“Ah. I see. It’s – so it’s really going to – nothing. It’s nothing. Thanks very much for letting me know. Yes, of course. Yes, it’s wonderful news. Yes, I’ll be in touch. Thanks again.”
[Bravely, stiffly, tearfully] Brittney Griner and her fiancé Glory Johnson are going to be featured on an upcoming episode of Say Yes To The Dress. I wish Brittney every happiness.
Glory, if you ever hurt her…
***
Last night I drove out to San Francisco because I thought I had tickets to a Hannibal Buress show but it turns out his show is next month so we just wandered around and found a place that only sells bread pudding, which is something that seems like it might as well happen. It’s going to be fun to see him soon.
***
Sundance Diary Exploitation Blues
***
I’m not sure exactly why but the idea that you can boil, then unboil, then potentially RE-BOIL the selfsame egg is hypnotic to me. I long for this technology to become widely available.
***
IT’S FISH WHERE THERE AREN’T SUPPOSED TO BE ANY FISH:
This month, a National Science Foundation-funded expedition began drilling through the Whillans Ice Stream, a glacier that flows from the West Antarctic Ice Shelf to the Ross Ice Shelf. The team wanted to see how the ice was faring and responding to climate change, so they drilled to the glacier’s grounding zone — where it leaves bedrock and meets the sea.
At that zone, the sea bottom looks bare and “rocky, like a lunar surface,” glacial geologist Ross Powell told Douglas Fox for Scientific American. They sent a little underwater vehicle called Deep-SCINI down the borehole to investigate. Its cameras would capture images of the rocks and sediment down on the sea floor. The researchers took sediment cores and seawater samples, which betrayed only the presence of a few microbes — no sign of crustaceans or other life normally found at the bottom of the sea.
This wasn’t a surprise: Under 2,428 feet of ice and 528 miles from the edge of the ice shelf, the site is far from any hint of sunlight, the energy source that typically powers marine food webs. So the next thing they found was shocking.
The ROV had paused while technicians adjusted some controls (it was the bot’s maiden voyage) when they saw something through the down-looking camera. Fox writes:
A graceful, undulating shadow glided across its view, tapered front to back like an exclamation point—the shadow cast by a bulb-eyed fish. Then people saw the creature casting that shadow: bluish-brownish-pinkish, as long as a butter knife, its internal organs showing through its translucent body.
It was a fish. About 20 to 30 fish visited the ROV that day, perhaps attracted to light. And that wasn’t all. Two other kinds of fish, shrimp-like crustaceans and few other invertebrates were also spotted.
“I’ve worked in this area for my whole career,” Ross says. “You get the picture of these areas having very little food, being desolate, not supporting much life.”
The food web down there is still unknown. “Food is in short supply and any energy gained is hard-won,” says Brent Christner, a microbiologist from Louisiana State University. “This is a tough place to live.” Without sunlight, the scant microbes there might be relying on chemical energy — minerals delivered by the moving ice above, currents traveling long distances or seeping up from sediments. “The lack of mud dwellers might indicate that animals living this far under the ice shelf must be mobile enough to follow intermittent food sources from place to place,” writes Fox.
***
I WILL READ ANYTHING ABOUT THE BODIES LEFT ON EVEREST AND THIS IS NO EXCEPTION
***
I saw The Wedding Ringer! It was no good. Watch the Conservative Student Caucus episode of Party Down instead for some good Josh Gad.
***
Lindy West’s episode of This American Life (about TROLLS) is up; I’m going to listen to it this afternoon and I invite you to join me.
***
Hey, here’s the first episode of David The Gnome if you want something peaceful and gentle to watch:
***
this is one fluffy chicken ok that’s all
oh my god pic.twitter.com/cfAZUfwKfa
— molly brooks (@mollybrooks) January 27, 2015
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FRIENDS. what if you made a parasol out of solar cells that you could plug your phone into, so it would protect you from the harsh light of the Daystar AND ALSO it would charge your phone
(It is cold and snowing here where I live, and so naturally all I can think about is the sun)
A dear friend of mine who lives in South Carolina is grumbling about “Northerners hogging all the snow” and how she would love to get a heavy snowfall. It is very hard for me to sympathize with her yearning when it’s -26 here with windchill and going outside hurts my face.
Yeah, I got a snowblower to clear out my driveway and the best part is that when it’s windy and the snow is light, you drive the snowblower around and all the snow just flies up into your face so it’s like wading through an eternal shower of ice.
