My experience with high desert daily thaw-freeze cycles is that it tends to produce hard ice "sculptures" in the bike lanes. If you get a hard ice base, studded tires are just about the only thing that will keep you upright. If you get crusty ice, studded tires are mostly optional. If the ice sculpture is particularly gnar, consider full suspension. I went full suspension with studded tires. It was overkill except for those ~5 days per year I absolutely needed to get to work, and the ice in the bike lanes was bad enough to be unwalkable.

If you get hardpack snow, aggressive tread blocks might be enough. I've played around with smoother center tread with aggressive cornering blocks, Nokian Mount&Ground/Hakkapeliita tires, narrow slicks, hardpan tread patterns... it's all a matter of matching the tire to the surface. No single solution will cover all possibilities, and it's critical to match your tires to your most frequently encountered condition. Be mentally prepared for some trial and error.

IMO, a narrower tire is better than wide, within reason. Narrow tires tend to push through snow and crust.

As to why fixies are superlative foul weather bikes:

• drivetrain components wear together: run it until the everything is worn to a nub (if you aren't into maintenance); replace everything together maybe every 7 years; clean and lube the chain when it gets noisy
• way fewer fragile moving parts
• dead simple drivetrain that performs perfectly even when neglected, always works regardless of sand, ice, snow, salt, foul language, or bad hair days
• gravel gets into the drivetrain with the snow and ice? fixie DGAF, unlike belt drive and cassettes
• on rim brakes, less road grit abuse of your braking surfaces because can stop with the rear wheel
• fixies are generally a much lower cost bike to start and you can have yourself a winter beater that will take all the abuse and keep going; tons of choices on the used market
• cheap chains, chainring, and cogs
• changing gear ratio is cheap
• direct connection to the rear wheel acts like traction control: easy to start and stop when slippery; when your front brake becomes useless because of low traction, you can still control speed through the pedals; inertia in the drivetrain carries your stroke through TDC/BDC, making it easier to maintain a smooth stroke in slippery conditions (helps keep you moving and upright); easy to feel when the rear wheel is losing traction, if your rims get iced over (and they will), you still have some braking capability
• you'll feel like a kid again doing massive skids down huge snowy hills
• easy trackstanding at stops: no unclipping/clipping back in (less chance to clog up the pedal and cleat), no putting your foot down into car snot, no putting your foot down in an ice patch and slipping
• the time and money you save on maintenance adds up quickly; get yourself a couple sets of wheels and keep them ready for various conditions; use the same rims for rim-brake bikes to keep your sanity intact
• disc brake fixies are a bit more rare, e.g. Salsa Stormchaser 1x with a White Industries ENO hub; disc brakes expand your capabilities, ease wheel swaps when using different rims, and improve all-conditions braking
• ^that said, I only ever owned a rim brake fixie and never missed my discs even in the gnarliest snow and ice; unlike all my other geared bikes, I've never fallen when winter riding my fixie; actually, I've never fallen on my fixie, period, and I credit that fixed connection to what the rear wheel is doing
• climbing hills is like being on an escalator: because the inertia of the drivetrain carries the pedals over TDC, a fixie just rips up hills; on a 25 mile one-way work commute, my top speed was down 3.5 MPH, but overall average speed was up ~1.8 MPH, with 1400 feet of climb each way

I resisted fixies for a long time despite hearing all the benefits. The story of that fixie pictured in my previous post is here: https://lemmy.world/post/27619326/16157725. VT, OR, UT, WA, MA, and CO winters have never given me any troubles on my fixie with the correct tires for the conditions.

There are a lot of factors that will affect the details of your selection:

• snow type, high desert fluffy, northeast boilerplate and snot, PNW icy wet slop...
• daily thaw/freeze cycle
• salt and/or sand used on the roads
• how much car snot will you be hitting on your commute routes

Without details of your snow conditions, all of the details of any commentor's suggestion will be guessing.

I can offer these generalities; IMO, fat bikes confer no advantage when it comes to snow. They sound great on paper, but if you're floating on top of snow, that's a recipe for garbage traction. For the broadest range of winter road conditions, nothing beats a fixie. I could write you a novella why, but I'll spare you.

Notice that I'm riding road slicks in that pic (25 mile commute one-way).

The next best choice in my experience is a rigid 26” disc brake mountain bike. With a 26" winter wheelset, you can have snow tires, studded ice & snow tires, plus tires for summer trails. Most 26" disc mountain bikes can also fit 700c with clearance for as much as 32C. With fenders! Get yourself a decent 700c wheelset, and you have some summer zippyness. That's a lot of use case in one bike. Tons of choices for this style, but my all time fave was the Trek SU200, same frame as the 4300.

