[HN Gopher] One Last Ride for Antarctica's 'Ivan the Terra Bus'
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One Last Ride for Antarctica's 'Ivan the Terra Bus'
Author : Thevet
Score : 78 points
Date : 2025-03-29 06:35 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.atlasobscura.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.atlasobscura.com)
| avar wrote:
| What a weird way to conclude an article, to suggest that an
| Antarctic bus will be remembered as coming from an era of
| "McMurdo's persistent culture of sexual harassment".
|
| Then when you click through that article you can read about,
| among other things, a case where " _the AP generally does not
| identify those who say they have been sexually assaulted unless
| they publicly identify themselves_ ".
|
| But they have qualms about including the name of the supposed
| attacker, who you can find (not from the AP) was found
| unanimously not guilty by a jury[1], in a case that whatever
| anyone believes about it, had nothing whatsoever to do with
| sexual harassment or sexual assault.
|
| The alleged victim had supposedly stolen the defendants nametag,
| because she was upset about not being invited to a party. When
| confronted she refused to give it back, and the defendant
| forcibly retrieved it from her.
|
| Is there a name for this fever dream style of writing, that even
| if you follow up on all the loose ends dropped throughout, find
| that some of them evaporate under scrutiny?
|
| 1. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/stephen-tyler-bieneman-not-
| guil...
| bombcar wrote:
| It's somehow related to self-referential news (where most
| "news" articles aren't reporting that a thing happened, but
| that another news agency reported that it happened) - it's
| almost "wikification", where what matters is the link and
| someone else having said it, original research is forbidden.
|
| Of course, this problem has existed forever - rumor vs fact,
| the oft-misattributed to Twain "a lie can travel halfway around
| the world before the truth can get its boots on".
| rafram wrote:
| The NSF itself said that sexual harassment is a problem at the
| base. They surveyed women there and _59 percent_ said they had
| been harassed. There have been a few named individuals accused
| of harassment there and a few victims who've come forward
| without asking for anonymity, but the point is that it's so
| pervasive that there's almost no point in trying to find
| individual perpetrators. Over half of all women at McMurdo are
| harassed!
|
| https://www.npr.org/2023/11/03/1210418182/antarctica-sexual-...
| redeux wrote:
| Terribly, 59% is actually lower than the rate of sexual
| harassment for women in the USA, which is around 77%
| according to the National Sexual Violence Resource Center.
|
| https://www.nsvrc.org/resource/facts-behind-metoo-
| movement-n...
| rafram wrote:
| 77% is over a lifetime, but 59% is just over the one or two
| summers that someone spends at McMurdo, so it makes sense
| that it would be lower. But if there weren't a serious
| culture of harassment, you'd think it would be _much_
| lower.
| petsfed wrote:
| I want to buttress a sibling comment and dig into how
| misleading your quoted statistics are.
|
| While there are complicating factors, in general,
| probabilities add linearly. So for the average woman in the
| US, who lives for 77 years, she therefore has a 1% chance
| of being sexually harassed during any 1 year of her life.
| Obviously, this follows some distribution, but still, the
| odds of it happening in any one year of her life probably
| peaks around 5-10%.
|
| I couldn't find good data on how many seasons the average
| Antarctic worker puts in, but let's say its around 10. That
| means the average woman working in Antarctica has a 5.9%
| chance of getting sexually harassed per year. Except, the
| average contract length in Antarctica is 4-6 months. So
| while a woman in the US has a 0.5% chance of being sexually
| harassed in a given 6 month time frame, a woman in
| Antarctica has an average 11.8% chance of being sexually
| harassed for the same time frame.
|
| Do you understand the difference?
| bitcurious wrote:
| >While there are complicating factors, in general,
| probabilities add linearly. So for the average woman in
| the US, who lives for 77 years, she therefore has a 1%
| chance of being sexually harassed during any 1 year of
| her life.
|
| Obviously the average survey respondent was not 77 years
| old, so the math here is wrong. Other assumptions we
| could make: prepubescent and post-menopausal women are
| not being sexually harassed at the same rate as women of
| reproductive age.
|
| I think your point would stand with steelman math, so why
| strawman it?
| petsfed wrote:
| Because my 5-year-old daughter has experienced something
| akin to sexual harassment. Its grim out there, but its
| far grimmer in Antarctica, and other isolated places
| where victims have little recourse in the moment [0].
|
| I went out of my way to provide as conservative of
| numbers as possible, so if that's a strawman, I don't
| know what to tell you. Even a cursory glance at
| incomplete statistics [1] on the subject show that the
| per-year rate of harassment at the peak ages is
| commensurate with the per-contract (again 4-6 month
| hitch, so double or triple that rate to get the per-year
| average) rate of _all_ women in Antarctica.
