[HN Gopher] Everything will be alright in Iceland
___________________________________________________________________
Everything will be alright in Iceland
Author : yakkomajuri
Score : 144 points
Date : 2024-01-05 13:03 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (memoirsandrambles.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (memoirsandrambles.substack.com)
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| I believe this completely. Folks who live under routine threat
| like volcanism can be the most calm and functional during crises.
|
| I remember an interview with a Dutch Engineer during a storm
| surge that threatened an important dike (aren't they all
| important?). They had been working all day and continuing into
| the night.
|
| "What will you do?"
|
| "Well, we'll work like hell and see what happens come morning!"
| ethbr1 wrote:
| > _Folks who live under routine threat like volcanism can be
| the most calm and functional during crises._
|
| Mind the (tectonic) gap.
| crote wrote:
| > aren't they all important?
|
| Not really. Some dikes protect millions, some protect a vilage,
| and some protect only a handful of people. The Netherlands is
| currently experiencing minor flooding, and a dike failure in
| Maastricht led to a dozen house boats needing to be evacuated.
|
| > see what happens come morning
|
| There really isn't anything else you _can_ do. Natural
| disasters are unpredictable, and the situation can drastically
| change from hour to hour. When your country is prone to this
| kind of threat, it 'll have dozens of scenarios worked out,
| planned, and practiced. It's mostly a matter of grabbing the
| right playbook, working like hell, and hoping it doesn't get
| worse. If it _does_ get worse, you simply grab the next
| playbook and carry on.
| jimmyed wrote:
| Reminds of Pakistan, specially when there was a lot of violence
| during 2008s. There would be _multiple_ bombs blasts on any given
| day and after a while, the news lost it's real world import for
| people. I was a tourist in Karachi then and recall appalling
| insensitivity when I heard of a blast on so and so road. The news
| just made me update the route I took that day.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| You should've been there during the 90s
| PicassoCTs wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krakatoa
|
| There is a phenomena that if you life under a consistent, visible
| threat to your life, like for example a huge damn upriver, you
| suppress that fear and become instead a "believer". And why
| wouldn't you, after all, if it goes wrong no survivors, so that
| story makes total sense, until it doesn't and even then.
| Log_out_ wrote:
| You meant dam..
| bbarn wrote:
| I lived in Iceland for several years recently. One thing you have
| to keep in mind, is this philosophy is pretty much born out of
| necessity. Until the US Military built a base in Keflavik (which
| later became an international airport), the country was quite
| behind the times. As one friend put it to me "When you were
| landing on the moon we were getting running water installed"
|
| Iceland was a very poor country for most people other than a few
| well off in the fishing industry. Today it's still relatively
| "medium" with few people very wealthy, but also almost no one in
| destitution. The attitude is that everyone should be able to live
| a good life, and while it's not truly socialist, it's pretty darn
| close.
|
| Thetta reddast is used somewhat interchangeably with "I don't
| feel like dealing with this" and "Some how things will work out
| even though it doesn't look like it now" and "fuck it". To most
| people it's kind of an in joke you say when something really
| sucks.
| yakkomajuri wrote:
| Definitely, it's just about always used in a manner of like
| "Ah, don't worry about it", and while I tried to convey that as
| well in the post (like with the Snaefellsjokull story), I
| wanted to show that there might be more to the mentality behind
| the scenes.
| pavlov wrote:
| _> 'As one friend put it to me "When you were landing on the
| moon we were getting running water installed"'_
|
| This also applied to large parts of the United States in 1969,
| and was part of the reason why many leftists and Black
| activists saw the Apollo program as a symbol of misplaced
| priorities at the time.
|
| Iceland wasn't any poorer than Mississippi, for example. And at
| least Iceland had a program in place to build a Scandinavian-
| style welfare state so everyone really would get that running
| water pretty quickly, as well as healthcare and education and
| the rest. America is still struggling with that while again
| spending tens of billions on a microwaved-Apollo-cum-Artemis
| program that's mostly pork distribution for senators.
| ch4s3 wrote:
| > a symbol of misplaced priorities at the time
|
| This always feels terribly myopic to me. There's a lot of
| state capacity and doing a sing;e time bound endeavor did not
| prevent civil rights legislation from passing or economic
| development in Mississippi. The moonshot caused NASA's
| funding to peak at ~4% of the federal budget for a single
| year in 1966, returning to less than 1% by '73.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| But in 1969 it was not settled that the country should fix
| civil rights. Probably Apollo would have been received
| differently by many people if other, more humane areas had
| seen as enthusiastic spending. Not saying it was wrong to
| do Apollo, though! It _was_ important, another great
| outcome was that it made the Soviet system crack faster.
