Are there any park rangers here? How hard is it to become one?

I think the Cracow-Częstochowa Uplands in Poland are a bit underrated outing place

In honor of Halloween, and we haven't talked about this guy in like a year, I'd like to get everyone to remember the tragic tale of James Kim, who got cuck-killed by his nagging white wife.

Guy, his wife, and their daughters, age 4 and 7 mo finished Thanksgiving with family in Seattle, and decided to stay at a resort on the Oregon coast on the way back to San Francisco. He was television personality and audio reviewer for CNET. This was in late 2006, so before smartphones. They missed the turn to the main highway connecting interstate 5 with the Oregon coast, pulled into a gas station to ask directions, and fucked it up from there. The wife was nagging him to get home and it got dark and they ended up on logging roads that theoretically DO connect I-5 and the Oregon coast, but it was snowing heavily and they turned around, got lost, and gave up. He went to seek help and died frozen, and the wife and two daughter survived.

The price a man pays for a hypergamous marriage.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Kim

General thread for freediving and/or spearfishing, since I don't see one mentioning either.

My personal questions:
I've been thinking about taking a certification course so I can learn to do these things correctly and safely. I'm probably happy just doing the diving, but spearfishing seems like an easy and practical extension. I only casually skindive and rod-and-reel fish at the moment. Does anyone have experience taking such a course?
I know I'll need my own gear early on, but each instructor I can find seems to have their own equipment shops, so I imagine they wouldn't be impartial about the quality of other gear on the market. I live on the Pacific coast of the US, so I see that a 7 mm open cell wetsuit is strongly recommended. What good/bad features should I look out for on wetsuits and other equipment? For non-competitive diving, carbon fiber fins are almost certainly not worth the price, right?

Life after 30 is a slow-motion suicide without family. It's all the negatives of getting old; watching your friends drift away as they start their own families, your parents and siblings getting old and die, watching everything in your life slowly putter out as the magic fades; without any of the positives of things like family or community to shore you up. Everything rots away and you're left with the bleakness of oblivion, no hope of anything continuing. Anyone who has experienced considerable ageing among his family members (or already in himself), knows how blackpilling it is. It's really rough, once people pass their early 50s (or sometimes even sooner) you start to notice the slip-ups, forgetfulness, the declining of fine motor skills, the difficulties understanding new information. Human existence is a tragedy, there are so few years that you are allowed with full mental and physical strength. Your peak years are mostly wasted with education, where you have barely any control over your own life, because you have little to no money nor autonomy. Add to that the time spent sleeping, working, hygiene, housework, shopping, appointments, visits to the workshop - what do we have left? Everyone who has to work for a living basically leads a precarious existence, regardless of whether they are a simple worker or a well-paid employee. Before they have built up a comfortable fortune and a well established understanding of the world, the body goes downhill.

Everyone post your tips, tricks, and knowledge about how to best see in the dark, and how to best utilise your scotopic vision.

This includes discussion of lighting and how to best use it, and IR/thermal/nacht vision options.

I'll start:
Your scotopic (night) vision takes about 20mins to reach highly effective performance, and up to an hour to reach peak performance - so it's important that you preserve it!

Facts about your vision that you can use to your advantage:
>your eye has two main types of photoreceptors: cones and rods.
>cones are sensitive to colour and most of your fine detail relies on them, they are NOT sensitive to contrast or movement
>rods are sensitive to contrast and very sensitive to movement, they see ONLY contrast: dark vs. light and never in fine focus.
>cones are grouped in the centre of your retina, directly behind your pupil and lens
>rods are non-existent in the centre of your retina, but are spread around the outside, off-axis from your cornea, making survival possible because it is your peripheral vision that you rely on for reflex if anything suddenly moves in on you
>in scotopic vision your cones fail and you rely entirely on your rods, this is why in low light everything looks grey or black & white
>this also means in the dark anything you try to stare directly at (if you think something is lurking out there in the moonlight) you won't be able to see, you're basically blind to anything you stare at
>look away slightly, using your peripheral (rod) vision and even though you couldn't read a chart you will get more information and immediately identify if something is moving

cont'd

would a solo alpine winter ascent of K2 without oxygen be a greater feat than free soloing El Capitan?

Life after 30 is a slow-motion suicide without family. It's all the negatives of getting old; watching your friends drift away as they start their own families, your parents and siblings getting old and die, watching everything in your life slowly putter out as the magic fades; without any of the positives of things like family or community to shore you up. Everything rots away and you're left with the bleakness of oblivion, no hope of anything continuing. Anyone who has experienced considerable ageing among his family members (or already in himself), knows how blackpilling it is. It's really rough, once people pass their early 50s (or sometimes even sooner) you start to notice the slip-ups, forgetfulness, the declining of fine motor skills, the difficulties understanding new information. Human existence is a tragedy, there are so few years that you are allowed with full mental and physical strength. Your peak years are mostly wasted with education, where you have barely any control over your own life, because you have little to no money nor autonomy. Add to that the time spent sleeping, working, hygiene, housework, shopping, appointments, visits to the workshop - what do we have left? Everyone who has to work for a living basically leads a precarious existence, regardless of whether they are a simple worker or a well-paid employee. Before they have built up a comfortable fortune and a well established understanding of the world, the body goes downhill.

Any tips for off trail hiking? I pretty much covered all trails at my go to out location but there's still plenty of unexplored land and terrain to hike on but I'll have to find my way through dense scrubland and hilly/rocky terrain.
I'm in pretty good shape and have all the gear since I already day hike at least a couple times a week(15 or so miles).

Any /spear/ bros? I was hiking pretty remotely on some old Indian trails along the river in central texas and happened upon some hogs. Wasn’t the first time this has happened either. I have no interest in hunting but I’m considering buying one to carry for defense if one decided to charge me next time and i don’t have a cliff or tree to retreat to. it seems like it would be pretty handy to have around as it was the most effective weapon in general before projectiles were invented