Testing an upload in the chat part of SE - disregard:

Oh okay it does still work

@Criggie Well, do you bring trekking poles on the bike? 😄

no - normally I'm pushing the bike. Trekking poles aren't really a thing on the street.

commute is 27 km, so if I break down near the start I'd turn around and pick up a different bike.

Halfway and beyond, I'm closer to the destination than the start.

That middle one was just-over halfway walking home.

~14 km pushing a bike and wearing road cleats was about 4 hours, so not exactly speedy.

Jeez, I feel lucky to live in a place where you can just use a train/bus/subway/tram in case of a breakdown...

@Criggie you armed an AI? Put a pink sword on that cleaning robot?

eheheh yeah

it was crap

It was an autonomous industrial roomba

but it was $25k NZ to buy, and still only did one floor, about twice the area of a domestic house. It had to be emptied by a cleaner every hour or so. It could not open doors or clean inside closed rooms, and it got hung up on desks and chairs a lot.... things that are numerous inside an office.

At the time work had 4 floors, so that would have needed four of the robots and didn't noticeably reduce the cleaner's workload.

Upshot, we trialed one then sent it back.

I do hope it had the sword attached on return :))))

Also, HOLY OBSCENE SEATPOST STICKOUT BATMAN !!

I'd be scared to put myself on that saddle in fear of it snapping off.

that's got to be 60cm of leverage !

Irresponsible behaviour, like arming roombas with swords, will be our downfall, if you believe Musk. (Never mind climate catastrophe, breakdown of biodiversity, and tyrants with nukes.)

It was a foam sword, and the thing was defeated by power or etherent cables looping on the floor. Its not a significant threat

Did it yell 'exterminate' while being stuck at cables?

@Criggie maybe pack a pair of flip-flops or huaraches in your tool bag. You probably make them do double duty as tool holders with your typical ingenuity for hacks.

And TBH we've lived here 6 years and 4 walks is one walk every 18 months.

Interesting idea - but they look less comfortable than going bare-foot :-\

something like umpteen kinds of these, often DIY.

It's for barefoot running, just protects you from sharps or high temperature

Best way is to buy a sheet of Vibram sole material and cut it exactly to one's foot's size. Because the sole weighs next to nothing the cord isn't uncomfortable.

yeah nah I'd probably just prefer to wear out my cleats, and walk on the grass where I can.

Aren't crocs pretty lightweight, albeit bulky? Not bad for emergency walking, or for bikepacking... if you can endure being seen in crocs 😄

I just stopped writing about how those sandals are way too hot on the soles, since unlike barefoot sweat cannot evaporate. And then you come with mushy sweat buckets.

Drill a drain hole? 🤣

I had Adidas trainers with drain holes at the bottom, super cheaply from a sale.

Pretty comfy shoes for ambling around. I think they were made for boating though and soles didn't last long.

@Criggie Just wondering, but are road pedals so much more comfortable than SPDs (with platforms)? (asking because MTB shoes seem more walkable.

yeah well the story there is I was given some shoes, and then bought pedals to suit.

So I got sucked into the road cleat ecosystem

Road shoes feel "faster" when riding, but way more cloppy when walking and also terrible grip on the ground.

Yeah I would like multiple of everythjing for every purpose, but that's just not going to happen

I own one helmet

Time for sleep - good night !

With MTB shoes you can even walk through snow and mud somewhat

@Erlkoenig There are also different grades of MTB shoes. Mine for instance are quite rigid, so are uncomfortable for long walks, but the "walkability" seems to be targeted to pushing the bike when you can't pedal. They also have threads built into the sole to add spikes to provide extra "grip" when climbing on soft terrain.

(officially mine are gravel, but I don't really what could be the difference between gravel and cross country shoes)

@Rеnаud my shimano shoes have such threads too. But the soles are not very stiff so somewhat ok to walk. They must be great for running fast or sprinting, at least when terrain is soft enough to provide grip.

@Criggie what-if.xkcd.com/5

Lol, the part about cars didn't age well. Modern cars, even ICE ones, can be completely (remotely) controlled by software, without manual override. Many have cameras and even radar, so evil-intelligent cars could definitely go on a killing rampage

True. The prevalence of sensor-laden cars has accelerated quickly. (pun intended)

I still don't see how a killer car tells the difference between pedestrians and street furniture. (Light posts, post boxes, rubbish bins, etc.)

Even ML-programmed autonomous vehicles wouldn't get trained to distinguish among the variety of things they're not supposed to hit any of...

Programming can be changed, that's the whole point of the robot uprising trope

Instructions can be changed (relatively) easily, but shape/pattern recognition is a lot harder to retrain on the fly. Even if the killer cars managed to learn how to distinguish human figures from street signs, we'd just need to plant mannequins in front of bollards to disable them.

I predict the AIpocalypse comes off the rails when the computers discover they need a puny meatbag in a forklift to get the robot parts from the self-driving truck to the automated assembly line.

Considering how insanely buggy all embedded and control software is, the robot uprising will probably crash after 5.23sec

Unfortunately, the biggest killer of the robot uprising would probably be starvation as supply chains unwind.

That's pretty much a given regardless of the origin of the apocalypse. Massive EMP/Carrington event, same.

Robot uprising prevention: