Landscapes change over time, but do habitats become less benign? Used to be eager to go out for another spin; lately it seems safer staying in. Life threatening weather with driven rain and toppling gales lately seem often and tragic, as is news of crime, disrespect, and extra traffic. Who’d then go out on an e-bike and risk being blitzed, lightening hits, overtaking misfits, or shorting circuits? Anyway,
why do some communities want to ban e-bikes? They appear to fear that 0.5 kilowatt lithium batteries might cause wildfires, though any such calamity has yet to be confirmed, and wouldn’t that apply more to 100 kilowatt Tesla e-cars and thousands of petroleum fueled brands, motorized molotov cockpits? E-bikes have been outselling passenger vehicles every year. Automakers consider them a threat, since gas-car purchases so far in 2026 declined versus a growth trend during previous administration, even though motorists tend to buy both, perhaps e-bikes for every passenger.
Busy during prime season - May, June, July here - riding through residential areas, usually less hectic than main thoroughfares, saw streets probably named after developer’s kids, Eleanor and Todd, not typical family surnames. Doesn’t seem right, but beats generic A, B, C, or 1, 2, 3 designations, or mob nicknames, as Baby Shanks or Bent Finger. Hot Toddy sounds like a porn star, while Icy Lenore might well be a Poe femme fatale or tragic heroine. For street names prefer allusions to bike brands, say Columbia, Merlin, or Wheeler. Some presumptions are wholly imaginary. Many motivations are undivulged intentionally. Few ever hear whole story or want to.
Closed minds delude themselves that truths are easily accessed by common sense; because they are seldom pleasant, minds are easily poisoned against them. If you want to explore ripples of reality, your approach must be random rather than regimented, stochastic instead of scholastic, or you stumble upon revelations. Like a knight errant, must mine connections among myriad sources, and seek righteous results, not personal validations. Since everything in universe is interconnected, have to escape self imposed silos to derive veracity. Rather engage in cultural omniana and unsocial media of nonfiction articles and books than worm though self indulgent mad magaverse or sad metaverse of unfounded opinions and unlovely poetry. Innocence attracts tragedy; some songs are better left unsung apparently.
"But you will come, won't you?" said Miss Ivors, laying her arm hand eagerly on his arm.
"The fact is," said Gabriel, "I have just arranged to go----"
"Go where?" asked Miss Ivors.
"Well, you know, every year I go for a cycling tour with some fellows and so----"
"But where?" asked Miss Ivors.
"Well, we usually go to France or Belgium or perhaps Germany," said Gabriel awkwardly.
"And why do you go to France and Belgium," said Miss Ivors, "instead of visiting your own land?"
"Well," said Gabriel, "it's partly to keep in touch with the languages and partly for a change."
"And haven't you your own language to keep in touch with -- Irish?" asked Miss Ivors.
"Well," said Gabriel, "if it comes to that, you know, Irish is not my language."
Their neighbours had turned to listen to the cross-examination. Gabriel glanced right and left nervously and tried to keep his good humour under the ordeal which was making a blush invade his forehead.
"And haven't you your own land to visit," continued Miss Ivors, "that you know nothing of, your own people, and your own country?"
"0, to tell you the truth," retorted Gabriel suddenly, "I'm sick of my own country, sick of it!”
James Joyce, “The Dead”,
The Dubliners, 1914
Recall only a few years ago wondering what might negate Bund screeds and seditious newscasts versus invisible liberality and progressive proposals. Decency demands tolerance, but conservative rascals have never been decent. When
YouTube podcasts began exposing authoritarian cruelty, depravity, and hypocrisy, unforeseen effects were to poke beehive and provoke threats. Now pedophile cult and tightwad wingnuts want to
deny free speech for everyone but themselves while steadily embezzling trillions from public treasury and forfeiting America’s future. Never wanted to be so angry and vengeful as to entertain permanent solutions, even for genocidal monsters and serial killers in positions of trust. In just countries, no one deserves a death penalty, yet deportation, exile, incarceration for life in an ICE facility without comforts or medicines, property seizure, and restitution of stolen funds are ethical sentencing options for irredeemable convicts.