|
| It was also not clear from originally that Apollo would be
| single time limited project, in the beginning there was a
| lot of talk about moon bases and such.
| philwelch wrote:
| There were a lot of enthusiastic spending programs and
| civil rights reforms in the 1960's, including the Civil
| Rights Act of 1964, Voting Rights Act of 1965,
| Immigration and Nationality Services Act of 1965, Civil
| Rights Act of 1968 (which included the Fair Housing Act),
| the establishment of Medicare, Medicaid, federal funding
| for elementary and secondary schools, Job Corps, Head
| Start, expansion of Social Security benefits, the
| National Endowment for the Arts and National Endowment
| for the Humanities, the Public Broadcasting System and
| National Public Radio, the Department of Transportation
| (along with federal funding for mass transit and high
| speed rail), the National Highway Transportation Safety
| Administration, and food stamps, just to name the
| highlights.
| merpnderp wrote:
| It's criminal that the US is spending money on SLS when it is
| so incredibly inefficient and will very likely be completely
| outclassed in cost and operational ability by Starship.
| criley2 wrote:
| Considering the CEO of the company making Starship has
| openly messed with his other companies in support of Russia
| (thinking about Ukraine decisions), there is zero chance
| the US should get into a situation where Elon Musk is the
| decider of whether or not Americans can go to space.
| Honestly, SpaceX with Musk at the helm is becoming a
| massive national security problem, and as a taxpayer, I'm
| okay spending more money to insulate ourselves from some
| globo-billionaire who doesn't give even a single F about my
| country.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| Starlink over Crimea?
|
| I thought the end facts on that were that SpaceX had
| never turned it on there, to avoid stepping over a
| redline, and simply refused to change that policy when
| the Ukranians requested it for a USV attack.
| simoncion wrote:
| It's my understanding that Starlink said something to the
| effect of:
|
| > No, we're absolutely not supporting offensive military
| operations. However, Starshield _is_ in that business, so
| go file your request through that so as to run it by the
| appropriate people in the US government to get their
| approval.
|
| And -AFAIK- the request was run through Starshield, and
| it did get approved.
| colechristensen wrote:
| You're criticizing the "foreign policy" of a company that
| decided not to directly participate in a foreign war,
| quite possibly at the request of the US government or
| under threat of having those satellites shot down which
| would be a catastrophe for space travel.
|
| If the US wanted to contract spacex for Ukrainian
| military comms, they would have.
|
| There are plenty of reasons to criticize musk, but not
| participating directly in a war isn't one of them
| actionfromafar wrote:
| I think I agree with this. And the US should definitely
| have contracted that.
| earthling8118 wrote:
| SLS isn't insulating us from him. If anything I'd say it
| has the opposite effect. By spending the money on an
| obsolete and inferior system we're playing ourselves and
| making it more likely we become dependent on such a
| person.
|
| Now if we took some lessons from the design or changed
| the rules of the game around SpaceX that might be
| different. But we're not making moves that help us in
| that department.
| kaashif wrote:
| Depending on one private company for space travel is bad
| too. It's important the US always have space launch
| capability for national security reasons.
|
| Even if it's really inefficient and bad.
| philwelch wrote:
| There are no plans to use SLS for national security
| missions. SpaceX, ULA, and Rocket Lab all do national
| security missions, and hopefully Blue Origin can join in
| as well in the next couple years.
| lupusreal wrote:
| In a sense, all the ostensible science missions are
| really about national prestige and are therefore national
| security missions in a round-about way. I saw a recent
| presentation given by Michael Griffin in which he makes
| this point; the HST wouldn't really be worth all the
| trouble if not for the "America flexing on the world"
| angle.
|
| https://youtu.be/4L8MY056Vz8
| philwelch wrote:
| Sure, but who's actually launching those science missions
| these days? It's all commercial providers. Recycling
| 1970's technology into SLS and making it even less
| reusable isn't a flex on the world, it's pork barrel
| politics.
| lupusreal wrote:
| I share your thoughts towards the lameness of SLS, but
| consider: would it even be happening if not for the
| threat of China going to the Moon? It seems to me that
| the whole point is to spoil China's fun.
