Some free climber fell o his death lately? Respect, bro. Max utiles.
As the saying goes, "Every corpse on Mt. Everest was once a highly motivated person."
I didn't read the Everest book. I liked the one about the kid who died in Alaska.
The one who looked like Joaquin Phoenix?
He didn't look like Joaquin. He was Joaquin. Also, not Alaska. I think.
I think the only mountaineering book I read was Herzog's Annapurna, amputated digits rolling around the railway compartment. Less respect, because littering.
My parents had a cat named Annapurna. This was before the kitties Chomsky and Popocatepatl from my early childhood. My parents used to be really good at naming pets.
My nephew and his wife have a dog named Chompsky.
If everyone still busy vomiting up turkey or what?
On this day, we all turn into turkey vultures.
Werner Herzdog would be a good dog name. Bonus: you could call the dog "Vern" for short.
Know what I mean, Vern?
For more disastrous mountaineering fun, I recommend The Summit if you can find it on netflix. Short summary: 11 highly experienced climbers die in a single day near the summit of K2. It's definitely a strong entry in the "and people do this for fun?" genre.
Yes, it was really striking how little Krakauer seemed to enjoy the whole climbing-Everest experience. Quite a contrast to accounts by other people.
Did he have digits removed in a moving train? Because that sounded like a real downer.
17: I assume part of it is just the haze of writing through PTSD, but it was really striking how academic and coldly disconnected he was from any desire to actually be there, embarking on the climb. It was very passive: I got myself into this mess, due maybe to some boyhood dream that I stopped wanting twenty years ago, and now I am enduring because I lack agency, and so I put one foot in front of another in a plodding manner in every sense.
Oh hey I think I actually have that book on this very computing machine.
In high school we did some fundraising to support some alumni making the trip. I think the idea of helping them was initiated by the teacher involved. Into Thin Air was much referenced.
We ended up obtaining a certificate from then-Gov. George Bush hailing the expedition as a "bacon to the community". Really. (IIRC.)
Which probably can't be exported to the United States.
But which in principle can at least be consumed in situ. Unlike K2 bacon.
21: One of the guys who dies was sponsored by a local elementary school, and was faxing letters back and forth to them the whole trip. In hindsight, the collaboration seems like maybe a questionable idea.
I missed the bacon the first time I read 21. Wow.
We got a brief, very partial satellite call from them near the summit.
An impartial call would have suggested a haze of PTSD, so for the best probably.
17: Right? Especially considering he wasn't some novice who went up his first time and discovered it wasn't his jam. He was past his prime in '96 but that guy did legit world class mountaineering in the 70's and 80's.
Werner Herzdog would be a good dog name. Bonus: you could call the dog "Vern" for short.
If the same household gets a cat, presumably it would be Claws Kinski.
The real mountains are the friends we meet along the way.
The fake mountains have roller coasters inside, to ride with your established friends.
Some people just don't want to understand that.
33: Probably the same people that didn't believe in Corinthian leather.
I just learned something! Thank you peep!
It's the real friends we met along the way.
AS IF THAT'S A REVELATION.
Obviously, no one knows on the internet, etc., but have we got any Great Danes here? As in alums of SUNY-Albany?
(They won their first ever FCS playoff game this weekend, and are coming to Bozeman next weekend for the second round.)
On topic, because bigger but thinner air.
Don't let the name confuse you. Definitely no Corinthian leather that far from Park.
35: Not sure what you learned, but I'm glad I taught you something.
39: You can hardly imagine my excitement when I saw the first part of your comment. Or my subsequent disappointment.
Alas, I am a tall dog and a graduate of the Danish Obedience Academy, but have nothing to do with SUNY-Albany.
I approve of 30.
I read both of the Krakauer books under discussion (long ago) and came away thinking that: A) More super-outdoorsy people might be crazy/assholes than my stereotypes of same, based on the loveable potheads I knew from my college Outing Club, had previously allowed me to consider, and B) Neither the books nor a couple interviews I've seen with him offer a speck of evidence that Krakauer would be any fun to be around irl, competent storyteller though he may be.
17, 19: Haven't read or listened to Into Thin Air or anything else in the genre so this is ex recto, but maybe part of the problem was how crowded Mt. Everest has become? This John Oliver episode makes the climb sound like a miserable experience for reasons that have nothing to do with cold or hypoxia. I don't remember how long Mr. Everest has been like that. Maybe not 23 years, but maybe the trend had started by then.
About 15 years ago I listened to Under the Banner of Heaven on the holiday drive home from Colorado, across Utah. The landscape makes it too real. Recommended!
