The MINI Vision Urbanaut is a concept vehicle designed for maximum space and comfort.

If you follow Mashable Shopping’s coverage, you know that we live to bring you the best product recommendations we can find based on countless hours of online research. But what about the stuff that we buy for ourselves? The stuff that made it into our shopping carts? Well, we’re here to tell you about those things, and we’ll be back every month to do so again.

Here’s what the staff bought in June 2021.

Something to get rid of the bugs once and for all

“I have a truly unreasonable number of plants for how small my apartment is, and the plants have brought in gnats, which irritate me to no end. I’ve tried sprays, apple cider vinegar traps, mosquito bits, and sticky traps (which work for the most part, but I still have a few stragglers). I decided to kick it up a notch with this contraption. It uses UV light to attract small flying bugs and then uses a fan to suck them down into the device where a sticky trap is waiting. I’ve been pleasantly surprised by the results in the few days I’ve used it. Unfortunately, this gross shit is the most exciting thing I bought in the last month.” —Miller Kern, Shopping Reporter

The key to a better night’s sleep (hopefully)

“My most recent purchase in my never-ending quest to fall asleep is a Bluetooth sleep mask. I fall asleep to ASMR every night, but sleeping with AirPods in was too chaotic and playing it out loud probably isn’t my boyfriend’s ideal white noise. This mask puts the sounds right in my ears while keeping light out, and allows me to comfortably lay on my side without shoving earbuds into my eardrums. (I bought mine on Mercari but it can also be purchased at Amazon.)” —Leah Stodart, Shopping Reporter

A Game Pass machine

“This definitely was not a responsible purchase on my part (considering I already dropped way too much money on a PlayStation 5 not too long ago), but once Xbox’s E3 showcase happened, I was convinced that it was time to pick up one of their next-gen consoles for those sweet incoming exclusives. I got the more budget-friendly Xbox Series S, and I couldn’t be happier with it. I’m basically using it as an Xbox Game Pass machine, and it’s been extremely fun to work my way through its vast library while I wait for those E3 games to come out” —Dylan Haas, Shopping Reporter

Some chunky loafers

“My trusty pair of loafers that I’ve had for years finally gave way to a massive hole in the sole, so it was time to get a replacement. I’ve seen a lot of people wearing these super chunky Doc Marten loafers and really wanted to pick some up for my next pair. They are extremely stiff right now, but they’re super high-quality and I know they’re going to last me a long time once I break them in.” —Dylan Haas, Shopping Reporter

A new beauty staple

“For as long as I can remember, my lips have been chapped. And for long as I can remember, balms and ointments have only ever been able to do so much. So when I tell you Smith Rosebud Co.’s Strawberry Lip Balm is it, I’m speaking from a lifetime of experience. Since I picked it up a few weeks ago, based on a friend’s recommendation, I’ve had no flaking, peeling, cracking, or bleeding at all. Which, for me, is nothing short of a miracle. I don’t know what magic separates this lip balm from literally every other product I’ve ever tried, including the line’s other flavors. (Maybe it’s the lanolin?) I just know that whatever it is, it works. And the experience of using it is pretty nice, too: It smells like those strawberry hard candies and comes in a cute old-timey tin or a convenient plastic tube. It looks light pink in the package, but goes on clear and not too glossy — perfect even for those who hate makeup. I plan to buy a million more of these and put one in every purse, coat pocket, and corner of my house, but I’ll start by spreading the gospel here for my fellow chapped-lips sufferers.” —Angie Han, Deputy Entertainment Editor

A summer skincare necessity

“I found this sunscreen via a friend and I am so excited for it! As someone who is painfully pale, reapplying sunscreen is very important, but it’s always hard to figure out how to reapply on my face when I’m wearing makeup. Also, it’s supposed to have a light scent which sounds like it smells amazing so I was sold. Fingers crossed this will be the answer to all my summer face sunscreen problems.” —Lily Kartiganer, Social Media Editor

A bucket hat with an important message

“I am currently obsessed with this hat. Bucket hats are A Thing now so I was looking for one and when I came across this one I couldn’t buy it fast enough. It comes in various bright colors and has a wide brim that protects your face from the sun, so it’s perfect for summer. What really sold me was the message, though. I am happy to be a walking billboard to remind everyone to wear sunscreen. Honestly, I don’t think I could’ve found a better summer hat.” —Lily Kartiganer, Social Media Editor

