The Hague-based court, whose orders are legally binding but lack direct enforcement mechanisms
Some “900 Hamas terrorists” surrendered in Rafah yesterday, so the pummeling seems to be working…
You “crawled through rocks.” Neo? Maybe I misheard that. It looks beautiful.
Looks beautiful where is it?
Beautiful. Thanks for posting.
Lovely place – my walking these days does not involve canyons, thank goodness, but lots of granite walls are available.
Saw these recently and thought I would drop them in for huxley to ponder.
On the same general topic, read this post from David Foster, and then the recent series from Matt Taibbi on the breadth and depth of the government-academic-media “anti-disinformation” establishment (in exactly the same sense that Eisenhower warned about the military-industrial(-government) establishment).
This is the introductory post; see individual reports for an increasingly detailed picture of just how much the Left is “fortifying” our news feeds and internet interactions.
Some samples: https://www.racket.news/archive
Censorship Files: “We Have Very Little Evidence About What Works”
Do “anti-disinformation” tactics work? Listen to the experts themselves
Censorship Files: “We Will Not Be Intimidated From Continuing Our Mission in… 2024”
When Stanford’s Election Integrity Partnership stirred up controversy, its participants defiantly planned a rerun for this year
The Overlooked Twitter Files Scandal: How the Intelligence Community Wore Down the Platform
Was Twitter set up by intelligence agencies? A handful of documents casts the conquest of private platforms by security officials in a new light
FOIA Library: The University of Washington
The raw correspondence returned in two Freedom of Information requests to one of America’s biggest sponsors of “anti-disinformation” work, Kate Starbird’s University of Washington
FOIA Files: Garry Kasparov Resigns from Aspen Institute Commission, Compares it to Soviet Committee
“If I’m being honest…This type of approach was common practice in the USSR.”
In other news, we expect a high of 49 on the windy Wyoming plains today, down from 60 yesterday, but better than the day before, which topped out around 40!
I’ll remember these days fondly in July, however, when we hope the NIGHTS will get back down that low!
I’ve also been hiking trails recently, there are a couple of dozen within few miles ranging from easy to ridiculous (50% grade). I stick to the intermediate trails in the hope that I can hike the more challenging trails by fall. I get passed by trail runners and mountain bikers all the time. Ah, youth. Yesterday I did this one.
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg was the latest high-profile Western leader to call for an end to the ban on Ukraine’s use of Western-supplied weapons to strike targets in Russia .. Ukraine was unable to attack Russian forces as they were building up before crossing the border into Kharkiv Oblast in the renewed Russian offensive that began earlier in May.
It’s insanity to allow the Russians to build up behind their own border for an attack on Ukraine. Ditto on the insanity of allowing Russian jets to launch glide bombs into Ukraine from safety behind their own border. Ukraine should be allowed to blow these jets outta the sky, and destroy any Russian build up close to Ukrainian borders.
Nice hike neo.
Not to be a jerk, but I hiked up to the top of Vernal Falls yesterday morning. On a club trip to Yosemite, Ted & I were the only two in our aged group of 22 to do an actual hike of some difficulty. I’ve been to Yosemite many times with my late wife, but somehow about 20 years slipped by since the last time I was there.
The climb to the top of Vernal used to be quite easy, and was a brief stop on the way to the top of Nevada Falls. That was then. Yesterday, it was quite challenging just to get to the top of Vernal. But not bad for someone who had arthroscopic knee surgery 3 months ago. I enjoyed it very much.
This video was taken 11 months ago, & I’d estimate the water flow rate we had yesterday to be about 80% of that in the video. It’s a very wet climb.
On July 2, 1961 my high school sweetheart and I climbed to the top of Half Dome. We had tried to do the climb the day before and checked in at the little ranger shed to tell the ranger we were going up. Somehow the subject of my asthma came up and the ranger told us we could not go up.
Being that we were two seventeen-year-olds, who had just graduated high school the month before we were boldly adventurous. We came up with an alternate plan. We waited until the next morning and walked onto the trail before the ranger shed opened. We had one canteen of water. We walked past the falls you just hiked and kept going up.
When we got to the base of the dome there was a metal cable railing suspended up the route to the top of the rounded back side. It was attached to the rock by a 4 ft tall metal post that wobbled back and forth in the rock as you pulled on the cable There were boards screwed into the stone every few feet. We grabbed onto the loose metal cable, and pulled our way up the back side of the rounded rock to the top. There is a little flat place on the top, where the cable stopped. That is where climbers are supposed to stop their journey, but I was young.
I got down on my hands and knees, and crawled over to the very edge so I could look down! Then I froze–I could not move and sure in the heck could not crawl backwards! My high school sweetheart who had stayed behind dropped down on his but and grabbed my ankles and pulled me away from the edge. We were both scared to &*^%. We walked back down to the valley with an empty water canteen.
When we got to the valley the first thing that greeted us was the news that Hemmingway had died! That was very sad for me because I had been in one of the first H.S english classes that celebrated the “new author”. I still love his work.
Fast forward 63 years and I met with a new medical doctor last winter. He has several pictures of Half Dome in his work area. He is also from California and I feel comfortable with him–he is a young guy who seems to be a very good doctor. I asked him what he likes to do here in MT, and he responded that he enjoyed rock climbing. I looked over at the Half Dome pictures and told him my story. He smiled and responded with “I went up the front”! Gotta give this younger generation credit for the many good things they have expanded and rock climbing is one of those things they have helped to develop.
Congratulations for making that hike in these years!
By link neo mentions Alex Honnold who stood on the shoulders of these giants.
Karmi, such is the way of war. B-2s based in CONUS bombed Serbia.
Beautiful hike.
When I was young and stupid, prior to wife and family, a friend and I hiked the Flume Slide trail, which starts where you visited. It’s a very deceptive trail since it’s about two hours of flat walking to get to the slide and then three hours straight up over large boulders, slippery rocks, and gravel. It’s really, really difficult. The Appalachian Mountain Club strongly recommends against doing it in wet weather and returning by other much easier trails at the top.
