Three things I read this week

Globalization, K2 mountaineering disaster, Soviet anecdote

Greetings friends

Henceforth I’m going to send out a weekly missive highlighting three things I’ve read and enjoyed (or found downright loathsome). Plus memes. Also, prepare in advance to receive more than three things if I’m feeling expansive.

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1 - No Way Down

Running a marathon got me thinking about other extreme sports, and this mental slide brought me to mountaineering. It only took 15 or 20 YouTube videos to figure out that K2 is the final boss, so I bought a book about one of the worst tragedies to happen on the mountain. I read it in a few days and here’s what I think.

The problem with No Way Down is that there’s no easy way to recount these events. With several dozen climbers involved there are too many names to remember. And the most interesting perspectives would come from the people who are all too dead to tell their story. What were they thinking in their final moments? Did they regret their mountaineering lifestyle? Did they face the great abyss bravely? Or were they so numb at the end that they slipped into the eternal black as easily as a cat slips into a nap?

3/5 stars, only recommended if you love getting colded to death, climbing ice cliffs, making oxygen deprived mistakes, or getting hit by avalanches.

2 - You’ll have your globalization and be happy

This article makes a classic error: it equates material wealth with happiness.

Contrary to populist narratives about “globalists” the world over exploiting the proverbial “little guy,” the happier truth is that globalization loves those with the least more passionately than it does any other economic subset. And if readers doubt this, they need only drive the poorest streets of any city anywhere in the world, only to watch what the people are doing when they’re not working: most are looking down at the supercomputers that fit in their pockets, and that provide them with staggering amounts of information for prices that continue to fall.

I find it frustrating when people like this author say “everyone has an iPhone, this is a golden age,” yet they catastrophically fail to account for all of the non-physical experiences that make life enjoyable.

The breakdown in traditional relationships, the deterioration of community, the impoverishment of morals. The latest dipshitty tech ain’t gonna make you Mr. Magnanimous if you don’t have any friends and your last date happened under Obama’s administration.

3 - NS Lyons interview

NS Lyons wrote the best article of the year and this interview was an exciting perspective on the man behind the keyboard. Turns out he came from academia! So the institutions can produce something good after all.

How To Write the Banger of the Year - INTERVIEW with NS Lyons, author of The Upheaval

4 - Ronald Reagan quip about the Soviet Union

In reading Michael Malice’s The White Pill (review coming soon) I’ve discovered that Ronald Reagan was quite the character. Here’s an anecdote of his about car ownership in the Soviet Union.

You have to wait ten years there for delivery after you order an automobile. And so a fellow had finally gotten the money together and was going to buy an automobile—only about one out of seven families have them in that country—and he went through all the paperwork and everything and finally signed the last paper, laid down his money. And then the man behind the counter said, “Come back in ten years and get your automobiles.” And the man said, “morning or afternoon?” And the fellow behind the counter says, “Well, what difference does it make ten years from now?” And he said, “Well, the plumber is coming in the morning.”

5 - Bonus anecdote