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The etiquette piece might be my single biggest grievance from the ebike crowd. I'm a big guy and climbing is not my strength, so I have PLENTY of experience with being passed on the uptrails by both regular and ebike riders. The ebike riders are exponentially worse at saying excuse me, on your left, or simply making some noise to let you know they're behind you. I've even seen groups of ebike riders talking and laughing about how fast they're cruising past other riders at the top of the climb. These aren't new riders. At the end of the day...

I can feel the downvotes coming, but I'm reminded of a comment I made back in February comparing e-bikes to GLP-1 drugs... Maybe I'm a purist, but isn't part of mountain biking the physical effort and reward? I understand capitalism, but when I see brands cutting analog models while e-bikes continue to dominate sales, it feels like another example of a broader trend: we're pouring investment into technologies that make difficult things easier. Is it possible that because analog bikes have essentially plateaued, so people who already have a sick bike are rounding out their quiver with an e-bike? Also...

Seems like a lot of e-bike talk in here lately, can you move this to the e-bike thread?

Jeff, have you considered loading it up with AI features that don't add anything or alter the core functionality of the app but are present enough that you can pretend that they do for the purposes of raising capital? PS - Jeff, as someone who was in the corporate world for a while a couple years ago, whenever you use the word "agile" I physically shudder a little bit in my chair. You've done it twice now in the last few days.

The suffering is 75% of why i ride, emtb can't give me that. For practical reasons eebs are good.

Well..my first reaction was the same. On a second thought, disregarding the ridiculous price...I'd be more keen to have this than most e-bikes that came out recently. I generally don't enjoy riding e-bikes, so if I do, it's for trail building. I'd actually take this thing for carrying tools etc. Maybe I'm just low key trying to repeat my "ebike isn't a mtb" thing, as in my view an emtb fits somewhere between a shovel and a VW Jetta, but for such purpose it actually makes some sense. But then again you look at the price and I'm back to...

If you're ever able to get this project going, I look forward to cheering you on, enthusiastically adopting your new tech, and inviting all my friends to join the platform with me, and then later calling down curses on you and the Brines family for generations to come for the inevitable enshittification of your platform after you've sufficiently saturated the marketplace.

Fallacy or not, if our domestic manufacturing capacity is contingent on wreaking havoc in the Middle East and the global south then I want nothing to do with it. Based on the tidbits shared above, it sounds like our domestic production capacity only exists because the ruling class can’t afford to outsource defense manufacturing without the risk of it being used against them (see Westmag drones) but they’re happy to sell us out for everything else. It may support the workforce but that’s just happenstance as evidenced by them actively trying to replace human labor with AI without any plan...

The point about defence spending having a positive affect on the rest of the economy- in my lectures this was talked about using the concept of the multiplier effect. This is the idea that if someone, ie the state, spends £1 on something then it increases national GDP by some amount because that’s been spent at a local supplier, who then pays wages, their employees go to the local butcher, who buys from the local farmer, etc etc. The issue with defence spending is it has a comparatively poor multiplier effect vs other forms of government spending. If I spend...

Some brands thrive on camaradery instead of rivalry.

The Pope reads Vitalmtb forums confirmed

"Speaking to the eBike riders I see on the trails here, they're all shifting to lower-priced bikes as they've realized that they can without sacrificing performance." This lines up with a hypothesis I've been thinking about for a while, which is that I think so much of the weirdness of the bike industry and bike customers (obsession with grams and weight, obsession over granular differences in tire feel and suspension tuning, and willingness to spend enormous amounts to customize and upgrade a stock bike) comes down to the weakness of the human motor and the human mind. We only generate...

Jackson’s DSQ had nothing to do with the poles themselves, other than the wind blowing him outside of them. If it had been tape instead, the same thing happens except he’s tangled up in tape too.

I forgot... they also ended up with the YT race team manager. Free team manager with truck? Free truck with team manager? I'm sure they got a deal one way or another. 🤣

The anti-CCLTV

Man do I hope to read some more opinions about bracketing in the tech rumors thread!

It's good to be prepared for situations like these.

Have not noticed any significant drag on my OneUp hubs but keeping that in the back pocket as an excuse the next time I'm last up the climb on a group ride.