Every now and then I read an essay from “Kiss or Kill” to remind myself of who and where I have been. These resonate through memory and I couldn’t be who I am now without having been who I was then. Sometimes the old soundtrack that fueled anger and ambition now makes me smile ... damn, that music was useful, helping turn emotion into action and action into words. Some read them and saw themselves or saw who and what they might become, what they might do if they focused and committed, and stood on their own when choices led them out of the group.

Years ago I asked, “What happens when you want to snap your fingers to a tune that used to make you want to smash your head?”

I looked in the mirror and asked again, “Will you take the easy way and settle for living a life in which you just get by? Or will you stay defiant and bet on the new, reinvented you?”

We get what we settle for, and believe me, we do eventually settle down but that doesn’t mean we settle for less. Our potential shifts with time and the repetition we needed when we were learning can easily become a trap; repeating ourselves, doing the same thing again and again and again and pretending we learn from it, or evolve.

When I read the old essays I marvel at the hunger and thirst, and notice how it has abated. I also see that my message of personal autonomy has remained strong and consistent. While it has been influenced by a wide variety of subcultures and interests — climbing, fitness, the movie business, military training and R&D, photography and writing — the constancy remains. And while my own ferocity winds down I know it’s important to keep learning and writing and speaking because these ideas must be passed on to the kids who DO have the energy to turn them into action.

English copies of “Kiss or Kill” have been restocked on my website. If you would like it signed/ dedicated to someone in particular drop me a note with your order.

The book has been translated into Italian, Slovenian, Polish, German, and Spanish. One of the German translations features a Foreword by Reinhold Messner.

I am inconsistent about honoring anniversaries. Some are more important than others. Some fade with time. This year, I forgot to honor the passing of my first dog, in 2003. I did not forget to have a moment of silence for the men lost when Extortion 17 was shot down in 2011.

Today, I acknowledge the power of choice, and that we may determine our direction, the path we walk forward, and how we may be changed by one decision. Two years ago today I quit drinking alcohol. It was a hard decision to reach, but easy to execute. I might have missed this anniversary but for the loved ones affected by it who remind me of its importance.

On one hand, drinking is something I don’t do anymore and I don’t much think about it. On the other hand, my life and my relationships are deeper and more real, I am sensitized and aware in a way that I wasn’t when alcohol played its role.

Before quitting I appreciated alcohol’s ability to disinhibit self-restraint, it allowed me to access parts of my emotional landscape that I locked up when sober. I wrote well on alcohol, clear spirits, specifically. I also appreciated how friends would open up when tipsy, even when they were over the line and too radically honest. That said, no one appreciated how red wine affected me. As much as I wanted to learn its intricacies — my great grandfather was an oenologist — I had to promise Blair I wouldn’t drink it because, damn, I turned terrible under its influence. That isn’t an issue these days.

Because I don’t much think about it I haven’t written about it but I will, eventually. One year ago, Blair wrote a wonderful piece about our journey. It is some of her strongest writing, grounded in love and care, with an eye watching out for our future.

Full Speed

Sobriety

“I am four days sober…

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a year ago · 139 likes · 57 comments · Blair Speed

I posted a Note recently about the laziness of taking shortcuts, and the delusion that such shortcuts reach the same, desired destination. It reminded me of this essay, which is the 124th in the second edition of POISON, about accepting the path as it is without seeking shortcuts, about accepting and embracing the time it takes to achieve competence, and perhaps mastery.

When I’m out hiking with Easton I think about shortcuts and their consequences because any uphill trail features switchbacks and those are cut with enough regularity to leave permanent evidence on the landscape. I doubt these marks are left by uphill hikers seeking a more direct and difficult way. People who are wired like that find their own way, on different terrain that leads to different objectives.

No, these marks are left by the lazy, those too weak or lame to take a longer more time-consuming route, or by people whose time is so precious that they cut a new path directly down the slope to save a little bit of theirs. I try to put myself in their shoes; perhaps those are too tight and they just want to reach the car so they can remove them. Perhaps it’s just more fun to disobey, to flow with gravity instead of diverting from its direct pull.

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Once the idea took hold the research began; Blair helped to flag the course from mile 44 to 63, the following year she paced Peder Anderson from mile 70 to 93, and explored some other terrain she would see earlier in the race. Training and preparation for the 2026 edition went well, all of the critical pieces and personnel came together. On the start line everything felt light, she carried no weight of expectation, and wasn’t anchored to any outcome. I had never seen her in a better place before an event. I remembered ten days earlier when she said, “I think I can have a good race,” and that morning, before sunrise, it really felt like she would.

Tune in to share Blair’s journey across an incredible mountain range, in the company of kind, open-hearted competitors, and dear friends, new and old. Check out her words here and her photography here.

I’ve been thinking about this concept over the past week because I am trying to understand how everything came together so damned perfectly for Blair’s big day out at the Crazy Mountain 100. Ahead of some previous long endurance efforts I think she was overtrained, worn out by the accumulation of training stress, plus work and travel. Few athletes can control their schedules to the degree they want to, and the self-employed have a really tough time. A last-minute job at sea level right before a high altitude race? Yeah, that’ll affect one’s condition. And how do we factor that into the recovery process, the pre-race taper? How does one rest and recharge while watching hard-earned fitness and preparation leak away?

Refilling a repeatedly emptied tank takes time, focus, and some forgiving or restraining self-talk. Once in the habit of training with a particular volume, intensity and frequency it is difficult to just walk away, and it’s also hard to know with any certainty how to de-load to prepare for an upcoming performance. Tapering for an event provides the athlete with plenty of time to question everything that has happened but can no longer be changed; did I do enough volume to run 100 miles and will the passive heat adaptation training work and is my stomach trained well enough to assimilate all of the calories I will put in during the race? Unanswerable questions, all, and yet they nag and wake and prod.

In the lexicon of training for a 100-mile foot race a half-distance effort is often counseled 4-5 weeks beforehand with the post-effort gap before the race depending on one’s (lifetime) training history and ability to recover. How long it might take to recover and sharpen up after overreaching is difficult to predict, and getting it right the first time is largely accidental; it takes practice. Blair has been practicing for a couple of decades and has enough experience to coach herself through the whole process (and it has been wonderful to witness). Seven weeks before the Crazy Mountain 100 Blair entered the 50-mile distance at the Scout Mountain Ultra. She went into it with a lot of miles and vertical gain in her legs, feeling a little beat down, and to make it harder, conditions were almost record-breakingly hot. Going into the event already in a deficit is the classic definition of overreaching and its impact on fitness — when followed by a long enough recovery period to allow super compensation — can be extraordinary.

In the past, when I was training people in the gym, many of them fighters of one sort or another I had to address the risk of overtraining because their technical practice at the dojo affected, and was affected by what we did in the gym.

Short-term overtraining (and/or under-recovering or underfeeding, etc.) is easily illustrated by acknowledging the difference between can’t and won’t. Some days a player can’t do the prescribed task. Other days he or she simply won’t do the task. I would get nervous when several can’t days came up despite attempts to recover and re-feed. For me, can’t results from overtraining and needs serious attention, and rest. A few days of won’t are also cause for thinking because these usually result from psychological issues, and may indeed be related to physical problems: training volume, frequency, neurological demand, and intensity, combined with outside stress … etc. But won’t often goes away with a firm talking-to or a big lunch, while can’t doesn’t respond to such niceties.

Overreaching is, however, intentional, and a very powerful tool when used correctly, with adequate stress, enough recovery, and timed appropriately to produce a peak or super-compensation coincident with a major competition. Overtraining “happens”. Overreaching is caused.

This is perhaps the simplest description of the concept and process I have ever read. Written by Edward Borysewicz (Eddie B) in his 1985 book titled “Bicycle Road Racing”, it is not specific to any particular sport, instead it is applied to the human organism.