I loathe clearing off my car on a windy morning because if the snow is light it blows right back into my face no matter where I turn and it’s just an endlessly snowy and icy wind tunnel and then I have to go to work.
Winter is depressing.
I read this as you “got a snowboarder to clear out my driveway” and I like that, too.
It’s especially funny because in that scenario, in order to get snow showered in my face, I’d have to be following him around while he swooshed back and forth in my driveway.
Tell me you pretend to be the White Witch/Snow Queen/Elf King while you do this.
Well, obviously. I can’t just walk around in the snow NOT pretending I’m the Erlkonig.
“Come away, human child,” she whispered, as she stalked through the shimmering cloud of white.
Correction: East coast northerners. I’m in Seattle and it’s been like, 65 and sunny. So weird. I am not sad about it though.
She wants our kind of snow, where “heavy” means six inches which falls over the course of maybe 6-8 hours and then stops for good. We cancel everything for four days, the temperature hovers right around the 29-31 range, just enough to keep it frozen, and there’s no wind involved. It doesn’t block your doors, it doesn’t need to be shoveled, driven in, or walked through, unless it’s just “for fun.” And then you really just need a scarf and a pair of gloves to handle it.
That’s the kind of snow we know.
I hate snowy days that go from 25-35 and back again. The snow thaws just enough to turn into boulders.
Although that does mean that last year, I was digging myself out of my driveway with a hatchet, which was pretty cool.
This idea is legit!!
High of 75F here today in Houston. But I’m sure an out-of-season hurricane will be along to punish us directly.
CHICKENS. I regret not acquiring a Fancy Chickens calendar.
(I have a rooster calendar instead, but it’s just not the same)
i got a fancy chicken calendar for xmas so i guess i’m that guy now
I think we should all just accept that there’s gonna be life everywhere on earth even if we can’t conceive of it. There are things living in boiling water, people live at high altitudes, gross shit lives at the bottom of the ocean, I AM NO LONGER SURPRISED. JUST ANNOYED because fish can live where they shouldn’t be able to survive and yet I am not allowed to live in the UK
Well remember there is precious little in the way of sunlight in the UK, espcially the further north you go, and though is not especially in short supply, thanks to the constant low-level grumbling, any energy gained is hard-won.
Can we stop weird-shaming oceanic life?
I’m only mostly joking.
The Davis the Gnome song! I am four years old now.
I love the internet because the first thing I thought of when I saw that chicken was, “But what do they look like as babies?” and not 30 seconds later I was watching all the Silkie-raising videos you could ever want.
ALSO, has everyone read about the NPR story about Whittier Alaska where almost everyone lives in one building?? Nobody I’ve shared with this irl is appropriately excited, not even my Alaskan girlfriend. I recommend reading everything about Whittier, then watching every episode of India Alaska because there are just so many ways to be a human and they’re all happening in Alaska!
I have (very briefly, to catch a ferry) been to Whittier and seen their sole residential building. It’s definitely a facinating, extremely beautiful place. Will have to check out the NPR story!
just googled this and loved it, thanks for sharing!
DAVID THE GNOME. You have saved my Tuesday morning.
And my Tuesday afternoon. I had the books as a child, had no idea they were cartoons as well!
I had no idea there were books!
This is the one I had!
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Gnomes-Thirtieth-Annivers…
I had totally forgotten it had a ‘women in western art’ lady gnome with her tits out until I google searched the author just now.
I loved this book as a kid, and I just got a copy for Christmas (my mom asked if it was ‘that weird elf book’, and I’m pretty sure this was the page she was thinking of).
Topless lady gnomes and dodgy sociopolitical stuff aside (the book talks about ‘those bad, unfriendly Russian gnomes’), it still kind of makes me want to leave bits of moss and cool stones at all the “gnome holes” in the woods near my house.
I am going to have to go through my old room at mum’s house next time I visit her and see if it’s still there. Having totally forgotten its existence for at least 25 years until I saw that video this afternoon and thought ‘those gnomes look familiar’ I am now consumed with a neeeeeeeeed to read it again.
I want to make a little gnome door in the gnarled roots of the tree out front of my house.
Mine too! I had a stuffed fox as a child in honor of that show.
YES! Mine, too.
I still sometimes sing the theme song at the top of my lungs when I’m out in nature areas
YES.
Oh how I adored that show when I was younger. I actually really, really loved a lot of pre-school shows until high school because they were so gentle and beautiful, like Little Bear and David the Gnome.
There were multiple evenings in grad school when I watched Shaun the Sheep (which is delightful, and soothing). A large portion of my brain is still a pre-schooler, basically.
