• 7 Posts
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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 12th, 2023

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  • Clickbaity, biased and misleading title.

    The article actually claims that, on average, e-bikers have a higher volume of exercise per week compared to cyclists. (This includes both METs, a measure of metabolism, and duration.) Even this claim seems a bit shaky, though.

    It wasn’t clear in the article how the studies categorized cyclists and e-bike users. I took a look at one of the linked studies and found that they categorized them like so:

    The distinction of e-bikers vs. cyclists was based on the following question at the baseline: “What type of bicycle do you use?”. Respondents stating that they used an e-bike were categorized as e-bikers, independent of whether they also used a conventional bicycle. Using this classification around the half of e-bikers only use e-bike while the other half use additionally a different type of bicycle. Users who reported any use of non-electric bicycle (including city bike, mountain bike or bike-sharing) but not e-bike were categorized as cyclists, those who did not report any bicycle use, as non-cyclists.

    A few issues I see:

    • Cyclists who also own an e-bike are only counted as e-bikers, which is a potential bias, since any and all exercise they do is being included.
    • Other types of biking can (and often are) more strenuous, therefore recovery time may be higher.
    • E-bikes are relatively new, so many e-bikers likely purchased them more recently. People tend to use recent purchases more.

    Luckily, the study didn’t base it solely on “ownership”, so the many people with old bikes sitting dormant in their garage don’t count.

    Also, in this study, cycling was given a constant 6.8 METs and e-biking, 5 METs. These are not constant activities; cyclists going uphill are likely going to be > 8 METS (the threshold for vigorous activity), and e-bikers using throttle-enabled bikes are likely far below 5 METs.

    In fact, according to the other study, pedal assisted e-bikes don’t always break the threshold for moderate activity under low and moderate assist levels:

    Further, while the cardiometabolic responses (e.g., HR and V̇O2) were lower for the e-bike, they were indicative of being at or near “moderate intensity[…]”

    The first study assumes 4 METs as moderate activity and 8 METs as vigorous. 5 seems like a high estimate, then, since the second study showed that e-bikes with assist aren’t always at moderate intensity, let alone throttle.

    Aside from the studies, the article itself mentioned that many cyclists take a lift to the top of trails. I enjoy mountain biking, and none of the trail systems near me have a lift. And a big reason I ride is for exercise, strength and endurance. Just me? Also, throttle e-bikes can damage dirt trails, they are completely banned at one of my local trail systems.

    Anyways, this article comes from a website all about EVs and similar. And there’s an affiliate link at the bottom to buy e-bikes. It’s not a secret that they’re biased.

    All of that said, e-bikes are a really great tool. I’m not against them at all! They make biking far more accessible to people who would otherwise have a hard time doing so. And they’re a great method of transportation, since they make it easier to travel farther than on regular bicycles and are more eco-friendly than cars and motorcycles.

    I think this article just perpetrates the divide between cyclists and e-bikers. They’re both forms of exercise and transportation, and someone using pedal assist for themselves doesn’t change what the cyclist is doing. Do what’s best for you, for you.





  • The difficulty seemed absurd to me, too, the first time I played the game. This time I began seeing the fun once I began discovering a few things the other day, TL;DR at the end:

    • Keeping your cloak stained seems key; blood is good and gives you increased crit chance, but water is usually easier to keep soaked. As long as you have that, you won’t go up in flames in fire or explosions. And water/blood can also wash off toxic sludge, oil, etc. so it’s really important to have a bottle of it on hand to shower yourself with.
    • Adding onto that, if you have a bottle that has empty space and you are holding it in a pool of a liquid, it will fill up with that liquid.
    • Kick everything! It’s super fun to kick explosive barrels or lanterns all over. I bound ‘ctrl’ to kick so I can more reliably kick.
    • Drink everything! You can right click on bottles in your hot bar to drink them, or you can press “s” to drink the liquid you are standing in. There’s some fun reactions, though most just make you vomit.
    • Tapping space to keep upward momentum > holding space.
    • I had the best luck sticking in the first area and getting familiar with those enemies. I like to have 3-4 wands before I go to the holy mountain and as much gold as possible (my best run I had like 600 by the first, bought lots of spells). To the left there are the mines. They have more gold, but stronger enemies.
    • The chainsaw spell is great, you can emulsify enemy corpses for their blood.
    • Chain bolt is really good if you can get it, that carried me in my best run so far.
    • Oh, also read the spells a wand has before using it. Some spells will hurt/kill you if they’re not matched with something that casts them away from you.
    • There’s tons of enemies, loot and areas to discover. The coolest part for me was finding a way to return back to previous layers once I had better spells.

    Anyways, it’s still masochistic in nature. My best run came to an end abruptly and unfairly.

    TL;DR: Be slow and cautious, play around in the first area to get better gear and understanding of the mechanics.


  • I jumped into Noita this past week. I had put about 5 hours in over a year ago, but I was intimidated by the systems and the initial difficulty. But I get it now 😭 The wandcrafting and fluid reactions are so fun now that I am more familiar with it all. I had a good run and I love the game now.

    Played a few rounds of gunfight in Modern Warfare 2019. The official game has a ring 0 anticheat so Linux support with proton/wine is out of the equation. But there is a way (old dev build, offline-only and most maps don’t work).

    Also played some Minecraft with a ship building mod. Here’s what I got so far, I’m going to sail the seven seas!











  • SmoochyPit@beehaw.orgtoLinux@lemmy.mlStop being elitist, spread Linux!
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    8 months ago

    I think GNU/Linux (What you’re refering to as Linux, is in fact, GNU/Linux, or as I’ve recently taken to calling it, GNU plus Linux.) is a great fit for non-technical people when they don’t have an established workflow on another OS. If their needs can’t easily be translated over, though, I think it’d turn users away.


  • I agree, it’s nice to ask somebody about their boundaries, and it can really make them feel more comfortable.

    However, I do consider it the other person’s responsibility to establish the boundaries and uphold them; if I call them something they dislike, I’d hope they’d feel comfortable enough to tell me (in a kind way). That’s the kind of friendship I’d want anyways. And if I purposefully ignore that request or argue it, I think it’s very fair for that person to be more stern in communicating their boundary. In this case, “I don’t care that you use it as gender-neutral, I don’t want to be called ‘dude’.”

    Good friends/people would respect your wishes, though. It’s your identity, at the end of the day.