| rqtwteye wrote:
| You can't depend on SLS either because of insane cost.
| rufus_foreman wrote:
| >> This also applied to large parts of the United States in
| 1969
|
| By 1970, 93% of the homes in the US had "complete plumbing
| facilities", which means not just running water but hot and
| cold water, a shower or bath, and a flush toilet. See
| https://www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/dec/coh-
| plumb....
|
| 1940 54.7%
|
| 1950 64.5%
|
| 1960 83.2%
|
| 1970 93.1%
|
| 1980 97.3%
|
| 1990 98.9%
|
| In the 1950's and 1960's, the United States was able to do
| more than one thing at a time.
| germinalphrase wrote:
| As a touch point: Gil Scott-Heron's "Whitey on the Moon"
|
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=goh2x_G0ct4
| euroderf wrote:
| This song. I get it. And I do not get it.
| fatbird wrote:
| Also, this brilliant mockumentary:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Old_Negro_Space_Program
| photochemsyn wrote:
| I've never thought much of that narrative argument against
| the Apollo space program, since the Vietnam War cost at least
| 4X as much as the Apollo program, with much less to show for
| it and far more negative social effects (e.g. all the
| homeless Vietnam vets with unrecognized PTSD, etc.).
| actionfromafar wrote:
| The true, multi-faceted cost of Vietnam sort of crept up
| slowly though, especially in the 70s. Weren't many armed
| gangs started by 'nam vets for instance? (Not even counting
| what it meant for south east asia.)
| avgcorrection wrote:
| How could killing people on the other side of the world
| over ideology achieve anything (show for it)?
| reducesuffering wrote:
| Ask the South Koreans
| avgcorrection wrote:
| "Some of you Vietnamese will die... but that's a
| sacrifice that I'm willing to make." Something like that?
| philwelch wrote:
| South Korea is a modern, developed country with a high
| tech manufacturing economy and a high standard of living.
| And it only exists today because many countries including
| the United States defended it from a communist invasion,
| just as the United States attempted to defend South
| Vietnam.
| avgcorrection wrote:
| > And it only exists today because many countries
| including the United States
|
| Bombed North Korea to the Stone Age?
| badpun wrote:
| E.g. by stopping a spread of said ideology?
| avgcorrection wrote:
| I thought taking a hardline anti-Vietnam war stance in
| 2023 would be a slam-dunk but apparently not.
| badpun wrote:
| I'm not a historian, but my understanding is that Vietnam
| was a failure for the US because it wasn't executed
| properly. Eventually, US lost heart and fled the country.
| The goal itself (stopping comunism from spreading to
| another country), was in US' interest, at least as long
| as US wanted to be maintain its status as a global
| hegemon.
| avgcorrection wrote:
| Very realpolitik.
| ytdytvhxgydvhh wrote:
| I always appreciate Dr. Ernst Stuhlinger's response to such
| criticism:
|
| https://news.lettersofnote.com/p/why-explore-space
| somenameforme wrote:
| It's extremely and utterly odd, to me, that so many people
| single out things like the Apollo Program as an
| 'extravagance' when this was also the era of the Vietnam War.
| The _entire_ Apollo program cost $178 billion in 2022
| dollars. The Vietnam War cost more than $1 trillion, and that
| 's if you put a $0 price tag on the millions of people
| killed, to say nothing of decades more of people being maimed
| and killed by our cluster bomblets left all over the country.
|
| The Vietnam War had absolutely 0 value. We hyped it up as
| some do-or-die necessity, we invaded, participated in the
| killing of millions of people, blew a trillion dollars, lost
| the war, went home, and there was no grand catastrophic
| change. We could have just skipped to the end by not getting
| involved in the first place. By contrast one can argue about
| the exact value of the Apollo Program but it's absolutely
| undeniable that there was value. We learned a bunch, showed
| what's possible with human ingenuity, and just plain old did
| something that would make one proud to be a human, let alone
| an American at the time. If we did more things like this,
| it's very likely that the relationship between the people and
| the government would be far better than it is today.
| gota wrote:
| > say nothing of decades more of people being maimed and
| killed by our cluster bomblets left all over the country.
|
| Not to mention the millions of people devastated by Agent
| Orange.
|
| The fact that the specialists warned the US military of
| these effects and it didn't stop them from poisoning the
| population for generations is mind boggling. How did these
| people rationalize their actions?