“Think of the body as a factory. If the usual demand is for 500 items a day, the factory produces that very comfortably. When an order comes in for 800 a day, the factory starts working harder. When demand climbs to 1,000 a day, the factory is at near-maximum production. When the order hits 1,200 a day, the machinery is shaking and ready to break. It can’t keep up. Then, all of a sudden, the orders stop. No more demand. But intense production doesn’t end so fast and that creates excess items. These go into storage, building a reserve that can be used to fill future needs. In the same way, the body increases energy production to answer the demand caused by very hard training day after day. When this training suddenly ceases, energy is replenished and the overflow is stored, increasing the body’s potential for work. This is sometimes called ‘super-compensation.’ Now we have the complete equation: First there must be super-work, then there must be super-rest. However, if the demand for energy does not restart soon enough, the increased production will stop and the energy level will return to normal.”

Blair had a terrible experience at Scout Mountain; within a few miles of starting she could tell her tank was empty, by mile 13 she wanted to drop. She also knew that continuing to dig the hole would benefit her seven weeks later if she recovered well afterwards. Everything hurt. Heat was crushing. Attitude spiraled down. And she kept going. She was learning. But she was also considering her first ever DNF in 30 years of competition and that’s a big monster to wrestle out there on the trail. I urged her not to stop when she came through the one aid station where I could see her, at mile 30. She kept running. The sun arced higher, burning, welding once-supple muscles into solid blocks of agony. Then, near the top of Scout Mountain itself, with 43 miles in her legs, she decided that 48 would be enough (I could pick her up from an aid station there). It broke my heart to see her in that much pain. It was the right call. The Big Fir aid station is actually six miles from the finish line because the terrain dictates the 50-mile course covers 54 miles but continuing didn’t make sense within the overall plan.

In the following weeks Blair reduced her mileage, rested and ate, stretched, went to the gym a bit, worked and slept. During the respite she came to understand that we all love her and care about her and it doesn’t depend on any performance or outcome; we see the ‘try hard’, we see her heart, her spirit, we feel her love and care for us ... a DNF? Well, we know she went as deep as she can and could because that’s what Blair Speed does.

Four weeks after Scout she and Peder, who would pace her for part of the race, did two, back-to-back, 20-mile days on the course to preview some terrain and stack some volume before backing off again. About three weeks before the Crazy Mountain race she began passive heat training, hitting the sauna 3-5 times per week. Mileage stayed low, punctuated with some short bouts of intensity, mostly on the treadmill where the stress is most controllable. She banked sleep. She spent good social time with family. We ate well. She super-compensated from the overreaching, and during the downtime prepped all of her food and hydration, typed out a race plan, shared her ideas with her pacers, meditated, journeyed, communed with the spirits she invited to join her. Then, with everything that could be controlled handled, she let go.

We woke up at 3:30am on race day after a fitful night. We drove to the start line. I had never seen her in a better place before an event. Everything felt light, with no weight of expectation, nothing anchored to any outcome. We never talked numbers, places, total time. We each had our own ideas, of course, but neither of us were attached to any of it. All she had said about what might happen was, “I think I can have a good race.”

And she did.

P.S. I will write about the journey from my “crew chief” perspective once I finish a couple of other pieces … and will most certainly do so as the experience and emotions accrete and coalesce.

I used to write about fitness, rather a lot and perhaps too much. Some of my points back then remain true in the specific context of their writing. Other criticisms have either become moot due to attention paid to fixing them or to technological advances and/or behavioral change. However, much of what I wrote about fitness and training focused on human nature, which, apparently, hasn’t changed so those theses are timeless. I’ve also realized that other ideas, originally written about fitness, apply universally.

For example, in the following essay (extensively edited here over ten years after I wrote it), I write about, “how easy it is to conclude that what we are doing produces the result we seek because we like doing that particular thing and it gets us high,” i.e. it provides us immediate and obvious positive feedback. I wrote that about various physical training modalities but it could just as easily be applied to alcohol consumption, for which the underlying motivation is often deep-seated personal discontent that drinking may mask without moving one any closer to resolving the actual issue.

We also tend to cherry-pick anecdotal or scientific observations that support our chosen actions, using them to bolster what we were going to do anyway. I get it; it’s hard and tedious work to sort the signal from the noise, and to read decades of work done on a particular topic. One could, of course, read a meta-analysis wherein someone else has done the sorting and developed conclusions from it, e.g. Stepto’s assessment of interval training, or Laursen and Jenkins’ work a few years later. But it’s a TLDR issue and we easily leap to the conclusion our prejudice has already prepared us to find, rarely reaching the paper’s conclusion, which is often, “more research is needed ...” It sure is hard to recognize our nature, and harder still to resist its influence.

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I have three questions today:

1. Does anyone know what they are doing?

2. If so, do they know why?

3. In the end, does it matter?

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Barry told the story in his first book, “The Calling”. He tells it very well. It is gripping, he draws the reader in to the rest of his wild origin story, and hooks them with a rich and enriching memoir. I’ve wanted to write a longer version from my perspective but found it daunting enough to procrastinate. Scanning and cleaning the slides I shot on the climb 38 years ago gave me the idea to tell my story by using those images and long captions. What I thought could be done in 36 pages ballooned to 76 and kept me occupied for some time. The sheer quantity of good, worth-a-thousand-words images relegates this project to digital presentation because print costs would be insane.

The time and emotional cost of building this PDF also means I’ll only offer it for sale on my website where $17 will get you a digital zine suitable for viewing on a desktop screen or tablet but as with many things, a phone won’t do it justice.

p.s. the title of this post refers to an excellent track by Mogwai that you can check out here

I had a wonderful phone call with Matthias Giraud last month and it reminded me of the podcast we recorded two years ago. It is one of the deepest I have ever done, an unforgettable journey guided by a seer. Our recent conversation also reminded me of how, despite our kindred spirit, we don’t see each other to talk as often as both of us would like ... but life sometimes gets in the way. Both of us would like to change that. Matthias is a rare phenomenon, a convergence, a warrior-philosopher, his mind and heart unified in word and action, his actions utterly consistent with his ideals. I wrote the following profile of him, with links to the podcast and videos of him pursuing his craft below the text.

I let the mail sit until I’m ready for the intrusion. If you sent me something and I haven’t yet replied it’s because I’m not ready for my state to be changed by whatever you sent. It could be years before you hear from me.

The letter from Matthias Giraud sat on my desk until curiosity demanded satisfaction and damn, it couldn’t have happened at a better moment; my antenna was finally set to “Receive”. The letter included a small print of the promo poster for a French outdoor action movie titled, “Pushing the Limits” that opened in forty theaters around France in 1994. I knew it well. I had worked on the two 16mm pilots that Thierry Donard directed, climbing for the camera, of course, and also filming a production documentary for the second one. When Thierry was awarded the budget to shoot a 35mm feature he gave me a supporting role that would involve some acting on top of the soloing. We filmed in the Mont Blanc massif in the spring then flew to South America, chasing winter to shoot the ski, snowboard and skysurfing sequences. By an accident of happenstance and the tragic death of our aerial cameraman, Francois Rickard, I replaced the lead actor while we were on location in Bolivia. It was a long, strange trip.

On the small poster Matthias sent was a hand-drawn ski line down the north face of Mont Blanc, the ski tracks ended at the edge of the massive serac above the Grands Mulets and below it, a stick figure wearing skis was flying beneath a parachute. From this image I presumed, before I began to read, that the writer had successfully executed a ski BASE jump off of the serac and I thought that was pretty radical.

In his letter, Matthias described having seen “Pushing the Limits” as a nine year-old boy. In fact, he’d seen it four times in the theater, attending until his mother refused to give him any more money for a ticket. So inspired by the actions and philosophy of the film’s protagonist, Xigor Copeland, he decided to live his life chasing those big dreams himself.

Growing up in the St Gervais-les-Bains/ Megeve area of France, within sight of the Mont Blanc massif, afforded Matthias great access to the mountains and also meant he was surrounded by the montagnard spirit; his desires and his activities were always welcomed, never socially marginalized. He started his trajectory with ski racing, then freeskiing, eventually taking it to big mountain skiing, and then went further afield into surfing, skydiving and eventually BASE jumping. He suffered a particularly devastating accident in 2013 when he disobeyed his intuition, jumped when he shouldn’t have, crashed into the cliff face of the Pointe d’Areu after opening, rag-dolled a couple of hundred feet but somehow turned away from the cliff face before passing out under canopy. The parachute flew on its own, carrying his unconscious body miles away from the exit where it crashed into a forest, dumping Giraud another fifty feet into the dirt. After being rescued he was hospitalized, in a coma for three days, with a brain bleed and shattered femur. His son was born three weeks later.

