This Is The End

As soon as humans started walking upright, we began predicting our eventual demise. Usually, our impending doom involves some sort of apocalyptic war or environmental cataclysm, and from culture to culture and millennium to millennium the script stays more or less the same. Just ask Peter Thiel, who says we need to be on the lookout for the Antichrist:

I’ve always just assumed singer-songwriter Don McLean was the Antichrist, but apparently I’ve been wrong and it’s someone who will arrive under the pretense of saving us from autonomous killer robots:

This is how Thiel says the end of the world might happen, according to a Wall Street Journal review of his recent lectures. Existential risks will present themselves in the form of nuclear war, environmental disaster, dangerously engineered bioweapons and even autonomous killer robots guided by AI.

As humans race toward a last battle—the Armageddon—a one-world government will form, promising peace and safety. In Thiel’s reckoning, this totalitarian authoritarian regime, with real teeth and real power, will be the coming of the modern-day Antichrist, a figure defined in Christian teachings as the personal opponent of God who will appear before the world ends.

Though I suppose that doesn’t necessarily rule out Don McLean.

Similarly, according to a report on the “Disaster Relief Trials” from the Desert Hipster Website, Bristol will be underwater by 2035:

The year is 2035. Global warming has pushed the world into its most catastrophic crisis yet. Rising sea levels have submerged coastlines, and extreme weather patterns have brought floods and storms to cities everywhere… Bristol, once a vibrant and thriving community, has become a disaster zone. Inundated by relentless rains and rising waters, the city’s infrastructure is crumbling. Roads are washed out, traditional transport is down, and survival has become a race against time.

Right, sure it will. That’s ten years from now–or more like nine, since 2025’s basically over at this point. (Well, I’ve thrown in the towel anyway…) At a certain point in your life you realize nine years is basically nothing, and so you start to laugh off the idea that it’s enough time for the sea to reclaim a major city. I mean, I have bib shorts older than that! (Sure, I wouldn’t wear them publicly, but still.)

Speaking of which, remember those protesters at the 2022 Tour de France who said we had 989 days left?

Well, it’s now been 1,170 days:

I’m still waiting…

Then again, maybe the wait is over and the End of Days has arrived right on schedule. After all, if the Antichrist were to come, why would he be so obvious about it? No, I suspect the Apocalypse will be far more banal. It won’t come with fire and brimstone; rather, it will take the seemingly innocuous form of the 666th review of the 666th boring-ass gravel bike:

OK, first, a disclaimer: I may whine about new bikes and the reviews that invariably accompany them, but I would like to formally acknowledge that like 95% of new bikes today are probably great, even if I’m not all that interested in them personally. Also, I have nothing against people who review bikes, and I would happily fly to Italy on someone else’s Euro to say how great they are. Sadly, the bike world didn’t want me, and so I’ve been forced to operate from a contrarian position ever since. “Sour grapes” isn’t just a fable to me; it’s a lifestyle.

So with that out of the way, I’d like to address how aggressively boring this bike is:

Also, it’s called the “Avona Callis.” This is maybe the worst name for a bicycle I’ve ever heard. It sounds like an album of whale songs, or a foot treatment from Dr. Scholl’s.

And yes, Peter Thiel’s prophecy notwithstanding, of course I told the AI to generate “An advertisement for a foot bath called ‘Avona Callis by Dr. Scholl’s'” and here’s what it came up with:

That looks like what would happen if Apple made a cat litter box. Also, I think my AI might be dyslexic.

As for the bike, I’m constantly reading about the dire state of the industry:

And yet people keep starting new bike companies to make the same exact bikes as everyone else:

The bike brand in question was Avona, a new setup from two gentlemen, Jonas Müller Max Koch, who have been part of the cycling industry for over two decades, previously at more established brands such as BMC, DT Swiss and Santa Cruz. Both have also been in the position of setting up a business before, namely ARC-8, which some may be familiar with. This time around they’re aiming to do something a little different, and to have full control over what they produce.

So what’s “different” about this one?

So instead of just a standard build being thrown into a wind tunnel, the team experiments with products, and the same approach applies to real-world tests.

The parts on the Ivanna Callous are the same parts that come on all the other gravel bikes, what am I missing?

But that’s not all:

This also means that every bike comes with a pre-waxed CeramicSpeed chain. No matter what level of build you opt for.

Jesus Christ. It’s ENOUGH WITH THE WAXING already. Also, buying a bike because it comes with a waxed chain is like buying a house because it comes with a roll of extra-soft toilet paper.

Most importantly, the bike is “holistic:”

Holistic, not a word usually used in cycling tech

I’m sorry, is there any company not currently taking a holistic approach to bicycles? If you buy a Specialized will it have one road bike pedal and one mountain bike pedal and different-length crank arms and mismatched tires and a SRAM shifter and a Shimano derailleur that won’t talk to each other? This is the most anodyne gravel bike marketing gimmick I’ve seen since the Mondraker Arid, where “each tube is optimized to do a specific job:”

Still, I did watch the video, which included an in-depth look at the downtube storage compartment:

Now that there are so many gravel bikes and they all have this feature, I assume people will now choose entirely on the basis of the compartment, just like how people now choose cars by the cupholders.

But there’s one thing that bewilders me more than anything else. I get why people want disc brakes. I get why people want crabon. I even get why people want wireless, battery-powered shifting. But how did we get to the point where these headset covers or whatever they’re called are now acceptable?