#TAIPEI CYCLE

[stivenhuang-blog]

2024台北自行車展 大會手冊廣告洽0955-352148

2024 台北國際自行車展 (TAIPEI CYCLE)由中華民國對外貿易發展協會主辦，台灣自行車輸出業同業公會協辦。這也是亞洲最大的自行車展會，預計參出規模：1,100家廠商; 3,300個攤位。 展出日期： 2024年3月6日至3月9日，展出地點：南港展覽館1、2館 。展出產品：自行車整車、自行車零件、自行車配件、人身部品、電動輔助自行車、電機系統、智慧騎乘裝置、騎行服務、新創企業等類別。 經濟日報（CENS)承攬2024展會官方手冊廣告： 2024 台北國際自行車展大會手冊廣告報價：下載 詳情可洽：經濟日報黃啟銘 0955-352-148 / stiven1017@gmail.com

[thistransient]

[strange-measure]

Juin's 6 Piston Semi-Hydraulic Brakes - Taipei Cycle Show 2024

紐曳き6ポッドって何か夢がある

[father-tu]

RENOVATIO #Taipei . . #fixedgear #fixie #bicycle #cycling #fixiegirls #fixiegirl #픽시 #bw #bikeporn #keirin #競輪 #leaderbikes #leaderbike #leaderrenovatio #renovatio #vscocam #vsco #FTleader（在 Taipei） https://www.instagram.com/p/Clk6Di0JxTd/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[bikeaospedacos]

Shows de bike trial com Diego Magno vão agitar Araxá no mês de abril

Apresentações do ciclista profissional acontecerão nas etapas de Araxá da Copa do Mundo de MTB e da Copa Internacional de MTB

Apresentações do ciclista profissional acontecerão nas etapas de Araxá da Copa do Mundo de MTB e da Copa Internacional de MTB As atrações planejadas para duas competições que vão agitar a cidade de Araxá (MG) na segunda metade de abril continuam a crescer. De 18 a 21 de abril, o Complexo do Barreiro sediará, de forma inédita, a UCI Mountain Bike World Series – a Copa do Mundo da modalidade. Logo…

[iammeigui]

☑ Rapha #festive500 - riding 500km again from Dec 24-31, this time to accompany @sneaky.snorlax to finish his first! I planned our routes along the endless riverside cycling trail in Taipei. The weather was a bit of a challenge, the week started with a cold wave with the temperature dropping as low as 8C, followed by days of rain. On top of that, the wind in Taiwan is blowing south so we had to deal with a lot of headwind every time we head out. Day 1 - Xindian 🚲 Tamsui Old Street 🚲 Lover's Bridge, Sunshine Bridge 104km. We had to bring my gravel to Giant Tamsui to get the squeaking checked and fixed Day 2 - Xindian 🚲 Sanxia Old Street 🚲 Yingge Old Street 🚲 Daxi Bridge, 104km Day 3 - Roahe Night Market 🚲 Xindian, 35km. We decided not to take a break due to the rain forecast in the next coming days so we bike after work! Day 4 - Xindian 🚲 Xizhi Old Street 🚲 Starlight Bridge 🚲 Keelung Harbor, 115km. Buddy had a little bit of incident on a slow and very safe route, nothing major Day 5 - Tour of Taipei, 65km. I wanted to show him the bike infrastructure in Taipei, how to navigate the busy and bustling streets. Brought my bikes to Giant Taipei-Nanjing for a quick check We took a rest day on Dec 29. I had to catch up with work and boy, I only had 30min of break and that's because of a canceled meeting Day 6 - Xindian 🚲 Bali Old Street 🚲 Guandu Bridge, Crescent Moon Bridge, 88km. We were mentally prepared to ride in the rain What kept me warm: @livcycling base layer, Liv Delphin rain jacket, Dexshell winter gloves, dhb Aeron winter socks, Liv Beliv cap. I still wear Liv Race Day or Fisso shorts, game changer is the @chamoisbuttr What kept us energized: full lunch meal, banana, @scienceinsport hydration tablet and energy gels, Mg 300+ Computers and sensors: @garmin Edge 530, speed, cadence and HR Belt. Buddy used Bryton 320, cadence sensor. #rapha #raphafestive500 #gopro10 #cycling #bike #biketrail #bikelife #bikeTaiwan #riverside #giant #giantbikes #liv #livlangmaadvanced2 #livdevote2 #wheninTaipei #taipei #taiwan #exploretaiwan #oldstreet #bridge #strava (at Xindian) https://www.instagram.com/p/Cm6C7nEpy9T/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[funkyruru]

