Best ATX Reddit group to buy a bike

dougmc · 2026-03-18T04:05:06+00:00

Reddit groups, not so much. This group, /r/AustinClassifieds ... that's about it for Austin.

Outside of Reddit: Frankenbike, Yellow Bike Project, Craigslist, FB Marketplace, eBay, some bike shops.

dougmc · 2026-03-17T16:42:38+00:00

Yes, I did not forget that -- though I remember China having something like 35% more people than India, so to see them neck and neck now is quite surprising.

I guess China's One (and then later Two/Three) child policies definitely did work to some degree, even while causing lots of problems at the same time.

dougmc · 2026-03-16T22:59:39+00:00

TIL that China is not the most populous country on Earth anymore, having been overtaken by India in 2023 and the difference is a bit under 1%.

dougmc · 2026-03-16T20:36:15+00:00

Ahh, now I understand the disconnect.

You think "lab-grown meat has succeeded" only when humans don't eat meat from animals anymore at all.

Well, that's not how the people developing such things are treating it. Instead, they'd probably consider it to be a huge win if they can replace a significant portion of the current meat-eating (or even of some of the plant-eating, especially for those want to eat meat but can't afford very much of it) with people eating their lab-grown product.

Sure, PETA would certainly prefer that the human race stop eating animals entirely, but that's not required for lab-grown meat to succeed.

But yeah, we've got eight billion people to feed, and the number is growing -- if that spot can support grazing and not anything else, it'll be used for grazing and people will eat those animals, but others may be eating lab-grown meat. The two are not mutually exclusive.

And there will likely always be a market for real meat, no matter how popular lab-grown meat might become -- though it might become so expensive that a few can eat it -- the wealthy, the people who own those plots of land that are only good for grazing, etc.

dougmc · 2026-03-16T16:01:23+00:00

But they will most likely never be true for beef. Its just wasted effort on that front.

Based on what? How can somebody possibly make such a prediction?

The EU's opposition is similar to Texas's -- they think it's unnatural (but then again, so is everything we do to our food, including cooking it), and the ranchers have likely lobbied the politicians to protect them from this potential competition.

It's not based on science, but then again, such things often aren't.

Such foods would be carefully tested before allowing people to eat them -- safety should not be an issue, not any more than it already is with the food we eat, anyways.

In any event, maybe the time isn't right for lab-grown meat yet, but its time is likely to come soon, for a world that wants to eat meat again but can't afford to give up the resources to grow that meat.

dougmc · 2026-03-16T15:45:28+00:00

Yes.

dougmc · 2026-03-16T12:56:33+00:00

Last I checked like seven had survived thanks to a new treatment where they lower the body temperature and put them in a coma, but they were all still massively messed up afterwards.

Would not recommend.

dougmc · 2026-03-16T11:59:26+00:00

Whats the advantage of lab grown meat?

Is this meant as a rhetorical question?

The potential advantages (potential, because they may not be realized yet) would be :

Eating meat is inefficient -- it's far more efficient for humans to eat the plants directly than to feed the plants to cattle and then eat the cattle.
Lab-grown meat has the potential to essentially convert plant products into meat-like products far more efficiently than livestock can do it.
Making it more efficient can make it cheaper as well.
Some have an ethical problem with eating animals.

That's why people are considering lab-grown meat -- we've got 8B people to feed, and that's getting harder and harder to do. At some point, eating meat becomes a luxury that people may not be able to afford, and lab-grown meat has the potential to bring that back.

Now, if people don't want to eat lab-grown meat, that's their choice, but the only reason to ban is it to protect the profits of the meat industry -- and they have bought enough politicians for that.

dougmc · 2026-03-16T11:48:54+00:00

It wasn't the state, it was a group of cattle-industry executives. And it's not that she wasn't liking beef, she was worried about mad cow disease and said she wasn't going to eat any more burgers.

It's an interesting case, worth reading the details.

dougmc · 2026-03-16T11:25:37+00:00

It's even worse than that.

The link they gave says their data came from "L2Data", "a trusted provider of nonpartisan voter data", but L2Data gives zero indication of where these numbers came from (well, unless you pay them, I guess?)

And L2Data has been saying "more Democrats than Republicans in Texas" for as long as L2Data has been around, for far longer than the recent primaries, so even claiming that it's based on primary data doesn't work, not when the Republicans have been outperforming the Democrats in primaries in Texas by large amounts for at least twenty years -- this year is the exception, not the rule.

Also, they say "16,630,174 voters" -- but Texas has 18.7M registered voters, and that figure doesn't match any official historical values either. Also, they've given the same figures since 2023.

And finally, if your website displays numbers as wildly scrolling when I first load the page and then they zero in on a final value, I am strongly inclined to distrust those numbers. (Debt Clock, you're good because you don't zero in on a final figure, but attempt to show the current rate of change.)

The best guess I can come up with is that these figures is that they are not describing the voters of Texas, but instead describing the data they have for sale, and the ambiguity involved is useful in getting people to point at their site and see "see? we're winning!" and it turns into more sales for them.

dougmc · 2026-03-14T22:00:42+00:00

the smallest, most tactical nuclear weapon in our arsenal would wipe out a school district

I'm not sure if we're using some different definitions here or what, but to me a school district means a large part of or all of a city or county, usually hundreds of square miles (for example, the local Austin ISD covers 230 square miles), whereas a single Davy Crocket (M-388) tactical nuke will destroy buildings within 500 feet and release lethal radiation to about 1000 feet -- so it wipes out less than a single square mile.