Eating In Space With Col. Chris Hadfield- listened to it this Saturday because that is apparently what I do on Saturdays, just came up in conversation whilst drinking hot chocolate, so here you go (it’s pretty interesting):
http://www.splendidtable.org/story/col-chris-hadf…
Day off today (basically) because Snow? Never change DC, never change.
David the Gnome! OH MY GOSH!
BRITTNEEEEEEEEEEY oh my sweet baby Jesus that’s going to be the happiest SYTTD episode that ever did exist
Lindy West’s story was just. so. good. One of the most powerful stories I have heard in a long time, honestly.
And the following TAL story about vocal fry was SO SATISFYING TOO!
The vocal fry story made me so mad! Just… arrgghh. Those assholes writing in all snooty. It double-annoys me because I know I tend to use more vocal fry in situations where I’m trying to lower my voice to not sound “girlish” or do uptalk because DAMNED IF YOU DO DAMNED IF YOU DON’T.
It was fun to hear Ira Glass just destroy them, like “I do this constantly and no one has ever said a word,” though.
I knowwww. At the end he’s like “get over it,” and I’m like YES YES FIST PUMP.
Doesn’t everyone do it, to some extent or other? Is it really just a young-people thing? I keep meaning to listen for it and then forgetting.
Yeah, one thing they talk about in the segment is that everyone acts like it’s something new, but there’s no evidence that it’s increasing. People who hate hearing young women talk have just latched onto it as their reason. (Ira talks about how before vocal fry was something people knew about, they got irate emails about their female reporters using uptalk or saying “like.” So it’s always something.)
See, this example doesn’t work for me, because I kind of hate Ira Glass’s voice.
*ducks, readies protective shielding*
Yep yep yep yep.
I don’t think it’s the vocal fry; I think it’s his cadence. He just says everything in the exact same “soothing” tone of voice, and it sets my teeth on edge.
I am so baffled about vocal fry. I try and hear it when people point it out, but it just…. sounds like people talking? People’s voices have different timbres!
Also Glass’s irritation that they get tons of mail about female reporters with vocal fry but have never gotten a single letter complaining about his was glorious.
And Lindy West’s piece was SO GOOD. So so good.
Well, partly agreed — but anyone can use his/her voice better or more poorly, and have some control over vocal timbre. I work a lot on trying to minimize what some people might call “vocal fry” because it hurts my throat and I start to lose my voice after a while — and also we all sound not just better but also more credible (sadly; stupidly; but such is the world) when we speak with a more resonant, “rounder” voice. It is a much more effective way to speak.
But then again, I work on it because I have a profession that involves public speaking a lot, and also because it is definitely something people judge women on much more harshly than they judge men. And you’re totally right, people have natural variation in timbre etc. and it’s not like anyone can control it entirely — it’s not a fair thing to judge people on.
Right, of course! I just can’t suss out what manipulations, conscious or not, are involved in vocal fry. I don’t doubt it exists, but my brain just doesn’t parse it as a distinct part of a timbre. So all the handwringing and whinging about it sounds even more like pure I-don’t-want-to-listen-to-women sulkiness to me.
Vocal fry technically is when you don’t produce a steady stream of air while you’re talking. So you might have a creaky voice, or it might squeak in places, or it might sound harsh. Your air stream is coming in spurts and jutters and bubbles instead of a steady flow. It happens a lot when, say, someone tries to lower their pitch lower than is natural/comfortable for them.
e.g. women when trying to sound more credible when credible=masculine. not to put too fine a point on it or anything.
That almost made me cry. I vocal fry a lot–and after a singing class in college and reading Patsy Rodenburg’s The Right to Speak I think it has a lot to do with being female and being taught to be quiet, and unassuming, and that my voice wasn’t worth projecting.
Lindy West — what an incredible story. Jaisus.
The conclusion of the vocal fry story was excellent, but the one letter that started out with something like, “If you INSIST on hiring young women for your show, and I guess they must work for cheap,” just set me on FIRE and I’m still mad about it. Fuck that guy with his fucking condescending fuckface.
The troll story – it just undid me on the train this morning. The guy she interviewed was so horrible, but I was also proud of him for trying to undo some of his damage and halting his progress as a horrible human.
Don’t listen to the Lindy West story while driving because it will be hard to see.
I see your fluffy chicken and raise you this fluffy rabbit:
Here’s another great photo of it that for some reason wouldn’t show up when I tried editing it into my previous comment:
Is that… the front end or the back end?