A much-needed WFH desk

“After over a year of working from home, I finally bought this two-tier foldable desk. The shelf is perfect for the extra monitor I also finally bought. When I have a meeting or film a video, I can put my laptop on that second tier so that my eyes are at webcam height for the most flattering angle (pro tip). I liked that it’s a simple enough design to fit into pretty much any decor. And the desk folds flat and is easy to store, making it the perfect solution for the approaching hybrid office season.” —Chandra Steele, Senior Features Writer for PCMag

A new patio set for the new digs

“We recently bought our first house, and we were so excited to get our first outdoor set for our otherwise empty deck! We went with the Luna set from Yardbird because it is classic and easy to keep clean.” —Barret Wertz, Style & Grooming Editor for AskMen

The ultimate epic medieval fantasy

“In theory: a strategic, team-based multiplayer game with complex sword-fighting mechanics. In practice: I killed an archer with a chicken.” —Pete Haas, Social Media Manager for PCMag

A more convenient comforter

“I got a new duvet cover set that looks like washed linen but more affordable and has a zipper close, which is the best part, in my opinion” —Megan Siler, Senior Product Manager

TL;DR: Keep cord clutter at bay with this Power Bar Multi-Device Wireless Charger. As of July 6, grab one for $149.95.

Untangle yourself from the annoying number of cables and charging bricks monopolizing your outlets and make your life a little easier with the Power Bar Multi-Device Wireless Charger.

Equipped with a 10,000mAh battery capacity, the Power Bar allows you to juice up four Apple devices at once, including your MacBook or iPad. It features three wireless charging spots. Two spots are intended for your iPhone and AirPods, while the remaining spot is a 5W magnetic hub for an Apple Watch. The final charging option can charge your MacBook or other USB-C devices with a cable.

See it in action:

While the Power Bar is specifically designed with Apple gadgets in mind, it is also compatible with the Samsung Galaxy S8 and more, as well as all Qi-enabled devices and many USB-C charging gear, like tablets, laptops, and other portable gadgets.

Snag the Power Bar and keep your Apple arsenal charged for just $149.95.

If a plug-in Toyota Prius doesn’t cut it, luxury carmaker Bentley has some more sumptuous options.

At a livestreamed event in Scotland on Tuesday, the British auto company revealed its second plug-in hybrid, the Flying Spur. Its first hybrid, a plug-in Bentley Bentayga SUV, was released before the pandemic.

The spacious sedan, which has been available since 2005, will be “hybridized” by the end of this year, with a similar look as its internal-combustion engine predecessor, also called the Flying Spur. But that’s the point. It’s a more fuel-efficient version of the original car — with a “Hybrid” badge on the front fender and a quieter drive. The gas-powered Flying Spur starts at just under $200,000, while the hybrid is $204,000.

An inside look.
Credit: bentley

The hybrid version will provide about 25 miles of pure electric range and has an EV Drive mode to run the car entirely with the battery. When fully charged and combined with its fully fueled V6 engine, it can go more than 430 miles. It’s a touch slower than its V8, gas-engine counterpart, taking 4.1 seconds to go from 0 to 60 mph instead of 4 seconds flat.

There’s Flawless Emerald green, Crisp Frost white, Open Ocean blue, and Quiet Intensity gray for color choices.

You can custom configure the Flying Spur Hybrid on the Bentley website.

A clue that this car is different.
Credit: bentley

Bentley, a 102-year-old company, has plans to go all electric by 2030, but until then it’ll keep adding hybrid versions of its traditional vehicles. Its first 100-percent battery electric vehicle is slated to arrive by 2026.

“We want to add sustainability to the comfort luxury experience,” CEO Adrian Hallmark said from headquarters in Crewe, England.

As the pandemic begins to lighten up in the United States, the memes are getting better.

2020 was particularly bleak, in global news and in internet culture. 2021 didn’t start much better, but as more of the general public is vaccinated, memes are coming back.

From new CDC guidelines to disrupted trade routes, here are seven memes that defined this year so far.

