8 ms·

Coolest Things I Learned in 2019

254 points by nefitty 7y ago

teddyh 7y ago
> Douglas Abrams’ Rules of Technology That’s “Douglas Adams”.
- inopinatus 7y ago
  Or even Douglas Adams's, if I may be so bold, or rather, oblique. The apostrophe protection society has retired, but some of us still cleave to the old ways.
- masonic 7y ago
  Douglas Abrams, famous inventor of the Vogon Destructor Tank
jiri 7y ago
Missing NOT. Or NAND
axaxs 7y ago
Out of curiosity, I signed up for this guy's mailing list earlier in the year, the first I can remember doing on purpose in many years. I am pleasantly surprised at the weekly content and general openness of the author, and would absolutely recommend it to everyone.
shreyshrey 7y ago
Really cool. The thing i have learned this year is -"Deductive logic doesn't always work in complex systems - especially when it involves large number of people"
- firethief 7y ago
  More generally: formal methods are only as good as your model
- throwthisaway2 7y ago
  Deductible logic never works if you dont have enough data. A large system requires large comstraint analysis. Then you can deduce the result.
Toury2d 7y ago
That was boring
hkmurakami 7y ago
Re: your tribe "Jerry Seinfeld said in an interview last year that his favorite part of the Emmy Awards was when the comedy writers went onstage to collect their prize. “You see these gnome-like cretins, just kind of all misshapen. And I go, ‘This is me. This is who I am. That’s my group.’ ” By your 40s, you don’t want to be with the cool people; you want to be with your people." https://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/01/opinion/sunday/what-you-learn-in-your-40s.html https://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/01/opinion/sunday/what-you-l...
- randycupertino 7y ago
  That's how I felt when I ended up in oncology research. All these super smart, driven, funny & interesting people who love going to work every day and try to help patients while driving research forward. After futzing around in other industries and doing bs work for waaaay too long, I felt like the girl in the bee costume from the 1990s Blind Melon video who at the end of the video finally comes across and parties it up with a bunch of other bee-people: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qVPNONdF58 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qVPNONdF58
  - majos 7y ago
    That surprises me, since I had heard being an oncologist is a very hard job because of all the bad news. I guess doing the research rather than the practice is a key difference?
    - hkmurakami 7y ago
      Not OP, but clinical practice and research are indeed very different.
    - randycupertino 7y ago
      I'm not an oncologist (heh...), more just a data guy who works with the researchers and helps them with genetic typing to build outputs with the tumor sample analysis. Sounds fancy but sometimes I'm just even doing plain old IT support (because I'm there in the labs and having to put in a ticket and wait for hospital IT is a pita). I do work with a lot of oncologists and while like any industry there are a few big egos and jerks the majority of them are simply amazing people. I've seen patient's families screaming and yelling at our PIs (literally spitting on their faces) and the Drs. stay calm, cool and professional. It's hard to be the ones delivering bad news but they do a great job. Most of the MDs I work with are both researchers and regular oncologist physicians. They participate in clinical trials and have labs where they investigate new treatments and drugs, but they also provide standard of care treatments for patients who aren't eligible or choose not to participate in trials.
aazaa 7y ago
> On September 24th, 1980, a man wearing cowboy boots and carrying two brown suitcases entered Binion’s Horseshoe Casino in Las Vegas. One suitcase held $777,000 in cash; the other was empty. After converting the money into chips, the man approached a craps table on the casino floor and put everything on the backline. This meant he was betting against the woman rolling the dice. If she lost, he’d double his money. If she won, he’d lose everything. Scarcely aware of the amount riding on her dice, the woman rolled three times: 6, 9, 7. > “Pay the backline,” said the dealer. And just like that, the man won over $1.5 million. He calmly filled the empty suitcase with his winnings, exited Binion’s into the desert afternoon, and drove off. It was the largest amount ever bet on a dice roll in America. The one about the Phantom Gambler had a discussion earlier here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19342794 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19342794
jdsully 7y ago
> At critical moments in time, you can raise the aspirations of other people significantly, especially when they are relatively young, simply by suggesting they do something better or more ambitious than what they might have in mind. Whatever you do, DO NOT apply this advice to your significant other. Perhaps a better man than me can do it effectively but I can say from experience the results are always disastrous.
- sitkack 7y ago
