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I didn't mean for there to be this long of a break but we're back with another issue. We have some really great gems to share and some electric thoughts leaked from my brain. Sorry about that.
AKA Sunset Ash's gemini capsule. Checkout the gemlog and projects as well as some links to peruse. An interesting project Sunset is working on is mentioned in their gemlog. It's called Static and it's a tool for aggregating gemlog posts and sending them out in email digests.
Do you love gemini as a calm respite from the chaos of the modern web? Do you yearn for a similar haven away from what e-mail has become today? You're in luck because Misfin aims to be an electronic mail protocol for the smol web.
Terminal nerds are in for a treat with this one. Among the many treasures found within you will find a daily sudoku puzzle, a live weather station with ASCII temp chart and a TextCam (webcam rendered with text/ASCII over gemini).
If you miss the chess puzzles we used to run in smolZINE then you'll likely be happy to find this capsule. It has a couple of games that can be played over gemini. One of those is a daily chess puzzle and the other is tic tac toe.
gemini://games.lanterne.chilliet.eu/
A very personal capsule in the best of ways. Some things I really like about this capsule are the list of favorite things, the long form description of what is on their desk and the shortcuts to happiness.
A gemlog and a very good one! I particularly enjoyed the most recent post about literal rabbit holes!
If you follow me on the Fediverse you've likely seen me blabber on about my ebike from time to time. Ebikes are not perfect. They have various detractors for a variety of reasons from concerns about safety to the silly purists that think riding an ebike is "cheating". This is complicated even further by the sheer variety contained within the category of ebikes. Two different ebikes could differ wildly in characteristics from one another. On one end you could be riding something that 99% of people wouldn't even be able to tell is assisted by a motor at all or you could be riding what most would consider a moped or small motorcycle. Well, I'm hear to say that ebikes are great. I've been riding an ebike almost every day for the past 3 years and change. As hinted at in the title nearly all of the times I have slung my leg over those two (or 4) wheels it was in place of plopping my butt in a car.
Where an ebike really shines is replacing car trips not making it easier to go for a bike ride for exercise or pleasure. This is why the cycling purists taking issue with ebikes and their riders are so misguided. The vast majority of people out on ebikes are likely on their way to work, the store or running an errand. Something they would have previously done in a car and the result is less traffic and safer streets for anyone else on foot or bike. Even if they were just out for fun SO WHAT! Nobody grumbles towards every car and motorcycle they pass about "cheating"! Going even further than the grumpy cyclists I would posit that even those in cars should welcome seeing more ebikes around town. Fewer cars on the road means less traffic and faster trips for everyone.
Going back to the transportation aspect, ebikes are quite versatile in an urban or semi-urban setting. I will use my own situation to demonstrate some of the ways ebikes are an excellent mode of transportation, not just compared to a normal bike but also surpassing automobiles in many cases. We live in a fairly small city in the US of just over 100,000 people and are pretty much in the middle of town. Broadly, I can get almost anywhere I need to go in a 3-4 mile radius by ebike in the same amount of time or faster than by car. Yes, you read that correctly, FASTER in many many cases. Trips in a 5-10 mile radius are doable and often still worth it due to some of the other benefits I'll talk about below. It gets more hit or miss in this range though because of a couple factors. Once you get beyond 5 or 6 miles in my city the available safe bike routes start going down significantly. The further you get out of the core of the city the more you get into the dreaded cookie cutter neighborhoods and associated high speed limit stroadsⁱ with non-existant/poor cycling infrastructure that no one in their right mind wants to ride a bike on. This will obviously differ depending on where you live but I've lived in a number of different cities and towns in different parts of the country and this is pretty typical.
