You also need to check the quantities, as it’s often not enough. Also, ingredient lists and nutritional values can’t always be trusted.

Most vegans don’t need supplements. Just check your b12/iron every 2-3 years

This is false. Your B12 reserves will deplete slowly but surely if you don’t supplement. Iron, ferritn, and a complete blood count containing hemoglobin and red blood cell indices should be checked more often than once 2-3 years. Many vegans will need supplements, especially young women.

Humans need amino acids that are only found in meat for our full health. This is easy enough to counteract by taking vitamin supplements

There are no aminoacids that you can’t find in plants. And there are no aminoacids that can be replaced by vitamins. Iron deficiency is a real possibility when eating a vegan diet, but B12 deficiency is a certitude for those who don’t supplement.

I was fully vegan for about 2 years. Being a clinical biologist, I’ve been having blood tests done regularly and inspecting my own blood smears. After a year or so I’ve began to see my hemoglobin and ferritin levels drop, so I started trying various iron supplements. Only one of them worked (a sucrosomial iron supplement) and started raising my hemoglobin. Sadly, I deemed it to be too slow and too expensive, so I started eating eggs again, occasionally some fish and chicken. After a few weeks I started gaining muscle mass and I saw some drastic improvent in my fitness levels (I guess I was also underestimating my necessary protein intake). After a year of eating meat and eggs, my ferritin has normalised, and so has my hemoglobin and erythrocite indices. After my experiences I’m still not going to discourage people from at least trying a vegan diet. I’ve seen enough vegans who are healthy, and I’ve seen people for whom a vegan diet is insuitable. It’s ok to quit if it affects your health.

These roads go through the bears’ natural habitat. There’s only so much you can do without wiping them out. Bears have become a bit of a problem lately, they’ve been going near towns and villages, at times they even get lost and end up on the city streets. That’s what mindless deforestation gets you, you know?

It’s Transylvania, Romania.

Making a steel frame is also labour intensive, it’s not just welding together a bunch of tubes. First, those tubes are expensive. They’re not just metal pipes (look up Reynolds 725, 853, 953 tubes or equivalent products from Columbus or Tange).

Then there’s the frame building process, any frame worth it’s money will use double or triple butted tubes (the thickness of a tube wall varies along the length of the tube for compliance and weight saving reasons).

Then there’s the economy of scale. Steel frames are a bit niche right now and are made in small numbers. Some of the fancier ones are produced in the EU or the US, which raises the costs by quite a lot.

But yeah, it would be nice if they were a bit less expensive.

We haven’t seen a courtroom episode in such a long time. I really liked it, it felt so much like ‘classic Trek’.

I think it’s become a niche option because of the price. Higher end steel tubing is not cheap these days, and a good quality steel frame can cost about the same as a good carbon fibre frame. And don’t get me started on Titanium…

I’ve taken up cycling 2-3 years ago and it has completely changed my life. I went from an obese (115 kg) couch potato to an active, relatively fit dude (73 kg). I’ve always been on the nerdy side and I’ve never really been interested in sports but let me tell you, there is no sport nerdier than cycling. It’s got graphs and numbers and statistics and shit. You can learn a lot about physics, materials like aluminium, steel, titanium, carbon fibre, aerodynamics, etc. It also keeps you good health. Until you get hit by a truck and fucking die, that is. But let’s hope it doesn’t come to that. :)