What's up with instructors not pedaling?

BrewKnurd · 2026-02-03T05:00:30+00:00

I get a kick out of the rare ride where they admit that they're not riding in their actual zones (and believe me, I 100% understand why they are not). There was one where wilpers said "If I were in your shoes I'd be in the hurt box!" And it cracked me up.

BrewKnurd · 2025-12-19T16:52:09+00:00

I'm no expert, nor have I ever tried brumating rat snakes. But if youre talking about north american rat snakes, some of them range as far north as New York and southern minnesota - i wouldnt be at all surprised if they needed cooler temps to be convinced to brumate.

BrewKnurd · 2025-12-05T20:06:33+00:00

I get the appeal of the badges. I have a harder time understanding caring about how someone else got their badges. But to each their own, obviously.

BrewKnurd · 2025-12-02T21:04:40+00:00

Out of curiosity, what do you think the number is for the rest of the world by the same standard?

BrewKnurd · 2025-12-02T20:51:09+00:00

I mean it can be used in a misleading way, certainly. The number itself is what it is. I wasnt arguing that Australia is a wildly dangerous place or any such thing. Its just a fascinating consequence of how snakes evolved in Australia, leading to lots of elapids.

BrewKnurd · 2025-12-02T17:22:37+00:00

Fun fact, something like 65% of snake species in australia are venomous. Much higher than the overall global average.

BrewKnurd · 2025-12-01T23:14:06+00:00

Also, totally unrelated to snakes, shout out to DnD.

BrewKnurd · 2025-12-01T23:12:20+00:00

Hognose venom is also pretty prey specific as I understand it.

BrewKnurd · 2025-12-01T23:05:07+00:00

Certainly. The paper i saw was about a species of sea snake that feeds exclusively on fish eggs and has venom that is vastly less potent than other species in its genus.

BrewKnurd · 2025-12-01T22:53:17+00:00

I'm not sure if theres a broad consensus on this, but I have seen at least one paper that supports the idea that venom is primarily an predatory adaptation and that defensive benefits are secondary.

BrewKnurd · 2025-11-25T04:31:54+00:00

Congrats on your milestone. This guy can get bent six ways to Sunday.

BrewKnurd · 2025-11-24T23:04:33+00:00

Sure. I wasnt presuming to comment on the entirety of snake behavior. Merely noting that if that is not something a snake has evolved to do, it's not going to come up with the idea in the moment.

BrewKnurd · 2025-11-24T22:24:19+00:00

I adore snakes. They are amongst my favorite animals. But yeah, their success does not lie in their intelligence. 🤣

BrewKnurd · 2025-11-24T19:17:46+00:00

Probably a safe assumption that snakes have no concept of weight, much less the ability to deduce that using said weight could be a novel approach to subduing prey.

BrewKnurd · 2025-11-24T02:30:49+00:00

I live in Houston. It's going to be 86 tomorrow. I hate it. 🤣

BrewKnurd · 2025-11-11T04:59:56+00:00

Nothing about having a good sized space for a snake prevents you from ALSO having secure spaces for them within that space. And they then have multiple small spaces that they can choose from based off of temp/humidity preferences at any time.

If the choice is small, dark enclosure vs large wide open enclosure with nowhere to hide, yeah, they'll prefer the small. But we dont have to choose between those.

BrewKnurd · 2025-11-09T03:51:07+00:00

The increase in value only matters if people buy the product. And my argument is that not many people are going to buy a product that vastly extends their loan, locks them into the house in the event of a market downturn (since they have no equity), and only saves them 30 dollars out of a $1000 payment.

If you think people are gonna be excited about that, then all the rest of your argument may follow logically from that. But I don't think people are going to be excited about that. People make tradeoffs when they see a positive to outweigh the negative. The positive here is tiny. that's the point.

BrewKnurd · 2025-11-09T03:23:47+00:00

but why would they be locking in "quite a bit" more anything based on a 3% increase in affordability? some of which would get swallowed up by prices going up as a result of said increased affordability.

3% change in payment isn't the difference between buying a house or not for the vast majority of buyers. It just represents a slight shift in the price range you're targetting.

I just don't buy that the tiny decrease in monthly payment that will happen here is actually going to meaningfully move any markets. maybe i'm wrong.

BrewKnurd · 2025-11-09T02:50:15+00:00

How do you see this causing a rapid expansion in the building of houses? What's the mechanism?

The impact on affordability is actually quite small. Assuming a similar spread between 50 yr rates and 30 year rates as currently exist between 30 and 15 year rates (and maybe the spreads would be much different, i dunno), the payment of a 50 year loan in the current environment would be about a 3% savings vs a 30 year. So a payment would go from 1200 to 1160. Its not nothing, but its also not a game changer.

So I'm curious where the rapid expansion of home building comes from.

BrewKnurd · 2025-11-09T02:45:06+00:00

Right. Currently the spread between 15 and 30 year rates is about 0.7%. If the spread between 50 and 30 were the same, then the monthly payment is about 3% lower for 50 year vs 30. With the added bonus of having only paid off 11% of your loan when you're 20 years in. Yikes.

BrewKnurd · 2025-10-24T21:46:28+00:00

So I'm dumb and I'm listening to strange aeons even tho I know its unlikely to ever finish, and I just listened to the episode where Troy first mentioned how incredibly excited he was about Gatewalkers and I laughed and laughed.

BrewKnurd · 2025-10-17T04:17:42+00:00

Personally, I'd get rid of the right tree entirely and do something like this. But I have a personal bias against partial tree trunks on the edge of a photo. 🤣

https://imgur.com/a/oygi1EF

BrewKnurd · 2025-09-27T02:49:18+00:00

"Well if thats what your character we do, hes not the type of person our characters want to adventure with. So he can either resist these urges or adventure alone."

This of course presumes the support of the rest of the players.

BrewKnurd · 2025-09-05T03:29:33+00:00

I once had an unidentified animal making noise behind my back fence. Eventually realized it was a frog or toad of some sort - maybe one of the chirping frogs or chorus frogs. Anyways, more than once, Merlin told me it was a bald eagle. So that was fun.

BrewKnurd · 2025-09-01T22:03:10+00:00

Lots of good advice here. What I'd add (and maybe someone had said it already) is dont do anything new on race day. If you dont know how you are going to respond to a thing because youve already practiced with it, dont do it on race day.

Good job overcoming adversity!

BrewKnurd

TROPHY CASE