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You Can Run

magazine.atavist.com

142 pointsbryanrasmussen78 comments

I expected a “running for beginners” app hah, like for training / endurance

On the subject of crime and that web site, I thought this story was quite fascinating:

https://magazine.atavist.com/2019/outlaw-country-klamath-cou...

There are a lot of those bits of land throughout the west that have been, for whatever reason, subdivided enough to make them very cheap plots of land in remote areas. They tend to attract a lot of very random people.

There's an area like that near where I live in Bend, Oregon where some guy called in to the Sheriff's department worried about his brother. The deputies decided to visit the next day because it was winter and already dark. Reading that, I had a record scratch moment where I was going "wait, the sheriff's deputy wouldn't visit the area after dark - holy crap".

Wow, that was quite a lot of cryptic build-up. It’s basically a story about conman/drug guy interwoven with biographical information and anecdotes about how this impacted his family.

“You can run,” I guess maybe in the context of “You can run but you can’t hide” is not really touched upon too much. I mean it doesn’t have a particular connection to this story, any more than any other story about a fugitive.

Yup. A big yawn. It seems like it ought to deep and insightful, but is, as you say, "basically a story about conman/drug guy interwoven with biographical information and anecdotes about how this impacted his family". There's no connection between the two parts that goes deeper that "they knew each other once, but did they really know each other?". It'd be Hallmark, but the parents aren't sympathetic enough.

Yeah — but includes a fun cameo from a famous 90s TV dad.

When I read your comment, I instantly knew which one.

Have you ever like, read books? Why on earth would you think the title of a piece needs to call to anything but a general emotion from the story?

> Wow, that was quite a lot of cryptic build-up.

Yes, they were building suspense and telling an interesting story. It's a long form article, not a 30-word tweet. Jesus.

I've seen this attitude on HN all the time - the concept of "a narrative hook" is apparently a foreign concept here

Clickbaiters abused the concept of a hook until the hook itself was seen as clickbaity.

Damn near a whole generation estranged from basic literary convention due to its horrendous abuse.

"Narrative hook" is more often than not a sign of a weak writer. The story could also have started with: "Before they learned that their father was a drug dealer, the following happened:"

It might be a nice truecrime story (I’m not sure actually, they aren’t my cup of tea). I read along figuring it’d have some HN-related twist eventually, but it didn’t. So I thought I’d provide a heads up.

Usually a book title is a little more descriptive. And there's a synopsis or some other blurb on the back of the cover, to try to make you care a bit more than three words on a link on the front page of Hacker News.

If you expect a book title to be descriptive, you will be very surprised to learn that Moby Dick is a story about a whale. Or the insatiable ego. Or something else.

Damn, I thought this was going to be a guide to getting into running for exercise. Yes, I know there are lots of those around, but if this one made the front page of HN then maybe it had something interesting about it, or it was particularly well written or something.

Or something about politics. Or schedulers.

  The son shall not suffer for the iniquity of the father, nor the father suffer for the iniquity of the son. The righteousness of the righteous shall be upon himself, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon himself. -- Ezekiel 18:20

That was aspirational around 590 BC when written, and still is. To isolate children from the iniquity of the parent would require the dissolution of the family.

My favorite (dys|u)topian setting; universal child removal to robo-nurseries, gets closer to implementable every day.

They more or less did that during the bombing of London, children were evacuated to foster families in the countryside en masse. Luckily they came to terms with the fact that this was an insanely traumatic experience pretty quickly and reverted. It's literally less traumatic for a child to be in an active war zone than to be separated from their parents.

Does this apply to babies separated at birth though?

The trauma shifts forward in time, like debt.

Unless the child is killed in said active war zone, which was the maximally traumatic outcome they were trying to avoid. Some evacuation was reverted, but there were also later waves; I don't think it was clear that it was overall the wrong thing given the very possible outcomes of heavier bombing or even invasion.

Well obviously dead child suffer no trauma.

> It's literally less traumatic for a child to be in an active war zone than to be separated from their parents.

Unless they happen to go to war themselves, vanquishing an evil queen with the help of a lion and becoming kings and queens, and reigning for a long while themselves.

