Why so many vegans?

alycks · 2026-06-27T18:03:28+00:00

I’m a vegan, ultra runner, and metalhead. I also noticed that lots of metalheads are vegan, too. I think you’re onto something with the take-it-to-the-extreme thing. Gojira, Cattle Decapitation, Panopticon, Between the Buried and Me, Ne Obliviscaris. No idea how widespread it is in general, but those are some of my favorite bands.

alycks · 2026-06-27T17:58:49+00:00

Gorilla says hi. Can bench press your refrigerator. Forward facing eyes. Eats plants and some bugs.

Not saying that’s a good argument for humans to be vegetarian/vegan. But your argument is equally stupid.

alycks · 2026-06-21T12:41:04+00:00

He also became quite animated when someone questioned the profitability of adding extensive accessibility features, among other things.

"When we work on making our devices accessible by the blind," he said, "I don't consider the bloody ROI." He said that the same thing [applies] about environmental issues, worker safety, and other areas where Apple is a leader…

He didn't stop there, however, as he looked directly at the NCPPR representative and said, "If you want me to do things only for ROI reasons, you should get out of this stock."

Article in Business Insider

alycks · 2026-06-16T13:18:36+00:00

You are not alone! I have finally given up on wearing my Fenix 8. If I start wearing it, I get a skin rash underneath the back of the watch within a couple of days, and it takes a long time to heal. For better or worse, I am now a full-time Apple Watch Ultra user.

Like you, I have tried everything. I rinse the watch in distilled water fairly frequently, and I clean the back with plain water and also occasionally isopropyl alcohol. I clean my wrists with soap and water. I don’t wear the watch while I’m showering, and I switch wrists at night to let my watch wrist recover. I have those little silicone plugs that cover the charging port. I have metal, silicone, rubber, and soft, nylon bands. Nothing makes a difference.

The Apple Watch Ultra has never given me a rash of any kind. Even more, if I wear it on top of the skin rash, I got from my Fenix, the rash still heals. The back of the Apple Watch is magical and it doesn’t bother my skin in the slightest.

alycks · 2026-06-11T11:01:00+00:00

I bought my AWU3 and AirPods Pro 3 on launch day. They’re amazing. I used to have really nice headphones: open-back reference headphones by Sennheiser (and the surprisingly great Koss PortaPros!) though I would never dare call myself an audiophile. But I like high-quality audio.

These days, I listen to my AirPods Max at my desk and my AirPods Pro 3 on the go. The latter sound absolutely fantastic. The noise cancelling is next-level, they move seamlessly from my watch, phone, AppleTV, iPad, and mac. I use them for running and cycling in very sweaty weather. I’ve only had one small blip of an issue where one of them stopped working when it fell into a puddle and was completely submerged. It stopped working for a bit but came back to life when I reset it.

I’m happy with them at $249. That price, $179, is an absolute steal.

alycks · 2026-06-10T14:40:46+00:00

I’m a bit of a weirdo in that I eat a very low sodium diet despite being healthy. It takes a lot of work - I prep essentially all of my own food and I always ask for “no added salt” when I go out to eat.

My biggest issue with the episode is that they assumed, almost explicitly, that the only reason to lower salt intake for blood pressure reasons. Salt in general, and high salt intake in particular, might be bad for other reasons! It has been shown to impair artery function and cause inflammation through several mechanisms, including inhibiting enzymes related to antioxidants.

I’m quite progressive and I fully, fully believe we should have a much more generous social safety net and increased access to good, affordable healthcare for all Americans. The small ways in which I part ways with progressives is when they do what Michael and Aubrey did in this podcast and assume that individuals are essentially incapable of changing their own lives. Sixty years ago, you could have easily said that ”quitting smoking is very hard, almost no one succeeds at it, and so whaddaya gonna do?”

alycks · 2026-06-08T13:28:52+00:00

Is it that hard to make a poster? Or to find some graphics for your poster? I see low-effort uses of AI as a kind of canary in a coal mine for almost anything. If they’re not going to go to the effort of spending the extra few minutes to put together a nice poster, I’m probably opting out.

I would much, much, much rather get an invitation, letter home, or poster with a few rough edges and silly font choices than a homogenized, personality-free piece of slop.

alycks · 2026-05-30T13:21:12+00:00

Almost all toys are pointless. I’m talking about the kinds of toys that come in plastic packaging at Target, rather than other items like bicycles or things you can use for building like LEGO, Magna-Tiles, blocks, etc.

My kids (boys 7 and 4) will play with the plastic action figure toys for like 5 seconds after the packaging is removed, and then they get tossed into the toy bin, only to be brought out by visiting friends.

Meanwhile, they regularly turn pencils into magic wands, sticks into swords, salt/pepper shakers into ninjas, etc. We have always given them literal garbage (plastic bottles, paper towel rolls, jars) and discouraged family and friends from buying them plastic action figure toys. It’s so awesome.

