SkookumTree
11mo ago
Hmm. My questions are rather obscure, but someone might be able to give me some advice here. I do have them - I've just been asking them on different forums. I've been putting off writing to people that have completed the Brooks Range Wilderness Ski Classic - I need to get on that, thanks for reminding me.
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What type of snow is commonly found in the Brooks Range in Northern Alaska? I've heard that it was generally homogenous depth hoar or sugar snow, but don't know for sure. If it is depth hoar, is it possible to pile a lot of it up, pack it down with skis, and build a snow cave or quinzee out of it? For what it's worth, I built more than a few of these as a kid.
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How common are avalanches in that area, given the snow conditions? I am guessing not uncommon; most of the trip will be on the flat but there is going to be a mountain/pass crossing involved.
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How likely are bear encounters in Arctic Village or Sagwon in February? I know that bears should be hibernating at that time, and polar bears rarely travel that far south.
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River travel: I've read that travel on the Sheenjek River is dangerous when it is 10 below zero, but safe when it is 40 below. Much of the water in the Sheenjek River comes from upwelling groundwater, and this erodes any ice that forms. Are other rivers in this region of Alaska fueled by upwelling groundwater and similarly dangerous? If they are - how do you tell that you're on a river (vs. flat ground) and how do you balance this hazard vs. avalanche hazard?
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Generally speaking, is the avalanche danger any greater or less in March in this region than it is in February?
I suppose that I might also want to post about some items I'm interested in purchasing. Namely, men's medium or large 8000-meter expedition grade down pants and a sleeping bag rated to 40 degrees below zero. Also, a Primus OmniLite stove pump. I wouldn't exactly suspect any of y'all have this kind of esoteric and specialized shit just laying around.
I hope that I'm at least at Chris McCandless tier here.
SkookumTree
1yr ago
Autistic guys can slay.
Maybe if they're fairly good looking, tall, and insanely dedicated - I'm talking at least as determined as a Navy SEAL. Since they were in single digits. The kind of person that could write courses on communication and facial expressions. The kind of person that makes a social blunder once a decade while sober. The kind of person that can inspire people, ironically, to endure Hock-level privation for no good goddamn reason. As far as I'm concerned, every word and gesture a neurotypical makes is a performance not much less graceful than that of a concert pianist or professional ballet dancer, and they can often inspire people to endure immense hardship in order to make them happy.
As far as positive comments: people almost unanimously said that it was stupid; many had respect for it but thought it was no less stupid.
SkookumTree
1yr ago
hmm. The hock is indirectly going to help me have charm, poise, and cool. After you've almost died in the fucking alaskan wilderness, a lot of things seem trivial by comparison. I hope I'll be more determined, more conscientious, and less neurotic. I suppose it'd be good if the least graceful five percent or so of teenagers decided to undertake a challenge as dangerous as the Hock, although everyone rolls their own Hock. Doesn't have to be wilderness, even.
SkookumTree
1yr ago
UMC: upper middle class
And why are you fundamentally willing to die over your awkwardness?
Personal convictions.
SkookumTree
1yr ago
You do fully understand that completing the Hock will not make you not awkward? It won't directly or indirectly help awkwardness at all.
It will potentially make me more conscientious: the attitude that lets me survive the Hock might let me pay a shitload of attention in social situations so I don't miss anything.
Do you understand that it will make you only slightly more attractive to women? Slightly and in a very limited way, which will be quickly undone and reversed if you try to milk it.
Yes. The Hock is going to freeze most or all of the hypocrisy off of me, but not much of the awkwardness. I'll probably be less neurotic.
SkookumTree
1yr ago
Women’s suffrage happened first in states where there were less women.
Wasn't that due to powerful madams getting women the right to vote in places like Wyoming?
SkookumTree
1yr ago
I spoke to a friend earlier today. She could tell I was on the spectrum but found it hard to describe exactly what made it apparent to her. After talking a while, she said that I always paused before I said something, or before I smiled. It was probably that deliberateness that was a tell. She did make it clear that there was nothing I had done (or failed to do) that was offensive in any way, although I'm reasonably sure that there's proto-offensive shit that doesn't rise to the level of conscious thought and is difficult, but not impossible, to put into words. Ekman and his team might be able to do it.
I also don't think all that many people can put into words the things that I do or say that make people think I'm autistic, or that offend people. If I had to guess, maybe ten percent of psychiatrists or psychologists, and maybe one average person in a few hundred.
I still think that a true UMC gentleman - like aristocracy in ages past - has things that they are fundamentally willing to die over. Like, a lot of duels were fought over things like "honor". I'm well aware that there were plenty of off-ramps in the dueling process that allowed both participants to be satisfied gentlemen. In the case of pistol duels the duelists didn't always shoot straight, and dueling pistols weren't usually that accurate. Even so, quite a few promising young gentlemen met a premature end on the dueling ground.
