I am, literally at this moment, reading a paper that cites maturana and varela regarding autopoesis

it’s the most milquetoast boring ass take possible. as an enlightened centrist, i can’t say I’m not altogether pleased

you fucking trot

If you look at the last paragraph, you can see that I am indeed horny for cybernetics

Yes. My local coop gives away tons of bikes. It rules

That’s fair. My first build was shimano parts from a parts bin and it worked great. I might push back a bit on the advent. I’ve only heard decent stuff about the advent x set. That said, much rather buy used/parts bin hen new.

Seconding bike coop/collective

I’m like 50-50 for adjusting my 2013 shimano 105 set, including cable replacement, barrel adjusting and some limit screw bullshit.

Anything more complex is witchcraft

Added complexity blows. My bike has a single front gear, and modernized cantilever brakes. The whole thing is much easier to self-maintenance than a lot of more built up bikes.

You do not need to buy a gravel bike, buy building one out of an old MTB is not too crazy, or buying an old cross bike is also a great idea

Buy used, spend a ton of time trolling FB sell groups and criagslist to get a sense of what’s out there. I can’t stress this enough, ride a lot of bikes.