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May 8, 2017

e-bikes are not a panacea

But the biggest flaws with e-bikes are physical and psychological. The bicycle is meant to be an endorphin-multiplier. In my mind, bike commuting's big draw is burning calories on the way to your destination. Yes, an e-bike is better for the environment than your car, but in the end, you forgo a crucial part of the experience. You make yourself better, and stronger, when you ride a real bike.

By doing the hard work for you, e-bikes cheat people out of that accomplishment and ultimately make them lazier. They enable entitlement to motion and a sense of false accomplishment.

May 7, 2017

An insurance bill for damage to the vehicle that hit her ?

For the first time in her life, Nako Nakatsuka felt hopeless. On April 6, 2014, the typically upbeat biochemistry grad student and member of the UCLA triathlon team had been making a left turn off Santa Monica Boulevard on her road bike when a car drifted into the turn lane and hit her from behind.

But it wasn't the crash that got to her--it was what came in the mail a month later: an insurance bill for damage to the vehicle that hit her, along with the threat of a lawsuit.

Things had started off normal enough post-crash. According to Nakatsuka, then 23: The driver got out of the car, apologized profusely, and even fetched water for her as she lay dazed in the middle of the busy road.

But when Nakatsuka contacted the driver's insurance company about her medical bills--she'd suffered a concussion, severe bruising, and permanent damage to her glutes--she discovered the LAPD had never filed a report, despite issuing her a receipt for one. The driver had also told her insurance company that Nakatsuka had caused the crash by backing her bike into the vehicle.

May 1, 2017

Not subtle attempt to troll

As an able-bodied white Protestant who was once thrown out of the Junior Republicans for being "above the threshold of racism we tolerate," I know a lot about what it's like to be persecuted.

This is not to say that I haven't faced persecution in my own life, however. As I loudly shout over other students, some have the temerity -- would you believe it? -- to keep talking, even when I have so clearly already interrupted them.

This is an unfair attempt to silence me, to say nothing of professors grading me down solely because of my beliefs. There can be no other reason, as my grammar are perfect. I try to never split an infinitive. I never don't use contractions or double negatives, and yet I so often find my GPA is barely above the number of world wars you claim there were (wasn't there another one in the 1860s, though?