Looking back on it, it’s the sort of trail Special Forces would train on. No one else is nuts enough to do it.
Your walk was much more scenic and fun.
For those who are interested, the hike is in northern New Hampshire in the town of Liberty.
back during the Cold war, there were certain targets you cannot hit, the bases in the arctic like polyarny (the one from which red october sailed from) we seem to have forgotten that lesson, I only found out about from greg vistica’s otherwise hack work about Tail hook,
Ah, youth. At least the doctor wasn’t a free-climber. See this.
Two college classmates went hiking in New Hampshire one summer weekend. I forget the details, but Andrea fell/slipped and ended up with a scarred face for life. A shame, because she was rather good-looking. She remained partners with her hiking companion.
Mother Nature needs to be treated with extreme respect.
A cousin who has been in deep SoHo for the last 50 years says that whenever she gets in the countryside, she gets a recurrence of Lyme disease. ( My high school competed in sports with Lyme, the town that gave “Lyme” to Lyme disease.) I tell my cousin that I spent the first part of my life in the countryside (nearest neighbor a quarter mile away) and never had such a problem.
The knee surgery went OKish, but I’m not thrilled with the results. At this point, I’m done with pampering it and I’m pushing it harder. It seems to be responding to that OK, but not without some pain. C’est la vie.
I had seen “Valley Uprising” not long after it came out & loved it. I watched it again before my trip and told my friends about it. It’s available on Tubi TV and RedBull TV for free with commercials. Highly recommended.
Anne,
Great story. My late wife wanted to do the trek you did to the top of Half Dome, but we never made it.
But it reminds me of one that we did some decades ago. Through happenstance, connections and luck, she & I and another couple got these tickets for a 5 day hiking loop through the high country above Tuolumne Meadows. We started at the Meadows and at the end of each day we would arrive at a different camp, with dinner and bunkbeds and breakfast in the morning.
The last day ended at Camp May which has a little lake at high altitude, and a modest peak towering above it. The sensible people were tired and kicked back when we arrived, but my wife saw another peak to be scaled. Off we went.
The incline wasn’t bad at the beginning or middle, but got quite steep near the top. And the trail more or less stopped before the top and there were these large boulders we had to climb over. It looked like it was kind of a conical peak with the tip missing and we had to go to the very top. But with some exhaustion and the difficulty of scaling each of these boulders, I found it easiest to get a good hand hold up high and, springing off of my footing, bolting up to the top of each bolder. Repeat, repeat… and suddenly I found my waist was at the edge of a 2,000 ft. vertical drop straight down. Not a good time to be inattentive.
As Jack Torrence in “The Shining” says, “I mean, a few extra foot-pounds of energy, per second, per second.” And whoosh, I’d have been gone.
I lost a roommate junior year at Boulder to Longs Peak. He, my other roommate, and another guy climbed Longs on spring break. Bivouaced near the summit then started down the north side the next morning. For those not familiar, Longs has an east facing cliff about 1500 ft straight down. Everyone had crampons, ice axes, but the mistake was they were not roped. My roommate slipped and started to slide towards the cliff face. Despite being very experienced, he panicked and did not use his ice axe for self arrest. Rocky Mtn Rescue found his mangled body 2 days later at the base. Cured me of any desire for serious mountaineering.
TommyJay, my husband had a knee replaced two years ago. The first few months were demanding, and it wasn’t until well over a year after surgery that he said he was glad he’d done it. This is a very strong and active man. Hang in there.
So sorry to hear that. The activity is certainly inherently dangerous.
The video of the hike up Vernal Falls brought back many pleasant memories.
I’ve done many of the classic Yosemite climbs. One of the most memorable was Half Dome via the Snake Dike route. My climbing partners and I left Curry Village campground at 7am, were on top of Half Dome by 1pm, and back in camp by 5pm. I was 55 at the time and in very good shape. But I was sore for two days after that climb.
Yoeme is a rock climber’s paradise. Therre’s no place on Earth that offers the variety of climbs of all sorts on good, solid granite in an area where the weather is favorable many months of the year. It’s no wonder that a lot of rock-climbing techniques and equipment were developed by Yosemite regulars. They have one of the best laboratories in the world.
My climbing these days is up and down the stairs in our house, but I have those memories to savor and am grateful that there are such places as Yosemite, Rocky Mountain National Park, Lumpy Ridge, and Boulder Canyon. All beautiful and offering a variety of climbs.
The Flume Gorge hike looks like a wonderful trip. The granite walls are very rugged and interesting. Rushing mountain water is always a delight to the senses. I never did any climbing back East, but certainly read about the climbing spots in New Hampshire and New York. Our nation is blessed with magnificent geography.
physicsguy, I look out the window and see Longs Peak.
Will someone please explain “grade” to me? Is a 15% grade equal to a 15% angle? I suspect not but can’t be sure.
That’s a nice video! Just long enough to give a teasing taste without betraying too much. There are some similar videos concerning certain Iowa parks that have drifted through my feed from time to time. The fact that it’s also labelled ‘Franconia Notch’ also inevitably appeals to me. (But will there be a bowl of Knoedel waiting at the end of the trail? Alas, no….)
• Israeli forces continued clearing operations in Jabalia on May 25. Three Israel Defense Forces (IDF) brigades are in Jabalia.
• The IDF has five brigades operating in Rafah.
• The IDF is moving “more deliberately” [Rafah].. The officers said that the IDF is using “less airpower and artillery, and fewer, smaller bombs,” which forces Israeli soldiers to clear urban areas on foot.
• …the four Hamas battalions in Rafah “are not as well trained” as those in the northern Gaza Strip and “are not an urgent problem.”
• Israeli forces have described the ongoing fighting in the northern Gaza Strip around Jabalia are particularly intense.
Can’t recall when I started reading about the fighting in Jabalia, but it has been long and steady. Was this a new Israeli tactic in this war or a much stiffer resistance than Israel was expecting?
Am finding articles about “captured” Israeli soldiers in Jabalia and about Hamas moving to a “war of attrition” there; however, western media rarely mentions the battle in Jabalia so am not sure about these other sources.
