The 4 climbers were rappelling down off Early Winters Spires - the spectacular, jagged peak you see from Washington Pass overlook. Sheriff on the news was speculating they anchored to an old piton, and it failed. RIP; not a fun way to go.

There's no cell service up there, not that it would have helped after a 400' fall...

Swimming in piss and shit is the perfect metaphor for working in the Trump admin

King County has too many wealthy people.

"We’re one of a relatively small number of counties where 401(k) holders are in the majority."

https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/data/what-new-401k-data-tells-us-about-king-county/

We need a 401(k) tax that redistributes those savings to poor people, so we have equal retirement distribution.

@2, FTW!

I wonder which easily preventable disease RFK Jrs poor grandchildren will die of first... measles or something they got from bathing in human shit.

Urban creeks all over America have been used as Combined Sewer Overflow for decades, if not centuries. It's gross. Seattle's been fixing this with big stormwater retention/detention facilities, slowly and steadily.

The worst Kennedy and his grandkids are probably fine as long as there hadn't been a huge storm recently, they didn't swallow shit and took a shower later.

Lake Washington is just as gross because of the goose shit. Matthews Beach is closed every summer for fecal bacteria.

I wonder if the bacteria will "resolve" RFK Jr like the bacteria "resolved" the alien invasion in "War of the Worlds".

Rest assured RFK is fully vaccinated and so are his grandkids. He’s a charlatan, not an idiot.

re: "Can't Wait to Vote" & "Mr. Sandman": TS is cucking hard for the DNC today.

@3 You should be wearing a good bulletproof vest when you propose this at the town hall. Of course, that won't help you with rifle fire.

"...the Trump administration
welcomed white Afrikaners “escaping”
a non-existant genocide in South Africa... "

omg!
the Absolute
BEST Hill for the
Wormtongue to Die on!

if anyone (claims to or)
KNOWs Genocide when
he Sees it's our dear wormmy,
fierce Defender of the Language
who'll fight This fight like NO One's
Business! I pity Cadet Bonespurs when
the Wormtongue grabs ahold of this FLAGRANT
ABUSE of our Precious and oft-Misused English Language!

sic 'em,
wormmy.

https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/law-justice/seattle-public-schools-sued-by-family-of-garfield-student-killed-in-shooting/

@11: As usual, you get it backwards. I know a non-existent genocide when I see one, and thus I agree with the Stranger that no genocide of white persons is underway in South Africa.

Glad to read my opposition to the Stranger's (and your) flagrant abuse of the word "genocide" elsewhere has been so effective, that you leap to complain about me when I had yet even to comment in this thread.

https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/24/politics/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-aoc-israel-gaza-genocide-cnntv

"a non-existant genocide in South Africa"

No the new rule is, if you deny that any particular situation amounts to genocide, it means the situation is definitely a genocide and you support the genocide. 😉 You monsters! 😆

@13: kristofarian referenced "Wormtongue" - so that must be you?

Remember when Republicans were Very Upset that Biden had purportedly botched the Afghanistan withdrawal and there were so many of our Afghan allies who were left behind to the tender mercies of the Taliban? Yeah, those are the people they're planning on deporting now. I guess it never was about a moral principle of supporting those who supported us. It was just about bashing Biden. Who'd a thunk it?!

@14: Hey Garb', looks like you're a thread late and a year short on your AOC news. You might want to try something more recent, which also demonstrates the utter fanaticism required for the 'Progressive' left to abuse the word "genocide" for Gaza:

'But the biggest, most dismaying indication of the widening gap between Ocasio-Cortez and the democratic socialist movement might have been the way she chose to handle the issue of Gaza in her speech [at the Democratic convention].

'Her only reference to Gaza was a line in which she credited Harris with “working tirelessly to secure a ceasefire in Gaza and bring the hostages home.” The moment was quickly clipped and posted to TikTok by the Harris campaign—a clear attempt to use one of the most popular young, left-wing politicians in the country to win over younger, left-leaning voters concerned about Gaza. “💙 @Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez,” the campaign account commented.'

After multiple paragraphs spent calling AOC a liar, the writer goes on to lecture her (and everyone else) on the correct primary ideological position, to which the modern American "Progressive" left must always absolutely and unquestioningly adhere:

"But Gaza is not just any cause. It is a red-line, defining issue of our time, and Ocasio-Cortez has found herself on the wrong side of it."

(https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/aoc-dnc-speech-gaza/)

@16: You are correct. Long ago, kristo' completely exhausted his lifetime allotment of creativity when he called me by the (for him) oh-so-inventive name of "tentsores." Once his lone brilliant burst of literary ability had swiftly passed, he returned to the most adult novel of ideas he shall ever read, The Lord of the Rings, and cravenly filched IP from an actual writer. (He still doesn't understand how much of a compliment he's paying me with this, so I shan't explain that where he can read it.)

