God Fearing Fag

Jonathan Joss was an Indigenous, gay man who was murdered on the first day of Pride month as well as Indigenous History Month. He died protecting his trans husband. Homophobia and racism aren’t marks of the past, and this is a heart breaking reminder of that.

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It is April 2026. One of the nation's top doctors is openly saying the president is showing signs of dementia. Because the president is a Republican, the press continues to shrug and move on. Under two years ago, that same press got together to end Joe Biden's presidency because he had a stutter and a cold during a debate, despite the fact that 1) Biden's lifelong stutter is well-documented 2) he was able to perform several public events in the weeks after and was fine 3) he's still fine 2 years later and wouldn't be able to make speeches in 2026 if he had been dying of dementia in 2024.

The press never provided any proof of their accusations, and no, Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson's tell-all book didn't actually tell anything:

But it didn't matter that the book didn't provide any evidence that Biden had dementia, because the narrative had been set--actually all the way back during the 2020 campaign, first by Fox News, and like a lot of right-wing narratives, it gradually took hold and became the mainstream narrative. I said it before and I'm saying it again: if the media had actually been concerned about the president having dementia, instead of them knowing that they were full of shit and deliberately pushing Biden out of the White House to enable Trump, they would be having wall-to-wall, nonstop coverage about Trump's decline. They're not doing that because they like Trump and will never admit to what they did, in a similar way to how they've never owned up to the role they played in downplaying Trump in 2016 and focusing on "HeR EmAAAAAAiiiiiLLLLLsssss" instead.

Remember when Lil Nas X beautifully explored his sexuality, seduced and killed the devil to the banger of all time, and instead of cheering on this openly gay and proud Black artist for his artistry and fighting back against respectability politics, suddenly said respectability politics was all the Queerest Place on the Internet cared about? Hm. Wonder what happened there.

The Character pipeline

If anyone is ever training you to replace them in a position and tells you 'its an easy job I don't do much' what this means is that you are about to spend six months to a year catching up on all the stuff they didn't do and sorting out the stuff they did poorly.

Rainbow Valley, for all its macabre connotations, is also a literal trash heap.

Base Camp and ABC are worse. The entire route is lined with garbage.

The Sherpa population receive little credit for incredible amount of work they do, often doing most of the work of the climber or team so that the team takes all the credit. It’s true that there’s a monetary benefit for their communities, but their job is also one of the most dangerous in the world.

There are documented crimes on Everest. Theft and assault are just the tip of the proverbial iceberg. Theft of oxygen tanks and other vital equipment can seriously endanger climbers. Entire books have been written about this.

People have been left to die on the climb. In some places, depending on the altitude, it becomes unavoidable or near impossible to move someone down the mountain. However, there have been avoidable deaths, again well-documented. Some climbers even say they have something called “summit fever” where only the climb has meaning, and not their fellow climbers. 

So what should be done?

Well, for a start, I think it helps to actually fucking listen to the people risking their lives working on that mountain. They don’t want it closed, because again, their lives will be ruined if that happens, but they DO want better regulations about who goes on the mountain, and what happens there.

See, you need a permit to climb Sagarmāthā , one issued by either the Nepalese or Chinese government, depending on where you start your ascent. And yes, multiple governments being involved makes it even more complicated, but let’s just focus on the Nepal side of things for now; the Chinese route is a real bitch to climb compared to the Nepal route so it doesn’t have such a tourist problem, and also the first step to any real solution there is for China to stop fucking occupying Tibet. So let’s focus on Nepal.

The permits are a very good thing; you need to pay to be issued one, which brings in money to the country, and it’s just common sense to regulate how many people are going up there. What’s not good is that the Nepalese government isn’t doing a very good job of regulating the permit sales; guides have been complaining for decades now about the government selling way too many permits, overcrowding the mountain, and allowing wildly unqualified people to go. One of the main things the Sherpa guide community wants is for the Nepalese government to sell less permits for Sagarmāthā, and make the skill/fitness requirements stricter. One popular proposal is to change the rules so that you need to have climbed at least one 8000m peak to be eligible to get a permit for Sagarmāthā. Since eight of the fourteen are in Nepal, this would keep money flowing, since people would need to do multiple trips, and it would also scare most of the dumbasses away - they want to be carried up the most famous mountain in the world so they can brag about summiting Everest. Having to climb a harder mountain first would make that look a lot less appealing, especially since K2 is a hellish death trap, and none of the other 8000′s have the same name recognition. You can’t really brag to your buddies at the office about having summited Dhaulagiri or Manaslu the same way you can brag about Everest. So that proposed rule change would scare off the tourists, and ensure every single person on Sagarmāthā is an experienced mountaineer that’s already experienced the death zone, as opposed to the current issue of multiple people that have literally never climbed before buying permits to go up Sagarmāthā.

They also want better regulations for the guide companies that can be hired for Sagarmāthā - there’s a huge problem of tourists paying for the cheaper guide companies, not realizing that the whole reason they’re cheap is because they take extremely dangerous shortcuts in their equipment maintenance. Those companies are a massive problem, and the legitimate guides hate them. So, so much. They put their clients in danger, they put their employees in danger, and they put everyone on the mountain with them in danger.

Finally, the guides need better pensions and life insurance, because the Nepalese government has a real problem of not paying the families nearly enough when a guide dies on the job. That was the entire reason for the 2014 strike - an avalanche struck the base camp during the pre-season, killing sixteen of the Sherpas that were laying down ropes for the season. The Nepalese government offered to compensate the families of the victims with just enough money to cover the funerals, which infuriated the entire Nepalese mountaineering community. They demanded that the mandatory life insurance policy have its payout doubled in the future, more money to be given to the families of the avalanche victims, and government payment of medical bills for the wounded. None of the demands were met, and so they went on strike for the year. The government did agree to give more money to the families… provided they presented the appropriate documents in Kathmandu, which isn’t really feasible for most people living in the Khumbu region, making them angrier. The life insurance payout was also raised, but only by half the amount the Sherpa’s had demanded.

