Readit NewsI recently won my age class in a 10k (6th overall out of 147 men). In a very competitive race earlier this year, the exact same time barely put me in the upper half (242/498).
That is insane. I dunno about the rest of Germany but in Berlin I can get a knee MRI appointment within two days.
I know this from personal experience, twice, in the last five years.
Because from my personal experience (in Cologne), the interaction goes like this:
“I need an appointment for an MRI.”
“Next one I can offer is in 4-8 weeks.”
“I have private health insurance.”
“Can you come in today?”
Anecdotally, the two contracts I had through agencies were still the most lucrative financially, despite the middleman taking a hefty cut, simply because large enterprise pay higher rates.
"Loud pipes save lives" is nonsense. When a driver is concentrated on visual stimuli, has his windows up and music playing, there are no pipes loud enough to make him notice me.
Why loud pipes then? Because it's so much fun to open the throttle wide and hear and feel the roar vibrating through the bike and myself! Makes me feel like I'm riding a rocket into space.
Do I do that in towns? Very rarely. I mostly try obeying speed limit with calm hand on the throttle and reasonable engine speed and shooting off when leaving a town. I'm super noise-conscious when riding after dark. I also don't rev on red lights just for the hell of it. I live on both sides of this problem, as a city dweller i hate being woken by noise, but it's more often some doofus in a knocking diesel car letting the engine idle for 20 minutes as he picks up his friends at 11 pm. I guess cars like that wouldn't be punishable, because they are not tuned to make noise. And when I hear the whine of a motorbike from the hills on the outskirts, it just makes me smile and plan a next ride.
To sum up: yes, loud pipes can be obnoxious, but it depends on the driver. If they get banned, people like me will lose a part of their hobby and noisemakers will find another way to be obnoxious (burnouts? screechy braking? loud music?)
As a former motoryclist with very loud pipes (and also an open air filter, which is just as bad or worse), I can tell you it‘s not just that. Exhaust noise emitted by a motorcycle is way louder behind the it than in front of it, especially when you and the bike are moving in the same direction. I have no hard numbers to back up this claim, but I once switched bikes with a buddy and while my bike was almost inaudible when I was driving in front of him, I was shocked how loud it was driving 200 m / 1/8 mile behind him.
A little backstory: a friend of mine sold a five letter single word .com about a decade ago for a really low price, IIRC $500. The buyer turned out to be Electronic Arts (through a middleman, obviously) and they used the domain for one of their games.
Every time I was contemplating an offer for the domain, I was worried that I was getting EA'd :) When I saw the domain getting relisted, I felt like that's exactly what happened.
So, to answer the original question, my biggest gripe is probably that price finding is really difficult for non-professional players.
The person I sold it to immediately relisted it for 79k. That was a bit irritating.
Oooooh, they do ! 120€ for 14U, now we're talking ! It's in Germany of course...
I think that indeed my problem here is that I live in too expensive a place, expensive for me, expensive for my servers ><.