Republicans believe in free enterprise for themselves alone, especially bilking, brushing, cheating, crypto conning, extorting, grifting, money laundering, phishing, rigged gambling, scamming, selling phony coinage or worthless garbage, sex trafficking, spoofing, stealing, and sticking it to suckers. They’ve been fighting public entitlements and race reparations for decades, thus preserving their treasury nest egg so only they can continue to embezzle from it. Family values to them means involving sons in their criminal enterprises, making a cynical show of morality, and waving bibles and flags as validity. Of course they want limited government and little change, so they can avoid indictments under immunity and inflict torments with impunity. Not only are crimes statistics poorly collected but they are reported based on political optics. Independent and objective journalists these days loathe access loss and lawfare alarm, so seldom expose such egregious villainy, or suffer consequences of being fired or indicted falsely.
Awash in lies, misinformation, opinion, prevarication, and propaganda, there are lots of notions and reports one can dismiss immediately. Yet with an open mind a pleasant surprise may sometime arise. You must ask questions to solicit answers, yet never forget how humans communicate clumsily and mangle vocabulary. Pictures speak volumes of memes but never explain own tropes. Words portray actions, people, and things; they are not those, merely ersatz placeholders, signposts, substitutes, or ways to convey concepts. In an era of anomie, broken oaths, normlessness, nullification, obfuscation, ostracism, and suppression, language has become a weapon to solicit compliance or stab you in the back. Yet they claim sledgehammers, sticks, and stones may break bones, but not insults, names, or remarks. Democracy exists in a bubble of rights and rules comprised of promises (broken) and suppositions (mistaken). How one behaves matters more than what one avows.
Does a quarter century of
B&C suggest Galahad (Savior) Syndrome mired in monomaniacal obsession? Or just something that offers a benign diversion that organizes every mundane observation? Trying to capture all facts on a narrow topic can be immensely challenging. Bicycling culture defies monographic treatment in its universal scope. Energy companies capture electricity, methane, oil, and other sources in barrels, grids, and pipelines, akin to snaring game and spreading nets. Hunter-gatherer mentality spotlighted in
B&C as “hugger” practice began for humanity in prehistory. It’s still a survival strategy that inspires literary approaches. Given intricacies of sharing information upon which humans are so totally reliant, people should instead let fair and kind acts to both familiars and strangers speak for them, at a minimum, driving extra carefully now that school is again in session, and sharing roads with vulnerable users, including bicyclists.
Of like mind tackling complex topics comprehensively, Bert Olton,
Arthurian Legends on Film and Television (McFarland Publishing, 2000, 341 pp.) delves deep into cultural echoes surrounding King Arthur Pendragon, an archetypal hero and war lord who many revere as a betrayed martyr and exemplar redeemer. Medieval monk Gildas the Wise held as a role model golden king Aurelius Ambrosius, Arthur’s uncle, descended from Aurelii family of Republican Rome, later morphed narratively into wizard Merlin, now a famous bicycle brand. Merlin’s magic lets Uther Pendragon covertly rape Duchess of Cornwall Ygrayne, Britain’s most beautiful handmaiden, a relevant tale first mentioned in pseudo-historical Historia Regum Britanniae (c. 1136) by Welsh cleric Geoffrey of Monmouth. Uther then embarks upon war against and mortally wounds her husband Gorlois, takes his castle, and weds Ygrayne. Cwen Mother dies giving birth to Arthur, who’s raised apart secretly by Sir Ector, according to yarns promulgated by medieval Matter of Britain authors.
Certain truths echo over eons. Given perennial struggle of freedom versus responsibility, society seems to prefer divinely inspired selfless knights righting wrongs, or whoever assumes burdens for community’s sake, over squabbling rabble grasping for own advantages. Camelot became a convenient catchall for morality plays until police dramas, war stories, and weird westerns dominated airwaves. It’s all really the same old “herstory”, so called heroes fighting over Helen of Troy as an excuse for testosterone fury. People are unsure of what justice should entail, whereas experts versed in entire canon of laws seem better equipped to decide punishments.