|
| Anyway - there's no possible price tag for that. Your point
| of comparison is correct; the space race as a whole was
| about the best- and cheapest-case scenario for a "war"
| ebiester wrote:
| Leftists and black activists were _also_ against the
| Vietnam War.
|
| The arguments were far less about the monetary value in
| that case, though.
| philwelch wrote:
| In the aftermath of the fall of South Vietnam, somewhere
| between 200,000 and 400,000 refugees died at sea trying to
| flee the country. Cambodia also fell to communism, where
| the new regime murdered between 1.5 million and 2 million
| of its people. Actually winning the Vietnam War could have
| prevented these outcomes and left Southeast Asia in a much
| more stable and prosperous position today, similar to South
| Korea.
| awongh wrote:
| I agree, and.... One reason why Apollo might seem cheap is
| because a lot of the R&D dollars are counted against
| developing ICBM missiles to annihilate everyone on earth.
| The rockets themselves and the fundamental work was
| primarily motivated by the creation of weapons, space
| exploration second.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| I don't know if it's technically stoicism or something, but you
| see this in places all over the world... the "it'll be alright
| until it isn't" kind of mantra. Living through these moments
| the best you can until you can no longer do so due to something
| beyond your control.
| gyomu wrote:
| I highly recommend the novel "Independent People" by Halldor
| Laxness, which your comment reminded me of.
| rurban wrote:
| I'd rather recommend the light hearted movie "Virgin
| Mountain", which is not that drastic. And in the german ARD
| Mediathek.
| mattbee wrote:
| I really liked this novel! A lot of what people say about
| Icelanders I assume comes from this caricature of an
| independent-minded (or uncompromisingly stupid) homesteader.
| There is sheep and starvation, bathetic death, ambitions
| ruined over and over while the 20th century grinds on around
| our hero. 600 pages. Did I say sheep? There's a lot of sheep.
| Pages of chasing them, eating them, buying them, driving them
| around. If that doesn't sell it to you I don't know what
| will.
| bane wrote:
| We just spent some time in Iceland this past year. I hadn't
| really realized it but Iceland pretty much didn't even have a
| formal tourist industry until sometime in the early 2000s
| mostly due to volcanic eruptions disrupting transatlantic air
| traffic causing the country to end up on the news.
|
| I came away with some interesting things:
|
| - In one small town we visited they had turned the local town
| hall into a tourist greeting center. It had a theater that
| showed films from the 60s and 70s filmed near that town. One of
| them explained that there were no roads to the town until the
| modern period. However the town's main industry was sheep
| farming. How did they get the sheep to market in the larger
| towns? Simple, they flow in an aircraft, drove the sheep
| onboard, and flew them there! Before the airplane people either
| didn't live there or had to drive their sheep by foot or boat
| to market -- trips of many many days.
|
| - Icelanders are incredibly comfortable being constantly _very_
| near volcanism. Most village centers have a local bathhouse fed
| by hot water from hot springs and they 're very popular social
| centers, people live on the slopes of active volcanoes, the air
| often smells of volcanic gases in many places in the country,
| and so on.
|
| - Much of the landscape is virtually impassable. It's the first
| time I've really ever seen such a vegetatively sparse landscape
| that was so inaccessible simply due to the terrain. In some
| areas, relatively "flat" landscapes were so rocky that I can't
| even imagine how one might traverse those.
|
| Beautiful country, hearty people, expensive, surprisingly
| consistently good food.
| dboreham wrote:
| Until railways were built everywhere animals were all driven
| to market often over long distances. Hence "drove road".
| seabass-labrax wrote:
| That might have been an unintentionally funny point to
| make, as Iceland doesn't have any railways!
| danans wrote:
| > It's the first time I've really ever seen such a
| vegetatively sparse landscape that was so inaccessible simply
| due to the terrain.
|
| I haven't been to Iceland, but I got similar vibes the first
| time I hiked through the Kilauea East Rift zone (vegetatively
| sparse, nearly impassable), where it's perhaps even more
| stark since lush tropical forest is just a few miles away.
| euroderf wrote:
| A hot shower in Iceland always has a whiff of sulfur.
| MrDresden wrote:
| Not if the water is heat exchanged. There are two separate
| hot water systems in the capital and it differs between
| municipalities how the systems are.
| SideburnsOfDoom wrote:
| > It's the first time I've really ever seen such a
| vegetatively sparse landscape
|
| The countryside of Iceland gave me the impression that
| instead of a "natural vegetated living world" there was two
| distinct things - an inorganic rock world, with a thin crust
| of life - lichen, moss and grass over it.