As a Hockist: perhaps a decent ideal to strive for is better to die than do your utmost to be graceful. It seems fitting and proper for an awkward person to adopt this as an ideal...at least until he is no longer awkward. The Hock is an idiotic and meaningless way to prove that I've got a high level of grit and determination.
I'm also guessing that many of you would think that my view of the 'UMC gentleman' - or the 'petty aristocracy' he described of people with two college educated parents - is out of whack and some fever-dream cross between Japanese bushido and what we think Victorian-era gentlemanly conduct was. And that if pressed, maybe a couple of awkward UMC dudes in a hundred would go on the Hock even if they were guaranteed to not be awkward after.
What's your take?
SkookumTree
1yr ago
I am like 95% sure that it's better for the woman to be in a relationship with the nice but awkward and kind of ugly dude. The 5 percent is basically me wondering if there was some very non-obvious way that the nice, awkward guy sucks as a partner; "treats her right" I am kind of doubtful about but we'll say that he doesn't hit her or yell at her and genuinely tries to be a good dude. Maybe he's not all that effective at it, but his heart's in the right place.
SkookumTree
1yr ago
There are almost certainly anatomically and mentally normal women who would happily date you if you keep working out and dress decently, especially since you'll be a doctor unless the Hock kills you.
Yes, I am well aware that there are desperately poor women in Cambodia or Thailand or hell, rural India who would date a man they are deeply and viscerally disgusted by in order to pull themselves and their families out of crushing Third World poverty. This is one hell of a sacrifice, I admire the hell out of that kind of resolve, and I don't think I'm worthy of it. I've met maybe a handful of people that are...maybe one percent of the population? Two? I'd sure as hell say that most of the people reading this ain't worthy of that, even though I think most people here are fine people and decent human beings.
SkookumTree
1yr ago
Typically when a person recognises that their belief is offensive, ridiculous and wrong, they stop believing in it as a result.
I don't believe this. I think that being in a physically abusive relationship is a good deal worse than being with an autistic guy that genuinely tries hard to be a good dude and is functional enough to hold a decent job. However, what I'm willing to consider is that there might be extremely non-obvious ways in which a relationship with our autistic hero sucks donkey balls.
Note that your claim that loneliness is as bad as 15 cigarettes a day directly contradicts your earlier repeated claim that it's better for a woman to be alone than to be in a relationship with an unattractive, awkward man. You can't have it both ways.
No, it's very possible to be lonely AF while in a relationship.
SkookumTree
1yr ago
She is still going to be disgusted twice over, as I am now: by my unattractiveness, and by my hypocrisy. Why not attempt the Hock and if I survive, marry a Filipina or a Columbian? I also kind of like the idea that awkward or unattractive people - especially awkward and unattractive men - should choose their own Hock or at least seriously consider it. The pointlessness is the point.
SkookumTree
1yr ago
I believe you; I have said many times before that the Hock is pointless physical suffering and risk. I don't think many people will be impressed by my having completed the Hock. They'll think I am either lying, or crazy. It's the effects of the Hock on my character and personality that are going to make the difference for me: having endured pointless suffering and mortal danger, I am now worthy of love in a way that I was not before the Hock. I've described the idea that my desire for sex and relationships is fundamentally hypocritical at the moment (because I'm asking someone to endure some gross shit I'm not OK with doing myself) and disgusting (because I think this form of hypocrisy is a little gross). Yes, there's also the disgust that comes from the very unattractive (and this is NOT just physical!) wanting sex and relationships, but my motivation for the Hock is basically that it'll freeze the hypocrisy and a bit of the disgust off of me. I've also always been curious about how I'd fare in a Bear Grylls-style survival situation/polar expedition type deal, and this is the time to either do my business, or vacate the throne...
SkookumTree
1yr ago
I guess I'd misspoken here: I wasn't referring to Bronze Age peoples justifying their pillaging and looting, but others...the Romans, the British, the French, the Spanish. The Vikings. Plenty of documentation there, much of it in English, about exactly what these people thought as they pillaged and looted. It doesn't seem that much of a stretch to say that people in the Bronze Age were also pillaging and looting shamelessly.
SkookumTree
1yr ago
I have heard that Alaska Natives respect him for attempting to live with the land; any knowledge of that?
SkookumTree
1yr ago
Yeah, I'm from the northeast US, not an Alaskan. Never even set foot in the state. A few people from the SSC Discord have seen pictures of me: Cypren and SomethingElse for sure. Skeward possibly, I don't recall who else.