1. Bernie at inauguration

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Bernie Sanders’ Inauguration Day get-up was also 2021’s inaugural meme. The Vermont senator’s down jacket and oversized mittens — a gift from a Vermont teacher who hand-knit them from recycled sweaters — were far from the formal dress coats spotted on other guests, but they seemed to keep Sanders warm as he sat alone during the ceremony. Sanders’ crossed arms and disinterested expression went viral as meme makers Photoshopped him onto the New York City subway, the moon, and iconic pieces of art.

2. It’s March again

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Between a devastating pandemic, record wildfires, an exhausting election cycle, and a worldwide mental health crisis, the last year seemed like a collective fever dream. As February drew to a close, social media users refused to believe that the world was coming up on a year of social distancing. Nobody was ready for March again.

3. Harry and Meghan’s Oprah interview

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Oprah Winfrey’s explosive interview with Prince Harry and Meghan Markle exposed the British royal family as a racist organization that denied Markle mental health treatment and pulled the couple’s security detail when they stepped back from senior roles in the monarchy. As the couple recounted anecdotes about “the Firm” — the British royal family’s senior staff and the associated institutions — Oprah’s appalled expressions became viral fodder. Screenshots of the interview were ripe for meme formats.

4. The ship stuck in the Suez Canal

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A wayward cargo ship ran aground in the Suez Canal amid high winds and low visibility, interrupting 12 percent of the world’s trade. Twitter users weren’t particularly optimistic when the Suez Canal Authority released photos of its efforts to dislodge the massive ship, which involved eight tugboats and a comically small excavator. Suez Canal Authority chairman Osama Rabie estimated that the stuck ship cost the Canal $14 to 15 million in daily revenue each day the passage remained blocked, but at least it gave way for excellent memes.

5. Vaxxed and waxed

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With vaccination rates skyrocketing through the spring, this summer’s motto is “vaxxed and waxed.” Social distancing isn’t over — the pandemic is still a risk as COVID variants circulate through the world — but the fully vaccinated can ease into gathering in groups and go maskless around other fully vaccinated people. As the world slowly opens up, stay vaxxed and waxed for the ultimate hot girl summer.

6. The CDC says

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The Centers for Disease Control updated guidelines for the fully vaccinated in May, inspiring a new meme format on Twitter. If you’re fully vaccinated against COVID-19, you can resume daily activities, which apparently include song lyrics, movie plots, and references to other meme formats.

7. Anakin and Padmé

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A scene from Star Wars: Episode II — Attack of the Clones resurfaced last month as a cheeky four-panel meme format. The set-up and punchline take place in the two panels, and Padmé’s horrified response has been used for all-too-relatable reflections on healthcare, vaccination rates, and music tastes that should absolutely be red flags.

2021’s memes started out dry — the year of social isolation hit online culture, too — but as the world returns to normal, the memes are back.

Generous TikTok users, beware – the celebrity you’re watching live on the app and tipping via gifts may not be who you think they are.

Around 1 a.m. ET on July 6, it seemed like Billie Eilish went live on TikTok and chatted with her night-owl fans. Everything looked like you would expect a celebrity live to look: a flood of incoming comments, Billie nonchalantly answering questions, and an endless stream of gifts via TikTok’s in-app tipping system.

An eagle-eyed viewer quickly noticed that this Live had been aired before.
Credit: screenshot: twitter with permission

But if you looked a little closer, you’d find a couple of inconsistencies. The account “Billie” was live streaming from was not her official, verified TikTok account, but rather one suspiciously named @billieeilishlive_1, which has since been deleted. And though she was answering questions and interacting with fans, none of the comments she addressed seemed to appear in the comments section at the bottom of the Live.

The sus account also only had two videos posted.
Credit: screenshot: TikTok

If you stuck around until the end, when Billie said farewell and the Live seemed to conclude, you would have also seen the the entire live stream start over, indicating that the Live was pre-recorded. In this case, the video was most likely a recording of a previous Instagram Live that Billie actually conducted, replayed on TikTok to pass off as real and cash in on TikTok gifts.

This isn’t the first time that this has happened. According to Snopes, another Instagram Live originally hosted by Billie Eilish was broadcasted on TikTok Live on June 24 from the account @billielivehere, passing off as the real celebrity. At one point, this live attracted more than 43,000 viewers at around 3 a.m. ET.

