Is it natural to work every day?

From the low-effort department 

I never used to "get" Reddit. But my lovely is keen, so I've joined in for a while (u/available_fact_3445 1 year 9 months karma 4000+)

I just had a submission to r/antiwork rejected for "low effort" (the irony), so it appears here, in splendid obscurity.

This was a reply I wrote on a thread discussing the fantasy of retreating into the wilderness, building your own cabin, and living an independent life.

A comment took it as natural that you would have to work hard every day. I demurred as follows:

***

 >"working" every day

It depends on the abundance readily available in the locality, but when this is studied among contemporary hunter-gatherer societies (eg Sahlin's Stone Age Economics) the natural rhythm of "purposive activity" is much more like every other day. For about 4-5 hours.

This chimes with the many, many, many rest days obliged by the church from rural peasants in medieval Europe.

It is also coherent with modern work practices which allow a four day week. The hard land of the Scottish Highlands obliges crofters to strictly respect the sabbath; were it not so the infinite possibility of productive work with meagre yields would soon exhaust any man, or woman.

A vegetable garden and an orchard require regular intervention, but not *every* day. Rain stops play. You only prune the blackcurrent bushes, once, in winter. And so on.

You only never get a day off when you start exploiting animals, so not *every* day, no, unless you start to keep chickens or something.

So how do these leisured hunter-gatherers spend the rest of their time? Mainly cooking, chatting, and grooming their relatives.

***

Reddit makes it easy to submit one text in many places, and I thought this might be interesting to the readers of r/antiwork.

It seems the moderators there disagree, so it's published here, for that reason.

On cycling round pedestrians

 From the self-translated-rants department 

Cyclists who don't respect pedestrians' priority are simple hypocrits. They would certainly be most unhappy if motorists meted them the same treatment.

At the end of the day, the pedestrian must always have priority because walking is basic. And yes, even buffoons, the tipsy, and clueless tourists have the right to walk freely.

So when you operate a potentially hazardous machine such as a bicycle in their vicinity, take great care! Always respect a minimum passing distance of one metre, and ride at walking pace if space is limited. Always give way to crossing pedestrians.

Making eye contact enables the courtesy of indicating the pedestrian's priority as follows: look the crossing pedestrian right in the eye, and the instant they glance back, tip your cap with a brief nod, and brake to a halt theatrically. Ideally I will make no other signal, neither visual nor audible. I aim to briefly maintain a track stand at least 3m from the crossing markings, before getting briskly on my way once more. It's convivial and efficient.

If you don't like the effort of reaccelerating after giving way to a pedestrian, buy an ebike and be done

Note:

This is the translation to the English of a comment in French made   here

On laziness

from-the-department-of-personal-activities

The phrase "intellectually lazy" popped up in my feed recently. It bothered me because merely observing the collocation obliged me to reflect on the phrase's implications for a few moments. A few moments I may have needed for another activity. Mony a mickle maks a muckle!

But I received the words fair and square via feeds that I have personally curated. So fair play to its author (I'd have to search on the phrase to name the author). 

My plan is still to have no plan, though the tenth anniversary of the founding of Cabinet Beezer falls this May, so I've decided to take a 'sabbatical', review the projects I've participated in from that date to the present, and write up the experience. 

Ou bien rien

House of Lords passes the Dutch on the left hand side

 from the department of the eternally hosted comment

I'm something of a Carlton Reid fan—I buy his books anyway—and I'm full of admiration for the tenacity of his career as a journalist covering the cycle business. He is to my view somewhat over-enthusiastic about the merits of separatist cycle infrastructure, but this is a matter for reasonable debate, and at least he does actually ride a bike. So I'm inclined to forgive him when I revisit his site bikebiz.com, and find that a comment that I left on a story he wrote in April 2017 about some clueless peer's ignorant waffling in the House of Lords has disappeared. Comments often seem to be the first casualty of website design makeovers, and in this case archive.org seems not to have come to my remarks' rescue. So here they are again, now with illustrations.

This idea of the Netherlands as some sort of transport paradise really does need a dose of reality. Firstly, while their overall road mortality compares favourably with that of other European countries, they're hardly immune to road deaths.

All European countries observed a decline in cycling as cars became widely available in the sixties and seventies. While the Netherlands are to be congratulated for arresting this decline better than most, they have not grown cycling since.

