2girls1bottl3: #intellectuals

the store that had the self-service machines what had problems digesting cash came up with a new, tried-and-tested solution to put a permanent end to coin bugs

no cash allowed

so that’s five self-service kiosks, all that don’t take cash. there are no signs anywhere indicating this. you can put coins in, they just drop back out.

the funny thing is that i only buy crap coffee there. i tried to make the local coffee shop -my- local coffee shop, but ...

they don’t take cash.

here is a message to everyone who doesn’t take cash. message begins now:

fuck you.

Vox: The surprising reason behind Chinatown’s aesthetic.

Bike ride lucky #23. Total 236.6mi. I noticed that the back was losing a small bit of air. First time using new pump on new-to-me tires. SCHWALBE! Get down low, squint at valve. “Mmmm.” EVERYONE knows there are two valves, Schrader (like on cars), and Presta (like on fancy-schmancy touring bikes that weigh three ounces and bicyclists routinely eat). Not a Schrader, so it’s gotta be a Presta. Yeah? [FX: furious image search] Uh. What? Whut? Surprise, there’s a third type of valve, the “Dunlop” valve, which also has an adapter to magically turn it into a Schrader valve. It’s a cheap little thing, a bit of metal, a smaller bit of rubber. SCHWALBE! So we’ve all learned something today, except for bike shops. Let’s visit some! First though, let’s break one of our locks, and get a slow flat on the spare bike. Check ... check.

SHOP A. “Do you have a Dunlop adapter.” “Dunlop?” [FX: goes to back] “Dunlop” “No we don’t have that.” [FX: begins leaving] “No one has that ... that’s for European bikes.” [FX: record scratch] Back in February, I asked someone at SHOP A for a suitable inner tube for Miss Lucy Legs, my beach bike. It has a weird rim, such that the valves need to be extra-extra long. It’s annoying, I want stuff to be standard. But this bike was a hand-me-down. Anyway, the guy says to me, he says, “yeah, this will work” even though it’s 10+mm shorter. I put it in, and can -barely- pump it up. It’s on the edge of not locking to the valve (this is not the tube that has the slow leak). Also annoying. Thanks guy. Two strikes for SHOP A.

SHOP B. “Do you have a Dunlop adapter.” “Dunlop? No ... only Presta and Schrader. But we -might- be able to order it.” “I can’t wait, thank you.”

SHOP C. “Do you have a Dunlop adapter.” “Dunlop? Dunlop? We have a Presta adapter ... " He showed me the adapter, and (a) it looked exactly like the Dunlop adapter and (b) it was $1.50. So I bought it. It worked, the tire held air and the village was saved. I wrote them a thank-you note so they also know that the next time someone comes in asking about a Dunlop adapter (2027), they can be all “we have you SET UP, my good consumerer.” I’ll go buy two more spares later, they’re tiny little nuts.

Phil Edwards: The real reason suburbs were built for cars.

Bike ride #16-22. Truck man doesn’t notice me in the Xing, so I air brush him. Do I have to explain this. I refuse. He wasn’t paying attention and there was a car coming the other way which obscured the lower 40% of my body/bike. He stopped 50 feet later in the middle of the street. I’m not sure what was going to happen, maybe he was hoping i’d turn around and he could back over me indignantly?

I got a pair of padded bicycle shorts. A net positive, these will do until I get a deluxe padded seat. The helmet has its pros and cons. Can’t hear as well as I’d like with all the padding smooshed up against my ears. The visor fogs up. The weight doesn’t bother, that was a concern.

People continue to “gun” their cars after they have to endure the excruciating business of stopping for a bicyclist in a crosswalk. It’s usually trucks that are really just slamming that gas pedal after I pass.

I have accidentally come up against a difficult “use case” wrt bicycle freight, so soon into my bicycling “phase.” 2x4s. I need about four of them. I can either walk to the nearby shit national hardware chain or ride the bike to my preferred 2x4 vendor. I have a nice wheel for one end of the grouping, but for the end that is next to the bike, I need some sort of pivot/joint, like a tow rope that attaches to all four boards etc. Something. I’ll figure it out.