Here is my mountaineering story.
I went on a climb in the Glacier Peak Wilderness Area when I was a Sr. in HS. Everyone else was experience but it was a low technical hike requiring crampons and ice axe and nothing else.
The view from the top was spectacular. The wind came up during the night and the next morning it was howling. I got up to pee and had just finished when a massive wind gust picked me up and blew me several hundred feet down the slope. I ended up on my back with my head pointed down slope wondering WTF had happened when I saw my sleeping bag cover fly by. I started back up the slope picking up various and sundry things when I found my tent mate. He was tangled up in his sleeping bag and the wreckage of the tent. He said he awoke to find himself tumbling end over end all balled up in the tent.
I had lost my gloves and as I couldn’t toboggan down the snow field I was left behind zig-zagging my way down to the tree line when I came across another member of my party. A teenage girl who had split the inseam of her pants from knee to crotch. We continued down the snowpack until we hit the tree line. Then we couldn’t find the trail, so we set off cross country through primeval wilderness old growth cathedral forest. The forest was strewn with massive windfalls like giant six-foot diameter pickup sticks. We could not proceed in any direction. So, I booster her up and climbed up and we walked from windfall to windfall until we reached the road. When we finally reached the cars at dark the rest of the party was extremely relieved. Never did that again.
Will someone please explain “grade” to me? Is a 15% grade equal to a 15% angle?
Rise over run, i.e., a 100% grade is a 45 degree slope. It is easy to measure with a (long) level, put one end at the high part of the trail, level it and measure the height of the other end above the trail.
Open Thread Sunday – Russian war on Ukraine
Russia’s Kharkiv Offensive and Leadership Purge – Shoigu’s removal, Kharkiv & What next for Ukraine? – Perun
Timestamps:
00:00:00 — Opening Words
00:00:59 — What Am I Talking About?
00:02:56 — The Russian Political Context
00:14:15 — The Military Context
00:17:32 — A Quiet Front
00:19:49 — Buildup And Operations
00:32:36 — The Operation Unfolds
00:37:21 — Purpose And Value
00:44:34 — Observations – Russia
00:54:25 — Observations & Recriminations – Ukraine
01:01:11 — What Next?
01:03:18 — Channel Update
Just minutes before the video was taken, Karina was able to send a last message to her best friend and only sister, Sasha. The haunting text urged Sasha to take care of their parents and to remain strong in the case she never returns home.
W.H.O. Fails to Secure Global Pandemic Treaty – Jeez…why can’t America find leaders who can stand up to the UN, W.H.O., etc? Long past time to defund the UN and sent it packing to some place else!
I dunno what happened to the Drudge Report and the Libertarian party. One morning a year or so ago—maybe longer, I woke and checked out the Drudge report and it seemed as if the Democrats must’ve purchased it!?! Keeps getting worse ever since…IMHO.
Some time after the Republicans had sawed off the limb GW Bush had gone out on, and probably around the end of Obama’s term I thought about joining the Libertarian party. Had always heard they were real Right-wing. Maybe I even joined it briefly (don’t recall??)—until one day I got a phone call from them. At the end of that conversation, I told the caller he sounded like a Democrat, and hung-up. Anyway, I’ve been NPA (No-party-affiliation) ever since.
yes he sold out about four years ago, drudge used to be the outlet for samizdat, eccentric news, off the beaten path, as well as the other wires,
as has been pointed out in other places, his reception was mixed, was trump perfect on the liberty score, certainly not, however Federalism allowed a certain level of freedom re the lockdowns, of course you can’t fix the stupid of dewine, and his nurse ratched mary astor, probably noem was the best on that score, with new York and massachussets tied for worst cuomo and charlie parker, as one acquaintance has dubbed baker, of course healey is worse, but thats like choosing your type of poison, on the West Coast, the walking cadaver that wasn’t even an actual doctor, Ferrer, was perhaps the worst as health director,
the first question I think is loaded from the getgo,
the Times big dive, is a thumbsucking piece trying to humanize the butcher sirwar, through the eyes of the dentist in the prison, where he was held, they don’t go austere religious scholar yet, well when a drone hits him maybe,
There was a lot of uproar earlier today about an Israeli strike on a “civilian refugee camp” outside Rafah, in response to missiles fired at Israel from Rafah. Surprise! Two very senior Hamas commanders from the West Bank operations were there, and were eliminated. Hiding among civilians is a Hamas specialty.
California cops have agreed to pay a nearly $1million settlement after they forced a confession out of a mentally unstable man by threatening to kill his dog if he did not falsely admit to murdering his father – who was alive and well.
$900,000 for going thru something like that. As for this ‘criminals’ torturers – ‘The police department has not specified whether the police officers involved will face any repercussions.’ He was psychologically tortured on August 8, 2018.
Thomas Perez Jr was questioned by police for over 17 hours in 2018..
He was told by officers that if he didn’t confess to murdering his father, they would have to put his dog to sleep due to ‘depression’ over witnessing a murder that never occurred.
So common place that the Officers didn’t even believe it was wrong…
Anecdote
Tommy, I assume this is your first knee.
I had a knee replacement in 2014 and the second one in 2022.
The first knee I faithfully went to physical therapy, and spend most of my day in the machine that flexed the knee. Went through a fair amount of oxy. The big mistake was going back to work to soon. Even though I worked at a desk– the lack of movement caused problems.
In 2022 I took no oxy because the surgeon started me on a pain ball– which released pain medicine directly to the knee for the first three or four days and a nerve medicine that seemed to work. I did use excedrin. I also went to physical therapy a total of once.
Instead a bought a cheap recumbent execise bike and used it without any resistance. I think basically the goal is to keep movement to prevent scar tissue from building up. As I increased the ability to flex the knee I moved the seat closer and kept increasing the angle of flexion.
The surgeon on the second knee said he never questioned someone when they decided to do the second knee– because no one would chose to do it unless the pain of walking was worse than the pain of a replacement.
It’s definitely worth it in the end.