|
| I mean, technically this is true everywhere; but in Iceland
| the vegetation was so thin and recent and patchy as to be
| noticeable in an unfamiliar way.
| bane wrote:
| I truly felt in some areas, especially the South Coast,
| that we had accidentally driven off the continental shelf
| and ended up on the bottom of the sea.
| radpanda wrote:
| > Much of the landscape is virtually impassable. It's the
| first time I've really ever seen such a vegetatively sparse
| landscape that was so inaccessible simply due to the terrain.
| In some areas, relatively "flat" landscapes were so rocky
| that I can't even imagine how one might traverse those.
|
| There are certainly areas lacking in vegetation for natural
| reasons but much of the land is vegetatively sparse because
| the Vikings cut down all the trees:
|
| > At the time of human settlement almost 1150 years ago,
| birch forest and woodland covered 25-40% of Iceland's land
| area
|
| From: https://www.skogur.is/en/forestry/forestry-in-a-
| treeless-lan...
| conradev wrote:
| Which some are also trying to grow back:
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/10/20/climate/icel
| a...
|
| A lot of the roughness in the terrain is because there are
| lots of old lava fields
| dreamcompiler wrote:
| ...but not old enough to have weathered down. Iceland is
| _made_ of lava, as is Hawaii, but the Hawaiian islands
| are much older* which is why they are now a garden
| paradise.
|
| *Except the big island which is young enough to still
| have active volcanoes like Iceland.
| triyambakam wrote:
| What is it about being made of lava that makes Hawaii now
| a garden paradise?
| SideburnsOfDoom wrote:
| "Volcanic soil" is good for growing plants, it's full of
| useful minerals
|
| https://www.scienceabc.com/nature/why-is-volcanic-soil-
| so-fe...
| ranting-moth wrote:
| I'm pretty sure I heard something like "nennessekki" a few
| times when things where getting tense.
| meheleventyone wrote:
| Probs something like 'nei, nei, ekki' which means 'no, no,
| don't'.
| jtha wrote:
| That would be the infamous Icelandic verb of "nenna". It's
| used as such "Eg nenni thessu ekki", which translates roughly
| to "I don't feel like it" or "I don't want to".
|
| But we have a word for both want and feel like, but they're
| different from "nenna". In some ways a better translation
| would be "I can't be bothered to".
|
| The word is somewhat socially acceptable as an excuse not to
| do something.
|
| "Thetta reddast" and "Eg nenni thessu ekki" are words many of
| us Icelanders live by.
| distcs wrote:
| > Iceland was a very poor country for most people other than a
| few well off in the fishing industry.
|
| Very insightful. I had no clue this was the case.
|
| Is there any published list somewhere that measures the
| relative richness between the countries? I am just curious to
| see which countries come out at the top and which ones at the
| bottom. Anyone knows any such list?
| bookofjoe wrote:
| Top 10 Richest Countries in the World (1980-2023) -- video
|
| https://fb.watch/pnScw21Tka/
| anonporridge wrote:
| Iceland has the highest median wealth per adult in the world
| today. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_wea
| lth_pe...
|
| It's not wealthy in an absolute sense, but it's incredibly
| wealthy per capita.
| runarberg wrote:
| The pipes in question were hot water pipes, used for district
| heating. I think most (probably every) house had had running
| cold water for decades at this point.
|
| In contrast in the USA 7% of households were missing any
| plumbing in 1970.
|
| Iceland was late industrializing and getting basic
| infrastructure. But so were other colonies. In 1918 Iceland
| stopped being a colony and by the 1950s it had pretty much
| caught on (with the major exceptions of road and rail
| networks).
| anonporridge wrote:
| > Today it's still relatively "medium" with few people very
| wealthy...
|
| This doesn't appear to be true. Iceland is one of the
| wealthiest nations on the planet per capita.
|
| Iceland also has the highest median wealth of any country at
| $413,193 compared to the US median of $107,739. Even in average
| wealth, Iceland ranks #5 globally only behind Switzerland,
| Luxembourg, United States, and Hong Kong. Keeping the average
| and median much closer than those other four does agree with
| your claim that they're good about making sure everyone has a
| good life.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_wealth_pe...
|
| Interesting thing I learned recently, is that Iceland has the
| highest rate of millionaires (in USD) of any country at 20% of
| the adult population. This more than double the 9% of US adult
| population millionaires.
