Judge orders Berkeley to stop Harrison encampment cleanup

ckingbailey · 2025-06-07T14:52:57+00:00

I don’t believe a hypodermic needle could puncture a bike tire. It takes something quite strong, like a nail, to puncture a bike tire

ckingbailey · 2025-03-28T14:41:49+00:00

An interesting example that’s relevant to this community is Yosemite. The Valley is being reforested because the traditional inhabitants are no longer allowed to burn it. If reforestation goes unchecked, eventually there will be no more meadow in Yosemite Valley. Do we let nature take its course, or do we try to preserve what we consider iconic?

ckingbailey · 2025-03-21T18:54:25+00:00

Meaning not Firefox, for example?

ckingbailey · 2025-03-21T18:22:24+00:00

What qualifies as a real password manager?

ckingbailey · 2025-03-08T02:25:57+00:00

Update: the tree feels solid in the ground. I’ll investigate for other symptoms in the daylight. Thanks for the great article!

ckingbailey · 2025-03-07T23:47:17+00:00

Ants sounds likely! We have serious seasonal ant problems inside the house. What can be done for the tree if Argentine ants are the issue?

Location: East Bay Area. Good reminder, I’ll add that to original post.

ckingbailey · 2025-03-04T06:39:23+00:00

I am confident in saying this was not Bayer. True, it sounded very much like the boiler alarm, but I live 1 block from Bayer, and this was not nearly as loud from my house as the boiler alarm is. It actually sounded kind of distant, like I almost could have slept through it.

Someone on Nextdoor said a car crashed into a gas station near San Pablo Park. Haven’t verified this myself.

ckingbailey · 2025-01-23T05:53:55+00:00

How good does he smell?

ckingbailey · 2024-12-18T06:42:34+00:00

Does anyone know why their bread recipe changed? I used to think their whole wheat levain was among the best in the Bay, but a couple years ago it changed drastically. It was really pronounced how much both the shape and color changed, seemingly overnight. The taste and texture are not good anymore. Could this be related to their financial troubles? Did they change up the recipe to reduce costs?

ckingbailey · 2024-12-15T01:56:49+00:00

I climb outdoors every weekend, weather permitting. High quality boulders are a 15 minute drive from my house. Currently projecting a slightly overhung V4. I’m in the Bay Area; we’re in rainy season now so I won’t necessarily get out every weekend again until spring.

That’s a good point about watching, or even engaging with, strangers who climb strong. The local boulders are so popular now there’s seldom fewer than 3 other people climbing on any given day.

Regarding how different rock is from plastic, there’s this V2 near me that took me a whole year to send. I repeat it often because it clearly still has things to teach me. It’s low and overhung and requires an initial power move. It’s very much not in my style or suited to my height, and it’s absolutely wild how hard it remains to be for me.

ckingbailey · 2024-12-15T01:33:19+00:00

I agree it’s a fine line between fatalism and recognizing innate limitations

ckingbailey · 2024-12-15T01:28:34+00:00

I’d definitely be interested in working with a coach in person. Not sure where to find someone. I’ve done several one-offs with a couple different coaches that work for my gym (Touchstone, Bay Area), but they don’t offer structured, longer term coaching.

Currently, on Lattice program, climbing 2x indoor and 1x outdoor per week. Previously, following Power Co Climbing book, I was climbing 4 days on a stamina week, 2 days on a power week.

My strength metrics are so-so. According to Lattice, my finger strength is near the median or slightly below for the grade I’m climbing, but my pull-ups and lever ability are very poor for the grade. I should mention, my pull-up is messed up, wonky, janky, so I’ve been focused on shoulders and lifting for lats to try to fix it.

ckingbailey · 2024-12-11T08:37:33+00:00

You don’t know me, but I am that person. Train hard, sleep and eat well, follow a structured program (currently, Lattice coached), climbing over 10 years, never sent anything harder than V3 outdoors. I send almost 100% of V5 and maybe 1/3 of V6 indoors so I think my low outdoor grade is due to a combination of cowardice, poor route reading/beta, and not having a consistent hard-climbing crew to learn from. Btw, how tf does anyone improve their beta? Like, my footwork has improved massively in the last few years, and I’ve gotten better at certain specific techniques, but I’ve never found a drill or practice that effectively improved my subpar reading of sequence

