This is the peak of bicycle technology.

It's a bike which a local customer brought around yesterday because it's been a few years and she thought it was about time that someone had a look at it.

I know it looks terribly old fashioned, but hear me out:

This is a reasonably light-weight, efficient bike, with effective gearing and brakes. Nothing on it is unmaintainable.

This bike came out of the factory in 1982 (May 1982 according to the stamp on the rear hub). It has admittedly had a fairly good life, always having been kept indoors, but it's been ridden a lot yet needed almost no work.

The front rack had a broken non-essential part which I removed. The rubber strap / snelbinder over the rear carrier rack was broken so I replaced it, and the skirtguards were perished and falling apart so I replaced those as well. Otherwise, I've just checked that things were working and added a bit of oil. One of the pedals was running roughly until I oiled it.

Bike shops don't sell bicycles like this any more. Modern bicycles are not designed to last a whole lifetime, like these were.

https://www.dutchbikebits.com
#bicycle #BikeTooter #cycling #repairability #righttorepair #netherlands #ProperBicycle #NotAnEBike #dutchbikebits

I have some thoughts on Paul Graham's latest essay, "Founder Mode."

Paul Graham founded YCombinator. His singular influence has been to drive Silicon Valley toward producing endless Sam Altmans and zero Aaron Swartzs.

Every time he speaks, we are all worse off.

https://open.substack.com/pub/davekarpf/p/paul-graham-and-the-cult-of-the-founder?r=eeyg&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true

United States power outage data updated every ten minutes.

#EnergyMastodon

https://poweroutage.us/

Some lovely news to share this morning: Blue Machine has been shortlisted for the #WainwrightPrize24 for Conservation :)

Hooray for the ocean! We need more people thinking about what the blue of our blue planet really is, rather than seeing it as a mysterious void, or just where the fish live. We are all citizens of an ocean planet and it's time to learn what that really means.

More here: https://wainwrightprize.com/