That little pink Y is its nose and mouth area, or the booplesnoot as zoologists call it.
“poof loof”
too cute, send help
At least 3 of those names are substitute words for Bramblebush Cumblywobble, so, I heartily approve.
WHAT HOW IS THAT EVEN
I can’t tell if I want to use it as a pillow, or make it into yarn.
It’s an angora rabbit, so you should definitely shear it and make some yarn. Apparently it’s softer than cashmere.
they don’t even shear it to make the yarn they weave it right off the goddamn rabbit
OH MAN I got to pet a bun like that at Lambtown 2013 and it was AMAZING
This lady came in, sat down at her spinning wheel, put the bun in her lap, and just started petting and spinning and the BUN was just like, flopping around, snuggling, getting the tips of her fur caught up in the drafting zone and SHOOOP it’s yarn now it’s not bun anymore
and that bun was just happy and cuddly as could be and SO SILKY SOFT
I also got my hand nuzzled by a different bun that year.
And at Lambtown 2014 I got to pet a cashmere goat! I actually would not compare cashmere and angora ’cause the fibers have such a dramatically different hand–angora is soft in a silky way, cashmere is more kind of velvety.
…I’m not sorry for being physically unable to contain myself when someone says even one single word about yarn I AM SO NOT SORRY
I wish to know more about this “Lambtown”. *flops on floor, chin in hands*
Lambtown is a sheep and fiber festival in Dixon, CA and it happens in october and there are sheepdog competitions and shearings and, uh, you can eat some sheep parts if you want I guess but it’s not a thing I do, and there are animals to pet and there’s a pretty good fiber marketplace and there are classes and talks and a sheep-to-shawl competition which is PRETTY NEAT
There are bigger fiber-and-textile shows but Lambtown has been my local show since I started my handspinning adventures and
did I mention there are sheeps and goats and buns and puppinsnoots who will just LET YOU PET THEM?
We drive by/through Dixon all the time on our way to visit friends in Roseville, and I had NO IDEA that this existed, I am so glad you mentioned it! Next fall we will stop and pet animals with our kids!
Oooh, they’ll LOVE it! And if you go early, you can see a LOT of sheepdogs doing their herding thing, sometimes they are kind of terrible at it (sometimes the sheep are very opinionated, also) but they are SO EXCITED and it’s very adorable.
ROSEVILLE! I have said it before, I will say it again, the best thing about Roseville is the Rumors Salon & Spa (with Amorous Strands inside) right next to the Kiss-N-Tell sex shop, I laugh at it EVERY time I pass.
I may scream with excitement. But not near the sheep, I don’t want to scare them.
My brother and SIL have a rabbit who is very fluffy indeed, and three times a year, they have to spend an hour or so pulling his discarded fur off him so he doesn’t swallow it and make himself sick.
They’re now saving that fur so my mom can use it in her garden, because rabbit fur apparently deters various pests. #moms
I definitely want to powder my nose with it.
That is not a rabbit, that is a polyester snowball that’s been through the dryer one too many times.
I believe you’ll find that it is actually a cotton ball with gigantism.
Definitely spent ten elated seconds believing that booplesnoot was a real word. Coming down off that high was pretty rough. It was a roller coaster of emotion fueled by pure uncut gullibility .
Hooray for oversized tribbles!
TIME FOR CUDDLES!
Whittier is a very depressing place except for like 10 days a year.
Also, I bought tickets to something then realized it was for ONE YEAR LATER. Who sells tickets 14 months in advance?
My sister and I did the same for a comedy show – she bought them just before Christmas 2012 and thought they were for March 2013. Nope, 2014!!
Awwww I once met a chicken that had a super fluffy white head like that (and the rest of her feathers were glossy black, she was stunning). She was hanging out and sort of following people around at a barbecue, which first appeared to be quite social, but then we realized she was following our shadows around so she could hang out in the shade. Clever girl.
N O P E to that ice fish thing. Everyone knows those things will burrow under your skin and then cause a mass murder-suicide rampage in your expedition.
thank you
My response to basically anything Antarctica-related is either this or mountains of madness.
Smilla’s Sense of Snow, right? I liked that movie! I was just outside in the disappointing 6″ of snow we got (blizzard, my a) and started wondering if anyone would be able to track our particular movements based on our tracks. Like, “they went outside, then the mother filled the bird feeder from the two-pound bag while the children started a sled run.”. Boring, yes, but if a crime happened, would anyone be able to do a timeline based on snow evidence? Anyone besides Smilla, I guess?
