News
Welcome to the News community!
Rules:
1. Be civil
Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.
2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.
Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.
Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.
5. Only recent news is allowed.
Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.
6. All posts must be news articles.
No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.
7. No duplicate posts.
If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.
8. Misinformation is prohibited.
Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.
9. No link shorteners.
The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.
10. Don't copy entire article in your post body
For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.
view the rest of the comments
That's an incredible book. I highly recommend both that and Under the Banner of Heaven. Krakauer is just riveting.
Totally agree, I think Into Thin Air is maybe my favorite book and I wasn't expecting that at all when I read it. I really enjoyed the show based on Under the Banner of Heaven too. What a bunch of crazies.
Krakauer is definitely a great writer but the factual issues in into the wild kind of made me wonder just how accurate the rest of his books are.
I don't know about Into the Wild, but I have read plenty about the FLDS church since to know that he at least got those details right in Under the Banner of Heaven.
I've read all of these. The streamingseries adaptation for under the banner of heaven was pretty good too.
Now I have heard that the steaming adaptation had some accuracy issues. I haven't seen it yet.
I don't recall the s Specifics enough to comment on the accuracy, because I read the book at least 15 years before seeming the show. but it is enjoyable and it I think anyone who doesn't read books should check it out to see how crazy Mormons really are.
The show does differ from the book. The main character in the show (Andrew Garfield) is not in the book. He's a detective searching for answers. It helps tell the narrative in video form. The book doesn't need that. Both the book and show are good. They just tell the relevant story in slightly different ways.
He admitted to some errors. He's trustworthy overall. That story has always been surrounded by a cloud of emotions and conflicting "takes". Which is very understandable. But I would also question the sister's version. Not saying she is lying, but a family member will always be biased.
I think there have been a lot of questions raised by people even before the recent book came out. In particular, the cause of Chris’s death by poisoning was more or less invented by Krakauer and contradicts what the coroner wrote and several independent analyses done on this topic. But Krakauer stood by this and has tried to revive his pet theories even after they were debunked.
Wasn't only Krakauer, though. McCandless himself wrote it in his journal, and many others have speculated he was poisoned by this or that. Krakauer didn't make it up out of whole cloth.
Truth is we don't know and probably never will. But it's kind of irrelevant. People always want to know an exact cause of death. Which is understandable, but ultimately the kid got killed by something he did or failed to do. Even if it was simple rabbit starvation (malnourishment) he failed to survive in the wild on his own.
I admire Chris and what he did. I don't think his death means he was an idiot. Quite the opposite. I think he was brave and adventurous and lived a much better life, if cut tragically short, than 99% of humans. But there's still some lessons to be learned from his avoidable passing.
The available evidence strongly suggests he starved (from lack of food, not protein poisoning) and has strongly undermined the poisoning theory. You can read a pretty detailed outline of his claims and contrary evidence here: https://freshlyworded.com/2020/05/17/re-reading-into-the-wild-what-killed-chris-mccandless/
But exactly how Chris died is kind of beside the point: Krakauer has suggested about half a dozen similar theories over the years, only to have them sequentially debunked. He then comes up with a new one as soon as the previous one is no longer tenable. This approach is not only wrong but it is in opposition to the idea of truth-seeking in that it goes to great lengths to avoid the obvious conclusion of the available evidence. If he had just said what you wrote, that the truth is somewhat uncertain that would be fine. But he didn’t, he has pursued his pet theory beyond all reason or evidence. I am assuming this is an ego issue and it raises big questions about the facts in his other reporting which have not been investigated as deeply.
Here’s another article that goes over even more factual issues in this section: https://www.adn.com/books/article/fiction-jon-krakauers-wild/2015/01/10/
I don’t want to dunk on Chris but he died because he was inexperienced and unprepared for the situation he put himself in. Whether that makes him an idiot is for up for debate but it’s not true that he was a victim of some unforeseeable tragedy. He didn’t have enough food or the means to obtain it, which is something most people realize before traveling to a remote area where they cannot easily escape.
I've read Krakauer's responses and followups and have a very different take. I see guy being attacked from two contradictory sides, simply trying his best to defend his reputation as an author. Not saying he handled it perfectly, but I disagree that it's pure ego and wild theories driving him. He's very open that he's speculating, he's owned up to being wrong at times, and he's trying to show the know-it-alls that they do not have the definitive answer either.