雖然咖狗的前輪是小徑無誤 但也聽到有人抗議後輪是700C 但其實咖狗一點都不吃香 後輪其實是38mm的寬胎 車重應該15公斤以上 當初用咖狗也是覺得好玩而已 還是有人要跟我換車😂 Credit ： @faithgear_hao #2022台北直線加速賽 #commute #commuter #bike #cycle #urbancycling #urbancyclist #urbancycle #taipei #taiwan #Bicycle #自行車 #單車通勤 #steelisreal #veloci #oldstreet #taiwan #fixedgear #fixie #pista #bike #bicycle #cycle #固定齒 #singlespeed #SaveTheTrackBike #TrackBike #kogakimera #omniumcargo #cargobike （在 觀山自由車練習場） https://www.instagram.com/p/CjX36J6pS6c/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[phaedraismyusername]

Happy International Lesbian Day! Here's some super brief book recs to celebrate

Books dealing with love, loss, longing and abandonment

This is How You Lose The Time War is a short but beautifully written epistolary novel between two agents on opposite sides of a time war as they slowly fall in love.

Our Wives Under the Sea is one of the most beautifully written debuts I've ever read about a woman whose wife comes home wrong after they thought she'd died at sea and how it feels to grieve the loss of someone who's still in your home.

Lucky Red is a western novel about a young girl working in a brothel who meets her first female gunslinger and falls head over heels for her, and the consequences that come with loving dangerous people.

Body horror galore

Camp Damascus is about a young woman living in a super conservative christian town built around the worlds most successful conversion camp and the horrors that are uncovered there when praying the gay away fails.

To Be Devoured is about a woman whose fascination with the local vultures turns into obsession and the urge to know what carrion tastes like overtakes her life and leads her down stranger and stranger paths.

Chlorine is about a girl whose entire life revolves around being a competitive swimmer, and how abuse, neglect, and obsession with being the best takes its toll on the young women caught up in these destructive cycles.

Flawed character studies

Big Swiss is about a woman who has a kitchen floor reset in her 40s, moves away and starts a new life as a transcriber for a sex therapist and becomes obsessed with one of his clients before inserting herself into this poor woman's life.

The Seep is a speculative sci-fi set in a future where there's been a quiet alien invasion that has given people the ability to make almost any changes to their own bodies and what that world feels like to someone who doesn't want to partake.

Milk Fed is about a woman in therapy who feels cut off from almost everything until she meets another woman who triggers in her a melding of sex, hunger, and religion and where that takes her. Huge trigger warnings for ED content. It gets tough, y'all.

Fantastical wlw books

Bitterthorn is an amalgamation of fairytales retold as a slow burn sapphic love story between a sad young girl from a cursed land and the evil witch who takes her as a companion in the latest of the generational sacrifices made to appease her.

All the Bad Apples may be set in contemporary Ireland but it is a fairytale following a young girl as she travels across the country looking for a sister she refuses to believe is dead and the people she meets along the way.

Gideon the Ninth needs no introduction on this site but for the sake of formatting - lesbian necromancers in space who find themselves in an isolated murder mystery plot. It's not a romance but it is a love story and this series will change your life if you let it.

Translated novels

Boulder is a short character study following a free spirited woman when she accidentally settles down with the woman she loves and how love and resentment can take up the same space in your chest when life doesn't turn out the way you hoped it would.

Notes of a Crocodile is a cult classic coming of age story about queer teens in Taipei in the 1980s. It was written in the 90s so please keep that in mind if you choose to read it.

Paradise Rot is about an international student studying in Australia and her growing obsession with her housemate as they share a space that allows no privacy. I've never read anything that feels stickier.