The downtown area where many restaurants, bars and stores are located is a prime example of why an ebike can be faster than a car. From our house to any establishment in the downtown area is always 2 or 3 minutes faster by ebike but can sometimes even be 5 minutes faster or even more. Taking the car we would have to drive there, spend an unknown amount of time finding an available free parking spot, then walking from there to wherever we would like to go. Bonus, add that same walking time again for the trip back home. Even if we wanted to pay for a more convenient parking spot closer to the businesses we were going to it would still be farther away than where we park our bikes. On the ebike we can park at a bike rack at most half a block from wherever we're going. In many cases we can even pull up directly to the place we're going. At most 30 seconds of walk time but often zero.
The downtown scenario is a great example but not the only one. Dropping my child off at school and picking them up is a daily trip we have to make. School drop off and pickup times are busy with everyone else also trying to shuttle their kids around. The result is cars waiting up to 3 blocks down the street. You can get a spot up close if you get there early, but then well...it takes even longer because you had to show up early and just sit there. Cut to me, rolling right up to the school gate just as the bell rings, my kid walking mere feet to my bike, hopping on and away we go to cruise past all those cars sitting still. Not only can I get to the school in the same amount of travel time due to the way traffic flows but I save upwards of 5 or even 10 minutes per trip avoiding all the sitting around or being stuck blocks away as the lowly car drivers do.
On a related note, one block of street on my route to the school is closed for 3 months. The detour, for cars, takes you nearly 3 blocks out of the way to get around the closure. You know what is not closed? The sidewalk which my ebike can easily traverse for 100 feet in order to avoid the detour. Boom, even more time saved. There are also often events that take place throughout the year in the downtown area and occasionally closer to our house just south of the downtown area and many streets are blocked off which results in detours and even more traffic backups on the roads that are not closed. Yes, you are getting the gist by now. An ebike can easily bypass any road blocks intended for cars and be on its merry way.
I could really go on for a good while about why bikes and ebikes are so much better for getting around in this type of environment than cars. Here is one more, cost. Ebikes might seem expensive to some on their face. If you see bicycles as an occasional leisure activity and shop for them at Walmart then you might think the price is high. If you are a serious road cyclist then you might think ebikes are reasonably priced or even cheap! When you consider how many trips an ebike can effectively replace a car there is a significant reduction miles driven and thus possible reduction in car maintenance. I have doubts about how significant the actual money savings is due to this reduced car usage in favor of an ebike. You are still paying a lot of the unavoidable costs related to cars just by owning it at all. But if you are a two car family and could make the move to becoming a 1 car and 1 (or more) ebike family instead then you would really start seeing some big savings.
Wait, here's one more (I really can't help myself, I'm sorry). Bike or ebike, you are physically out and visible in your environment and your community. You are not an anonymous mechanical behemoth speeding too fast, hidden behind a cage of metal and glass. You are a person with a face that can see and be seen by other members of your community. You will likely find that you start seeing some of the same people who's faces are also visible in your neighborhood as they walk or bike. Perhaps you will even find yourself stopping now and then to have a chat with one of those familiar faces. Fresh air, vitamin D, wind in your face, mild to moderate exercise without taking any additional time out of your day...ok, OK, I'm done now!
Finally, I have one request for ebikes in the future. Please add cool Star Wars style speeder bike noises.
- kelbot
by kelbot
To play Stinky Pinky you will need to read the two descriptions below. They each describe a word and the two words rhyme. Example: 1. Smelly, 2. Finger; Answer: Stinky Pinky. Get it? You can email your answer to the address found at the bottom of each smolZINE to confirm if you are correct. The first to answer wins...uhhh I haven't figured that out yet so my congrats will have to do for now.
1. Baby wrap
2. Duck walk
Please consider taking part in making this zine better and more diverse by contributing your thoughts and finds. If you are interested in contributing a short article or capsule picks email me at: smolzine (at) cyberbot.space.
If you have any feedback or just want to discuss anything related to gemini or smolZINE hit me up at the above email or ping me on the fediverse at kelbot@retro.social and/or use the #smolZINE tag.
Thank you to all our fellow geminauts for continuing to make this place fun and interesting.