While TikTok does have limitations on who can participate in Lives and exchange gifts, it’s not very difficult to qualify. For a user to go live, they must be at least 16 years old and the account must have at least 1,000 followers. To send gifts while watching Lives, you must be at least 18 years old, a policy that TikTok changed from 13 years old after facing children’s privacy concerns.

The accounts that recirculated Billie Eilish’s Lives have easily surpassed the follower requirement, with more than 60,000 followers each. And as anyone knows, it’s not hard to enter a fake birthdate when creating the account to fit the requirements.

“Our community expects an authentic and entertaining experience, and we work hard to maintain that by identifying and removing behavior that violates our Community Guidelines,” a TikTok spokesperson told Mashable. “We continue to invest in strengthening our detection and prevention mechanisms to minimize the potential for this behavior to flourish on our platform.”

In terms of how much real money may have been scammed by the fake celebrity, TikTok’s gift currency is a little convoluted. To buy gifts, users must first buy coins, which can be found in the user’s profile settings under “Balance.” You can buy anywhere from 65 coins to 6,607 coins, ranging in price from $0.99 to $99.99. Gifts are then available for purchase on Lives, which range in price from 1 coin to 6,000 coins. The user who is hosting the Live will then receive an unknown amount of diamonds per gift, which can then be converted into real money.

Faux Billie Eilish is also not the only celebrity some TikTok users have been duped by, and the fake live phenomenon may be spreading to platforms like Facebook, too.

“There are a lot of these on Facebook,” tweeted Gabrielle DeFlorio. “I’ve seen Snoop Dogg and a ton of others.”

User Sophia Hernandez also said that there were “literally hundreds of these fake livestreams on TikTok,” and that they’ve been showing up on the app for months.

While the onus of removing fake celebrity Lives should be on TikTok itself, users can take several steps to make sure they’re not sending monetary rewards to impersonators.

1. If you come across a celebrity going Live on TikTok, double check that the account has a verified badge after the handle. While some celebrities and influencers do make burner accounts, it is rare that they use these accounts to go Live, so we recommend refraining from sending gifts to unverified accounts in general.

2. Try to look for comments in the comments section that match up with what the celebrity is addressing. While these scroll by quickly, if you can’t find any comments that make sense for the Live, it might be pre-recorded.

3. Pay attention to the time. While it may feel organic and elite to catch a celebrity Live airing at 3 a.m., it’s also the perfect time for scams, as the real celebrity is probably asleep and won’t be able to immediately debunk the fake stream.

Whether it’s fake Billie Eilish or phoney Snoop Dogg, no one wants to feel swindled out of their money by their favorite celebrity. If you really want to keep your gift currency secure, maybe don’t send them to celebrities at all – they don’t exactly need the extra cash.

UPDATE: July 6, 2021, 3:30 p.m. EDT This story was updated to include a statement from TikTok.

Complete family dysfunction has never looked so good.

HBO just dropped the trailer for the very highly anticipated Season 3 return of Succession, which left off nearly two years ago with heir apparent Very Sad Boy Kendall (Jeremy Strong) breaking away from the family and laying blame for the company’s misconduct at his father’s feet. Basically, some serious shit went down.

The very fun teaser shows the fallout, with the entire family freaking out, making new side alliances, and showcasing some intriguing new power plays from some of the very worst people on Earth. Would we expect anything less?

Succession Season 3 hits HBO this fall.

Sure, we’ve all snuck a look at our phones in dull meetings. But if you’re working on the taxpayer’s dime, you’d better be ready for artificial intelligence to call you out for gawping at the black mirror in the legislature when you should be, you know, legislating.

That’s what digital artist Dries Depoorter did for his latest installation “The Flemish Scrollers.” His software that uses facial recognition to automatically call out politicians in the Flemish province of Belgium who are distracted by their phones when its parliament is in session. The project comes almost two years after Flemish Minister-President Jan Jambon caused public outrage after playing Angry Birds during a policy discussion. (Really.)

Launched Monday, Depoorter’s system monitors daily livestreams of government meetings on YouTube to assess how long a representative has been looking at their phone versus the meeting in progress. If the AI detects a distracted person, it will publicly identify the party by posting the clip — on Instagram @TheFlemishScrollers, and Twitter @FlemishScroller.

The accused representative will be named and shamed with their social media handles. The bot also politely requests they “pls stay focused!”