  As someone who has been on the receiving end of this (from a loved one), your advice is sound.
  - mistermann 7y ago
    True, this matches my experience perfectly, but perhaps the/some ways do exist but haven't been found, or will never be found, because it's too risky to try on an individual basis?
    - majos 7y ago
      Can one of you explain why this is bad for partners? What’s wrong with saying “it’s reasonable for you to be ambitious”?
      - nefitty 7y ago
        It could be uncharitably interpreted as, "You're not providing the value I expect. You should fix that."
    - travisjungroth 7y ago
      I think I’ve done it and been successful. I think two things are important. It has to come during a time when they’re already talking about their plans. And, it has to obviously come from a place that you think they’re underselling themselves (not that you want to get more from them). “Maybe I should get a job as a data analyst.” “Really? I think you have everything you need to be a data scientist.”
aaron695 7y ago
> "Imagine a tool was invented to help a researcher to improve by just 1%. > The gain would hardly be noticeable in a single individual. But if the 10 million scientists in the world all benefited from the tool, the inventor would increase the rate of scientific progress by roughly the same amount as adding 100,000 new scientists." This used to be called Chinese maths, not sure what it's called now. In total there are 10 million researchers so it'd have to be pretty generic. And unless it's a bottleneck it'd have no effect. Reducing transport times by 1% just means people go home early. Helping the 90% of researchers who are dead wood wouldn't help either. The internet and computers are examples of successful tools so it is possible. The replication crises is an example of a problem that could be looked at. But targeted tools seems like a better attack. And this all assumes science is where we are lagging, compared to the commercial application of science (which the internet and computers have also helped)
mark_l_watson 7y ago
Excellent, I signed up for his weekly newsletter. As much as I nerded out seeing the latest Star Wars movie yesterday, and the half dozen good movies a week my wife and I watch on streaming media, my favorite way to be entertained by people’s writing, with really good conversations coming in a close second.
gitgud 7y ago
> Wicked Learning Environments This anecdote about the NYC doctor who was praised for being able to predict Typhoid, but was actually just spreading the disease to all his patients is a scary reflection of some businesses. Reminds me of tech companies from HBO's Silicon Valley, to them they're "Making the world a better place..." but in reality they could be harming everyone without even knowing it...
nlh 7y ago
Loved this with ONE exception: > “Twitter is the most amazing networking and learning network ever built. > For someone whose pursuing their dream job, or chasing a group of mentors or peers, it’s remarkable. In any given field, 50-80% of the top experts in that field are on Twitter and they’re sharing ideas, and you can connect to them or follow them in your personal feed. > If you get lucky enough and say something they find interesting, they might follow you, and the reason this becomes super interesting is that unlocks direct message, and now all of a sudden you can communicate directly or electronically with that individual. Very, very powerful. Man, so many things about the statement make my skin crawl. The idea that you should be "chasing" mentors or peers. The idea that you should be "lucky enough" to say something "they find interesting" and then "they might follow you". Lucky you, you little worthless common person! Talk about a subjugating attitude about the world. Bill Gurley seems to be very excited about the idea that people are just hoping and pleading and begging for more powerful people to notice them. Sorry for the negativity. But this is just such an unproductive attitude and perhaps the cause of a lot of what makes Twitter awful. EDIT: Let me add a more positive take. I agree with the underlying sentiment here -- that Twitter does provide folks with an opportunity to actually engage with people they might not have otherwise had a chance to engage with previously or in other contexts, and that is truly excellent. I'm just reacting strongly to the way it was presented ("you should be so lucky as to be noticed by someone more powerful than you.").
- sincerely 7y ago
  I think the point is less that this is an ideal state of affairs and more that this represents a huge opportunity for people who want to learn/network than a pre-twitter world.
  - nlh 7y ago
    Totally. And thank you for saying that. I think there is definitely a positive way of looking at this, I just don't think Bill Gurley captures that potential in his statement. I'll edit my comment.
  - kick 7y ago
