well if you're just going to out and SAY it 😆
I ride a bike therefore I care about cities. Also love rock climbing, RPGs, SFF, heavy metal & martial arts. From Wolastoqiyik territory, living in Anishinaabe territory. She/her but not a sonofabitch about it.
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well if you're just going to out and SAY it 😆
I love that :-) You hear it in Atlantic Canada mostly among the older folks and in rural areas but it's definitely still there. And every so often I catch myself doing it.
heh, also linguistics nerd here (couldja tell?). Here's a video of a Norwegian woman doing it (he tags where it is in the subtitles which is helpful)
Absolutely welcome! When I found out it was an Atlantic cultural thing, and realized I do it, I went down a bit of a rabbit hole. There's a theory that it originated with the Vikings, which explains its geographic distribution
Very plausible; Grok as FSD
An aspirated yes is when you say "yeah" or "yep" while inhaling. AKA "ingressive pulmonic speech." Found in Atlantic Canada and some other North Atlantic countries (I've heard Scandinavia and Ireland among others). Kind of means "yep, I agree," or "yeah, I knew that" rather than a straight-up yes
"Aspirated yes"
I'm sorry this is mushy but I love this so much. At the end of the day our urbanism is not in service of some grand quest for national economic dominance or cultural vengeance against suburbs. It's for this. Making people's lives safer and healthier and more prosperous and building communities.
Huh, I haven't been around or in one (because Canada) but it could very well be. Might have to look into it more. On a quick look, I'm seeing some "AV software was janky, resulting in crash" type stuff but not "AV was speeding" or "AV disregarded controlled intersection"
to be fair, autotaxis like Waymo are slightly different in my head than individually owned autonomous cars though, because I really object to "buy fleet of autonomous cars, put them on the road, take up space, make profit: employ no one."
Also they perpetuate car dependency and car infrastructure at the expense of more sustainable and, I would argue, more sociable modes of transport.
The up side: they don't get drunk or distracted, they don't break laws, they don't nod off at the wheel. The down side: they circulate around adding a sometimes empty vehicle to traffic while some capitalist makes passive income off them, employing no one, & eating into public transit's modal share
Absolutely (just in case it wasn't clear that the all-caps were intended to convey sarcasm). I hate the idea of autonomous cabs possibly even more than I hate union-free gig-economy ride-hailing apps, because at least the latter "employs" people
We don't have them in Canada either whatEVER shall we DO
The account was already tagged with "AI imagery" by a labeler so I'm kinda surprised. Unless they are seeing and sharing a lot of AI content, which is entirely possible I suppose
Somewhere, Murderbot is wishing for the sweet release of an explosive decompression event
My favorite example on Google Street View: One pole broken off halfway up. One scratched and battered and marked up with black marks. One snapped off and lying at the side of the road.
It's so great. I saw another video of someone else rendered equally speechless. Would love to see this thing in person
this channel just continues to be absolutely My Jam
I am calm. I am breathing deeply through my nose. I am counting to ten. I… WHAT, ARE YOU AFRAID YOUR DOG WILL INFODUMP TO YOU ABOUT THE FUCKING BALL?!?
HA I knew where that link was going to go before I clicked on it
also kangaroos don't move their hind legs independently of each other
Kangaroos don't walk like that. But thanks for contributing to the erosion of objective reality!
Two thumbs up for the vintage CBC tee :-D
Summer's Not Over
I really don't like how its eyes wobble and gloop around
its deeply funny/a historical tragedy that silicon valley are spending countless billions and boiling oceans chasing an AI fever dream while actual future tech is out there looking cool as hell
Watching my cats sparring counts as martial arts practice, honestly. You can watch Lorge Cat let Smol Cat get in legit moves, you can watch them both stop to think through the next combo, you can watch Smol Cat try to strategize around the size difference
This is absolutely my "I just got home, I have 30-45 minutes before I have to be out the door again for a class" go-to. I put nifty mustard on the bread, maybe add some sharp cheddar
watched this a FEW times in a row. I love it.
I've just been reminded of the time the wonderful @tkingfisher.com said lovely things about Peter S. Beagle and The Last Unicorn so this is a day when I have to remind you that that book is ice and fairy wings and lilacs and the death of everything and if you have not read it you absolutely should.
Especially since: news.ballotpedia.org/2025/08/21/a...
hoo boy do I ever want these
I try to stick to that rule as much as I can. It's not like you're going to convince them of anything anyway. I try to remember I can just block them and go talk to people who like bicycles
"they need to learn that they need to follow the rules as well."
Produce the bodies, be they alive or dead.
Also, people were less likely to call in sick during the pandemic because more people were working from home all the time so you COULD work while you had a cold without having to bring it to the office?
This was pickled beets, because I had a lot of beets from my farm share. My cutting board looks like a crime scene now.