Those kids seem to mostly turn out alright. Small sample size though.

I'm not so sure you're interpreting the data correctly: 1 in 4 such children become "silly, conceited" adults, forgetting all the lessons they learned on their adventure; and 3 in 4 develop vivid visions that result in them getting killed by a train.

And far far worse outcomes for those children orphaned:

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-04-27/child-abuse-royal-com...

One of them (Susan) gets really into nylons and lipstick and is basically damned to hell for it, though.

I think the part where she abandoned people, including one prisoner, to a murderous gang of con artists / burgeoning cultists is more relevant than precisely what she abandoned them for. I'm reasonably sure that my interpretation is not how the author (C. S. Lewis) interpreted this part of the story, though.

Also, she wasn't damned by the end of the last Narnia book (rather, she's expected to be damned, but it is not yet certain).

it seems that at least according to the german wikipedia page about the topic in germany they came to the opposite observation. children who were sent away apparently suffered less than those that stayed in the war zones.

Amusing how many read excerpts of The Republic and come away thinking it's a utopian project, and not a thought experiment to investigate the nature of justice.

And as many adoptive parents know, that doesn’t go so easily.

You can't quote that without also quoting:

   Keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, and that will by no means clear the guilty; visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, and upon the children's children, unto the third and to the fourth generation. -- Exodus 34:7

Why not?

Probably to show you can pick any choose any bible verse to make whatever point you want. There’s a verse for A and NOT A.

That's weird. I don't have this with the Bible. But maybe I haven't read those passages. Do you have some examples?

How is it possible to not be familiar with this common criticism? e.g., Leviticus prohibits wearing clothes woven of two different types of fabric and calls for killing adulterers, anyone who curses their parents, etc. etc. which millions of cherry pickers ignore while constantly referring to the bit about laying with a man as with a woman.

I think it's extremely possible to be familiar with the criticism without ever having seen specific examples. I certainly haven't. I guess I assumed it was something to do with people misunderstanding the difference between new and old testament, or something to that effect.

Your comment also does not seem to present any examples of this. You start talking about it, but then you move on to complaining about cherry-pickers instead of showing some other part of the old testament which happens to encourage wearing clothes woven of two different types or not killing adulterers or something.

The common criticism was

> Probably to show you can pick any choose any bible verse to make whatever point you want.

Explicit contradictions aren't the only basis for that, but for those, bible-defending pedants can see password4321's comment that started this subthread as well as his followup.

Over and out ... I won't respond further.

Then say the argument for what it is - “the text is often misunderstood and/or misrepresented”, not “the text itself is somehow hypocritical because people misuse it”.

I don’t even disagree with you, I just don’t get why you’re so purposely mislabeling it.

> not “the text itself is somehow hypocritical because people misuse it”.

I should stick with not responding, but I never said anything of the sort. And despite my many criticisms of religion and the religious, I have never in my life had the thought that the BIBLE is "hypocritical", just because it has inconsistencies and contradictions (which it genuinely does AS DOCUMENTED here, NOT merely people hypocritically misusing, misinterpreting, or cherry picking from it) -- ascribing hypocrisy to the bible is a category mistake.

> you’re so purposely mislabeling it.

So not only am I mislabeling something that I never labeled, I'm doing so purposely? And not just purposely, but purposely in extremis?

What an absurd and disgusting uncharitable personal attack. I will truly never respond to you again.

If I was being absurd and disgusting, I’d call you a name. Not every disagreement is a personal attack, even if you’re dedicated to being a victim.

>Explicit contradictions aren't the only basis for that, but for those, bible-defending pedants can see password4321's comment that started this subthread as well as his followup.

Right, you’re talking about the one that explicitly is not a contradiction, it’s a misunderstanding of new vs. Old Testament, which I specified in my first response.

This is the worst thing about discussing religion on the internet. People pretend to be so disgusted by it they simply CANNOT POSSIBLY discuss it, despite being just… completely wrong.

And of course the explicit contradictions are needed. If all you’ve got is “this seems backwards” and nothing more, that’s a sign you don’t actually have a contradiction - you have anger born of ignorance.

I'm more than happy to respond to moral issues you may have with the Bible, if you're interested in trying to understand it from a neutral viewpoint.