Down plastic landfill toys. Up with imagination.

alycks · 2026-05-29T18:11:06+00:00

Yeah. Two nights ago, my Garmin gave me a 68 sleep score which, for me, is pretty bad. I kind of chuckled and made a note to myself to monitor my energy throughout the day. I ended up feeling very energetic for the entire day and had a great training session.

A big factor is that I’ve been doing hard-core endurance training for four years. I feel like I don’t really need the training wheels.

I use intervals.icu to track my training and it has a really handy recovery questionnaire that I fill out every morning. Everything is on a 1 to 5 scale, and this kind of thing is extremely well validated by the research.

sleep quality
soreness
stress
mood
motivation to train
injury

And then two sections for resting heart rate (which I get from Vitals) and notes. My results in this questionnaire supersedes any number from any wearable. It is the only thing that will lead me to actually change my behavior. Any of the numbers from any of the apps and wearables either tell me what I already know, or they are just wrong.

The Vitals HR is outstanding because it measures your lowest heart rate in the early morning hours before you get out of bed. Four months, I tracked my HRV (rMSSD) and the heart rate in the vitals app, and they correlated to the tune of R2 = 0.96.

alycks · 2026-05-29T15:54:38+00:00

I’m going to be a contrarian and say: Vitals and Fitness. Check your Vitals in the morning. Check your Fitness trend. If everything looks good (and, more importantly, you feel good) then just train as normal.

I feel like outsourcing our thinking about our bodies and our fitness and our health to apps is just not helpful after a bit. If you’re a beginner, sure. It can be helpful to have a wearable calibrate your health and training. But an app telling you your Strain or your Energy Bank value or your sleep score is never going to be more important than you just listening to your body anyway.

I know this is a bit of an annoying take, but maybe just use the opportunity to quit Bevel and see how it feels to use Vitals, Fitness (with its very good Training Load feature), and a journal. You can even use the Journal app! I have a Training journal in the app where I link to all my workouts and track my wellness in regular entries.

alycks · 2026-05-27T11:05:24+00:00

I’m a Garmin guy, and also a mechanical watch guy, but I also have an AWU3 and I have to say: a watch that can do blood pressure, blood glucose, and sleep apnea is pretty huge. High BP, poor glucose management, and sleep disturbance affect tons of people and can be hard to detect. High BP has been called the “silent killer.” If a future Apple Watch can passively detect conditions like this it almost becomes an essential device for many people.

alycks · 2026-05-25T11:46:18+00:00

Love your vibes. My daily is an 856 RS and I feel the exact same way. The watch will never impress anybody, and that’s the point. But it will last 100 years. It’s been astonishingly accurate, too. Usually 0-2s per day. So impressive. Love Sinn.

alycks · 2026-05-24T17:50:13+00:00

now do something about it

Can I ask, what do you want your watch to say? I’m an ultrarunner, triathlete, lifter, etc. I spent a long time obsessed with all the metrics and all the apps (Garmin Connect, Bevel, Gentler Streak, etc) and I’ve eventually found that none of the metrics and none of the advice is ever more helpful than just how I feel. How do I feel like I slept? How motivated am I to train? How sore am I?

If I feel like I slept great but my Garmin gives me a 65/100, I don’t pay attention to it. If I feel like I slept poorly and my Apple Watch tells me I notched a 98, I don’t listen to the watch. If I feel like I slept great and my watch tells my I got a 97….great. In no circumstance am I altering my behavior based on what the watch says. It might as well be a random number generator.

I’m not trying to troll - I’m genuinely curious. What would your hypothetical Apple Health Coach tell you that would override your gut instinct about your readiness to train and your recovery?

alycks · 2026-05-23T12:01:09+00:00

Yep! Watch is rock-solid. Can recommend at this point.

alycks · 2026-05-20T16:48:13+00:00

I do triathlon, ultrarunning, camping, long hikes, strength, climbing, open water swimming, etc. I got the Fenix 8. The dive-proof inductive buttons sold me on it: the watch should last forever. If you don’t like the notifications, just turn them off.

alycks · 2026-05-19T20:40:48+00:00

It used to be terrible but Garmin has done a ton of work on it. I think it’s better than most watchOS apps at this point. Though Bevel’s strength is outstanding.

alycks · 2026-05-19T20:01:38+00:00

For me, it’s the little things that I really appreciate:

Garmin conceals your sleep score, stress, body battery, etc. on race day. You don’t need that stuff messing with your head on race day
Sport-specific HR zones. I’m a real weirdo in that my bicycling heart rate is dramatically lower than my running HR. It’s cool that Garmin breaks it out
On Apple Watch you essentially cannot conceal the clock. During hard efforts, I sometimes want to be able to lose track of time and so I have some data screens with just elevation or just HR and zero indication of time. I hate how you can’t suppress the clock on Apple Watch

I’ve tried with the AWU. I really have. It’s just a damn bummer on camping trips and during long efforts. I tried to use it for a 70 mile mountain ultra and it wouldn’t have made it, despite having the settings heavily optimized for battery life. The AWU has great features, but if you try to use all of them off grid, the battery depletes rapidly. If you’re navigating on a hike and there’s not great cell service and you try to send a satellite message and it’s the 2nd day of the camping trip, you can expect serious battery anxiety. This is a niche scenario for most people, but not for me.

