Having more fun than you. Especially if you work in the bike biz.
Photo “shared” from Revel
Ho boy. “Like biking without the work.” Thanks so much, Revel.
I’ll just put the bicycle industry over here, shall I? Next to the buggy whips, Linotypes and rotary-dial phones?
Anybody seen any journalism on what we do with the batteries in all this lovely “green” e-shit when they fail, as batteries do? Can they be recycled? Do they wind up down in WIPP? Or do we just launch them into space?
Tags: Revel scooters
Mad Blog Media 
June 17, 2019 at 7:40 am |
Here’s some journalism on what we presently do with plastic recycling: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/where-does-your-plastic-go-global-investigation-reveals-americas-dirty-secret/ar-AACZkcL?li=BBnb7Kz
Wonder how “The Graduate” movie advice would play nowadays. ??
Not a good sign for future battery recycling either, eh?
Additional news is that the UN projects world population to possibly reach 11 billion by 2100; but more likely will peak at around 9 billion between 2040 and 2060 and then decline slightly. It’s currently at ~7.3 billion.
On the bright side, the solstice is this Friday! 🙂
June 17, 2019 at 8:30 am |
The Strawberry Moon looked pretty awesome this morning, Herself reports. She got to eyeball it on the way to work; the neighbors’ houses blocked my view, dern it all anyway.
June 17, 2019 at 8:14 am |
Looks like at least in the United Snakes, most of the high tech batteries are either shitcanned or sent overseas for recycling, since Americans, being so environmentally-conscious, want all the green technology but none of the required nasty byproducts, which we keep behind the curtain.
Keep moving, move along, don’t pay any attention to what is going on here…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battery_recycling
June 17, 2019 at 8:28 am |
“WALL-E” was a documentary, you know.
June 17, 2019 at 8:36 am |
Cute!
Given that Amazon is the leviathan of commerce, I fail to see how Murrcans will ever embrace a meaningful Green New Deal, since rampant consumerism is a large part of our problem. The solution to unmitigated emissions is in part to cut back our appetite for More and More Shit. Especially, if as JD says, we are still minting more and more people.
June 17, 2019 at 8:49 am |
Rampant consumerism is also the basis of our economy. You’re an anarchist with a side of commie if you’re not happily buying shit you don’t need and can’t afford.
June 17, 2019 at 9:27 am |
Well, I’ve got a bit of that streak in me but generally for durable goods rather than ephemeral shit. I really do wonder what would happen if we scaled down the economy, esp. given that most of the wealth is piled up on the top couple percent anyway. Amazon seems to be a perfect wealth redistribution scheme, leaching money from people buying crap and piling it up in Jeff Bezos’ account while employing a legion of galley slaves. The alleged Santolina development also comes to mind.
Neither this economy nor our sprawl based development is sustainable.
June 17, 2019 at 11:46 am |
Speaking of sprawl based development, you gotta love this.
June 17, 2019 at 11:04 am |
Sustainable growth is an oxymoron that only a moron short on oxygen could come up with.
PS: I hope that is good enough to steal, Patrick.
June 17, 2019 at 11:38 am |
OxyMoron sounds like a particular brutal form of brainwashing. Gets those stubborn thoughts out of your mind, along with pretty much everything else.
June 17, 2019 at 12:04 pm |
Well, I guess not good enough to steal, and I agree after second thought. Trump Heights? An imaginary gift from one corrupt autocrat to another. But, Notayahoo has the same idea as everyone else. Tell cheeto benito what he want to hear and he will ignore you for awhile.
June 17, 2019 at 12:13 pm |
Sustainably growing is like fucking for virginity.
June 17, 2019 at 12:18 pm |
As I’ve written before, if these gizmos keep people out of cars, great. If they just put a bunch more smart-ass drunks on the streets who otherwise would be walking (staggering) not-so-great. I suspect the backers of this thing figure some big-bucks outfit will buy ’em before they go bust, otherwise there’s gonna be a lot of e-waste to haul away somewhere. China’s already been through this, no?
June 17, 2019 at 12:27 pm |
I figure this is just another attempt to popularize the Darwin Award competition. Newbie riders on mopeds in a dense urban environment? What could possibly go wrong?
June 17, 2019 at 3:38 pm |
Anecdotal evidence from a left coast vacation … lots of folks traveling without a rental car cuz they know they can zip around and pay by the mile. Vacationers, conference attendees, etc. But no guarantee that this is a 12-month or all-latitude solution. You never see them test run these things in Buffalo in February
June 17, 2019 at 3:58 pm |
Or Vegas in August.
June 17, 2019 at 5:29 pm |
And no one knows how to put a car seat on one, or haul a pallet of cedar mulch home from Lowe’s.
June 17, 2019 at 5:50 pm |
I keep seeing dudes on gas scooters, the sub-50cc models, putt-putting along on Tramway. You have to believe in an afterlife to do that shit, and you have to believe you’re going up rather than down, too.
Sure would suck to arrive in Hell with that big Cadillac imprint in your backside.
“Shit, maybe I should’ve bought a Harley instead of the scoot. Or a Yukon.”
“Don’t worry, buddy, plenty Harley riders down here too. Have a seat by the fire. ’Scuse me, I meant in the fire.”