SkookumTree
1yr ago
portrayal of its inhabitants as people who killed, looted, and enslaved without a second thought
I don't know; you can find plenty of primary source material from individuals and groups of people that were out killing, looting, and enslaving. They justified themselves in lots of different ways - but pillaging and looting and killing, especially in war, wasn't exactly uncommon in the past.
SkookumTree
1yr ago
Kek. Sure, it'd soar...
more seriously, it would soar for a while, then crash, and then settle at a new and possibly lower baseline after they'd cleaned the worst of the tweakers out. I suppose it could be an expensive as hell way to flush people with a propensity to meth addiction out of your armed forces.
SkookumTree
1yr ago
Eh. Limit it to 50 mg/day/soldier, 100 with approval of IDK a medical guy and a Captain or above. Special Forces get to do what they want within reason. Like shit has value but we don't want a tweaker army either. You also are going to have a lot of veterans with Adderall dependencies and you will need to address that somehow too.
SkookumTree
1yr ago
Sure. Now your war is being fought essentially by tweakers. That...can work, for certain values of work; Nazi Germany used meth'd up soldiers for their Blitzkrieg and the Imperial Japanese used it as well. However, they kind of acted like savages. I think that you could have soldiers judiciously using shit like this and do OK but you can't have a whole damn tweaker army. There's a limit to 'average mgs/day of amphetamine/soldier' you can have and still have a decent army.
SkookumTree
1yr ago
Things that would be risky or deadly in 1950 are actually not risky or deadly now, from sex (safer from pregnancy and disease, but far more restrictions on it then ca. 1970)
Hmm. With respect to sex, it was probably least consequential (socially and physically) from the late 60s until maybe 1985 or so, with the rise of AIDS.
physical activities (we can fix injuries we couldn't before)
As far as physical activity: trauma medicine is great at saving lives and also a very mixed bag. For the most part, if you're alive after suffering an injury that would've killed you in your father's time, you're going to be crippled for life and in chronic pain.
I think that a lot of it is that the Boomers were the first generation, or one of the first, to grow up in a world where the idea that no parent should have to bury a child was an accepted truism.
SkookumTree
1yr ago
Said soldiers now need access to the Ritalin. It's not a great analogy but think about shit like type 1 diabetes and insulin, or hell stuff like depression that's stable on SSRIs. Sure, we might have the logistics capability to keep ADHD troops supplied with Adderall for months and months, and the shit can be vacuum sealed or something to last for years. However it's something else that can go wrong in your war operation.
I'm not doubting that the US has the industrial capacity - puny as it is - and the logistics capacity to start making Adderall by the ton and shipping it to soldiers, however.
SkookumTree
1yr ago
Not only the medical records themselves. Yes, 25 years ago, it was pretty likely that the records of Private Scuffedup's ADHD treatment only existed in a single doctor's office in Peoria instead of a nationwide system. Yes, the system was designed to weed out the very unhealthy when most of the concerns were about weeding out malnourished and literally retarded recruits. You also have more medical treatment for things like ADHD and autism. I wouldn't have been diagnosed if I'd been born 20 years earlier; the guy on Ritalin now might've just been called "rowdy" and either grown out of it or not. At some point they'll figure out something that works. If there's a real war, God help us, we'll be handing out waivers like candy.
SkookumTree
1yr ago
For every Chris McCandless, there are probably a hundred dead fools that aren't made famous like this and don't have pilgrimages.
SkookumTree
1yr ago
Jesus. If I survive the Hock and then get a girlfriend, and manosphere types then pile onto the Hock...
Andrew Tate 2.0 in the Alaskan wilderness as a kind of Bear Grylls-esque manosphere grifter is going to be dangerous. That'd get a lot of few young dudes killed. I'd probably be collateral damage as the first jackass to do this, too.
No. I said I was like 95% certain that a woman in a relationship with such a man suffers much less than a woman in a relationship with a man who literally beats her up. The other 5 percent is basically some devil's advocate stuff like "maybe he is so incompetent socially that he makes her isolated and miserable, and that's worse than being beat up" or some stuff like that. It most definitely can be very charitably considered a stretch; I'm simply leaving the option open that there is some very non-obvious way that Awkward Andy is a worse partner than that Henry guy from Radicalizing the Romanceless. Personally, I'm stumped, Andy's got to be better as a partner than Henry and Henry's just a fucking con man to Andy's crap marketing. However, I was sort of hoping that someone here would come up with some eloquent argument for how Awkward Andy sucks rotting donkey balls as a partner in a way that is very much not obvious at first glance. I can't think of it, to be honest, although admit to perhaps being unable to grok just how Awkward Andy might suck in some sort of weird illegible way that ultimately cashes out to worse than being in an ER with a black eye and broken arm courtesy of Henry.
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