| https://www.statista.com/statistics/262687/countries-with-th...
| joisig wrote:
| Some part of the reason for this is that pretty much anybody
| who is owns a single-family home in Iceland outright and is
| otherwise mostly debt-free would count as a millionaire (in
| USD) these days, because housing has appreciated by
| ridiculous amounts in the last 20 years or so.
|
| One of the reasons there are a lot of house-millionaires is
| because some of the oldest generations, who bought their
| homes before 1980 or so, took normal loans with fixed
| interest rates, just before massive inflation in the 80s. The
| decrease in value per krona in ten years starting 1980 was
| something like 99.7%, so the loans went pretty quickly to
| something indistinguishable from zero. Inflation-indexed
| loans have been the only type of housing loan you could get
| for most of the time since about 1981, and are still the
| norm. The effect around that time of transition was that the
| younger generations (next waves of house buyers after them)
| were saddled with a lot of the burden.
|
| Source: I'm Icelandic.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| > "When you were landing on the moon we were getting running
| water installed"
|
| Same for a number of folks in Fairfax Co VA (US ~wealthiest).
| My best friend's house was typical for the area. Cold running
| water arrived ~1970. Hot 1982. Outhouses stayed until about
| 2000.
| foobarbecue wrote:
| First two paragraphs resonated. I'm an American who grew up in
| Brazil, Japan, and Sweden. I'm tired of being asked "which was
| your favorite" because it's so reductive and ALWAYS what people
| ask me. Questions in this article are much better.
|
| On the other hand, the description of roping up without proper
| training... yeesh. Sounds like bunch of gumbies putting each
| other's lives in danger. Not ok.
| tome wrote:
| How about in future, when someone asks you "which was your
| favorite" you instead answer one of the questions in the
| article? It's highly unlikely people _literally_ want to know
| which was your favourite. More likely they 're open to hearing
| anything interesting about your experience you could share.
| moffkalast wrote:
| So... which one was your favorite? :P
| RobRivera wrote:
| Oh youuuuuu
| switchbak wrote:
| "Sounds like bunch of gumbies putting each other's lives in
| danger" - that seemed pretty obvious from his story.
|
| I have a couple good friends that work on the search and rescue
| team, and the increasing number of stories about people putting
| themselves in serious danger with no self awareness is really
| concerning. I've unwittingly been pulled into these situations
| myself with said gumbies, and I'm now at the stage where I have
| no tolerance of it.
|
| It's really not cool to put a bunch of other folks in danger
| because you did something stupid, completely ignorant of any
| potential danger. It's totally ok to take measured risks, with
| proper training/knowledge and at least some kind of preparation
| for handling unexpected situations.
|
| And sometimes it's me being the gumby, which probably still
| happens in small doses :)
| ekidd wrote:
| > _Sounds like bunch of gumbies putting each other 's lives in
| danger. Not ok._
|
| One weird thing about Iceland (as of 2008) that might be
| related: They don't do warning signs.
|
| - Superheated geyser pool 3 feet from the foot path? No warning
| sign 95% of the time. The other 5%? "Danger: Hot."
|
| - A slippery tourist trail 5 feet from a rushing river that
| immediately goes over an 80 foot waterfall? No warning sign.
| Often no railing, either.
|
| - A road to a tourist attraction that might rip your
| transmission out? No warning sign.
|
| I could give more examples of unmarked deadly hazards at major
| tourist attractions.
|
| Iceland appears to assume that deadly hazards are common, and
| that you'll use common sense. Or maybe you won't, and you'll
| stick your hand in a geyser.
|
| I'm reluctant to draw any kind of philosophical point here,
| besides "When visiting Iceland, please use common sense and pay
| attention to your surroundings."
| hprotagonist wrote:
| _Not known, because not looked for
|
| But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
|
| Between two waves of the sea.
|
| Quick now, here, now, always--
|
| A condition of complete simplicity
|
| (Costing not less than everything)
|
| And all shall be well and
|
| All manner of thing shall be well
|
| When the tongues of flames are in-folded
|
| Into the crowned knot of fire
|
| And the fire and the rose are one._
|
| -- ts eliot, following julian of norwich
| avgcorrection wrote:
| Yeah okay. I hadn't ever thought that they wouldn't be.
| s_dev wrote:
| >There's a saying in Icelandic - thetta reddast - that means
| "everything will be alright", and, while many languages have a
| similar expression, this one is really embedded in Icelandic
| culture.
