I stopped carrying a chain tool and then bust a chain a few weeks ago. It was pretty easy to prise off the broken link with an Allen key and stick in a quick link. I won’t bother with a chain tool for general riding again.

You’ll find an 11-46 12 speed cassette on eBay/aliexpress which tightens the range a bit but won’t give a huge weight saving.

Rotor has been mentioned, otherwise there isn’t anything else in the mythical 11-40 range (unless reluctantjumper wants to share a link)

Race face made one called stash I believe.

I just wear bibs with pockets under baggies now instead.

For sloppy conditions I use the cheapest pattern metallic ones. Usually about 9Euro.

How you bed them in affects lifespan enormously. I’ve got to the backing in a week and had 8,000kms from a set of the exact same. This summer I’m going to break in a winters worth during a dry week and set them aside (saying that for the 10th year in a row without getting around to it)

Axs is a gamer changer for operation. I almost need to relearn how to use my left thumb when I use my bike with hydro post.

However I’m recommending my ride buddies to wait for AXS v2 as I’m still a little disappointed at the play in the post. I’m currently switching my AXS post between bikes until v2 when I will buy a second.

The only ad I get on STW is some click bait about the 30 richest comedians. I tried for a while with the ‘not interested’ option but it was still the only ad I got. Now I click it a few times on each visit. I’m still not interested but maybe STW gets some revenue from it?

Regarding the OP question about advertising unavailable products, I’ve been thinking about the CRC products on another bike website ‘Daily Deals’ that are never available. They can’t be that bad at connecting their stock to a highly trafficked web widget?

A question that would have made zero sense 12 months ago but now is understood by everyone reading it.

What’s the rate of tax on tampons in Ireland? I’ll save anyone the googling and tell you it’s zero.

Like most of the EU bogeymen it was imaginary and/or overblown that we were being forced to do anything.

It’s not only the loss of the opportunity to live and work (and love) in the EU27 in future, it’s the royal **** mess it makes of life for those that did it years before the tosspot farage came along.

I can no longer live in the same country as my father (my only relative).

That’s it. That’s the message.

I can no longer live in the same country as my father

**** fish and sovereignty and whatever else you leave **** used as an excuse to be xenophobic.

There’s no common ground or coming together or making the best of it or seizing opportunities.

I can no longer live in the same country as my father.

Came for the epidemiology, stayed for the fronted adverbials.

Apparently taught in KS2 year 4 whatever that means..

Guy, aged 43 1/2

In all seriousness, are the kids being disrupted now actually learning more useful things about coping with life than they would be in a normal deskbound schooling?

Darn, there goes the single possible benefit that I could think of.

Can we get rid of the cookie consent pop-ups from Friday?

That must be worth a few percent off GDP.

I hope that all the news about Johnson backing down on standards alignment etc that has been buried over the last few days means that when he announces a trivial ‘win’ on fishing the country can concentrate on fish and think we ‘won’ just long enough to get the deal signed.

Johnson isn’t negotiating with the EU. He asking them nicely to give him something he can shout about and stay quiet about all the stuff he capitulates on while playing along that he’s working hard to protect the UK.

You got your answer back along from bob_summers

2C and raining today. Out for 3 hours on a classic road loop I saw maybe 8 other riders. The more hardcore they were the less perceptible the greeting. Lifting pinky and ring finger by far the most common amongst those who looked like they had been out before sun up.

I don’t believe anyone didn’t acknowledge but it’s hard to miss the slight raise of a head when it’s lashing down.

What do you want it for and it’ll be easier to recommend a source.

For example I’m a sweaty headed baldy and I can’t ride in the summer without a cap as a dispersion layer – Castelli make a great wicking cap and its cooler with the cap than bare headed (under a helmet)
Today it was 2C and raining so a gore cap was perfect to keep the rain out of my eyes.
Cinelli do a great range of cafe caps to look cool.

Cheap caps are cheap and although fading isn’t a problem, a wonky peak is not a great look!

I haven’t had a straight answer what 1 and 2 are yet but there must be something

That’s still top 3 of the most lucid arguments for Brexit.

