I love when people draw their own little sandy opinions around nebulous, subjective topics, and then proceed to act like they’re speaking ex cathedra on the topic.

Here’s a general life tip: learn to identify opinions from fact. When people express opinions (value judgements), politely, amicably, and sincerely ask them to share the facts on which they developed that opinion. Be fair and hold yourself to the same standards. And hoo-whee, people sure do express a lot of ignorant opinions.

Now onto the topic of “not goth.” The drummer for Sisters of Mercy, one of the quintessential goth bands, is Doktor Avalanche, which is a drum machine.

Another funny bit in goth culture, but not exclusive to that subculture, is the “I am more goth than thee.” It was such a tired trope that my goth friends and I would joke “I’m so goth, I’m dead.”

Anecdotally, I have been an audio engineer for some goth bands, Black Atmosphere probably being the only one of which you may have ever heard. The amount of signal processing and audio post-processing used by every goth band is some Ship of Theseus shit. They use so much processing, they blur the boundaries of synthesis as an instrument. No exaggeration: Black Atmosphere used every processor in my rack, and I had racks of racks.

The low voltage wire splicing was a little too interesting to qualify for dullness. Reported and requested summary banning! The other two links were sufficiently dull and may have spared you banning though. 😆

What were the handful of instances wherein violence wasn’t required to defeat fascists?

Not enough context to say. And really, my opinion one way or another is (and should be) worthless. If you feel used, your perception here is necessarily valid regardless of how grounded in reality.

The key here is to examine your own interpersonal template and remedy whatever it is that results in these relationship dynamics in which you keep finding yourself. If you weren’t actually in an exploitative relationship, it’s up to you to address the thought patterns that led you to believe that. If the relationship was exploitative, then it’s up to you to address your traumas and lack of boundaries that precipitate these relationships.

I’ll close with: all relationships are transactional in one way or another. The exchange might not always be immediately apparent, yet can be utterly benign and mutually beneficial. Just because someone wants something from you doesn’t mean it’s nefarious. You need to define your boundaries and needs, then be explicit about that with potential partners.

highkey tired of people who only like me platonically getting with me because it’s only them who try to date me, then they realize they don’t like me or didn’t like me all along and just played with me because they didn’t want to feel bad

can’t help but be upset and i do not wanna see my ex at all, but she’s such a nice person

These are some awful feelings with which to grapple. The need to be appreciated, cherished, and nurtured is why we enter into relationships.

There is opportunity for you here to find people who fulfill your companionship needs. However, the corollary is: out of all your past relationship failures, the common thread is you. There is something in your interpersonal template that attracts you to people who treat you badly, attracts such people to you, or some combination thereof.

I hope you can find healing, growth, and the companionship you crave.

Result: there are 16 beans.

I’ve ridden electric stuff with really bad/jerky throttles

What are those models with bad throttle response?

“It was like…full-on sci-fi.”
“Dude…can’t believe I missed THAT!”

That whole exchange was worth the cost of entry.

Better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick. But why not GO there? Commercial and residential zoning gets a 100% tax when left vacant. That would be a great start on the whole real estate investment property bullshit. And cut that down to three months. Oh, you can’t get $3/sq ft? Now you can instead pay into the city’s coffers.

There are so many ways to fix these problems, yet the political will is… tepid at best.

My commute used to be 52 miles every weekday. Gatorskins very quickly proved themselves to be a hard no. Those tires somehow magically merge low traction and low longevity. Tread wears out quickly, sidewalls degrade quickly, and flat resistance was on par with tires that don’t claim to be hard-wearing. I’ve had sidewalls start to delaminate in under 500 miles. After about a year of that chaos, I switched to Vittoria Rubino Pro III on most of my bikes and never looked back.

While I have no love for Conti Gatorskins, that chunk looks like it was initiated by a lateral cut. The top edge looks very clean, while the remaining edges look torn.

I generally mistrust Conti tires regardless of mode. I had a new car and motorcycle that both came with Contis. Just terrible. Switched to Michelins on the motorized vehicles. That resulted in better traction, better ride, and better wear.

The goddamned business news this morning… It’s almost like execs are begging for since of that ½ of Mario Brothers action.