However I wasn't expecting this. I expected examples of contradictions.

God knows Christians these days are walking contradictions, so I understand your frustration and reaction, but I meant in the text.

The common criticism was

> Probably to show you can pick any choose any bible verse to make whatever point you want.

Explicit contradictions aren't the only basis for that, but for those see password4321's comment that started this subthread as well as his followup.

> I'm more than happy to respond to moral issues you may have with the Bible

Are you effing kidding me? No of course I don't want a discussion about that with some rando godbot.

Over and out ... I won't respond further.

I asked because you brought it up... Good thing I didn't assume you were.

And yes I did see password4321's response. Been going through them since yesterday.

Assuming you are asking in good faith, I'm still going to Google that for you and paste the first link:

https://thoughtcatalog.com/jim-goad/2014/05/30-pairs-of-bibl...

There's a verse for "humans only have one rule: don't eat that apple" (Genesis 3:3), but the narrative in which this verse appears makes it obvious that this is no longer the case by the end of the chapter. Much of the Bible is presented as a history, and the rules presented are superseded, amended, qualified or augmented by subsequent rules throughout – although not usually so soon as this.

This poses a problem for cherrypicking, but exactly the same problem is present when cherrypicking from any legal tradition: that doesn't mean that the law is meaningless, only that cherrypicking is not an appropriate way to read it.

But they weren't touting the bible or offering it as an authority, just saying that one particular statement was "aspirational" but has practical problems ("To isolate children from the iniquity of the parent would require the dissolution of the family").

One aspect of what I'm trying to share is that it is a bit of a stretch to quote one Bible verse expecting others to accept a one sentence summary of the context as sufficient explanation to apply the verse to a topic.

Except that the writer in Ezekiel is proposing a new deal (in the voice of God) for his intended audience: basically, if at this point in the negotiations you forsake behavior A, various criminality and oppression; I will promise B, not to hold your relatives responsible, and C, to rescue those you've oppressed. (Also possibly D and E -- it's a long passage.)

Thank you for sharing your explanation. One point I was trying to make was that just as the concept of children not being responsible for their parent's choices is mentioned in the Bible, so is the concept of children being affected by their parent's choices.

Whether or not I should take a random person on the internet's (OP's) word that a Bible verse should be interpreted as aspirational or your word that a concept does not apply to the group being spoken to is separate from the fact that both concepts are mentioned. To me it makes sense to acknowledge the existence of both if using the Bible as a supporting reference.

Your post was quite relevant, as the Ezekiel writer is referring to and contrasting with that well-known passage of Mosaic law you quoted. As for your doubts about the discussion here, that's what makes study rewarding -- and the first and secondary sources invite you to start a study of your own.

You can't present these two passages as if they're the same voice. It's two different authors so the point that there exists multiple points in the Bible is a non-sequitur. It is very clear that the Ezekiel quote is aspirational because we do know a) what the levant was like then & b) what Jewish law already said and c) what Ezekiel is saying. The fact that you personally don't know invalidates nothing, and that fact that you tried to present b) as if it's a 1:1 cancellation is just insane when Ezekiel already knows and is responding to those words.

Again I repeat that I did not share anything about voice, invalidations, my personal knowledge/actions (which you've deemed insanity), or cancellation... I am only feebly attempting to ensure that references to this topic from the Bible are considered alongside references in the Bible to a similar topic from another perspective.

I appreciate your filling in additional justification for the OP's initial intro. Thanks for sharing your understanding of the passages though there may be a slim chance your understanding of me is a bit lacking while you've chosen to disregard the HN guidelines.

This is literally true now that we understand epigenetics a bit more.

[flagged]

Do you have any references on this? My understanding is that it’s in kind of a similar boat with intergenerational trauma that quantum mechanics is with certain schools of philosophy, and that the actual science of epigenetics supports a much more limited scope (responding to e.g famine and other current stressors in utero), so anything that could fall into the intergenerational realm would need to be passed down through the normal evolutionary process of populations experiencing selective pressure.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fearful-memories-...

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S009286742...

Of course one can quote the statement that one agrees with and not the statement one doesn't agree with, unless the intent is to review the work that contains them, which it wasn't.