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According to Depoorter’s website, if there is no session in progress, the software will begin analyzing and learning from archived livestreams instead. Whether this means the software will routinely post evidence of past distraction wasn’t clear. Depoorter did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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Less than 24 hours into the The Flemish Scrollers going live, the program has already identified four instances of politicians preoccupied by their phones, and sparked discussion among the software’s growing social media following.

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As some followers have pointed out, the software’s tendency to jump to conclusions could be a problem. After all, we can’t know what those politicians were up to on their devices; there are times when useful and important work needs doing urgently, even if it is on the same device everyone uses to waste time.

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Until the AI software starts reading phones over the shoulders of the legislators, then, we’ll have to just trust that being watched by a bot can help politicians curtail their Angry Birds time.

Sorry, Gen Z. Airbnb is holding the line on its under-25s house ban, even as America emerges from lockdown — and more people are being blocked than we knew.

Airbnb says its anti-party safety system has blocked more than 100,000 “suspicious” bookings since launching in the U.S. last July. (The Verge previously reported that the number was “above 50,000”; that estimate did not include a number of major cities listed below).

The Airbnb system prevents guests who are 24 or younger, and have fewer than three positive Airbnb reviews, from reserving entire houses near where they live. The initiative was first rolled out in Canada in 2020 after a rash of violent house parties.

“We know that people over the age of 24 are perfectly capable of booking a home for the wrong reasons, too,” the online rental marketplace said in a statement last year. “But based on the positive impact this policy has had on unauthorized parties booked by guests under 25, we believe this is the right action to continue to protect the safety of our community.”

Airbnb confirmed the following local data for its blocked-booking system. Los Angeles, the Land of Irresponsible Influencers, tops the list with at least 15,000 party shutdowns in the past year. Atlanta and Chicago are the next most blocked cities, with roughly 12,000 and 10,000 blocked bookings respectively.

• ~15,000 in Los Angeles

• ~12,000 in Atlanta

• ~10,000 in Chicago

• ~7,000 in Dallas

• ~6,000 in San Diego

• ~5,100 in Charlotte

• ~5,000 in Phoenix

• ~4,500 in Las Vegas

• ~4,500 in Seattle

• ~3,800 in Austin

• ~3,500 in St. Louis

• ~3,000 in Columbus

• ~2,700 in New Orleans

• ~2,600 in Denver

• ~2,600 in Portland

• ~2,000 in Cincinnati

• ~1,800 in Salt Lake City

• ~1,500 in Albuquerque

The system does not block single room or hotel bookings. It will also allow entire house bookings by users age 24 or below if they have a good Airbnb history, or are making longterm rental plans. If your booking is blocked, you will know at the time of your booking attempt, Airbnb spokesperson Ben Breit tells Mashable. Breit emphasized that the initiative is focused on “unauthorized parties — meaning a party thrown without the knowledge or consent of the hosts.” 

Safety has become a big selling point for Airbnb amid the COVID-19 pandemic. This spring, the platform implemented an eight-point “summer of responsible travel” plan, which included restricting bookings around Fourth of July weekend for guests and offering 24/7 customer support as well as discounts on noise detection devices to hosts.

Just last month, Airbnb also announced a partnership with competitor Vrbo aimed at removing “party houses” — rental locations advertised with large (and potentially dangerous) gatherings in mind — from their collective marketplace.

“Airbnb and Vrbo plan to work with a trusted third-party intermediary to develop a process that identifies properties that have been permanently removed from each platform due to repeated violations of respective community policies,” the companies said in a press release. “The information will be available for each company to take the appropriate action.”

There can be few better feelings in life than riding an e-bike around town on a sun-drenched summer weekend. Yeah sex is cool, but have you tried coasting almost effortlessly at the perfect speed past shops and cafes and parks and sweltering sidewalks, natural AC blasting your body, tunes in your open earbuds, smartphone strapped on the handlebars, barely pedaling, no particular place to go, anywhere in a 60-mile radius your oyster?

I had this sensation testing the $1,900 Aventon Aventure, one of 2021’s most hotly-anticipated e-bikes, and the feeling has been a long time coming. The Aventure is the first e-bike I’ve ridden at length since I spent a whole year doing a full experiential review of the $4,000 Gazelle CityZen. That review ended right before the pandemic, during which I focused on running. Which is also cool, but tends to limit your world to the surrounding 10 miles or so.

