2 bicycle videos and an update to the employment update

Pure awesomeness (via chic cyclist):


And after going through a ton of Mark Ronson songs on youtube yesterday I'm going to have to go and buy some of that fool's music.

******
New helmet design (via Toxel):

I like that people are trying to come up with alternatives to helmets (full disclosure: I usually don't wear a helmet myself unless I'm going for a long distance ride), and after seeing this video, I have more faith in this design than I did just hearing about it.

Two things in this helmet's defense that I've already seen people question:
1) It's a one use thing. Well yeah. Technically a normal helmet is too. You should get a new helmet after a crash because the structure has been damaged.
2) On the face plant crash, the helmet ended up not adequately protecting the dummy. Same thing for a regular helmet. I knew a guy who had his jaw wired shut for a month because he hit the road face first in race crash. Unfortunately nothing's going to really protect you in that kind of crash.

Now for the downsides as I see them. Obviously there is the cost, but if this design picks up and really becomes feasible, the cost will drop. My second concern is if people decide that this design means they can wear normal hats or have some extreme updo (such as the super high ponytail in one of the pics at the link). In the video on one of the slo-mo shots you can see that for just a fraction of a second, the helmet catches on the smooth head of the dummy as it inflates. Hopefully the designers have or will test out the helmet with stuff that will impede the inflation so they see if it still works just the same. Lastly, and this one's mostly personal, I live in an area where it's 90+ degrees for half the year and always significant humidity. I'm not wearing some thick ass thing around my neck as I bike!

******
And now for the update to the employment update:
I'm staying employed at my current job through the end of the year. Woot!

Happy Columbus Day!

via feministe, transcript available at the link.

More information on the worthlessness and insult of this holiday at Racialicious:

In my opinion, it’s not as if the information does not exist out there which explicitly states that no, Columbus was never even near the continental mass of what’s now known as “America”. The “great” navigator that he was didn’t even know where he was going and never washed up here – ever.

What he did do with the full backing of the voyage was ensue genocide, apartheid, and colonization – all whose affects are deeply entrenched in existing assimilative federal policies, hierarchical societal structures, and the realities of Indigenous communities here and around the world.

Employment Update

I mentioned a little over a month ago that come October 1st of this year, I'd be out of a job. Well, it's October 9th now and I'm still employed. For now. I got a one month reprieve that keeps me working until the end of October, and there's a chance I can get another reprieve that take me out to December, possibly even next March. I'm not out of the woods yet, but it's nice to have even just a little more time to hunt for a new job and save up money in the mean time.

*fingers crossed*