FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
And every gimmick hungry yob
Digging gold from rock n roll
Grabs the mic to tell us
he'll die before he's sold
But I believe in this
And it's been tested by research
He who fucks nuns
Will later join the church
User ID: 195
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
4mo ago
I had this thought a couple of times, he bounces back.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
4mo ago
Are there any decent chinesium oura ring knockoffs out there?
I want to dabble in fitness biometric tracking, but I don't really want a smart watch, the ring seems practical but I don't want to spend that much.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
4mo ago
It's a sop to a subgrouping that has been co-opted by the MAGA movement.
Think of it as the RFK equivalent of the Cuba embargo: most don't care, and a subgroup cares A LOT, so you go with what the subgroup wants.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
4mo ago
This was my biggest culture shock moving to the city. Where I grew up the working class was mostly white, the diner waitress and the customer had about equal odds of being white or black. Moving to NYC, lower end retail has entirely black employees serving mostly white customers.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
4mo ago
Yeah it feels like a compromise climb-down. Vaccines are cool, but it's the Tylenol.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
4mo ago
Maybe I wasn't paying close enough attention to your posts, but I got the impression you were looking to buy new for that price, since most people buying used don't have much option wrt features or brands, especially at the lower end of the used market. Maybe things are better where you are, but most of what I see on FB marketplace/CL is junk, and the specialist bike sites are more along the lines of "This year-old $6500 bike is a steal at $3000".
No that's pretty much craigslist here as well. Over time I've noticed some decent deals here and there, just wrong size or wrong style for me.
Though I may ultimately just keep the ones I borrowed. I'm fairly certain that the people I borrowed them from don't particularly want them back, at least not from me.
Any 10–20 year-old used bike is going to need a chain, probably a rear cassette, probably tires, probably new cables.
So, like, bike-sensei: I haven't actually changed most of those things on several bikes that haven't been ridden in years, and the tires are hit-or-miss, but with a bit of lubrication the rest seems to work ok in that I hop on and pedal it and it goes. Should I be changing out all those things as well?
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
4mo ago
Getting back to you, found the Charlie Kirk jokes that made me guffaw, and are still dirty enough to shock my conscience after a three years of scout camp doing dead baby jokes. From who? The sick fucks at NFC East Meme War of course!
Using Kirk as essentially the new version of the gangbang meme to show a player is gonna get wrecked
Using Robinson as an edgy version of Goku to show a player is going to be accurate
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
4mo ago
I'm really kinda lost on what you're saying here, Rov, though I'm sure it's my ignorance of what I'm talking about. It seems to me like $200-300 is a reasonable budget for a 10-20 year old mid-range used bike around me, both from craigslist/FM and walking around the big bike flea market near me the other weekend, at which price point one can get a decent bike from a respectable brand with what I would consider a lot of different feature sets from suspensions to frame materials to gearsets to handlebars, so like yeah one ought to get picky.
I guess if I were looking for something really specific and in better shape it seems like $600-1000 gets me there, but I really don't get what I get other than "new" for more money than that. Enthusiasts try to explain it to me and I don't get it, it feels like they're telling me I have to buy a new Mercedes and a Camry just won't do.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
4mo ago
I assumed that the advantage of the 3x system was using a front shift to rapidly change gears, going from 3-5 to 2-5 only takes one shift where going from 1-12 to 1-7 takes five shifts. I would think the speed/reliability of the shifter would be the limiting factor here, though that might be my lack of exposure to higher end bikes.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
4mo ago
Wow, that is something. I have not come across it yet! Bookmarked.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
4mo ago
It's decently fun and comfortable for most things for me, and ugly enough to not be an attractive theft target. The lack of gears make it not that great for climbing hills/bridges, but it's okay for me on the ones near me. Also not great for carrying cargo, but I don't have much need for that now. I used to have a nice hybrid like the one I'm suggesting, which had decent saddlebags for cargo, but it got stolen a while ago.
Interesting how that is a consideration I don't really have for this purchase, but is clearly important for others. 90% of my rides start and end at my house, the rest are on trails in parks, and none of them feature public stops.
It may take some experience to understand how road bikes are really supposed to fit and work. You should be leaning forward enough to put significant weight on your hands. The drop bars provide several places to put your hands to help with this strain. Between putting significant force on the pedals most of the time and keeping some weight on your hands, there shouldn't be that much weight on the seat most of the time, so it's not meant to be that comfortable for just tooling around.
I've been embarrassed by this already. I actually really like how the road bike rides when I get it under way, but getting it under way ends up being significantly harder or more clumsy than the more upright bikes.
