Yahtzee’s book Will Save the Galaxy for Food actually covers this, in a sci-fi way. In the future, all transportation is done via Quantum Tunnelling, so guess what job suddenly became obsolete? Space pilots. Space pilots now only exist because people have nostalgia for the old days, reducing pilots to little more than tour guides and adventure holidays.
It’s like in those MMOs where you can teleport basically anywhere, but you still have mounts and yes you can travel from one end of the map to the other on your horse, admiring the scenery, or you could just click the coordinates someone pasted into the chat to get to the world boss you’re supposed to kill for the most optimum play… Lookin’ at you, Guild Wars 2!
It’s like in those MMOs where you can teleport basically anywhere, but you still have mounts
Typically, you can’t teleport somewhere you haven’t already visited in these games. So the horse lets you travel beyond your historical borders, while teleportation allows you to reconvene with friends at a prior explored location.
You know I just realized I need to get a quick deployment and dedeployment windsurfing parachute to propel my bicycle when the wind is, well, normal here.
shit it looks like i’ve got all the hardware except the sail (my trike has a vertical(ish) post about the same angle we could totally pop a sail mount in or on. and i’m kind of turning my bike into a papier mache pirate frigate for halloween 2026, so this would just, uh, yeah it’d be great.
my wife blames you. i haven’t told her yet, but she blames you.
I can take it. Good luck!
Install one of those funky wind-redirecting towers that they’ve started adding to cargo ships
I can imagine power lines being a problem.
not my biggest one tho
quick deployment
Trivial
and dedeployment
Physically impossible
i got knives what you talking about
So it averages out to being about average in difficulty then.
Mid diff
You could attach the parachute lines to electric motors that could quickly reel the parachute back in.
And make the parachute semi-rigid like an umbrella so that it folds in a predictable and reversible way.
And make the anchor point where the lines attach to the motorcycle moveable. When it’s deployed, the anchor point sits at the front of the bike so the chute and lines can pull the bike forward from the front. As the chute is getting close to being fully reeled in, the anchor point swings out on an arm a couple feet to the side of the bike and it gets several feet higher so that the lines and the chute are coming in from directly overhead rather than blocking the riders view.
These are just my preliminary ideas. Of course the engineering team at GM or Toyota or whoever buys this idea off me will likely want to tighten it up a bit to take into account various locale specific regulations and practical manufacturing considerations.
I’m amazed how in fantasy settings with houndreds of humanized species, all being like horse, oxes, cows, pigs, parrots and what not… but acts like humans and have similar social status as humans… still, meat is being pushed as the core diet in these worlds. It’s so importantt to push this narrative that not even fantasy worlds are safe, even though it just gets weird (and prob really dark) with how that world otherwise works.
… Buddy, you do realize that meat-eating is sort of a core concept for most things on earth, right?
About 63% of species are carnivores, only 32% of species are herbivores. It’s literally just a small subsect of humans that think eating meat is weird or some kind of ‘narrative.’
It’s not so much that, but the presence of fables of species that humans usually exploit for their bodies. If these fables walk around and have citizenship etc, in many settings you can start wonder who are people of the show eating.
Just like Capitalism Realism, authors can’t even imagine societies with other economic system than capitalism.
I know they are exceptions of that. If you like to mention your favorite one please do it.
still, meat is being pushed as the core diet in these worlds
The natural tension between herbavoires and carnavoires is a major plot point of Beastars. It’s primarily used as a metaphor for the tension between age cohorts and genders, but vegans and anprims ahem eat it up, regardless.
Similarly, Attack On Titan is all about humans turning into giant cannibal monsters, then justifying it to themselves.
Also, a very popular trope in Vampire / Werewolf / Zombie settings. “How does cannibalism become socially appropriate?” has become a popular subject of modern fiction, particularly in the horror genre.
Yea there’s are a few shows playing on the subject, but I promise you this is the case in the wast majority of fable indulgent isekais.
