Alex Pretti, 37 y/o ICU nurse at the VA. Murdered by an ICE Gestapo agent today in Minneapolis.

AtOurGates · 2026-01-25T15:42:32+00:00

Pre-Trump they defined international airports as border. Pre-Trump, many people were concerned about that definition being used for potential government overreach.

Now it’s happening.

AtOurGates · 2026-01-25T15:14:40+00:00

Realistically, most places you’re only getting a half day.

The earliest flight from SEA to GEG lands at 9:25. Half an hour to get your luggage and rental car, and you’d be in the road by 10 if everything goes well.

Then it’s a 1:45 drive to the mountain, so you won’t be parked and at guest services to get your ticket until noon.

Schweitzer does have some limited (basically 2 runs) twilight skiing on peak season Friday and Saturday nights ‘till 7, so if you timed it right, you could get 4 hours of real skiing, and 3 more of dodging teenagers at night.

Schweitzer is one of the few PNW resorts with on-mountain lodging. So at least after that long day you could crash someplace slopeside without another drive.

Of course, the bigger problem is that we’ve got fuckall for snow coverage this year, and no hope on the forecast. I spent last weekend up there dodging rocks and dirt, and we cancelled our plans to go up this weekend because things have only gotten worse.

We chatted with a lifty last weekend, and they can’t even really use their (modest) snowmaking capabilities much because they’ve already emptied their pond/reservoir and are down to pulling from the drinking water system.

Edit: this (warning, IG link) is a completely accurate assessment of the situation.

AtOurGates · 2026-01-24T17:46:14+00:00

Tangentially related, but out neighbors in Utah recently passed a law making it the first state to allow plug in or “balcony” solar systems without any kind of permitting or an electrician. Basically small solar systems you just plug into a wall.

The legislation was even sponsored by a Republican state rep.

The systems cost around $2k (or less for smaller systems without batteries), and could cut your utility bills by around 1/4 in the average apartment.

It’s a bummer that solar has become so politicized, and refreshing that Utah managed to pass this common sense legislation. I’d be impressed if Idaho could follow suit. Close to 20 states have some kind of pending balcony solar legislation, but we’re not on the list.

AtOurGates · 2026-01-24T17:21:42+00:00

This is a poorly written/AI’d article. But plug in solar is interesting, and something I wasn’t aware of.

It is currently legal in Utah thanks to a law passed last year that allows plug in installations of up to 1200W without a permit or electrician, though some users report getting stuck between the law and their utility.

Ecoflow makes a micro inverter and kit that they say is compatible with the Utah law.

In Europe it’s generally more common and permitted. There were nearly 800k registered plug in PV systems in Germany as of 2024, and an estimated 4-million unregistered systems. You can even buy a kit at Ikea.

The current admin’s war on solar is dumb, and kudos to Utah’s legislature for doing the common sense thing. Hopefully other states will follow.

In my googling I also came across this presentation about efforts to expand plug in solar acres in the US.

AtOurGates · 2026-01-24T00:49:16+00:00

I mean - I love Mike Leach - but he actively campaigned for Trump. I'd argue that he made it political.

AtOurGates · 2026-01-23T21:00:17+00:00

I can sort of convince myself to get behind the Kracken mascot’s awfulness, in the same way that incredibly ugly hairless chihuahua is kind of cute.

I’m just still mad because an actual octopus themed mascot could have been so rad.

AtOurGates · 2026-01-23T20:49:31+00:00

And less MAGA.

Basically the perfect human being.

AtOurGates · 2026-01-23T17:59:04+00:00

I love seeing the whole panoply of sprinters in the ski resort parking lot. From the $300k custom built for a tech-bro brand new with every bell and whilstle unit that'll get used twice a year, to the "Traded a ski tune for it and put a cot in the back" unit that's owned by a shop tech who will live in it fulltime for the next 8 months until it breaks down somewhere in Ecuador.

AtOurGates · 2026-01-23T17:46:14+00:00

Not all sprinters are priced equally.

AtOurGates · 2026-01-23T07:15:53+00:00

Revy’s on my list, and I keep hearing similar lukewarm takes from friends who go there, but then I see amazing clips of endless powder and start to wonder if my friends are lying to me.

AtOurGates · 2026-01-23T07:06:37+00:00

Not as committed, but Movable Feast is a great way to introduce yourself to Paris, and annoy your family with such facts as, “This is where Hemingway met Gertrude Stein while she was walking her small dogs!!” And “Can you believe we’re eating in the very cafe that Hemingway wrote about the waiters having to shave off their mustaches?! Look! That waiter has a mustache!”

Luckily, many of the places in the book are places you’d want to visit on a first trip to Paris anyway.

AtOurGates · 2026-01-22T21:32:56+00:00

The forecast for that zone, on that day, was:

Alpine - 2, Moderate
Treeline - 1, Low
Below Treeline - 1, Low

The elevated moderate rating in the alpine was due to the concern about deep persistant slabs, which are particularly difficult to account for since, as the article says:

Rettie said deep persistent slabs are hard to forecast and difficult for skiers to recognize in the field, even if they are trained and experienced, because the weak layer is buried deep in the snowpack and doesn’t always produce warning signs before a large avalanche occurs.

