On cycling and conspiracy theories

The sudden departure of lower-house deputy and charity activist Łukasz Litewka brought shock and grief on many, including me. Of all actors of the Polish political arena, no other had brought in more benevolence to the disadvantaged, terminally ill and animals. The tragic twist of fate have chosen him to pass away as a fatality in a traffic accident. 

A noble, young man suddenly departs, leaving a question why. Just like a Smolensk air crash, the accident looms as so improbable that it goes beyond comprehension of many.

The likelihood of being run over in a head-on collision with a car on a road in a middle of a forest is tiny, yet not equal to zero and with a large dose of bad luck, it materialised. Had he left home half a minute earlier or later, he would have escaped death. Most of us, including me, have averted a major accident more than once by dint of being a few seconds earlier or later in a deadly spot.

The theories of an alleged assassination began to sprout very shortly after his tragic death. Their authors claim Mr Litewka was inconvenient to many by speaking openly of paedophiles and zoophiles in Kłodzko or by messing with owners of crummy animal shelters. Frankly speaking, I do not buy it.

Facebook with its nefarious algorithms has suggested me a group (I deliberately leave out its name and will not link to it) whose members strive to call into question the official version of what we know about the accident or (less often) try to come up with alternative explanations. Out of pure curiosity, I tried to go through some of the postings, most of which do not hold water altogether, defy the common sense and basic laws of physics. Not to mention in this country of seasonal, yet not seasoned expert, thousands of skilled specialists in traffic accidents involving cyclists have mushroom within last two weeks. On top there are people who post provocative notes soaking with crass stupidity, while other group members fall for their twaddle. I do not commend this, a this a slap on the face of the deceased's nearest and dearest. Overall, I look at the group with disdain, but would not favour censorship here, as any attempts to close their mouths would trigger siege mentality.

The tragic accident ought to bring about a discussion on cyclists' safety. At the scene there was no cycling path, no pavement, no roadside, no separation of vulnerable traffic participants from motor vehicles. Mr Litewka did not wear a helmet, which that time would not have helped him, but in many cases helmets saved lives or prevented serious injuries.

Last Sunday I cycled 102.51 kilometres thus have beaten my record of 100.00 kilometres set on 7 June 2021. On the last day of the long weekend several people went for recreational bike rides. On the 90th kilometre of my journey, having coasted through Bulwary Wiślane chock full of people I was approaching Most Łazienkowski and nearly had a head-on collision with a fellow cyclist. I quickly skimmed on the rear brake and then on the front on and then gently swerved. The fellow speeding cyclist had far less reason and skill and ended up somersaulting over the handlebar. She had a helmet and luckily the only injuries were bruises and a swollen knee with a bleeding wound. Hearteningly, most people around stopped by to check if she needed medical aid. I waited half an hour until the culprit was picked up from the scene by her relatives.

Given the level of thoughtlessness among cyclists, an incident was just a matter of time. Unless you collide with a car, cycling gives much less room for serious injuries compared to travelling by car. Yet, sins of cyclists overlap those of motorists. Speeding, aggressive overtaking, not looking back ahead of overtaking, not signalling an intention to turn, abrupt braking, stopping for no reason and blocking infrastructure are those I see most often. There are several cases of cyclists not minding pedestrians, or less experienced cycling path users (elderly people, families with children), the plague are food delivery bandits on electric bikes doing at 40 kmph on cycling paths. 

I advocate cycling, moving around and commuting by bike and building infrastructure for muscle-propelled vehicles, but we also need education and enforcement of traffic rules on cycling paths. An aggressive bike rider would definitely do less harm than a speeding idiot behind a wheel of a motor vehicle, but cycling paths, except for where they cross roads, should be a safe place. At least I wish they were safer than they are now. I cycle a lot and if the traffic is dense and fellow cyclist not considerate, it can be stressful.

More than a hangover

Blogging continuity is a virtue itself, so despite headwinds I am leaving hereby a short note, saving for posterity the outcomes of my folly. On Friday a few lads came over to my place. We emptied too many bottles. This resulted in a severe punishment from my body, which on Saturday refused to put up with the excessive alcohol intake the evening before.

The entire day wasted, so with other duties to get on with during the weekend I need to put back my posting on the Ukraine until next weekend. Already roughly fine, but still feel the effects of noting eating a crumb yesterday and having my digestive system irritated by throwing up the Friday evening’s content yesterday morning. A proper poisoning past me.

Not asking for sympathy, just facing the music. Past this bout of crass stupidity I will hold back from going overboard with alcohol for a long time.

Don’t look up – film review

A belated review (though Michael beats it to me), since I watched the film on 27 December, after reading several recommendations on Twitter on it.

My very first reaction before watching the film was that the title had been translated incorrectly into Polish. Don’t look up sounded to me as nie sprawdzaj, nie weryfikuj informacji. Such worked my fondness of phrasal verbs, yet I was wrong. I literally tells you not to look at the sky.

The film which premiered in cinemas on 10 December 2021 and on Netflix on Christmas Eve went absolutely viral among well-educated people I follow on Twitter during Christmas. While at my parents’ for Yuletide I could not watch it, my only access to Netflix is via application on my TV set (shared account).

Michael as he summarises the plot claims the film, dwells on dumbed down masses. The first word which sprang to my mind when I tried to describe Don’t look up with one word was ignorance. Overwhelming, dazzling, overpowering ignorance individuals feel comfortable with. A portrait of omnipresent ignorance and a bunch of pundits trying to tear down the walls of ignorance to save the planet is dejecting.