[mariacallous]

Lai Ching-te will be Taiwan’s next president after winning Saturday’s election, ensuring that the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) will remain in power and dealing a rebuke to Beijing’s wishes for a more China-friendly administration. In the days before the election, Taiwanese voters were flooded with information. Look up, and they saw posters on buses and buildings declaring the virtues of all three candidates and their running mates. Look down, and they got a stream of news, gossip, and opinions from their phones—not all of it true and much of it likely stirred up by internet trolls in China.

Taiwan is one of the world’s most digitally connected countries, and on social media, false posts and videos are reaching thousands of people before platforms can take them down. TikTok was flooded with disinformation accusing Lai of sex scandals, tax evasion, and conspiring to start a war with China. His vice presidential pick, Hsiao Bi-khim, has been accused of secretly holding U.S. citizenship. So has the running mate of Ko Wen-je, the third-party candidate livestreaming his spoiler campaign on YouTube and TikTok.

Researchers have attributed much of the false information to Chinese actors—and rather than blasting pro-China views to Taiwanese voters, they’ve focused on amplifying negative stories about Taiwan’s domestic politics and wedge issues, such as the role of the United States, with the intent of polarizing Taiwanese society.

“Beijing’s cognitive warfare is evolving,” said Tzu-wei Hung, a scholar at Taiwan’s Academia Sinica. “Negative narratives are effective not because they will change the election result but because they intensify social conflicts and create a vicious cycle of distrust and hate.”

Taiwan faced a similarly toxic disinformation environment before the 2020 presidential election, and at the time, it fought back—hard. Officials frequently accused China of being behind wide-ranging disinformation campaigns. Police summoned private citizens for posting false stories and levied fines in some instances for violating a law preventing public disorder. The National Communications Commission (NCC) issued a series of fines to the pro-China TV station Chung Tien Television (CTi) for broadcasting false information. Eventually, in December 2020, CTi was taken off the air after the NCC declined to renew its broadcast license.

The government learned quickly that none of it worked.

“If you want to curb disinformation by legal measures, it’s difficult and dangerous,” said Yachi Chiang, a professor at National Taiwan Ocean University specializing in intellectual property and tech law. It “opens a pathway for the government to control speech.”

Taiwan has always been a banner holder of free speech in Asia. In 2020, however, DPP legislators were panicked over the prospect of Chinese election-meddling. President Tsai Ing-wen was riding a wave of global popularity by supporting the Hong Kong pro-democracy protests, which had broken out months earlier, giving Beijing every reason to remove her from office or disrupt her legislative majority.

Tsai was reelected in a landslide—but not because her government cracked down on fake news. Many fines levied under the Social Order Maintenance Act, an existing law that was utilized against disinformation peddlers, have since been overturned by the courts.

The NCC’s crusade against CTi hasn’t gone much better. Opposition politicians used its removal from the airwaves to hammer DPP politicians as enemies of free speech. The NCC, at the time, argued that CTi had failed to adhere to basic fact-checking standards and could not ensure impartiality from outside influence—a clear reference to its owner, the domestically unloved Tsai Eng-meng, a snack food tycoon with extensive business interests in China and a track record of pro-unification statements.

In May 2023, a Taipei court ruled against the NCC’s decision to shut down CTi, saying it had failed to provide adequate reasoning for its decision. At present, CTi remains off the air—and its request to have its license renewed by the court was rejected—but the NCC has been ordered to review its own decision and provide stiffer reasoning. “You need something stronger to sustain your ruling,” Chiang said.

Taiwanese authorities have successfully prosecuted citizens who received funding from China to publish fake news. But in general, politicians began to realize that moving through the judicial system “would be slow,” Chiang said. “The decisions might be disappointing. The results might be less effective.”

Just after the 2020 election, however, Taiwan’s government found a better way to combat disinformation when the COVID-19 pandemic swept the globe. Taiwan was the first country to alert the World Health Organization of the presence of a coronavirus in Wuhan and then introduce travel restrictions and quarantine protocols.

Public officials also began releasing accurate, easily digestible information as quickly as possible, before disinformation could reach people’s phone screens. Chen Shih-chung, the health minister at the time, held press conferences each afternoon, earning him the nickname “Minister Clock.” His ministry, along with the social media accounts of Tsai and Premier Su Tseng-chang, posted colorful memes sharing data on the pandemic and extolling the virtues of masking and hand-washing.