Show me the one person out of the 17 million that voted for the country to be on its 4th prime minister by the time the ration books got issued in 2021. Anyone who claims this is what they voted for hasn’t done a lot of critical thinking about what they wanted or what is and will happen.

Some people are still convinced its worth it but that’s an entirely different thing – and that number reduces every day.

It’s not inevitable that we still **** everything up.

All the MPs keep voting for idiocy because the idiots keep shouting about how they’ll string them up if they don’t. It’s beyond time for them to be let known that the majority of people now expect them, and will reward them, for being sensible from now for a while.

Good point about the French fleet who have previous with blockades that I’d forgotten about.

That the leadership here is talking about the 200 mile zone around Britain that includes half of the coastlines of our European friends I’d think it almost an inevitability that it’s going to kick off right away.

Note, it’s only a siege if you’re inside the moat and “we’re not going to sell you our last rotten turnip” isn’t a threat.

Thinking back to the last person I argued about Brexit with in 2016 his argument was that because it was impossible to leave was the exact reason we should.

I still wonder why Britain didn’t enforce the freedom of movement laws to the letter rather than pretending our hands were tied. The UK had amongst the most lax settlement rules of any EU state (because we needed the help) but could easily and unilaterally tightened them to the letter of the law.

Consensus on the pound is ‘wait and see’ at the moment while we have a Shroedingers brexit.

When the box gets cracked it’s going to get volatile over the next few weeks and could easily head 3-5% or more in a session if there is a definitive result one way or the other.

I stopped moving money out of the U.K. last week when the Johnson meeting with vdL was planned but before it happened. I’ll start again when the eventual deal gets agreed.

Next stop is either a deal and the pound will be up a decent amount or a definitive ‘No Deal’ and it’s ****. Next after that will be an actual deal to allow planes to fly and trucks to drive, Ireland border etc. (Because there is no such thing as a no deal)

I’m not against a short sharp shock of a no deal on Jan 1st. The spivs will make money from it of course but it’s probably the quickest way to an actual deal.

Britain still hasn’t worked out that Europeans will just be selling within Europe instead if U.K. cuts themselves off. ‘No deal’ means ration books but maybe they’ll be blue too to keep the swivel eyes happy.

They voted for no deal. We’re not going to get no deal as there is no such thing. Whatever we end up with will not have been voted for by anyone.

People who say we should just put up with shit are nearly as bad as the people who force the shit on us in the first place.

Over centuries we’ve worked out a form of democracy that protects us against the wilder swings of public opinion and here we are advocating that mob-rule is the only way to make decisions now.

But as Hunt has correctly identified, a temporary 2% margin 4 years ago doesn’t give anyone any mandate to make tough decisions. And that swings both ways now, once we’re out (and international pariahs for being dicks) we won’t get back in with 52% support for rejoining.

We have to make the best of this very small window to limit the damage. We could still end up staying in SM and CU if the leadership actually listened to the public opinion now.

And I repeat: No one voted for this.

I’ve got no problem with parliamentary democracy giving ‘power’ to a not-majority as the whole system is designed to slow things down until there is actual support. Brexit A50 threw that out in an instant and a couple of people decided that we ‘had to’ leave. Why they couldn’t have had the idea that Hunt has just had now that they have never had the support for tough decisions I don’t know.

I’ve been angry about Brexit for the last 4 years or so but this week is really getting to me (as I try to encourage my elderly father to panic buy staples as my wife, daughter and I – his only family – are no longer allowed to live in the same country as him)

Yesterday on the newswires:

The former foreign secretary Jeremy Hunt said a no-deal exit would be a “failure of statecraft”, but he laid the blame on the EU for failing to understand the UK position. “I still think that the Europeans are overestimating the political space that Boris Johnson has on this,” he said. “That’s why I think it’s a very perilous situation.”

The Europeans are overestimating the political space Boris has?!!!