Clown ass on bike with cheap bullhorn pointed backward, blaring some sort of continually-looped screed that was so distorted by the volume I couldn’t understand a word of it. He also had a flyer taped to the side of his bike that had been weathered to illegibility. The yelling sounded militaristic, blah blah blah BLAH, blah blah blah BLAH. Normally, you hear something like that, the person passes, you pass, whatever, water off your back. We were stopped waiting for a freight train, so it really got on my nerves. I reluctantly pulled my phone out to take a photo, knowing that something would happen such that I’d just miss it, and yeah, he decided to leave. Just as he was out of sight, photo app was ready. “I’ll run into him again.” Like a half-hour later. He saw me and started saying something like “I have a message” as he was approaching me and I could barely understand that; I was going to yell something back at him, like “no one understands your dumb-ass manifesto, jagoff” but then realized he wouldn’t understand me either. Then I ran into him another half-hour later. I concentrated really hard on the important information and pulled out the phrase “innoculate society” so it must be a pro-vax message. Clearly. Given the way he was riding “around” and not “to” a thing, I think this is his mission, to be a blaring dickhead in the east bay to turn people off of his pet cause, The People’s Campaign to Blah Blah BLAH. I’ll trade him for the old people putting up the giant RFK banner on the ped bridge every weekend. Just to be clear, “trading” here means that he would be sent to Moon Jail, a construct I have created solely within my mind for the world’s assholes. It’s getting pretty full. Also, again, for clarity, “Moon Jail” is a jail; on the moon.

B. A. Stevens Billiard & Bar Supplies ‒ Refrigerators and Ice Boxes for Every Purpose. Spring 1894 (pg 99). Toast water.

occasionally i think about a news story that was covering the ongoing ramp-up wrt in-cab tracking computers for long-haul truckers

at one point the trucker was supposed to pull the computer from the mount and turn it into the dispatcher or some such because at this point we’re in the early-middle of the sneakernet-to-skynet revolution

this is the thing that’s constantly telling him to slow down speed up you need to go here go there you’ve been docked you’ve been demoted etc

so he opened the door to his cab and high-kicked the computer straight out of its mount

yeah i’ve been working on the new api calls, why do you ask

Every Frame A Painting: Jackie Chan ‒ How to Do Action Comedy (2014).

no one: yay the new cdc bullshit guideline cartoon is here

look, some people need to die because you went back to work while you were still contagious (usually, it’s 10 days with covid). we are america’s oil, just this large flow of expendable people keeping the lights on. please die so your supervisor’s supervisor can get his catamaran waxed.

a whole 24 hours, wow. [FX: slowest fucking golf clap ever] / absolutely no mention of checking to see if you’re contagious. zero. this bit of the cartoon is the alternative ‒ “Prevent Spread ASTERISK FOR PRO-BUSINESS DEFINITION OF THE WORD ’PREVENT’”

Ride #14-15 ... I am doing errands with the bike now. Mailed some letters, bought some envelopes to make more letters to mail. Bought groceries. Really motivated to get rid of car. Especially since, as it turns out, one of the few times this year I’ve been on the freeway, I ended up behind a gravel truck dislodging rocks, one hit the windshield, and the crack is spreading. The race is on. Can I get rid of the car before I have to replace the windshield.

I removed the sticker from the rear fender using a plastic razor and isopropyl alcohol, which I had lying around because I used to use it for cuts and scrapes and now the winning formula is apparently to just use soap and water. I didn’t know plastic razors existed until I went looking for sticker-removal solutions. They’re like a regular razor, except plastic. The one I have is a holder; one side holds a disposable metal razor blade, the other side a disposable plastic razor blade. Stay tuned for the oral history of plastic razor blades.

Someone asked about the bike while I was parked up. I started explaining a few things about it and said that it makes you sit up straight, so you’re higher up than a regular drop-handlebar racer speed bike. He had a drop-handlebar racer and said “I sit up when I ride ... I think I do.” His bike had the serious curly drop handlebars. You can sit up if you ... want to ride hands-free. Otherwise, you’re bending over. Look how sleek. #sleek I mentioned Not Just Bikes and he said he loved Not Just Bikes and I gave him the url for the Dutch Bike video which I know by memory since I’ve posted it here 2,738 times. “lowercase a, uppercase E, uppercase S ...”