It was a triumph of public transparency that paid off handsomely. Taiwan saw just 823 COVID-19 cases in all of 2020, despite its close proximity to the pandemic’s epicenter.

It also helped politicians realize that “you can’t count on laws to tackle disinformation,” Chiang said. “You need to create your own information.”

“Free speech is not the cost but the key to counteract disinformation,” said Hung, who noted that in 2022, Freedom House found that countries that protect free expression and have robust civic society groups do a better job at mitigating false information.

Taiwan has tried other forms of a more open approach. Although it banned the Chinese-owned video platform TikTok from government apps in 2022, Taiwan has not followed countries such as India in issuing a general proscription on the app despite concerns that Beijing can influence content. About one-quarter of Taiwan’s population uses the app, including a host of popular influencers and celebrities.

Taiwan also has a network of strong civic fact-checking organizations that work with social media companies to combat disinformation. One of them, MyGoPen, recently started collaborating directly with TikTok to correct false posts about the 2024 election.

No matter who is in power, politicians seem to acutely understand that the best way to combat false information about them is to push out their own narratives on social media. “If you are popular on the internet, that’s more important than [popularity on] traditional media channels,” Chiang said.

Lai’s win on Saturday is not an outright victory against disinformation itself—both Chinese and domestic actors will surely continue to create confusion and distrust whenever they can. It did, however, show that Taiwanese voters can’t easily be swayed, as long as public officials do their part to communicate rapidly, positively, and honestly.

[bookaddict24-7]

New Young Adult Releases Coming Out Today! (November 7th, 2023)

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Have I missed any new Young Adult releases? Have you added any of these books to your TBR? Let me know!

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New Standalones/First in a Series:

Artifice by Sharon Cameron

Check & Mate by Ali Hazelwood

With or Without You by Eric Smith

Swarm by Jennifer D. Lyle

Last Girl Breathing by Court Stevens

The Revenge Game by Jordyn Taylor

No One Left But You by Tash McAdam

Gorgeous Gruesome Faces by Linda Cheng

Wren Martin Ruins It All by Amanda DeWitt

Finding My Elf by David Valdes

Emmett by L.C. Rosen

Where He Can't Find You by Darcy Coates

New Sequels:

Vengeance of the Pirate Queen (Daughter of the Pirate King #3) by Tricia Levenseller

Nightbane (Lightlark #2) by Alex Aster

The Way I Am Now (The Way I Used to Be #2) by Amber Smith

Loveboat Forever (Loveboat, Taipei #3) by Abigail Hing Wen

Dawnbreaker (Salvation Cycle #2) by Jodi Meadows

The Hunting Moon (The Luminaries #2) by Susan Dennard

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Happy reading!

[loneberry]

Yi Yi by Edward Yang

Kaili Peng (wife of Yang) + Haden Guest, Sean Yang (son)

This film has been on my watchlist for ages. When I saw the Harvard Film Archive was doing an Edward Yang retrospective, I waited to watch a glorious 35 mm print. The film was introduced by Yang's wife, pianist Kaili Peng, and son, Sean Yang. Sean spoke of his father's early death, about only getting to know his dad through his films. After the screening Kaili describe Yi Yi as a "prelude to his own passing," his last "love letter to the world." She described Yang as a moody and passionate person, prone to bouts of anger. Yet while making Yi Yi, he was always in a good mood--that "sweetness" (her word) is captured in the tone of the film. 

Why is it that the films of the Taiwan New Cinema + Second New Wave (especially Tsai Ming-liang) capture urban alienation so powerfully? What is the root of this melancholia? You'd think Taipei was the loneliest place in the world. I don't know. Maybe it is. I've never been, even though my father immigrated from Taiwan and I've long wanted to go there to scatter my grandfather's ashes. 