|
| Ireland has a "It'll be Grand" culture as well for comparison.
| It's a trade off with pros and cons and works for some situations
| and inhibits progress in other situations, things often don't get
| acted on or resolved quickly but at the same time there is a huge
| reservoir of tolerance to draw on when things do get shit.
|
| I would consider this the other end of the spectrum to countries
| like Japan or Germany in the way they respond to certain things.
| Lots of generalisations of course but that's often the
| impressions you get from travelling. It's very hard to be precise
| about big groups of people.
| notnaut wrote:
| >It's very hard to be precise about big groups of people.
|
| Literally impossible, by the nature of it.
| bbor wrote:
| 100% of German citizens have a brain, emotions, and an
| enduring ineffable soul. That's a precise AND accurate
| statement ;)
| mckirk wrote:
| That's a bold statement to make. German souls need to be
| re-issued regularly by the BIE (Bundesamt fur Immaterielle
| Essenzen), and it's quite easy to fall behind with how much
| paperwork this is every year.
| notnaut wrote:
| People are people! Precision at its best!
| YurgenJurgensen wrote:
| Aren't tautologies, by definition, the least precise
| statements possible?
| CrumpetDiagonal wrote:
| Similar culture in Australia too. "She' be right, mate"
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| I'm always struck by Brits who include a wellness check with
| their greeting.
|
| [knocks]
|
| [door opens]
|
| "Y'alrite?"
| chrisweekly wrote:
| hmm, maybe not so different from American "what's up?" or
| "how's it going?" as a non-sequitur
| jameshart wrote:
| British English idioms are often contractions of MUCH
| longer phrases.
|
| "Y'alrite?" is not, contrary to what you might assume,
| short for "Are you alright?"
|
| It's short for "Are you alright if I come in and interrupt
| you? It's fine if you're not, I just wanted to check before
| barging in. It's really not too much trouble is it? I'll go
| away and come back later. Or never. Sorry. Sorry, sorry."
| tasuki wrote:
| Ah, I'd always thought the "you alright" was passively-
| aggressively suggesting I was somehow not alright.
| switch007 wrote:
| Give me German/Dutch "this is awful and it should be fixed" any
| day over "It'll be grand" (we have a similar attitude here just
| across the Irish sea)
|
| It can be a bit annoying listen to them moan about small things
| constantly but my impression of the Netherlands is shit just
| works and things get fixed. They seem to have a very low
| tolerance for bs and excuses, which is refreshing
| a_gnostic wrote:
| In my culture we say "Today is a good day to die... But
| tomorrow will be better!"
| RajT88 wrote:
| I like to joke that Americans' responses to catastrophe is'
| "Thanks Obama!".
|
| But it does get at how some folks here deal with adversity.
| 7thaccount wrote:
| Are you my parents? The things Obama still get blamed at is
| insane. I'm not a huge fan of Obama, Trump, or Biden. There
| are certainly things to blame them on, but every little
| thing like gas prices is just ridiculous. The office of the
| President wields a lot of power, but they're not in charge
| of everything.
| RajT88 wrote:
| Exactly what I was getting at. Does not matter who is in
| office, they get blamed for _everything_ bad that
| happens.
|
| ETA: In lieu of acceptance and determination.
| unsupp0rted wrote:
| The insert-everywhere saying in Turkey is "good luck".
|
| You might say it to a clerk instead of "have a nice day".
|
| Much less conviction about everything being alright, but
| hopeful anyway.
| kabouseng wrote:
| Iyi sanslar, but also used regularly is kolay gelsin, which
| means let it come easy, or go easy, there is no direct
| translation. Then there is also hayirlisi, which means what
| will be will be, in my experience used sarcastically /
| raising you shoulders when everything is f*cked, as is common
| these days in Turkey.
| esafak wrote:
| When it comes to disasters the phrases that come to my mind
| are "bana bir sey olmaz" (nothing will happen to me) and
| "teget gececek" (it'll be nothing), which are expressions of
| denial and minimization.
| baz00 wrote:
| According to OECD Health at a Glance 2023, Iceland is the highest
| per-capita consumer of tranquilizers. YMMV.
|
| I did go there last year and I'm not sure I'd want to live there.
| Nice place to visit though and mostly nice people (apart from the
| large Ford truck driving psychopaths)
| euroderf wrote:
| IIRC they are also the ONLY country that actually dealt with
| the clowns that caused their financial crash.
