There's abuse of power, and then there's a proportional and necessary response. I have no idea what that looks like, I sure hope they can figure out how to fight back and maintain some semblance of functioning democracy / order. Not saying it needs to be neat and tidy and 100% by the book (D's usual MO) But I 100% agree, complacency is death, maybe even literally in this case.

LOL Kind of makes you wonder if they are polling some of these really out there ideas with internal focus groups while we speak. "If Joe Biden single-handedly vacates and reseats most of the supreme court, I would still vote for him in November- Strongly agree, agree, neither agree nor disagree, disagree or strongly disagree"

But realistically if he does anything like that and somehow DOESN'T get impeached /removed, the GOP takes the house, senate, and presidency for the next 5+ election cycles, or at least until they torch things so bad people revolt.

If they're going to use this to get away with illegal stuff, it has to be through obscure, complex and technical means that people don't readily understand. And just make up all sorts of nonsense as you go along how it wasn't actually illegal, let it get tied up in the courts for years, etc. I have no idea what that looks like, it just can't be obvious and apparent to the average voter.

The dems are (fortunately?) smart enough to realize that doing illegal stuff and abusing power will just cause further abuses of power by the other side, potentially devolving into complete chaos. Not that the present situation is the very definition of law and order, but history has shown time and time again, the more you throw out / rewrite the rules unilaterally it gets really hard to put the genie back in the bottle. And yes, I fully acknowledge to some degree, we are already there; but it can always get worse.

FYI There is a youtube channel dedicated to long term resiliency planning. Would be a good place to start:

https://www.youtube.com/c/americanresiliency

Their cover of Harry Styles' "Golden" is phenomenal

"We just need a place to stay for a bit while we get back on our feet"

Brexit 2: Family Breunion!

Every time I see a picture like this I can't help but think how strong the urge would be to just set off into the mountains and see how high up I could get.

The ones specifically sold as whole-house basically just move a ton of air. Some standard 20" box fans work pretty well, I actually have an air king running in that configuration right now. Just need to run them a little longer. The whole house ones can exchange a whole house worth of cfm in just a few minutes (look up " night flush")

There are whole house fans that mount in a window, FYI. You set it up as an exhaust on the highest floor. The negative pressure draws cooler air in through other open windows

Good catch! I actually have some of those 11s cassettes they say you can use to check. I'd imagine the 45T version (what I'd be looking at) is less of a problem than the 50T, though it's good to have those specs just to verify! Thank you!

Just a new narrow/wide chainring, I know the exist because I looked into replacing the existing ones, and they're cheaper than replacing with 2x/3x equivalent.

As far as cockpit, for the sake of argument, parts bin (theres more complexity that goes beyond the scope of this question)

even the cheapest 11s LG cassette (LG400-11) is 3-5x more expensive than a normal 9s cassette (HG400). you also can't get replacements for more than the smallest 2 cogs to extend the life of your expensive cassette unless you buy the LG700 cassette which is 6-8x more expensive (and only has 4 individually replaceable cogs).

Supposedly linkglide cassettes last 3x as long. I have no idea how much of that is marketing hype vs real world experience. I also wonder if linkglide is the new standard, we'll see cheaper components (including 3rd party) down the line.

all I see here is a rather sizeable investment cost with no amortization in sight.

$93 for a linkglide groupset on Aliexpress (derailleur, chain, shifter, cassette). Conservatively, $50 for selling my existing components on the bay and / or marketplace.

$20 for a new HG400 cassette and another 20 for a chain to keep current setup going. So $10 out of pocket maybe?

I realize it's not a HUGE difference one way or another, I think the main deciding factor is time spent changing stuff out or dealing with other 'quality of life' things. The 105 brifters don't seem to like temps <32F and being in WI there are at least a couple dozen commutes where that's an issue as well. Was kind of hoping there was a no brainer answer here because the more I think about this the more I sink into analysis paralysis. Oh well, appreciate the insight either way!