There is a website– Bone Smart where people discuss their experience and also don’t ascribe to the idea that the recovery needs to be very painful. Just keep moving.
I did enjoy the story. (HOA member gets clobbered by a lawfare attack from the HOA, sics ChatGPT on HOA, baits a trap, victory ensues.)
I salute HOA member’s resourcefulness. However, I suspect we are heading into a future where we’re all going to need an AI Buddy to help us navigate society.
If reading bizarre analyses is your hobby, then this is one of the strangest political analyses I’ve ever come across, combining points of great historical interest and acuity with incredible blindness (or, to be kinder, foolishness?) though not in equal doses—there is a lot more blindness than there is acuity (OMMV)….
Claire Berlinski with a monster effort trying to rationalize the dangerous conundrum that the country faces in November….
“The Locust Years;
“We have the politicians we deserve. And they have us.”— https://claireberlinski.substack.com/p/the-locust-years
H/T Powerline blog.
Though to be fair, it isn’t really that hard to do…)
Related (Carville and “messaging…”)
In what might be his most important article to date (and that’s saying something), Victor D. Hanson, in a brilliantly reasoned if brutal book review, takes apart piece by piece the left-wing authors of a tendentious, slanderous, fantasy-saturated DIATRIBE, masquerading as a work of “non-fiction”:
“All the rage”— https://newcriterion.com/article/all-the-rage/
H/T Powerline blog.
A “cheap recumbent exercise bike” – never heard of one, but looks a lot easier on the arse than those tiny tight seat standard exercise bikes. Good tip Brian E! Knees are fine, but at 78 it seems that I have gotten a lot lazier.
Got tired & winded just reading about all the hiking & climbing in this thread, and checked for a cheap standard exercise bike yesterday—those seats just look too painful, but the “recumbent” ones look like something I might actually use… 🙂
Oh, happy Memorial Day!!!
Ah the fair claire whose novels are of interests one of them concerned the city of isfahan in the news recently her father is the mathematician david berlinski
but then again she was part of the malaysian grapevine scam against reformist anwar
ibrahim She lets the perfect be the enemy of the good
Hanson as a classisist is well aware of the sophists which schaller and weidman who started out as a speech writer for bill clinton so he knows humiliation first hand
Karmi, I got this one. $150. It’s pretty smooth and quiet.
You’ll never get the resistance out of this you can get with the ones at the gym, but it worked fine for increasing my range of motion on the knee.
A couple of years later I have the same range of motion with both knees. I was remodeling houses after work at the time and it took that long to get enough RoM to be able to work on my knees. I would often times just lay down. Pretty comical.
Since I have a hip bursitis which never quite goes away, my trainer suggested I try the rowing machine. I use both legs at once rather than alternating, which is easier on the hip. I get full range of motion with the knees and an upper-body workout at the same time. I love it so much I bought one. I got the Concept 2, which isn’t cheap, but friends have experience with the cheap ones, and neither they nor the trainer recommend them.
Thanks Brian E! 🙂
Kate, as my knees failed and I had to quite jogging (couple of surgeries and steroid shots later) I had the knee replacement with the idea I would keep running– so I bought a road bike which took the pressure of my knees.
I never liked biking because you have to stay aware– running on the other hand you could kind of drift off and look at the scenery. So I switched to the bikes at the gym (I didn’t like the elliptical machines either).
I agree there is no comparison to this bike and a more expensive one– but it turned out to be quiet, so I could turn on the tv and just work on my range of motion– which required minimal resistance and I wasn’t looking for a cardio workout.
Very minimal electronics, but any more we have watches that will keep track of heart rate and oxygen– so that’s not an issue.
I keep thinking I’m going to get back in shape and start running again– but it’s now been 10 years and I’m not sure I have the will to go through the process of getting back in shape. (I do still miss running.)
There was a world class distance runner that had both knees replaced and he kept doing marathons. (He was only 135 lbs.) He had a blog– and suddenly he quit posting. I assume his steel knees gave out.
Rowing would be good exercise– but doesn’t the machine take up a lot of space?
The rowing machine is long and narrow. I happen to have a place next to a stairwell going down which is just the right length, so the machine doesn’t take up a huge amount of floor space. I was using the one at the gym to get cardio work, in lieu of fast walking, which is what I did before the hip started making trouble. I found I wasn’t getting up, getting respectably dressed, driving to the gym, exercising, and driving home, the three times a week I intended to. Because of the lockdowns, we already had a bench and free weights up in the bonus room over the garage. The rowing machine is over in the corner up there.
I loved rowing. I did a 45 minute class at Row House. But at 750,000 meters, I tore my rotator cuffs in both shoulders. Surgery soon.
Moderation in everything, Cornhead. I’m doing 30 minutes a day to get my heart pumping.
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Israel ignores International Court of Justice *ORDER* – pummels Rafah
Some “900 Hamas terrorists” surrendered in Rafah yesterday, so the pummeling seems to be working…
You “crawled through rocks.” Neo? Maybe I misheard that. It looks beautiful.
Looks beautiful where is it?
Beautiful. Thanks for posting.
Lovely place – my walking these days does not involve canyons, thank goodness, but lots of granite walls are available.
Saw these recently and thought I would drop them in for huxley to ponder.
https://notthebee.com/article/someone-used-the-new-chat-gpt-upgrade-to-nuke-their-homeowners-association-for-targeted-harassment-
Too funny. This guy had the tech savvy to pull off a great stunt.
HOAs delenda est.
https://notthebee.com/article/ladies-and-gentlemen-a-conversation-between-two-chatgpt-bots
They can replace all of CNN, MSNBC, etc — save money and get better reporting.
And maybe replace most college teachers while they are at it.
https://www.racket.news/p/the-overlooked-twitter-files-scandal
On the same general topic, read this post from David Foster, and then the recent series from Matt Taibbi on the breadth and depth of the government-academic-media “anti-disinformation” establishment (in exactly the same sense that Eisenhower warned about the military-industrial(-government) establishment).