The tiny dog tried to attack my bike again. It’s going to get spoked. Calling animal control tomorrow, avoiding the area in general, it’s a shitshow. I have to go out of my way for 2+ blocks but that’s life in these here United States.

I have my bike helmet. I went and got it: with my bike. Haven’t tried it on, today is pretty hot and I don’t like things on my skull when it’s hot. Other than a tiny, talkative rat that controls my amazing French cooking via hair-pulls. Don’t know how it’s going fit in the helmet.

What a strange sign. Sure, push the button, but they’re still going to run you over. Bon appetit.

Ride #12-13. 14.6 miles today. 138 miles total. Got the plug-in lock and the frame lock keys in the mail the same day. The bike fell and torqued the unused front light a bit so I removed it. Now there’s the front light mounting bracket to remove which requires the whole steering column be pulled out which no. I’ll put the bow on the bracket. The panniers are both too forward (I kick one with my heel occasionally) and too much to the rear (the kickstand barely snaps into place). These are not going to be long-term bags, but I’m going to relax my bank account for awhile wrt “optional” upgrades. I can deal, bags.

The rides themselves are losing half a grade, down to a B, because the amount of car fuck-ups grates, just like it does driving, but you know, instead staring at someone’s muffler from the underside. One guy went way over the line, I stopped, stared at the car’s tire, then started making moves to go around the back. The bike is not a sleek sleeky thing, it’s clunky and takes effort to manuever in tight spaces. So he starts backing up. Then he says he’s sorry, and I nod, then he says he’s sorry again, and I nod, and he says “I said I was sorry” which yeah. “Yes thank you, I deal with this every day.” It just ... adds up. The ones that kill me are the ones that are totally oblivious. I’d rather have someone go “yeah I saw you, FUCKHOLE” than the zombies. Maybe.

I’m riding, for the most part, on a designated parkway path. This was on a street, which is about 10% of my “usual” 14-mile route. Anyway, add cement to level the sidewalk across the streets, make the cars go up and down little ramps (oh no they will be an additional .7 seconds late to their destination), fuck Armor Tile. There’s tons of wonderful ways to deal with this, and it’s all WORKING CURRENT infrastructure tech but heaven forbid a car has to slow down when running over a child or your pet or you or your whole fucking family. If I actually routinely purchased anything other than art supplies/food/tools I’d certainly avoid all the businesses that were whining about the West Portal changes. “’Where are the people going to go? They are just going to avoid the West Portal and go somewhere else,’ said Pankaj Shah, owner of Roti Indian Bistro.” Yep, that’s how it works, or it’s actually totally the opposite, I can’t remember which. PEOPLE GO WHERE CARS AREN’T. Surprise, I’ve eaten there, never again. Anyway, make the drivers push buttons and carry flags and wait for the signal and wear hi-vis vests and wear white and wear helmets and look both ways. Fuck HAWK crossings, fuck beg buttons, fuck your stupid flexposts twice, fuck sharrows. In conclusion, fuck cars.

That’s one reason I’m getting rid of my car. US infrastructure is soooo good at hiding people so cars=fast they’ll just pop up suddenly and you think “oh am I going senile?” No, this is how the system is designed.

I also need to start BLORTing to different destinations, the novelty gene in me is whining again. “Cool your jets, dear, we got some surprise packages coming.” “Okay.”

Space Feather: On Max Headroom ‒ The Most Misunderstood Joke on TV.

Phil Gaimon: Please Share This When I’m Killed by Someone Driving a Car.

I liked Cardhouse when it was less bikey wah wah wah [FX: wees self]

