Mastodawn

Lindsey Kuper Mar 10

I forgot to mention this when it happened, but we recently hit 500 miles on the used cargo e-bike we got last summer! During the school year, we really only use it for short trips with our kid a couple times a week, but every one of those trips is one we didn't have to take in a car. 🎉 I love that sitting in traffic with my kid in the back seat is now a rare occurrence.

Honestly, e-bikes have been the technology that has improved my life the most in the last five years. I live in a hilly place, and with my first e-bike a few years ago, I suddenly became able to commute by bike. Then, with the cargo bike last year, I suddenly became able to take my eight-year-old places by bike.

She sometimes actually hugs me while we're out on the bike. Best damn thing in the world, and it couldn't happen in a car.

@lindsey yeah, my spouse loves her ebike in hilly Wellington. Leaving the house is easy, but getting back is a bit of a mission on pedal power alone; I try to not do it more than once a day.

@lindsey (the flip side is that moving to another apartment is tricky because it also needs bicycle storage)

@lindsey best ad for bikes period.

@lindsey wow, I don’t even receive hugs while on my ebike and it’s still one of the very few recent technologies that I am almost unequivocally positive about.

Lindsey Kuper Mar 12

@lea what are the others?

@lindsey the ones that come immediately to mind are medical tech: mRNA vaccines, injectable HIV prophylaxis, and continuous blood glucose monitors. (I suspect there are other med-tech improvements to the everyday experience of chronic conditions, like the CGMs, that I am not as aware of. CGM is somewhat topical to me as my niece was recently diagnosed with T1D.)

@lindsey
Possibly also menstrual cups (which I don’t personally use but which I do believe have been an improvement for many people).

@lindsey Oh and outside med-tech: this is very niche and definitely less life-altering, but the availability of a pretty full range of colors in off-the-shelf borosilicate glass rod has come leaps and bounds. You just genuinely couldn’t buy most colors in boro until surprisingly recently and a small handful of people made it happen.

Akiva Leffert Mar 12

@lea @lindsey the most impressed I’ve been by tech in years was at the dentist a few years ago when I needed a new tooth implant. they scanned my mouth with a wand and I could watch the mesh appear in real time. the dentist dragged some points around to fit my face better. then while I was still at the dentist they c&c’d a tooth, baked it, and put it in my face. whole thing only took a couple hours. mind boggled. I almost quit my job and went to work on medical devices right there

@akiva @lindsey oh, hm. I put the dental capture/CAD/fab pipeline in with my own research area, which is to say: I am broadly a gleeful nerd about it (and I agree dentists have the best tools) but also I’m close enough to it that I do see some of the negative parts. (Any fab stuff is inherently entangled with resource allocation and how that interacts with socioeconomic and sustainability factors; reconstructive scanning tech replicates beauty norms…)

MCDuncanLab Mar 12

Absolutely the best!

@lindsey sounds like my life before I moved into the city. I had a couple of ebikes, one being a cargo for the kids. Without it, I'd have been mostly trapped at home

MegatronicThronBanks Mar 12

@lindsey Bicycles are an over-hyped non-solution for many people. But e-bikes, I think, *might* actually be part of the now and the future! We have a massive trail near our home that we would like to explore, and e-bikes offer the perfect way to do it!

Gary Houston Mar 12

@lindsey I suppose an e-bike would be helpful for me, since I live on a hill, and it would be faster than walking, but it might also be risky, since the road is quite steep and not very wide, and has tight bends and parked vehicles with bad visibility.