It takes time to come to the realization that a lot of what we do is inefficient because that’s just what people are used to doing. Some towns survive solely due to coal mining, and they see it as an existential threat if it were shut down. Nuclear power also takes very knowledgeable individuals, years of planning, and many resources to get started. Coal is cheap, dirty, and primitive.
and makes steel.
Use hydrogen for that (using coal creates 1.5 tons CO² per ton steel). Green steel needs no phosphor and sulfur too, making it stronger.
Hydrogen isn’t cheap, though.
It is if you have a nuclear power plant
Ah yes, the famously cheap nuclear power plant.
How expensive is it per MWh compared with coal if you account for removing the CO2 from the atmosphere?
Most countries don’t and won’t do that, though. Coal is only expensive when a society agrees to stop externalizing the costs, and that only works if either most major countries are doing it or when they severely restrict trade with countries that keep externalizing the costs.
Gets cheaper though.
Nuclear also isn‘t even a good energy source. Way too expensive and the waste is a problem for millenia. Renewables + hydrogen/battery/mechanical energy conservation is simply superior. Fusion would be cool too
They’re expensive to build because we don’t build enough of them.
Modern reactors can run on the spent fuel of older generation reactors. The waste issue isn’t as big of a deal as it was a few decades ago.
Nuclear is a great energy source. My state (Illinois) generates over half of all its energy from nuclear. France is a great example of a country that maximizes the potential of nuclear energy. The waste is not a problem if it’s stored properly. The much bigger problem are carbon/methane emissions which are fucking our climate right now. Also, nuclear waste can be reprocessed to make it less volatile and radiotoxic, but that requires an advanced application of technology.
Batteries and solar absolutely yes, we need to be scaling up battery technology as fast as possible, particularly sodium-ion batteries for static energy storage from solar power. The biggest problems with wind/solar is the actual storage of the energy. No wind? No power. No sun? No power. That’s why you need batteries, and battery technology has only gotten good enough in the past couple years.
Scaling up hydrogen is very difficult, it’s extremely volatile, and can realistically only be used in large scale power plants because transporting hydrogen is extremely expensive. Fusion could be good, but it’s still being worked on, and who knows how long it’ll really take for us to have a practical implementation.
We have an increasing number of windmills here. The wind never drops below 15mph (there are a few airfields taking advantage of that) so like, the one time I remember the wind stopping there was a tornado 30 miles away. Ages ago.
France only pushed for nuclear, because they need an excuse for the costs of their nukes and nuclear submarines. The disadvantages of high cost and nuclear waste remain.
if it’s stored properly
For millennia, which we can’t do yet.
nuclear waste can be reprocessed to make it less volatile and radiotoxic
Which needs energy.
France’s 80 years of nuclear waste takes about the space of an Olympic swimming pool and half.
In a millena, it’ll be 150 swimming pools, and that’s assuming we haven’t found a way to repair/reuse/recycle it in 1000 years. Or not decided to just yeet it on the nearest inhospitable planet via railcannon or something.
Nuclear waste is a non issue.
If it’s such a non issue, how come we still don’t have a single long term storage facility for spent nuclear fuel in the world? After more than 70 years of nuclear energy production.
We do, it’s called really big hole
Which is still not operational, just like the dozens of other potential storages, we started building just to find out last minute that they are not suitable. Or even better, those we started using just to find out they were not suitable to begin with later. I’m curious to read how many billions it will cost to retreive the waste from Onkalo in 30 years when we’ve learnt that it’s also not safe for the next million years.
“If it’s not an issue, how come we haven’t built a thing to solve it”
Yeah, that must be the reason why the United States pay half a billion dollars of tax payer money each year to the utility companys to compensate their failure in finding a suitable storage location.
Yes battery + solar seem to have gotten good enough in recent years. So much so that it seems they are more cost effective than nuclear for newly build systems. Nuclear even seems to be the most expensive one. Link
Did you even read my comment? There already are ways to efficiently store electricity generated by solar and wind turbines. These methods use conservation of movement, gravity or hydrogen made through electrolysis to flatten out the fluctuations in sun and wind availability. That and nuclear fusion is the future, coal AND nuclear are outdated and we should get away from them as quickly as possible. No new nuclear power plants and no coal mining anymore.
