Notices by Not Just Bikes 🇳🇱 (notjustbikes@social.notjustbikes.com)

I typically don't read comments beyond those left by my Patreon supporters, but after releasing a new video it's impossible not to catch a few stray comments when opening the YouTube Studio app.

I will never get tired of seeing one of the "If you love Europe so much, why don't you move there!" comments. 😂

Also I thoroughly enjoy one comment calling me a MAGA Trump supporter with the one immediately after it calling me a communist.

I knew "big box" stores were bad, but I was still surprised by what we found when researching this video. 😬

#bigbox #urbanism #cities #notjustbikes

https://nebula.tv/videos/notjustbikes-these-ugly-big-box-stores-are-literally-bankrupting-cities

I've been saying this for years: ebikes should have USB-C PD ports for charging!

Finally a manufacturer has actually done it. In this case using 140W power delivery, which is way higher power than any ebike charger I've ever used. And USB-C PD now supports up to 240W, which is more than enough for ebikes.

I hope this becomes the norm:

https://www.theverge.com/news/639681/usb-c-charging-e-bike-ampler-nova-specs-price

First of all, why would I be in favour of a car company, never mind an American car company?

Telsa makes expensive luxury cars, primarily for the US market. They're big and overpowered. They're dangerous (to others) and encourage people to speed.

And they're WIDE! Tesla cars are about 15 to 25 cm wider than a typical EU car, which means I can never pass them on a bike on the narrow Amsterdam streets.

So I put up a YouTube post about the Tesla protests happening in Amsterdam this Saturday:

https://actionnetwork.org/events/takedown-tesla-amsterdam

It made a few people mad, and a handful of people unsubscribed (almost entirely Americans: I can see from the stats).

That was to be expected.

But what really surprised me was the number of people who said something like, "Why are you against Tesla when they are in favour of everything this channel stands for?"

Uh ... wut? What channel are these people watching?

I am loving that things are finally moving to make European countries less dependent on US software (especially cloud providers), but I am disappointed that there isn't more of a focus on open source software.

There are several government programs within EU counties to fund the development of open source software. We need WAY more of that, coordinated at the EU level.

The best way to avoid being beholden to big tech is to fund viable open source alternatives.

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/dutch-parliament-calls-end-reliance-us-software-2025-03-18/

Bergen built the world's greatest bicycle tunnel and I visited! Check it out in my latest video on YouTube!

Unfortunately we can't have infrastructure like this in Canada because of the winter, so you'll only find stuff like this in a warm, flat, basically tropical city. You know, like Bergen, in Norway.

https://youtu.be/JCedclz03uI

@derrickb It would almost certainly work, and Teslas aren't the only cars that recognize speed limit signs either.

I feel like somebody out there must've tried that by now. 🤔

It is pretty dystopian if cyclists feel the need to dress up as traffic cones to avoid being killed by murderbots though. 😬

A couple of the photos showed the (very, very few) bicycle lanes that were actually plowed in Toronto, which was great, but it was really treacherous to even GET to these places in the first place.

There were a few other people cycling with me who were either very brave or, more likely, lucky enough to live and work along part of the minuscule "winter bike lane" network that were plowed.

But another photo shows the extremely dangerous situation of a semi truck in gridlocked traffic, in the dark winter rush-hour, blocking one of the very very few bicycle lanes that were actually plowed. 😩

I can't believe I ever cycled on these dangerous streets and in the dark! I don't think I would do that today. 😱

And la pièce de résistance, at the end of the photo album, was this photo of the bike rack at my work.

After braving the snow-covered car-infested streets of Toronto, I get to work and the snow plow has put all of the snow from the car parking right into the bike rack. 🤦

Google Photos just popped up with a "memories" album it auto-created with photos from 2016.

Almost all of the photos are from my bicycle commute to work, and it unintentionally showed just how ridiculous the whole "nobody cycles in the winter" excuse really is.

Most of the photos were bicycle lanes completely covered in snow, and mostly turned to hardened ice in the form of tire-treads, due to cars driving over them.

GEE, I WONDER WHY NOBODY IS CYCLING HERE?

#vikingbiking #biketo #bikewinter

And so it begins.

One of the "predictions" from my self-driving cars video that I was 100% confident would happen was that robotaxis will be programmed not to stop for pedestrians.

The idea that a single individual, outside of a motor vehicle, could stop a robotaxi is antithetical to both the tech bro mentality and American traffic engineering.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/on-roads-teeming-with-robotaxis-crossing-the-street-can-be-harrowing/ar-AA1wHy1N

It's exhausting how many Americans respond to my content with "this guy obviously has no idea how big the US is" when I have literally driven across the US seven times. I guarantee I have a better understanding of how big the US is (and how irrelevant that fact is to my content) than any of these people.

No matter how many videos I make it's still the same tired old excuses, over and over and over again.

There needs to be a word like "mansplaining" but for Americans. Yanksplaining, maybe?

NEW YOUTUBE & NEBULA CHANNEL ALERT!

Our new comedy urbanism channel, I Love the City is now live!

I Love the City is a ridiculous take on urbanist topics, and unlike Not Just Bikes, it's actually funny because other people write the jokes!

The ILTC writers are standup comedians, and they've worked on several other comedy shows, including The Daily Show, Robot Chicken, Those Who Can't, and more.

Check out our first episode, how cars killed the hat!

https://youtu.be/z4D0VMKeHjk

London (in Canada) and Utrecht (in the Netherlands) are so wildly different today that it seems almost comical to compare them. But around a hundred years ago, they were pretty similar.

https://youtu.be/4uqbsueNvag

@pinhman omg Michael was doored!? 😬 That's absolutely awful! But I'm glad he wasn't seriously injured, and the irony of this remarkable.

A Canadian government travel advisory to the Netherlands just went out today telling Canadians to beware of using Dutch trains because of thieves, and that there are "regular cases" on international trains, including the EuroStar to Paris & London.

Is this actually real?

Like, obviously I know that crime CAN happen on trains, but has there been any RECENT increase? And are there really "regular cases"?

I searched several news sites (in Dutch) and couldn't find any recent news about this. 🤷

I like the BlueSky feature of "Starter Packs," where people can make a list of accounts they like, and with one click you can follow them all.

But it's absolutely insane that you can't *remove* yourself from somebody else's list.

People are making "Starter Packs" of accounts to harass and sharing them with their followers.

They really need to add a built-in way to find out which lists you've been added to, as well as a way to remove yourself (and report the list) if they're malicious.

A friend of mine texted me to say that he's pretty sure nearly every US transit advocate in their 20s is a "fucking abrasive jackass".

I immediately asked him if he's been on Bluesky recently.

"How did you know!?"

Yup. There are many reasons I'm not on Bluesky anymore, but that was definitely one of them.