Subsidization, Regulation, and AI May 16, 2024 by David Foster
https://chicagoboyz.net/archives/70988.html
This is the introductory post; see individual reports for an increasingly detailed picture of just how much the Left is “fortifying” our news feeds and internet interactions.
https://www.racket.news/p/introducing-the-censorship-files
Some samples:
https://www.racket.news/archive
Censorship Files: “We Have Very Little Evidence About What Works”
Do “anti-disinformation” tactics work? Listen to the experts themselves
Censorship Files: “We Will Not Be Intimidated From Continuing Our Mission in… 2024”
When Stanford’s Election Integrity Partnership stirred up controversy, its participants defiantly planned a rerun for this year
The Overlooked Twitter Files Scandal: How the Intelligence Community Wore Down the Platform
Was Twitter set up by intelligence agencies? A handful of documents casts the conquest of private platforms by security officials in a new light
FOIA Library: The University of Washington
The raw correspondence returned in two Freedom of Information requests to one of America’s biggest sponsors of “anti-disinformation” work, Kate Starbird’s University of Washington
FOIA Files: Garry Kasparov Resigns from Aspen Institute Commission, Compares it to Soviet Committee
“If I’m being honest…This type of approach was common practice in the USSR.”
In other news, we expect a high of 49 on the windy Wyoming plains today, down from 60 yesterday, but better than the day before, which topped out around 40!
I’ll remember these days fondly in July, however, when we hope the NIGHTS will get back down that low!
I’ve also been hiking trails recently, there are a couple of dozen within few miles ranging from easy to ridiculous (50% grade). I stick to the intermediate trails in the hope that I can hike the more challenging trails by fall. I get passed by trail runners and mountain bikers all the time. Ah, youth. Yesterday I did this one.
I saw we were on the same wave lenght
Aesop
https://x.com/SteveGuest/status/1794324401048969465
Imagine if we really had a news media
..lift restrictions on Ukraine’s ability to use Western weapons to strike Russia
It’s insanity to allow the Russians to build up behind their own border for an attack on Ukraine. Ditto on the insanity of allowing Russian jets to launch glide bombs into Ukraine from safety behind their own border. Ukraine should be allowed to blow these jets outta the sky, and destroy any Russian build up close to Ukrainian borders.
Nice hike neo.
Not to be a jerk, but I hiked up to the top of Vernal Falls yesterday morning. On a club trip to Yosemite, Ted & I were the only two in our aged group of 22 to do an actual hike of some difficulty. I’ve been to Yosemite many times with my late wife, but somehow about 20 years slipped by since the last time I was there.
The climb to the top of Vernal used to be quite easy, and was a brief stop on the way to the top of Nevada Falls. That was then. Yesterday, it was quite challenging just to get to the top of Vernal. But not bad for someone who had arthroscopic knee surgery 3 months ago. I enjoyed it very much.
This video was taken 11 months ago, & I’d estimate the water flow rate we had yesterday to be about 80% of that in the video. It’s a very wet climb.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uz2KnVL3504
Hi TommyJay:
On July 2, 1961 my high school sweetheart and I climbed to the top of Half Dome. We had tried to do the climb the day before and checked in at the little ranger shed to tell the ranger we were going up. Somehow the subject of my asthma came up and the ranger told us we could not go up.
Being that we were two seventeen-year-olds, who had just graduated high school the month before we were boldly adventurous. We came up with an alternate plan. We waited until the next morning and walked onto the trail before the ranger shed opened. We had one canteen of water. We walked past the falls you just hiked and kept going up.
When we got to the base of the dome there was a metal cable railing suspended up the route to the top of the rounded back side. It was attached to the rock by a 4 ft tall metal post that wobbled back and forth in the rock as you pulled on the cable There were boards screwed into the stone every few feet. We grabbed onto the loose metal cable, and pulled our way up the back side of the rounded rock to the top. There is a little flat place on the top, where the cable stopped. That is where climbers are supposed to stop their journey, but I was young.
I got down on my hands and knees, and crawled over to the very edge so I could look down! Then I froze–I could not move and sure in the heck could not crawl backwards! My high school sweetheart who had stayed behind dropped down on his but and grabbed my ankles and pulled me away from the edge. We were both scared to &*^%. We walked back down to the valley with an empty water canteen.
When we got to the valley the first thing that greeted us was the news that Hemmingway had died! That was very sad for me because I had been in one of the first H.S english classes that celebrated the “new author”. I still love his work.
Fast forward 63 years and I met with a new medical doctor last winter. He has several pictures of Half Dome in his work area. He is also from California and I feel comfortable with him–he is a young guy who seems to be a very good doctor. I asked him what he likes to do here in MT, and he responded that he enjoyed rock climbing. I looked over at the Half Dome pictures and told him my story. He smiled and responded with “I went up the front”! Gotta give this younger generation credit for the many good things they have expanded and rock climbing is one of those things they have helped to develop.
Congratulations for making that hike in these years!
https://thenationalpulse.com/2024/05/25/wapo-debunks-nyt-alitos-upside-down-flag-was-over-neighborhood-dispute-not-politics/?feed_id=7049&_unique_id=66521441e3322
TommyJay:
Glad your knee surgery went well.
Anne:
Ah, youth.
At least the doctor wasn’t a free-climber. See this.
Re: Yosemite
TommyJay, Anne:
I’m not a climber, but I was fascinated by this documentary about a rebel group of Yosemite climbers who innovated a new world of climbing in the 70s
–“Valley Uprising” (2014)
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3784160/
By link neo mentions Alex Honnold who stood on the shoulders of these giants.
Karmi, such is the way of war. B-2s based in CONUS bombed Serbia.
Beautiful hike.
When I was young and stupid, prior to wife and family, a friend and I hiked the Flume Slide trail, which starts where you visited. It’s a very deceptive trail since it’s about two hours of flat walking to get to the slide and then three hours straight up over large boulders, slippery rocks, and gravel. It’s really, really difficult. The Appalachian Mountain Club strongly recommends against doing it in wet weather and returning by other much easier trails at the top.
