a regular daily errands-and-commuting cyclist in NYC for a few years now, whenever I get in my car to go somewhere ...
... the sheer weight and size of the metal around me seems positively *sci fi*
I mean, cars?
They're basically MECHAS. Right?
A human inside
controlling this weirdly big-ass piece of exoskeletal steel
@clive When I cycle I treat other cars as if they are herd animals. Big heavy dumb things that usually don't even notice I'm there, and if they do notice me it may not go well for me. Tempremental and quick to anger, they are also unpredictable when they get spooked. I never assume they will do the sensible thing.
(I tend to think of them as American Bison.)
That's only tangentially related to what you said, I guess. Maybe they are mechas that decrease the human driver's IQ by 50 points?
Bison are a good way to think of it
Big ol heavy metal bison, don't wanna piss 'em off, and with all that long hair hanging in their eyes they may not see you
Yes, precisely!
Very cybernetic
Also, a Canadian poet I once knew regarded cars as deeply Freudian places -- id-release devices, "hence the exuberant singing along with the radio, the quick and ready rages"
@harrisj @clive Yeah this is very true; I'd say even truer on a bicycle. It doesn't take long before the bicycle feels like an extension of your body.
Similar to the topic of video game immersion, where the controller "disappears." You're not thinking, "I will press this button and then that little mario avatar will jump." You're just thinking, "I'll jump".
I wonder how our brains got so good at this talent.
yes, precisely
heh heh yes
Once you see it you can't unsee it
Yeah, the extension of our proprioception to a huge vehicle is amazing
@clive @martinvermeer In the early 90s on Fridays living in San Francisco I would ride my bike to and from work going from near Golden Gate Park to about 5th and Mission. The 6 to 9 blocks of riding on Market Street in rush hour traffic in the morning had me feeling like a fish swimming with a large pod of killer whales, very apt at bumping into you or each other.
It was the one day a week I didn’t need coffee in the morning.
Killer whales, great metaphor
No, it appears there are many of us!
I was just talking about this with @noahshachtman
“Once you see it you can’t unsee it”
Yeah, it's a bummer when you're reliant on a car
But that's a common situation in the US!
@clive 7 or 8 years ago I started talking about passenger vehicles as "mobile power plants". We see this now with electric cars theoretically capable of powering a house for days.
And like 90% of the car's typical energy usage is spent moving the car itself.
If we added weapons, they would be Mecha. 🤖
But even in their current form they are power plants with wheels and steering. 🔋🔌🛞
Great way of putting it! They *primarily* generate power, only secondarily exist to move stuff around … and even so do that latter task in a risibly inefficient manner
Totally
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