HN Theater @HNTheaterMonth

⬐ simple10

Wow. That's amazingly mesmerizing and cathartic for free soloing. Thanks for posting. It's a stark contrast to the Magnus Midtbø and Alex Honnold free solo video [1] released today. The Magnus video made my palms literally drip with nervous perspiration.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cyya23MPoAI

⬐ geuis

That's a really interesting and somewhat tension-causing experience to watch. Tension level increased once they switched to the go-pro.

⬐ adriand

Couldn’t even watch this video - I had to skip to the end. Way too stressful! The frank admissions of fear at the outset really set the tone and it just gets more intense from there. Insane.

⬐ germinalphrase

and Honnold calls it light scrambling.

⬐ mks

Great video. It shows how much climbing (and lot of other things) is in your head and your repeated experience. The route (5.9/5a/VI) must be laughably easy for Midtbø who climbs 5.15/9a/XI+ yet he is quite understandably fighting for life while Honnold is walking around, enjoying no-hand rests and recording. Gradual exposure takes some of the scariness away I guess.

⬐ snak

Great video, thanks for sharing. I had the same feeling of my palms sweating during some of the shots.

It also sparked my interest for climbing, I'll give it a try for sure (with rope).

⬐ djmips

That's so inspiring. Alex gives advice that might as well be about programming and the fear of starting a complex project. Don't look back or ahead, just this move is easy, this move is easy and you will get there!

⬐ vincnetas

this is good advice when situation is stable, but if you see storm is comimg, or there are other uncertanties, you must plan ahead or rush through. or have a backup plan, but yeah this is free soloing so no backup plan by design ;)

⬐ __s

Honnold has mentioned that any fall he's made has always been his fault in retrospect. Throughout the linked video he underlines consistently mitigating risk & never getting yourself in a spot you aren't comfortable with

Some parallels if you look at hardcore mode in Diablo genre of games. Builds heavily emphasize safety & being able to slow down situations enough to react to unknown risks. Like how Honnold talks about how free soloing isn't gym climbing so you should always be taking it slow & keeping three points of contact, not leaping for holds

⬐ BFLpL0QNek

A bygone era. I have fond memories of going to similar building sites/factories in north west England, 4-5 years old with my old man before I was old enough to go to school. Sitting on the wheel arch at the back of a rusty old van amongst loose tools/building materials bouncing around, being taken up some rickety scaffolding being told stay away from the edge, careful on the ladder, passing tools while my old man worked stood on stacked milk crates several floors up.

Today that’d never happen and you’d be sat in front of a judge. 30-40+ years ago where certainly different times in working class nw England. Maybe it’s because I grew up in it but looking back, back then it seems work was work, not pushing Jira tickets, one on ones, 360 degrees, agile, navigating office politics just to get shit done.

There’s a complete series about Fred on YouTube, well worth watching.

⬐ seszett

> back then it seems work was work

Back then, the amount of workers dying from work accidents was also an order of magnitude higher than it is today.

Individual surviving workers might have good memories of their job, but I'm not sure if it was actually better from a more general point of view.

⬐ leetrout

This one is my favorite- where Fred ladders an overhang.

https://youtu.be/3R3-YwDZrzg

⬐ I_complete_me

Thanks for the link. What percentage of the population nowadays would do that? And would every climber feel ok about doing it? Fred was great as witnessed by the comments!

⬐ leetrout

Of people that climb professionally I would think at least 10% would do that just like he did. 1 in 10 seems like the right ratio of expecting someone gutsy enough in that population.

I bet most, if not all, would do it with modern safety gear.

Out of the general population... not many people would go up that first ladder. Haha.

⬐ chha

Came across this at random, and finds it a fascinating contrast to my (and probably lots of others on HN) daily job.

⬐ ls15

It's like adding functionality to legacy code

⬐ nimbius

as a tradesman mechanic, seeing an old-timer like Fred at work makes me swoon. in the states due to OSHA regulations, there are quite a few reasons why this sort of work would never get done, but Freds attention to safety and detail cant be missed.

Mr. Dibnah is a master craftsman. he makes scaling this chimney look like a sunday stroll.

⬐ Teandw

Are you sure you watched his videos? Fred had virtually no attention to safety.

He would proudly promote that he would climb those towers after drinking pints of beer down the pub. He's a lovable person and I've watched nearly all of his TV work but safety was not his priority.

⬐ pmyteh

This short clip of people running from one of Dibnah's chimney demolitions going wrong is quite instructive. None of the bystanders should have been allowed anywhere near!