I can't find my pictures of this in winter configuration. But here it is in ultralight touring mode. Winter tires were Nokian on the stock 26" wheels.

I guess Techno Viking finally caught up to Chuck Norris.

Alec's call to action was refreshing amid so many other outlets smoothing over current events.

The first section though... I'm all in on renewable energy and have been for 15 years. What blew me away was how much I internalized the "challenges" to solar. Propaganda is a hell of a drug. Even as aware and informed as I like to think I am, I still managed to drink the wrong Kool-Aid. The numbers in favor of solar were surprising, even for this true believer.

Am I imagining it, or do they have serious Tiny Dick Energy?

All the tacticLOL hardware, rolling with the whole crew, and motherfucker feels the need to aim his pepper ball gun threateningly? I hope those small, insecure men get every ounce of hell they deserve.

You are using a modern, privileged metric informed by an intensive media penetration that was unavailable during the first three campaigns you mention, and only to a slightly higher degree in the last two.

Most enlisted I have known, and it's a lot, thought they were defending the world from despots. Hell, even the officers I know initially thought they were serving the public good. The rest I know who don't fit into that category just wanted to be able to afford college and a family.

And even if the Marine in the picture knows NOW he only served a bloodthirsty tyrannical regime, the fraternity of the USMC, the commitment to the Constitution... It's some deep, deep connection. Even the most disillusioned Marines I know are still loyal to the Corps and the Constitution. Moreover, it is better that one realizes US hegemony later than never, yes? So how about we welcome those have opened their eyes and remedied their ways?

Or we can just keep shitting on allies and see how that works for us.

Me, before I read the article: this is nothing unusual, and I don't see what the problem is. My employers have paid for some pretty advanced training over the years. In return, they asked me to agree to stay for six months. NBD...

Me, after the article: HOLY FUCKING SHIT!

This shift has also opened the door to a new industrial complex of employer-run, for-profit training sites and academies, which many workers are steered into when they’re hired for a job. Critics say employers now use these job training programs to force workers into debt and suppress wages, courtesy of TRAP contracts.

This is heading into Company Town territory. Seriously predatory shit.

Humorous on face value, but that's not what utility companies do. In every utility district I ever lived (and it's a lot), if the meter readers were "unable" to read your meter, the consumption was estimated.

I had many conflicts about this because I traveled a lot for work and knew that there was no possible way I could have consumed as much electricity as they estimated. It turned it that meter readers could just claim the meter was inaccessible, and their job was considered completed.

This article feels a little disingenuous and seems written by someone who has only heard their friend complain about David Brooks. In his book "The Second Mountain," Brooks goes into his mea culpa moments. He has on more than a few occasions admitted his errors. I would share citations, but it was a library loan and it's on hold.

Those of us who protest against power, aren't we looking for exactly the kind of change of hearts and minds such that Brooks is showing?

• Dress for the slide, not for the ride
• ATGATT
• Gray-haired riders don't get that way from luck

What others did I miss?

Pssh... This guy is chump change, maybe a senior engineer at best. You can tell by his footwear. The really highly paid engineers have Crocs with socks, if any footwear at all. 😆

I travel a lot for work. US Customs and the TSA are absolutely a sick joke. I could easily write a novella on the extremely poor training of TSA employees. I have a small permanent retainer (read: braces); about 25% of the time, that is considered suspicious, and I get an enhanced inspection. "Ya know, I could just open my mouth and show you what's in there."

The TSA always determines that my juggling balls are suspicious, so I never pack them in carry-on anymore. I have NEXUS, yet I always get an enhanced inspection on return to the US. Literally every other country to which I have flown just waves me through, even before I got Pre-Check/NEXUS/Global Entry.

My partner had her rigging knife in her backpack on a flight out and back. She was unpacking and found it in her backpack after the trip. Good catch, TSA.

And the absolute frosting on the TSA shit sandwich: one of my close friends owns a private security firm. His company was approached by the TSA to assist in security audits at a major international airport. He and his team were contracted to "smuggle" fake firearms through TSA checkpoints, any way they could. The TSA repeatedly failed to detect the firearms for each of five audits. The TSA division (district? regional?) manager, frustrated at his group's 100% failure rate, determined that my friend's company must have specialized criminal training, and everyone who worked that contract were put on the no-fly list. It took him about 18 months to unfuck that mess for him and his employees.

I had written a few more paragraphs about TSA hassles, but I think y'all get the picture.