There followed a long period of recovery, of existential longing and self-exploration, rehab, retraining, and a ferocious dedication to practicing fundamentals, and examining every possible detail that allows (or prevents) these jumps from happening successfully. Six years after the accident Matthias returned to the Pointe d’Areu, which, “is not the ideal mountain for base jumping ...” and successfully made the jump that almost took his life. Three months later he made the first ski BASE jump off the grand serac below the summit of Mont Blanc, which he climbed up and skied down in proper alpine style.

In the years following he has made ski BASE jumps from the Aiguille Blanche de Peuterey and Mont Blanc du Tacul to name but two, as well as the big serac below the Dome du Gouter on Mont Blanc, which I soloed for a 16mm pilot of “Pushing the Limits”. His 2026 ski BASE exit from the large serac dominating the north face of the Aiguille du Plan — after having skied from the summit — is one of the most technical ever done. A fall above the serac would be fatal and an off-heading canopy opening would send him into one of the cliff faces on either side of the narrow gully below the ice cliff. It is quite harrowing to watch the video.

The uninitiated consider Matthias and the whole Super Frenchie persona a selfish, gifted and very fortunate adrenalin junkie but some of those who have heard him speak, and more importantly, those who know him recognize a sensitivity, intelligence, and fearless internal inquiry that would not be out of place in one of Plato’s philosopher kings. He is charismatic, a natural leader, eloquent in speech and written word who writes first in English to simplify the concepts and get them out, translates into French because that language is more precise, and re-translates back to English to finalize the thesis; I quite appreciate this approach.

The sensitivity and thoughtfulness apparent in private conversation belie the hubris required to imagine the projects he undertakes; first self-belief then overall belief. However, the aggression and fearlessness one might imagine to be the necessary, enduring characteristics of a ski BASE jumper are only temporarily present in him.

“Like all extreme skiers, we go through these phases of arrogance. Nobody is born humble but you need to have a respectful, humble approach to maximize your survival. You never forget hitting a cliff, I think about it all the time ... the accident at Pointe d’Areu turned me inside out on all levels and it took me years to reconstruct myself and struggle with my emotions.

This is a kind of special side to the mountains. You acquire so many intense experiences up there that the digestion period can be long and the moments you live will always stay intact, in my opinion.”

That last sentence describes perfectly how I live with all of the intense experiences I ever had in the mountains; they are intact, indelible, constantly present.

Matthias and I first met in February 2020 at a coffee shop in Salt Lake City. The conversation was wide ranging, enthusiastically switching between English and French, and closed with the promise to stay in touch, which we have. In the mean time a documentary about him was released to great acclaim, a film that was initiated in 2007 by Matthias and fellow 24 year-old Chase Ogden but took an extended production timeline due to the accident. I missed the premiere and kick myself a little bit about that to this day. Regardless, the Universe finally agreed to put us in the same place at the same time once again and we sat down to record the conversation for which you may find links below. I don’t believe either of us knew what to expect but certainly not a 3.5 hour long journey. Our talk led us to many topics and ideas we simply did not have time to address so there may very well be a second part. When the editor at BlackYak Europe began listening, looking for a logical place to cut the conversation into two parts he was so fascinated that he couldn’t stop listening hence decided to release the podcast in its entirety.

After our conversation in June 2026, and his experiences in the two years since the podcast was recorded, I believe it’s about time to sit down in front of microphones again, this time with me as the host and Matthias as the subject. When that finally happens I will post it here.

The podcast introduction: From extreme mountaineering to training Hollywood’s elite, Mark Twight’s journey has been anything but straightforward. He has reinvented himself countless times, often more than he acknowledges, delving deep into his core to gradually accept himself. Facing and overcoming challenges can leave lasting marks, sometimes making one hard and unyielding, with little room for inspiration. However, maintaining sensitivity and staying in touch with one’s ever-changing environment fosters dynamic growth rather than becoming rigid and static.

Tune into this enlightening and inspiring podcast episode where no emotion, no experience nor wisdom falls short.

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Made For Missions podcast on Spotify

Made For Missions podcast on Apple

The Overall Madness

The Official Super Frenchie YouTube channel

Matthias Giraud, “How To Stick Your Landing” at TEDxBerkeley

Lately, it seems like I start a small project that grows and spreads until it’s finally as big as it needs to be. Or maybe I just need an editor. There’s an idea swirling, something big enough that I unconsciously resist it because I know how difficult it will be to execute. I hesitate to start the journey such a project will require. Rather, I don’t want to admit I’ve already taken some first steps, test-driven the memories, examined a few stories to see how rosy my glasses are, and brutally dissected others, and myself.

One climbing story is so big that my compressed, two-minute punk rock version of it was just that, and demanded much of a reader. It’s where I was at the time and marks that. Two versions of it have been published, and I’ll claim the definitive edit is in “Kiss or Kill - Confessions of a Serial Climber”. My spoken word version of it at the Banff Mountain Film Festival in 1995 was the apogee of my telling; vital, comedic, entertaining, deadly serious, and something I could not put into writing. I am grateful there is an audio record of it, and even a grainy, handheld Hi-8 video tape that I’ve never watched or digitized. I should probably do something with that someday.

Barry told the big story in his first book, “The Calling”. He started the book with it and tells it well. It is gripping, he draws the reader in to the rest of his wild origin story, and hooks them with a rich and enriching memoir. I’ve wanted to write a longer version from my perspective but found it daunting enough to procrastinate. Scanning and cleaning the slides I shot on the climb 38 years ago gave me the idea to tell my story by using those images and long captions. What I thought could be done in 36 pages ballooned to 76 and had kept me occupied for some time. The sheer quantity of good, worth-a-thousand-words images relegates this project to digital presentation because print costs would be insane.

The time and emotional cost of building this PDF also means I’ll only give it away to Founding Members and then offer it for sale on my website where $17 will get you a digital zine suitable for viewing on a desktop screen or tablet but a phone won’t do it justice. I’ve posted a few pages below as teasers.

Buy the PDF here.

This started as a Note and got out of control. It would normally go behind the paywall for a few months but I think the topic is important enough to broadcast freely — you can support more work by becoming a paying subscriber and/or encourage others to subscribe. Also, I feel slightly out of my depth on the technology discussed here but not on the human nature wed to it, and I also trust my capacity to learn, so here goes ...

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I posted a Note here on April 30th while I was reading The Iron Heel by Jack London, which is considered one of the first truly dystopian novels, and forecasts, in 1908, the rise of a vicious corporate-government partnership in these United States. Perhaps inspired by the early-1800s Luddism movement, London describes a workers’ revolution and its goal of just socialism, which itself is idyllic, and appears viable in theory but becomes exploitative and authoritarian in practice once human nature expresses itself. It is a fine ruse to rouse the have-nots against the have-overmuches, and also a useful theme in this story of morality shaped by class self-interest, the divine right of the credentialed, wealthy (earned or inherited), and those with political connections to control and determine the fates of any lacking similar prestige, or power. It’s a good book although far from London’s best, and despite its predictable and depressing outcome — resistance crushed by the powerful state — quite thought-provoking. In it I saw some parallels between industrial-era exploitation of human capital (wages and rights reduced, and jobs eventually eliminated by automation) and our current predicament involving artificial intelligence.

It doesn’t appear that the growing resistance to AI — as futile as it is — is driven by those opposed to technology but rather by folks who are against exploitation, collusion between public and private entities, metastatic wealth redistribution, the gate-keepers standing between them and the opportunities once offered by a functioning American Dream, and overall cognitive decline among users. In one of my opinions, AI’s hijacking of copyrighted material alone should have creators aux barricades, with rifles. Regardless, artificial intelligence is here, and knowingly or not we either use or are subjected to it every single day. It is voracious, unstoppable, and constraining it towards a holistically beneficial outcome appears beyond those who claim to have their hands on the reins.

