Pictured here is the ones by Velorian for E-Bikes

Bicycle indicators are available to purchase and there's some variety going from gadget that breaks in a day to proper ones. But there is surprisingly little of them and most of them run on batteries and standard bluetooth connections which I think is kind of ass for something safety critical.

Anyways germany, in 2024, finally made bicycle indicators legal for all types of bicycles instead of only 2 tracked ones or where the way it's built would make it impossible to use your hands and people have gotten cracking at building something, to me, better.

This one hooks up to the E-bike battery, which at least in germany will keep on the lights even if empty on reserve power because LEDs don't take much. They also build one with a dedicated battery pack and wired everything you can hook up to your dynamo to recharge as you ride which imo takes a lot of hassle out of it.

Everything is of course made to esoteric german safety specs and as such the pre-order model costs about 200 - 250€ all said and done. But I'm guessing in a decade these will have arrived at a more reasonable price.

Came out last summer and is to my knowledge basically the only bicycle game that's not exclusively downhill MTB.

I gave it about 3 hours and am now in world 2. It's an open world racing and exploration game, reminds me of Crash Tag Team Racing or Banjoe Kazoiie Nuts and Bolts in that way. You also get to swap out your bicycle parts with 4 stats, power, handling, grip and aero (as in aerodynamics, not air control). Some of them are grounded and understandable, but it does get wacky with it if you want and the ideal build at any given time is mostly some frankenstein monster. The devs apparently lurk on /r/xbiking and you feel the influence, but it's not reddit in a bad way.

It has a story to give some sense of progression but it's basically just plot for plots sake, allthough who cares. The bicycle people you race are all short, but well made pastiches of real life bicycle archetypes, which is fun.

The races themselves have some sort of soft categorization into mtb, gravel or road but it really doesn't matter much, There's both crits, so lap races, as well as point to point.

The cycling, to me, is sadly a bit lackluster. I mean I'm obviously on the deep end of what I'd like here but other than hills reduce your top speed way faster than they would in anything with an engine, this doesn't feel much like cycling. the handling is different from similar 4-wheeler based titles, but then you just have an accelerate and a brake button, both on a binary despite the game recommending and playing best with a controller. You start and use a singlespeed drivetrain for a good while, after around 4 hours I just unlocked my first two-speed gearbox. The singlespeed doesn't really act like a singlespeed, it's a CVT, as such the two-speed basically just feels like an optional "if you'd like some shifting" addon. Unless I crash I've not found a reason to shift out of the 2nd gear once I hit speeds because you don't slow down a lot.

It basically feels like a bit of wasted potential if you're making a bicycle videogame anyhow. Give me some 2x or 3x gearing, you don't usually find that in a racing game. Maybe instead of a mario-kart-esque drifting mechanic you gotta mind pedalstrokes so you don't pedalstrike the ground going around corners - you know, anything bicycle basically.

As it stands, if you're into bicycles or looking for a relaxing open world racing game for a few bucks this might be up your alley. Parts are abound, it's charming, the music is some really good english italopop that fits the setting and the riding is fun, just a bit too little of a bikeride.

Bonus points for being able to get off your bike and walk with it. You have to do it to interact with the world and it genuinely makes the place feel way less like you are a talking vehicle, despite that being true.

It's so fucking stupid. Snow removal responsibilities basically go along with property. Municipal streets are either done by the city or it just decides "nah" and doesn't do it, sidewalks and bike paths are for the residents (sometimes done by a service if it's a rental building or the owner resident springs for it). Except on city property, where sidewalk and bikepath clearing is, again, the cities responsibility.

Then there's county roads, often they go through the municipality and as such latter won't do it unless getting reimbursed by the county. Then there's state roads, same deal, then there's federal roads who as far as I'm aware just do it themselves mostly, allthough could contract it out, but otherwise same deal as they tend to cross both counties and municipalities.

Then there's train property like crossings, which is the train companies responsibility, and like bus stops, which falls on the bus company and if you have it, tramways and tramstops, that also have to be done by the operating company. Again, unless there's some contract and reimbursement shit going on.

Love to send out like 30 different groups of snow clearing people in a wild mishmash of priorities that leaves a checkerboard of ice patches in the public space

I feel like I'm reasonably good at picking at a game on the gameplay level, as per what works and does not and why and surface videogame essayist stuff like ludonarrative dissonance (or the rare examples of ludonarrative harmony).

I may offer you my finest insight into video games such as "Lara Croft has some sort of father complex going on" and "Shadow of Chernobyl is unintentionally about life in the collapse of the soviet union" which even by my own admission feels shallow and trite. You watch someone like Jacob Geller or Noah Caldwell-Gervais and they have fascinating things to say even on games you wouldn't expect it, like NCG on Quake.

How do I become that knowledgeable? Interesting? Analytical? about video games?

https://news.asu.edu/20250124-environment-and-sustainability-depending-car-could-be-impacting-your-life-satisfaction

The research revealed that when individuals relied on cars for more than 50% of their out-of-home activities during a typical week, their satisfaction with life declined.

[...]

*Answer: One way we measured car dependence was by asking respondents to estimate the percentage of time they rely on a car for out-of-home activities in a typical week. What we found is that, generally, as car dependence increases, life satisfaction tends to go up — but only to a certain point. Beyond that, we start to see a decrease.

To make sure the relationship we observed was not influenced by other factors, we used regression analysis and controlled for various external factors that other research has linked to life satisfaction. The tipping point, or threshold, where life satisfaction begins to decrease, is around 50%. When people rely on their car for more than half of their out-of-home activities, it seems to have a negative effect on their life satisfaction.*

[...]