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=DMCSSMoPELU

More problematic than the work at heights, where the one at risk was mostly Fred himself.

⬐ petertodd

> there are quite a few reasons why this sort of work would never get done

Doing those chimney climbs safely, with fall protection, is pretty easy these days. It's so easy that I've seen videos of urban explorers, base jumpers, etc. using perfectly good fall protection, even while doing illegal things!

Remember we're looking at a video from 1978: modern fall protection gear simply wasn't widely available back then.

⬐ naikrovek

OSHA... I have never once seen, nor heard of anyone who has seen, someone who works for OSHA.

I'm starting to think they aren't real... everyone is so sure that "OSHA won't like [that which is about to be attempted]" and it hasn't ever stopped anyone from doing profoundly stupid stuff, except for new guys. Still, I've never seen them, been alerted to their presence, or met anyone who has (I've been asking for 20+ years.)

obviously they are real, but they are in no way the ever-present threat they are made out to be.

⬐ notatoad

OHSA doesn't operate by inspection but by report. If your employees report your job site, you're gonna get busted. And if your employees are getting injured, they're gonna report your violations.

Every person on your site is a OHSA inspector in disguise.

⬐ mc32

The problem is they will be present AFTER the accident for the investigation and then find out what shortcuts were taken and who was at fault/irresponsible.

⬐ bombcar

Exactly. Unless reported they are like NTSB and crawl out of the woodwork after someone dies.

⬐ gorgoiler

I fear it is the same with anyone who mentions “ISO compliance” and how we will “fail our audit if you get caught” as a reason not to do something.

I have never seen these prognostications come true. It really seems like it’s just a way for naysayers to rain on peoples parades, or appeal to authority as an way of stopping people from doing things when really they just don’t like them.

It leaves an extremely unpleasant taste in the mouth and it’s an absolute must to probe this kind of thing when interviewing candidates.

⬐ krisoft

> It really seems like it’s just a way for naysayers to rain on peoples parades

Or you know, i’m not going to die to maximise your profit. You go right ahead and circumvent sane and safe working practices as long as it is only your life on the line.

⬐ gorgoiler

You turned my point around. I’m not talking about a random colleague forcing a peer to do something unsafe.

I’m talking about a random colleague seeing their peer wanting to do something and their reaction being “I don’t think you should do that because of a contrived reason which an auditor will say is against security / safety best practices.” Except they don't know this – their just making stuff up to be disruptive, show-off, sound-clever, boost their esteem, etc.

Bystanders whose sole contribution is to think of reasons not to do something — without taking responsibility for getting stuff done — are net-negative strong no-hires.

⬐ woodruffw

OSHA has 2200 employees. They're not a large agency.

That being said, they're like the SEC (which only has around 4800) in that they heavily rely on employees (and incidental bystanders) to report unsafe worksites. The fact that you haven't had to interact with them is either a really good or really bad thing.

⬐ silentsea90

Does anybody here feel a sense of sadness watching a video of a middle aged man from the mid 90s? I am closer to his age now than I am to myself in age from back then. Every time I watch an old movie (eg. The Godfather), I can't help but see myself in the younger folks then and realizing how old they are now. Makes me want to make the best of my time now.

Do you folks feel that way?

⬐ morsch

Sure. When I see a scene from Seinfeld now, I can't help but think that I'm now older than the protagonists, while they are stored in my memory as older people.

It's less striking with videos like this, which I hadn't seen until a few years ago, when The Algorithm started pushing it.

⬐ CaliforniaKarl

Part 1 is available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F04dGK1_wYA

They're a great watch!

⬐ NegativeLatency

The steam engine stuff is great too

⬐ bufordtwain

Around the 3:50 mark: "that's where the beer belly comes in handy" :)

⬐ tragomaskhalos

I'm glad this stops before he has to negotiate the lip of the chimney as I was already getting the willies, having never fully recovered from watching John Noakes climbing Nelson's Column on Blue Peter all those years ago,

⬐ mbalyuzi

Indeed. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGZ-h70IK9s . And the camera-man presumably did the same thing first, with camera in tow...

⬐ Steve44

There is also the mast on the Royal Navy land based training base, HMS Ganges.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sSuZXlUxwbk

⬐ telesilla

Watching this was like watching some kind of horror film where society fore. Keep watching to the end where one of the alumni calmly explains how there was at least one death and serious injury! He did note that going up to the highest section was voluntary, at least..