In addition to the Neo-Luddism movement, another visible aspect of the campaign against AI dominance of our social fabric involves the data centers required to increase computing power. These are sensible targets because they are physical, their impact on quality of nearby life is easy to identify, and even those not immediately affected may empathize with those who are. The resistance of the latter is deeply justifiable, especially where eminent domain seizure is used to threaten private property owners who are unwilling to sell. Total opposition is one thing, well-informed questioning is another, and prudent. I don’t find the idea that the protests and questions may be driven by foreign-produced propaganda or the advocacy of suspiciously-financed nonprofits necessarily relevant. I do find the use of confidential nondisclosure agreements to prevent public awareness and maintain the secrecy of these projects highly fucking relevant.

While it is easy for project supporters to characterize the protestors as being anti-technology and anti-progress, I think they are anti-being-told-what-to-do, anti-eminent-domain, anti-runaway-costs, and don’t see rapid accruing of profit and power to the few as a long term benefit to society on the whole. I also think the engines of these protests and the concerns raised, while valid, are imprecisely ordered in the hierarchy of reasons to resist.

Of course, the data centers use water for cooling, pollute the air with power production (although if natural gas is burned to make electricity it is cleaner than coal or oil), foul natural environments with audio and visual pollution, receive substantial tax incentives without binding them to public benefit, and potentially raise the cost of living (utility bills) when piggybacking on existing infrastructure instead of operating independently. However, cornfields and golf courses use a lot more water, we must increase energy production to support the growth of population and its appetites anyway, urbanites don’t have any stake in preserving rural or natural environments, and also don’t live where the cost of utilities (localized to areas around the data centers) affect them. It may be easier to sway those who see only the upside of AI growth by using different arguments.

My main argument against AI is that it supports the increasing breadth and depth of the surveillance state, homogenizes behavior, coalesces enormous power to centralized government, the companies and lobbyists influencing it, and places wealth great enough to turn a representative republic into a feudal state in the hands of those few operating the largest corporate conglomerates the world has ever known. Of course, cognitive decline and dependency also occurs through use of AI — making people stupider may be the point — but surveillance and social control top my list.

That significant public resistance to construction and operation of data centers is being ignored by those in power should be the basis of revolution. Clearly, in this instance, public participation in local governance is a charade. How many videos of citizens expressing concern to their representative councils — elected and otherwise — and being dismissed or bulldozed will it take before citizens understand their position as subjects? And is there anything they can about it?

Unfortunately, now that we’re dependent on the devices and habits that are literally baked into our economic and social structure (as Hasan Minhaj states in this video), our power to turn the momentum in a different direction is limited. Our appetite for convenience and ease will increase — reinforced by those who benefit from it — as will the manipulators’ detailed knowledge of our pressure and relief points. Even if we agree that the technology of behavioral manipulation is bad for the happiness and satisfaction of all who are exposed to it, our tribalism, which I’ll define as ‘social identity amplified by social media’, places us and our groups in such confrontation that we can’t unite against the larger, predatory threat. All movements away from artificial and technological dependencies have been relegated to the fringe, thus easily ignored or attacked. To make any headway against the exploitation that is 35+ years in the making will take a large movement, grown with painstaking attention and consistency. It must be decentralized to allow multiple attack vectors or present different defensive postures, with partisans ferociously adamant in their position regarding technological and authoritarian overreach.

I have no idea what this looks like but informing ourselves about the topic then thinking critically on its individual and communal impacts seems a good place to start. Then move forward to organize energy around unifying subjects like data centers and government accountability. Although it seems a fait accompli, they can only remove the teeth from our individual and collective sovereignty if we let them.

Oh, and despite this call to action sounding impossible, “try not to consume another piece of electronic media for the rest of the day.” It will be a good reminder of how deeply entrenched the use of all things digital truly is.

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Things I read to inform myself:

Blood in the Machine

Yanis Varoufakis Interview on Technofuedalism (His take on data sovereignty via digital identity is quite interesting)

How Big Tech Became Part of the State

Neo-Luddism

Foreign Support for data center opposition (pull some threads)

Eminent Domain examples here and here and here

“Wall Street’s miscalculation of what some people value most”

NDA use to hide data center details from the public here and here and here

Slow Dancing to This Bitter Earth — a little music to go with this

P.S. a glib note made while writing this: when artificial intelligence and its human teachers intervene in public association and discourse by way of surveillance (recognition technology, tracking, fingerprinting, selective disclosure, viewpoint suppression or amplification, etc.), I think its well-past time for Kyle Reese to visit this era.

I wrote this in October 2015, one week after writing the Plasticity essay. For a while I had been trying to learn how to run, to move faster than the uphill-like slog or jog that would have accurately described how I locomoted at the time. It reads to me now as a good examination of just how hard it is to change behavior, specifically unconscious behavior, and especially physical movement patterns and responses ironed in to our bodies by years of practice. It's about running but applies to many behaviors, physical and otherwise.

The period described here happened just ten years ago but the mileage on my body had already accumulated to the point of limiting certain movement. And while low-impact activities would have been the wise decision I chose something more destructive than what I had been doing. Three years later I had my first hip replaced, then some other interventions in the years that followed. I think this side journey into running faster accelerated the ruin of various and necessary bits of cartilage. That destruction would have occurred anyway, perhaps over a longer timeline with less actual pain, but the impact of this focus sped up the decline, which may or may not have been a good thing.

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I’m that guy. I joined the local 10k this morning. I participated. I did not race. I knew my place. I ran my last foot race 40 years ago, as a freshman on the high school cross-country team.

I wanted to do it then, and thought I could. I loved it when we hit “Bitch Hill” on the Woodland Park course and I killed myself on it every time we raced there. But I was short, and weak, so no matter how much I wanted it I couldn’t keep up with the field and I paid heavily for my efforts on the hill, which we climbed early in the race, when it came time for pace to make a difference.

I didn’t care about strategy, I just did what I wanted when I wanted to do it. The results of that clearly proved I wasn’t in the right sport.

Eventually, I discovered what I was meant to do and doing it shaped me. Later, after I quit climbing, the bike helped fill the void created. It wasn’t easy to adapt but I did and I had a couple of good seasons where what I wanted to experience and what I could actually do coincided.

To change patterns hardened by years of hiking, uphill, often with a loaded pack, might be more difficult than learning to ride the bike, which was different enough that I could write new code instead of overwriting what I’d already written and practiced so hard.

I walk. I walked. And the way I did so was faster than many of my climbing contemporaries could. That speed carried over when the terrain steepened. I climbed some routes faster than anyone had before or since. My (1988) record on “Slipstream” still stands but even when I was speeding up and down mountains I couldn’t match the pace set by others on the trails in the valley. I was a specialist, with all of the limitations that come with it.

Sometime in the early-2000s I was at an event where different shooting sports disciplines were presented to the public. After I helped out with the USPSA aspect I tried a short summer biathlon (running instead of Nordic skiing). The national team members presenting that event asked me what was up with my running style, and commented, "You lean so far forward that each step looks like you are trying to keep yourself from falling over, which is slow, and tiring. You need to be more upright, and think about leading with your hips instead of your forehead." They weren't wrong, and since I'd never seen myself run I had no idea how well I had adapted to hiking uphill, carrying a pack.

Earlier this year I decided to try to relearn how to run. I don’t hike uphill much slower than I could at my peak but running is totally different. The movement patterns I developed at one speed, on specific terrain, and ironed in over decades of repetition actually contradict what I want to accomplish right now.

My friend Cole suggested that tuning my fitness — established during the course of my whole conscious life — and changing the movement patterns would be, “like turning a ship. It will take time.” After my race today I’ve accepted it might be like steering an oil tanker that has 50 years of momentum. The good news is that age also confers a certain patience. I know I can’t have it tomorrow, nor do I need it then, so I’ll make the incremental changes I know will be stable, and sustainable.

Even if I’m not fast on my feet at least I’m not afraid of trying hard. I can dig deep. In previous essays I’ve discussed the difference between the ability to hurt and the capacity to suffer. Some can hurt: nuking themselves with short, high-intensity efforts. In fact, this is a characteristic of many guys who train in the gym. On the other hand, several of us have developed the capacity to suffer, to go relatively hard for a long, long time. The psychology is different. The fitness traits also differ.

