Hi, Josh here. I write about whatever's on my mind. If you don't want my emails, I really don't want to be in your inbox. Smash the unsubscribe link.

OK, so I'm ruined by Bali. When asked by friends how it was (either while I was there, or since I've been back) I've really struggled to answer it in a way that feels at all comprehensive or correct.

I've long had on my twitter bio the words "That which is most important cannot be directly discussed", and I continue to believe this to be true.

There's a painful phenomena in the modern world/'knowledge work' that everything we think/say/do is mediated by the written word.

Which suuuuucks, if you're someone who sometimes uses the written word to over-intellectualize/hide from certain aspects of the lived experience.

I.E. 'overintellectualization' can be a trauma response, or a form of dissociation. I once had a therapist tell me something like

> wow, you sure do seem to have a great understanding of your own trauma and background. [...] Have you considered that your intellectualization might be a truama response?

I replied with:
> Yes, it most certainly is, but it's better than meth, so we're rolling with it.

I'm losing patience with my own wordiness, and I've found it way, way harder to excitedly put words down 'on paper'. I think this is a sign of health. maybe.

Anyway - instead of dropping a ten thousand word missive in your inbox about why scooters are great, I wish I could transplant you and I to Ubud, do a quick scooter riding lesson, then spend an hour or two touring around the island together, riding our scooters, enjoying the food, the sights, the smells, and experience.

It's infinitely more engaging to the brain to do something than it is to read about someone else doing it.

I have plenty of videos of the road networks, of scooting, and more, but it feels like such an impoverished way of sharing an experience. I'm reluctant to even try, because I know how easy it is to dismiss an 'argument' (via words) or a video of something, with the sentiment of

> well, sure, that's how they do it there, but life is different here.

"there" being "the rest of the world" and "here" usually meaning "The USA".

So, here's a few videos of scooting around bali. For various reasons, I only have scooting videos when I was riding on the back of a scooter, using a local scooter taxi service called "grab". (It's a platform analogous to uber here.)

​https://www.tiktok.com/@josh_exists/video/7212646051990392110​

​https://www.tiktok.com/@josh_exists/video/7212478007787769134​

I know internet norms demand that I include screenshots, but I'm not. Just click one or both of the links. or don't.

Here's a video from taking a car through downtown ubud in rush hour. This is "the worst of the worst" as far as how traffic in Ubud can be, and it was still only fractionally as annoying as normal USA rush hour:

​https://www.tiktok.com/@josh_exists/video/7212183434700098862​

It pains me to talk about, because within a certain region, enough people adapting scooters would unlock improvements/harm reductions of at least two orders of magnitude.

an order of magnitude is (roughly) considered a 10x improvement. a second order of magnitude is a 10x improvement of that 10x improvement, or a 100x improvement over the original condition.

I'm a 'systems thinker', at my best and worst, and I think we could even tack on a third order of magnitude of available improvement, if, broadly, "we" could "update our norms" to be more inline with balinese norms for mobility networks.

Here's how we get two orders of magnitude improvement:

• scooters are less than 1/10th the cost to obtain than a regular car
• scooters are less than 1/10th the mass of a car, so they generate far less tire microplastics, brakepad dust, and vehicle emissions. (It's relatively easy to accellerate/stop a mass of 250 pounds vs a mass of 2500 lbs)
• because they weigh so little and take up so little space, they dictate proportionately less space be alocated for travel and storage
• because they weigh so little and take up so little space, they cause proportionately less wear and tear on roads. Roads can be thinner/lighter-duty, and they can be parked in small basements and on second floors, without adding all the weightbearing structures that cars dictate
• all these space/weight/resource savings allows those resources to go into other purposes, like 'building places worth visiting' and 'having more money to live your life'.

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All of this added up easily gets you three orders of magnitude improvement.

"our"/American norms are so disconnected from certain aspects of reality (thanks to american regimes of social control and ethnic cleansing that got normalized around chattel slavery) that i feel like a raving lunatic when I bring it up.

> Josh, that seems strong...

You're not wrong. I invite you to get yourself a copy of The Slaughter of Cities: Urban Renewal as Ethnic Cleansing.

So, scooters. I'm trying to figure out a way here in Denver to act as a bit of a broker between institutions and people, sorta in line with this paper, Structural Holes and Good Ideas.

Travel norms in Bali are such that everyone rides scooters, by default. Kids ride scooters, adults ride scooters, old people ride scooters, they commute, they use them as work vehicles, and far more. In bali, it would be ridiculous to 'advocate for more scooter riding'. It's the default. Some people wear helmets, some don't. It's all casual. Some ride in shorts and t-shirts and flip-flops, some don't.

It's far from the default in the USA, and thus it's uncommon, less likely to be imagined as a possibility, and far more dangerous.

In the USA it's common to see roads clogged with huge vehicles with huge blind spots, and drivers don't expect scooters. As you can see from the videos above, it would be comical for a car driver to not expect a scooter passing on the left or the right.

That all said - I still think riding scooters is the way to go in the USA. The upsides are infinite, and the downsides are not dramatically different from the downsides of driving a car.

40,000 car drivers per year die in america, while driving. Speed is the most dangerous component of traveling in a vehicle, two-wheeled or four.

Driving/riding slowly certainly reduces the likelihood of serious injury in an accident, but unfortunately, road networks in America (and the use of stoplights/signalized/unsignalized intersections) cause super dangerous situations, continuously. If you're riding your scooter around on chill neighborhood streets (strongly recommended) you cannot get very far without having to cross an 'arterial', which is guaranteed to be the most dangerous part of your day.

We shouldn't have to deal with these dangerous roads - the institutions that claim ownership/responsibility of that space/role should be making them safe, but, again, because these roads were designed to perpetuate ethnic cleansing, the fact that they deal out death, degredation, and danger is a feature, not a bug.

-Josh

PS I'm kicking around the idea that the ideal way to "ease into" scooter-riding is among two-car households. Especially if one of the cars still has a car payment. One could sell a car, buy a scooter, pocket the difference, and then most of the time, both driving members of the household would have mobility options, and if there was weather or needs around cargo, the car would be used by whoever most needed it.

In Denver, a problem for commercial real estate operators is ensuring adequate vehicle storage for all the apartments they rent out, which often go to two people - married, partners, or just friends. But when there's not adequate guaranteed vehicle storage, it's hard(er) to rent out the unit. It's free to store a scooter in a commercial parking facility, because they take up no space and you could fit 50 of them just in odd corners of a garage.

PPS totally unrelated: i'm working on a long piece that I'll link to next time. I used to be a voluntary member of the evangelical church, then I read three books, and 'recovered' a much more interesting and provocative jesus, and marched straight out of anything related to evangelicalism. It's a bit of a complicated and delicate story, so stay tuned! It's 🌶️ and fun to write, I'll make sure to include a link once it's written.

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