⬐ tragomaskhalos

ladder runs out 15 feet from the top - oh thank God he's made it

"All that's left is shunning up the mast" - sorry, what? I'm just going to hide behind this sofa

⬐ mhh__

If anyone likes this kind of vibe of old video my dad got me to "acquire" a show called "Jack Hargreave's Old Country" which is the titular man meandering across the English Countryside talking to people.

⬐ danieldevries

Fred was a national treasure. Really enjoyed his show when I was younger.

⬐ chrisseaton

I wonder why the ladder isn't just built into the chimney permanently, like via ferrata.

⬐ ectopod

What material wouldn't degrade over the lifetime of the chimney?

⬐ OJFord

Titanium?

(I'm no expert, that's an honest question mark.)

⬐ chrisseaton

Steel... just like via ferrata. These chimneys aren't more than like 150 years old max.

⬐ googlryas

Via ferratas are almost always embedded into pure rock, generally limestone, right? Brick and mortar is quite a bit different.

⬐ ectopod

Maybe. I don't know. I've seen plenty of old fixed ladders that have rusted to uselessness, but they weren't 150 years old.

⬐ VectorLock

There would then need to be ladders over most of the surface of the chimney, and with the anchors for the ladder mortared into the chimney, and the whole point of climbing the ladder in the first place is to repoint the mortar, you couldn't rely on the anchors being sound.

⬐ Nooshu

Whole host of his videos are on Youtube, many hours worth:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YnH7cw0ql1I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v74p0djZ_zc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9g-bFr9qjDo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T00zEt1-3VA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=am9e2Gq1jt4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DPKvT52ZUi8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r2rE5YIyoc0

*Other videos*

- [Fred Dibnah laddering a chimney (Part 1)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F04dGK1_wYA) - [Fred Dibnah laddering a chimney (Part 2)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E-a27xwcLfU) - [Fred Dibnah How to climb a chimney overhang at 50+](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3R3-YwDZrzg) - [Fred Dibnah How to erect a chimney scaffold](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6W_7uIapoHc) - [Fred Dibnah Tribute (2004)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nI4_OSS5F7k)

⬐ adav

Lots of Fred’s fantastic TV shows can be easily found on YouTube.

Is there a modern equivalent of those shows? Nothing comparable comes to mind.

⬐ notatoad

There's a wonderful culture of tradesmen posting YouTube videos of their work.

My most recent binge has been Perkins Builder Brothers, but also check out Essential Craftsman or Samson Boat Co. They lack some of the gravitas of the old guys, just because of their modern tone. But they're great.

⬐ bombcar

Guilty of Treeson is good.

There’s also a few plumbers unsticking drains (both sewer and storm) which is oddly fascinating.

⬐ notatoad

oh man, i went down the storm drain unplugging rabbit hole the other night. that was when i knew i had had too much youtube.

⬐ mhh__

In a sense something like 3Blue1Brown or a good DIY channel is almost a modern equivalent in terms of content but the thing these old documentaries (not to be overly patriotic but often British ones) have that most (almost all, really) YouTube videos have is the expertise and creative bottleneck of being made by a proper TV studio.

Bottleneck I say? From limitation and oversight comes restraint and clever tricks, and that is a good way of making good media.

⬐ prescriptivist

What is this particular regional accent? The narrator sounds like Tyson Fury.

⬐ raldi

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

⬐ pacaro

Specifically Fred's accent is from Bolton, which is just NW of Manchester. It also encodes social class signifiers in that it is distinctly working class. It is also dated, accents have evolved a fair amount in the 50 years or so.

⬐ mhh__

I suspect that post-internet and especially post-instagram and TikTok (it wasn't youtube), a lot of the UK's regional accents are going to get homogenised.

⬐ pacaro

It will be interesting to observe, I'm sure that TV and radio before it had a measurable impact too. I mean some people attribute the loss of the Cornish language to the railway making Cornwall less isolated

⬐ tragomaskhalos

Good spot. Paddy McGuinness is younger but his accent is very similar, particularly the very distinctive vowels which are quite different from Manchester's.

⬐ trebligdivad

Yes, they're very very local around here; with strong differences over a ~10 mile range around Bury, Bolton, Manchester.

⬐ klelatti

Some context might be of interest here.

The chimneys that Dibnah worked to demolish were usually attached to cotton mills in and around Manchester in North West England. The cotton industry was in steep decline there in the 1970s and 1980s and one by one these mills became unprofitable and closed down. Even if the mill building could be repurposed the chimney wasn’t needed and would be expensive to maintain.