The only thing that makes me consider pushing a bigger budget, like $500 rather than $200, that some of the newer bikes I see around are 1x10 or 1x12 gear systems. The 3x8 systems you see on most used bikes seem to add a lot of complexity for very little benefit (to me). Older bikes too, but nothing that's both working and cheap. One of those weird manufacturing moment-in-time things where for a while 24 speeds was really difficult to do from a manufacturing perspective and became the standard of excellence, and now you're starting to see less of it for the same reason: everyone can do it, so let's see what the best thing to do is.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
4mo ago
Ok one more hot take: Brands in cycling barely matter, they really only do the frame (if they do!) and then assemble parts from suppliers. So pick PARTS not brand.
Yeah, what's annoying to me as an outsider is that I thought "Shimano" was a brand name like an Edelbrock engine, only to realize they make EVERYTHING, so they're not really any indicator of quality.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
4mo ago
Borrowing a bunch of bikes was a great idea, and sounds like fun.
It was! There's something fun about inflating the tires, adjusting the brakes and shifters, lubricating everything, and getting an old bike out on the road. It's like an easier lower stakes version of the barn find car. It was also the best education in bike brands for me, virtually every house around me has a bike in the garage, 90% of them are trash that the owner thinks is a really high end bike and the other 10% are really expensive bikes that the owner thinks is just old trash.
I think I've mentioned here before, the number of bikes you'll want is N+1, where N is the number of bike you currently own. The optimal number to in fact own is M - 1, where M is the number of bikes where your spouse threatens to divorce you.
It's amazing how quickly one finds oneself wanting all kinds of specialized varieties of bike, while simultaneously secure in the knowledge that others are doing more with less.
I basically only ride a hard-tail 29r XC MTB on local trails now. It's at the level of cheapest bike that I do not consider a piece of shit. For where I live, the best combo of: low maintenance, getting out and exploring a bit, and not risking being killed by a motor vehicle. It's also cheap enough I don't feel compelled to baby it.
I find myself riding on public roads much more than I thought I would. I had a vision or stereotype in my mind that this was fairly dangerous, but upon really thinking about it and doing it more, I just need to be choosy about time and route and I can avoid most traffic pretty easily, make no left turns at speed, and have minimal problems. Route A is good for weekday evenings with minimal traffic after 6pm but bad during the day, Route B is through a neighborhood and good during the workday but terrible at rush hour, Route C runs through an industrial park and is perfect and completely empty on weekends but impossible on weekdays.
It's interesting, to me, how riding a bike changed my interaction with roads and traffic relative to walking the dog, going for a run, driving for utilitarian and recreational reasons. Hills are fairly irrelevant to driving, annoying but ultimately meaningless outside of split time for running, a major obstacle for a bicycle requiring serious route planning. As I walk or run on the left hand side facing traffic, turning left is the inside lane, and anyway crossing traffic is no big deal anywhere I go for a run. On a bike, I really try to avoid left turns unless it's at a stop sign, as that presents the worst risk of a car coming up behind me hitting me while trying to pass. Going for a run, if I need to stop and rest or walk for a bit after a hard effort or halfway up a hill, it doesn't matter and no one cares. When I fail on a hill climb on a bike, I feel like a public failure walking my bike up the hill, like wow I really suck at biking, and occasionally even get motorists slowing down to ask if I'm ok or if the bike broke down.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
4mo ago
Getting a used one from a bike charity in your city is your best bet for <=$300, new for $300-$600, and then used again beyond that.
Why that dip in the middle? What brands should one be looking at in each price range?
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
4mo ago
or the bastard cousin, a tri bike, which you won't be able to use in many group rides if you want to join a club
Why not? That seems an odd rule.
I'm still figuring out what kind of bike I want, hence attempting to try out a variety of bikes. The old Jamis Quest road bike rides really nicely, but besides being the wrong size I don't entirely love the uncomfortable forward seating position, and it makes me nervous on actual roads because I feel like I can't keep track of what is going on around me the way I can on a more upright hybrid bike. I'm not super worked up about speed, but I imagine if I stick with it I will be, so one doesn't want to spend on something that will later be limiting. Probably not interested in a true mountain biking experience, in that I find the idea of seeking out mountain biking trails kind of annoying. Mostly I guess I'm looking at 3-10 mile fitness/relaxation rides on hilly suburban/rural roads around me, plus at some point I'd like to plan a longer distance ride.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
4mo ago
Pretty much. It's like a lower stakes version of fixing up an old car, there's something satisfying about getting it rolling, but without the specialization. This is actually one of my first experiments in using chatgpt to educate myself on something, which I guess is really part of the fun of the experience, and appropriate given the low stakes involved.
I still have a "Romo's a Homo" t shirt I bought outside the Septa station somewhere in my closet.
