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Where do the children play?

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Re: Where do the children play?

#191

Post by HeinzStuckeIt »

netdevphoenix wrote: post #177
Xylakant wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We haven’t had a malfunctioning battery in ~40 000km of ebike use in our family. We have one that failed to charge due to age. The number of times we ran out of battery due to forgetting to charge can be counted on one hand. The number of flat tires is in the single digits - modern general use tires are really sturdy, especially if you combine them with sealant.

Must have been a high end bike because the ones I have used have had multiple punctures within a year and running out of battery in the middle of trip has happened several times which is not great if you live in a hilly area

The “high-end”-ness of a bike and the likelihood of punctures are completely orthogonal. You can get a low-end e-bike and just put decent tires on it. Since weight is less of an issue with e-bikes than acoustic bikes, it’s common for people to choose heavier tires like Schwalbe Pickups that offer very high puncture-resistance.

Re: Where do the children play?

#192

Post by acdha »

netdevphoenix wrote: post #175
Toutouxc wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn’t take much time to fix a puncture with a tiny kit the size of a matchbox. There are also tubeless tires with liquid sealant. An e-bike with a dead battery becomes a heavy bike. Theft and accidents, okay, but the first sentence is just fearmongering.

> It doesn’t take much time to fix a puncture with a tiny kit the size of a matchbox. That's a dependency. Now you need to remember to have that kit with you. This is like solving the short battery life in phones with a portable battery charger. You still have to remember to charge the charger beforehand and bring it with you. Small kits are easy to lose sight of that by the time you need them so you don't know where…

> That's a dependency. Now you need to remember to have that kit with you.

You put it on the bike and don’t worry about it. This is less onerous than remembering your bus pass or cars keys.

Re: Where do the children play?

#193

Post by HeinzStuckeIt »

netdevphoenix wrote: post #175
Toutouxc wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn’t take much time to fix a puncture with a tiny kit the size of a matchbox. There are also tubeless tires with liquid sealant. An e-bike with a dead battery becomes a heavy bike. Theft and accidents, okay, but the first sentence is just fearmongering.

> It doesn’t take much time to fix a puncture with a tiny kit the size of a matchbox. That's a dependency. Now you need to remember to have that kit with you. This is like solving the short battery life in phones with a portable battery charger. You still have to remember to charge the charger beforehand and bring it with you. Small kits are easy to lose sight of that by the time you need them so you don't know where…

People have been stashing a puncture repair kit in a small saddle bag since the nineteenth century. The kit just sits there until it is needed, potentially for years. To depict this as a big stress and risk is a real reach.

Re: Where do the children play?

#194

Post by Macha »

ctoth wrote: post #180
iso1631 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's two aspect of "country" relative to somewhere like London. There's an estate in various towns, where there's plenty of actual public space, playing fields and grounds, walk into town, to shops, bus/train to larger towns. Plenty of open space. Then there's the real country, where there's very little public space - nowhere to ride a bike other than narrow country roads, you can walk but only in restrictive foot…

> There are 4 children in our village at the "local" primary school Four? How... What? How does any of this actually work (you clearly live there, so it obviously does?) That seems like you're living somewhere that's just like ... empty? How do any services/infrastructure/... How many old people live in this village? Is this the demographic collapse people are going on about?

That sounds like the village in which I spent my teens. Population of ~500, and for We didn't have nice paths, there was a (former) main road going through the middle of the village. As far as local infrastructure, there was the pub, a car mechanic, and every few years a corner shop would open up and last about 2-3 years before shutting down again.

If you needed groceries you went to the larger village (population ~1000) which was about a 40 minute walk along the main road (which only got dedicated pavements after I had moved out), or a 5 minute drive. For amenities that larger village had 2 bars, 2 churches, a takeaway, a supermarket, a primary school and a garden centre.

If you needed anything more than groceries, you needed to go to one of the nearby towns which were ~20-30 minutes by car and (according to google maps) ~2 hours walk.

Re: Where do the children play?