A+
Speaking of Everest, I just started reading The Abominable by Dan Simmons last night, and was particularly chilled by this bit of information: “It takes a while for men to fall almost a mile. Luckily – if that’s the word – they are almost always dead and largely dismembered long before they reach the bottom.” It goes on to describe how the comrades of the fallen must then descend, spending hours passing by the tools, boots and bits of their friends.
I think I’ll pass on mountain climbing, thanks.
How is that book? I love his sci fi stuff…
It’s good so far! He’s great with research, so it’s loaded with historical mountain climbing info.
I haven’t read any of his sci fi stuff, but I looooooved his book The Terror, about the 1845 Franklin Expedition to the Arctic. I’m all about the icy peril.
Many thanks to both you and noodge for the reading recommendations!
The Terror was EXCELLENT (as long as I don’t think too much about the racial stuff and the ending in particular). I heard rumours at one point of an AMC show based off it and was so excited
I really want to read that! I loved The Terror.
Oh my God, that This American Life episode. I was CRYING ON THE BUS over Lindy’s piece. It was so sad and so satisfying and yet unsatisfying at the same time. Ugh, and when she says that getting harassed is part of her job…Jesus I hate the Internet sometimes.
And the piece afterwards about all the mail the female correspondents get about their voices and how terrible they are and how stupid it makes them sound…RAAAAAAAAAGE. SO MUCH RAGE.
Am I alone in thinking it sounds kind of sexy? I love a little rasp in anyone’s voice. I mean, all those emailers can fuck directly off, also.
Yeah…so we’re not supposed to have high-pitched voices because then we’re shrill, but if we go the other direction, vocal fry, which is also bad? It’s almost like society just wants women to not talk at all OH WAIT
CANNOT CLICK ON THE EVEREST STORY FAST ENOUGH. It’s one of my tragic polar obsessions, right there with the Franklin Expedition.
Random fact: some climbers jokingly call one section of the mountain “Rainbow Valley”. Because of all the brightly colored climbing suits in the corpses.
*the more you know gif*
Have you read “In the Kingdom of Ice”? A+++, would highly recommend for anyone who can’t get enough of doomed outdoor expeditions in very, very cold weather.
No but I sure as shit am going to put that on my Amazon list immediately! Thank you! I was starting to think I was running out of tragic polar expeditions. I’ve got Franklin, Greeley, Shackelton and Scott already but no George Washington DeLong!
Oh and Bartlett, that jagoff from the Karluk.
I would also recommend “The Ice Balloon” by Alec Wilkinson. It’s about Salomon Andrée, the lanky Swede who tried to reach the North Pole in a hydrogen balloon in 1897.
THANK YOU. That looks awesome as well!
Also what a weird idea. Let’s take a balloon…TO THE ARCTIC!
Yeah, it was definitely an interesting idea, just not a very good one. And he was incredibly enthusiastic, and they were all so excited when they set out, and then……………..welp.
What polar exploration books would you recommend? I love reading about doomed expeditions, it makes me feel better about trekking my way through yet another miserable Chicago winter.
(Is that terrible? I feel like that might be a moral failing on my part.)
My favorites:
Frozen in Time (Franklin Expedition and beyond)
Ice Blink (More Franklin…I have an obsession)
Ghosts of Cape Sabine
Endurance: Shackleton’s Incredible Voyage
The Ice Master: The Doomed 1913 Voyage of the Karluk
Fatal Passage: The Story of John Rae
The Last Viking: The Life of Roald Amundsen (who btw was the guy who actually managed to finally sail the Northwest Passage successfully)
Scott’s Last Expedition: The Journals
Race to The End: Amundsen, Scott, and the Attainment of the South Pole
If you want to go into cold places like mountains:
Into Thin Air (duh)
Touching the Void
The Climb (Anatoli Boukreev’s version of the events in Into Thin Air, RIP Anatoli, as he died climbing another mountain later on)
K2: Life and Death on the World’s Most Dangerous Mountain
I want to read Buried in the Sky, also about K2 but I have not yet.
Oh also The Lost Explorer : Finding Mallory On Mount Everest. There’s a ton of books about George Mallory and Sandy Irvine trying to climb Everest, so you can really take your pick. That’s just the one I have.
And if you want to read about an expedition up Everest that did NOT end in tragedy you can read about Sir Edmund Hillary! Several books on him, I have one called High Adventure that I liked quite a bit.
I definitely recommend Buried in the Sky, I thought it one of the better books I’ve read about When Mountain Climbing Goes Wrong. What I like is that it was one of the only ones I’ve read where the focus was on the Sherpa climbers.