Yet in global terms they do occupy one of the most favourable topographies for cycling on the planet.The solution they found back then—of rigid separation of modes—has its virtues, but cannot be unquestioningly adopted in other localities—might hills make a difference for example?
Since the seventies, motorists have not improved their reputation: the ongoing road slaughter, oil wars, an obesity crisis, and pollution episodes can all be laid directly at their door, even before we consider the contribution of motoring to anthropogenic climate change. More thoughtful parliamentarians would be considering how to kick the motors out altogether, not bleating about a few cycle paths.

This seems a good place to note that I consider the House of Lords to be an insult to the notion of democracy, and I'd sack the lot of them if I could. Confronted with such evident idiocy in the legislature, it is natural to wonder how the hell to get rid of one. Answer: you can't. Dictators Peers for life! Ho hum!

Tickling the Dawes' nether regions back to life

from the threadbare department

The Dawes has been out of action since the end of May, when, feeling a nasty wobble in the cranks while riding out to meet the lads in Cherbourg, I looked down to see my bottom bracket almost dragging along the road. Investigation at the local bike shop the next morning revealed that the threads on the bottom bracket shell of the frame had rusted through: a potentially frame-ending injury.

I ran home for the town bike, which is a more or less acceptable substitute for the Dawes up to about 70km, at which point the lack of variety in hand position starts to become fatiguing.

Anyway, when I got back from the trip, Yoann Loncle of Menhir Cycles was ready to take a look, so I stripped the frame down and sent it off to him. Great craftsmen do take their time, but the repair of the frame (there were a couple of cracks in the stays, and the rear brake bridge had cracked through on one side) was finally completed last week, so it was time to rebuild the bike with the new Kenli bottom bracket. This sidesteps the need for a framebuilder to replace the entire bottom bracket shell, but there is a reason why threading the bottom bracket securely to the frame is superior...

First time around I just bought a second Shimano-fit 20-toothed socket tool, and tightened the Kenli as best I could. However, it came loose on a 10km test run to test the fit of the reassembled machine. I retightened it, but next day's planned ride to Saint-Nazaire (64km) had to be cut short in Couëron (13km) when it loosened again.

More serious measures would evidently have to be taken. Browsing around Sheldon Brown and the archives of uk.rec.cycling yielded some helpful info, but I didn't fancy using metal filler (which is basically glueing the unit in place, probably irrevocably), and 'tapping the thread to Italian fit' and suchlike is certainly beyond my capacities, and I think, those of any known supplier.

So I decided to try obtaining a snugger fit for the Kenli with shims. This is illustrated in this Flickr set. Here's a picture of the new left shim in place:
The shims did seem to give a bit of extra added grip as I tightened the bottom bracket, and I added some Loctite 243 to the Kenli's threads for good measure. Fingers crossed! My legs are awfully powerful and I do feel sorry for any bike component that's got to deal with them. A replacement for the Dawes is becoming a pressing necessity, but I've had a lot of fun on that bike down the years, and I'm finding myself reluctant to accept its demise.

Update 22h18, 19 October 2018. First ride out on the repair entirely promising—maximal mashing of pedals on a 20km loop out through Vertou this afternoon—all seemed solid on my return.

On riding safely in difficult conditions

from the department of roadspace carving

I follow a whole bunch of cycle activists on Twitter. This sort of post appears daily in my feed:

No.5- Yet another #closepass Driver trying to overtake as road narrowed. Hooked handlebar, bike wedged under his wheels, I tried to bale and was dragged along. Police said 50/50 blame! I showed the video. Changed to 3pts & £100 #greenock #inverclyde @TakeThatCyclist @ClosePasses pic.twitter.com/BlTZ5uP067

— Father Spodo Komodo (@fathersensini) September 13, 2018

A cyclist is riding along a busy single carriageway road in wet weather. He is overtaken too closely. The overtaking driver then instantly forgets the cyclist, the road narrows, the overtaking vehicle moves left, and knocks the cyclist down. Fortunately this cyclist incurred only minor injuries, and the driver was prosecuted, though only because the cyclist had video evidence. All most regrettable.

But—and I'm writing this here because the brevity of the Twitter risks rapid descent into accusations of victim-blaming—there are a few learning points for all cyclists. While the van-driver should not have acted as he did, and is undoubtedly to blame for the crash, there are a few things you can do as a cyclist to avoid such hazard.