I suspect Dibnah got the work because he was the cheapest and the mill owner would typically be very short of cash.

⬐ ghostly_s

This video is about maintaining a chimney, not demolition.

⬐ klelatti

You’re right - which is great.

General point still stands though as most chimneys were demolished.

⬐ chrispeel

I wonder if any early rock climbers used the sort of wood blocks to install pitons as Fred uses (most visible in Part 1). It seems like the wood blocks make the pitons a bit less destructive.

⬐ theptip

I’ve never seen that. I don’t think it would work. In this case he is not protecting against a shock load, he is pretty much ensuring a constant force on the anchor by tying the ladder tightly and directly to the anchor.

Climbing anchors need to withstand extreme loads as you could fall tens of feet before your fall is arrested and you load the anchor, plus the substrate is usually more strong than brick and mortar so you can make a much tighter (higher pressure) insertion before the wall crumbles.

⬐ 2ICofafireteam

I used to have a video clip of Fred demolishing a chimney from the top-down one brick at a time for new labourers watch.

It was the perfect example of not being intimidated by a big job: Just get at it and keep moving forward.

⬐ sizzzzlerz

this puts all those guys who work on the giant antenna towers to shame, what with all their belts and harnesses and other safety equipment. Sometimes, they even have elevators to take them part of the way up.

⬐ ncmncm

Used to be wind turbine posts were just big enough for a ladder inside. Then they got big enough for a one-man elevator (that climbed the ladder). Its floor and ceiling popped open, just in case. Now the posts are big enough for a saloon car, which is good because it takes a whole crew, up top.

⬐ KennyBlanken

I have a really dim view of people who hold a dim view of health and safety, especially around stuff like this. This sort of old-school machismo is encouraged by industry because doing things with a higher margin of safety is slower and more expensive. Often not by much, especially compared to the volume of money being made overall, which is what makes it even more reprehensible.

Falls from heights are a huge cause of workplace deaths in construction: https://www.osha.gov/fall-protection

It doesn't take much height to do so: https://cdn1.hardhattraining.com/wp-content/uploads/how-high...

Any time an employer or company encourages you to take risks or pressures you to not observe safety regulations, find another job, fast. Your life is not less important than profits or productivity. Ever.

Edit: not impressed at all. This guy is an asshole - aside from the fact that multiple clips show him picking something off chimneys or towers, giggling, and throwing them casually off - here he is laughing about how he and a coworker purposefully dumped a bucket of cement water off the top of a tower and came down to found they'd damaged a guy's nice sports car. Which he thinks his hilarious: https://youtu.be/ezX_o0H5FuE?t=217

⬐ jnsaff2

I think having good regulations and meaningful safety culture are important. I also think this guy taking a dim view is not warranted. That said, a lot of safety regulations nowadays is about minimizing liability and increase in safety is incidental.

I worked in a British company (that had a warehouse) in an office as an IT contractor, and in the 3-storied office all stairwells were full of posters telling me I should hold the handrails and that kind of completely pointless garbage.

⬐ dutchblacksmith

Fred is from a time where there were no other means to climb a chimney. He worked safely for that time period. Worlink in a lithium mine these days is more dangerous.

⬐ 7952

His safety is based on skill rather than technology and documented rules. That can work really well for an individual working with minimal assistance which is exactly how Dibner worked. It just doesn't scale to teams.

⬐ klelatti

Don’t disagree with you on the vital importance of health and safety but that infographic

> It doesn't take much height to do so: https://cdn1.hardhattraining.com/wp-content/uploads/how-high...

does a really poor job of conveying the relative risks - and presumably these incidents are generally occurring when workers are following the rules which isn’t confidence inspiring.

⬐ raldi

That link's broken; do you have a screenshot?

⬐ klelatti

Didn’t realise copying / pasting longer HN links fails.

Here is the full link

https://cdn1.hardhattraining.com/wp-content/uploads/how-high...

⬐ JackFr

Anecdotally from a number of relatives who work in the construction trades, the majority of accidents are due to alcohol and drug use — which I suppose often go hand-in-hand with lax standards. It seems to me that keeping people from getting high and drinking during the workday improves safety by an order of magnitude, however that’s easier said than done.

⬐ jimnotgym

Easier said than done, whilst paying minimum wage and giving people extreme physical work to do yes...