I liked the Mormon book.
He's pretty famous hereabouts for the rape book -- the one where he says our town isn't any different from anyplace else, and then names the book after the town.
He's been trying to get student records related to the football player who was arrested, tried, and acquitted. Lost in the Montana Supreme Court; his petition for cert in the US Supreme Court is pending. So maybe he'll get famous again for a ruling that the federal laws about student record confidentiality have to fall in the face of an author's dogged pursuit of the truth.
One of the themes of the book is that crowding and inexperienced climbers played a role in the disaster, although it's probably gotten worse since then. There were a bunch of expeditions trying to summit on the fatal day, which caused delays in reaching the summit, which is why they wound up descending in the dark when the storm hit.
I thought it was "Book of Mormon."
There were a bunch of expeditions trying to summit on the fatal day, which caused delays in reaching the summit, which is why they wound up descending in the dark when the storm hit.
It seemed to me that this paled compared to the error in not turning around at the predetermined turnaround time.
There were 33 people attempting the climb that day, and there was definitely a traffic jam where Krakauer had to wait an hour, but that was a worst-case scenario because he was so far ahead of most of the people. There's a stretch with a single line, and he's on his way down, and has to wait for a big crowd to make their way up. So it took a big toll on him, individually, but not on the group as a whole.
The most horrifying part of that book for me was the piece about the super experienced guide, stuck on a ledge with the climbers he had been leading, calling home on his satellite telephone telling his wife goodbye, that he was going to die of exposure before the night was over.
A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush was a lot cheerier.
I drove the family up Mt. Washington this summer and there was a big line to take selfies at the summit marker. The kids were whining about the line and someone in front of us loudly proclaimed to their companions how obnoxious it was for people who had driven up to take a picture at the summit, only hikers should take a picture. This made me more determined to wait out the line but alas I gave in to the whining.
Those weekend warriors who drive to the top of Everest and take pictures of themselves at the summit are the worst.
You should only take a summit picture there if you've hiked the Appalachian Trail from either of its end points.
I've surely mentioned before that an old friend married a guy who'd been up Everest twice -- he was the ninth American (and 113th person) at the top, and then his second time was a first ascent for a particular route. They went to NZ for 50th anniversary festivities with Hillary. Now that's a club you can't get into any more.
Looking it up, I see that he and a guide went up one day, and 3 other people (including a sherpa) in their expedition went to the top three days later, and that was it for 1981.
One thing that marrs the whole bragging rights bit is how insanely much more the sherpas do. Like if it were an electronic assist, that'd be one thing, but this is a person doing 1 1/2 times the work.
I am also wondering if bottles air technology has improved and allowed less acclimatized people to make the ascent now than in 1996.
||
Pop quiz!
Denmark completes contentious fence along German borderDoes said fence serve to block the movement of:
This John Oliver episode makes the climb sound like a miserable experience for reasons that have nothing to do with cold or hypoxia. I don't remember how long Mr. Everest has been like that. Maybe not 23 years, but maybe the trend had started by then.
The crowding had already started, the Krakauer piece for Outside was specifically on the commercialization of Everest. The hypoxia does crazy things to the body at that extreme. Judgement and cognitive function go to shit. Ditto digestion. It's typical for an Everest climber to lose 10-20 pounds. A huge factor is that the people running the expedition were up there with the group trying to make critical decisions while in a severely compromised state.
Everest: Beyond the Limit is free on Prime. It follows Russell Brice's guided expeditions, filmed 10 years after the Krakauer expedition. Brice never leaves base camp and directs everything via radio so that all the judgement calls are being made by someone with plenty of oxygen.
59: You buy into stereotypes, shame on you.
I have complex stereotypes of Danes and Germans. I know Germans are bigger on nudism and refugees (at least their governments) than Danes and that Danes are very aware of the importance of pigs to their economy.
A huge factor is that the people running the expedition were up there with the group trying to make critical decisions while in a severely compromised state.
We know where babies come from.
Anyway, hypoxia sounds unpleasant. The highest elevation I ever spent the night at was 9,500 feet. I kept waking up breathing heavily and I was only 20 or so.
I've been plenty high, but never much above sea level.
C!
Because swine fever and bacon.
56: re: air cylinders, I was reading that they're kind of scary - cheaper companies have recycled tanks well past a reasonable lifetime, so sometimes they leak or malfunction due to age. I don't think there have been many advances, but the age of a cylinder matters. I can't imagine reaching a cache of cylinders and realizing I was going to die because my "fresh" tank had leaked.