Lots of chatter about who is at fault for this mess but the fact that 4 years later someone in government has suggested (with long words and pointed in the wrong direction) that the Prime Minister has no scope to agree ANYTHING is proof positive that there was never mandate to leave with a vote won on the strength of a temporarily duped 2% margin.

My ire is directed at everyone who said ‘Right, that’s it. 50%+1 is enough to burn everything to the ground and work it out later and if you disagree you hate democracy’

It was so Fu(#ing obvious that it was going to play out like this that I still cannot fathom how we started on this path (Corbyn)

I recently discovered that my Hope cups are different widths and the (metal) sleeve takes up different widths depending on whether it mates with or slides into the DS contra NDS cup.

Offer it up outside/alongside the frame to see what width each of the configurations is.

You’re getting so confused between acclaim and payment. I haven’t looked into the violinist story but her share is probably a fraction of what was paid out on that song.

Which I don’t blame you for given the alternative fact above about Little Mix. Who uncritically publishes ‘news’ like that?

@thepodge Then give us a better solution.

The audience are the strongest arbiters of success that there has ever been. Playlist curation follows what listeners are finding and listening to. The gatekeepers’ power is diminishing.

Are you sure you want to make an argument in favour of a small number of industry insiders deciding who gets the spoils?

@rsl1 If your activity paid out only £40 (premium UK stream rate is approx double what you used) then you listen only 1/2 as much as an average listener each month.

Stream rate = All the revenue from the subs type in that market / All the streams from those users

@olly someone had to go there but please don’t do this. Inflating activity takes money from genuine artists. (and it screws up which playlists the music you fake-stream gets added to which then misses the chance of putting it in front of people who might like it and play it for real)

The model is “a share of the revenue based on how much your work is listened to” – no one gets a free pass now by selling a critically acclaimed trendy work that no-one listens to. The money goes to artists who listeners listen to. Is that not a fair way to distribute the revenue?

No one is forced in the literal sense to put their music on Spotify but with the vast majority of music content revenue coming through streaming it would be a brave decision to turn away from it and put an alternative marketing strategy in place.

For those that do have streaming services, take a moment to look at your listening history. The artists you actually listen to (or the rights holders if different – an entirely separate discussion!) are the ones who are getting paid.

Strip out your guilty pleasures, as no-one will begrudge you them, and then decide if you’re happy with where your money goes. Because it doesn’t go to who you follow, or who you put in your playlists, or who you tell people you listen to. It goes to who you listen to.

There is more money flowing to artists than ever before – that it is not going to artists you like seems to be the biggest argument that is being made.

If you subscribe for £10 per month and then listen to your favourite artist for 8 hours per day every day then they will get around $30 per month from your listening activity*.

*a premium subscriber listening to an average 3 minute song in the UK market for this calc. Needless to say, in a discussion about musicians getting paid, that you should be listening to the music and not just leaving it running 24:7 just to put activity on an artist. Don’t do that as it is cheating musicians that do get listened to.

What I’m saying above is that the real issue with streaming isn’t that artists don’t get paid (spoiler: they do) but that the incentives for click bait populism risk screwing with how content is put together.

Luckily it’s never been so easy to get your art out to your audience (free) without gatekeepers that there is a balancing force enabling more uncommercial art than ever before – just don’t complain if the audience doesn’t listen.

@molgrips all of the services work the same. One of them was thinking about making the pools per listener. So you put your tenner in, I put my tenner in. And each of our contributions gets divided up amongst the rights holders that we respectively listen to. It’s actually much more complicated than the market/subscriber types pools but puts subscriber money directly to the artists that we each listen to. If you only listen to one artist they get all of your £7. I thought that it would help convince “real music fans” to switch to that platform but the idea didn’t get carried out.

It’s funny how “real music fans” listen so much less than the average listener and therefore the artists they listen to get comparatively so much less of the pie. The artists that “not real music fans” listen to get much more of the pie.

If “real music fans” just listened more their artists wouldn’t have so much to complain about…

That stereo gum article on the algorithm is really good and quotes people who know more than anyone about this topic.