Hell yeah spending the evening listening to metal and making preserves
Heck yeah!!! Playing with throwing knives this afternoon, finally managed to land a shot
Happy Labour Day! (Playlist not mine)
I considered hopping onto the path behind the Rona and then cutting cross country through the farm (there's a single track) to the Dewberry Trail and picking up Walkley at the trailhead (slightly less terrible highway crossing) but had a time constraint to deal with
Just *chef's kiss*, that sign. Peak #Autowa. No notes.
I'll just drop you at the point where the painted bike lane is *marked as crossing the onramp* and then just. . . vanishes. Enjoy this example of "but the bike lane brought me here." (The Google car seems to have come through here on a relatively quiet morning.) maps.app.goo.gl/sKjYbSLiyCL5...
That goat track at the right of the stroad? That's a *desire line* 😨. That's what I ended up doing too: I just got up on that narrow bit and walked the bike for half a kilometre after literally RUNNING with it across the highway offramp.
🌟ALERT ALERT ALERT🌟 🌟 #TransitCat #BikeCat !🌟 🌟THIS IS NOT A DRILL OR EVEN CATURDAY🌟
Reminds me of this Ottawa city councillor on an audit committee meeting over Zoom, with the laptop on the passenger seat and his eyes on his phone, ON CAMERA, IN A LIVESTREAMED CITY COUNCIL MEETING. He's now a Member of Provincial Parliament.
Had to ride my bike on a bunch of long straight rural roads today with little to no shoulder and you know I thought about this video a bunch
Yeah, although I pretty much only use it when I'm trying to track my rides for some reason (like for this challenge I've been doing
HA, a couple of my friends are also in Victoria and have also been watching that highway bridge with a lot of hope and anticipation. (And I love the Goose)
It was tolerable this morning at like 8:30 am when traffic was light, but coming back around 5:15? GodDAMN that was terrifying
Google directions got me to Navan today, via the rail trail, but holy FUCK apparently the only way to cross the highway was INNES. Riding across highway on- and off-ramps on what is basically also a highway, with no bike lane and a curb? Can not recommend.
SEVEN HUNDRED KILOMETRES RIDDEN, FK YEAH (you know what I can do now? I can decide sometimes that maybe today I don't FEEL like a bike ride)
Riding a bike, you get to watch these peopledriving around staring at their phones every damn day. It's SO much worse than most people think it is. The other day I passed a parked car on my bike: he started driving & pulling out into the lane while staring at his phone, nearly hit me
The thing I was sort of surprised by this month, riding like twice as much as I usually do, is that I'm hungry ALL THE TIME. I really didn't step up my snacks-packing to the degree necessary. 630 km. 70 to go. Probably packing in another 20 or so tonight.
With alt text:
Look at this thread and imagine that you had to deal with this in your own life and maybe you will start to get it.
this is legit shocking to me. back when I ran a piddling little micropublisher doing mostly zines, I registered our books, wtf
My workplace has the option to include your pronouns in your network ID and it's a godsend sometimes for exactly this reason. It's rough when someone doesn't use that option and I have to try and work around using any pronouns at all because I don't know....
I love the idea of a guerilla umlaut www.the-berliner.com/english-news...
Okay, farm share, I see your challenge and I raise you corn salsa with bell pepper and jalapeño and cilantro and red cabbage and red onion and the only things I didn't get from you was the lime, salt, cumin & oil
Also, selfishly, I would take a few straight days, during the week, of rain.... after August so I'm done trying to get through a quota of kilometres on the bike 😅
that'd be just about perfect, yeah
So I'm... not patient, so when that let up by a teeny bit I just went for it. I got drenched but hey, made it past the 600km mark for the #GreatCycleChallenge! Got home wet, chilly, tired, and hungry but... 100 km to go before Sunday. I think I can, I think I can, I think I can. . . .
Well, maybe I'll see if this is going to blow over before I try to ride 20 km home
Yeah, they eventually gave up on the set close to my building that was right in front of a bus stop when the buses kept just massacring them while pulling in to the curb
Which means the ones on Kilborn follow the bike lanes: but the ones nearby on Pleasant Park are frequently too close to the curb to safely allow a bike through. But drivers may assume that I'm going to be staying outside them "in the bike lane" ... and crowd me.
The other thing that bugs me about them is that as far as I can tell they are NOT meant to delineate bike lanes, or at least not always, but people THINK they are. From what I can find out, the outside poles are placed a set distance from the centre, not the curbs. (blue poles tho ARE bike lanes?)
yeah, I've watched drivers fully come to a stop faced with these things when they're new, and then skootch slowly through. I've also watched buses just drive right over them. Honestly they should just put up speed cameras - those work AND generate revenue.
I can kinda see the snow clearing argument: it would be really tough to clear around them and as a winter biker I can only assume they would just clear *inside* the posts, leaving even more snow at the edge of an already narrower street. And I don't know how they'd clear around those centre posts.