#195

Post by pmg101 »

rcpt wrote: post #182
Aeolun wrote: post #4

I think this heavily depends on location. At 7 my child can check nearly all the boxes for independent activities. My wife may not like it, but the surroundings are probably safer than anywhere else in the world. The only thing we don’t have is forests. This is central Tokyo. Kids still spend a lot of time on Roblox because everyone tends to be deathly afraid of letting them ring each other’s doorbells.

In Los Angeles we let our 8 year old walk half a mile to school and someone called the cops on us.

What did the cops say?

Re: Where do the children play?

#196

Post by Yhippa »

When I let my kids have freedom in the various stores we go into, I get nearly instant looks of disgust from people. It's like everybody has forgotten what it's like to be a kid and why that kind of independence is necessary. Socially it's verboten.

Re: Where do the children play?

#197

Post by bluGill »

BobaFloutist wrote: post #179
mlrtime wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm going to get criticism because I feel HN is mostly urban based... but I don't think kids need "cities" to grow. They need nature. I picture rural/suburban areas that aren't fully built out with small wooded areas , creeks and playground 5-10 minute walk. They need to get dirty, play in water etc. When I think cities, I think dense urban areas that rarely offer this unless living in a expensive or unique neighborh…

The thing that cities provide that's harder to access in the countryside is exposure to people other than you, with different (not necessarily incompatible) perspectives and value systems. I think it's actually really important for kids to be exposed to people that disagree with their parents and learn that people can disagree with their parents while still being reasonable, kind people that their parents more or les…

You can find mono-culture in both cities and rural areas. In cities there are more options, but in rural areas you can really get into it. In cities you can select from several different mono-cultures and ignore all others. In rural areas you can really get deep though because a commune can ensure you never encounter anything else, while in cities you still see them on the streets you just don't interact (though my experience is communes have outsiders come in for various supplies from time to time). If you don't live in a commune though rural areas don't provide choice - your neighbor is the only option no matter how strange they are.

Re: Where do the children play?

#198

Post by rayiner »

reeredfdfdf wrote: post #33
retube wrote: post #19

As a parent, I relate to all this. Great piece. When the kids were babies we had the standard debate of move to the countryside for fresh air and gambolling in the fields etc. But so glad we stayed in London, the kids have so much freedom with public transport they can organise their own meet ups and activities and go running around all over town without any parental assistance or intervention at all. Whereas elsewhe…

There's a middle-ground between a big city and full countryside. I lived my childhood in a place with about 4000 people in it. School, friends and everything else I needed was within walking, or at least biking distance. My parents didn't have to drive me everywhere. Obviously there weren't as many possible hobbies and events as in big cities, but mobility wasn't an issue.

Right. Most people in "rural" places live in small towns. My wife went to high school in a rural Iowa town with 2,000 people. You can walk from the high school to anywhere in town in 30 minutes.

Re: Where do the children play?

#199

Post by elgenie »

djtango wrote: post #99
Aeolun wrote: post #4

I think this heavily depends on location. At 7 my child can check nearly all the boxes for independent activities. My wife may not like it, but the surroundings are probably safer than anywhere else in the world. The only thing we don’t have is forests. This is central Tokyo. Kids still spend a lot of time on Roblox because everyone tends to be deathly afraid of letting them ring each other’s doorbells.

Seeing tiny tiny kids walking around is one of my favourite qualities of Japanese life, and on the flipside I sensed a quiet but shared responsibility/interest everyone took in making sure no harm befell the child on their journey. One the purest luxuries of living in such a high trust society

That feeling of shared societal responsibility probably has at least something to do with the birth rate. Japan is down to just 686K babies born per year from a population of 123 million.

Re: Where do the children play?

#200

Post by strix_varius »

mlrtime wrote: post #96
goodcanadian wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Legal e-bikes are fine. The ones you are complaining about are probably illegal, not that there is any real enforcement.

Serious Q: What is the fundamental difference between a legal and illegal e-bike. This largely is differentiated by the location but I don't know what illegal e-bike means.

E-Bikes are sold & regulated in "classes" (at least where I live in the US).

A class 1 e-bike is pedal-assist and stops assisting beyond 20mph (mine, for instance, tapers off starting probably around 15 mph).

A class 2 is the above, plus a throttle.

A class 3 is anything that assists over 20mph. The "basically motorcycle" set exists here.

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