An independent court system is a democratic cornerstone some historians trace back to Breton nobleman Alan the Red (aka Alanus Rufus or Alain le Roux, c. 1040 to 1093), a brave knight also of Aurelii ancestry and loyal advisor to William the Conqueror. Absentee monarchy, Frankpledge, one hundreds, and shire courts dispensed verdicts locally, after knightly tradition, referring only the most difficult decisions to royalty. “For the great thinkers of the American Revolution, this was their intellectual and historical foundation. Magna Carta and Parliament’s victory over the Stuarts showed them that not only could they place limits on the government, but that they had the right to run that government themselves.” David Edwards, "
How the Norman Conquest Underpinned American Independence", 2020
True heroes do exist, often cowed by Gawain (Imposter) Syndrome, presidential persecution, and self doubt, thousands already fired by regime for perverse amusement, including top scientists at CDC, exacerbating pandemic risks, and Federal Reserve, though courts will likely block a misogynist/racist targeting of board’s first and only black woman member Cook. Cabinet roles and court appointments now go to loyal but unworthy amateurs and incompetents, none of whom can pull a sword from a stone to become king. Nazi’s likewise targeted blacks, educators, homosexuals, Jews, Romis, Russians, scientists, and whoever was a threat to their white male supremacy, but führer loser suicided and Germany never fully recovered; meanwhile for sake of hate millions of innocents tragically died unnecessarily.
In CamelNot, today’s USA, circuit judges are about the only ones standing between democracy and despotism. Of their latest rulings,
70% have restrained current regime, over 300 suits pending, due to total contempt for constitution’s limits on chief’s role and court decisions and orders. Historic numbers of demonstrations and protestors probably won’t reverse the degenerate agenda of this power mad minority. Instead, arguing unconstitutionality of every executive order before a biased and stacked Supreme Court seems the only way to form a basis of impeachments for toxic justices who violate their sworn oaths to protect and uphold constitution, not hand over blanket immunity never before needed by any law abiding official. Anyone who makes such a demand must already be guilty.
If you don’t speak or write conventionally you obscure meaning. Each sentence has a noun component cheering on every action verb, then possibly dissecting afterward. A verb matters more than a noun, since it makes little difference who does a deed as long as whatever gets done whenever or wherever. Mind your adverbs, which can exaggerate or falsely qualify. File “oh, ouch, ugh, and wow” under official parts of speech, interjections. “Bang, boom, buzz, crash, slash” and so forth are onomatopoeia, nouns that describe sounds that can also be used as adjectives and verbs, sometimes crucial modifiers and qualifiers. “Ah, er, erm, hmm, uh, um” are utterances, not words, yet may imply duplicity, indecision, indifference, ignorance, or weakness. Even gestures,
a raised eyebrow, finger, or hand, are fraught with confrontation, menace, or uncertainty.
Carrying forward from list half way through
Bike&Chain (page 498) decades ago, and with a growing propensity to add idioms to English dictionaries, now recognize that many people are unaware of thousands of complicated communication concepts, e.g., logical fallacies. It’s not just chosen words but studied elocution and timely delivery that persuade. Furthermore, inflection and tone also alter meanings. Innocent statements delivered with bitter anger, eerie calmness, increased volume, or obvious passion say something altogether different than what words alone express. Buddha demonstrated a millennium ago how verbal logic is inadequate for attaining enlightenment and perceiving important truths. A foreign tower of babel and glut of incomprehensible rhemes convinced many European composers to write wordless dances, quartets, requiems, and symphonies; some became so anti-epeolatric they believed only parole-free musical passages should be shared, not the political and sentimental horrors of operatic librettos rife with provocative and turgid arias.
What is truth after all? In today’s war of words that gaslight rubes and refute facts, much of what you’re told enriches them not you. A precise statement hinges upon definitions, logic, semantics, sentence structure, and spellings. Over 3,800 terms do nothing more than describe, parse, qualify, question, and specify idioms, statements, and words themselves, all trying in vain to eke out and pin down what human chatter signifies. See
Labann’s Glossary of Spoken and Written Communication, a veritable genome of verbal expressions, if you’ll pardon a metaphor. If you look up their definitions, they only reference literary abstractions, more words, nothing concrete, definite, or emotional.
The circular reasoning of defining one term by another and vice versa makes you question all of them. A is not B; not even atoms of same element are identical. Imaginative minds ensure meanings morph over time; specialized terms tied to moribund activities disappear from use. Without fully understanding how to use a vocabulary effectively, you’re striving blindly to share data and speak freely. If you didn’t know this, where’s your insight into how to interact for mutual benefit? You probably can’t avoid being deceived, persecuted, and snared in woebegone weeds. Brown studies and humble prayers often occupy midnight insomnia until Matins hours.
