Ice Theft in Antarctica | Hacker News Reader

Ice Theft in Antarctica

nautil.us

The term "theft" and "steal" feels really odd to me when referring to ice or glaciers, or anything that is inanimate (?).

For example this sentence: "Usually, when glaciers come into contact they merge and continue flowing together. They have also been recorded stealing ice from one another" just left me more confused than before. What does it mean for glaciers to "steal ice" from one another? I understand "merge" but not "steal" in this context.

I just think the author needs a better vocabulary.

Another way to put it, as the article does, is transfer of ice to one glacier from another.

Yeah. I think that would have been much more appropriate but a lot less exciting.

Before I read the article I was thinking maybe some researchers were stealing ice from each other and was really excited to understand why.

I think it's just an extension of clickbait.

Theft! Stealing! More emotionally laden terms.

Don't anthropomorphize glaciers. They hate that.

Why is it giving you trouble, though? The idea is that the glacier is taking ice that 'doesn't belong' to it, putting the other glacier at some sort of disadvantage.

Anthropomorphization isn't exactly an uncommon writing tool.

The fact that you don’t understand why he doesn’t understand makes me understand that in this whole conversation you’re the person with the greater misunderstanding.

So witty!

Or, actually he understands just fine but chose to say he doesn't understand as a way to protest something he disagrees with. There's a chance you understood that and just wanted to try and be snarky though, isn't there? Such a valuable contribution!

I actually did not understand what it means for a glacier to steal something: take [what exactly] and [why]?

I do not disagree with something I have no idea about.

How can you truly not understand from context? I mean, you guess merge, which indicates you do understand the point being made, but just strongly disagree with the language for some reason.

If you truly didn't understand, you wouldn't have been able to suggest your preferred language use of 'merge' instead.

Of all the hills in this little pale blue dot, the decision to pick this one as the location to commit seppuku over someone else’s interpretation of an analogy not only seems wasteful, it begets the question: why?

But this is the Internet. A modern marvel built for the purpose of inflating one’s ego at the cost of others. Me included, of course.

Now, do me. Please.

> Of all the hills in this little pale blue dot, the decision to pick this one as the location to commit seppuku over someone else’s interpretation of an analogy

That's not at all what's happening. I just made an observation because I truly doubted how someone couldn't understand, especially when their text indicated they did.

What's weird is when people like you involve themselves for no reason at all though.

> Now, do me. Please.

How about you do us both a favor and just never reply to me again? You don't have that in you though, you're one of those need to have the last word types, so have it, so at least I can then be done with you :)

> What's weird is when people like you involve themselves for no reason at all though.

They made it so much better with a witty reply. I was just thinking this is one of my favorite HN threads I've seen in a long time. And now you've ended it with the HN trope of "I have no sense of humor but I still need to point out why I'm better than you."

Different strokes for different folks.

> Different strokes for different folks.

Indeed. Personally I thought the unwelcome interjection was asinine and combative with less than pure motivations, but glad you were able to enjoy it.

Thank you, that’s very kind.

Ok. Only because I don’t want to ruin Dang’s Memorial Day weekend. Lord knows he doesn’t need yet another man-baby emailing him with complaints about some idiot on the internet making fun of him.

You'd be the one here being dealt with since you're brazenly breaking the guidelines due to your not-exactly-veiled insults, themselves a result of you inserting yourself into a mild disagreement just so you could fight in the first place. Some people, eh?

Fantastic bait though. Well done :)

Wait, I did not suggest anything, I quoted that sentence from the article which mentioned "merge". I just understood what "merge" meant, but not "steal".

That's honestly just hard for me to believe. Is English a second language for you?

Yes, it is.

I guess that explains it, thank you for responding, and sorry about the off-topic nonsense from the other user.

To maybe try and explain, as I said earlier anthropomorphization is a pretty common writing tool, which means to treat a non-person being or object as though it were a person in limited contexts. In this case the glacier is being anthropomorphized to help describe its behavior, otherwise, sure, the use of steal wouldn't really make sense.

Does that help you understand it at all?

Humans are 60% water, so it's not that far off, because that means a glacier is only 40% non-human.

There’s plenty of this kinda stuff in the parlance - for instance, bees “rob” each other. Are they criminals? No, but the behaviour can be described as theft.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robbing

That is much closer to the concept of ordinary human theft.

This is clickbait.

IIR, "capture" is the geological term used when one river or stream starts taking water from another. (Generally due to erosion shifting their courses.)

No idea if there is a correct geological term for what's happening here - but "theft", "steal", and "piracy" get the clicks, so...

the title could just be an example of how a person ends up thinking after bieng on station in antartica......glaciation starts to become personal

This is another case of the theft of the word theft for something that wasn't a theft.

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