    I don't actually think it's better than this was pre-Twitter. In the past, you could find more or less anyone in the phone book. Basically every person who succeeded in tech without family connections pre-1990 got their start by using this (Steve Jobs immediately comes to mind; he home-dialed Bill Hewlett (yes, that Bill Hewlett) as a child, asked for spare parts, and got a job because of it). For a while, you could also do this before people were scared to post their mail addresses on the internet. Have a question for someone? Type USERNAME@DOMAIN.COM into the box, and they'll answer in a few days! That's more or less gone, though. That manipulation is now the standard should be looked on with incredible sadness rather than "Wow, what a huge opportunity!"
mrfusion 7y ago
Regarding one of his last ideas. For those above 35 what technologies seem against the order of things?
- kbutler 7y ago
  As an over 35, best I could come up with was maybe the lack of expectation of privacy/willingness to post anything. For example, why would I post to all my friends that I paid someone on Venmo? default=private was the first setting I changed. That's more of a social evolution than technological. But maybe I'm personally biased to accept new technology. (And my grandfather began using microcomputers in his 70s, so genetics/familial influence may play a role as well).
- marcosdumay 7y ago
  Putting everything on other people's properties, renting stuff that you'll use long term, and yes, as kbutler said, disclosing everything in public by default. Those are not technologies, but I doubt it was exactly the tech that the last generations were complaining about. Anyway, there is one piece of tech: the all hearing helpers we get on telephones and alexa style devices.
- slyall 7y ago
  For me it's most IoT stuff. I really can't see the point in paying good money[1] to be able to do weird things with my lights, aircon or stove. Security system perhaps but not the other junk. [1] - Also concerns about privacy and quick obsolescence of tech
usaphp 7y ago
> Four new dollar stores will open in the U.S. every single day of 2019. That's a new dollar store every six hours. There are more dollar stores than there are Walmarts, McDonald’s and CVS stores combined I wonder what is causing that, in the times of Amazon, how do these stores survive?
- disillusioned 7y ago
  They serve, almost exclusively, the poor. They end up being the line of last resort for the poor and very poor to eat food, buy toiletries, and other must-haves. They supply a facsimile of nutrition but because they are "cheap" in a way that everyone can conceive of, and because they have a strong supply chain that is affordable for the companies themselves to run, they end up filling in the gaps in much of suburban and rural America, where grocery stores are nearly nonexistent. Some real interesting stories on their negative effects on communities here: https://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2019/08/23/dollar-store-dominance-comes-with-a-cost-for-low-income-americans https://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2019/08/23/dollar-store-dominan... https://www.forbes.com/sites/pamdanziger/2018/12/30/will-dollar-stores-be-the-end-of-local-american-retail-ilsr-seems-to-think-so/#160b4b456194 https://www.forbes.com/sites/pamdanziger/2018/12/30/will-dol... https://www.fastcompany.com/90278384/why-dollar-stores-are-bad-business-for-the-neighborhoods-they-open-in https://www.fastcompany.com/90278384/why-dollar-stores-are-b... https://www.businessinsider.com/dollar-stores-taking-over-america-2018-12 https://www.businessinsider.com/dollar-stores-taking-over-am...
- randycupertino 7y ago
  We live in a ritzy town on the SF Peninsula where hhi is routinely 400k and up, and our dollar store is constantly mobbed. Sometimes it's so mobbed that it actually backs up traffic on El Camino Real because so many people are waiting to pull into the parking lot. I think a lot of shoppers rely on it for basics like toiletries and other items you'd get from Target or Walmart. The markups on Amazon for these items are actually pretty outrageous. Amazon, imo is not cheap - and also way too high of a risk of getting a fake and knockoff product. At least in a brick and mortar store you can be confident in the supply chain and know you're not getting some sketchy reseller from China. We bought some decorations for our wedding there and they were perfectly adequate. No lesser quality than anything we would have gotten from amazon or a party store, imo.
senderista 7y ago
> In any given field, 50-80% of the top experts in that field are on Twitter spit take
m0zg 7y ago
>> Cyclists in the Tour de France used to smoke to increase blood flow You quite often see people in e.g. Zurich (and I suspect in other European cities as well - smoking seems to be much more socially acceptable there) smoking while riding a bicycle. I was kind of baffled by that the first time I saw it, but when you think about it, it's not too weird. In the US you ride a bicycle to get some exercise in, to stay healthy. I don't think I've ever seen anyone smoking while on a bicycle here. In Europe they ride bicycles to get around, so smoking a cig while riding a bike doesn't seem like anything out of the ordinary to them.
travisporter 7y ago
Loved the read, with the exception of the anti-vaxxer/climate change denial mantra: “The majority is always wrong. The minority is rarely right.” — Henrik Ibsen