If you’d wage hostile incursions under international laws and rules of engagement, best to analyze each of these phrases carefully. They consist of nouns that solely describe other words, not objects from nature, what humans use to exchange concepts, conventions, and plans, thus forming compacts, contracts, customs, and treaties. Broken oaths amount to crimes. Geneva Convention violations equal war crimes punishable by extreme measures including execution. Time to curb your enthusiasm for “unwoke” warfare, such as indiscriminately blowing up fishing boats in international waters.
People who know a sole esoteric or special thing gleefully repeat it to the exclusion of learning anything else, as they were repositories of a single fact, for examples, "affordability, groceries, and tariffs". Feature film Book of Eli (Gary Whitte. dir., 2010) was set in a post apocalyptical future with a scarcity of printed books, where individuals “became” a notable piece of literature by memorizing it for recording back onto pages for distribution someday. Eli possessed a brail bible only he could read, thus memorize. Makes knowing and reiterating a few fancy terms seem rather pathetic and slack.
You might not think anyone except hipsters and showoffs would need a new glossary of words about words. But how can citizens live legally and righteously if they can’t understand the polysyllabic terms from which laws are written? Chief executive and his justice secretary don’t care or know what Habeas Corpus means. You can use list to identify every false flag politicians foist upon fools. When you twist words to mean whatever you want, any social contract dies alongside freedom, rectitude, and rights as collateral damage. Truth be known, you live among dangerously deranged and raving animals including antisocial, armed, potential murderers roaming freely everywhere you need to be or go by bike. You did nothing to disarm mental defectives, yet expect to evade calamity for as long as you blissfully and naturally live?
Pope Leo recently said, “Belonging shifted to digital tribes and echo chambers... Something was lost... We are witnessing the combustion of meaning itself. The old symbols flag faith constitution still stand but their authority flickers. For some they are relics of order, for others instruments of oppression...fractures under too much information and too little wisdom... We speak often of freedom, yet rarely of responsibility, of rights, but not of duties.” Humans are programmed to chat and share, but lost language mastery and moral propriety. Global failures mount upon fiendish advice by fascists whisperers in White House. Multiple Catholic Popes condemned current regime’s false Christian pretext that causes clothing manufacturers to close shops, leaves dead bodies on streets, levies tariffs that drive up cost of food and negatively impact farm operations, removes charities and children from grant and welfare rolls, starves the least fortunate, and suffers no injured or sick poor to seek medical attention. One can be certain that metastasizing hunger and want leads directly to murders and thefts. Bad deeds and callous wishes usher evil into all lives.
Citizens hear and see what bullies and dunces in office do and say; some compare notes and converse among themselves to decide how to deal with damage and decline they’ve caused. SCOTUS be damned, the People govern themselves cooperatively by knowing, obeying, and using laws, not kowtowing to a bloated traitor with illicit conditional/temporary immunity, or shirking duties to terminate his malfeasance. They may also recall and renounce fathead legislators who dishonor office by kissing asses of oligarchs who didn’t elect them. Republican Congress has done almost nothing for vast majority, in fact, made lives of constituents less secure and worse in every way. When death dealer Mordred mansplains away short term setbacks for long term gains, it’s time to hold accountable for
a long list of impeachable offenses he who, for fraud and rape convictions, should already be serving multiple prison sentences. Whenever he trots out his more dreaded mistress Morgana, execrations and expletives greet this maleficent couple.
Because accusations and indictments are only words, criminals expect to be exonerated for their vicious acts against voiceless victims. When confronted with demonstrable facts, they pivot to win an intellectual argument through illegitimacy of “because I say so.” Late knight lighthearted momologues get preempted while White House promotes sedition and slander, which alone serves GOP, a 25% affiliation party beholden to rich scumbag kleptocrats and tech bros, who buy influence and throw their weight around individually. Damsels and maidens are their routine prey; lock up your preteen daughters until they are adults, because “consent” is yet another term they abuse. Seek no relief from Round Table regulars Sirs Agravain the Hard Hand, heir to crown Constantine, Perceval of the Grail Quest, star-crossed queen lover Tristan, or tall valiant Ywain du Lion liberator of the Castle of Maidens, all having lived exemplary lives but long since lain well below British terrain.
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