2021-11-23

NFS Pi is now Network Block Device Pi and that works way, way better. I should write this up because I didn't find one guide that was totally helpful and I had to spend a bunch of time in the initramfs poking things.

As a European living in North America I can sometimes be prone to euro-smugness about certain things -- healthcare and banking and telecoms and the supremecy of cars (to pick a few). (Yes, Ontario has OHIP; No, it's not the same as the NHS).

I live in a neighbourhood with almost no sidewalks and for years I've considered this a classic case of car centrism: Ottawa is so unwalkable that we don't even have a place for pedestrians in the suburbs!

I've only recently thought about it with fresh perspective: these roads don't have sidewalks because pedestrians have equal rights to the road.

In a way, sidewalks (like bike lanes) are a way of taking a class of road-user who used to have equal rights to the whole thing, and sequestering them off to one side. Putting in a sidewalk is a signal that the road is for cars.

(I feel similarly about bike lines: I love to use them, but where they run parallel to roads and are less convenient, they are really saying: roads aren't for you. Roads are for cars).