Locked down for so long, I hadn’t experienced the miles of sexy green protected bike lanes my neighboring city of Oakland has installed (and some of which its DOT is now threatening to rip out). This was now e-bike heaven: All the vibrant culture and food of what we affectionately call Oaktown, starting to open up again after a tough year, and you’re rolling past it faster than a lot of the traffic, but in the open air, where you can make eye contact, and smile, and stop at a sidewalk BBQ place, and chat with the flirty counter person about the Aventure’s eye-grabbing fat tire design.

I’m not alone in enjoying what you could call Hot Cycle Summer. E-bike sales spiked to record highs in 2020, with imports doubling and the U.S.’ largest independent e-bike retailer selling out multiple times. In the UK, where e-bikes are hotter than EVs, one sells every three minutes. In the U.S., it’s more than one per minute. And though America is lagging in its bike infrastructure, cities around the world are turning into cycle-friendly utopias that put even Oaktown to shame — most notably Paris, through which you can now take a dedicated cycleway along the Seine all the way to the Normandy coast.

The Aventon Aventure presented some issues we’ll get into, not least the dumb name that had me saying “no, no, Ah-venture” to multiple curious passers-by. But while I wouldn’t buy one myself — same as I concluded with the pricier CityZen — it’s going to be great for some people in some circumstances. And the point is this: We should all be joining the e-bike revolution ASAP. It’s one of the best things individuals can buy for a warming planet with increasing climate emergencies, as well as the best way to see the reopening world. It doesn’t matter which one you choose; it matters that you choose, and then that you lobby your government hard for more places to ride on it.

As a record heatwave hit the west coast, the Aventure at least encouraged to start shopping for my perfect e-bike now. Here, from my casual rider’s experience with polar-opposite types, are the main points I’ll be bearing in mind.

1. It really is a seasonal thing.

I can hear the outrage from extreme cyclists now: What are you talking about? We commute every weekday and hit the trails every weekend, rain or shine! Pipe down Lycra, I’m not talking about you. I speak for the bike-curious, the trepidatious majority. In a survey for Oakland’s bike lane master plan, 56 percent of people wanted to bike but only 11 percent were “strong and fearless” or “excited and confident.” The rest of us are “interested but concerned.” We’re the ones who might buy an e-bike but stick it in the garage when colder weather arrives. Even in the supremely temperate Bay Area, I feel no need to get on two wheels when the thermometer dips below 60 Fahrenheit.

And is that such a bad thing? So long as you budget for a bike you’re only going to use half the year (or join one of the increasingly cool e-bike sharing schemes), there’s no shame in getting back into your car in the winter. One of the most potent promises of e-bike world is that it can help cure our addiction to emissions-spiking summer AC. This I discovered on the hottest day of 2019 with the CityZen: Even my swamp cooler at full tilt was no match for the cooling relief of going outside and hurtling down hills at 25 MPH (then using electric power to get back up them: wash, rinse, repeat).

Don’t be sad when Hot Cycle Summer is over. Be happy it happened, and will again, and that it can help save the world while raising our smile quotas.

2. You don’t need that much power.

There is a fine line between e-bicycle and e-motorbike, and the Aventon Aventure sidles right up to it. There’s a throttle on the handlebar, like a demon on your shoulder, offering you the opportunity to go up to 20 MPH without pedaling. My advice: Don’t touch it. The sudden lurch isn’t worth it, especially in a bike lane situation where there might be a car door opening in your future. Save it for emergencies, like if you’re out on the open road, or tired on your final uphill.

Same advice goes for pedal assist levels 3 through 5, pretty much. I didn’t like the way they made the bike lurch after a four-way stop, or the motor noise they made, or the exercise they took away. According to my Apple Watch, the average heart rate on my summer rides so far hasn’t exceeded 100. Which is fine — all workouts are good but I never slipped into the effortless cardio-boosting feeling from my CityZen year that I described as “my heart is beating happy.”

3. Fat tires feel great. But the weight!

Credit to the Aventon Aventure: its fat tires made Oakland feel like all the streets had been repaved instead of just optimized for bikes. I love me some good road bike, but it’s hard to ignore the bone-rattling sensation you get from the average city street on thin tires. There are pot holes in the Bay Area that feel like tiny concussions.

