Another clue I shamefully missed!

For reference, Paris (France) has had a scheme like this for several years. No lottery, the rebate is 50% of the purchase price capped at 400€.

So my e-bike cost me 800€ instead of 1200. The bike needs to be registered with an official ID (it’s now mandatory for bikes in France, it’s like having a dog). And of course be on the list of EU-regulation-respecting models, which is (unfortunately) quite short.

BUT. It seems that as of this year the rebate is means-tested (like Washington). To incomes of <10,000€, so you now have to be pretty poor to qualify. But bike usage has exploded in Paris so perhaps the scheme has done its job.

IIRC Darwin spent much of Origin of Species talking about it. That and, um, worms.

Amazing. Did not know that but it figures.

Well, well. Looks like you’ve got to the bottom of it. That would explain the ring too.

I was taken in by a virtuoso pigeon artist!

It must have escaped. It was getting a lot of attention at the cafe, but from children. The staff were completely uninterested, presumably because they knew it already. In my experience individual pigeons tend to frequent exactly the same haunts.

Got a good look, if it was painted it was an amazing job. (PS: it was exactly that.) See added photos. As mentioned, it’s not the first I’ve seen (completely different places).

Yes, I think there may have been a ring, that’s definitely a clue I should have been paying more attention to. Too distracted by the fabulous paint job!

Seriously though, I suspect a genetic quirk. Pigeons do have unusual variations due to the human selection in their history. You sometimes see ones with feathered feet for that reason. Like dogs, basically.

PS: looks like your theory is correct. The invisible hand turns out to be very human. I’m impressed.

Location mentioned: Teruel, capital of Spanish province of same name. Cafe on main square.

Price: 1200 € of which I got rebated 400 (!) by Paris regional government as part of their effort to bribe people to get on bikes.

Distance per charge: yesterday I did 75km with 1000m of uphill. That was a big day, too much, but I arrived with 2 bars of battery left. Basically by limiting the power level to 1/5. That means the motor targets about 15 km/h. In theory you just have to turn the pedals, in practice you have to help quite a lot on hills.

Time to charge: 4 hours or so.

Paniers: none, it’s literally a single backpack that I’ve bungeed to the rack. Very practical, this is always the way I’ve done touring and here it’s even better since the smallish wheels help to lower the center of gravity.

Seat: heavily cushioned! Significantly more comfortable than a standard bike but I suspect the real difference is made by the double (front and rear) suspension. I’ve done touring on a recumbent, this is not as comfortable as that (impossible!) but definitely much better than a normal touring bike. I was skeptical about that and it’s a pleasant surprise.

Water resistance is fine, I’ve ridden in driving rain without issues.

The one issue I’ve had (in 3000km!) is with the cadence sensor. It began to wobble, which caused the motor to cut out intermittently, very annoying indeed. Once I worked out what was going on, I fixed it (with tape!) and all was good again.

Stop spamming this community. Reported.

Interesting. By couching your skepticism in very dull (but no doubt accurate) legalese, you managed to avoid getting brigaded for effectively dissenting from the (also very dull) jaded-US-progressive groupthink in this community.

The danger of retaining one’s purity is that you risk forfeiting influence over what may (very well) happen anyway.

American robins seem to be fatter and gaudier than their European counterparts. Just saying.

So that’s what it looks like. I know this bird mainly thru the all-hearing ear of my bird-ID app.

Predictably insightful.

multiple groups that prioritize different paired corners of this people-information-scale triangle

Fact remains that we’re struggling mainly with the scale corner here.

As a counterpoint, I’ve used it for the best part of a decade, every single day, without a single issue.

My experience is anecdata. So is yours and OP’s.

This was reported on last year. Good to get a bit of hopeful news. There’s still so much left to save.

PS: species info

[etc etc] The shape supports the palm and lets riders rotate their wrists inward. With bent elbows and a narrow arm position, the hood position can now be surprisingly aerodynamic. [etc etc]

What lot of words to confirm what surely every cyclist has known they were a kid: bull-horns are just more comfortable than any other configuration you could come up with, and if you wanna go faster then just bending yer arms will help.

Brake “horns” always struck me as a tacit admission by bike designers that nobody wants to ride with drops, not really.

Still, interesting article.

What a handsome featherball.

I’m not “pushing for” anything except more control to the user. Where’s the contradiction? I was skeptical about AI chatbots (stochastic parrots etc) but it’s got to the point where the utility is impossible to deny. A one-stop-shop answer to any question, which is probably right and shows its sources, that’s a pretty amazing innovation. Huntnig for information is a lot of my web usage, so I absolutely see the point of putting that prompt alongside the one for URLs and search terms and even for merging it all one day (the first two were once separate prompts too, let’s remember). This is clearly the direction of the web whether we like it or not, and with more voice interface since young people hardly know how to write any more. The role of Mozilla IMO is not to stop this new world singlehandedly, it’s to give us more control over it.

Installing an extension for an occasional use-case like this is not quicker than what I did.

I do of course have extensions installed (including the canonical ad-blocker that you use too). I’ve been on the web since the 90s and was a full-time frontend developer for a decade until quite recently, so I’m hardly the ignoramus you’re making me out to be. From the same facts I just come to different conclusions to you. It happens.

If Firefox offers an off-switch for the features you don’t want (it does) then where is the “forcing down throats”? If this amazing project doesn’t survive because it refused to move with the world around it, then you won’t even have that off-switch and you’ll regret being so obstinate.

PS I see the downvotes, maybe it wasn’t you but I consider downvoting toxic so that’s all I have to say here. You’ve made your point and I did understand it.