To summarize: shutting down Sagarmāthā will fuck over the entire economy of Nepal, leading to people dying and lives being ruined. Listen to the fucking people you’re trying to advocate for. They want the Nepalese government to sell less permits to climb Sagarmāthā, have stricter rules about who can buy the permits, tighter regulations for guide companies, and more government assistance for guides and their families after an injury or death occurs. And yes, Sagarmāthā is a sacred place to the Sherpa people, and their religious leaders want everyone off the mountain… but let’s be real here, that’s never going to happen.

So, if this is an issue you care about, and you actually want to do something instead of making vague, impossible demands to feel good about yourself online, what can you do?

For a start, begin calling the mountain Sagarmāthā instead of Everest. Everest was only used as a name because Nepal and Tibet were closed to outsiders when the British were surveying the Himalaya’s in 1800′s, so they were unable to learn the mountains real name. And the surveyors were surprisingly serious about labelling mountains with the correct local names, which is why Everest and K2 are the only standouts among the 8000 meter peaks - K2 is so remote it never actually had a name, and the placeholder label of K2 stuck, while Sagarmāthā was believed to be the same situation and given a name instead. The only reason it’s still called Everest is because that’s the name that became famous. Getting the proper name into common use might make things right. It’s about respecting the culture of the Sherpa’s… and it will also respect the wishes of Sir George Everest, who absolutely fucking hated the proposal to name the mountain after him, and fought tooth and nail to leave a placeholder and keep searching for a proper local name. The poor bastards been rolling in his grave for over 150 years now, let’s get his name off the damn mountain already.

For improving the actual conditions, push for the Nepalese government to make the changes the guides want. International pressure is necessary for that; if nobody cares about the Sherpa’s, the government can do as they please, and the guides just have to put up with it. Pay attention, raise awareness, advocate for their wellbeing, and, again, listen to what they actually need/want.

Finally, rookies climbers going up Sagarmāthā should be judged, and judged hard. They’re not impressive. They’re fucking idiots being carried up a mountain by the real professionals so they can claim bragging rights. If someone brags about climbing the tallest mountain in the world, ask about their climbing experience and training, and if they’ve ever climbed/considered climbing any of the less famous 8000+ meter peaks. If they’re not an experienced climber that respects the mountain, mock them relentlessly. They’re not impressive, they’re an idiot that burned their own money to be carried up a really big rock and steal the credit for their guides hard work.

That being said, also show respect towards the people that have died on Sagarmāthā, AND the people that have witnessed death on that mountain. I’m not going to blame anyone for bad decision making at 8000 meters of elevation. The death zone was named that because the conditions cannot support human life; you are slowly dying as soon as you enter, and the trick is just to get back down before you succumb to it. The human brain does not enjoy being slowly suffocated to death, and you sort of lose your shit as a result. That’s just biology, happens to everyone. There’s a reason why disasters high up on the 8000+ peaks are so confusing - there’s always multiple different stories about how events played out, because short term memory loss and delirium are a very common side effect of being at an altitude unable to support human life. That’s also a large part of ‘summit fever’ on those peaks; people genuinely cannot make rational decisions up there. It’s a well documented problem. A fair amount of lethal falls up there are technically suicides, as people get confused and wander off cliffs, or begin removing protective gear, or other things nobody in their right mind would do. That’s why so many people die attempting to summit after the cut-off point of it being too late to try - they can’t process that if they continue, conditions will become extremely dangerous on their descent. They can only understand that their goal is the summit, the conditions are good right now, so that means they’re fine and should keep going.

I've seen people insist that Turtle Island is the "correct" name for North America and that Native people should be called Turtle Islanders, even while they were being told that that name is specific to tribes who have that creation story as part of their culture and that other tribes have their own stories and names. I've also seen people refer to the Three Sisters method as blanket indigenous as if it isn't an agricultural technique thatnwas formed in a place where those three specific plants are native and were cultivated and that other indigneous peoples across the world (and other Native tribes!) have their own techniques. Powwows and vision quests and spirit animals are all treated as generally indigenous and not exclusive to certain tribes in North America. Even the insistence on using the words tribe or nation for any indigenous group makes no sense for communities who have their own preferred terms.

UkraineWorld:

While you’re at it, stop calling East Turkestan “Xinjiang”

“Xinjiang” means “New Territory” / “New Frontier”. It was a term that was historically applied to a lot of different regions, not just the XUAR, and was used to denote, you guessed it, recently conquered territory. See also areas in South China which were conquered but were still administered by local civilian governments eg. "Jinchuan Xinjiang" (present-day Jinchuan County), "Liangyou Xinjiang" (large portion of present-day Guizhou), and the historical "Xinjiang" which is now Zhaotong prefecture.

And before you say “oh, but Chinese proper names don’t always have to mean anything, I mean just look at the Chinese names for Canada (‘Jiānádà’ lit. ‘adding taking big’) and Portugal (‘Pútáoyá’ lit. ‘grape teeth’)” I’d like to point out that there is a world of difference between transliterating a foreign name without regards for meaning, and clearly naming a region after what it signifies to an imperialist regime. You can’t “bite the wax tadpole” your way out of naming a conquered territory the same name that was applied to many other conquered territories, specifically in order to denote that they were conquered territories. Come on now.

If you’re feeling hopeless and helpless yelling on the internet will not make you feel better and it won’t change anything in the world. You have to get off line. Get involved. Do something local. We’re in this mess partially because people are choosing hashtags over actions.