Yi Yi contains sadness and levity in equal measure. In that sense it is true to life. The adult characters are haunted by their disappointments. Min-Min is plagued by a lack of meaning she tries to counter with Buddhist retreats. NJ is troubled by the counterfactuals of his life—the career he did not pursue, the great love he abandoned, who he encounters 30 years later. The children repeat the disappointments of their parents, continuing the cycle, ad infinitum. Strange, the night before watching Yi Yi, I watched Abbas Kiarostami's Where Is the Friend's House?. Both films stage an encounter between a child and an elderly person as a way to meditate on life and time. In both films there is affinity between the child and old person, who exist on the outer edges of the life cycle. Yes, you can't help but feel, watching Yi Yi, that the little boy Yang-Yang is an old soul (see the films final lines). Yang-Yang is the film's comic relief. I love what that boy sees—the photographs he takes of the backs of people's heads, how I dreamed them (see the photos that open my Sunflower book). 

Ting-Ting, too, is beautiful in her loneliness. Her guilt, her insomnia. She dreams of relief: "Now that you've forgiven me, I can sleep." 

How am I supposed to address the dying? Every soliloquy to the comatose grandma is the character confronting themselves. NJ mumbles that speaking to someone in a coma is like praying. Do they hear you? Are your words sincere? 

The way the film is shot, too, adds to the feeling that the characters are self-enclosed. Much of the action takes place in cramped interiors. The camera is often placed outside the building or train, just beyond the windows, giving you the feeling the they are ensheathed by glass. The window becomes a nexus between the interior and exterior: in the glass we can see what is happening outside at the same time we are observing the facial expressions of the characters. The headlights of the nighttime traffic dance on a woman's face. This is truly the hand of a director with a powerful vision.

Kaili said, after the screening, that Edward's autobiography is manifest in many of the characters. Edward was turned down from piano lessons, as was NJ. The music only meant something to him after the first time he fell in love. 

What can I say. It's a beautiful film. Watch it.

[Read more film reviews on my Letterboxd.]

[natureofthefungi]

The thing is though, Jenny was stuck in a time loop/ cycle of death and rebirth until the new album. The difference between jft and ahwt is that instead of the guy From Mexicali it’s the girl From Sunny Taipei send tweet

[thistransient]

打田放水~

[strange-measure]

Prototype Forks From ND Tuned - Taipei Cycle Show 2024

エアーダンパー採用の34モデル、120mmトラベルで1350ｇって軽いな。

[hellocwong]

Cycle Dummies Pitstop

Taipei, 2023

[transboysokka]

Chronic pain/fibro updates and thoughts from the past couple days I guess since I treat this site like my goddamn diary

First of all let’s talk plans for solutions. My big huge obstacle right now is my daily commute. Obviously when my lease is up in September I’m gonna fork out more cash to live closer to work, preferably (but unlikely) in a building with an elevator.

Until then something needs to change to manage the pain. Here are those options:

Buy another motorcycle/scooter. Driving to work would fix everything tbh but I honestly think it’s such a hassle to have and park a scooter in Taipei

Switch to crutches for the commute instead of a cane. The cane is helpful to my knees but I have a fucked up shoulder too so it’s not a sustainable solution. I’m embarrassed enough using the cane (something I know I gotta work through) so I don’t think I’d even be ready for crutches on that level

Try to bike more to/from work. Here’s the option I’m going to explore! It’s about 5km each way which is super easy for me. I’m not thrilled about the kind of dangerous trafficy route but I’ll try it…

ok now some good news from today!

I’ve been so depressed these last few months just in survival mode from pain but also stuck inside my windowless apartment on weekends dealing with pain when I just want to be active

My holiday to the US was restful and healing in the ways I needed it to be so I’m in a way able to start fresh now being back here

I’ve always mostly enjoyed running or hiking and I’m starting to finally be able to accept that those days are behind me. Even walking for exercise frankly. So it occurred to me to return to cycling, which I used to do a lot and has always been easy to me. Since I can’t ski in Taiwan, as much as I love it.

I don’t have my expensive fancy bike anymore (no place to store it rip) but I rented one of those cheap ass city bikes and rode around about 25km today. It was so. Good. And freeing. And healing. To be able to Get Out again and go fast and feel active. I didn’t go as far as I could have, and I wasn’t in any pain while I was doing it. I’m SO glad I found something I can still do and I want to go on more weekend rides and I think it is going to be so good for me…

Maybe I can even teach my dog to walk next to me on the bike because his twice-daily walks are getting too hard for me too….