Hooman make fire, fire make warm, fire make food, fire good, huk!
Eh…a lot of what we do is inefficient because that makes the most money for people who already have too much money.
Nuclear was kneecapped by the fossil fuel industry. They’re still fighting against renewables.
We’re going to destroy the planet so that the rich get richer.
There’s a reason we don’t have flying cars yet, and it’s not because we don’t have the technology.
Imagine a government so cartoonishly evil and/or stupid that it would develop nuclear technology, then use it to extract fossil fuels more profitably. No need, the USA tried.
Ok, but in their defense the other idea was putting small nuclear reactors in everyone’s car. Fallout didn’t pluck that idea from the aether.
Nuclear Fracking has a ring to it though.
At least that would’ve made the traffic interesting. Fender bender directly followed by nuclear contamination of an entire city block.
Wouldn’t be surprised to see someone make a car with a small nuclear reactor in near future just to have it made and shown
You can only lose so many stable boys before giving up on your riding griffins.
> setting has bikes and trains
> still using cars as main form of transportation
Trains and bikes are much more inconvenient. Though bikes are good for close proximity.
I find the opposite to be true. Taking a train is so much more convenient. Don’t have to find a place to park, don’t have to do any work to get there. Just sit down and wait
Bikes are nice because I don’t have to worry about traffic much, and generally parking isn’t an issue
Cars are really inconvenient. You have a gigantic vehicle that you have to navigate around many other vehicles, then find a parking spot, usually not close to where you’re actually going
Finding a place to park a car is inconvenient, but locking up a bike somewhere isn’t?
And you must live within walking distance of a train.
There are bikes that have motors, it helps reach further away locations.
Those same vehicles also have a 4-wheel model that’s pretty nice.
Do those motors keep the rain and snow off you?
And look at all these single non-parents trying to tell everyone they should only use a bike…
Don’t forget that most of them live in dense urban areas as well, and to say they “look down” on those who don’t would be an absurd understatement.
Like, I moved to a place that is aiming to be an entirely walkable town, but it’s not there yet. The pandemic put a lot of the development on hold and things are finally getting back up to speed now. My closest grocery store was going to be two blocks away, but that was scrapped. There’s one being built that will be 3 miles away, so bike-able when it’s finally fucking opened. Currently, the closest one(s) are ~10 miles away. I work a job that is entirely possible to do remotely, but the execs have forced us all back into the office, ~20 miles away. I drive a hybrid because I can’t afford a full EV right now. My home’s power is nuclear and solar.
Some of the chucklefucks in these comment sections act like I’m personally clear cutting the rainforests because I dare to say that I require a car in my current life situation. Motherfuckers, I’m doing all I personally can. So go sabotage some private jets, or locally campaign for more bike lanes and public transit solutions, and get off my balls.
they “look down” on those who don’t would be an absurd understatement.
These discussions are never about rural areas. No one is going to a rural town and installing bike lanes. No one is suggesting 20 miles of bike lanes go in where you live. It’s always about putting in bike lanes and transit where it makes sense
Some of the chucklefucks in these comment sections act like I’m personally clear cutting the rainforests because I dare to say that I require a car in my current life situation
People are chastising you for arguing people in cities that could easily bike need to drive a car. That’s what you’re doing. People say we should have bikes and transit in cities and you come out arguing against it
Keep driving your car. No one is taking it away from you, no matter where you live. We just want the option to bike or take transit in our communities. We don’t currently have that option because suburban and rural people constantly fight urban transit tooth and nail
These discussions are never about rural areas. No one is going to a rural town and installing[…]
That’s… not what I’m talking about at all in regards to people talking down about people who live outside of urban centers. There are people out here actively calling people maga chuds based entirely on the environment they live in.
People are chastising you for arguing people in cities that could easily bike need to drive a car. That’s what you’re doing.
Oh fuck off, I’ve done no such thing.