Case in point: the centre post has been hit so much it's got scars and black streaks. The post on the left has been snapped off halfway up but is still standing; the post on the right has been knocked down and then presumably dragged out of the bike lane
To be clear, I hate these things and they're EVERYWHERE. They get broken and block the bike lane; they have little pads they're bolted into that could catch a bike tire; people think they're marking off bike lanes when they're not; they create pinch points where cars try to squeeze past you
I'm not imagining it, these suckers ARE popping up like daisies. City councillor's newsletter with lots of info on how MANY they've put in and what the process is. Pretty short on why, or how effective they actually are, or whether or not they're a hazard for people on bikes
It's the King's birthday. Jack Kirby. The Avengers. Fantastic Four. The New Gods. More. Infinite worlds. And remember, he was a Nazi killer. He beat them senseless in NY, and later shot them in Europe. Here's a sketch from Jack of his gal on some stationary he pulled from a dead Nazi. All hail.
Ha, you beat me to it. It's a classic
This is like when they counter with "not everyone can physically ride a bike" and "what are contractors supposed to do if they can't carry their tools around in a truck?" as a response to "it would be great if more people could ride bikes to go places."
I'm getting bloodyminded about this now: I have 5 days to get 165 km in and by GOD Yes, this evening's ride home was a bit of a slog and yes, I blew a tire on one bike this morning. But. Never say die, etc etc etc. Just made a plan to ride to Navan/Vars on Saturday so that'll be 50+ km down.
I whole-heartedly disagree with the City of Ottawa administration's decision to mandate a full return to the office for City staff on Jan. 1. I wasn't supportive when federal public services were forced back into the office, and I certainly don't support it now.
Like yeah I really BET that whatever random shit the hallucination machine spits out about bullet lists is going to be more efficient than me going to the page about bullet lists on the style guide site and looking with my eye jelly at the words on the screen to find the ones I want
oh for fucksake I was just looking for the canada.ca style guide to check on punctuation of bullet lists and THIS bullshit pops up when I type "canada.ca bullet lists" into the search bar.
You tell em, Jeff. This decision is stupid.
Yep, "well duh" and "oh yay more congestion" - but I also liked that last line. Hey Ottawa, active transportation is almost up to 10% modal share!!! Go us!
Ah, it was inevitable: the August flat tire. On my way to the office this morning. Every year I get a flat tire or some other mechanical thing. (It's a good thing I own more than one bike! Swapped rides, off we go, crisis averted)
And what with taking the bike to judo class tonight, I've crested 500 km! It's going to be a squeaker but I might be able to pull this off?? Assuming I can still average about 33-35 km a day...
I take a lunch break from reading a book about how to interrogate production practices and now all I can do is yell “THE SUIT IS THE SHIRT” and figure out how to put this screenshot in my syllabus.
Union station, DC
Over 1000 people signed this petition calling on Toronto event venues to stop banning bicycle helmets. Please spread the word. #BikeTO #TOpoli #VisionZero chng.it/VLmRkbdHXR
So, if I'm "envisioning" a rock climbing route, which would be similar, I can close my eyes and run through the movements as I remember them, but I can't see in my head what the holds or the rock face look like.
Out for a ride tonight for #GreatCycleChallenge ... caught a moment in Mooney's Bay. I quite like this shot.
I was at @karridian.bsky.social's place and he asked me about it because he saw the post, and I was like "look, she was fine when I left, this time it's not on me" 😅
However, I DO dream. Vividly sometimes. And when I'm awake, I can remember that I saw those things in my dream (last night I dreamed my mom shouldered a firetruck and hauled it several feet, as a feat of strength) but I don't re-see them or anything. Anyway, it's WEIRD and fascinating to me.
But okay, general poll: what does "I can see that in my head" mean to you? Like I'll say "I can picture my living room" but that for me means I'm aware of what's in it and the size and space of it but no, I can't actually close my eyes and SEE it. I can close my eyes and THINK ABOUT it.
Eeeeeexactly :-D
It's all so subjective and depends on self-reporting and interpretations of language and my family are all ND enough that we can deep dive on it for a WHILE. (fun fact, my big sister, who I look a LOT like, is synaesthetic AND hyperphantasic I think, so we're like opposites that way)
kind of weird to me that I mentioned a little while back to my family that I'm aphantasic (I don't see things in my mind) and every so often they just come back like, yeah but what? how? what does that mean? what's it like for you? and we end up having these long convos about how brains work
Okay, yowch; that must have happened after I left??? Hope it heals up fast! (But also, enjoy jumpscaring the coworkers ;-) )
I pulled over and stepped out into the road to take a few pictures. There is no disguising how ugly this parking garage is or will be.
Okay, yeah, I just rode a hundred km in two days, I got three hundred to go, I . . . can maybe do this thing. I might not get a whole lot ELSE done in the rest of this month but I might get to my goal! #GreatCycleChallenge