2024jun26. Ride #9-10-11. 16 miles today. 114 miles total, approximately. Installed rear-view mirror poorly. Re-installed rear-view mirror. Rear-view mirror is cheap piece of shit that vibrates too much so now we’re going to invest actual money in a new one. Pulled rusty pivot bolt/nut combo out of seat replaced with new bolt and wing nut so it’s easier to adjust. This of course did not work for something as beefy as a bicycle seat so back to regular nut for superior tightening. Added cheap panniers/saddlebags as test before buying more expensive panniers/saddlebags. Haven’t studied any of the How To Make A Pretty Ribbon Allll Pretty video tabs yet so I can add a pretty bow to my bike. Oiled squeaky seat, looks like it’s the worst rust on the bike. No more noises at all, bike is seriously quiet. Seat is third-party manufacturer, “Lepper.” Made in Holland. I may have to angle the seat up a bit, it felt like I was slipping forward a little. It’s a game of balance, and balancing, and balances. Waiting on plug-in lock (July 3rd), extra lock key (~week or two). Need a coffee mug holder on the bike. Morning ride with coffee thank you yes. I’m starting to get the feeling that I’m slumming riding this thing. It’s so pretty. I also had Pants Incidents wherein each leg of my pants got a little caught in the pedals, the left more than the right. Adding “solve pants problem” to bike to-do list. My bicycling outfit continues to evolve.

Limpboi suv driver blasted out from behind the Seabreeze Cafe and locked his brakes in the dirt/rock parking lot to avoid hitting me. If they evict the Seabreeze Cafe I will burn this city down to ashes. I recommend the “Dutch crunch” roll w/your fav-rit type of sammich meats & etc.

A bus pulled up to sidewalk and I yelled “oh NO” and cranked to get past it before it opened its doors. Depositing people directly in my path.

Another “nice bike” compliment. Also saw two Dutch bikes rolling around.

Here’s this amazing bit of kit as you slide into Gilman from the new ped/bike bridge. Yes, America, it’s [FX: thoroughly checks history] the first railing in California that separates bikes/peds from death machines, the ones they put in Japan on every block ever in any city. Gilman connects you to the Ohlone Greenway, but not before a few blocks of shitty old-time no protection bike lanes. I ride on the sidewalk as much as possible. Is it against the law? I don’t care, fuck cars, we live in the stupidest auto-centric hellscape bullshit fuckup clown down virustown scenario. Which reminds me, gotta order the helmet.

It’s four days shy of a year when Zuckerberg answered an employee’s question about a crucial, important burgeoning technology during a meeting. Let’s check in with the meat of the blathering.

“Our north star is can we get a billion people into the metaverse doing hundreds of dollars a piece in digital commerce by the end of the decade? If we do that, we’ll build a business that is as big as our current ad business within this decade. I think that’s a really exciting thing. I think a big part of how you do that is by pushing the open metaverse forward, which is what we’re going to do.”

All I am saying is that I can produce this sort of grande bullshit if you give me a bottle of cough syrup and a straw. Pay me 1/10th his salary and watch your stock surge.

the world is filled with assholes

some of them go to great lengths to identify themselves

“well mah truck ain’t FATAL enough right there ... gonna fix it up”

would i rather be alive living in the us

or dead, floating in space

seems like a toss-up

The Erstwhile Philatelic Society caretakers recently got to experience The Solano Human Project and we all thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. It involves a pleasant stroll around the relatively quiet business district of Solano Avenue in Albany, California, United States, Earth. “Can you save humanity from AI while strolling on Solano?” Please read the link for a project description and accolades from other peoples who have done the do. As with any sort of experiential relational aesthetic artverk of the kind that carves out a fleeting existence in the world [FX: motions to world], the best time for you to contact Solano Human Project and reserve a spot is right fucking now. As a member of a group with several labor-intensical walkabouts under our various belts and suspenders, it is a juggling act and not everything is under your control. Additionally, we were fortunate enough to schedule our time during BONUS CONTENT PERIOD as mentioned on the project’s page: “Special ‘BONUS CONTENT’ only available through July 27, 2024.” Stop sleeping, do the thing.

If you are very masky like I am, please be aware that you are never thrown into situations where masking would be a problem. I mention this because this is the nutswerld we live in today, peopled by life-like robot men and women.

I am stressing the “do this” portion of this message because we, the EPS caretakers, always have quite a chuckle at the ridic number of people who either mutter/exclaim about really wanting to do the X but never do the X and then kick rocks angrily or expect us to serve them a hand-written engraved invitation to do the X before they’ll do the X. Don’t be a don’t bee. Be a do bee, doo bee doo bee doo. Move your ass. Now.

“I’m telling you again, Johnson, if you don’t get a fucking contagious disease mentioned in the goddam lyrics, you are FIRED”