The Escape Collective

Did you look at other groups which have done something similar? Im curious to see how this type of project works even if not all of them are for me. So many people bemoan the structure of news and media businesses but I wonder if there needs to be more of a cycle of business destruction and creation to keep things from getting ossified and having the wrong priorities. Seeing this reminded me of https://escapecollective.com/ which came from the implosion of Cycling tips after being purchased by Outside.

Kate Wagner, the author, is also an excellent sports journalist who covers cycling. A recent piece on Tadej Pogačar and Slovenian cycling: https://escapecollective.com/the-tadej-pogacar-office-park-crit-a-vibe…

Pro teams are going 28 mm or even 30 mm at the front and 32 mm at the back. Some measurements from Tour de France 2023 at [1] One of the reasons why larger tires are better is that the size of the contact patch to the road depends only on the internal pressure of the tire. A 20 mm tire and a 40 mm tire have the same contact patch but their shape is different. The one of narrower tire is aligned back to front so the wheel is less round. The contact patch of the wider tire is aligned right to left, so the wheel is more round and it rolls more easily without dissipating energy in elastic deformations. You'd have to inflate the narrower tire to double pressure to compensate, but then the ride is less comfortable and you can double the pressure only up to a point. That was about rolling resistance, then there is aero. Wind tunnel tests discovered that tires should connect smoothly to the profile of the rim without making the classic shape of everyday bike's wheel: a wide tire in narrow rim. They must have the same width instead and a fatter rim is more aerodynamic than a skinny one. Hence the drive to wider tires. However there is catch. A wider tire adds more mass to wheels and they are the worst place to add mass to because it works against you every time you have to make that wheel spin faster. You add mass to the frame and all the static parts of the bicycle if you really have to. And finally a very large tire (100 mm or 4 inches) is obviously too wide to have a…

Founder(s) sold to Bendinggspoons who specialize in the kind of takeover where the buyer stops all development and tries to keep the money inflow from a service running with minimal maintenance crew. Evernote is the most famous example I think. Apparently 80% are already gone: https://escapecollective.com/how-komoot-lost-its-way/ (paywalled, but I think it's the definitive aftermath writeup, as opposed to all the older news that stop at speculating about layoffs that had not happened yet)

Escape Collective did an article on this (https://escapecollective.com/what-would-happen-if-everyone-in-the-pelo… and while at first glance there's a lot to like about a "spec series" for cycling, ultimately it would definitely advantage/disadvantage some riders. Plus, people just want to race a bike that works for them, not some spec bike.

Well, people dope now with CarbonMonoxide https://escapecollective.com/exclusive-tour-riders-are-inhaling-carbon…

Slightly related: pro cyclists inhale small amounts of CO to measure their physiological adaptation to altitude training (and maybe dope with it too) https://escapecollective.com/exclusive-tour-riders-are-inhaling-carbon…

Cycling journalism doesn't pay well and has suffered in recent years. Escape Collective is a group trying to 'go their own way' to provide high quality reporting on their own terms. So it makes sense for them to paywall it; it's not meant for a broader audience, but people who want a lot of high quality bike news. https://escapecollective.com/about-us/

And it's even better when you can have both _useless_ sports and _useless_ literature : https://escapecollective.com/belief-wins-the-day/