Feeling’s mutual.

If you need someone to teach you how to ride a bike, hit me up.

Alright. If that’s what you want to nitpick here

The average adult (in the US) can ride a bike, whether or not they ever actually do is a different matter, but the majority of us learned how to at some point, and there’s a reason “it’s like riding a bike” is a saying.

From being able to ride a bike to being able to ride it a reasonably long distance just takes time and work to build up to it, which is what he said.

Now a lot of people won’t put in that kind of work, but that doesn’t mean that they can’t.

I’m fat, I won’t sugar-coat that. In a couple weeks when it warms up a bit I’ll hop on my bike, and I’ll probably manage around 5 miles, and by the end of the summer I’ll probably work my way up to around 15 miles, and I’ll still be fat. I do this pretty much every year (and worth noting, I didn’t even learn to ride a bike until I was in my 30s)

There are parts of the world where damn-near everyone gets around on bikes, they don’t have some sort of unattainable genetic advantage because they grew up in Amsterdam or whatever that gives them some “dormant athleticism” that Americans don’t have, they just ride bikes.

The average adult can ride a bike. They just don’t or won’t.

He was replying to a comment about e bikes, and concluded his comment talking about them. The whole comment was building up to that fact. Just because every sentence didn’t explicitly mention e-bikes doesn’t mean that they weren’t the point of the entire comment.

He spent a couple paragraphs talking about his own struggles building up to riding a regular bike and then concluded by basically saying “or you can skip all of that hard work and get an e bike”

And if you finish reading, he talks about ebikes and strikes helping to fill that gap

People don’t really want things fixed like they used to, and even when they do, affordable parts are getting almost impossible to find for modern vehicles and devices.

God damn do I feel that.

I recently replaced my dryer. It suddenly started making a really alarming banging noise.

I’m a DIY-minded guy, spent maybe an hour taking the damn thing apart.

And I found the issue- a bad drum roller. Theoretically an easy enough fix once you have the whole dryer apart like I did (which wasn’t really hard, just time-consuming)

I went online and searched out the part, and it was going to cost me almost $200 (granted I was going to replace all 4 rollers, if one went there’s a good chance the others weren’t far behind)

For a bit of plastic and rubber that looks a hell of a lot like a scooter wheel.

And while I was in there, there were a couple belts and pulleys and such that I also wanted to replace. Stuff that was bound to wear out eventually, and the dryer was about 15 years old.

So all in I was looking at probably close to $4-500 in parts. Couple hundred more and I could just get a whole new dryer, which seemed like the smart choice because who knows what else might have been about to go- the motor, the heating element, any of the electronics

So that’s what I did. And I hated it. There was something I could have fixed, I wanted to fix it, but it just didn’t make financial sense to fix it.

This wasn’t a dryer from some oddball fly-by-night unheard of AliExpress brand, it’s an overall respectable company that makes a pretty reliable product. And this wasn’t a particularly specialized part, it was basically just a wheel. It should be the kind of thing that’s pretty much standardized, used by every company in countless models of different appliances, and available for cheap off the shelf at any hardware store. I should have been able to walk into Ace hardware and go buy something like a generic “3 inch roller wheel” for like $5, took it home, and slapped it onto my machine.

But instead it was some proprietary bullshit and I couldn’t find any readily available off-the-shelf part for a reasonable price that would have fit quite right.

They literally reinvented the wheel so that some years down the line I’d have to shell out money for a new dryer instead of fixing the one I had.

I’m honestly a little conflicted about how people like you who are still actively involved in scouting should react to this.

On the one hand, yeah, screw the organization, they don’t deserve support for this kind of stuff.

On the other hand, it’s about the kids, and I do overall believe that the core values of scouting and the kind of structure it can provide are great things for a lot of kids to experience. There are other ways to provide that sort of program, but scouting is already there, and it makes more sense to me to try to preserve and improve that than to try to start something else from scratch.

And good adult leaders can do a lot to insulate their units from the bullshit from higher-up. I know my troop wasn’t at all afraid to bend or even outright break the rules when it made sense to do so (I actually remember first learning the term “plausible deniability” from one of my leaders,) and being active at the district or council level can help put pressure from the inside (back in the 90s my local council actually tried to force the issue and allow gay scouts to join, they got shot down by national but imagine if more councils would have stepped up to do that.) Good leaders with their heads on straight leaving scouting will just result in the organization collapsing into exactly what we don’t want it to be.

I’m not currently active in scouting, I don’t have kids and my schedule doesn’t really work with it these days to be active as a leader, so all I can do is try to make some noise from the outside leaning on my experience as an eagle scout and former leader. I have nothing to lose but also very little leverage. People like you have more leverage, but also not much to lose- absolute worst case scenario they find an excuse to kick you out, but if you don’t succeed at making change from the inside you were probably going to leave anyway.

Maybe you’re right, and I’ll have sent my medal away for nothing, in which case I’m down a prized but essentially useless trinket.