I’ve gone for 63 hours non-stop in the mountains. I’ve raced my bike for nine hours in one-day events and done multi-day stage races too. But those efforts all offered periods of respite, when I could draft, or coast, when the pace slowed enough to allow me to eat and drink. Today I finished the course in 52 minutes of sustained effort. Within a few hundred meters of starting my heart rate was at 90% and it stayed there — climbing to 94% at its peak — until I crossed the line and allowed myself to walk. I never “hurt” but I did do some suffering. Slowly.

The point here is that I’ve chosen to pursue an activity for which I have no efficiency. From which I get little positive feedback in a comparative sense. Sure, I’ve not run six miles in a row as fast as I did today but a lot of others were faster. Much faster. Many people I wouldn’t consider fit if I saw them in the grocery store ran faster than me.

To improve I will actually have to work hard, and smart. The technical lessons Julian Goater introduced me to last weekend were in my head today but not beneficial. I could apply them, and I felt my speed increase but the cost (of the conscious, unfamiliar effort) was too high so I couldn’t maintain it.

Wholesale change isn’t easy. What I did correctly to achieve one goal isn’t right for another and this is a difficult concept to face for anyone in any context. We want to keep doing what we are doing because it got us where we are. And that success, if it is such, reinforces our behavior. We want the same behavior to carry us toward the goals our current condition helped us to imagine. But it won’t.

The sooner we accept this the sooner we can take steps toward our new objective. Such vision and change is essential to continued growth, and evolution. Knowing this doesn’t make it easier. If I can’t instantly change simple biomechanics to run faster and more efficiently how can I expect to change the way I think and see without considerable and consistent effort?

What makes me happiest about this new challenge is that I’ve taken care of my engine (the joints are another story), and endured and experienced enough along the way to be in position to learn and apply new lessons. Every day I look around me and I’m saddened by examples of people who didn’t, who gave up early, or never learned the comfort that derives from self-imposed discomfort, from wanting and working for more.

If there is one lesson I would teach to someone half my age it would be that: work harder than you think you need to, and take care of the mind and body that you are stuck with for the rest of your life. “Take care” doesn’t mean avoid, it means think ahead, weigh the cost of what you want now against what you might want in ten years, or twenty. You will probably live longer than you think. The habits and scars you create now will sink their roots. If you don’t keep enough strength and resilience to combat those roots they will eventually hold you down.

Writing can be difficult. Sometimes I bruise my forehead, figuratively smashing it against the wall in frustration because I can’t write. Writing can also be easy. Sometimes I observe my fingers flying across the keys and wish I could type as fast as the ideas are forming in my head. I had a good session recently, on the flight home from Alaska where I …

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Hail,

As a way of thanking current paying subscribers I am sharing the next PDF zine, Équipe Journal 6 (I’m still working on the epic 70+ page No. 4). If you are a new paying subscriber and haven’t found the first issue surf back to December 2, 2024 to download it. You can find the second issue posted on April 4, 2025 and the third was posted on November…

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When I come across essays written in the past I see a different man, and a different writer. I wasn’t as good at the writing then but that’s to be expected, and I was also a harsher observer and critic when it came to human nature. Some part of me thought I had it figured out, at least in the context of my work at the time, and wondered why others couldn’t see what was so damned obvious to me ... or something. And while I stand by the main thesis of this short piece — that commitment is at the heart of all striving and change and achievement — these days I am more forgiving of those who lack it.

Mine has been stretched thin on the rack of time, perhaps circumstances prevented theirs from thickening enough to support their spines, to straighten them. I also realize that some are not naturally self-motivated, they’re followers, and the desire to change is not always paired with the willingness to learn how, to tend the spark into actual fire. “I just want to be told what to do” was the most sickening thing one could admit to me at the time. I would give blood teaching someone to be autonomous but wanted nothing to do with the person who couldn’t bother to do the thing themselves.

All of these little conflicts did help me understand the difference between going “up” to, and coming “down” to something, and how that difference affects the life force motivating whatever action is being taken.

* There’s a chance this thesis spills out of its container to apply elsewhere but the original context is the gym, physical training, the practice of becoming, and the practice of undoing.

I define going “up” towards a goal as taking action to become someone more knowledgeable and capable, an aspiration to something greater, and (in my view) addressed in a measured, patient way by someone who understands that, if it could be done easily and quickly then it would already have been. The energy of positive change is powerful, perhaps even self-perpetuating.

Coming or going “down” towards an objective is taking action to undo the result of prior, indiscriminate behavior; runaway appetites fanned and fed until the bad habits raged out of control. When finally confronted, the actions taken to change the outcome are often rushed, as if the protagonist was suddenly embarrassed to find himself in a particular condition. And it’s a harder fight because, if one is honest about why action is needed, even positive progress comes with self-recrimination, a review of all that led to that need.

When I realized that progress can come with admonition it helped me understand why some can’t make a commitment to change, and why, when left on their own, without guidance, they might not do anything at all.

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I walked into the gym where I’m working the other day. I was with the owner and we were ten minutes late getting back from lunch. A client was there twiddling his thumbs. The gym was empty. Every machine was available for his use. He was dressed in his training costume, hands protected by padded gloves. And there he stood.

I marveled that he was dedicated enough to show up but not willing to even fire up the treadmill while he was waiting. The big, green Quick Start button can’t be missed so a lack of knowledge wasn’t the cause of his idleness. Surely, he has the coordination and resilience to do some Squats or Lunges — he had to walk down a flight of stairs to get into the gym and up them to leave. Clearly he can locomote. The lowly Push-up is a fine exercise to do while waiting for something more interesting to happen. And there he stood.

He had enough interest to get to the place but not enough to do something once he arrived. That never would have happened in my old gym.

I’ve had some enlightening conversations lately about training and eating. The common thread in many of them has been that of excuse. Everyone is eager to share why they don’t exercise. One gal assured me that she trains hard and when I told her it doesn’t show she countered by saying, “I like to drink on the weekend.” I shook her hand. She knows who she is and what she does. Another woman asked me for a secret, a gem that would help her, specifically. Oh, you’d like me to cut straight to the heart of it? “Umm, not really. Not with that look on your face.”

It reminded me of a bike racer friend whose goal is constant improvement. He’d made the pilgrimage to a wind tunnel in North Carolina. We discussed the journey, shipping the bikes, getting out there, the hotel living, and all of the testing he did. I was hearing him on a macro level, recognizing what the trip and study meant. Another guy asked for the secret, the gem, “What was the main takeaway from your testing? What is the most important thing?”

I wanted to scream, “Don’t you get it buddy? The most important thing is being willing to invest the time and money to go to the tunnel and do the test in the first place. The rest is ... details, just stuff. Without the will to make the journey and take the test in the first place, knowing those details doesn’t matter. They have no value without the underlying desire and commitment to exploit them.”

My friend answered but I missed it. I recognized what a waste of time the reply was anyway. Even if he divulged the absolute most critical detail the guy asking the question wouldn’t do anything with it because he lacks the prerequisite to use it: commitment.

That’s what I saw in the idle man at the gym: no commitment. For him, the reason not to was greater than the reason to do something. Well, let me tell you, pal, no one’s going to do it for you.

I recently read this — the 59th essay in the second edition of POISON — and decided it could be more clear so I edited and added photographs to illustrate it. I believe the topic is important because genuine leaders are few while influencers are many and these assume the title of leader simply because they have followers. A Pied Piper is a trickster, not a leader.

Anyway, a former student separated from the military and as part of his university program asked to conduct an interview. The stated topic was leadership but we covered a lot of terrain. I extracted the relevant ideas and exchanges from the interview to make this essay..

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What leadership lesson or lessons did you learn in the mountains that you find it most important to impart upon your trainees as you help them “improve [their] spirit” through your training regimen? If you had to define your leadership philosophy in as concise a manner as possible, how would you characterize it?

If we use the definition of leadership I believe most people hold in their heads then I don’t think one chooses to be a leader. In the mountains, of course we define leader as the one on the sharp end of the rope, finding the way, making decisions about his or her own safety in the moment, that of the team, managing overall risk, and also keeping the objective in sight, allowing it to influence those decisions. Democratic teams share that role 50/50, swapping leads equally. Smart teams put whoever is most capable of leading at any given moment in that role. Often though, someone just needs to take over and tell others what to do and when. In any situation — if you open your eyes and ears and get beyond ego — it is often clear who is capable of that. If the objective is important to the team then whoever can best achieve it should lead regardless of title, or rank.