Looking back on it, it’s the sort of trail Special Forces would train on. No one else is nuts enough to do it.
Your walk was much more scenic and fun.
For those who are interested, the hike is in northern New Hampshire in the town of Liberty.
back during the Cold war, there were certain targets you cannot hit, the bases in the arctic like polyarny (the one from which red october sailed from) we seem to have forgotten that lesson, I only found out about from greg vistica’s otherwise hack work about Tail hook,
Ah, youth. At least the doctor wasn’t a free-climber. See this.
Two college classmates went hiking in New Hampshire one summer weekend. I forget the details, but Andrea fell/slipped and ended up with a scarred face for life. A shame, because she was rather good-looking. She remained partners with her hiking companion.
Mother Nature needs to be treated with extreme respect.
A cousin who has been in deep SoHo for the last 50 years says that whenever she gets in the countryside, she gets a recurrence of Lyme disease. ( My high school competed in sports with Lyme, the town that gave “Lyme” to Lyme disease.) I tell my cousin that I spent the first part of my life in the countryside (nearest neighbor a quarter mile away) and never had such a problem.
The knee surgery went OKish, but I’m not thrilled with the results. At this point, I’m done with pampering it and I’m pushing it harder. It seems to be responding to that OK, but not without some pain. C’est la vie.
I had seen “Valley Uprising” not long after it came out & loved it. I watched it again before my trip and told my friends about it. It’s available on Tubi TV and RedBull TV for free with commercials. Highly recommended.
Anne,
Great story. My late wife wanted to do the trek you did to the top of Half Dome, but we never made it.
But it reminds me of one that we did some decades ago. Through happenstance, connections and luck, she & I and another couple got these tickets for a 5 day hiking loop through the high country above Tuolumne Meadows. We started at the Meadows and at the end of each day we would arrive at a different camp, with dinner and bunkbeds and breakfast in the morning.
The last day ended at Camp May which has a little lake at high altitude, and a modest peak towering above it. The sensible people were tired and kicked back when we arrived, but my wife saw another peak to be scaled. Off we went.
The incline wasn’t bad at the beginning or middle, but got quite steep near the top. And the trail more or less stopped before the top and there were these large boulders we had to climb over. It looked like it was kind of a conical peak with the tip missing and we had to go to the very top. But with some exhaustion and the difficulty of scaling each of these boulders, I found it easiest to get a good hand hold up high and, springing off of my footing, bolting up to the top of each bolder. Repeat, repeat… and suddenly I found my waist was at the edge of a 2,000 ft. vertical drop straight down. Not a good time to be inattentive.
As Jack Torrence in “The Shining” says, “I mean, a few extra foot-pounds of energy, per second, per second.” And whoosh, I’d have been gone.
I lost a roommate junior year at Boulder to Longs Peak. He, my other roommate, and another guy climbed Longs on spring break. Bivouaced near the summit then started down the north side the next morning. For those not familiar, Longs has an east facing cliff about 1500 ft straight down. Everyone had crampons, ice axes, but the mistake was they were not roped. My roommate slipped and started to slide towards the cliff face. Despite being very experienced, he panicked and did not use his ice axe for self arrest. Rocky Mtn Rescue found his mangled body 2 days later at the base. Cured me of any desire for serious mountaineering.
TommyJay, my husband had a knee replaced two years ago. The first few months were demanding, and it wasn’t until well over a year after surgery that he said he was glad he’d done it. This is a very strong and active man. Hang in there.
https://youtu.be/nmUy-DzFcm0?si=4IYZvgUYylXLCvEO
Smith Falls State Park, Nebraska.
physicsguy:
So sorry to hear that. The activity is certainly inherently dangerous.
The video of the hike up Vernal Falls brought back many pleasant memories.
I’ve done many of the classic Yosemite climbs. One of the most memorable was Half Dome via the Snake Dike route. My climbing partners and I left Curry Village campground at 7am, were on top of Half Dome by 1pm, and back in camp by 5pm. I was 55 at the time and in very good shape. But I was sore for two days after that climb.
Yoeme is a rock climber’s paradise. Therre’s no place on Earth that offers the variety of climbs of all sorts on good, solid granite in an area where the weather is favorable many months of the year. It’s no wonder that a lot of rock-climbing techniques and equipment were developed by Yosemite regulars. They have one of the best laboratories in the world.
My climbing these days is up and down the stairs in our house, but I have those memories to savor and am grateful that there are such places as Yosemite, Rocky Mountain National Park, Lumpy Ridge, and Boulder Canyon. All beautiful and offering a variety of climbs.
The Flume Gorge hike looks like a wonderful trip. The granite walls are very rugged and interesting. Rushing mountain water is always a delight to the senses. I never did any climbing back East, but certainly read about the climbing spots in New Hampshire and New York. Our nation is blessed with magnificent geography.
physicsguy, I look out the window and see Longs Peak.
Will someone please explain “grade” to me? Is a 15% grade equal to a 15% angle? I suspect not but can’t be sure.
That’s a nice video! Just long enough to give a teasing taste without betraying too much. There are some similar videos concerning certain Iowa parks that have drifted through my feed from time to time. The fact that it’s also labelled ‘Franconia Notch’ also inevitably appeals to me. (But will there be a bowl of Knoedel waiting at the end of the trail? Alas, no….)
ISW’s Iran Update, May 25, 2024 – Snippets:
Can’t recall when I started reading about the fighting in Jabalia, but it has been long and steady. Was this a new Israeli tactic in this war or a much stiffer resistance than Israel was expecting?
Am finding articles about “captured” Israeli soldiers in Jabalia and about Hamas moving to a “war of attrition” there; however, western media rarely mentions the battle in Jabalia so am not sure about these other sources.
Here is my mountaineering story.
I went on a climb in the Glacier Peak Wilderness Area when I was a Sr. in HS. Everyone else was experience but it was a low technical hike requiring crampons and ice axe and nothing else.