|
| 0. https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/marine-
| science/articles... 1.
| https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7485046/
| avar wrote:
| > The NSF itself said that sexual harassment > is a
| problem at the base.
|
| I'm not claiming otherwise, I was commenting on how bizarre
| it is to work this into an article about a transport bus in
| Antarctica. > They surveyed women there and
| 59 percent > said they had been harassed.
|
| I don't think they did. Did you read the report?
|
| The survey[1] had a 24% response rate, so that 59% number is
| extrapolated from that, it's actually just over 14%.
|
| The report certainly contains some deeply troubling
| anecdotes, but (no surprise) there's a wide chasm between
| what it claims, and how it's been reported on.
|
| But don't take my word for it, read what they have to say on
| page 28: "[...]it is important to note that
| the survey and focus group questions were not
| designed to elicit information regarding the
| prevalence or incidence of sexual assault within
| USAP. This remains an effort for the future. Instead,
| the qualitative and quantitative data elicited
| extensive information regarding individuals'
| experiences and perceptions. Team LDSS did not
| independently investigate or otherwise seek to verify
| the accuracy of individuals' reporting."
|
| That 59% claim comes from a footnote on page 33 of the
| report. 33%/47% of men/women said "sexual assault" was a
| problem in the USAP, and 48%/72% of men/women said the same
| of "sexual assault".
|
| The 59% is then women respondents who had a "negative
| experience" with either assault or harassment.
|
| I don't believe that means, as you claim, that "they had been
| harassed". Earlier on page 30 they say:
| Approximately 40% of all focus group participants
| discussed a personal negative experience with sexual
| assault or sexual harassment
|
| Neither of those percentages in footnotes appear to be
| supported by accompanying source data. But since they go out
| of their way to distinguish between a "negative experience"
| and "personal negative experience", the 59% appears to refer
| to some broader category than personal experience with
| harassment or assault.
|
| 1. https://www.nsf.gov/geo/opp/documents/USAP%20SAHPR%20Repor
| t....
| petsfed wrote:
| >The survey[1] had a 24% response rate, so that 59% number
| is extrapolated from that, it's actually just over 14%.
|
| That's not how statistical extrapolation works.
|
| Here's a recent study that uses modern statistical
| modelling methods to extrapolate actual harassment rates
| from reporting rates that suffer _strongly_ from self-
| selection bias in a similar environment: [0]
|
| Perhaps they can repeat the original study in light of the
| suggested methods just published.
|
| 0. https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/marine-
| science/articles...
| teddyh wrote:
| > _Is there a name for this fever dream style of writing, that
| even if you follow up on all the loose ends dropped throughout,
| find that some of them evaporate under scrutiny?_
|
| Journalism.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Thats not how I read the closing and description of the prior
| era. I read it as one that was more human, before being stamped
| out and sterilized due to the PR challenges is posed.
| jsight wrote:
| > Is there a name for this fever dream style of writing, that
| even if you follow up on all the loose ends dropped throughout,
| find that some of them evaporate under scrutiny?
|
| It is called journalism.
| gregoriol wrote:
| What is it replaced by?
| sleepytimetea wrote:
| AI /s
| joshvm wrote:
| In the summer, there are a small fleet of vehicles called
| "Deltas":
| https://photolibrary.usap.gov/PhotoDetails.aspx?filename=del...
| and the Kress.
|
| From the article (though it doesn't say these still exist):
|
| > But, she says, "Ivan could just make it through anything. I
| mean, he just floated across when the roads went bad," as
| opposed to the Deltas and the 65-passenger Kress trailer, which
| often got bogged down in slushy snow and transitional terrain,
| and led to passengers being stranded out on the ice.
|
| DVs (the Antarctic/naval term for VIPs) usually travel in
| minivans with oversize or tracked wheels. Those are also used
| to get smaller groups shuttled between places.
| biofox wrote:
| It has been a dream of mine to visit one of the research stations
| in Antarctica since I was a child. Unfortunately, my professional
| career has not yet provided me the opportunity :(
| jbm wrote:
| Off topic but this is much more of a common sentiment than I
| had thought. There was an anime series about this - Yu Zhou
| yorimoYuan iChang Suo -- literally about high schoolers who
| wanted to go to the antarctic.
| shadowtree wrote:
| You too can ride in such a vehicle - just visit the Columbia
| Icefield in Banff, Canada.
|
| https://www.banffjaspercollection.com/attractions/columbia-i...
|
| They drive out tourists on to the ice (as long as it is still
| there, couple decades left).
|
| I did it, very cool.
| nxpnsv wrote:
| I was driven in this from the ice runway to McMurdo station in
| 2001. It was very loud and slow and bouncy. I loved it.
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