I am reminded of an exchange between Hemlock and Meyer in The Eiger Sanction:

Hemlock: “Karl really likes to lead, doesn’t he?”

Meyer: “Even more, he likes the title of leader. As if that makes him a leader.”

To learn the truth of my own character, I went to the high places, often alone, to put myself into situations where I couldn’t lie about capability, where imagined traits were vaporized by risk: the clearest mirror in the world.

Later (in my climbing career and life) I understood that risk was only necessary as a lens to examine myself if I remained deluded or insensitive, unwilling to assess myself clearly. Along with maturity came the will to ruthlessly interrogate myself and accept the outcome honestly. For me, accurate self-knowledge is the foundation of leadership; if I am constantly questioning my own abilities and understanding in front of those I’m leading then I expect them to question me as well. However, when I am certain of what I can and should do I project it and their questions cease.

What the mountains taught me about leadership is what they taught me about being a man; you don’t get to quit. The mountains can make it harder to quit, or more dangerous. So keep going. And keep going again the next time you want to quit. Be the man you imagined yourself being (or becoming) when you said you wanted this.

My concise leadership philosophy? Give. Everything.

And maybe reinforce that with Ludendorff’s concept of “total war” as interpreted by René Desmaison who applied the spirit of “total alpinism” to the mountains, defining the term as utter commitment of all available resources to the task at hand. Assign enough importance to the outcome and you will give everything. Anything less, is less. And if it is that’s OK — as long as you admit it.

Whereas some training institutions tolerate sloppy and often unsafe form in the name of intensity, during the seminar I attended, you emphasized that a bad repetition doesn’t count at all. I read that you did the same for the cast of “300”. When programming for your athletes do you think it is most important to prioritize safety, speed or, “tackling the problem at hand” and how are you, as a leader and a trainer, responsible for ensuring the hierarchy of various priorities is maintained?

Distilled, my personal training philosophy is simple:

Find the problem. Fix the problem.

Solutions manifest differently for different problems, and also according to the different temperaments of the individuals involved. Being limited by a single solution — because it’s all one knows or it has proven profitable in some circumstances — limits the scope of the problems you can address and what you can learn. Ultimately, a fixed style or solution is a dead end. Sure, I can SELL it now but it’s not philosophically sustainable so it will not last. The human adherents evolve out of it.

There is an inherent problem with trying to extrapolate the micro — today’s workout, and acceptable standards within it — to the macro, which is one’s overall philosophy of training and living from which a particular objective manifests. The micro is not necessarily an expression of the macro or an effective step taken towards it but we can easily pretend it is. And when we arbitrarily assign great importance to the result of today’s effort, the micro, most folks will accept poor form, adjusted standards, etc., in order to have a ‘winning’ outcome right now. This may be detrimental to the long term goal.

Some cite the risk of injury as the reason that sloppy form should be avoided. I can agree, and should, if only for the sake of immediate safety during a training session. However, I believe learned behavior is the more important issue; we develop habits quickly, bad and good. If I am looking to improve performance in high-risk sports (climbing, fighting, etc.) or in a military context then I want to program good, safe behavior consistently enough that it becomes unconscious. When fatigue or stress is great enough to prevent consciously directed movement patterns then whatever is habit — automatic — damn well better be safe, and efficient. To me it always comes down to training FOR something. That thing is greater, and more important than what goes down today, or tomorrow. Keeping the goal in mind and present to influence daily behavior is paramount. Most folks aren’t thinking ahead. They aren’t chess players. They want it now and think what they can get right now matters. I prefer to ask if it will matter in ten years?

The leader must keep the goal in sight, let ego run when appropriate and rein it in when it isn’t. My job is to know the trainees, to understand what drives them, what each needs, how each responds to training, to feel how they are feeling, to know what has happened in the near-recent past in other aspects of their lives and training, to know too about last week and last month, their injuries, etc. But I must also understand their ambitions, and whether those might be more important than the injuries or other aspects of their lives. And then I figure what to do with all that, constantly adapting, on the fly, in the moment.

I don’t treat the actor, athlete or soldier differently. They are all human beings and as such respond similarly to stress and motivation and expectation.

How did your gym project continue to ride the wave of notoriety that you gained following the “300” movie? What was so intrinsically different about your training philosophy that made it so “sticky?” What do you think resonated about what you were doing?

Deep inside I believe we all know that what is needed cannot be bought or sold, but we swallow the bait when the snake oil salesmen come around because we are human and hopeful.

I don’t have a solution to sell or make unrealistic claims, and I don’t promise miraculous, time-compressed solutions. People know the truth; hard, smart work produces good outcomes but they are led astray by their hope for an easier path, and by the promises of folks who only have the dollar value in mind. In this context I believe people want to be told the truth, even when it hurts. What they do with it is entirely different. Hello horse, here is the water. If you want to drink we can help. If you don’t that’s fine too. Leadership is knowing what you can and can’t do for someone. Leadership is partnership. We meet partway, halfway, somewhere on the way. I need to be capable. You need to be willing.

There is a huge gulf between an unaccomplished but attractive influencer saying, “It’s easy”, and someone who has actually done it saying, “It’s hard but it IS possible.” You know the hard way is real and it arrives at the goal. It rings a bell that resonates in the spirit while the sales pitch is just a tickle, a hit of dopamine, addictive but fleeting.

At some point, after years of beating my head against the brick wall of commerce-driven media, I became optimistic when, in interviews, I said “hard work” and the magazines printed it. I said “no instant miracles” and they wrote it. I said “long term dedication” and it went out on the wires. I made it clear that we aren’t selling an easy solution, and that there isn’t one. I said, “Yes, we sell something, it’s called education. Knowledge. It’s up to you to put it to use. No one is going to do it for you.” And people heard it.

That trend was transitory, or fake. These days we’re conditioned to impatience by hacks and accelerants. The truth of hard work and durable attention has been overrun by the assault of convenience, its message drowned out by whoever is loudest, with the greatest number of followers.

One truth remains though, if you want to lead effectively, if you ever hope to be a leader for longer than the fifteen minutes you’re entitled to then you better not be full of shit. Because real people see right through it.

When I see the warning, “parental discretion advised,” it usually applies to music. That doesn’t necessarily mean it’s good. However, when I see the warning regarding a book, I figure it should be mandatory reading. I found an old note referring to the first time I saw one; the book in question, a collection of short stories, had been penned by Raymond Carver. I think he should be read in school, if only to expose young people to succinct writing. That said I’m not sure which ages would be receptive or for whom it would be most effective. A couple of years after it was first published I discovered his collection, “Cathedral”. It affected me strongly enough that I did not seek out more of his work. Two decades passed before I came across the bestickered book in question, another collection, written before Carver got sober, titled, “Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?” I figure the sticker was a recent addition, applied after a too-sheltered status quo began claiming that both words and reality were threatening.

The 1976 New York Times review of the book contained the sentence, “No human blood is shed in any of these stories, yet almost all of them hold a promise of mayhem, of some final, awful breaking out from confines, and breaking through to liberty.” This notion of dark hopefulness is quickly dampened by the description of several typically Carver scenes, which are, “menacing, as are the spells of quiet and tensed apprehension ...” His spare, delightfully real and incisive prose puts one on the back foot almost immediately. He aims his pen at human nature, exposing our most dangerous, and self-deceptive qualities. Carver described the tone of his work as, “grave maybe, and somewhat dark”, which I think is a useful counterpoint to the current wave of books and blogs and Substack missives thumb-typed on touchscreens with browser tabs opened to Thesaurus entries for hope, promise, and optimize.

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Joe Keithley fronted a punk band called D.O.A. He still does. He’s also a city councillor in Burnaby, BC. “War On 45”, which had eight songs on it but was called an E.P. because it was only 20 minutes long, has been out for over 40 years. Keithley’s motto has always been “Talk - Action = Zero”, which maths wrong because it implies that Talk is equal to Action but it does (very) accurately describe how words become surrogates for the actual doing. That’s just lip service and lip service makes me sick.

The laziness of words without action disgusts me, especially when my own words aren’t expressed in action, but my disapproval can’t change anyone but me. I seek a signal amidst the noise, filtering and interpreting, and the process wears me down. It’s hard to evade and even harder to confront the insipid influencers who offer nothing but dressed-up hype and shiny pleasure bait — they really do get me down. It’s all so empty. And it was inevitable.