You’re only feeding my point and getting all bent up about shit I didn’t say. Thank you for at least explicitly stating the strawman you’ve imagined me to be.
suburban and rural people constantly fight urban transit tooth and nail
Citation fucking needed. How would someone outside one of the cities in question have any influence on those decisions, and more importantly, why in the fuck would they even care?
I personally have the displeasure of knowing plenty of god awful nimbys, and they’re all upper class urbanites worried that their little nest egg(s) in the wealthy parts of my local city will lose value.
Seriously. Last winter here was -25 C. Miserable for bike rides.
Thank you, Not Just Bikes, for finally giving us this video when someone pretends that winters are normally -25°C.
Could you summarize I don’t have half an hour right now
- People in much more extreme climates bike at rates an order of magnitude higher than the US and Canada.
- People physiologically adapt to the climates they live in by being outdoors.
- North Americans who complain about the cold use the wind chill rather than ambient temperature when that’s not actually the temperature they’re feeling with clothes on that block the wind. They also take the coldest data points and just say “that was the whole winter”.
- Poor weather magnifies the US and Canada’s unsafe bike infrastructure. If we had safe, well-maintained bike infrastructure, it would not be nearly as much of a problem (shown by the Nordic countries biking all the time in the snowy dead of winter).
- In extreme weather, you can still delay your trip, take public transit, take a car, etc. Commuting via micromobility isn’t a binary yes/no thing; if you can’t on some days, then don’t.
Don’t bike that day. Bike the other 364.
Sent to you from the Netherlands where people still cycle in hurricanes.
It’s that way for a good 3 months. At least -10 anyways.
There are carts you can pull behind your bike that your kids can ride in. Some of them even have up to 4 seats for kids
Also they have fairings for the rider you can buy to be your windshield basically
You haven’t seen American roads, have you? They’re not remotely safe for this shit in most places
They’re not remotely safe for this shit in most places
Yes, good, and why is that? Keep that thought going.
It’s not because I’m not out there risking my life on a bike trying to commute 40 miles because some idiot on the internet thinks they know everything, that’s for sure.
Do we need better infrastructure? Yes.
Are bikes the solution to everything like some dummies in this thread think? Fuck no.
I can’t speak to trains (our rail system is a joke here) but I’ve been having more fun traveling and saving money by using my bike. Since I’m on the ground floor, it’s very convenient.
Hold on, let me just load up the family onto my bicycle and ride the 15 miles to the grocery store.
Oh yes, the grocery store commute. You can clearly see in traffic that every car is full of groceries and people everyday at all times, and is rarely one person alone
I leave the 8-story building (with an elevator), walk 5-10 minutes (one road crossing with lights), buy groceries, in 30 minutes I’m back home.
Something is wrong with that murrka thing.
Most Americans are used to very spread out cities. It causes a lot of problems with groceries since you have to make far fewer grocery trips, which then means fresh foods are rare. Probably a huge contributor to America’s obesity problem
Can this argument just disappear from discourse? People don’t always drive around with their partner, dog and 2.5 kids AND groceries AND spare tires AND grandparents.
The majority of people in car-centric areas use their car only to haul around themselves, which could be done with public transport or bikes.
Im surprised everytime I see a car with more than 2 people, just 1 is the norm
Legit. If my wife wants to come on a trip I’m driving on, she can hop on her bike. The two of our bikes together cost a fifth what our car cost, and the “fuel” expenses are negligible with solar.
Honestly thinking of a way to solar recharge the bikes while we’re camping. Like, an umbrella to shade the battery, with a solar panel on top and an extension cord up connect the battery under the damn thing. Maybe solar panels on the bike too and some active cooling for the batteries idk
That, and the nearest grocery store being 15 miles (25 km) away is highly unusual even by US standards. The fact that someone chooses to live in bumfuck nowhere shouldn’t mean that the other people who live in a town with population > 5 shouldn’t get to have safe, affordable, well-kept walking/micromobility/public transit infrastructure.