This is so unexpected and wonderful, to see this thread. I get an amazing happy feeling, bumping into other people interested in Arctic/Antarctic stuff. Most people don’t seem to care about it at all. Even people I meet when I travel there (I’m that nuts about it, yes), most of them haven’t done any reading or much research or anything, it’s very depressing, I tell you.
For books about exploration, I have a strong preference for original accounts.
Fram or Farthest North (two volumes, link is to first, get the second also) by Fridtjof Nansen is a classic, utterly readable polar exploration story, one of the top ten probably. Nansen was a wonderful, vivid writer and all of his books are good, but this one describes his most famous journey, in which he designed a vessel to be iced-in, took it north with a hand-picked crew, got iced in, and drifted around until he got bored; then he and one other carefully-chosen man got in kayaks and tried for the Pole. He and the other man, Hjalmar Johansen, called one another “Mr. Johansen” and “Professor Nansen” through bear attacks and accidents, until, having lived an arm’s length from one another for months on ice, on water, and in a shallow hole in the ground with a log covered with walrus hides for a roof, they shook hands and agreed to use Christian names.
If you think Nansen spends too much time discussing his preparations, do keep in mind the spectacular failures that preceded him: failures of planning, failures of provisioning, failures to accept reality.
South by Ernest “The Boss” Shackleton is his account of the journey which included the famous rowboat trip from Elephant Island to South Georgia Island.
Books about the Arctic and Antarctic: I May Be Some Time, Francis Spufford. A deep and thoughtful examination of the Heroic Age of Exploration, as it’s called. Possibly the best book about it ever; if you only read one book, this is the one. Roland Huntford’s The Race to the South Pole contrasts diary entries from the Amundsen and Scott Expeditions. For recent Antarctic writing, I loved The Crystal Desert: Summers in Antarctica by David Campbell. It’s about the Peninsular research stations and what goes on there—the science, the politics, and the tourism.
A lot of polar travel writing, like all travel writing, ends up sounding rather narcissistic, too much centered on the writer. The books I list are about the places.
YES THANK YOU. I’ll be coming back to this thread for other recs. It’s amazing to talk to other people who actually want to talk about this stuff. Like, the response to my excited facebook post about the discovery of the HMS Erebus was uh, less enthusiastic than I would have liked. I was freaking out.
“I may be some time.” Sob forever!
I also prefer hearing about the expedition and the places and people who already LIVE in the places over the person doing the exploring. Because while some of them were fascinating men, some of them were…not.
I go to the Oates Collection at Gilbert White’s House on a regular basis – I am more than a small amount in love with Titus.
Jennifer Niven wrote an account of the fiasco expedition focused on Blackjack—which was padded, and though we know that happens with very slight subjects or subjects with little documentation, yet it would have been better at half the length—about Stefansson’s doomed Wrangel expedition which highlighted Ada Blackjack.
I’m not sure what’s going on with my browser vs. the comments section here. I apologize for the sentence + formatting hash above.
Also The Worst Journey in the World, by Apsley Cherry-Garrard. He was with Scott, and went miles out of his way on a separate expedition in the depths of winter to get some penguin eggs. He had appalling vision and couldn’t wear his glasses because of the weather, so did the entire thing mostly blind.
I just finished it so I’m evangelizing about it to everyone! Do you have other favorite books in the genre? I am all about recommendations.
I just posted it above! Some of them can be, shall we say, dry? Like Captain Scott’s journals are written very much in the way you’d imagine a British Royal Navy officer in 1910 to write, but still very interesting if you’re super into polar exploration and kind of that whole era of “let’s conquer the Artic…uh, because!”
I’m sure there are more books I can’t remember right now. My bookshelves are COVERED in sad stories of people dying in cold places. I have no idea why but it’s fascinating stuff to me.
Carlos Hernandez has an excellent short story, “The Aphotic Ghost,” in Mothership: Tales from Afrofuturism and Beyond that is EXACTLY about recovering a body from Everest.
Aah thanks for this thread! I too love books about doomed cold-weather expeditions, and also shipwrecks. Hubris!!
Oh I love me some shipwreck books too. If you want a book that’s just piles and piles of doom, shipwrecks, and stories of castaways on islands, get Desperate Journeys, Abandoned Souls: True Stories of Castaways and Other Survivors by Edward Leslie. It’s HUGE, and his writing style reminds me of a very excitable elderly professor who talks in exclamation points!!