Or maybe I’m right, in which case I’m either ridding myself of a symbol of an organization I’ll no longer wish to be associated with soon, or maybe, just maybe I’m doing something that helps to prevent that from happening.

If you’re right, I’ll feel a little silly and otherwise continue my life as normal, content that I at least stood up for something I believe in.

But what will you do if I’m right? How would you feel knowing that you brushed this off as a non-issue if girls and trans youth, and maybe eventually other “undesirables” are eventually kicked out of scouts, when their commitment to dei wavers, and maybe they’re even twisted into a militaristic, nationalist organization like some modern Hitler Youth?

Also thank you for showing real scout spirit and taking this seriously.

I’ve been talking to a lot of other eagles and other former scouts, and so far none of them have been happy about this. I have a couple other people also planning to return their medals, and a few who can’t find their medals or who are (understandably) reluctant to do so but are at least planning to write some letters and make some noise over this.

“DEI” is baked throughout the scout program

And do you really think that they’re not going to try to come after that too? They’re already leaving the door open for them to come back and put more pressure on scouting in a few months, and Drinky Pete has pretty clearly said that he hopes the organization will go back to being the boy scouts.

When someone tells you who they are, believe them.

Also really convenient of you to just ignore the concerns about trans youths. I’m sure you’re not pushing an agenda here /s

I don’t have a specific link to share, I’ve been following this whole situation for a few weeks now since it was all first announced. There’s a lot of articles being written about it now, your best bet is probably just to see what your favorite trusted news sources are saying.

They didn’t change much, but there were changes made and not insignificant ones

They have done away with the Citizenship in Society merit badge, which was a relatively new badge, but was also a required badge to earn eagle. This was a badge that basically focused on the importance of DEI.

They’ve also agreed to add a “military service” merit badge. Not a whole lot of details yet about what exactly that will entail or if it will be a required badge or not.

It also sounds like they’ll be making youths register accordingly to their biological gender as opposed to the one they actually identify as, and will need to use facilities like bathrooms and share tents and such with other scouts that corresponds to that.

It’s not massive changes, but it’s certainly enough that you should be pissed about them. And hegseth has indicated he wants to reevaluate in a few months and likely will be pushing for even more changes.

I’m an eagle scout, I’m fucking pissed about this, it goes against all of the good values I learned from scouts for them to give into this pressure, and I’m sure that when kegsbreath comes back around in 6 months or so they’ll cave even more.

I’m sending my eagle medal back in protest.

Could always fly the Verda Stelo as long as you’re ok with the possibility of someone trying to speak to you in esperanto because of it

Unfortunately I live a really long way from their HQ in Texas, and have neither the time nor the money to do so.

And delivering it to my local council wouldn’t really have the same impact, my local council isn’t the problem, they actually tried to admit gay scouts back in the 90’s when the national organization was still firmly against it.

https://www.scouting.org/program-updates/citizenship-in-society-merit-badge-discontinuance/

At least one of the changes is already easily verifiable.

Kegsbreath has pretty clearly said that he hopes to have girls kicked out and is going to further reevaluate in 6 months though

So it’s coming.

I’m an eagle scout, and I’ve been following this story.

I’m going to be returning my medal as soon as I find a good mailing address that gives it the best chance of it landing on Roger Krone’s desk.

I’ve been in touch with every eagle I know. A good handful of them are on-board with sending their medals back as well. Most of the rest of them are at least going to be writing letters and doing whatever else they can to draw some attention to this.

Look, in the grand scheme of things, the changes they’ve agreed to change little to nothing about the scout program.

But if they caved once, that just means that hegseth is just going to try again, and they’ll probably cave in next time too. And the next time.

I’m not doing it lightly, I’m damn proud of my eagle scout award, that goofy little medal ranks among my most priced possessions.

But after a couple more rounds of this bullshit, they’re going to twist scouting into something I’d no longer want to identify with, so one way or another my days of being proud of that medal are coming to an end.

I think they were bigger on spears though.

I slacked off in high school and went to community college.

Where I continued slacking off. I sat in the back of one of my history classes because it was near an outlet, so I could plug my laptop in, pretend to be taking notes or whatever, but in actuality was just goofing off for most of the class

Next to me sat another slacker, he was goofing off in much the same sort of way, and we hit it off.

He became, and still is, one of my best friends. Most of my friends I can actually trace back to him in some way or another. He’s one of those people whose ability to meet and befriend people everywhere he goes borders on the magical.

One day we met up to go wander around a local flea market/farmers market. We ran into his best friend who also happened to choose that day to go wandering around the aisles of junk looking for hidden treasure.

And that friend brought his girlfriend with him. Years later she would become my wife.

It wasn’t exactly love at first sight. We all wandered around together for a while chit-chatting, and eventually we ported ways. She didn’t make much of an impression on me at the time, nor I on her, I actually don’t think she even remembers this story.

Since we shared pretty much the same circle of friends, we would bump into each other occasionally at parties and such. For a few years I don’t think either of us really thought much about the other, we were just friends of a friend who seemed cool enough.

