Underrated point. Someone always brings up the cost of bikes in these threads and it's silly. Sure, some hard core cyclists will put $20k into the hobby, but it's not at all necessary.

I've got maybe $1200 in my total set up, and I could have done it far cheaper if I'd been picky about shopping sales and buying used.

The bike was around $750 new, $80 for an ergonomic saddle (saves on padded shorts, but YMMV), $60 for a helmet that fits well, $100 for pedals with toe clips so I can wear street shoes, and a few accessories here and there.

I put in 30-50 miles a week on average and I've had the bike for better than 2 years with no major mechanical issues. I don't know where that puts me in terms of milage over the average cyclist, but I have a great time and get plenty of exercise without breaking the bank.

I wonder if you could produce fairing kits for common recumbent bikes and split the difference.

Wealth doesn't necessarily exclude them from being MAMILs, but from what you've described, it seems there are plenty of other reasons to ride solo.

Sounds like you've encountered MAMILs in the wild.

Middle Aged Men In Lycra.

I like to point out that a 10k bike is really just a cheaper mid-life crisis than a sports car, tends to shut down the conversation one way or another pretty quick.

I have a bunch too, but the collection started by accident.

I like Godzilla. I like the old movies, I like the new ones. He's a giant radioactive lizard, what's not to like? I'm not a superfan, but I enjoy the franchise(s).

I'm supposedly hard to buy for, I think mostly because my interests lie outside the rest of the my family's to an extent, and tend to be niche or technical in nature, so I get Godzilla swag and toys for Xmas and birthdays. I don't mind, it's fun.

49 year old dude here, skilled labor job, gruff, grungy, rough around the edges, etc. etc.

I would fucking love these. I'd show every single one of them off to my coworkers and talk about how damn cool they are. This is spousery at its finest.

Anyone who sees something wrong with this is just a jealous, insecure asshole.

People don't often realize how subtle changes in language can change our thought process. It's just how human brains work sometimes.

The old bit about smoking and praying is a great example. If you ask a priest if it's alright to smoke when you pray, they're likely to say no, as your focus should be on your prayers and not your cigarette. But if you ask a priest if it's alright to pray while you're smoking, they'd probably say yes, as you should feel free to pray to God whenever you need...

Now, make a machine that's designed to be agreeable, relatable, and makes persuasive arguments but that can't separate fact from fiction, can't reason, has no way of intuiting it's user's mental state beyond checking for certain language parameters, and can't know if the user is actually following it's suggestions with physical actions or is just asking for the next step in a hypothetical process. Then make the machine try to keep people talking for as long as possible...

You get one answer that leads you a set direction, then another, then another... It snowballs a bit as you get deeper in. Maybe something shocks you out of it, maybe the machine sucks you back in. The descent probably isn't a steady downhill slope, it rolls up and down from reality to delusion a few times before going down sharply.

Are we surprised some people's thought processes and decision making might turn extreme when exposed to this? The only question is how many people will be effected and to what degree.

I gotta unpack this a little...

Reddit's main source of revenue is advertising. Other companies pay Reddit to shove ads in your face. You probably buy products from at least some of those companies, and while market forces and consumer perceptions have large influence, operating costs are still a factor in setting those prices. Just like everyone else, Reddit sets the prices of its advertising services based in part on its operating costs, which includes Spez's salary.

Even if you avoid Reddit, things you buy are more expensive because this fucking toolshed gets paid $193 million a year just to be a sociopathic jackoff with a popular website.

I quit Reddit years ago, but I'm still fucking pissed about this shit and I have every right to be.

If feel like more of them just realizing that they won't be the exception to the rule and only really care now that it's obvious they'll get the shit end of the stick just like everyone else.

For a great many MAGAs it is and always was about weaponizing a social and political movement to hurt people they don't like and now that it's hurting them, we're seeing clearly that their principles never aligned with what they espoused. It's always hypocrisy with them, they aren't willing to be tradwives and follow the ideals they claim to support, but they're happy to use the idea to attack feminism.

If they wind up being forced out of politics, I have no sympathy for them. It was so very apparent, going all the way back to the beginning of Gamergate, that this was the trajectory of the movement.

I feel that the majority of innovation occuring in modern capitalism is confined to two key areas:

1. Regulatory capture and market control.

2. New ways to mindfuck people into overpaying for goods and services.

This may honestly be it for me.

I quit playing games because of all the greed and hype, I went back to piracy when streaming started to fracture and greed set in, I left non-federated social media because of the enshittifaction and invasiveness, and I go to fairly extensive lengths to block ads and protect my privacy as much as possible...

And instead of moving to any number of fair, non-exploitive business models, they're just going to force ads down my throat like that episode of black mirror.

If this goes through I'll be sorely tempted to wipe everything I can and start over as best I can. Only interact with the Internet when I need to.

You'll find me paying cash at the local used bookstore, at least until all the major publishers make that illegal.

EDIT: It's honestly depressing, I genuinely enjoy technology and the internet, but when companies like Google are able to force garbage like this it just sucks all the joy out of it for me.

It's like everying is becoming a shitty mobile game. Do the toolsheds that develop Candy Crush clones not think we can understand why in app currencies are sold in bundles of 100 but every thing we purchase with them requires amounts that end with a five? Does Google not think we know the real motivation behind a system that strives to prove ads were delivered to your browser either?

I know a lot of people may not see the real driver here, but I'm tired of being underestimated and infantalized by a bunch of dorks trapped in a corporate echo chamber. I think I'd prefer it if they just straight up said they're going to sacrifice our privacy and user experience for a quick bump in stock value.