The other thing to note is that most people who fall from height are 'unskilled workers' (remembered stat, I held a Construction Safety Certification Scheme gold card in the past) . Ie, they shouldn't have been up there in the first place. Typically people plucked out of the pub to become 'roofers'. Iirc falling through skylights was the number one cause. While we value cheap labour, safety will always be second best

⬐ aynsof

I'd have expected the death rate to increase as the height increased. Any idea what's behind the seemingly random distribution?

⬐ defen

That's the percentage of fall deaths caused from each height, not the mortality rate of a fall from a given height.

⬐ grog454

In other words, assuming falling probability doesn't vary with height, its estimating what % of time people spend at each height * probability of a fall being reported at that height * probability of death at a given height.

⬐ 7952

It probably depends a lot on what you are going to hit as you fall. A drop onto a safety line over an empty void may be safer than a 2m fall onto a piece of equipment.

⬐ billfruit

There is a proverb, may be Italian: it is better to fall from the window sill than the roof.

⬐ None

None

⬐ JohnJamesRambo

Add it up as you go up. :)

⬐ toast0

This isn't really reporting a death rate, it's reporting the distribution of heights given you died falling from a height.

I'd guess falls from higher heights are more deadly, but less likely (you're more likely to use fall protection on a 8 story roof than a 1 story roof, I'd guess; and there's also a lot more 1 story roofs than 8 story roofs)

⬐ InCityDreams

He was also self employed.

⬐ aaron695

These men from decades ago and before are why you live your easy privileged life.

The risks they took built society.

If you think "Bullshit Jobs" is real then I hope you realise that's exactly you. These men are doing real work. And the idea they could just get other work is pretty insulting.

How much OH&S should be done in today's society is complicated. But what still keeps society running is a whole class of men doing hard dangerous work.

(And this an awful example about working from heights, that kicks in at 7 feet. The fact it start low is what matters. He is doing speciality work which is totally seperate and obvious he'd die)

⬐ Teandw

I'll think you'll find that your take on things is what gets people killed and exactly why health and safety/OSHA exist like they do today.

⬐ HL33tibCe7

Yes, many people in my family actually work(ed) in the building profession, and are/were “real men”.

They are/were more passionate than anyone about safety in building, because they have literally seen people killed when safety was poor.

⬐ dale_glass

The jobs are things that needed doing, yes.

Doing them in a dangerous, cavalier way? Not really. A bridge isn't really improved in any way if 20 people die falling from it during construction.

And yeah, maybe that kind of thing made the bridge noticeably cheaper, but was it cheaper really when you account for the effects those deaths had? We pay less for the bridge, then pay more for funerals, compensations, negative effects that workers dying had... it's just nowhere in the bill for the bridge.

⬐ jimnotgym

Tbf to Dibnah be belonged to a different era, pre Heath and Safety at Work Act (1974). He was in possession of a very much niche and specialised skill and worked in a normally very contained environment where only two people were normally at risk. With modern rope access equipment much of the residual risk of falling could be mitigated in the video, but the method could have been maintained. FYI the video is mislabelled (like a lot of Youtube) as from 2011(upload date). He died in 2004! I believe it was filmed in the early 1980s.

If you want to attack Fred, maybe attack his selfish devotion to his hobbies at the expense of his family, but not for having an attitude to health and safety that was somewhat normal for the era he worked in.

⬐ goldcd

I'm somewhat bemused, but also quite proud that Fred Dibnah has appeared here.

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

I'm British but was completely unaware of the early stuff he appeared in, but the late 90s, early 2000s stuff crept into the public consciousness.

Our equivalent of OSHA is "Health and Safety" and Fred held a dim view. Fortunately his legacy is continued by "British scaffolders" - a famous sub-group within construction, who you can still see to this day getting utterly shit-faced in a pub on cider over lunch, before returning to site.

Not sure if this division of construction labour exists elsewhere. If you pay a builder to so anything in the UK, they'll subcontract any erection of scaffolding to separate company, with a noticeably more cavalier attitude towards potential death and injury. Then your primary contractor will do the job, and the scaffolders will return to remove the infrastructure.

⬐ seszett

I assumed it was the same everywhere because it doesn't make sense for a company to keep all kind of scaffolding equipment when any given site will only need a small subset of it.

Ah least in France and Belgium, scaffolding is also generally erected by a specialised company (except very large public construction companies which do everything themselves, but then it's still separate services inside the company).