254 points by nefitty 7y ago

teddyh 7y ago

> Douglas Abrams’ Rules of Technology That’s “Douglas Adams”.

inopinatus 7y ago
Or even Douglas Adams's, if I may be so bold, or rather, oblique. The apostrophe protection society has retired, but some of us still cleave to the old ways.
masonic 7y ago
Douglas Abrams, famous inventor of the Vogon Destructor Tank

jiri 7y ago

Missing NOT. Or NAND

axaxs 7y ago

Out of curiosity, I signed up for this guy's mailing list earlier in the year, the first I can remember doing on purpose in many years. I am pleasantly surprised at the weekly content and general openness of the author, and would absolutely recommend it to everyone.

shreyshrey 7y ago

Really cool. The thing i have learned this year is -"Deductive logic doesn't always work in complex systems - especially when it involves large number of people"

firethief 7y ago
More generally: formal methods are only as good as your model
throwthisaway2 7y ago
Deductible logic never works if you dont have enough data. A large system requires large comstraint analysis. Then you can deduce the result.

Toury2d 7y ago

That was boring

hkmurakami 7y ago

Re: your tribe "Jerry Seinfeld said in an interview last year that his favorite part of the Emmy Awards was when the comedy writers went onstage to collect their prize. “You see these gnome-like cretins, just kind of all misshapen. And I go, ‘This is me. This is who I am. That’s my group.’ ” By your 40s, you don’t want to be with the cool people; you want to be with your people." https://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/01/opinion/sunday/what-you-learn-in-your-40s.html https://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/01/opinion/sunday/what-you-l...

randycupertino 7y ago
That's how I felt when I ended up in oncology research. All these super smart, driven, funny & interesting people who love going to work every day and try to help patients while driving research forward. After futzing around in other industries and doing bs work for waaaay too long, I felt like the girl in the bee costume from the 1990s Blind Melon video who at the end of the video finally comes across and parties it up with a bunch of other bee-people: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qVPNONdF58 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qVPNONdF58
- majos 7y ago
  That surprises me, since I had heard being an oncologist is a very hard job because of all the bad news. I guess doing the research rather than the practice is a key difference?
  - hkmurakami 7y ago
    Not OP, but clinical practice and research are indeed very different.
  - randycupertino 7y ago
    I'm not an oncologist (heh...), more just a data guy who works with the researchers and helps them with genetic typing to build outputs with the tumor sample analysis. Sounds fancy but sometimes I'm just even doing plain old IT support (because I'm there in the labs and having to put in a ticket and wait for hospital IT is a pita). I do work with a lot of oncologists and while like any industry there are a few big egos and jerks the majority of them are simply amazing people. I've seen patient's families screaming and yelling at our PIs (literally spitting on their faces) and the Drs. stay calm, cool and professional. It's hard to be the ones delivering bad news but they do a great job. Most of the MDs I work with are both researchers and regular oncologist physicians. They participate in clinical trials and have labs where they investigate new treatments and drugs, but they also provide standard of care treatments for patients who aren't eligible or choose not to participate in trials.

aazaa 7y ago

> On September 24th, 1980, a man wearing cowboy boots and carrying two brown suitcases entered Binion’s Horseshoe Casino in Las Vegas. One suitcase held $777,000 in cash; the other was empty. After converting the money into chips, the man approached a craps table on the casino floor and put everything on the backline. This meant he was betting against the woman rolling the dice. If she lost, he’d double his money. If she won, he’d lose everything. Scarcely aware of the amount riding on her dice, the woman rolled three times: 6, 9, 7. > “Pay the backline,” said the dealer. And just like that, the man won over $1.5 million. He calmly filled the empty suitcase with his winnings, exited Binion’s into the desert afternoon, and drove off. It was the largest amount ever bet on a dice roll in America. The one about the Phantom Gambler had a discussion earlier here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19342794 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19342794

jdsully 7y ago

> At critical moments in time, you can raise the aspirations of other people significantly, especially when they are relatively young, simply by suggesting they do something better or more ambitious than what they might have in mind. Whatever you do, DO NOT apply this advice to your significant other. Perhaps a better man than me can do it effectively but I can say from experience the results are always disastrous.