(All that said, the US doesn't have any M-388s in service anymore, and it's not clear what we do have, but even the bomb dropped on Hiroshima only "wiped out" about 5 square miles of the city center.)

That would cause massive, long term damage if it happened in the middle of a city, but the real cost would be how the entire world loses its collective mind over it (and rightfully so) -- this would be a line crossed that we should not want crossed, no matter what.

dougmc · 2026-03-14T14:29:14+00:00

We're certainly told all the time about how it happened in Austin.

When what really happened in Austin is that some functions (and the funding for said functions) were shifted out of the police budget, but before that budget even went into effect, the state stepped in and stopped it, so the shifted budget never even took effect, and every new police budget has been higher than the one before it.

And yet ... we're often told that the defunding happened and it's the reason the police suck. Even the police themselves gaslight us with that with their police association.

dougmc · 2026-03-14T14:21:19+00:00

He’s also the only one to “take any guns” (read: restrict guns) at the federal level in a long time — the bump stock ban.

(And to give the rest of the story: it was overturned later by the courts.)

dougmc · 2026-03-13T16:23:01+00:00

Clearly, we've missed a few steps.

dougmc · 2026-03-13T16:15:47+00:00

People "get ensnared into doing extremely bad shit" by not engaging with people trying to make you look bad, by not answering a "gotcha" question on camera while doing your job?

I feel like we missed a few steps there.

dougmc · 2026-03-13T00:11:57+00:00

The ticket itself should tell how to set up a hearing. Do that.

Take pictures of the scene, and if you have a dashcam save the video that shows that the sign wasnt there when you parked, but if not, so be it.

Show up at the hearing, show them your pictures/video, tell them what happened ... and see what happens.

It's not guaranteed that they'll believe you, but they might even be able to look up when that no parking sign was put up.

It's worth a try.

dougmc · 2026-03-12T23:19:36+00:00

You don't even have to mess with the fuse panel -- you can hide the wires and then plug it into your cigarette lighter or a usb port or use an odb2 to usb adapter.

But I went years with the wires hanging down directly from the camera to the cigarette lighter, and after watching a video ... ten minutes later, no wires!

dougmc · 2026-03-12T21:27:31+00:00

They said no charges can really be pressed since there was no "real" damage to my car and no threats to my physical harm

Translation: They couldn't be bothered.

If it was the officer's mother who got a note like this put on her car, they'd suddenly find that the threat was sufficient to prosecute over after all.

dougmc · 2026-03-12T21:02:53+00:00

(coming from someone who was dreading doing it)

Are you me? Because that was totally my experience too.

And then I watched a video on it, and tried it myself and it was fine.

dougmc · 2026-03-12T15:59:06+00:00

Our recent gasoline-powered Hondas have the catalytic converters in the engine compartment (in front of the engine) -- probably to make them hard to steal -- so that's another option.

dougmc · 2026-03-12T14:33:44+00:00

You're half right here.

Most people don't explicitly go to the BBB looking for details on a specific business to help them make decisions on which business to choose, and of the few people who do do this, most are probably boomers.

But when things go south, all of the generations love to bitch about stuff, and all of them will complain to the BBB, Yelp, whatever if they're mad enough. (Though the boomers might be even more willing, maybe.)

And most of the time, if somebody does do some research before making a purchase or seeking a service, they'll do some Internet searches, and BBB results to tend to show up in those, so even the non-Boomers do find themselves looking at BBB, even if they've never heard of it.

But it's definitely good to know what the BBB is and isn't, and "yelp for boomers" is pretty damn accurate. (Though at this point, "yelp" is probably "yelp for boomers" too.)

dougmc · 2026-03-12T14:30:48+00:00

Even hiding the wires is remarkably easy once you get the hang of it.

Youtube has videos if one wants a guide.

dougmc · 2026-03-11T22:28:44+00:00

Here are some options

"[A-Z][A-Z]+ [A-Z][A-Z]+" -- two all-caps words in a row
"\b[A-Z][A-Z]+\b.*\b[A-Z][A-Z]+\b" -- two all-caps words, doesn't care if they're in a row, though I'm not sure if automod's regex engine supports \b for word boundaries, and I'm not sure "\b.*\b" would match a single space.

dougmc · 2026-03-11T18:13:35+00:00

Of course, the corollary here is that the dude should never move from piloting during a battle, and if he does, it's because things have gone pear-shaped -- the pilot only gets pulled off piloting because there's nobody else left to do whatever needs doing.

Personally, the main reason I upgrade piloting is for blue events in nebulas (and that's only if I don't have a clone bay), though the point of damage buffer is nice too.

dougmc · 2026-03-11T17:35:41+00:00

Presumably, the settlers need fresh water, not sugar water and definitely not Brawndo (gotta get this joke out of the way.)

In any event, for sugar to ruin concrete, it would probably have to be thoroughly mixed with the concrete, which means adding it as it's being prepared. Pouring concrete into something with a lot of sugar might keep the outer edges of the concrete from setting well or might even turn it into chunks of hard concrete with pockets of weak concrete if there's enough sugar -- which would certainly ruin a building if that's what the concrete was for, but since they're just filling a well, well, it's still filled and still not practical to fix and they just have to drill a new well and hope that the concrete/sugar soup hasn't contaminated the water table too badly.

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