Somewhere in there there’s a step “come up with the most sociopathic business plan possible.”

You’ve only been here for three days so you don’t know, but the user you’re replying to was notorious as an emphatic, outspoken critic of the DNC before the change in leadership. It was at the point where half the stuff he said was easily mistaken for tankie anti-Democrat trolling.

If he, of all people, says it’s better now, I, for one, believe him.

“We’ve tried running two shitlib women with ‘status-quo’ platforms during a time when the public is crying out for economic change, and they both lost. That proves women can’t win, because it couldn’t possibly be about our abject refusal to rein in the billionaires!” — shit liberals say

Builder: “I’m not incompetent! Uh… God didn’t want it to happen. Yeah, that’s it; the collapse definitely wasn’t my fault at all!”

I hear that, and in parallel, mostly essentials only, minimum amount of purchasing for months now. Not paying a dime into their precious “economy” if I don’t have to.

See, that’s where they got me: I would’ve liked to do the same as you, but instead I bought a bunch of stuff I would’ve normally waited until later to get, in anticipation that the fuckwad’s idiot tariffs would jack up the price if I waited.

Who cares? It’s not as if the dipshits who need to hear it would know the difference anyway.

If they also have a teaching position, they might get a tiny tiny bit from the university, but that’s it.

Granted this is a best-case scenario, but the salaries for profs at my alma-mater (a public tier 1 research university) are public and I looked one of them up once. He was getting well into six-figures for teaching classes.

I was just being silly and paraphrasing a very old reference.

(It is still fundamentally a FWD sedan, though, and therefore objectively inferior to, say, my Miata. 😜 )

See also: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheissTitillationTheory : “The sexiness of an outfit is directly proportional to the perceived possibility that a vital piece of it might fall off.”

Well, shocks can also keep the wheels touching the ground more often on bumpy terrain, for better traction. Think climbing a hill on rooty, rocky singletrack, without losing traction and therefore momentum.

But yeah, no: In order to get to the point where you actually need suspension to stop the frame snapping in half or something like that, you’ve gotta be doing some real X-Games shit. And at that point you need full suspension anyway, not just a hardtail.

(Either that, or your frame was defective and unsafe to begin with.)

To be fair, if your son cares it’s only because you/society taught him to care.

DSA according to conservatives and liberals: ☝️

DSA in reality:

Yes, but the vast majority of Europeans are not rural – and unlike Americans, they aren’t suburban, either.

It got way better between the 1860s and 1940s. The issue is that starting in the '50s it declined again.

I think a more recent map is more interesting:

Remember, America was not built for the car, as ignorant people often claim. It was demolished for the car.

Trolling the politicians who try to violate the separation of church and state isn’t useless.

I’ve been buying a bunch of camping/backpacking gear recently, including a couple of water filters and a bunch of freeze-dried meals I found on clearance at Costco (assorted 10-pack box for $10, or $1/meal!). I tell myself it really mostly is for camping (especially since my kids are getting into cub scouting), but I’d be lying if I said the possibility of bugging out wasn’t also at the back of my mind.

I also built myself a new computer recently, and went for small-form-factor instead of a normal tower case just in case I need to move on short notice/with limited ability to bring belongings. I’ve also been simultaneously waffling between trying to fix a bunch of stuff on my house so that it’s in good saleable condition and hesitating to spend money on stuff that can’t be easily moved. It’s a weird feeling.

I have trouble getting over the back wheel (maybe my saddle is too wide?)

I think it’s more likely your saddle is too high or your handlebar reach is too long.

If most of your riding is on paved surfaces, you want “city bike tires.” For your bike, they’ll be roughly 26x1.5"-2.0" and they’ll be relatively smooth instead of knobby. Better ones will have features like extra puncture resistance and retroreflective sidewalls.

Random example from an image search:

The “some nubs on the outer sides but a smooth patch down the center” type of tire the commenter above recommended would look something like this…

…but honestly, I’d probably go for a full-blown city tire instead unless you’re regularly riding on loose surfaces, not just “occasionally.”

You can have better traction and comfort from using the shock or you can have better efficiency and speed from not having it absorb some of your pedaling force, but you can’t have both at the same time.

There’s a reason the only bikes you’ll find with suspension are MTBs, hybrids marketed to newbies who don’t know any better (sorry), and high-end e-cargo bikes that have excess power budget to spend on jostling the cargo less.

Also, keep in mind that your arms and legs (if you stand up on the pedals) act as shock absorbers, even if the bike itself is rigid. The tires and even the frame flex a little bit, too, and that’s basically considered good enough on paved surfaces up to and including cobblestone streets.