sitkack 7y ago
As someone who has been on the receiving end of this (from a loved one), your advice is sound.
- mistermann 7y ago
  True, this matches my experience perfectly, but perhaps the/some ways do exist but haven't been found, or will never be found, because it's too risky to try on an individual basis?
  - majos 7y ago
    Can one of you explain why this is bad for partners? What’s wrong with saying “it’s reasonable for you to be ambitious”?
    - nefitty 7y ago
      It could be uncharitably interpreted as, "You're not providing the value I expect. You should fix that."
  - travisjungroth 7y ago
    I think I’ve done it and been successful. I think two things are important. It has to come during a time when they’re already talking about their plans. And, it has to obviously come from a place that you think they’re underselling themselves (not that you want to get more from them). “Maybe I should get a job as a data analyst.” “Really? I think you have everything you need to be a data scientist.”

aaron695 7y ago

> "Imagine a tool was invented to help a researcher to improve by just 1%. > The gain would hardly be noticeable in a single individual. But if the 10 million scientists in the world all benefited from the tool, the inventor would increase the rate of scientific progress by roughly the same amount as adding 100,000 new scientists." This used to be called Chinese maths, not sure what it's called now. In total there are 10 million researchers so it'd have to be pretty generic. And unless it's a bottleneck it'd have no effect. Reducing transport times by 1% just means people go home early. Helping the 90% of researchers who are dead wood wouldn't help either. The internet and computers are examples of successful tools so it is possible. The replication crises is an example of a problem that could be looked at. But targeted tools seems like a better attack. And this all assumes science is where we are lagging, compared to the commercial application of science (which the internet and computers have also helped)

mark_l_watson 7y ago

Excellent, I signed up for his weekly newsletter. As much as I nerded out seeing the latest Star Wars movie yesterday, and the half dozen good movies a week my wife and I watch on streaming media, my favorite way to be entertained by people’s writing, with really good conversations coming in a close second.

gitgud 7y ago

> Wicked Learning Environments This anecdote about the NYC doctor who was praised for being able to predict Typhoid, but was actually just spreading the disease to all his patients is a scary reflection of some businesses. Reminds me of tech companies from HBO's Silicon Valley, to them they're "Making the world a better place..." but in reality they could be harming everyone without even knowing it...

nlh 7y ago

Loved this with ONE exception: > “Twitter is the most amazing networking and learning network ever built. > For someone whose pursuing their dream job, or chasing a group of mentors or peers, it’s remarkable. In any given field, 50-80% of the top experts in that field are on Twitter and they’re sharing ideas, and you can connect to them or follow them in your personal feed. > If you get lucky enough and say something they find interesting, they might follow you, and the reason this becomes super interesting is that unlocks direct message, and now all of a sudden you can communicate directly or electronically with that individual. Very, very powerful. Man, so many things about the statement make my skin crawl. The idea that you should be "chasing" mentors or peers. The idea that you should be "lucky enough" to say something "they find interesting" and then "they might follow you". Lucky you, you little worthless common person! Talk about a subjugating attitude about the world. Bill Gurley seems to be very excited about the idea that people are just hoping and pleading and begging for more powerful people to notice them. Sorry for the negativity. But this is just such an unproductive attitude and perhaps the cause of a lot of what makes Twitter awful. EDIT: Let me add a more positive take. I agree with the underlying sentiment here -- that Twitter does provide folks with an opportunity to actually engage with people they might not have otherwise had a chance to engage with previously or in other contexts, and that is truly excellent. I'm just reacting strongly to the way it was presented ("you should be so lucky as to be noticed by someone more powerful than you.").

sincerely 7y ago
I think the point is less that this is an ideal state of affairs and more that this represents a huge opportunity for people who want to learn/network than a pre-twitter world.
- nlh 7y ago
  Totally. And thank you for saying that. I think there is definitely a positive way of looking at this, I just don't think Bill Gurley captures that potential in his statement. I'll edit my comment.
- kick 7y ago
  I don't actually think it's better than this was pre-Twitter. In the past, you could find more or less anyone in the phone book. Basically every person who succeeded in tech without family connections pre-1990 got their start by using this (Steve Jobs immediately comes to mind; he home-dialed Bill Hewlett (yes, that Bill Hewlett) as a child, asked for spare parts, and got a job because of it). For a while, you could also do this before people were scared to post their mail addresses on the internet. Have a question for someone? Type USERNAME@DOMAIN.COM into the box, and they'll answer in a few days! That's more or less gone, though. That manipulation is now the standard should be looked on with incredible sadness rather than "Wow, what a huge opportunity!"

