1 gal of gas: ~29k calories - $4.609
~29k calories of rice: ~$600 <-- sus math btw 🤔It’s simple: drink the gas.
okay, update:
my math was wrong. new cost of rice: ~$11.5 (ordering in bulk)CONCLUSION
Drink the gas.100 grams of raw white rice is 365 calories, meaning that it’s about 3650 calories per kg. 29k calories of rice is 8 kilograms.
Where are you buying rice that it costs $75/kg???
One thing to account for is that humans are very inefficient at converting food into energy output. Only about 25% efficient to be precise. So you need to eat about 4 times more calories than you end up outputting into the bicycle.
The same thing applies to ICE cars, their engines are also very inefficient. EVs however reach an efficiency of 80-90%, they only end up using more energy than a bicycle because of how much faster you usually drive them. But if you drove an EV at the same speed you would ride a bicycle they would be vastly more efficient. And that’s not even accounting for the amount of energy used to produce food in the first place, which is a lot higher than the energy content of said food.
The superior choice is obviously an electric bicycle though when you want to have the most sustainable transportation, you get all of the efficiency gains from a battery operated motor, whilst still having the low weight and drag of a bicycle
EVs however reach an efficiency of 80-90%,
That’s not accounting for the inefficiency of turning heat into electricity in the first place (turbine generation is about 90% at utility scale) or turning photons into usable electricity (photovoltaics are at about 20%). And with turbines, you have to account for the inefficiencies in processing the fuel to get it to that point.
The whole universe is just an entropy generator and we’re gonna lose a lot of useful energy as we try to manipulate it.
Have fun commuting 30 miles to work on that thing. Especially when there’s 8 or 10 inches of snow, -10 wind-chill, or there’s a thunderstorm rolling in. I’ve seen people do it; they look absolutely fucking miserable and it’s a miracle it doesn’t kill them.
sees happy person
gets mad
Bruh I will literally just stay home if there is that much snow I’m not fucking stupid
Respect to those folks. A miserable ride is often rewarding because it’s one of those lows that is eminently temporary and gives you an appreciation for the highs, especially if you are dressed appropriately so as not to catch a cold or some such. Kind of like shoveling snow for that sweet sweet mug of hot chocolate on the sofa afterwards. But yeah, also a good city will provide alternative options for its citizens, trains, buses, rideshare even. If a 30 mile bike ride is the only alternative to driving from place A to place B, your government doesn’t want you to have any kind of freedom to choose how you get from place A to place B, if there are no affordable housing options or good job opportunities that change that equation, your government is working on behalf of the big car manufacturers and dealers to keep you enslaved in debt to them, which is pretty fucked up
> be me
> live in a relatively new part of town in the Netherlands
> bike 20 minutes to the city center
> no hills or mountains because netherlands
> See almost no cars because most bike routes are completely seperated and shorter than car routes
> Park my bike in a surveilled parking area funded by the city
> Do all my shopping for the day and return
> MFW my friends and family don’t even realize how good we have it
So how easy is it for an American to move to the Netherlands? Asking for myself
If you are skilled labor, yes: https://www.expatica.com/nl/finance/taxes/the-dutch-30-ruling-explained-101641/
But what @abbadon420 said is equally true. Housing market’s fucked beyond belief. Now, if you want to WFH and live out in the sticks, you’d be set.
Be American
Living paycheck to paycheck
Need job
Good worker
Work overtime when needed
Trying to pay off car
Smug biker does a driveby near open car window
Rethink my life
Realize U.S. infrastructure often requires vehicles
In middle of daily 40min commute, one way
Realize the same distance on bike would be two hours
Depresso
This is why we need good public transit on top of good biking infrastructure. The two working together let’s you get anywhere a car can go while not taking a lot longer.
You’re not wrong, but that’s not going to work over the entire country. There’s just too much space to cover; the country would go bankrupt trying to provide mass transit everywhere that it’s needed. So while this could be, if you could convince people to actually do it, a solution in urban areas, it’s never going to work out in the thousands of miles of country and they have the exact same problems. They just have less traffic and more empty space to cross.
We didn’t go bankrupt making a car-centric infrastructure, we won’t go bankrupt building adequate mass transit and micromobility infrastructure. In fact, we will probably profit greatly in myriad ways.
You realize the US used to have a comprehensive rail network, right?
And park directly in the immediate front of the building I’m visiting. No circling around and around without finding a space to park my overly expensive rust box. Just arrive, lock the bike to a post and be there.
Totally different experience in that aspect alone.
