Yes, it's a meta-joke inspired by the funny unit of size used in that article and on the fact that it is even more opaque to Europeans, which have even less of a feeling what that actually means.
Also, the format is a pretty common standard template ("xxx or something - no idea I'm yyy"), which is very popular in Germany, but I am not quite sure it is also a thing internationally...
And yes, I am also now graving for one of those delicious Pickup choco biscuits! :-)
In the English language, "or so" is used only for numeric uncertainties (like "5 eggs or so" / "5 or so eggs"),but not for general uncertainties, like not knowing what specific type of thing an object is.
That's different to my 1st language (German) and I didn't know that before learning it from other comments in this thread.
You would also say it “five or so eggs”. The “or so” gets tied directly to the number, not the eggs.
Interestingly Gemini Pro that I asked to make sense of the topic told me all its examples in the other word order:
„I’ll be there in 10 minutes or so.“„It costs 50 dollars or so.“„There were 20 people or so at the party.“
So either there are additional circumstantial or regional differences, or the LLM was sycophantic again and fantasized a form more pleasing to a German chat partner.
I knew that "or so" is also a common expression in the English language, so assumed it to be used in the same way as in German.
As I just learned, this is only the case when dealing with numeric values (e.g. "five eggs or so" and not with uncertainties regarding more general things or distinctions between things.
So "Looks like a bug or so" apparently would be wrong.As I now understand it you would say "Looks like a bug or something" instead?
That's not only the case for Chinese bikes, though.
I once had my saddle stolen and the bike shop was like:"Yeah bring the bike over because we need the exact measurement down to a tenth of a millimeter."
Me:"How the fuck am I supposed to do that? It doesn't have a saddle!"
I see it this way: Colleagues riding their car to work typically spend so much more money on convenience extras alone like entertainment system, comfort seating and stationary-heating, while effectively spending less time in their cars than I on my bike, that I see no point in going the complete hardcore way.
Having a bike that leads to less hassle and maintenance time while on top also being tailored to my specific needs and fitted to my stature is more than worth the roughly 30% increase in cost per km, imo.
But I admire all that go the minimalist way!There is e.g. this one guy who regularly flies past me on an old, much to small 3-gear-woman's city-bike - completely impressive!Then there is this other guy riding a custom rebuild three-wheeler, complete with canopy, bike horn and an integrated stereo system blasting Metal music, casually greeting everyone passing, as if riding a Harley. :-)That's part of the fun of riding a bike - there is more variation between bikers, as you have much more freedom to still affordably realize your ideal view of it!
Most people that I know live in the range 10-20km from their place of work, with a second peak around 30-40km (the ones that decided for more rural living)
20km being somewhere around the upper limit of what makes practical sense to still do by bike, this would be 4000-8000km when biking to work 200 days per year.I was around 18km (so 7000km yearly) for most of the past 20 years, but home office since corona reduced that to much more relaxing 3000km/year.
Maintenance also depends hugely on whether you drive through the winter or stick to the summer months. Wear during winter especially of the drivetrain is crazy...
Regarding the rim brakes: I was talking more about the wear of the rims themselves. Depending on pad/rim-material combination they worn down after 20000km at the latest, rear wheel often even earlier.One of the main reason I bought completely new bikes every 3 years until about 10 years ago. Drivetrain components worn down even when changing chains regularly, new wheels to become necessary because of rim wear and suspension fork just a piece of extra nonfunctional weight after three winters.
No suspension and easily maintainable disc brakes was a game changer, together with a steel frame and fork, which let me sleep more relaxed because not so susceptible to hidden wear.
That's solid advice for your occasional short range bike.But when talking about substituting a car for a bike with the thereby associated mileage (which the comic implies), in most cases this will be less true.
Main reason for this is that, apart from the frame, bikes mostly consist of wear-and-tear parts.That is especially true for many used bikes that still have rim brakes and on top may have obsolete parts that are not easy to come by (had that once for my bar-end gear-levers that Shimano decided not to produce any more, because old-fashioned...)
Also a used bike comes as it is, so not really optimized for easy maintenance as you could choose a new bike to be.I have learned by now (after switching to new bikes every few years and ~20000km before), that the most stressless (and also cheap in the long run) path is to buy a custom bike with robustness and easy maintenance in mind.
So steel frame, no suspension fork but fat 29'' tires instead, mechanical disk brake, standard lower mid range components (less optimized for weight, but often more robust), lowest number of gears possible (less finicky and typically less chain wear).
The initial cost when doing so will be higher, but in the long run will pay itself of when doing 5000km+ per year.
LOL!Came to this comment section to say exactly that, just to discover it to be already the first comment!But it's kinda the reverse thing OP had in mind, I think...
l agree that it's complicated.The DST in the early 80s actually was the 3rd time people introduced it here, one of the predecessors of our current state even being the first country to ever use it in its current form during WWI.
Funnily enough, it is not universally agreed on in German to say "Gesundheit".Many don't do it any more (me included), because it is a comment on an uncontrolled body function and thus pretty intrusive.
Exception to this may be people who are really close to you.
It has been introduced in my country during the early 80s, so I have to disagree on that one.That's just about 40 years ago, so pretty sure there are still people left who agreed to it.
I would love to do some development for older devices at some stage!
I did some assembly level programming on the DSP of a S25-like phone platform back in the days for my master thesis.Was really a lot of fun, doing complex signal processing using 2x8KB directly accessible RAM @ 13 MHz CPU frequency😆
I'm just going to enjoy a build process for a while first
Why should I?
(silently snickers in German national holiday)