Right, here:
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/23/sports/everest-climbing-oxygen.html
57: I didn't guess because I got impatient and looked it up, but it looks like a combination of A and C? Overtly C, but likely meant to slake thirst for A.
I don't remember how long Mr. Everest has been like that.
He was always cold and unapproachable, but it's the recent veneer of cosmopolitan bonhomie around an icy nativist core that's made him truly intolerable.
Cosmopolitan my ass. Goddamn patriarchal appropriation.
Here's another story from when it wasn't so crowded. Still pretty dangerous: https://www.nytimes.com/1983/10/28/world/us-team-finds-a-harder-way-to-scale-everest.html
||
http://www.startribune.com/klobuchar-presidential-campaign-staff-unionizes/565708022/
"Political campaign workers deserve a voice on the job as much as anyone," International Brotherhood of Teamsters President James P. Hoffa told Bloomberg News.Hoffa? Really?
Yes, really. Jimmy's son IIRC. He's been running the Teamsters for years.
According to the headline, 90,000 packages are stolen everyday in New York City. What I wonder is how they fence that? Is it all eBay?
I'm just generally curious. Not thinking of a career change.
It's all accounting fraud. The packages never existed.
Because there's probably no health insurance in fencing.
Are you filing a claim? Are you filing a claim? ARE YOU FILING A CLAIM? There's no insurance! THERE'S NO HEALTH INSURANCE IN FENCING!
If everything you have is yours but may have been stolen since you bought it on eBay, will a girl still come up with something to prove?
||
I've accidentally set off the Yang Gang on Twitter and now they are blowing up in my mentions. Turns out they are a bit sensitive if you describe a Value-Added Tax as "regressive."
Apparently a VAT not regressive the way Yang wants to do it. Its just not, Ok!?!?!?!
|>
51. I've hiked Mt. Washington, and when you get to the top you generally have a WTF moment when you encounter the people who drove up or took the cog railway and are therefore clean, not tired, and dressed for the flatlands (up to and including high heels in some cases). I don't recall there being a line for photos. I have also driven up and down the mountain and frankly, hiking it is more fun.
161 people have died on Mt. Washington, which is about half the number who have died on Everest. If you read the accounts (the book "Not Without Peril" has a bunch of them), most of them were irredeemably stupid, and a few were just unlucky with the weather.
Wait. I figured it out. I didn't realize he was still running.
86: I climbed the Zugspitze, and it's similar in that there's a cable car that will get you to the top, where you find restaurants and observation platforme and other kinds of Bavarian hoopla. It's distinctly odd to come over the ridge and see all of that. On the other hand, it's hella convenient for a beer and a schnitzel and getting back down.
90: Running up that hill.
It's hard to make a VAT progressive in the sense of primarily collecting revenue from the rich like a graduated income tax can (which seems to be what some super lefties insist on these days), it doesn't make sense unless it falls significantly on the middle class, but it's more progressive than sales tax, and a generous low income rebate can make it fall barely at all on the bottom rung.
something i find inexplicable - people telling you about their antarctic or climbing himalayan mountain climbing trips and framing it as "gotta go now before its gone!" and then being surprised-offended when you point out that their trip is making it go ... faster.
i am completely understanding and largely supportive* of the "don't guilt people for their day-to-day driving and other fossil-fuel dependent activities they have little opportunity to change, focus on structural change" but my god people no one needs to go on these trips! you aren't scientists, you are just gawkers.
* i think there is value in getting people to voluntarily inconvenience themselves as a way of creating personal commitment to bringing about systemic change. bike commuters are going to support bike infrastructure, etc.
You find it inexplicable that people are surprised and offended when they are unexpectedly criticized?
how could this criticism be _honestly_ unexpected?
I have a theory that lots of wealthy people are oblivious.
on a global scale, these are wealthy people. in their own minds - solidly middle class, to bottom reaches of upper middle class.
Which theory is completely original and must be attributed to me.
97: They are also oblivious about their n status on a domestic scale.
I have a great theory.
I should have been a social scientist.
85,93 Can we exchange thoughts about property taxes or possibly other wealth taxes? These would not be as regressive ceteris paribus. The place I know best that's using these aggressively is Chicago, whose existing public employee pension fund obligations are the main driver behind a net debt of about $30 billion (Chicago has 3M residents, so about $10k/person). High property taxes are definitely a factor for people there choosing whether or not to live in the city (or the area-- IL debt is also bad, not sure how much wealth/income there is outside Chicagoland). There's a thriving high-salary economy with most well-paid work downtown, so there are expensive luxury towers going up a kilometer away from brownfields. People who aren't part of that economy are leaving though, especially if they live near dangerous neighborhoods and are black.