mrfusion 7y ago

Regarding one of his last ideas. For those above 35 what technologies seem against the order of things?

kbutler 7y ago
As an over 35, best I could come up with was maybe the lack of expectation of privacy/willingness to post anything. For example, why would I post to all my friends that I paid someone on Venmo? default=private was the first setting I changed. That's more of a social evolution than technological. But maybe I'm personally biased to accept new technology. (And my grandfather began using microcomputers in his 70s, so genetics/familial influence may play a role as well).
marcosdumay 7y ago
Putting everything on other people's properties, renting stuff that you'll use long term, and yes, as kbutler said, disclosing everything in public by default. Those are not technologies, but I doubt it was exactly the tech that the last generations were complaining about. Anyway, there is one piece of tech: the all hearing helpers we get on telephones and alexa style devices.
slyall 7y ago
For me it's most IoT stuff. I really can't see the point in paying good money[1] to be able to do weird things with my lights, aircon or stove. Security system perhaps but not the other junk. [1] - Also concerns about privacy and quick obsolescence of tech

usaphp 7y ago

> Four new dollar stores will open in the U.S. every single day of 2019. That's a new dollar store every six hours. There are more dollar stores than there are Walmarts, McDonald’s and CVS stores combined I wonder what is causing that, in the times of Amazon, how do these stores survive?

disillusioned 7y ago
They serve, almost exclusively, the poor. They end up being the line of last resort for the poor and very poor to eat food, buy toiletries, and other must-haves. They supply a facsimile of nutrition but because they are "cheap" in a way that everyone can conceive of, and because they have a strong supply chain that is affordable for the companies themselves to run, they end up filling in the gaps in much of suburban and rural America, where grocery stores are nearly nonexistent. Some real interesting stories on their negative effects on communities here: https://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2019/08/23/dollar-store-dominance-comes-with-a-cost-for-low-income-americans https://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2019/08/23/dollar-store-dominan... https://www.forbes.com/sites/pamdanziger/2018/12/30/will-dollar-stores-be-the-end-of-local-american-retail-ilsr-seems-to-think-so/#160b4b456194 https://www.forbes.com/sites/pamdanziger/2018/12/30/will-dol... https://www.fastcompany.com/90278384/why-dollar-stores-are-bad-business-for-the-neighborhoods-they-open-in https://www.fastcompany.com/90278384/why-dollar-stores-are-b... https://www.businessinsider.com/dollar-stores-taking-over-america-2018-12 https://www.businessinsider.com/dollar-stores-taking-over-am...
randycupertino 7y ago
We live in a ritzy town on the SF Peninsula where hhi is routinely 400k and up, and our dollar store is constantly mobbed. Sometimes it's so mobbed that it actually backs up traffic on El Camino Real because so many people are waiting to pull into the parking lot. I think a lot of shoppers rely on it for basics like toiletries and other items you'd get from Target or Walmart. The markups on Amazon for these items are actually pretty outrageous. Amazon, imo is not cheap - and also way too high of a risk of getting a fake and knockoff product. At least in a brick and mortar store you can be confident in the supply chain and know you're not getting some sketchy reseller from China. We bought some decorations for our wedding there and they were perfectly adequate. No lesser quality than anything we would have gotten from amazon or a party store, imo.

senderista 7y ago

> In any given field, 50-80% of the top experts in that field are on Twitter spit take

m0zg 7y ago

>> Cyclists in the Tour de France used to smoke to increase blood flow You quite often see people in e.g. Zurich (and I suspect in other European cities as well - smoking seems to be much more socially acceptable there) smoking while riding a bicycle. I was kind of baffled by that the first time I saw it, but when you think about it, it's not too weird. In the US you ride a bicycle to get some exercise in, to stay healthy. I don't think I've ever seen anyone smoking while on a bicycle here. In Europe they ride bicycles to get around, so smoking a cig while riding a bike doesn't seem like anything out of the ordinary to them.

travisporter 7y ago

Loved the read, with the exception of the anti-vaxxer/climate change denial mantra: “The majority is always wrong. The minority is rarely right.” — Henrik Ibsen