Thanks! My favorites are Alvin Moscow, Collision Course (which is about the Andrea Doria) and Gary Kinder, Ship of Gold in the Deep Blue Sea, which is about the sinking and salvage of the SS Central America. My obsession with hubris (and huge fiascos involving EU bureaucracy) is the reason that my DVR is full of documentaries about the Costa Concordia, whose salvage I have followed obsessively.
If you’re interested in hubristic dudes and the Andrea Doria, you should also read Kevin McMurray, Deep Descent, Adventure and Death Diving the Andrea Doria. The wreck is juuust in the bounds the depths that humans can dive to, and it’s nicknamed the Everest of the deep.
I love stories of civilization vs. nature, especially when nature wins.
And yes, hubris. I think that’s why it’s so fascinating. SO MUCH HUBRIS.
Did you see they found an actual chart used in the Karluk expedition??? http://www.adn.com/article/20150123/old-chart-ide…
I had not!!
Man, this plus the Erebus! So exciting!
I read this post a while ago, and was a bit shocked by your callousness about the Erebus disaster, and also a bit baffled out by your lumping in the plane crash with climbing/adventuring tragedies. AND THEN I googled, and found out that there was a ship called Erebus! In my neck of the woods, “Erebus” refers to the plane crash into Mt Erebus, in Antarctica. I just learned that the mountain was named after the ship. The more you know!
Anyway, now I have learned about the ship!
I…honestly had no idea there was a plane crash into a mountain called the Erebus so I too have learned something today! Also maybe we should like, stop naming stuff Erebus, it keeps ending poorly for people.
I was talking about them FINDING the ship Erebus, being exciting! I swear, I’m not a monster! Well I am literally a Lovecraftian nightmare monster, but I’m not a JERK.
Also I read that article and that’s sad as shit!
Wikipedia tells me
In Greek mythology, Erebus /ˈɛrəbəs/, also Erebos (Greek: Ἔρεβος, “deep darkness, shadow”), was often conceived as a primordial deity, representing the personification of darkness
Yep, let’s stop naming stuff Erebus!
If anyone wants a hate read today, Jonathan Chait has helpfully provided us with one, “How the language police are perverting liberalism” http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2015/01/not-…
Jonathan Chait, nooooo! He used to be one of my favorite political reporters, but he hasn’t been the same since he had that dust-up with Coates.
Oh, maybe that’s what brought this on. He’s still kind of nursing a wound about how badly he failed to impress Coates.
I just had a huge rage-spasm about this.
It’s paticularly infuriating because it’s exactly the same thing that clueless white male liberals ALWAYS say about “PC-ness”, as though all of the subsequent discussions on the subject haven’t happened.
And to wrap it around to yesterday’s chat about AP: Thanks for weighing in, you precious snowflake.
A+ link roundup. I love anatopistic fish, I love dead bodies that have remained where they died, and I love Say Yes to the Dress. Someone plz instruct me in the ways of watching that episode if I don’t have cable.
(happy snow day, Boston/Providence folk! Stay toasty!!!!!! heh)
Oceans: full of weird shit in unexpected places since the Mesozoic era.
Yeah, I’m always surprised when people are surprised when they find life in some weird corner of the ocean. Like, at this point, our default set of expectations should be, “Well, whatever we find down here is probably gonna be pretty fucked up looking.”
It drives me crazy when I’m watching some special or other and they’re like, “they thought this was the biggest shark in the ocean, but it wasn’t! We’ve now definitively found the biggest shark in the ocean, no question” because it seems to me that the only conclusion you can draw from finding a bigger shark is that there’s probably yet a bigger one somewhere else.
Meanwhile, in Astrophysics, “We’ve run a mathematical model that concluded that universe as we know it may in fact be a subverted, 18-dimensional illusion inside the booger of woodland troll in Middle-earth. It will also soon explode into quasilarks, a theoretical subparticle that exists in two temporal locations, 50 years from now, and 3:30 am on June 16, 452 BC at the exact same time in the same spatial location.”
Seriously! Nature is generally bonkers! We’re used to giraffes and rhinos and vultures, but that’s cause we see them (or images of them) fairly regularly! If we gawked at goblin sharks all day maybe they’d seem sort of normal too. (Goblin sharks may not have been the best example to use here.)
I am terrified of deep water, but I want to fund like 19 more of that David Attenborough special on the deep ocean, because I would watch weird glowing spiky worm-fish cavorting around under glaciers allll day.
Aaaah that one was SO GOOD. I mean his work is just generally terrific, but that one in particular was amazing.
