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Pedestrian in the Age of Planes: a (cope?) 🧵. I grew up walking and biking to go places. My whole training, and later professional life, was done accordingly: I don't go really far, nor really fast, but I have a good sense of direction, and developed very specific muscles. Now we have planes. 1/

Understand how incredible this sentence sounds. We made machines which can FLY. We can go to places unreachable before, incredibly fast! This was unthinkable even a few years ago. Even well educated people are mystified by how they work. Again: metallic tubes. Which fly. With us in them! 2/

This is completely magical. And yes, there were reasons to be skeptical, but at this point, it is pretty clear planes can, in fact, go to faraway places in mere hours, where even boats (our best boats!) would have taken months—forget about walking. Planes exist! Is there any point in walking? 3/

It's also a bit worrying to see how much fuel a plane uses, to be honest. I know I can rely on my shoes: but can you imagine what would happen to the plane industry if a war or a global event led to an increase in the price of fuel? If there was a fuel shortage? How dependent this makes us? 5/

And honestly—flying a plane is not very easy, no matter what some say. It takes years to know how to actually fly well, with the proper training. Again, miracles of engineering. But they're expensive, subject to a lot of constraints, and they do require a lot training! 6/