Taxing second homes or empty investment properties is a policy that I've heard of as a possibility, but I don't know how practical that is to actually raise revenue.
National debt is different than local debt since there's lots of global wealth that wants to hold bonds even if there's a deficit. But capital flight, maybe in the form of a DE or SD trust, is not different.
I'd love to see a way to apply a lower rate for property taxes for the first $100K in property value, a second tier that goes up to $200K, and higher tiers at $300K, $500K, and $1 million. But there are all sorts of practical difficulties, like what happens when multiple properties are owned, let alone whatever distortions would be caused by tax avoidance efforts.
Taxing second homes or empty investment properties is a policy that I've heard of as a possibility, but I don't know how practical that is to actually raise revenue.
Entire towns around here either prosper or are starved for resources, based on how many taxable summer homes are in their jurisdiction.
I think that means you need to invade Boston.
There's no good roads to Boston. It's what keeps Boston from invading us.
Since this is unfogged, I'm going to presume all mentions of Mt. Washington are referring to Pittsburgh.
105.first is approximated by the homestead exemption common in many locales, but I agree that it needs more gradations. Of course a proper wealth tax would handle that, but maybe there should be an additional tax on top of it for second homes, which have additional externalities beyond wealth generally.
I'll need to read up on using the homestead exemption as a tax break. That would be useful around here, although chances are the state would never go for it.
maybe there should be an additional tax on top of it for second homes, which have additional externalities beyond wealth generally.
I'd argue there are fewer externalities, at least from a local budget point-of-view. People don't send their kids to the public school where their second home is.
I'm not sure I agree with the common concept (not necessarily here) that people with basic homes should get minimal property taxes. It's still a major form of wealth in society, and it's usually accompanied by means to pay at scale; the exceptions can be treated as such with means-testing.
An option for people whose income does not match their home value: defer increase in tax bill to when it sells and the money actually exists. So either you pay the tax regularly, or you pay an extra chunk of the windfall gain later on.
One of my rules of thumb in tax policy is we need to levy taxes that most of the public, and at a minimum the UMC, actually pay substantial amounts into. Berniecrats make what I think is the mistake of saying "We can provide all the services we desire by taxing billionaires and nobody else." Those taxes are good, but their volatility makes them less suitable to consistent service provision (see the CA state budget), and part of their social value is compressing the income spectrum so that they will collect less over time by design. Property tax, ideally expanded to all wealth, is one way we ensure most of those decently-situated in society are reliably paying a share.
I am especially influenced by having pondered how to get rid of Prop 13 for a decade now.
114.2: an option *that should exist* (but usually doesn't
I think part of the point is fuck billionaires.
Not only do we have a residential exemption, we have progressive water and sewage rates.
Your sewer drains faster the higher your income.
Yeah, I'm also in one of the (relatively few) MA cities with an exemption - this year, the first $288k of assessed value isn't taxed for your primary residence.
I like the Dutch system which combines a national wealth tax (exempting first homes), a national income tax based in part on the notional rental value of your home, and a local property value tax, recalculated yearly. This avoids some of the valuation/banding issues that Council Tax has in the UK, and also mitigates the problem of poorer municipalities being starved of funding for services. It also feeds into things like rent regulations.
At the moment mortgage interest is deductible, but this is very slowly being phased out.
||
But finding that "one-in-a-million pig" is difficult because nobody tests for them, she said. "You either find a mutant, or make one yourself."|>
That sounds like something someone says before they fuck a pig.
Basically, America has ended the mortgage interest deduction, but only for the middle and lower middle class. You need a really big house to gain by itemizing. The deduction is still there, but only really exists for the wealthy (and maybe California).
I suppose raising the standard deduction is, on the whole, not regressive because you get that even if you don't buy a house.
114/117 The WHOLE point is to fuck billionaires. Pigs come later, if at all.
Yeah, in my first year as a homeowner I was all primed to not do the standard deduction for the first time ever. I even brought my low three figures in charitable donations to the accountant. But no, I missed my chance.
My accountant just sends a bill. I don't know of any who work for donations.
124. Those of us who live in high-tax states are all being pushed into the standard deduction, due to the removal of state and local taxes as deductible items.
That too. But with a $24k standard deduction (if married), you'd need a really big house or a really bad mortgage to hit that even with property taxes.