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Where do the children play?

(unpublishablepapers.substack.com)
409 points casca | 1 comments | 16 Nov 25 13:45 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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retube ◴[17 Nov 25 08:49 UTC] No.45951914[source]▶
As a parent, I relate to all this. Great piece.

When the kids were babies we had the standard debate of move to the countryside for fresh air and gambolling in the fields etc. But so glad we stayed in London, the kids have so much freedom with public transport they can organise their own meet ups and activities and go running around all over town without any parental assistance or intervention at all. Whereas elsewhere we'd need to drive them everywhere, they'd be stuck at home way more, they'd have no real agency in their lives - I grew up like that and hated it.

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ensocode ◴[17 Nov 25 09:05 UTC] No.45951995[source]▶
I can relate. Nice article. We had that same debate and ended up moving to the countryside. Surprisingly, it worked out well. + real forests. With today’s e-bikes, even hills or longer distances aren’t really a blocker for kids anymore. In the end, it feels like the bigger factor is how you organize daily life, not whether you’re in a city or in a rural area.
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netdevphoenix ◴[17 Nov 25 09:35 UTC] No.45952133[source]▶
>With today’s e-bikes, even hills or longer distances aren’t really a blocker for kids anymore

Unlike public transport, with an e-bike, the chances of getting a puncture or a malfunctioning battery increase with usage. Plus, there is also the very common bike theft and road accidents if you live in a country where bikes need to go on the road (like the UK)

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Toutouxc ◴[17 Nov 25 10:07 UTC] No.45952283[source]▶
It doesn’t take much time to fix a puncture with a tiny kit the size of a matchbox. There are also tubeless tires with liquid sealant.

An e-bike with a dead battery becomes a heavy bike.

Theft and accidents, okay, but the first sentence is just fearmongering.

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netdevphoenix ◴[17 Nov 25 16:31 UTC] No.45955147[source]▶
> It doesn’t take much time to fix a puncture with a tiny kit the size of a matchbox.

That's a dependency. Now you need to remember to have that kit with you. This is like solving the short battery life in phones with a portable battery charger. You still have to remember to charge the charger beforehand and bring it with you. Small kits are easy to lose sight of that by the time you need them so you don't know where they are.

Tubeless tires are sadly not compatible with most bikes. I am not trying to be downer, this is just my experience (losing the kit and finding out that the bike I bought is not compatible with tubeless tires). I do agree though that bikes are definitely the way to go. But I wouldn't rely on them too much, especially on the electric components. Humans have a tendency to aim for convenience above all and being stranded in the middle of nowhere with dead phone and a bike with a dead battery in winter is not fun

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HeinzStuckeIt ◴[17 Nov 25 20:16 UTC] No.45957780{3}[source]▶
People have been stashing a puncture repair kit in a small saddle bag since the nineteenth century. The kit just sits there until it is needed, potentially for years. To depict this as a big stress and risk is a real reach.
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netdevphoenix ◴[18 Nov 25 10:03 UTC] No.45963271{4}[source]▶
> To depict this as a big stress and risk is a real reach.

Yet here we are, living in a world where most parents would NOT let their kids travel around unsupervised even though it has been going on for longer than the 19th century. People have also been making fires for far longer than that. Both of these are depicted as big risks. You might find it a real reach or not but the overall point is that we don't live in a 19th century world anymore and our worldview is for better or worse different.

Try ask parents who can't barely make ends meet to get a puncture repair kit for their kid. You know the kit will be a cheap 5 star rated one from Amazon/Temu and the second it gets needed it won't work as it is meant to. This is reality

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1. HeinzStuckeIt ◴[19 Nov 25 14:18 UTC] No.45979787{5}[source]▶
Man, your post is just so out of touch. Puncture-repair kits are cheap, you can find them from hardware stores for just a couple of euro even in countries seen as expensive. And those kits work just fine regardless of how cheap they are, because the tech is so simple and unchanged since a century ago: rubber patch, chunk of metal to work as a tire lever, tiny piece of sandpaper or other abrasive, rubber cement. As long as that rubber-cement tube stays unopened, that kit will last years inside a saddle bag.

I spend a lot of time traveling the world by bicycle (hence the HN username), and I have bought cheap Chinese puncture-repair kits around the developing world, whether in China itself, Central Asia, or Sub-Saharan Africa. They have always served me fine.