The view from the top was spectacular. The wind came up during the night and the next morning it was howling. I got up to pee and had just finished when a massive wind gust picked me up and blew me several hundred feet down the slope. I ended up on my back with my head pointed down slope wondering WTF had happened when I saw my sleeping bag cover fly by. I started back up the slope picking up various and sundry things when I found my tent mate. He was tangled up in his sleeping bag and the wreckage of the tent. He said he awoke to find himself tumbling end over end all balled up in the tent.
I had lost my gloves and as I couldn’t toboggan down the snow field I was left behind zig-zagging my way down to the tree line when I came across another member of my party. A teenage girl who had split the inseam of her pants from knee to crotch. We continued down the snowpack until we hit the tree line. Then we couldn’t find the trail, so we set off cross country through primeval wilderness old growth cathedral forest. The forest was strewn with massive windfalls like giant six-foot diameter pickup sticks. We could not proceed in any direction. So, I booster her up and climbed up and we walked from windfall to windfall until we reached the road. When we finally reached the cars at dark the rest of the party was extremely relieved. Never did that again.
Will someone please explain “grade” to me? Is a 15% grade equal to a 15% angle?
Rise over run, i.e., a 100% grade is a 45 degree slope. It is easy to measure with a (long) level, put one end at the high part of the trail, level it and measure the height of the other end above the trail.
Open Thread Sunday – Russian war on Ukraine
Russia’s Kharkiv Offensive and Leadership Purge – Shoigu’s removal, Kharkiv & What next for Ukraine? – Perun
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=829nvzjbPPA
Karina was in an army base on the border of Gaza when she was kidnapped – I noticed Karina for the first time last week – in a news report about her Hamas captors threatening to kill and/or rape her & four other young women: ‘You’re so beautiful.. the girls who can get pregnant’:
W.H.O. Fails to Secure Global Pandemic Treaty – Jeez…why can’t America find leaders who can stand up to the UN, W.H.O., etc? Long past time to defund the UN and sent it packing to some place else!
https://x.com/JewishWarrior13/status/1794737831534907891
You are not supposed to see behind the curtain.
https://legalinsurrection.com/2024/05/lithium-battery-fire-smoulders-in-san-diego-area-warehouse-wont-be-extinguished-for-weeks/
I dunno what happened to the Drudge Report and the Libertarian party. One morning a year or so ago—maybe longer, I woke and checked out the Drudge report and it seemed as if the Democrats must’ve purchased it!?! Keeps getting worse ever since…IMHO.
Some time after the Republicans had sawed off the limb GW Bush had gone out on, and probably around the end of Obama’s term I thought about joining the Libertarian party. Had always heard they were real Right-wing. Maybe I even joined it briefly (don’t recall??)—until one day I got a phone call from them. At the end of that conversation, I told the caller he sounded like a Democrat, and hung-up. Anyway, I’ve been NPA (No-party-affiliation) ever since.
Florida Voter Registration – By Party Affiliation: ‘REP – 5,243,299, DEM – 4,351,265, NPA – 3,533,149’.
Donald Trump Tells Libertarians to Choose Him as Presidential Nominee – they’re booing him and he keeps speaking, seemingly w/o losing a beat… 🙂 🙂
yes he sold out about four years ago, drudge used to be the outlet for samizdat, eccentric news, off the beaten path, as well as the other wires,
as has been pointed out in other places, his reception was mixed, was trump perfect on the liberty score, certainly not, however Federalism allowed a certain level of freedom re the lockdowns, of course you can’t fix the stupid of dewine, and his nurse ratched mary astor, probably noem was the best on that score, with new York and massachussets tied for worst cuomo and charlie parker, as one acquaintance has dubbed baker, of course healey is worse, but thats like choosing your type of poison, on the West Coast, the walking cadaver that wasn’t even an actual doctor, Ferrer, was perhaps the worst as health director,
fwiw
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2024/05/the-soul-of-moderation.php
the first question I think is loaded from the getgo,
the Times big dive, is a thumbsucking piece trying to humanize the butcher sirwar, through the eyes of the dentist in the prison, where he was held, they don’t go austere religious scholar yet, well when a drone hits him maybe,
There was a lot of uproar earlier today about an Israeli strike on a “civilian refugee camp” outside Rafah, in response to missiles fired at Israel from Rafah. Surprise! Two very senior Hamas commanders from the West Bank operations were there, and were eliminated. Hiding among civilians is a Hamas specialty.
https://www.foxnews.com/world/israeli-airstrike-rafah-kills-2-top-hamas-commanders-dozens-civilians
https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2024/05/26/farage-sparks-leftist-meltdown-after-stating-growing-number-of-muslims-loathe-british-values/
Justice .. American Style – California cops threaten to kill man’s dog if he does not falsely confess to killing father – who was still alive
$900,000 for going thru something like that. As for this ‘criminals’ torturers – ‘The police department has not specified whether the police officers involved will face any repercussions.’ He was psychologically tortured on August 8, 2018.
So common place that the Officers didn’t even believe it was wrong…
Anecdote
Tommy, I assume this is your first knee.
I had a knee replacement in 2014 and the second one in 2022.
The first knee I faithfully went to physical therapy, and spend most of my day in the machine that flexed the knee. Went through a fair amount of oxy. The big mistake was going back to work to soon. Even though I worked at a desk– the lack of movement caused problems.
In 2022 I took no oxy because the surgeon started me on a pain ball– which released pain medicine directly to the knee for the first three or four days and a nerve medicine that seemed to work. I did use excedrin. I also went to physical therapy a total of once.
Instead a bought a cheap recumbent execise bike and used it without any resistance. I think basically the goal is to keep movement to prevent scar tissue from building up. As I increased the ability to flex the knee I moved the seat closer and kept increasing the angle of flexion.
The surgeon on the second knee said he never questioned someone when they decided to do the second knee– because no one would chose to do it unless the pain of walking was worse than the pain of a replacement.
It’s definitely worth it in the end.
There is a website– Bone Smart where people discuss their experience and also don’t ascribe to the idea that the recovery needs to be very painful. Just keep moving.
https://bonesmart.org/forum/view/knee-surgery-recovery-area.9/
Regarding the LP of New Hampshire convention. I think the backdrop to their podium says it all— “Become Ungovernable”.