Quoting one statement from a source in support of one's perspective can be interpreted as an attempt to demonstrate that the source aligns with that perspective.

"can" != "necessarily does", but you said "can't", which is what I refuted. And I think your assertion here is even more baseless, frankly ... there's zero indication that they offered the quote to buff the bible, which was not previously the subject of discussion. And they didn't even quote it in support of their perspective, they said it was "aspirational" but then said "To isolate children from the iniquity of the parent would require the dissolution of the family".

I also pushed back at the bible thumpers who demanded contradictions in the bible from me when the whole context was you explicitly pointing one out.

I have far better things to do than discuss the absurdities of texts written by ignorant nomads and Roman propagandists thousands of years ago (and spun by agents of King James) so I won't respond further ... over and out.

If your point in responding was to refute one word being absolute when you accept the concept is a possibility, we're both going to have a bad time.

Ah to live in the 70s and 80s where nothing was verifiable. I probably would still have been a model employee but the possibilities were endless.

The 90s weren't so different, nor earlier decades, centuries. In fact, the positioning here irritates me:

  The McCanns vanished, as did Sally and Steve. It wasn’t that hard; they were living in the golden age of fugitives.

It makes it sound as though the anomaly were not the past two decades, but all of recorded history which preceded them.

No, it really was a golden age. Before the 747 kicked off the age of cheap air travel in the 1970s, it was impractical to hop around the world like the family here did. Even domestic travel in the US was slow, difficult and expensive until the train and automobiles came along.

And if you wind the clock even further back, you could hardly go further than a few villages away on foot or horseback before people would get very suspicious about an outsider venturing to their domain.

Car racing and drug running must have been closely linked in the 80s. For another great read about them, check out Randy Lanier’s story. ( He had racing boats, too. )

Maybe Miami Vice was closer to truth than we knew.

I actually enjoyed this one the build up worked for me, even if the two threads don't fully tie together.

I read it all. There are no shockers in the boxes. It's all explained ahead of time and by the time the contents of the boxes are revealed, you'll wish you didn't read all of that.

I interpreted it another way: the boxes are what connects the past to this written story. Without the boxes most details would be forgotten and this article wouldn't exist. The documents in the boxes were only thoroughly read by one daughter starting in 2024.

> John was strict and controlling. He wanted his daughters to dress in identical clothing embroidered with their initials, and told them to wear their hair long, that it looked more ladylike than a popular bob cut. He wrote down chores for everyone in the family on sheets of yellow legal paper. Erin and Meredith got lists of books to read and words to memorize. The house had about a dozen phones, and John instructed Erin to answer formally: “McCann residence, Erin speaking. How may I help you?” John told his daughters that there was only one right way to install a new roll of toilet paper—feeding forward from the top, not hanging down in back—and insisted that they get straight A’s while lying about his academic achievements.

So completely normal things painted as some insidious nonsense.

I wouldn't call that completely normal. It's certainly strict and controlling.

Is this a story from the Epstein universe? Because the town of York during that time had some interesting characters like Donald and Kashoggi. Also "Lago Mar" in Florida sounds familiar.

Edit: At the end the main protagonist even mentions having Iran Contra evidence and speaks to the commission, but two senators present evidence that devalues his testimony. Interesting.

The moral of the story is that they should have followed in the footsteps of the Sackler Family and Purdue Pharma, who found a legal way to push opiates on people using shopping mall pain clinics and shady doctors as the sales and marketing team.

Just as sociopathic, but they got to keep their billions, serve no prison time, all while doing far more social harm than a pair of low-life cocaine importers could have dreamed of.

Reminds me of Brecht

> Was ist ein Einbruch in eine Bank gegen die Gründung einer Bank?

In the long tradition of commenting on HN without reading the source, I was about to write up everything I've learned about running over the years...shoes, routes, stretches, rest days, IT band therapy, ...

Their dad smuggled cocaine. That was the secret that took about 4,000 words to reach. Entertaining article, but boy what a trudge.

Sometimes the journey is the reward.

Meh, I felt that the article was over-dramatic and verbose at times.

Honestly i come to hn to escape true crime.

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