People don’t suddenly stop driving cars when not-cars becomes the predominant form of transportation. Like I said, “main form of transportation”. That cars are by far the main form is the problem because, among other huge problems, it induces reliance on cars and creates expensive, unmaintainable sprawl that makes other forms of transit completely impractical. Hell, even bumfuck nowhere towns used to have passenger rail that came through them before the tracks were ripped out.
“What do you mean ‘boats shouldn’t be the primary form of transportation’? Did you ever consider that I chose to live on an island off the coast of Michigan??”
True. However “food deserts” do exist in some US cities. Though that’s another consequence of unfettered capitalism.
Step one: leave the family (especially toddlers and infants) at home with a trusted caretaker or dog. Step two, ride about 15mph so you don’t drain the battery too fast. Step three, wake up
I’ll be sure to tell my brother (single parent) he can just leave his kid at home with the caretaker he can’t afford
Some people are completely unable to understand that not everybody lives in a city with everything on their doorstep, some people have children, and some people need to be able to transport more than a few small items at a time.
Therefore the majority that do live in a city must use cars too?
No one is coming to your rural community to build a bike lane. These discussions are never about the rural folk. Y’all are going to be left alone. Bikes and transit don’t make sense in low-density rural areas
Now please stop fighting the change the rest of us want in our cities
Big city people: Boy, it’d sure be nice if there were fewer cars in the center of this big city right here, and more people would use the public infrastructure already at their disposal.
Country people: Some people don’t live in cities, therefore this statement is also about me! There tryin ta tek muh cur!
You do know steam powered locomotives started appearing in the early 19th century, long before than cars?
Cars are much more advanced tech than bikes. Hell we have partly self driving electric cars now. That’s some sci-fi shit
That’s why I can’t understand how some bikes can cost as much as a small used car.
Buying something at the beginning of its usefulness vs the end where it’s practically falling apart and worth only what you can sell its parts for…
And some watches cost far more than both.
Price isn’t always perfectly aligned with complexity or utility 🤷♀️
Yeah, some watches, but you can buy perfectly competent watches for very low prices.
You can’t buy a perfectly competent electric bike for a low price, at least not where I am.
Is that true for used e-bikes, too?
The used market for pretty much anything is shit here in Italy, idk why
Weird. That’s definitely not a problem here in Germany.
Economies of scale and subsidies
huh, now i want to slap some sensors on my ebike so it can do ACC
Nuclear’s always a fun idea until someone decides to commit an act of domestic terrorism. Or until some freaks decide to target the nuclear facilities of their enemies.
Nuclear facilities are very very tight on security. Domestic terrorism is a terrible reason to not build them.
And if you are a part of a war? With or without the Nuclear plant you are going to have massive problems.
Weird excuses to not build them if you ask me.
Do I want the results of the war being that my hometown needs to be rebuilt from the ground up?
Or do I want to have that be the case, except we gotta wait 5000 years for the radiation to be at a level where we can do that safely?
A nuclear plant is not a nuclear bomb. And 5000 years is outta your ass.
And, the most important thing - military targets are usually protected worse than nuclear stations and big industrial plants. A nuclear station doesn’t move anywhere, it just sits on one place armored so well that it’ll likely survive the town being nuked (pun intended).
There are pollution dangers and complex logistics of rare and expensive materials. And the stations themselves are very expensive. But the danger of a nuclear station giving out a nuclear explosion is nonexistent.
You have a higher chance of being struck by a falling wind turbine blade than you do of being victim of a nuclear power plant exploding.
You gave an example of the Zaporizhzhia plant being bombed in Ukraine, wheres the explosion or nuclear fallout? And thats a plant from the 80s.
This
People act like there isn’t a rather large contingent of our society that doesn’t openly invite “end times” or want to create as much pain and suffering as possible for poor black and brown ppl who you know these plants will be built around.
There is substantial reason to advocate for nuclear, but to handwave the concerns of organized sabatoge in the times we’re living in does not help.
There’s plenty of shit that disporportionately comes down on minorities, but nuclear power plant building sites?