In theory, the Aventure’s fat tires should have made them great for bike trails too. In practice … well, as I discovered minutes before leaving on a vacation to the bike-trail-filled land of California’s High Sierras, they were literally too fat for my car’s bike rack. So “in practice” will have to wait until I find some other way of transporting them up there. Amtrak, maybe?

In 2019 I complained about the CityZen’s unwieldy 50-pound weight, which made it a pain to take on and off public transit. The Aventure weighs a CityZen and a half at 75 pounds. Even walking it across a street can feel like a haul. Sure, there are plenty of situations where the weight won’t matter: if you live on the ground floor next to a long stretch of beach road, I can imagine this being the perfect boardwalk e-bike. In the city, its heft is kind of a nightmare.

Your mileage may vary. My mileage has me shunning the weight-means-power tradeoff, and looking at the lighter end of the spectrum. Probably not the 19 pound HPS Domestique, 2021’s lightest production e-bike, or Trek’s lightest-ever mountain bike at 34 pounds, both of which just launched for a cool $12,000 apiece. But hopefully something closer to them than to the scales-tilting Aventure.

4. Consider your ass.

Having just slammed some tires for being too fat to fit, let me proudly stand up for the rights of people like myself with larger-than-average posteriors. The Aventure’s saddle feels our pain; it’s heavy but cozy. The upright posture you get from its handlebars is more pleasant, too. I was okay with leaning forward on the CityZen more, but there was no way I was riding on its regular seat, and immediately had it swapped out for the widest thing in the store.

Maybe one day, bike manufacturers will realize that few humans have the tiny butts required for the so-called “standard” road bike saddle.

5. Color screen no, saddlebags yes.

The Aventon Aventure arrived with a color display for your battery percentage and mileage information built in. I do not know why it would do such a thing. In the direct sunlight of Hot Cycle Summer, this screen is harder to read than a regular LCD. The screen caused the only really messy part of my confusing construction process (the Aventure ships partially built to save on costs), as its two tiny screws were missing. And it’s the main thing I worry about when leaving the bike locked up: Some opportunistic asshole with a hex key is going to mistake that for a smartphone.

Same goes for the Aventon app that connects to the bike via Bluetooth. It mostly records rides, something my watch and phone are quite happily doing already.

When thinking about the bells and whistles of the bike, consider what you’ll actually be doing with it. I got used to carrying saddlebags all the time with the CityZen; even if you only plan to ride, you will invariably pass a cool shop, or remember some grocery item you needed, or change plans to something that involves beach towels. The Aventure boasts a a front basket, which I haven’t needed once. Saddlebags are like a bag of holding or a TARDIS; each seems to have infinite internal room and are great for any random side quest.

6. E-bike security varies wildly.

The CityZen had a key that had to be stuck in the bike in order to turn it on, and to eject the battery. The Aventure has a key that has to be stuck in the bike in order to … eject the battery. In theory, a wily thief (who’d gotten past my D-lock) could turn on the bike and ride away for the length of the battery charge (which, given the Aventure’s impressive 720 Wh battery, would likely take them many miles away).

That is, if the wily thief had done what I had to do repeatedly, and Googled the manual to remember which buttons to press in which order and for how many seconds. That’s probably the bike’s best security feature: An annoying user interface.

7. Manufacturers still don’t know their market.

We are still in the very early years of the e-bike revolution. The vast majority of potential buyers are still untapped. For all those can’t-keep-them-in-stock sales, there is not one groundbreaking innovative design that matches the medium and the moment. No Model T Ford, no Tesla of e-bikes has yet taken hold of the market. I like to think that somewhere in some garage an inventor is tinkering with a design that is light and secure with moderately wide tires, a super-cozy newbie-friendly seat and handlebar setup, and plenty of options for low-level pedal assist.

Maybe this combination is impossible to manufacture at scale; maybe we just haven’t thrown enough R&D money at the problem yet. Either way, we have to live in the real and rapidly-warming world. Your e-bike purchase or rideshare subscription isn’t going to be perfect, but it is urgent — especially as we’re nearly halfway through summer already. And who knows: by the end of it, maybe you’ll be filled with the desire to buy lycra and keep going.