June 17, 2019 at 12:46 pm |
You mentioned when the batteries fail. Just to be clear, there are two kinds of fail: the stop working before they’re supposed to kind, and the inevitable end of life cycle kind. The first game probably isn’t that big of a deal, but the second kind is huge. The army is paying a fortune overseas in remediation costs for deploying everywhere and then burying their lithium ions. There has never been a definitive study showing that the gas savings of a Toyota Prius make up for the battery generation costs and recycling costs. Batteries are super attractive short term and crazy scary long-term.
Problem is that they are inevitable. Anything that can run on gas or can be plugged in can be converted to a battery format. In terms of business models and economics, there are no barriers to entry. The engineering has already been done for you. It’s just a matter of slapping it together and rounding up investors. And this toothpaste ain’t going back in the tube.
June 17, 2019 at 2:03 pm |
^^^
What he said.
June 17, 2019 at 3:07 pm |
If you saw the basic load of batteries, quantity and cost, an Army division needs to deploy for 90 days you wouldn’t believe it. This is one reason the Army was an early adopter of solar and wind power.
June 17, 2019 at 3:31 pm |
they also own ROWPUs (Reverse Osmosis Water Purification Units) but those damn plastic water bottles keep showing up by the pallet-load.
June 17, 2019 at 2:48 pm |
Actually, batteries can be recycled. Energizer, in fact, has a line, EcoAdvanced, that is partially made with recycled batteries.
https://www.batterysolutions.com/recycling-information/how-are-batteries-recycled/
June 17, 2019 at 3:29 pm |
Can be, is the operative word.
June 17, 2019 at 4:32 pm |
Our little burg quit its recycling program. I was quick to blame the Chinese for not taking contaminated recycling materials. Then I talked to the city public works manager of the recycling program. She told me that the city has a 30% contamination rate. The contaminants were organic garbage, diapers, bowling balls, wood, yard waste, and on and on. Essentially people treated the recycling can as and overflow garbage cans. The city couldn’t sell it because it was too expensive to sort and clean. Granted, they were running it as an enterprise operation, it had to pay for itself. Another great repug idea. We can fix it. But, for the time being we are just burying the shit so the grand and great grandkids can clean it up later. Pitiful, and many Arizona cities are in the boat. I haul my recyclables to the county transfer point about 7 miles from the house. I’ll be damned if I will throw aluminum cans and plastic into the garbage.
June 17, 2019 at 4:51 pm |
Pat/Plat, me Boyo:
“Custom adapts itself to expediency.” (Tacitus 56-120AD, Roman historian)
“Mankind’s egocentricity is exceeded only by its arrogance.” (JD 1947-?)
We separate our recyclables from our “garbage” here. Not sure what actually happens to the recyclables though. More to follow as I research it.
“We know that in our free market economy some will prosper more than others. What we don’t accept is the idea that some folks won’t even get a chance.” (Julian Castro 1974-?)
June 17, 2019 at 7:30 pm |
’Burque and Fanta Se are both struggling with their curbside recycling programs. Ours won’t take glass — that stuff we have to haul down to a parking lot next to the Lowe’s on Juan Tabo.
June 18, 2019 at 12:30 am |
Tax revenues should fund the recycling since when the landfill is full tax revenues are going to be involved one way or another. I wonder if a “Don’t be a Litterbug” kind of program can educate folks to separate the stuff properly?
Here in Italy they have huge bins clearly marked all over the place, but I don’t know if their contamination rate is any better. Depending on where you are, the littering rates vary widely – the south still has plenty of trash blowing around while the north is much more tidy.
As to the battery pollution, I guess it’s like nukes? Choose your poison, but the nukes and batteries at least keep the crap out of the air that’s going to bake us off the planet sooner rather than later.
Makes me wonder if there are other planets out there with inhabitants who already tried all this and are now barren, lifeless balls of rock in space?
June 18, 2019 at 8:24 am |
Yep. We haul our glass directly to the recycling center on Old Buckman Road. But we can’t blame the Chinese, can we, for the fact that we generate so much shit? Heck, we rape the Chinese environment and worker to make it cheaply, then we buy it from China, and then expect them to do us a favor and take it back. Its another form of American imperialism. Expecting the rest of the world to drown in our shit.
June 19, 2019 at 11:16 am |
I recycle all that I can at the street and try to decontaminate it as much as possible taking into account the water and heat resource that it takes to decontaminate the stuff. I suspect that most of what I recycle is going to the landfill but I continue to do it because I’ve been weighing my recycle junk since 2008. Old habits are hard to break. I believe it may be time to simply throw everything into the garbage can. In a couple hundred years when the value is high enough, our children’s children can then set up companies that mine landfills for recyclable (recycleable?) products. Some landfills are already tapping the methane gas that is farted from them.
Regarding battery use and the problem of disposing / recycling of them: Yep, it’s a situation that manufacturers knew about, most consumers didn’t (don’t) think about, and venture capitalists investing in battery tech companies could care less about. One of the reasons I shun Di2, etap, etc. is because of the battery problem. Besides, I’m an Mech Engineer anyway – “I don’t need no steenking batteries”.
The only green thing humans can do for the environment is farting and to serve as compost when we pass on to meet the spikey forked red fella…
June 18, 2019 at 8:42 am |
FWIW, the NBA champs’ parade shooter was taken down by bike cops on traditional 26”, triple crank, hard tail mountain bikes. Not e-bikes, not gravel, not plastic wonders. That’s just science talking.
https://apple.news/Ah_X_6zqDTASH_WxBIdhIew