While it's happening to a group that isn't particularly popular, it isn't really fair to call the problem non-"existant" (think you meant existent)–it isn't disputed that literally thousands of Afrikaners have been murdered on their farms since 1990.

@19 Still not a "genocide" and more than Gaza is, by definition.

@20 Could you forgive the people subject to having their land and homes expropriated on the basis of race, and many of their families murdered every year, for feeling they may be on the cusp of genocide?

It is chiling to hear of fatal climbing accidents, more chilling when you have personally climbed the route. The descent gully of Early Winter Spire is full of old anchors and webbing, the gully itself littered with loose rocks, rubble, and sharp terraces. When I descended the rope kept getting snagged, forcing us to occasionally to climb unprotected to recover the snag. Pretty awful.

@21: “Could you forgive the people … for feeling they may be on the cusp of genocide?”

I forgive them, but they’re wrong. Genocide is a question of objective fact, not a question of subjective feeling. 😉

It’s heavily disputed that the murders are part of a concerted effort to systematically kill white farmers in south africa. Living in a country with a high murder rate is not genocide.

It may not rise to the level of Israel's slaughtering a full 2% of the Gaza population, but at the end of the day, of the many things one might criticise Trump for, let's not include rescuing a minority group from racial revenge and punishment.

@21: They're not being attacked because of their race, but because they have land and homes to expropriate; obviously, white persons without those items haven't been forcibly relieved of them. Expropriating land and homes by force, while completely unjust and terrifying, does not fall under the definition of genocide in the UN Convention against Genocide.

Back in my undergraduate days, anti-apartheid activism was a staple of many an American university campus, including my own. The United States pursued very aggressive policies against South Africa's system of racial inequality. Now that South Africa seems sliding towards the definition of 'failed state,' I believe it's time for Americans to re-evaluate why our policies haven not created a shining example of equality in government there. Of course, like all other progress, change in policy will likely have to wait for post-Trump America, but we really should start a national dialog on how we can best aid post-apartheid South Africa to become the place we'd envisioned back then. More-favorable trade status? More direct financial aid? More student visas? I really believe we owe such consideration to post-apartheid South Africa and its citizens.

Trump’s immigration policy is destroying more lives than it’s saving and white people in south africa are one of the most privileged minority groups in the world.

I don't think genocide is required for asylum; I believe it is more relevant to refugee status. South Africa's situation is similar to cartel violence, and many from Mexico are in the US seeking asylum due to being a target of the cartels.

Tensor is one of those sick puppies who would be justifying the holocaust decades later.

@28: Don't add confusion to the confusion. Genocidal victimhood would be sufficient but not necessary for both refugee status and asylum! 😃

@29: Not every bad thing that happens to someone is a genocide. 😛 Well, except maybe in progressive discourse, where "genocide" has been redefined to mean "anything bad my out-group does." 😅

https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/in-private-some-israeli-officers-admit-that-gaza-is-on-the-brink-of-starvation/

How's that for not-genocide

The rock climbers are from Bellevue and Renton and not Redmond. Typical TS reporting, but what can you expect from an already low bar of integrity.

I mean, it's so profoundly sick and pitiful when the actions on the ground in Gaza are so beyond depraved and inhumane that anything Hamas did on 10/7 has been paid back 100 times over and then some. Smotrich and Ben Gvir have called for the literal total destruction and ethnic cleansing of Gaza and the actions of the military there have checked off every war crime in the book, from mass graves to shooting air workers in the head with their hands bound and blindfolded. And now they dare to compare this canard of South African farmers to that situation. It is racist, motivated by emnity, and antisemitic as it completely shits on the Jewish people as a whole to give a psychotic and vocally violent and hateful minority pure control over the agenda to protect the fuckbrain shithead Bibi who enabled and allowed it to happen under his watch.

All common sense and humanity goes to shit so long as you can do a mental gymnastics floor routine because in this case Gaza falls in the outgroup. But all things being equal, the character and willful ignorance tensor displays shows that he would do the same as any genocide or even holocaust apologist so long as his opponents fell in the outgroup. It's fucking sick and frankly insane that there is no goalpost too far moved or standard lowered for him to continuously and psychotically grasp at straws to make it okay. May god have mercy on your slimy little grinch heart that pumps shit instead of blood through your rancid veins. Just plain evil.

@33: So, it's firmly within the Progressive philosophy to use "genocide" to describe Gaza, even though AOC and Bernie Sanders do not?