Re: Lindy West’s TAL episode (which i will listen to post-haste), my library has been killing it in the New Books About The Internet department lately. I’m reading a book called “Hate Crimes in Cyberspace” right now, which is written by a University of Maryland law professor and suggests solutions to online harassment. She calls it “the civil rights movement’s new frontier” because it can, in some cases, seriously destroy the lives of the largely-women and LGBTQ people it affects. It’s really fascinating.
(the next book on my list is an ethnography about Anonymous and i cannot wait!)
Is that We Are Anonymous? I am psyched to read that, but I already have fifteen library books checked out and I have to make a dent in the pile before I get another one, dammit.
No, actually, though I should check that one out! It’s “Hacker, Hoaxer, Whistleblower, Spy: The Many Faces of Anonymous.” The author’s an anthropologist.
Thaaat’s the new one. I need to get our cataloging department to include Anonymous as a subject heading or something. We Are Anonymous is more interview-style investigative journalism, with a history of the political side of the movement.
Has anyone been watching ‘Pets – Wild at Heart’ on BBC? It is glorious. The slow-motion hamster race was excellent, and my dad practically cried with laughter at the hamster whizzing round and round on the wheel. The actual purpose of the programme is very interesting (I did not know that related cats will often babysit for one another), but it’s mainly an excuse to watch pets do cute/funny/curious things for an hour. Plus David Tennant narrates, so that’s a bonus.
I don’t know if you’ll get it abroad, but BBC nature programmes tend to find their way to YouTube eventually.
I saw the trailer and I WANT IT
This sounds like the most perfect program of all time.
It was made with PBS, so we should get it in the States sometime, but I can’t find when
That TAL episode is fantastic, and I am ALL about mountain climbing disasters ( This: https://www.etsy.com/listing/175599201/people-die… is prominently featured on the top of my list of things I would like to own).
BUT THE BEST THING.
THE BEST.
IS CHICKENS WITH PANTS.
Lookit that chicken and tell me it doesn’t look like a fluffy member of ABBA. You go ahead and try.
Oh. Oh my god. The David the Gnome theme song. I’m having a moment here.
AND IF YOUR HEART IS TRUUUUUE
Did anyone else see this piece on Austrialian Indigenous oral history stories that are now confirmed to record things that happened over 10,000 years ago? There’s a story that describes the course of a river that might have vanished as early as 12,000 years ago! I get so excited about oral history stuff.
That is FASCINATING. I love stuff like that.
I forgot that David the Gnome was a thing and now I think my heart is exploding.
I try and skip most Sundance coverage because it will be months before I get a chance to see any of the movies premiering there, but dear God do I want to watch that David Foster Wallace movie right away. Love Jason Segel and can’t wait to see his take on DFW.
I think Giant Poofball Chicken is my new Patronus.
Now I am expecting a playlist for standing outside Brittney Griner’s wedding
The TAL episode about trolls reminded my why I love the toast and why I recently signed up to post on it. I spend too much time online, and at one point I just hit my limit with crappy people trying to make other people feel bad. It’s just like, “why am I exposing myself to this junk? Nope.” There’s a study that shows trolls have high rates of sadism, and I think that explains pretty much all of it.
I was totally freaking obsessed with David the Gnome as a kid. This is the best day ever.
I don’t know how far of a drive to San Francisco it is for Mallory but I once took a bus from Chicago to Columbus, OH (8 hours, as the megabus flies) to a convention that was actually being held a full week later.
A full week!!
That’s awful, you really must have had boiled-and-subsequently-unboiled egg on your face after that!
That's awful, you really must have had boiled-and-subsequently-unboiled egg on your face after that!
I…honestly had no idea there was a plane crash into a mountain called the Erebus so I too have learned something today! Also maybe we should like, stop naming stuff Erebus, it keeps ending poorly for people.
I was talking about them FINDING the ship Erebus, being exciting! I swear, I'm not a monster! Well I am literally a Lovecraftian nightmare monster, but I'm not a JERK.
Also I read that article and that's sad as shit!
Oooh, they'll LOVE it! And if you go early, you can see a LOT of sheepdogs doing their herding thing, sometimes they are kind of terrible at it (sometimes the sheep are very opinionated, also) but they are SO EXCITED and it's very adorable.ROSEVILLE! I have said it before, I will say it again, the best thing about Roseville is the Rumors Salon & Spa (with Amorous Strands inside) right next to the Kiss-N-Tell sex shop, I laugh at it EVERY time I pass.