But the meanest cowboys joke is going to require some context. Back when Terrell Owens played for the Eagles, when he made a play the whole stadium would chant "T-O T-O T-O T-O, T-O, T-O." Well, after his falling out with McNabb breaking his contract with the Eagles and signing with the cowboys, he comes back to the linc. Not long before it was widely reported that he had attempted suicide by taking too much hydrocodone, and been found unconscious by his publicist. Well, he comes back to Philly, and every time he's on the field we all chant "O-D O-D O-D O-D, O-D, O-D" to the same rhythm.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
4mo ago
Two months ago I decided to take up bicycling. Thanks for the advice everyone. After determining that as my learned friend @MollieTheMare indicated, the Pacific mountain bike I'd come into was kind of a piece of shit, I went hunting around for other bicycles I could borrow from people, and found myself with a menagerie of old bikes that had been sitting in garages for years or decades now sitting in my garage and being fixed up and ridden around my neighborhood. I've got a 90s Trek hybrid for girls, a 2012ish Trek hybrid for men, a remake Schwinn cruiser, and a Jamis road bike from the 2000s that I quite like but have to keep fiddling with to make work for me because it's actually the wrong size. Eventually I'm going to return all but maybe one of them to their original owners. I'm still kind of figuring out what exactly I like/want/need in a bike, and how to go about finding it.
So cycling mottizens, consider this the "What are you riding?" thread, or the "What bike would you advise someone to buy?" thread. I'm curious what the fine people of this place think is a good bike.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
4mo ago
Who are the Gazans and how would they go about surrendering?
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
4mo ago
Santa Claus is kind of like the cowboys' super bowl chances, in that neither really exists.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
4mo ago
It's not that I wanted to kill him, it's just unpredictable what a D Cell battery hurled at 60mph from section 127 will do to a human skull on impact.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
4mo ago
What's the point of an analogy if it doesn't work unless it's exactly the same? Typically everything is fodder for a joke among comedians, and the punishment is that if people don't like it the joke bombs. "Don't make jokes about deaths" wasn't really a standard until last week, and while people often got sensitive about such jokes, this wasn't a broad standard.
I will not beat the allegations.
And let's be honest, if this wretched hive of scum and villainy ever makes it to court, none of us are. I would not want to be in court trying to explain that it's important not to ban the pedofascist on civility grounds.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
4mo ago
Would it be in the realm of appropriateness for a late-night comedian to take a shot at Jerry Jones for this response? No
Absolutely it would be appropriate. People said that a LOT about everyone involved in baseball in the aftermath of the Roy Halladay and Jose Fernandez deaths.
In 2023 the Dallas Cowboys faced the San Francisco 49ers in the divisional round of the NFL playoffs. It was probably the career-best year for QB Dakota Prescott, they had a strong team. Unfortunately the niners were having a better year, behind Mr. Irrelevant Brock Purdy's establishing campaign, and in the 4th quarter the cowgirl's season was on the brink: they were down a touchdown with just six seconds to go 76 yards. So the Cowboys draw up a hilarious trick play involving putting their running back at center and everyone else out wide, including the rest of the offensive line, and the plan appeared to be to try and lateral a series of hook-and-ladder runs up the field for the touchdown. It, of course, didn't work. Elliott got steamrolled, the pressure got to Dak and he threw it like seven yards for a short gain that accomplished nothing. They looked silly and everyone around the NFL mocked it for a while.
Now as much as I love mocking the cowgirls, realistically their win probability from that position was less than 2.5%. There was a 97% chance that the 49ers were going to win, and the play they called in that situation was unlikely to work. So I always thought mocking them in that situation was a little silly, they just didn't stand much of a chance to begin with so you gotta try something.
In the same way, mocking Kamala for her electoral results for not winning the election is kind of silly, like mocking Ezekiel Elliott and Dakota Prescott, a fun thing to do if you hate their team but ultimately not really the fault of the players on the field. She focuses on the 107 days, but the bigger problem was being tied to an unpopular incumbent president without the advantage of incumbency. If TPTB had the chutzpah to just kill Biden, Kamala would have had a chance: she would have been the first female president, she would have had the advantage of being in power. But running as an incumbent vice president of a clearly failed (because not-running) president, she had all the disadvantages of a failed admin attached to her while having none of the advantages of having concrete accomplishments to point to. She couldn't avoid blame for any of the failures of the administration eg Gaza and Inflation; she couldn't claim credit for any administration successes, eg the economy not cratering post Covid. The Democrats were doomed in 2024 when they nominated Biden and picked Kamala in 2020. Biden was always going to get old, Kamala couldn't be skipped over without pissing off too many people. The result in 2024 was pretty much set in stone, and confirmed when Trump turned left in Pennsylvania.
Pick Pete, don't pick Pete; you were losing either way. Accept what happened and move on, don't try to blame others.
Now if we want to play "How did Kamala manage to lose so badly?" then there's room to analyze performance. But losing was always her fate.
More options
Context Copy link