I own several bike trailers, built a few cargo trailers myself, and ride with them a few times a week, so I’m going to chime in with some thoughts after looking at their Vimeo page, which inexplicably has more information than their website.

The Convoy appears to be a standard bike rack built atop an electric unicycle. I say this to illustrate that it’s offering maybe 30% more carrying space than you could reasonably get with a rack over the rear wheel of the bike.

The most striking thing to me is the use of a 14" wheel, yet the cargo area is the same height as a rack on the bike. If it was a bit longer, the centre of gravity could be lowered quite a bit. Though the compact nature could be useful to people with tight space limitations, I can’t help thinking a long tail bike would be more versatile.

12kg weight for 50kg of cargo capacity isn’t too bad, though my most used cargo trailer weighs 22.5kg with about ten fold the carrying capacity. It’s much longer though, bit over five feet. Storing something this long isn’t problematic for me though - my next one may be longer.

For a trailer that attaches to the axel, I like the connection design they’ve used (similar to the Burley Coho XC) and the tensioner being simple and effective for applying pressure on the powered wheel. It is also a stylish addition to a bike, which can be important.

The self steering aspect is quite interesting to me, though I’m not really sure it is needed for something with one wheel. The wheel does need to steer, given the trailer does not have any articulation from the bike, but why it has active steering is something I don’t understand. It’d be interesting to know if they tried a passive steer solution that didn’t work since the wheel is so close to the bike or something like that.

Unfortunately I have little confidence there is a niche for a product like this as I believe the dentists are buying Urban Arrows.

Based solely on your comment, I’m looking forward to watching a scene where Christian Bale goes around Wall Street collecting mugs in The Big Short 2: Polymer Boogaloo.

Thank you. I did think about that also.

‘Volunteers’ did the counting, but surely they should have known or been informed that a quorum of votes equal to x% of the community are required for the vote to be valid. If the count doesn’t meet or exceed that value, discard the ballots.

Or even why was the vote permitted to take place in less than the required notification period? I presume the answer to these questions is either incompetence or bravado on the part of the board members taking their position for granted.

I find it unlikely that if the vote had went the other way, the board would have had the integrity to raise the same objections.

To play devil’s advocate for a moment, having a sufficient vote notification period is important.

Though if that were the board’s true concern, they surely would have announced intention to notify the community alongside their statement cancelling the vote for this reason, which hasn’t happened insofar as I can tell.

I think that if half of the community shows up with less than a day’s notice to make themselves heard, that’s probably representative enough for how the community feels about these board members.

I found an update about the vote to remove the three board members.

Homeowners voted 190 to 20 in favour of removal, however the board cancelled the vote claiming there wasn’t a 24 hour notice given to the community and subsequently that 210 votes might not qualify a quorum of more than a thousand homes.

You won’t live near cities that clean up their waterways? You could rival Michelin publishing that list of reasons you have.

Imagine the power of combining this tosser initiative with the revenue sharing aspect of New York’s vehicle idling program. Save the planet and get paid all at the same time.

I’m not sure the builder profits much more by using engineered timber given its expense compared to concrete. Given the environmental cost of building with concrete, it’s important to find alternative materials.

Even in your anecdote, it’s not as though the addition of a single floor was the cause of the fire, just like the material type wasn’t. It’s much easier for an incomplete building to go up in flames than a completed and occupied one.

Technology isn’t always a solution, but it’s not like pressurized stairwells, automatic hallway segmentation, or even sprinkler systems are things of science fiction. These are all pretty established techniques of fire control.

In terms of prevention, given the number one cause of fires in homes and buildings is in the kitchen, the easiest solution is opting out of the methane infrastructure in new projects. Though there’s a rather large industry that pushes for this practice to continue, so that’s a difficult thing to do.

Also, to bring it back to the topic relevant to this post, I’m not advocating to make escape harder in a burning building by eliminating stairwells. My point is precisely what’s in the content of the post - single stairwell buildings in other areas don’t have people on the upper floors dying hand over foot because they had to descend an extra flight or two.