However, what we observed is that car dependence does not just affect how people feel while traveling — it seems to have a more lasting impact on overall life satisfaction. This finding is surprising because existing studies often display a weak link between car use and broader life satisfaction. Our research suggests that the effects of car dependence go beyond the immediate experience of a trip and may influence long-term sense of well-being.

I'm not bragging here, it's a point of discussion, I feel like so many games where aim plays any role give you a smorgasboard of tools and tactics and it all pales to "be somewhat decent at mouse aim". Is it because they're heavily designed around controllers? Is it just wasted potential like so much else? Am I too dumb to do sick nasty useful combo on the AI or am I simply god's chosen gamer?

EDIT: I play on normal, usually. I know, there's my problem, but it's not like the underlying problem gets solved via requiring 3 head shots or having to interact with a half baked stealth system that either doesn't work or mostly works on "sit invisibly in a bush until the patrol walks their 30th circle on this route"

Catch up here

After some hollabaloo about whether there were any traffic simulations the situation as of now is Ute Bondes (carbrain democratic union) says there were traffic simulations, but the car drivers refuse to adhere to them.

Now you might think this is deeply, deeply stupid but it gets better: all the car drivers actually do adhere to them, because all the traffic simulations showed exactly what is happening; perma-congestion. I assume this was too woke for the CDU and as such they ignored it and opened the thing anyways. Proposed fixes now include turning a bike lane into a car lane (instantly got thrown out because it's too complicated) or turning a parking lane into a car lane (instantly got thrown out because muh parking). The solution as of now is wait for the nearby bridge to be fixed (not happening) for more lanes, surely that'll alleviate the problem.

When she's not busy fucking up an entire district of Berlin on account of carbrain, Ute Bonde spends her time proposing good things such as "building another landing strip at the catastrophe that is the BER Berlin airport" or "building a maglev tram"

Picture via Wikimedia

You row to go forward but instead of water it's wheel

Fun fact: Every year about 10 randomly chosen white middle aged dads in the west are afflicted with rowbike madness and start trying to revolutionize this as the next best thing. They pull of frankly impressive engineering feats to produce the most contraption bicycle yet devised, here's an early 2020s example

Magic is real albeit reserved to semi-uncontacted tribes in parts unknown is a fine setting but a much more interesting story would be how two exiles built the 300m long switch operated windpowered pipe organ that remains functional with absolutely no maintenance

Every one of the ancient magical civilisations you encounter in Tomb Raider, besides magically never showing up on satellite imagery, are all centered around the magical thing that changes the world so nobody recognizes they're sitting on the never-failing-never-maintenance ball bearing technology

The old tomb raiders were obviously hugely based on sex sells. the ads had half-naked 300 polygon lara and all that. So for the reboot trilogy starting 2013 they seemed to have wanted to scale that back a bit, make it more "woke".

It feels so much more misogynistic to me than the old titles with her scantily clad outfits because it changes the dynamic from "Lara Croft is a badass who kickshoots a T-Rex to death wearing hotpants" to "Lara Croft ends up in weirdremovedy sex and/or torture situations a lot while wearing cargopants".

I'm not going to claim the old Tomb Raiders are like bastions of even good examples of feminist media but the 2013 Tomb Raider is especially bad at this. Lara as a charcter does beat the odds but my god is half that game women torture porn and all the payoff it might have had at the end is basically thrown overboard entirely by the time the sequel starts. I mean you end up that game showing a lot more skin than you started out with but not because Lara the character figures hot pants and a crop top is a pretty good outfit to go spelunking in old aztec temples in but because it is literally torn apart from a combination of enviromental hazards, animals and human enemies. The sequels at least turn down the gruesome death animations which in the first reboot one are insanely focused on showing Lara getting penetrated by spears and sharpened sticks. It is not at all subtle.

You ever play a game and it's all competently made and such but somehow it just feels 20% off for what it's supposed to be? And then you play something else of similar genre and it just feels SO much better to play.

What's the esoteric part about gamefeel? Why's 2013 Tomb Raiders and it's sequels feel like 20% off? Why is Black Ops - rated on Gameplay - so much better than Singularity which came out the same year despite both being made by Raven?

It's amazing that all dashcam compilations basically consist of people sending in clips of other people fucking it up and then still end up at at least 30% of being entirely avoidable situations if the driver with the camera just wasn't also hugely carbrained. Most common issue seems to be some sort of my right of way shall not be infringed, my steel steed shall make it so or figuring looking at the road and / or being able to stop your car within the distance you can see is for chumps.

I'll go through it clip by clip for Idiots in Cars Nr. 367, posted a day ago at time of writing. To be clear, I'm not saying it's the dashcam drivers fault primarily in the examples down below but isn't this supposed to showcase other people fucking it up entirely?

At 00:32 you can clearly see the red car, cutting across the lines, no indicator ain't exactly on a vector for the right lane, time to stay the course and not brake

At 01:36 you can quite clearly see, in broad daylight, the bump ahead that the person wrecks on and that's with the shitty dashcam quality

01:59 I don't even think I have to point out how fucking carbrained it is to swerve blindly into the opposing lane of traffic because you couldn't be bothered to just brake a bit and wait all of 3 seconds

At 04:13 you can clearly see the red car from the right moving with literally no possible place to go instead of right infront of the driver, time to acclerate straight at it (HOOOOOOOOONK)

At 08:14 like the person in the white SUV is an asshole but like what did you think would happen here when they overtook you on the blocked lane?