From Y'all to Yinz

A Southern girl moves to the North.

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realcleverscience:

Behold, the Copenhagen Wheel.

Now, this is pretty awesome on a few levels. Firstly, as the video explains, it attaches easily to almost any bicycle and stores energy from braking to help you when you need it, similar to what the Prius does. That makes biking easier for hilly places, like Seattle. Now, that’s cool and all but I’ve seen that before. However, it gets better. 

The device also includes sensors for speed, effort, and environmental conditions. These can be transmitted to your smart-phone so that you can regulate your biking effort (e.g. tell the device to use the stored energy to make the ride easier/faster), see real-time data on relevant conditions (e.g. traffic, air quality, etc), and you can opt to share data that your bike picks up. As they say in the video, it basically turns every bike into a mobile weather station which shares important information with the city and other cyclists. 

So, aside from making biking - an already very green alternative - a bit easier no matter where you live, it also makes your riding “smarter” (e.g. can make it more into a personal training program) and also help monitor conditions, which can be very useful for city initiatives which require data on things like air quality or road quality. (Could you imagine how popular and useful this would be for a city bike program?!)

All in all, this seems like quite the win, though perhaps still a bit expensive.

(And a hat tip to thegreenurbanist.)

(via thegreenurbanist)

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So while I don’t want to have to change out of my pajamas to go shopping, either, and I fully expect the goods I order off the internet to materialize at my front door in about the amount of time it would take them to be transported from the Starship Enterprise, I’m just sayin’. Like I tell people who are unfortunate enough to be friends with me: It’s worth considering how the hell those goods get to you, so fast, and for free, when the company you bought them from is posting profits in the millions, or even, in the case of Amazon, billions. Chances are, it’s via the people who worked for the small businesses we ruined when we were saving $4 by buying stuff off the internet, people performing dangerously repetitive or otherwise ergonomically unsound jobs in a cold, shitty, emotionally abusive warehouse for very little money and very few benefits, the kind of conditions people endure only because it’s their last resort. It’s worth considering, because one of the reasons those conditions can so widely prevail is that no one ever does.
from this article by Mac McClelland.

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I don’t think marriage is perfect institution. I don’t think it’s right for everyone. I don’t think it should be given the social privilege that it’s often given (particularly for women). There is nothing about being married that is somehow better, or more important than being a single or partnered and not married. (Which is why I so adamantly use the title Ms. It’s none of your business what my relationship status is.) But, I’m aware that marriage can be a valuable tool. Studies routinely show that married couples come out significantly better financially in the long run. Marriage can be a boon to long term health and happiness. Kids that grow up in stable long term partnerships tend to be better off. And that’s not to mention the myriad of ways that marriage can personally support you, make you free, and give you wings to fly. Marriage is a long way from perfect, but it’s an institution that I passionately believe should be available to everyone.
From this post.