SlamDrag

A master class in close reading, and a towering analysis of novelist Thomas Pynchon. Really good piece for being an essay published in a relatively laid-back periodical.

Hello friends, if you'll allow me, I would like to rant for a moment about the state of dating in an urban setting.

I don't want to immediately say things were better decades ago, but as someone who is monogamous, vanilla, just wants a steady partner, it feels impossible to date with the current apps. I am in hobby groups, I'm on Bumble, Hinge etc., I meet new people. Yet I can't seem to find anyone. I'm despairing friends, I'm despairing.

I feel like I'm picking people off an algorithm. The room for surprise and delight has been cut off. Now there is only space for cold hard data. Lots of pretty people with good education and it's so hard to see them as people and not just another part of an ever growing list. Another dot in the scatter plot.

People who are in LTRs, how'd you find your partner? What keeps you together?

Other single folk, how are you finding dating to be in your current locale? What things have brought success or failure in your mind? How do you define success or failure?

The rock climbing community has long found itself at odds with park rangers. Very rarely intentionally! But today there is a silent battle between a small group of climbers trying to reform the wilderness act to allow fixing permanent anchors to rock in the wilderness.

The use of fixed anchors, also called bolting, makes routes far more accessible to the average sport climber. Without fixed anchors, climbers must build their own removable anchors on the wall as they climb (called "trad climbing"). This is difficult enough that the majority of climbers won't do it, only the dedicated few. While fixed anchors in themselves do not have an environmental impact, any route that gets bolted in the wilderness will undoubtedly see a large increase in human activity that would harm the local flora and fauna. The Protect America's Rock Climbers act is a misnomer at best, lie at worst. There are already hundreds of bolted rocks within the US, with more than enough sport climbing to last anyone a lifetime. Furthermore, if anyone wishes to climb in the wilderness, they are allowed to, provided they are dedicated enough to climb it in the trad style. It is far more important to protect the wilderness that we have left than it is to create a few more pretty rock climbing routes.

Janja Garnbret took Gold this weekend in her second tournament back after her break due to a toe injury. She had a very emotional final boulder, it was an almost impossibly good tournament for her. As the greatest female climber of all time, the pressure is immense. Every time she gets on stage she performs at the highest level. It is not just her peaks that make her incredible, it is her incredible consistency. No one was quite sure how good she would be after her long break, and many were wondering if the era of Janja's dominance was over after she finished second in Prague.

As it turns out, rumors of Janja's demise were greatly exaggerated.

New Hoffman video dropped. Not sure if we have any 3rd wave coffee lovers in this community. I've been an avid AeroPress user for about two years now and it will be interesting to see where the company goes, though it will likely not affect me as this thing feels nigh indestructible and I can likely use it for ten years with no issues.

Do you set aside a time each day to write? Do you write five pages stream of consciousness then trim it down into something that makes sense? Are you a planner? Do you write in a notebook? Do you write once, edit once? write twice, edit once? Write once, edit thrice?

I don't have a consistent process. I've been experimenting with writing in a basic markdown editor, maybe 500 words at a time, then stringing together multiple entries as best I can. What I find is I have lots of ideas and thoughts that are separate, and critical to my ability to form complex thought is correlating multiple seemingly unrelating things, which then creates a new more complicated and hybrid whole. I can't sit down and write 5,000 words on one thing, but I can write 500 words on ten things, and then use that as the basis of a mosaic piece that (when edited well) comes together into a unique whole.

My favorite breakout climber of this year, Oriane Bertone, has won her first gold medal in a Boulder World Cup. Notably, she won her first gold medal while up against Janja Garnbret, who is widely considered to be the greatest women climber of all time (she took silver in this competition). Truly a notable achievement!

On the Men's side of the tournament, Prague was Adam Ondra's first tournament of the year. Adam is the greatest sport climber of all time, being the first person in the world to ascend a sport route with a grade of 9c, which as of today remains unrepeated. Adam had been focused on finding first ascents of outdoor routes, but is returning to competitions to prepare for the Olympics where he hopes to bring home a gold medal.