Firstly, it is a good general rule never to pass a parked car closer than the radius of a car-door. "Dooring" (having a car door opened into your path) is a real risk, and a nasty injury-prone crash if it does happen. Riding wide of parked cars eliminates this risk entirely. But the cyclist in the video is riding too close to the parked cars in my view.

Now, why did he do this? The answer, of course, is that it is easy to feel intimidated by vehicles behind you. Drivers rev their engines, follow too closely, or even sound their horns to try to get you to move out of the way. This is physical intimidation! Resisting it is easier said than done, and requires both mental and physical strength.

But it is the driver that does not see you that will kill you, and the further out into the carriageway you ride, the closer you are to the following driver's central field of vision.

I entirely understand also, that my view is formed from my own experience as a) a person naturally endowed for cycling (a moderately athletic male adult); b) a trained motorcyclist (it's easy enough to take the lane with a BMW R80RT between your legs I assure you); c) a person who sees very clearly that the private motor car has no place in the urban environment in a democratic society, and is willing to put body and bike on the line to state this. Having the physical strength to "keep up with the traffic" in short bursts does make the cyclist's life easier in present conditions. But there is no *minimum* speed limit on any urban road, and as cyclist you have a perfect right to use the carriageway appropriately, whatever your habitual cruising speed. Both the British and French highway codes lay great emphasis on the fact that overtaking is the most hazardous manoeuvre, and clearly lay the responsibility for doing so safely with the overtaking driver.

Secondly, once the parked cars have been overtaken, the cyclist moves left, thus inciting the overtaking manoeuvre. But had he anticipated the narrowing of the road ahead, he could have instead maintained his line to occupy the centre of the narrowed lane, averting any illusion in the mind of the van driver that this was a good time to overtake. Which it obviously wasn't.

And thirdly, having carved that space, should idiocy arrive over your right shoulder in the form of an inappropriately overtaking driver, you have a space to move into, not the obstacle of the kerb immediately to your left.

What is to be done?

Many people watching this video will interpret it as evidence for the implementation of "protected infrastructure" (i.e. a kerb-separated lane for bikes on the offside of the road). But this is not the only possibility, and such lanes create new problems of their own, particularly when carriageway and bike lane arrive at junctions, which become more complex as a result. In practice such implementations tend to impede the progress of the cyclist compared with the progress they might make on the road.
The elephants in the room here (as ever) are the contribution the parked vehicles made to the crash (on-street parking is a curse), and the sheer volume of motor traffic (this can't go on). Both driver and cyclist are victims of a transport "system" based largely on private motor vehicles that is incompatible with an egalitarian society. Driving in town is only even possible because some people are not driving cars. A town where all trips are made in private cars looks like Los Angeles, not Greenock.

And of course the law should be changed to put the presumption of blame on the user of the motor vehicle in the event of a collision with a pedestrian or a cyclist, as is the case in France or the Netherlands. With great power comes great responsibility!

These are amongst the most difficult and demanding conditions that a cyclist could face anywhere. One can understand the popularity of the four-wheeled metal umbrella as a default mode of transport in the west of Scotland, but it's not progressive, and it's got to change.

Transparency real and imagined

from the all very well in theory department

Back in August I came across this blogpost—a somewhat generic homily on the importance of openness and transparency in scientific communication. I share the author's optimism that open access to the scientific literature will provide better validation of published work than traditional systems of peer review. But unless this superior access is actually exploited by knowledgeable users, the potential gains may not be realized. Though a blinking cursor beckoned me below the line, the author has, in his or her wisdom, failed to publish my comment. So it must appear here:

Transparency is superior to trust—as long as some relevant person(s) actually exploit(s) the transparency. Look at how long that ssl flaw hung about in Debian, for example: https://pinboard.in/u:juliusbeezer/t:security/t:opensource/
That was all open code, utterly vital to the security of hordes of crucial servers run by the world's top-most geeks, and therefore, every internet user. But the problem sat there for two years, apparently.
That's an extreme example that did get fixed. Transparency is necessary yes, but unless it's actually backed by readers/critics/reviewers/coders/experts actually looking through the windowpane afforded by it, its value is only rhetorical.
It does mean that the guards can guard the guards and we can watch the guards guarding the guards though. Or maybe McGregor-Maywether.