Please, please, I’m literally begging you: Please point me to a place where a nuclear plant has been constructed somewhere that displaced anyone.
Only restriction is it can’t be people who were displaced by nuclear disaster, like Chernobyl or Fukushima.
Bonus points if it displaced minorities. Even more if there was an alternative build site available but they chose to be bastards.
We’ve had at least two of these in the recent past: that Ukrainian power plant that was under attack, and also Iran’s nuclear facilities getting bombed.
That’s why nuclear facilities security is so stringent and fail safes are everywhere
Every country using nuclear power has incidents with missing fission material and covered-up leaks or near-core-melt incidents in reactors, if you dig a bit deeper. I’m swiss and know of multiple of them* in Swiss, France and Germany. Imagine how it looks in a absolutistic 3rd-world country.
Btw, the one in Ucraine was forcefully taken over by Russia (with international diplomatic pressure caused only by them firing on the outer walls) and power cut.About fail safes; historic statistic mean is every 25 years somewhere all of them not working and causing large swaths of land being uninhabitable for centuries. Human error always gets underestimated there.
* like, secretly using low-grade steel for the reactor walls to cut cost, fissures not being reported, or the one, where Leibstadt had to be cooled by firefighters (not being told anything (i know one of them)) due to cooling canal congestion after heavy rain.
Edit: Or were you sarcastic and i failed to notice?
Yeah, all the dirty bombs that are set off each year show how unsafe nuclear power really is!
Hasn’t ever been an attack against nuclear power station, I can’t think of one
Three years ago: Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant crisis
I envy you. Not having watched the news for 3 years must be nice.
The only thing I can assume you’re alluding to is when the Russians took control of Chernobyl which is not an active power station and didn’t result in a radiation leak.
The one at Zaporizhzhia is active and has been attacked a half a dozen times.
And we’ve all read about the nuclear winter that subsequently ensued.
Huh? Not sure what you’re trying to say. It’s pretty much impossible to trigger a nuclear explosion from a nuclear power plant, no matter what you do.
It was sarcasm.
Nuclear is also freaking expensive. You need a lot of safety measures to run a nuclear power plant relatively safely, and disposing of spent fuel material and the building itself when it’s decommissioned is really expensive, too. On top of that, the nuclear material that power plants use isn’t cheap, either, and there aren’t that many countries that actually have them in mineable quantities. And one of the major exporters is Russia.
Charcoaled!
I feel like it would be much more effort to tame a flying creature or magic, with the latter often being displayed as a life-long commitment.
And it would be especially hard to feed those things. Can you imagine how much a magical creature eats? They use a lot of energy. Much more than a horse would normally
Yeah, you can put horses on any pasture and they will happily graze on whatever weed grows there. Gryphons (just one example of a popular fantasy mount) should be carnivorous. So how many cows do you need to feed that thing before it will fly someone safely across the countryside, without deciding that this someone looks awfully tasty?
Big flying mounts should be horribly expensive to maintain. Only the most wealthy nobles and wizards who can literally conjure money should be able to pay for them.
Personally I always have to suspend a lot of my disbelief whenever dragon mounts are being mentioned in fantasy books and there is absolutely no explanations how these creatures are being fed. Usually the topic is quietly sidelined or simply dismissed with “something something magic”.
At the very least, building a fence to keep in a Pegasus seems like MUCH more work
As would building a fence to keep in a bird.
Cages are clearly more effort (and cost) than fences (given a similarly-sized creature), though.
Except high-magitech worlds of course.
Checkmate!
Is this coach class?
Neigh
So basically these planes run on horsepower, where as hamster power runs the on-prem machines at work.
Starting to make sense.
Is this the hyperloop they talk about?
I’m laughing at both the mental images of the horses being shunted through the hyper loop at high speed, or them being the motive force to pull passengers through.
That’s at least 18 horsepower!
has anon considered, that maybe, horses are just extremely fucking cool, and that is why?
Boo horses. Hooray horsetaurs
World that has nuclear coal energy, but rides magical horses as the main transport.
