Monday, October 20, 2025

Social Climbers

Did you read some weeks ago about how blizzard conditions stranded almost 1,000 hikers on Mount Everest? What the hell? It turns out maybe 800 people a year reach the summit, spending somewhere around $100,000 each to do so. There’s pictures of tightly packed queues curving their way up the mountain, each of them enjoying a glorious view of the back of the tourist in front of them. Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hillary got there first in 1953. That was the whole point. Nothing else counts. Going there now is like sitting down at your keyboard to write Finnegans Wake.

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