Eat a bowl greasy dicks, you fucking human shitstains. It’s not bad enough that we have bullshit Protestant work ethic and prosperity gospel here. We’re trying to export that anti-worker codswallop because we haven’t immiserated enough of humanity. Billionaires need another pound of flesh from those people over there too!

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I have a hypothesis that the Nassau pirates were a successful socialist economy. The Flying Gang/Republic of Pirates was founded mostly from former privateers (legally sanctioned and “licensed” marauders). The democratic and socialist nature of the republic was a growing threat to royalty and the American ruling class, especially given that Africans could be full crew members and even captains with all the rights afforded those roles. Furthermore, European royalty and American capitalists were the only ones “allowed” to pillage native lands. The pirates were in turn sacking European and American ships of their ill-gotten and exploitative gains.

Having a socialist, comparatively egalitarian and equitable society amidst the Carribean sugar plantations was too much of a threat to the ruling classes. The pirates were ruthlessly pursued and purged from history. Sure, King George I (and some others? don’t recall) first tried to bring the Nassau pirates (back) into the fold with offers of amnesty. This is analogous to offering modern engineers well-paying jobs; most terrorists whose names you know start out as engineers*. The ruling classes first wanted to put the pirates’ skills to use for their own gain. Benjamin Hornigold was one who returned, hunting down his former peers.

*think about that the next time you run across a bored, disgruntled engineer

I find it very odd that books on the golden age of piracy all remark how the pirates supposedly kept no records, yet discuss at length how the pirates had healthcare, disability, pensions, equitable wealth distribution… these things all require assiduous record-keeping. And so my bullshitspiration is that there were records. But the campaign to wipe out the pirates was so thorough that we are now led to believe that the pirates were just brigands and chaotic anarchists.

Never heard of this person/channel previously. I fell down the rabbit hole of his videos. Thanks for wrecking my morning productivity! 😆

Wait, you said a 1x can have a similar range, and then immediately followed up with:

you do have to sacrifice either a bit of top end speed or climbing ability

It is impossible for both statements to be true at the same time.

No, no, no. It was riding a bicycle. Duh!

superior due to the narrow-wide chainring

Fully agreed. Narrow-wide rings are absolutely a boon to mountain biking as are derailleur clutches. And 1x is superlative for hard trail riding on that factor alone.

A factor in the issue I take is the proprietary nature of modern bike drivetrains. With older drivetrains, we could mix and match to our hearts’ content. But now, even within a component line, e.g. Deore XT or SRAM X[n], specs such as pull rates can be different even for the same cog count. “These are the only combinations of components we think you should use, and we will do everything we can to block you from customizing.” Shimano is especially egregious about this expensive mess, and they know it, which is why they tried to un-hash things with CUES.

Pretty much everything 3x9 all works together. Road derailleur and cassette with mountain crank and bar-end shifters? Sure! Gear range for days. I sincerely believe this is to sell more bikes. Want to climb hard pack and mixed surface? You need a gravel bike! Want to get groceries? You need a commuter or loaded tourer! Want to go on a fast road ride? You need a road bike!

It used to be really easy to build up a bike that could perform most bicycle functions well. Mixed-surface, loaded, commuter/grocery-getter, randonneuring, snow, rain, club rides… one bike with maybe a wheel change*. Good luck with that now. Gravel bikes are kinda filling that niche now, but the components and frame manufacturers are again trying to fracture that even further. The gravel drivetrain won’t have the range to cover all the use cases without a cassette or crank change.

Moar rant, moar example: my partner works in an LBS. We can literally afford to buy any bicycle we could want. She wants a general-purpose gravel bike, and it’s not even a case of “just spend more money to get these additional features.” Component selection on a pre-built, geometry, wheel selection… all tightly engineered to cover as few use cases as possible. Okay, we’ll build from a naked frame. Oh, the more racy geometry frames lack braze-ons and can’t fit a 50mm tire.

*It makes complete sense to have a full-squish mountain bike for the aggressive off-road stuff, and those bikes are necessarily different. Even for that case, I can hang with the LBS trail/flow rides on my do-almost-everything bike. My current do-everything took me more than six months to source compatible parts and troubleshoot. This used to be a matter of just pulling the trigger on the parts I wanted.

Did you even watch the video? He even addressed the point about which you’re asking. Repeatedly.

The root cause of what you describe is a build or maintenance issue. Properly built, tuned, and maintained bikes don’t drop chains.