Behind a metered paywall, which means you should be able to see it if you’re not a regular to the site.

As I said, it’s a metered paywall and everyone gets one free article (I just double-checked).

So it looks like The Atlantic has seen you before! Consider subscribing, IMO it’s an excellent deal.

Some interesting thoughts - and questions - here. Seems you posted them in the wrong place, given the paltry response. Or possibly at the wrong time (i.e. 6 hours after the herd had moved on, a perennial problem with social media).

It isn’t based in XML, and modern devs don’t want to use XML. As I’m not a coder, I cant say how big an influence this has, but from what I have seen it seems to be a substantial factor. Can anyone explain why?

XML is space-inefficient with lots of redundancy, and therefore considered to be ugly. Coders tend to have tidy minds so these things take on an importance that they don’t really merit. It’s also just fashion: markup, like XML and HTML, is a thing of the 90s, so using them is the coder equivalent of wearing MC Hammer pants.

Interesting perspective. You’re so right about Osmand, I’ve been using it every day for over a decade and I regularly get lost in the arcane functionality. IMO the best way to improve this is to zero in on problems and get involved on the issue tracker, because the people running Osmand are quite serious and responsive (even tho their business model remains a bit opaque to me). Alas I get the impression FOSS map users are flocking to Organic Maps because Osmand is too complex. Seems like reinventing the wheel to me. Osmand is far better than Organic Maps, its problem is UX.

About gravel, I’m doing exactly the opposite - avoiding it at all costs! I hate punctures that much. Recently made the unhappy discovery that the Eurovelo bike routes, i.e. Europe’s supposed flagship intercity bike lanes, are mostly unsurfaced. My ultimate priority when cycling is to get away from cars. And personally I don’t see why car-roads get asphalt but bike-roads have to put up with gravel.

In my experience, the latest of which dates to today, Brouter is rubbish. What I usually want is pretty obvious: take me by the most direct route which has the least cars. If I choose “Balanced” or “Prefer byways” in Osmand, the results are (usually) acceptable. The closest I can get in Brouter is “Consider traffic” - at which it will pick a route that takes winding scenic detours off the main road every few kilometers, which is an absolutely dumb way to solve the problem. Whatever. Perhaps there’s a better way to do it.

Two-finger scroll won me over to the trackpad and I never looked back. A mouse is an annoying complication IMO - and on the way out along with desktop computers, despite what the out-of-touch geeks in this forum wishfully think. Might as well get ahead of the game.

Mouse? What is this thing you talk of?

Osmand can do this. And basically anything else. I’m always mystified to find how many people haven’t even heard of it, or use weak imitations like MapsMe or Organic Maps.

This kind of purity policing is deeply offputting IMO. And certainly won’t help build federated social media.

on the website of a law firm specializing in bicycle injuries

Fair enough, I didn’t notice this and it does change things.

In fairness, you (or I) are not paying for this “AI slop”. IMO it’s unrealistic in 2025 to expect a professional journalist to materialize and somehow produce, for peanuts of online ad revenue, an article of better quality than this. Especially given that it’s based on legal smallprint, which is an ideal use case for AI.

Perhaps next time the AI will incorporate your useful caveats and return something less sloppy.

The basic problem is that airplane fuel (kerosene) is untaxed due to an international treaty dating back decades. It’s very hard to change international treaties, especially when a politically powerful industry has a stake in them not changing.

Yep, what I like about Merlin is the description search, where spits out possible matches based on physical description. Because with a tiny lens from 30m it’s unrealistic to get amazing pics like yours!

I use WhoBird for sound ID, because it’s lightweight and on the open-source app store F-Droid.

With the aid of various AI tools I can now instantly tell the difference between a chaffinch and a chiffchaff! It’s not much but I’m proud of it.

As much as I admire Shimano and its amazing ability to make itself indispensable for what feels like a century and counting, hub gears just work better and this thing looks like the holy grail.

Handlebar grip tape has always struck me as the ultimate obsolete invention. Those foam sheaths are more comfortable and they also don’t fall off.

Maybe pines and oaks are my gateway drug? Thanx for the recommendations

Sturmey Archer

I remember that name. Sounds vaguely like a brand of Victorian kitchen appliance.

Shimano having downgraded its outlook for 2025

How is Shimano not sitting on a literal mountain of cash? This company has somehow managed to maintain a virtual world monopoly in bike transmissions for decades and decades.

By 2040, with battery costs lower, more models available across price points, and a dense charging network, India could see electric cars as a majority of new sales, and its entire two- and three-wheeler fleets electric.

These forecasts are always so conservative! It’s going to go way faster than that. The basics economics make that inevitable. And having seen - or rather heard and breathed - a bunch of Indian cities, I say it cannot go fast enough.

Damn. I thought I’d subscribed to a community about trees