Are AOC and Bernie therefore also apologists for genocide?

Or are AOC and Bernie the real exemplars of Progressive philosophy, and only fringe entities use "genocide," such as a "canpus group hijacked by Hamas sympathizers," as you had averred as long ago as (checks notes) yesterday?

Newhalem has a pay phone?

@33, "Anything Hamas did on 10/7 has been paid back 100 times over and then some."

Wars against an attacker aren't about retribution. They are about taking away an adversaries capacity or will to attack you again.

In the Gaza case, its hitting Hamas, and the resources they need to keep making war against the Israel.

The rockets they launched on Israel (over 10,000) were all made from diverted civilian goods and civil infrastructure.

The current allegation is that Hamas diverts even food and medicine imports to sell in Gaza's black markets so they can continue to pay the jihadist mercenaries they hire from around the world. They are abolishing any distinction between war and humanitarian materials, to the detriment of Gazans.

There are reports from Aljezzera quoting furious Gazans as stating that humanitarian aid coming into Gaza gets diverted underground to Hamas.

What will help Gazans? Ending the war. The faster Hamas, the IDF, or both lose the capacity or will to continue, the faster Gazans get out of the crossfire and the faster cross border trade can resume

International courts don't protect non-combats. One side losing, so the conflict ends, protects them.

Jesus you guys are singing the same tune for two years while the situation just worsens. Again, apologists for genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, the works. Trash and scum. Wormtongue filth.

@35,

That's freaking nuts. I would honestly assume most any pay phones left in America are goofy art installations, and if they're live at all connect to like looped transcendental music or whatever.

@33: “shooting aid workers in the head with their hands bound and blindfolded.”

lol, what. You are working yourself frothy over a shooting that did not, in fact, actually happen! 😂 Come on now dude! 🤣🤣🤣

Whoa whoa whoa, the IDF murdered hundreds of aid workers, sure, but none of them were blindfolded. Get your facts straight @33!

This is what the genocide apologists have devolved to.

@40: lol, the Israelis have “murdered” precisely zero aid workers. 😂😂😂

the
psychopathy
runs deep in tS's
far right commentariat
& they're not uncomfortable
with that at all - the reptilican brainstem:

why this Planet
cannot have
nice things.

@42: As Garb' reminded us, such a long, long time ago (by which we mean, "yesterday"):

"If you want to espouse the tenets of progressivism in good faith, turn to Bernie Sanders and AOC,"

(https://www.thestranger.com/slog-am/2025/05/12/80053638/slog-am-the-2025-city-elections-begin-trump-wants-a-new-jet-and-hegseth-is-still-an-idiot/comments/17)

Bernie Sanders and AOC do not use the term "genocide" to describe the situation in Gaza. Is that because "the psychopathy runs deep" in Bernie Sanders and AOC? Do you know? I keep trying to get an answer out of Garb', but no luck so far. Maybe you could ask Garb'?

@41 Over 400 aid workers have been killed by Israel in Gaza since October 2023, mostly UNRWA staff. If you know less than nothing on the subject, please just don't comment.

@44: each of those 400 deaths was a tragedy, but none of them was a murder. 🥲

ai siksokbotts're
Experts when it
comes to An-
nihilations

you can tell
by the E-
mojis

justifying
Genocide's
just a Sidehustle.

@25 Afrikaaners are not a minority group

@45 I guess you could pretend you were hairsplitting about the word "murder", as if Israel killing them by simple negligent homicide would be much better, or if there weren't indisputably deliberate murders like the March 23 Rafah paramedic massacre, but it's obvious you just didn't know and when you confidently burbled the "precise number" you were embarrassingly wrong. Take the L!

@47 You're insanely wrong. 5-6% of the South African population. That's a...minority.

@48: There’s no “hairsplitting” about murder; hence our laws differentiate between homicide and manslaughter. The difference lies in the intent of the actor.

The death of white farmers in South Africa does not, all by itself, constitute genocide. The deaths of civilians in the war zone of Gaza does not, all by itself, constitute genocide. Proving genocide in each case requires far more evidence than has ever even been mentioned here.

“… indisputably deliberate murders like the March 23 Rafah paramedic massacre…”

Your calling it “indisputable” doesn’t make it so. Israelis have experience of attacks from Palestinians disguised as paramedics, and that context is extremely important in judging events such as the one you mentioned.

mike_blob dear, Newhalem is a City Light company town. A hamlet, really. You have to be a City Light or North Cascades National Park employee to live there (I think a Whatcom County Sherriff’s Deputy also lives there). Now that I think of it, there might be a payphone by the General Store.