While watching the film I saw two parallels. First was about early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic. In late 2019 Chinese authorities strived hard to shut mouths of doctors who warned of a perilous new virus, then their reaction to contain the spread of the virus was delayed. They failed to nip it in the bud, so now we have what we have. Second was about the global warming, which unlike the pandemic is a relatively slow process with long-term rather than immediate implications. Experts presage how bad it might get in a few decades, but politicians remain deaf to it or make inconsistent moves to combat it or just pretend they do something, not to wind up their voters with inconvenient decisions to curb carbon dioxide emission.

If I were to choose one picture which conveys the same message as the film, I would opt for the one to the right. I first saw it nearly a year ago, in the context of people who worship self-styled experts who claim SARS-CoV-2 does not exist / is as dangerous as ordinary flu, mask and vaccinations do not work, etc. Those individuals are either too thoughtless or too cowardly to face the complex situation the mankind need to get to grips with. Some humans have a tendency to deny facts which are inconvenient to them, searching for a comfort and peace of mind. I realise why this happens, but advise to rise above it.

The film deftly depicts the worst human traits – greed, selfishness, unjustified self-esteem, ignorance, laziness and many more. The moving picture is well-crafted, but has left me exhausted after watching it. If the film is meant to be an eye-opener for many, I hope it keeps going viral, though I keep in mind the human memory is short-lasting and it soon will be forgotten.

Exam in operational risk management

No, not the one at school, the one in life, this is the school of hard knocks! As some of you noticed I was absent in the blogosphere for a few days, to be precise from Thursday to Monday. The computer rehab was totally unplanned, I wrote here many times that mishaps always strike out of the blue and a few days ago this theory materialised.

For almost four years my computer had worked beyond reproach, but recently it began to work more and more slowly, in a word it became an ordeal to use. On Wednesday I had a bad day, the laptop also wasn’t in top form and eventually I lost my temper and spanked it in an attempt to persuade it to run faster. To no avail, it didn’t, but the other day when I turned it on the operating system didn’t want to load. After a few attempts I decided to run a recovery procedure and blithely left the room. After a quarter I was back just to see the hard disk had been formatted and the system was being restored. I thought it wasn’t a tragedy, I deluded myself everything could be recovered, it would be just a matter of money, but the problems were just setting in.

Firstly, the reinstalled system was overwritten on some of the sectors on hard disk, making it impossible to recover around 10 gigabytes of data saved on the disk. But the computer at least worked, I installed a modem and looked for a company which would help me get back my data collected for no apparent reason for many years.

When I found one, thins began to tangle up even more. It turned out the hard disks by Fujitsu-Siemens are generally vulnerable and fragile, to boot given that this one was not in pristine condition, it didn’t need much to conk out – my fault. On the course of recovery process in which they somehow managed to get back around 30% of my data the disk launched an auto-destruction procedure and gave up the ghost. Nice.

The only positive aspect of the whole story is the company I’ve found. Recovery Center is an excellent example of how customer service in Poland should look. The guy who runs it (not much older than me) proved himself to be a professional and reliable young entrepreneur. A normal company would recover more or less of my data, leave me with a worthless hard disk and quote me at least 500 PLN. At RC, not only they recovered as much data as they could, but also they fixed me up with a new hard disk and restored my original operating system, probably worth still around 200 PLN. And at the end they quoted me very favourably – I paid for the whole service 300 PLN and 170 PLN for the new hard disk. Maybe you wouldn’t call 470 PLN a snip, but somewhere else I’d have been charged probably around 1000 PLN. So if it happens to you that your hard disk, pendrive, digital camera or any other carrier packs up and you live in Warsaw or around, do not hesitate to contact them. The only drawback is the road leading up to their head office in Kierszek, south to Las Kabacki. I wouldn’t advise to try to get there by car. I made this mistake once, I managed not to damage any part of the vehicle but then I simply cycled there, road full of potholes, dangerous for undercarriage is not how the infrastructure on the perimeter of Warsaw should look.

But it would be best, if you learnt from my mistakes, so I appeal to you. Do back-ups. Buy a pendrive and store there all your important files, just in case. You don’t have to hit your hard disk, they break down for no reason.

Now I feel as if I was writing on someone else’s computer. It runs faster, work is more comfortable, but my digital belonging are lost or kept in 6 GB of miscellaneous chunks which will be brought into order for many weeks. All music is gone, but I hardly ever listen mp3 files on computer, I burn CDs right away. Six films downloaded and not yet saved on CDs or DVD are gone. Interestingly all photos I took since December were recovered. When it comes to the documents, many of them can be found in the random heap of data. I don’t even feel like sorting it out. Not a tragedy, but not a pleasure as well. Following my previous threads I compared my loss to the tragedy of the people who lost everything in the flood. The price of my folly was also quite reasonable – less than 500 PLN. Compare it to other people who out of their carelessness crash cars, or, Heaven forbid, injure or kill people in traffic accidents and you’ll see the scale of my damage is negligible. And I inflicted a damage only to myself. If you managed to read through the whole post, just draw some conclusions.

Sorry once again for a break in blogging. The next post will appear on Sunday, just after the exit poll results are announced. I’m somehow no longer afraid about the result, but the growing support for the candidate of the System, Russian Secret Services and other criminal organisations does not mean you can shrug off the vote. Go to the polls on Sunday!