If it was harder, I’m sure we would have heard about the trend of every building seven levels and up having dead bodies pile up in the stairwell after someone tried to flambé a quail.

While it isn’t clinical, I think the practice of building beyond a few levels with a single egress point in so many other countries is sufficient enough evidence to justify changing this building standard.

The multiple references to ‘fire safety organizations’ read to me like ‘fire departments’. Fire departments across North America already dictate what our roads (and therefore cities) look like. Seems like a logical leap they would also impose control over the corridors within buildings too.

I’ve seen some of the photos of people driving American-sized pickup trucks around Europe and I hope they get outlawed. Unfortunately, Europe and Asia do have so many more options - sometimes even by American companies much to my annoyance.

I occasionally look into getting a Kei car of some sort. Though it’s not really practical for me. Maybe one day, by the time a sub five inch flagship phone is developed perhaps.

Small vehicle sales represent less than a fifth of the market. Major manufacturers have ceased production of sedans and hatchbacks in favour of larger platform SUVs and pickup trucks.

I realise that vehicles aren’t really the focus here, but the smartphone market isn’t too dissimilar in certain ways. The major manufacturers have discontinued their smaller for factor devices citing ‘sales’, but those devices cost nearly what a larger one did so it’s reasonable that consumers would opt for the bigger screen, especially when it’s typically coupled with a larger battery and superior camera.

Also similar between these two markets, if you look overseas, or at older used models, or make any of a variety of compromises, you can find something if you’re determined. Or you don’t find something and just deal with the giant phone that sticks half out your pocket and you can’t sit down without removing it.

Personally, I’m enjoying watching the advances in folding phones. They are approaching Westworld standards pretty quick. Trouble of course will be when they get there, it’ll cost the same as a car and at that point it better unfold some wheels too.

I was only meaning that 1% chance bit in reference to someone that had chosen to donate their body to science.

I am for opt out instead of opt in, but making it mandatory would be a step too far. At the same time I find the two opinions of ‘my body my choice’ and ‘after death you cease to exist’ to be a bit counter posed.

I would instead suggest what already occurs in today’s reality: write your wishes down, and hope your wishes are followed by your descendants, or your family, or your executor, or your attorney.

Unfortunately for anyone’s wishes, that’s all they are - wishes. Unless one go to rather significant lengths to erect checks and balances to the following of your desires, whichever individual remains after our demise can simply do away with whatever they please and have an auction to the rich for extra parts while taking sponsorships from big oil.

I wish I could live in that timeline where all morgue attendants got a page when the world’s 1% needs a good looking kidney hahaha.

Similar to vehicles, smaller phones probably would sell just fine.

The issue would be that not many people would buy a phone 2/3 the size unless it was also 2/3 the price. Even if the manufacturing of such a device was 2/3 the cost (it wouldn’t be), the bottom line for the manufacturer would be same number of devices sold, but 1/3 less money.

Companies don’t do less money.

In fairness, pretty much any subject will have some negatives that could be pointed to and touted as an excuse for not doing something.

If there’s even a 1% chance of your body being properly useful to science in some way, and therefore humanity at large, it’s worth the odds.

Though I’d bet good money that the amount of mutilation and whatnot isn’t particularly common for science bound bodies. Much easier to steal some organs from the morgue bodies marked for non collection.

Yes, I’m rather disappointed in the ‘better of two options’ that was chosen. I just wish we could get away from first passed the post. Maybe one day.

I’m glad to hear this. Yet another reason to relocate.

Yes I suppose, just like anything, a nuance here would be whether or not we expect a person of such political authority to be able to have weekends at all.

On one hand, they’re still a person working a job and no one should be working 365 days a year On the other, the societal cost, in terms of income tax covering travel and security costs, of having a President that travels every weekend is a bit much.

If the President was only golfing on the weekends, and wasn’t charging the government to golf at his own clubs, then this whole thing of him taking leisure every weekend would be a harder thing to argue against without getting into that whole administration work life balance discussion.

Despite the name, it’s nice this isn’t a physical pass that some people will never hear about and still end up paying full pop at these places. Everyone that’s eligible will benefit. That’s great.