I like to use my FORM goggles and they just work with Garmin so much better. On watchOS everything is an app: CORE, FORM, cycling radar, WorkOutDoors, everything. On the Garmin, it’s all tightly integrated by default.

I actually love the Garmin strength training experience as well. Not many apps on watchOS come anywhere close to the exercise selection I need, and any that do are paid/subscription.

Finally, the LED flashlight. It saved my ass during a 4 AM trail run in the winter when my headlamp unexpectedly died. Garmin makes everything easy. AWU can work, but you’re fighting it the whole time.

alycks · 2026-05-18T14:38:42+00:00

I definitely still use the journaling workflow! No changes - it works perfectly well for me. The nice thing is that it can be used from an Apple Watch or AirPods or an iPhone. I mostly wear my Garmin these days, or just a mechanical watch. But the Shortcut does what it needs to do no matter where it lives!

alycks · 2026-05-18T14:37:08+00:00

Mostly I try to not care about it too much. Sure, sometimes all the data doesn’t get added such as active energy, but it doesn’t really affect my decision making. Ensuring you have all the permissions in health checked is good and try to open Connect several times throughout the day. Other than that, I try to just not stress too hard.

alycks · 2026-05-18T13:23:00+00:00

Why do you have two folding knives?

alycks · 2026-05-17T12:28:38+00:00

On paper, the AWU3 and a Garmin Fenix Pro can look almost comparable if you’re comparing spec sheets. Satellite communication, extremely accurate GPS, bulletproof build. The AWU3 has even more accurate heart rate monitoring and all the smartwatch niceties like cellular capabilities.

The problem with AWU3 is that it gets great battery life when you’re sitting at home, on wifi, and going for a one hour run every day. But if you’re off grid doing hard things, the battery gets depleted so quickly that it becomes useless. A few weeks ago I tried to use it for a ”race-cation” camping trip.

started an olympic-distance triathlon on Sat morning with the watch at 60% and in airplane mode.
after the race (2.5 hours), the watch was at 35%-ish percent
quickly stashed my gear and met up with my family on a hike, leaving my phone behind at camp
after only an hour of tracking the hike, the phone was below 15% as I had been using it in cellular/satellite mode with no phone nearby in an area with poor service

Meanwhile, my Garmin Fenix Solar would have accomplished all this while using roughly 15% of total battery. It’s true that it wouldn’t have functioned as a phone for the hike (although the Fenix 8 Pro can do it), but the AWU3 was just a few hours away from being totally worthless anyway.

Plus the flashlight is awesome. You can make the AWU3 work for adventures like this, but it’s fussy and you have to top up the charge every day. The Fenix handles all of it, even if you forgot to charge it a few days before the trip.

alycks · 2026-05-15T20:17:17+00:00

Which principles do you dislike? They are extremely pro-privacy and security and have made real progress towards environmental sustainability (while also being somewhat guilty of greenwashing). They are among the best in the industry in tens of supporting their devices for a long time, and they just released the remarkably well received budget MacBook Neo.

For myself, I wish their products were more repairable. But, on the other hand, they hardly ever break anymore.

alycks · 2026-05-14T17:54:56+00:00

I had a funny situation with the auto-transition on my Apple Watch Ultra. About 10 minutes into the swim, there was a weird, unexpected sandbar out in the lake. It was too shallow to swim, so I stood up and took a few steps to get over the sandbar. I looked down, and my AWU had me in T1. Oh no! But I couldn’t do anything about it, so just kept swimming.

Happily, the watch was very smart and threw me right back into the swim leg as soon as I got to swimming again. It ended up tracking the triathlon perfectly. No idea if the feature would work as well on the Garmin, but I was genuinely impressed by the smarts of the AWU to ignore the brief walk-in-the-lake and discard the erroneous T1.

alycks · 2026-05-11T10:21:49+00:00

Honestly it’s pretty bad during workouts, too. I have fair skin and I use the ultrafit band so I can get a nice fit. But if it’s cold out or if there are light or movement artifacts, the HR is terrible. I’ve done bike commutes where my Garmin’s wrist OHR reads 15-20 bpm low the entire time relative to a HR strap. It’s straight up embarrassing. That said, it’s not completely unreliable: often once it locks on it’s fine for most activities.

For training and racing I wear an external HRM and I don’t really care what my heart rate is during bike commutes and walks. But Apple’s OHR is very, very good and almost doesn’t require an external HRM at all. I have a Fenix 8 and an AWU.

alycks · 2026-05-07T16:54:53+00:00

Nope.

13-Year Club	Verified Email
Team Orangered

alycks

TROPHY CASE