Upvoting, for visibility. As I mentioned in another comment supposedly the amount of cable pull for SRAM MTB-compatible microshift bar end shifters. I actually happen to have that exact shifter on one of my bikes, that I was coincidentally also looking to swap the cockpit of over to my main commuter. So theoretically just buying a cues RD and cassette should let me into the party; but I am very surprised nobody appears to be running this setup yet. I have the groupset in my cart on Aliexpress and I'm super tempted to give it a shot.

So Russ from Path Less Pedaled did some experiments pretty recently with something similar.

I believe This is the stackechange post in question.

Radavist also tried a similar hack and it appeared to work.

I'm guessing you're in / near a fairly large metro area? I watched marketplace for months and months, set up alerts and everything. Only good deals that would ever pop up were several hours away, not worth the time and gas. I did finally score a v685 (awesome value for what it is IMO) for my main system for $150 shipped from ebay. Any time I would find a remotely decent deal on a receiver locally it was already gone by the time the seller messaged me back.

Had better luck with speakers thankfully, I was able to piece together a full andrew jones 5.1 setup (minus sub, already have a pretty nice 12") along with ceiling speakers for around $200 using various marketplace finds. All totaled for a $350 5.1.2 basement setup it sounds pretty amazing to my ears.

Yeah I see those finds posted here and on a couple FB groups all the time... yet the market here is way different. Probably because I live in a VLCOL area where people are astoundingly frugal, tend to hold onto their old stuff forever, and then try and sell 20 year old non-HDMI entry level sony receivers for $150.

Sure enough, the guy selling this one just moved from CA. Apparently it sat in a box for the last 4 years and it's in pristine condition, works perfectly.

Intellectual shortcut for pretty much everything you find here: Seek those that seek the truth, run away from those who have found it.

What does that mean in this case? If someone tells you they know what would happen in such a scenario (i.e. a nuclear attack by a nuclear power), consider what they are saying with a heavy dose of skepticism.

First off when you say "one of them" are you talking about US / China / Russia firing on one another? Remember, places like India, Pakistan, Israel*, are technically "nuclear powers", and while not good, I could see plenty of scenarios where they attack each other but it doesn't escalate to end the world (though that's always a possibility when talking about nukes of course. I am quite sure there are protocols, procedures and playbook options intended to contain the chaos in such an event.

Even if you assume it's Russia / China / US attacking, you seem to be assuming it's automatically an all out assault. We don't know if that's the only option on the table (by nature of how secretive these 'playbooks' are) but I would be extremely surprised if it were. Think about the scenario where Russia launches a nuke at ukraine, US / NATO massively retaliate with a conventional attack for example.

Now, nuclear war is bad by just about any measure but how bad depends on many unpredictable variables, not the least of which is simply human behavior in a situation where, essentially, no human has (thankfully) ever found themselves before. At some point in the cascade *sane and rational* humans are quite literally ordered to pull suicide levers attached to billions of others, including themselves. It would be foolish to assume that would go perfectly. There are many, many possible outcomes here, even if that does include maximum annihilation.

I have the same rack! It's such an awesome value for the money.

How do you like the lat pulldown attachment? I have that attachment still sitting in the box right now, I either need to reroute some electrical conduit (including the wires that go to my central A/C) to get it to fit, or cut it down.

How much was it? I can't seem to find it online and I've been checking costco's site fairly regularly. Actually been trying to buy the u7k since it went on sale several months ago and they never got stock for my zip code.

Not officially (I emailed them and they said no) but if you look at the page, someone with Sport EXP said it worked on theirs. After looking at all the info Average Joe Innovations has most usefully provided on the page where he sells his own grips, It seemed like they would, so I ordered. At first one of the adder weight levers was a bit loose with the new grips but I 3D Printed a .5mm shim and everything works perfectly. They include a 1.5mm shim when you buy from powerblock but that was too much, the lever barely moved when I had that one on. I suppose you could just sand it down too if you don't have access to a 3d printer. Average joe has a video out there where he used a standard o-ring, so that would work as well.

Unless they're doing this to help manufacture said "bad" PR.

"FINALLY, SEE THE FILM THEY DIDN'T WANT YOU TO SEE!"
Complete with red band trailer.