|
| In comparison, the USA ? Don't make me laugh.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| > I managed to stop myself with an ice axe self-arrest, saved by
| having used my free time in the past to watch alpinism videos
| with self-arrest tutorials.
|
| Wow. I took Sierra Club Basic Mountaineering class, and we
| learned self-arrest three ways: head down facing down, facing up,
| and head up facing up.
|
| The class was cancelled later when someone stuck the ice ax into
| their stomach and sued, and insurance rates skyrocketed.
|
| And this guy learned it by watching a video.
| yakkomajuri wrote:
| Hey! Author here. Felt this one in particular needed a reply.
|
| I've since actually gotten a bit into alpinism and done a
| proper course. My instructor (a super experienced British guy
| in the Alps) refused to teach self-arrests to beginners because
| he said the risks were greater than the potential benefits. He
| said a lot of people get hurt practicing it (as you've noted)
| and so he preferred to really drill down on precautions and
| crevasse rescue techniques etc.
|
| As for the story, I need to note the slope wasn't too steep,
| but being unable to brake would maybe have sent me down the
| crevasse (unclear how wide it was, we stepped over it on the
| way there and it seemed it may have been narrow). I also doubt
| my technique was perfect, but I just remembered to not just try
| to have the axe over my head somewhere but rather push my
| body/shoulder into it with the axe placed more diagonally.
|
| I'm certain it was not beautiful nor perfect but at least
| enough in that situation.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| In our case, it was in the San Gabriel mountains near LA. The
| snow was so wet we had to wear rain suits to be slippery
| enough to slide down.
|
| Was it safe? Obviously not. But 1000's of people did it
| before anyone got badly hurt.
| yolo3000 wrote:
| My story, I was descending a mountain in early spring with 2
| friends. I had an ice axe in my hand for balance, although I
| had never learned self arrest. As we're descending, my friends
| took the 'winter route', which was a rocky ridge going down. I
| took the summer route which was 100m away, just because it was
| smoother. It was wet grass and some patches of snow. I slipped,
| fell on my back and started sliding, had trouble turning
| because of my backpack. You really catch speed, I couldn't
| stop, I was approaching rocks. Somehow I turn on my belly, and
| instinctively I stick the axe in the ground. You're supposed to
| hold the top of the axe with one hand close to your chest, but
| I kept both hands on the handle, and I stoped, I was lucky
| MrDresden wrote:
| Part of my Icelandic search and rescue qualification program
| involved staying in a mountain cabin over a weekend with a few
| others, where we spent our days "throwing" ourselves down the
| icy steeps of the mountain and training ice axe self-arrests.
|
| Of course there was no danger, but I get the sense other
| cultures would perhaps not go straight to that kind of hands on
| training.
| klik99 wrote:
| This resonates with me on many levels. I worked at an Icelandic
| company for many years and some of my coworkers are like family -
| I never quite put my finger on why I got so well with Icelandic
| people, but maybe it's because of this "thetta reddast" attitude
| - I also have this attitude, though it was something I got in my
| mid-20s - I used to always think the sky was falling and at some
| point I realized that it consistently stayed up.
| 0xEF wrote:
| > it was something I got in my mid-20s
|
| I'm past my prime, but would love to know your secret. I
| remember not wanting to return from Iceland, dreading the
| inevitable Anxiety Circus(tm) that was my life in the US. While
| in Iceland, I felt good about being alive. The way the people
| just get to the point and aren't afraid to say what they mean
| instead of this weird communication dance most Americans seem
| to do. The fact that yeah, danger looms in a variety of ways
| and the environment can be a bit hostile, but that's fine
| because we can deal with it together. It is difficult for me to
| call my experience there anything but refreshing...and yet I
| was not able to hang on to that.
|
| A fault of my own, to be sure, but seeing as you adopted it in
| your early years, was there anything in particular that you did
| to make that happen?
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| In my head this becomes _Risk perception in the US is severely
| broken._ which it is.
|
| We US-ians compulsively fear negligible risks (stranger
| kidnapping, terror attacks) while being unable to sense harm in
| play (elimination of child growth environments due to false risk
| perception and systemic destruction of free range area).
| jon_richards wrote:
| People don't realize just how stark it is.
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/v870vf/m...
| RHSman2 wrote:
| The happiest people I have ever met are filipinos. And they do
| not have so much going well at most times.
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