We manifested this reality by seeking convenience, and accomplishment without difficulty. We have accepted that appearance is reality, convinced that the tip IS the iceberg and whatever truth hidden beneath may be concealed long enough to snatch for the prize and get away with it. Recently, we’ve seen several frustrated individuals doing the snatching, fully exposing the ugliness beneath as it breaches the surface to get what is ‘rightfully’ owed them. The video of an adult female demanding that a father and son give her the baseball she believed was hers after trying to snatch it up when the home run landed near her seat is ugly indeed. Bullying the quicker, luckier fellow who scooped it to give her the ball she deserved because ... well, who knows why? But it sure rocketed her to internet stardom. And viral is indeed an accurate term for these video records, exposing the virus of entitlement, broken social contracts, and the utter abandonment of the Golden Rule. Is this a new phenomenon wherein people trot their online personalities into public or has it always been like this and what’s new is the constant, insistent video coverage?

And the virus got me too, distracting me from the point. See how media works?

A strong segment of the economy these days depends on lip service. The right, organically produced, amateur-in-appearance product endorsement can be a powerful marketing play, even when the protagonist is an unaccomplished figurehead. You know, a 20-something child who steers or entices the susceptible to change the way they speak or dress or posture, and encourages the audience to buy whatever IT is from them or their commercial partners. But if the secret to succeeding with minimum effort or looking like X or Y is to simply be younger than an accumulation of decades of poor choices, well, how could any conscious person actually be influenced? I guess that’s the problem, consciousness, or lack thereof. Instead, we have become our appetites so physics-defying cleavage, here-for-one-day abs, overly-taut skin, over-exploited locations, and the promise of easy riches really do trick consumers into seeing what they want to see, and believing what they want to believe, truthful or not. The influencers are just as easily influenced by their own reflection as any other person who can’t separate signal from noise.

If you’re going to say it or push it I believe it’s important to have done something, to have lost as well as gained, to have earned the broadcast frequency rather than your position having been an accident. This is Talk + Action and the sum is always greater than its integers. Those who actually know a thing and DO something with it, who work for it and use it, and eventually learn from it, now those folks are interesting. They have wisdom to pass along.

I talk a lot. I’ve hawked products. I was selective and tried hard not to pimp anything that didn’t align with my own values. Sometimes I wrote ruthless, honest reviews of products that I was paid to use because few products are ever as good as their marketing. Anyway, the point of that talking, writing, teaching, and training has been to open eyes, reorient thought, to change what people expect of themselves, and how they behave. I’ve always believed it important to share knowledge, and wisdom, the experiences that could help others live their lives, perhaps differently. That’s real, and useful influence, NOT what’s mistaken for it. The collective illusion is shockingly prevalent, and difficult to resist. It infiltrates the psyche, affecting individual self-image and behavior too.

I have seen how deeply entrenched our self-delusion can be and how well the mirror lies, or we do in front of it. I remember watching a friend train some students in the gym. One of them was a quitter, and quick with excuses. He was a big puffed-up guy who dropped the 20lb dumbbells during the 30/30 Push Press caper, settled for 10lb DBs, and eventually quit with those too. All the while looking in a mirror. How could the big, swollen man — muscular and attractive by some standard but unable to hold two 10-pound weights overhead — be blind to the truth of his reflection? Of course, his shoulder was sore, his back was tweaked, he did a heavy chest workout yesterday, he’d have to see the chiropractor now, etc. He recited a litany of justifications, empty words to gloss over the fact that his appearance was not reality. I was astonished. Why would he pay a talented and conscientious coach to train him and then not listen? Why would he quit doing the exercises that will improve him, his self-proclaimed objective? Why would he lie?

Maybe he doesn’t know what he wants. Maybe he knows but doesn’t understand what it will take to achieve it. Ignorance is a fine explanation for misguided effort. But ignorance disguised with posturing and self-delusion isn’t, and it’s a waste of everyone’s time. Maybe he was just paying lip service to the idea of wanting to change, fashionable as it was in that time and place.

On the other hand, I know people who will go whatever distance they must go, or are told to go, despite knowing how crushed they’ll be at the end of it. These men and women are willing to trade current discomfort for future improvement. They are willing to look weak and incapable to others while they figure things out because they know that once they do it will show in their actions and character in the future. Or because they don’t give a fuck what others might think, now or then.

Some years ago I was riding bikes with my old climbing partner, in a period when he wasn’t as fit as he would like. He hadn’t spent much time on the road, spinning pedals recently but the ability to concentrate mental and physical power that made him such a great climber hadn’t faded. He can apply it to whatever he chooses, and take it as far as he likes, or is willing to recover from. The mental strength that allowed him to push beyond limitations — real, self-imposed and otherwise — in the mountains, is a tool he can use for and against other things. Having earned it, this capacity is with him forever. His virtue needs no signal, it’s obvious in his carriage.

Knowing you will be physically crushed by an experience and volunteering for it anyway might be the definition of confidence. The desire to confront Self can overcome the doubt we face ahead of an unpredictable outcome. Knowing it will be hard, and hard for a long time, and you might not finish, but still toeing the line shows belief in the Self, and in the ability to assimilate and recover, mentally and physically. Knowing you are going to look imperfect without caring what observers may think or say liberates. This freedom is a key to self-improvement. And it can never be sold or bestowed by a popular influencer.

Sometimes the insight we share doesn’t seem like wisdom at all, except perhaps in the rearview mirror. But even when we joke our character and values show through. A favorite memory from visiting Tadjikistan in the early-90s is of teaching the English phrases I thought most useful to one of the local gals in the Moskvina base camp, below what was still called Peak Communism at the time. Our hosts called her an interpreter but winked when saying it, and hinted that she was a State agent assigned to gather information on and from foreign climbers. The first phrase I taught was, “I don’t care what you think,” which is universal in its appeal and application. And it can be aimed at influencers (both real and fake) or anyone in any social situation who is seeking to capture and steer our attention. After we left the Pamirs, and in the many years since, I’ve often wondered whether our “interpreter” found the phrase as useful as I have, or perhaps took it to heart and went her own way.

Concentration is exclusion. It’s a necessary element of success. And while focus eliminates distraction, it sometimes becomes a trap, a telephoto lens that prevents us resolving subjects or material outside of its narrow view. Success rewards the means of its achievement, which can quickly become habit, also a trap. I have always believed it important to balance one’s physical and intellectual capacities, and embrace the learning and knowledge particular to each.

I took this position to navigate early adulthood. My middle class family placed great weight on the upward mobility promised by purely academic, intellectual pursuits but I quit formal education after barely graduating high school. Instead I sought a holistic, worldly knowledge through self-directed physical and literary interests. It was a rebellious act, righteous, yet tempered by the sense I was betraying an expectation of filial fidelity. And until I discovered a social hierarchy different from my upbringing I felt threatened by peers who pursued education and advancement through exclusively scholastic means; they would become successful and influential and powerful according to the fable we were taught while I probably wouldn’t.

These days I don’t feel much threatened by intellectually arrogant, self-described elites. I see the house of cards upon which their certainty sits, the one-dimensionality of their life experience, and the prejudice with which they regard those who aren’t confined within the same social and economic balloon. The psycho-physical balance still matters to me.

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There have been technical teachings, and also lessons about belief in Self and capability, and investing in both. If you truly believe in your project use your own money to make it. Of course, this is a greater risk but the outcome may also be greater; if you use someone else’s money you will never own, and never control what you make. Believe in your own value because investors will only do so for a percentage of the take.

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Last year I went a little haywire on the topic of Everest. I realized today, after learning the climbing season from the Nepal side had been delayed by an impassable icefall, that I had not released this particular essay from behind the paywall yet. It will make more sense if you read the original Everest Turbo essay and some of the comments before proceeding below. There are seven comments on the original posting of this essay and you can read them here.

I woke early today to address a couple of things I missed in the Everest Turbo essay, as well as some comments posted here. I am not consciously moralizing, just trying to observe and express how I feel. Exploring human philosophy requires conversation and I truly appreciate readers' comments and willingness to engage on this topic and platform. Thank you.