⬐ jaclaz

Just for the record, this is essentially connected to the changes in safety rules, it changed roughly at the end of the '90's here in Italy when requirements (certification of workers, need for projects for even the simplest scaffolding schemes, etc.) were introduced/made compulsory in more (now in practice "all") cases at the exact same time when - for a number of reasons (financial, fiscal, and more) - construction companies were essentially forced to sub-contract the scaffolding works because it became a cost (as opposed to being a resource).

Until then, having a good sized but not too large scaffolding inventory was something any construction company would have had, as well as the internal resources to mount and dismantle them.

Scaffolding is generally paid with a price (per square meter or in some cases per pipe/joint) for the installation, (usually) up to 1 month rent, and dismantling, then there is another price per month of the scaffolding being on site, a "pure rent" of the structure.

This latter tends (tended) to be remunerative (essentially beacuse there is no work involved in it, so it becomes essentially "interest on the cost of the scaffolding") and sort of monthly fixed recurring income.

If I recall correctly, the break even point was around 18-20 months, in some cases 24 months or two years, after which the scaffolding was paid for and the "rent" became just income.

More or less the same reasoning is (was) for site cranes (but also for other site equipment), that as well were once bought by the construction companies while nowadays they are almost invariably rented from some specialized companies.

⬐ saalweachter

My assumption in NYC has always been that there is no such thing as a scaffolding warehouse, and scaffolding remains at one site until it is needed at another.

⬐ jimnotgym

Scaffolding also requires certain licenses and insurance that are expensive to get in the UK, not worth it unless you are doing it full time. It is also an extraordinarily physically demanding job, which is not easy to do for someone who does not do it full time. If you look past the tatoos you will see scafolders often posess a very athletic physique, even sporting the neck and shoulder muscles that you normally only see on bodybuilders. Most general builders are happy to outsource such demanding work. It attracts a certain subset of the population, it is not particularly well paid, requires a qualification, is physically hard as stated, all weather. Therefore they don't descriminate against things that are taboo in many jobs, poor English, anger issues, heavy drinking, prison tattoos on hands and face, dyslexia, low IQ, missing employment history etc. You don't have to do a whiteboard interview, but you do have to be able to lift extraordinary weights. A standard scaffold pole is a 21ft long, heavy walled steel tube weighing around 30kg. Just you try and pick that up from one end like they do! You might manage to carry a 13ft (18kg) scaffold plank on your shoulder, but they carry them 5 or more at a time, and then lean them up against the scaffold!

To be clear, Im not saying all scaffolders are dim ex cons. They are all extremely tough though...

Btw Fred Dibnah of the video was in a very different industry of steeplejacking. This required brains and was rather better paid.

⬐ craz8

Fred was a British TV star in the 80s young person. Back before HD TV and DVD quality.

I grew up around people like Fred (and they may have known him from his steam engine work) - good at hardware. Luckily software came along for me to not lose eyes and limbs to my job as would have been the case otherwise.

⬐ ncmncm

We are the poorer for having fewer Freds.

Fred Kummerow was another grave loss.

⬐ I_complete_me

> you can still see to this day getting utterly shit-faced in a pub on cider over lunch

I worked in the construction industry in London in the late eighties and I witnessed builders drinking 6 pints in the half hour lunch and then going back to working at height with heavy machinery. I couldn't say anything.

⬐ zasdffaa

> Fortunately his legacy is continued by "British scaffolders" - a famous sub-group within construction, who you can still see to this day getting utterly shit-faced in a pub on cider over lunch, before returning to site.

'Fortunately'?

I'm not up for prissiness and stupid rules but hefty metalwork being put in high places - there's nothing good about mixing alcohol with that.

Edit: I'll go further - I'm disturbed that you can endorse macho bullshit culture that can get themselves or worse, any bystanders, mashed up or killed.

⬐ readme

there are some jobs that are dangerous and there's just no way to change that

what about parent's post was "macho" -- you think drinking is macho?

parent didn't say their gender

⬐ zasdffaa

> there are some jobs that are dangerous and there's just no way to change that

of course there is - just add alcohol! Voila, nao moar dangerous.

⬐ readme

the assumption here is that alcohol makes them less safe

but do you have data on heights and alcohol?

⬐ zasdffaa

Interesting, if slightly troll-y question. Let's go for it. Original comment referred to scaffolders getting "utterly shit-faced". Are you proposing that high levels of alcohol do not impair physical ability and judgement?

⬐ readme

>utterly shit-faced in a pub on cider over lunch

emph on "over lunch", I interpreted it as hyperbole from someone from a less teetotaling culture

i'd guess 1-2 (2 for a heavier person) would not impair abilities at heights and could actually make someone less nervous