@48: lol, in addition to not being “murder,” the aid worker deaths were also not “simple negligent homicide.” 😂 You’re doing that thing again where progressives redefine words like “murder” and “genocide” to mean “anything my out-group does that I don’t like.” 🤣 It’s not “hairsplitting” on my part to correct you, although I can see how it might make you mad if you’re not used to hearing it. 😘

@48 -- yep. & there's @49,
stepping in Instantly to
protect its siksokbott
🛴🔨.

'don't Worry, little
ai -- Daddy's here.'

babyback's
Gone. let's
Lose🛴🔨
Too.

Debating the semantics of the words genocide and murder on the internet while babies get blown to pieces. So republican.

so Distracting.
so Wormtongue.

@54: “Debating the semantics of the words genocide and murder”

Sounds like we all agree, then: there has been no genocide and no murder in Gaza. 😛The non-combatant deaths in Gaza have been harms incidental to combat, excusable under the law of armed conflict. I’m glad we’ve finally settled this distracting semantic debate! 😉

SO Wormtongue

@52 "the aid worker deaths were also not “simple negligent homicide.” 😂"

The IDF disagrees.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/20/world/middleeast/israel-gaza-medics.html

@54: Yes, if it's one thing the Republicans have conclusively demonstrated, it is their fine attention to detail in the meanings and applications of polysyllabic words. No doubt.

Meanwhile, I make no apologies when I defend the real meanings of words. I unambiguously and in all cases deplore the abuse of language, especially when dishonest actors try to twist language for political gain. (See Orwell, G. for details.)

@58. Oh please. You're the one acting like the Ministry of Truth by gatekeeping and turning a blind eye to any truth you don't agree with so you don't have to budge an inch on your posturing or god forbid show any empathy to anyone who is suffering unjustly, you malevolent sociopath.

@59: Hey Garb', does Bernie's and AOC's refusals describe Gaza as "genocide," mean they're no longer persons we should reference as prime examples of "Progressive" beliefs in the USA?

@59 -- Well-Put, CD.

the Wormtongue is
Genocides' Biggest
Booster distracting
the Conversation
making it about
ANYThing But
what WE're
$upoorting
with OUR
TAX $$$.

See? There
he Goes
AGAIN
@60

Right On
fucking Cue.

@59: With all of the suffering and misery in our world, why are you so adamant that Gaza, and Gaza alone, be called a "genocide," to the point you keep trying (and failing) to gatekeep our dialog here based on it? What's so special about it? Can't Gaza just be yet another humanitarian disaster, and we work together to address it? Why can Bernie and AOC be your standard-bearers politically, yet without calling Gaza a "genocide"? What so special about them? Why are they not "malevolent sociopaths" for their refusals to do so?

If you want to convince anyone that you care about this topic, then as @54 mentions, "[d]ebating the semantics of the words genocide and murder on the internet while babies get blown to pieces" is likely not the look you want to present. Yet, you do, endlessly. Why?

@58: "The IDF disagrees."

Article does not support your contention that the IDF disagrees with me regarding the question of negligent homicide.

Did you once again link the wrong article? 😂 Or is this yet another of your convenient semantic confusions? 😂

@63 true, they admitted they committed homicide as a result of being negligent, but they didn't say in so many words that it was "negligent homicide." You win a thousand internet points congrats.

@64: You’re slowly getting there. 😄 In Israel as in the United States, negligent homicide is a crime defined by particular elements. The elements of that crime are absent in the March 23 Rafah shooting. The Rafah shooting was not negligent homicide, QED. 😃

Sorry if it stings. 😂 Not everything your out-group does is a crime. 😘

@65 which element of negligent homicide under Israeli law, in your opinion, is not established when someone's negligence causes the death of another person? Or which element of Manslaughter in the 2nd under Washington law? Just kidding I know you have no idea.

@66: In the Rafah incident, the missing element of the crime is negligence. 🤣

@2 thirteen12: +1 for the WIN!!! And thank you for beating me to it.
You summed it up beautifully.

@61 kristofarian: Teenieweenie has nothing better to do, other than to ecstatically slurp up the very contaminated
Trumpfist pond water RFK Jr. swims in. He loves spewing shit on cue, no matter how toxic.

@59 CDizzle and @61 kristofarian: +2: Word

@60: Uh-huh....right on schedule. Same batshit time, same batshit channel. Don't you get tired of reading raindrop's cue cards over and over?
One suggestion, teenie: You might wanna get a tetanus shot soon.
I know how much you pride yourself with being an avid brownshirt, but forever swimming in shit is a bit over the Trumpf's butt end, dontcha think?

@6 Max Solomon: Thank you for the reminder of why I don't swim at public beaches anymore.
Fifty years later, too many people and too much bacteria.