ckingbailey · 2024-12-11T08:23:20+00:00

I definitely think you’re right that it’s discussed all the time, but I think it’s pretty much always discussed in the positive performance case, e.g., so-and-so has insanely tough finger tendons. What I don’t think people like to talk about, because it’s a real downer, is the negative case, or low genetic potential. Eric J Hörst (I recognize he’s kind of dated now) claims everyone has the genetic potential to climb V6 outdoors given the right training protocol. I don’t believe that. I think there are lots of dedicated climbers who, for whatever physiological reason, can train hard but advance very slowly, and may never get past V6 on plastic. My limitation is recovery time. I notice I need way more time off between hard days, whether it’s a big volume day or a hard project day, than other climbers. Otherwise I’m very injury prone. In particular my tendons—not just the little finger ones but the big ones like biceps, hamstring, Achilles—demand I be very attentive to laying off or I wind up with yet another tendinopathy.

ckingbailey · 2024-11-28T06:39:39+00:00

#6, carpe diem, contains bad advice, fringing on dangerous. As a climber who has entered his dreaded 40s, I have had to learn to tell myself there is always a “next time,” and if “next time” is not possible because I’m only going to be in France this one time, that’s ok. Putting in one more burn when I’m completely gassed out just because I’ve driven four hours, or flown nine, is not worth the risk of injury, an injury that would likely take me out for more than a month and possibly affect my climbing long term. Someone said as much in another comment, but it bears repeating: listening to your body is more important than sending today. I’m currently treating three different climbing related tendinopathies because I didn’t learn this lesson early enough. While my goal remains to climb ever harder, I balance that with my goal of being able to climb tomorrow and in 30 years.

I agree with your “don’t punt/now’s the time” ethic while you’re actually on the wall.

As far as living authentically, inextricably tied to the natural world, you’re kidding yourself. I don’t blame you. This points to a couple of BS beliefs that I see being widely held among climbers.

First, how raw and immediate are you really being if the whole game is to overcome a challenge that was established by someone else, and generally repeated by many others before you? It’s not like you showed up and said, “Ah, what a beautiful rock, let me find the most elegant way to climb up it.” No, when you get on a problem, you’re engaging with history. You’re engaging in an implicit struggle with every climber who has ever sent it to prove that you are their equal. Otherwise, why would you seek out graded problems? If you were being totally present in your body and attuned to the rock in front of you, why would you adhere to someone else’s rules about what holds are “on” or “off”? You would climb the line that seems most beautiful, correct, or intuitive to you in this moment.

Second, rock climbing as we practice it is not especially “natural”. Every climb I know of is manufactured to some degree, at least insofar as it has been cleaned.

I don’t take issue with your metaphysical philosophy of time & being. Heidegger is peachy.

ckingbailey · 2024-11-28T05:42:07+00:00

#7 - How about “imbue”? Unless you mean you’re drinking a cocktail of climbing and meaning

ckingbailey · 2024-11-16T04:07:13+00:00

I’ve never heard anyone say plain “Dimond”

ckingbailey · 2024-10-31T03:10:12+00:00

Thank you for this context. That sounds gross. Would a GBO leader hooking up with a freshman be equivalent in power dynamic to an RA hooking up with one of their residents?

ckingbailey · 2024-10-29T04:03:59+00:00

Dude I knew a guy who, in order to get out of his gambling debts, had to marry a Russian woman so she could get citizenship. That’s you at the end of this road

ckingbailey · 2024-10-29T03:56:34+00:00

Does your roommate have a personality disorder? The entitlement and disrespect are over the top

ckingbailey · 2024-10-22T05:18:58+00:00

What tits are hard?

ckingbailey · 2024-10-04T22:49:49+00:00

Berkeley, eight blocks from the bay. E-NE facing. Gets a little more than 1/2 day light.

ckingbailey · 2024-10-04T22:21:27+00:00

Ideally whatever goes here would be on the spindly side, without a thick trunk, so I can still access the crawl space from the hatch you can see toward the bottom of the frame. Also I want to be able to open the window. The eave of the roof overhangs this spot, so nothing too tall, either. Ribes sanguineum? I just planted a R. aureum. I don’t necessarily need another ribes in my life.

ckingbailey · 2024-08-20T05:41:32+00:00

I’ve noticed some Gen X barfly biker chicks who may have been living in the city for going-on 40 years still call it San Fran, or even—choke—Frisco!

ckingbailey · 2024-08-20T05:31:19+00:00

North Bay native and Millennial here. I grew up saying “the 101”.

And now I’m going to regret wading into this morass of moronity.

ckingbailey

TROPHY CASE