The Bluestocking, vol XVIII: Mountains, monsters and mixtapes

Morning,

This week I was supposed to be Uganda (long story) so I ended up instead with a blissfully clear diary. The weather here has been vile, so it's fitting that I've ended up with two stories about mountain rescues (or lack thereof). If anyone wants to send a St Bernard with a flask of brandy in the direction of north London, be my guest.

Helen

The Icelandic rescue service

A few years ago, three college-age kids from Holland showed up at Landmannalaugar to make the thirty-three-mile trek to Þórsmörk. The two men were wearing jeans. The woman was wearing hot pants. It was a few degrees above freezing and starting to snow. The SAR volunteers and the hut warden tried to talk them out of setting forth, or at least “to put on real pants,” Katrin said. (Instead, the woman put on pantyhose under the hot pants.) Hours into the hike, the Dutch group stopped at a pass with a memorial to an Israeli tourist who had died here of hypothermia in 2004. The snow was coming down hard. One of the guys had a ukulele. “The Dutch hikers just gave up there,” Katrin said. “They just lay down. They thought they were dying."

Iceland is a cool, as well as a cold, country. Their volunteer rescue service must think that tourists are unbelievable prats.


Friend of the devil

As measured by the perverse standards that define prison life, it turns out Peter’s greatest transgression may have been appearing on America’s Most Wanted a total of five times while so many other reprobates — some with truly unspeakable atrocities on their rap sheets — never made the cut.

“I don’t even like to mention it, because guys are so competitive,” he said with a sigh. . . “If I hear one more time, ‘You didn’t even rape her,’” he said, employing a whiny singsong. Then he leaned back and shook his head. “I mean, talk about ‘Damned if you did, damned if you didn’t….’”

This piece on a sex attacker who once worked as a fashion journalist in New York contains so many gobsmacking lines. "He filed on deadline, and his copy was clean." (HOW could such a person be a psychopath?) "Serial killers are very snobbish." (Hadn't really thought about that, but it figures.) “'I’ve never done anything like this before, so I guess I’ll just start by saying, I think your crime was really cool.' He looked a little misty. “It was like, ‘You had me at hello.’” (Women: do not form relationships with men in prison for sex assaults.) Anyway, it's extremely long but worth persevering with, because the writer does eventually circle back to the problem that this guy he's getting on well with did actually nearly rape someone.

Why Can't Kesha Release A Mixtape?

And if the legal and commercial complexity of Kesha’s situation wasn’t enough, it’s rendered even more challenging by the power dynamic present between her and her alleged long-time abuser. Kesha and Dr. Luke have had a creative relationship for a decade at this point, and based on Kesha’s claims it’s one that’s been sour since the very beginning. In her own recent affidavit, she wrote that Dr. Luke drugged her with a "sober pill" and raped her just a few months after she joined him in Los Angeles; her early 2014 stint in a rehab clinic for treatment of an eating disorder was in part pushed forward by Dr. Luke allegedly calling her a "a fat fucking refrigerator." "I know I cannot work with Dr. Luke," wrote Kesha in her affidavit. "I physically cannot. I don’t feel safe in any way."

Anyone who thinks that women routinely make rape accusations as part of some kind of feminazi plot should read what happened to Kesha since she alleged her manager drugged her and abused her.


Quick links: The true story of "Green Boots", the dead hiker who has become a waypoint on Everest. (I'm with Jan Morris: it's time to stop climbing Everest.) The rating game, or how Uber turned us into horrible bosses. This guy should definitely quit social media. For the love of God, stop trying to get me to send things to people's desks in boxes. I spent too much time creating my own gif dance party (hot take: Twist Again is the best music, and the dog in the sock the best character). The Fat Jew's book launch was meta. This guy wants to quit the internet too, and he once made a TED talk about how great the internet is, so you know things are serious now. This piece on how Twitter is dying is better than the last piece I posted on how Twitter is dying, so sorry about that. Plus: Hey, at least Isis fighters are still getting into the Twitter spirit by having petty arguments on there!

Quote of the week: "That’s the beauty of trolling: seeing something earnest decay into absurdity. That’s what makes it so joyful to see Richard Dawkins diligently informing people that he did not say 'stick your finger up the hole, out pops a tootsie roll,' and it’s even better when it takes on those with real power."

This is what a 16th century book of selfies looks like:

Guest gif: your mother warned you there'd be days like this.

That's all for this week. If you like this, forward it to a friend! To sign up, go to tinyletter.com/HelenLewis