Does anyone take Libertarians seriously?
Here’s Viva Frei’s take on it:
Libertarians HECKLE Trump, Act Like Leftist Children, Then Get Absolutely ROASTED!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7v6ex5z_Fg
Re: AI / HOAs delenda est
AesopFan:
I did enjoy the story. (HOA member gets clobbered by a lawfare attack from the HOA, sics ChatGPT on HOA, baits a trap, victory ensues.)
I salute HOA member’s resourcefulness. However, I suspect we are heading into a future where we’re all going to need an AI Buddy to help us navigate society.
If reading bizarre analyses is your hobby, then this is one of the strangest political analyses I’ve ever come across, combining points of great historical interest and acuity with incredible blindness (or, to be kinder, foolishness?) though not in equal doses—there is a lot more blindness than there is acuity (OMMV)….
Claire Berlinski with a monster effort trying to rationalize the dangerous conundrum that the country faces in November….
“The Locust Years;
“We have the politicians we deserve. And they have us.”—
https://claireberlinski.substack.com/p/the-locust-years
H/T Powerline blog.
+ Bonus (far shorter than Berlinski’s version of War and Peace, above)…
James Carville, somewhat shockingly, somehow finds fit to come up with a bit of truth…
“Democratic strategist James Carville blasts own party — again: ‘Messaging is full of s–t’”—
https://nypost.com/2024/05/26/us-news/dem-strategist-james-carville-says-partys-messaging-is-full-of-s-t/
Though to be fair, it isn’t really that hard to do…)
Related (Carville and “messaging…”)
In what might be his most important article to date (and that’s saying something), Victor D. Hanson, in a brilliantly reasoned if brutal book review, takes apart piece by piece the left-wing authors of a tendentious, slanderous, fantasy-saturated DIATRIBE, masquerading as a work of “non-fiction”:
“All the rage”—
https://newcriterion.com/article/all-the-rage/
H/T Powerline blog.
A “cheap recumbent exercise bike” – never heard of one, but looks a lot easier on the arse than those tiny tight seat standard exercise bikes. Good tip Brian E! Knees are fine, but at 78 it seems that I have gotten a lot lazier.
Got tired & winded just reading about all the hiking & climbing in this thread, and checked for a cheap standard exercise bike yesterday—those seats just look too painful, but the “recumbent” ones look like something I might actually use… 🙂
Oh, happy Memorial Day!!!
Ah the fair claire whose novels are of interests one of them concerned the city of isfahan in the news recently her father is the mathematician david berlinski
but then again she was part of the malaysian grapevine scam against reformist anwar
ibrahim She lets the perfect be the enemy of the good
Hanson as a classisist is well aware of the sophists which schaller and weidman who started out as a speech writer for bill clinton so he knows humiliation first hand
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2024/05/26/of-heat-engines-and-refrigerators/
The funny thing about Carville is that he clearly has NO IDEA what his party currently IS, what it represents or what it aims to actually accomplish…
Carville know, what he has wrought, yet he still does it anyones, was Karl Rove better, well he can barely fit in Carville’s gullet so,
https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/israel/2024/05/rude-and-crude-but-definitely-justified/
Karmi, I got this one. $150. It’s pretty smooth and quiet.
You’ll never get the resistance out of this you can get with the ones at the gym, but it worked fine for increasing my range of motion on the knee.
A couple of years later I have the same range of motion with both knees. I was remodeling houses after work at the time and it took that long to get enough RoM to be able to work on my knees. I would often times just lay down. Pretty comical.
https://www.walmart.com/ip/Marcy-ME709-Recumbent-Magnetic-Exercise-Bike-Cycling-Home-Gym-Equipment/11820039?athbdg=L1700&from=/search
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2024/05/27/america-to-lift-ban-selling-offensive-weapons-saudi-arabia/
Since I have a hip bursitis which never quite goes away, my trainer suggested I try the rowing machine. I use both legs at once rather than alternating, which is easier on the hip. I get full range of motion with the knees and an upper-body workout at the same time. I love it so much I bought one. I got the Concept 2, which isn’t cheap, but friends have experience with the cheap ones, and neither they nor the trainer recommend them.
Thanks Brian E! 🙂
Kate, as my knees failed and I had to quite jogging (couple of surgeries and steroid shots later) I had the knee replacement with the idea I would keep running– so I bought a road bike which took the pressure of my knees.
I never liked biking because you have to stay aware– running on the other hand you could kind of drift off and look at the scenery. So I switched to the bikes at the gym (I didn’t like the elliptical machines either).
I agree there is no comparison to this bike and a more expensive one– but it turned out to be quiet, so I could turn on the tv and just work on my range of motion– which required minimal resistance and I wasn’t looking for a cardio workout.
Very minimal electronics, but any more we have watches that will keep track of heart rate and oxygen– so that’s not an issue.
I keep thinking I’m going to get back in shape and start running again– but it’s now been 10 years and I’m not sure I have the will to go through the process of getting back in shape. (I do still miss running.)
There was a world class distance runner that had both knees replaced and he kept doing marathons. (He was only 135 lbs.) He had a blog– and suddenly he quit posting. I assume his steel knees gave out.
Rowing would be good exercise– but doesn’t the machine take up a lot of space?
The rowing machine is long and narrow. I happen to have a place next to a stairwell going down which is just the right length, so the machine doesn’t take up a huge amount of floor space. I was using the one at the gym to get cardio work, in lieu of fast walking, which is what I did before the hip started making trouble. I found I wasn’t getting up, getting respectably dressed, driving to the gym, exercising, and driving home, the three times a week I intended to. Because of the lockdowns, we already had a bench and free weights up in the bonus room over the garage. The rowing machine is over in the corner up there.
I loved rowing. I did a 45 minute class at Row House. But at 750,000 meters, I tore my rotator cuffs in both shoulders. Surgery soon.
Moderation in everything, Cornhead. I’m doing 30 minutes a day to get my heart pumping.