Eventually, of course, the two of them broke up, as tends to happen. We all stayed in pretty much the same social circles, but she and I didn’t have a whole lot of direct interaction.

One day, that friend from community college hits me up. He’s heading over to the house that she was renting with a couple roommates, no real plans, just chill, have a few beers, watch movies, maybe get some food. So I tag along.

It was basically the three of us hanging out in her living room, and her roommates occasionally wandered in to grab a beer from us before disappearing back into their rooms.

We refer to that night as “The Accidental Nazi Night” because just picking random movies from Netflix, we ended up choosing Iron Sky (about Nazis on the moon,) Equilibrium (dystopian movie with an authoritarian state surprising free expression and such,) and Fire with Fire (where the main villain is a Neo-Nazi)

So that was my first time really spending any sort of quality time with her, just chilling in her living room, killing a case of beer, and watching movies of varying quality.

We became pretty good friends after that. The house she rented basically became the usual hangout place for everyone, so I spent a lot of time there. Funnily enough, she tended to hang out in her room away from all of the action while we were all making a ruckus downstairs.

And so things went for a few years. I’ll be honest, I never really had her on my radar as someone I was interested in dating and was content to be friends.

Apparently she was very interested in me though, and was laying the flirting on pretty thick, and it all went over my head. Eventually she realized she would need to resort to more drastic measures, and one night as we happened to be leaving a friend’s party at the same time, as we got to our cars she grabbed me and kissed me.

And I’ll be honest, that broke my brain a little. From my perspective it kind of came out of nowhere. I kind of had to rethink everything about us and decided, “yeah, fuck it let’s see where this goes”

And so here I am a decade or so later, married for 7 years, and pretty happy with how things all turned out.

I work in 911 dispatch, trying to inject a bit of reason into stupid and scary situations is a big part of my job.

–

I had a call one time, they guy had been threatened by a bunch of teenagers with knives on a bus

The bus came to its stop the teens got off and so did this rocket surgeon (instead of, you know, not getting off at the same stop as a bunch of armed kids who were just threatening you)

That’s about when he called and I answered.

This idiot was following them.

I told him not to, and reminded him that they have knives.

He told me it was ok because he had a knife too.

So I basically had to explain to him why that was fucking stupid.

–

Another time, I get a call from someone because there was a crazy guy with a machete out on their porch.

Her stupid fucking husband wanted to go outside to fight him. So I had to keep telling her to make him stay inside.

–

We had a domestic once, we actually got calls from both parties. One half was outside the house, the other half was inside, and they’re basically standing at the front door yelling at each other.

My caller was inside. I told them to just close and lock the door and wait for the police. They did. Problem solved, right? Arguing stopped, the other party even walked away from the door after that. I get all the info I needed and hang up.

Except like 2 minutes later, I see that we’re now sending EMS out to that house.

Because my stupid fucking caller opened the door to start arguing again and got pepper sprayed by the other party.

–

Those are probably the three biggest stand-outs I’ve had so far, but I’m really hard-pressed to think of any disturbances or domestics, that couldn’t have been resolved, or at least kept from escalating if at least one party would have just walked the fuck away. Close the door, roll up your window, go into another room, step outside, walk down the block, go sit in your car, etc.

Or hell, even just sit there and ignore them.

But no, they always need to get the last word in. They can’t swallow their stupid fucking pride for even one second.

And it’s really disturbing that those kinds of people are making their ways into law enforcement type positions.

It’s not a new phenomenon, and it’s not just ICE, it’s regular cops and such too.

But these aren’t the kinds of people who can help solve problems. These are the kinds of people who are problems.

I feel like that kind of illustrates the point though

There’s a lot of precise grammar rules because the language is a little bit of a clusterfuck (I say that with love, I like the French language and speak a bit myself.) If you were to create a language from scratch, you’d probably choose to make one with much simpler grammar.

Like most languages, French evolved organically out of other languages. There wasn’t really a point in time where someone said “hey I made a new language, here are the rules, I call it ‘French.’” Instead, for centuries people just kind of picked and chose what parts of Latin, Gaulish, Frankish, etc. that they liked and didn’t like, mashed them together in whatever way felt “right” and eventually French happened.

Then when some eggheads decided to write down the rules, it was more of a “Ok, here’s all of the weird bullshit most of you are already doing, and there’s kind of a lot of it. It sounds very pretty, but let’s just all agree that thats enough and this is how our language works. Try not to add any more weirdness” (and they’ve been remarkably good at sticking to that, l’Académie Française doesn’t fuck around, which may or may not be a good thing depending on your views)

You got a lot of words with letters that don’t make sounds or make very different sounds that you might think if you weren’t already familiar with the language’s eccentricities, you got some very common verbs that conjugate in weird ways, you sometimes mash words together with an apostrophe basically because it sounds nice, the Académie Française, when confronted with a new thing, sometimes decides that the terms that most of the rest of the world have decided on for that thing just aren’t “French enough” and goes and makes up a new word for it, etc.

And again, I like French, I’m not shitting on it, English isn’t any better and the rules are certainly less formalized