Ironically it would be possible (and occasionally is in some obscure small markets) for a stream to be as much as a penny. All the audience has to do is listen to very little music and the stream rate goes up.

(@timc fully agree about labels putting pressure on services to pay out a higher cut. The new ‘offer’ to reduce your % in return for algo plays is a pretty disgusting push by the new gatekeeper to abuse their position. On the other hand, if you believe in your content you’d take the deal to get a bigger slice of the smaller pie.)

TimC’s first post pretty much sums it up with what to do if you want to put more money in artists pockets, I’ll add:

Streaming services are not a replacement for physical media, it’s the alternative to piracy. Spend on music has never been higher if you ignore the couple of years at the start of CDs when there was a lot of format switching purchases happening. And the proportion of consumer spend going directly to artists has never been higher. Look on the wrist of every rapper you’ve never heard of and the money is out there. If you want more money to go to your favourite artist then simply listen to them more!

Record labels have always taken their cut. Partly for the investment that they make into artists and partly for the services they carry out. As artists are more capable of reaching their fans directly and the cost of production goes down artists need labels less and contracts are starting to shift towards creators. In comparison to artists from the 80’s who are complaining about paying for services they received 40 years ago, ask Lil Nas X whether he’s happy with his deal…

Some details
= Apple pays 2x Spotify because the average Apple subscriber listens to half as many songs as the average Spotify listener. (Facts from 24 months ago)

= each service pools all the subscriber income per market and subscriber type, takes their cut, and then divides the pool to the content owners by activity. If you listen to a song once the content owner gets 1 X money/total streams. If your neighbour listens to Drake 1000 times then Drakes label gets 1000 x money/total streams.

= artists who don’t get money are not getting listened to. It’s that simple. You may love ‘xyz artist’ but if you don’t listen to them they don’t get paid. Listen to them more than the kids are listening to pop!

= stream rates roughly equate to a CD album being played between 20-50 times. If you don’t listen that much then the artist gets less money.

If you read between the lines of the above you’ll note the pool division process can be a money multiplier. If you pay your £10 subscription and listen to an artist more than the average listener then more than £10 can go to your artist.

The money goes to the content owners of the music that people listen to!

I’ve probably done more gravel Kms on gravelkings than most but I wouldn’t go back after switching to Teravail Cannonballs.

You wouldn’t want to work for anyone who wouldn’t employ a kid because of who their boss once was.

Farsports do one that I’d buy as I’ve been thrashing their wheels hard for years with no problems.
There are a couple of other ‘brands’ out there that also have a reputation to protect.
I wouldn’t buy a no-name bar and stem as the seller has much less skin in the game than you do!

I use a reverb hose routing tool https://www.bikeinn.com/cykling/rockshox-stealth-barb-connector-reverb/136091602/p

Disconnect at the calliper (with calliper input angled to not drip fluid).

Take out barb or cut off 10mm of hose and screw in routing tool to act as a stop and an attachment point

Tie thread to the routing tool and pull thread through any internal routing that is currently used.

Put the hose through the new bar.

Use the thread to pull the tool+hose back to the calliper

Unthread tool

New barb and olive

Connnect

Last time I did this I could have got away with not bleeding but did a quick bleed anyway.

Now until January is 60 days. The currency fluctuations are going to be proportionally very large as everyone tries to work out how fked up Britain is going to become. When it is clear what level of fkedness is expected normal business resumes. To ignore the wild ride Sterling is in for for the rest of the year is not smart if the OP is worried about his investment performance. Dropping 10% out of the gate will take a long time to recover from.

Biggest issue for U.K. people to think about now is what currency they have to invest.

If your pot is in Sterling then what happens to the pound in the next 60 days is going to have a huge effect on your investment.

Getting pounds into global stocks now (even at US all time highs) will turn out to be an ok plan by January if GBP falls at new year. On the other hand if there’s a deal and Sterling gains then no investment will be better than watching your GBP (denominated investments) appreciate.

If you’re a podcast person this is worth a listen. https://podcasts.apple.com/se/podcast/fast-talk/id1490521721?l=en&i=1000496473460