To begin, I’ll state that this article, “Xenon Misuse in Sports – Increase of Hypoxia-Inducible Factors and Erythropoietin, or Nothing but ‘Hot Air’?” published in the German Journal of Sports Medicine shows no significant increase in EPO production following exposure to inhaled xenon gas. Which raises some questions about the functional use of xenon during the preparatory period for the Everest climb, its future utility for regular, paying clients (is it just hype?) and also makes me wonder about O2 flow rate during the ascent.

My first point from this morning is that we should all be careful when we laud a physical accomplishment which, difficult as it may be, is really a logistical accomplishment (this goes for Purja and Harila too, of course). As noted by Ed in his comment, at least one of the protagonists in the XeO2 event was quite aware of this fact, though it would be easy for those unfamiliar with the process to overlook. He also noted the difference "between extending human capacity and replacing it," and that this is the latter. Before reading that I had typed a note that gas of varying types and drugs do not replace the physical effort and the will required to climb Everest but they do reduce the amount of each required. These interventions have a stronger effect on those with a previously existing, high level of fitness and high altitude experience than they would on less fit, inexperienced physiologies. This being the case, the gas may 'extend' the capacity of the individuals involved in the immediate term but does the opposite for our species, generally, offering yet another shortcut as it does.

In both sporting and philosophical terms this XeO2 event is very different from Messner and Habeler proving the mountain could be climbed without supplemental O2 in 1978, and very different from the 1984 Australian ascent (of a new route done without outside support or supplemental O2). Those climbs extended the physical and psychological capacity of both participants and observers, indicating what might be possible for human beings in the future, and inspiring them to try. Some days it feels like we no longer try to extend or expand human capacity but instead use unnatural means to bring the challenge within reach, to minimize the mountain itself.

In his comment, Steve pointed out that the expedition was "raising money for veterans charity", which further influences our apprehension of things. When an action or event is perceived as benefiting a disadvantaged group the action itself takes on higher meaning for the beholder, whose eyes may turn away from other actual or philosophical implications. Ours has become a society where folks believe that one positive action can balance out other, negative behavior or consequences. Sometimes our efforts are genuine and heartfelt but sometimes we use altruism in the service of image, to put a shine on actions that are actually self-serving. The results of this Philanthro-Washing may be helpful, especially to those receiving benefit but may also be distraction, sleight of hand, a way to offset carbon and guilt, to buy off our impact on the environment or temper our influence on future human behavior. The action itself (Everest faster, by any means necessary) and marketing of it normalizes consumptive, acquisition-driven tendencies regardless of which group or movement benefits.

I wonder who, by the way, does benefit from Mission: Everest. Cui bono? Ego? The clothing manufacturer? The guide service? A charitable organization? Local inhabitants?

One financial windfall of the commercial expeditions allows Nepali organizations to clean up the environmental impacts of previous human visits. This is a GOOD thing, and sadly, necessary. But when I see porters ferrying trash out of the mountains on foot, under the watchful eyes of rich clients, sipping coffee from their $150 mugs, I am sickened, and not by the garbage. At 8:14 in the RTS video Norbu Sherpa describes how, after spending two months with a personal Sherpa many clients don't even know his name, much less the names of the other Sherpas on the team helping them to fulfill their ambition. Apparently, the Colonialist attitude remains abundant among moneyed westerners (and yes, I admit to generalizing for effect).

Norbu also declared that these commercial operations have, "nothing to do with alpinism or the love of the mountains", which is clear to anyone with open eyes. He operates an agency and guide service and knows exactly what that is and means, and he appears almost sad in the video. I am too.

The natural environment offers us the opportunity to challenge and explore ourselves, to immerse ourselves in its beauty, to plumb its depths and consequently our own. When we move across the surface of that environment as spectators instead of participants, mitigating and filtering difficulties or risks instead of immersing ourselves and adapting to them, we reject the very opportunity for growth and change the mountains present. We replace rather than extend our understanding of Self and the world we live in.

Of course, Sagarmatha is a natural resource and will always be exploited. It is ‘renewable’ in a sense, and clearly, the Nepalis are trying to strike a balance between the health of the resource, the land, and the wealth that may be earned (individually and culturally) upon it. Ed, who has much experience in these matters, noted that the mountains where these commercial expeditions occur — and there are many besides Everest — have already been ruined by overuse. While keeping all of the shit in one place, aka the "Outhouse Theory", alleviates the impact on lower and lesser known mountains and locations, how we manage resource use and human expectations for the future won't be easy or clear. That the commercial sites are already fucked is no justification for future gang bangs but they do serve as a dramatic lesson of what happens when the god of commerce is worshiped at the expense of the human spirit. That said, regardless of how the masses affect those zones, their flocking doesn't prevent us upholding the ideas and ideals we find valuable, or diminish the experiences we seek by way of our personal pursuits.

On the other hand, Ulysse Lefebvre, founder of Alpine Mag, had a different take on the XeO2 event. He wrote that, one of the most jarring aspects of the story are the aesthetics and point of view; dark, militaristic, the "all-black suits, masks and goggles, this expedition takes on all the codes of the warrior aesthetic," and the "testosterone-laden imagery, with logos reminiscent of army insignia and words that speak of conquest." The company supplying the clothing, Thrudark, certainly has an "operator fetish" vibe to it, all about domination and nothing of integration. This narrative reinforces the idea of conquering or vanquishing a mountain, and is most certainly aimed at a particular audience. Seeing that audience in my imagination makes me wonder which one I belong to. Anyway, one French friend (who climbed a new route on the south face of Nuptse, among others) said of this whole event, and I paraphrase, "Welcome to clown world".

He was joking, in earnest. Speaking of jokes, we used to make one about the Unclean Olympics where doping was mandatory and spectators paid a premium to watch levels of performance and posturing, and mayhem that was not possible for clean protagonists to express. I discovered today that it's fucking real.

A friend made me aware that the 50-meter Freestyle swimming record had been broken by a doped athlete. Per the BBC, "Kristian Gkolomeev swam 20.89 seconds in a 50m freestyle time trial in the US in February, 0.02 seconds quicker than the world record set by Brazil's Cesar Cielo in 2009." Although not chemical doping, his full-length polyurethane 'super suit' was banned from competition shortly after Cielo set the record wearing one. Gkolomeev also began taking banned substances after signing up for the Enhanced Games in January 2025. He admitted that, "on the second attempt I was on a full two-month cycle." Whatever he was on — and the organization won't say — he claims to have added ten pounds of muscle once he began doping, and received a $1,000,000 prize for beating the world record time.

World Aquatics, swimming's world governing body, stated, "the Enhanced Games are not a sporting competition built on universal values like honesty, fairness and equity: they are a circus, built on shortcuts," which sounds frighteningly familiar, and perhaps an accurate description of the XeO2 affair.

The Enhanced Games website says the company was "founded in 2023 by Australian entrepreneur Aron D’Souza," and that, "the Enhanced Games challenge conventional views on human performance, embracing advancements in medicine and technology to safely expand the boundaries of what is possible ... backed by pioneering investors like Peter Thiel, Balaji Srinivasan, and Christian Angermayer, the Enhanced Games represent a global movement at the intersection of sport, science, and cultural evolution."

Again, people can and should do what they want to. However, I don't believe that runaway acceptance and pursuit of the "enhanced" versions of sport performance or recreational activity will render them more valuable, deep, or inspiring. They will simply become more convenient and accessible, and shallow, without the power to transform. If that's what people want, I say go for it but there's a different way.

As a young man I often asked myself “What do I want to do?” Somehow I understood it was the DOING that would transform me, which was different from wanting to BE someone. I climbed for decades, using the "mirror in the cliffs" to learn and eventually change and reinvent myself. I hoped that, by writing and speaking about this enormously powerful, lasting human experience, others might find similar value, and perhaps inspiration. I've been frustrated, of course, but also lifted up and amazed, and in turn inspired in my own way. The through line of my life has been open-hearted, hard work, respect for nature, awareness of the traps in my own nature, sensitivity, the constant pursuit of knowledge and experience, and my desire to integrate myself into the natural world rather than insulating myself from it.

I believe the shortcuts and enhancements are barriers to such integration and that's why I speak out against them.