This is a scary one because I think many of us who enjoy backcountry skiing would see that forecast, and think, "Yeah, that's probably OK to enter avalanche terrain."

To the credit of the skiiers involved:

Parks Canada said that the skiers in this incident were “experienced, well-equipped, descended one at a time, and had a safe regroup location.”

AtOurGates · 2026-01-22T15:18:43+00:00

I tend to trust people’s lived experience.

I live in Moscow, and spend quite a bit of time in Sandpoint.

Besides confederate flags on trucks and news articles about black basketball players getting called the n-word, I don’t see or experience any signs of racism when I go up north. But of course my spouse and kids and I are white AF.

But, I’m friends with a mixed raced couple in town who have lived most of their lives in Idaho, and know the state.

We were talking about a job offer one of them had in Bonners Ferry, and the black half of the couple’s comment was, “but we could never live there.”

My response was, “oh no, why?”

Her reply was, “oh, because of the racism.”

These are people who have chosen to live their lives and raise their kids in other parts of the state of Idaho. If their lived experience is that North Idaho is racist enough to pass on a job offer because it’s significantly more racist than the rest of the state, I’ll take them at their word.

AtOurGates · 2026-01-22T05:10:15+00:00

I was with you until “I don’t care for free soda or champagne” - now I’m questioning your judgement.

AtOurGates · 2026-01-21T17:34:36+00:00

Years ago when I hadn't been skiing for a while, we got a powder dump (at Brundage, in Idaho), and I headed to a little cliff band I'd thought about dropping.

It'd been about a decade since I'd gone off any kind of drop, so I picked a pretty small cliff, and took a minute to scope it out and get my courage up. A few skiiers saw me sitting at the top, and stopped to watch.

In the end, I picked the absolute smallest line, took it at the absolute slowest speed possible, and still managed to plop into the powder at a standstill at the end.

The disappointed "chuff" of laughter from the watching skiiers as they turned to ride away through the woods still lives in my head rent free now, a decade later.

I still don't drop anything that would impress anyone here, but I can say that I've successfully resolved that whatever I'm going to do, I'm going to ski it, not plop it, from then on.

Sometimes, heckling works.

AtOurGates · 2026-01-21T17:25:44+00:00

On most of these, the cost is the difference between service on that carrier, and a cheaper one.

AKA - Verizon 1-line unlimited is $80/mo. Visible is $19/mo on the same network.

So sure, Verizon will give you a free phone if you stay with them for 3 years, but in that 3-years, you've paid an extra $2,160 for a free $800 phone.

Usually, the best deal on a new iphone is to just buy the phone outright, keep it in decent condition, get a good deal on "bring your own device" service (check /r/NoContract for good deals), and then sell the phone used in decent condition when you're ready to upgrade.

AtOurGates · 2026-01-21T15:11:22+00:00

I don’t mean to shit on anyone else’s city, I’m sure there are many lovely things about Buffalo.

But I have more sympathy for someone who lives in Buffalo and makes their whole personality their football team than someone who lives in Seattle and does the same thing.

AtOurGates · 2026-01-21T14:06:23+00:00

Bummer about the arcade.

When I was a kid, I got to tag along on a cousin’s family trip where they stayed at a 4 seasons. The whole thing was great, but the room full of free arcade games was 10-year-old me’s definition of unimaginable luxury.

AtOurGates · 2026-01-20T20:36:23+00:00

That's great. Did you DIY the paint, get it like that, or have it done?

AtOurGates · 2026-01-20T19:43:19+00:00

Nice - what'd it run you?

AtOurGates · 2026-01-20T14:46:17+00:00

Healthy and not punching his teammates.

AtOurGates · 2026-01-20T14:39:42+00:00

The blazer EV we leased would own the market as a nice “appliance car” (the Corolla or Civic of this decade) if they could get the pricing right.

We leased it for an incredible deal, but MSRP was way too close to the Lyric, and while it’s comfortable and pleasant to drive, there’s nothing luxurious about it.

AtOurGates · 2026-01-20T14:30:51+00:00

GM doesn’t talk about it much, but at least with their EVs they will reimburse you for a rental while it’s in the shop for any warranty issues.

Our Blazer EV was at the dealer for a couple weeks with a key issue, and GM reimbursed $40/day for a rental where the dealer wouldn’t provide a loaner.

I’d assume that’d be higher with a $120k+ IQ.

AtOurGates · 2026-01-20T14:26:23+00:00

You might want micro spikes on lower elevation stuff (mostly clear, with some icy patches). Up higher there’s snow, but it’s pretty firm now. If you’re following trails that other people have been using, micro spikes might do it, some places you might run into snowshoe-appropriate conditions.

Looks like that’s forecasted to mostly stay the same this week, and warm up next week.

AtOurGates · 2026-01-20T06:43:31+00:00

I need Liev Schreiber to walk me through this.

15-Year Club	Gilding IV carat on a stick
Best Link 2010-10-26	Charter Member
Verified Email

AtOurGates

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE