I’d never heard of stone lifting and I couldn’t see why it would be real.
Without the context of history, it seemed absurd that people would run around lifting random rocks and ascribing history to them when it served no useful purpose.
Going even further to design rules and convey them with great sincerity without context felt like the Ministry of Silly Walks from Monty Python. (A type of humor I greatly enjoy.)
Over the years I’ve been on Hacker News, I’ve seen a few founders who had convinced
themselves a large market existed (or could be created), contrary to all evidence. (E.g. A social network around raising and caring for electric eels.) So I was primed to see someone poking fun at that.
Now, I think it is really cool. And of course I’m going to tell my friends about it so we can discuss how cool it is. :)
Funnily enough, I went to Hida no Sato in May to visit the stones (the museum itself is great too)! They're going to be the subject of one of my future articles. The stones at Hida folk village are lighter than most, but the setting makes them wonderful. I got permission to lift of course. That's the key really - especially with Japanese stones when they're often in shrines.
I do add some monuments. For Japanese stones, I'm a little more conservative about adding them, generally. I'll be adding the Hida no Sato stones to the map alongside the article though.
As for Benelux, I'm not aware of any historic stones. There is one person who set up a stonelifting challenge in Belgium. Feel free to email me (via the contact email on the site) and I can share more info if you want it.
Yeah, I speak a little Japanese, so I was able to ask one of the people working at the museum.
It really depends on the shrine. Some explicitly allow lifting and some have stones that you're not allowed to touch. So it's best to ask in just about every case.
Stoneland, Fullsterkur, and Levantadores are many people's introduction to stonelifting. They're wonderful documentaries. Martins Licis (2019 World's Strongest Man) also produces some great documentaries related to stonelifting and other obscure strength sports with "Strength Unknown" that I recommend to anyone interested.
OP here. My kid is a new Dr Who fan. An old photo of the cast of Local Hero popped up in one or another of my feeds, with a 1982 photo of an impossibly young Peter Capaldi. Kid loved the photo but had no idea about the movie. I found a good photo of Pennan on the Wikipedia page, amazing place. The article mentions lifting stones, which was unfamiliar. Google brought me to your site, which is very appealing, as many have noted. I’m a non-tech in the tech industry, so I like to contribute outlier things here, usually resulting in crickets, sadly, but in this case it resonated. Huzzah!
It's a good article but it could use a bit of background as to what "stonelifting" is, exactly, for those who aren't already familiar. From what I gather, this is more about lifting stones in public places than, say, using stones in your own personal gym? With an emphasis on historic stones? There's mention of a "stonelifting tour" as well, would love to understand more of what that's about.
Those are fair points. I guess the audience I wrote this article for is people who are already aware of stonelifting and who are planning to go and lift some stones. I've added a TODO to make it a little more clear in this article.
>From what I gather, this is more about lifting stones in public places than, say, using stones in your own personal gym? With an emphasis on historic stones?
Exactly!
A stonelifting tour is when you visit a place (often a country like Scotland or Iceland) to lift various historic stones on the same trip. Sometimes that's with other lifters.
What should I be picturing for a lifter going for one of these stones? Should I be picturing a lone man stalking across a scottish moor, to test his strength with a single lift, alone and with no witnesses? Groups of athletes in lycra wearing lifting belts? Organised competitions with cheering crowds?
How accessible is stone lifting to genetically smaller people? I strength train seriously but I'm never going to have the build or strength of the much bigger men who I usually see doing powerlifting and strongman.
Like the other reply, stones range in sizes and weights. Even if you're not massive, there are plenty of more accessible historic stones. You obviously tend to hear about the heaviest and most challenging ones that giants lift.
One of the most inspiring (and insane) feats of strength I've ever seen was Chloe Brennan's lift of the Replica Dinnie Stones (weighing 333kg (734 lb)) in 2022. She weighed ~64kg (140 lb): https://youtu.be/CRaEALQSxTI?&t=434
The historic stones are probably out of reach. I've heard of a range of stones (don't remember the name/location) where the lighter ones may be possible. With those it the claim is "X lifted all 7 forgot-the-name stones".
As a sport, strongman has atlas stones (cement spheres) going down to sizes that most people could lift to shoulder. However, as a sport, the bulk of the training to get strong enough to lift a stone doesn't involve actually lifting a stone. It's a very welcoming group, though, with most competition directed inward toward the self rather vs against another person.
Strongman (which stone lifting is related to) is an extremely accessible and welcoming sport. We have men, women, and children of all ages and sizes, and stones (and other implements) appropriate for everyone. Not everyone completes, but in competitions there are classes, so you can compete against other people your own age, size, gender, level of experience, and even level of disability if applicable. There are also historic lifting stones of all sizes, not just massive ones that require a giant to lift!
Note also that is not unheard of for people to "blank" i.e. not complete any reps of a particular event. It's often said that if you don't (particularly at the lower levels) you're not challenging yourself.
It's also bad form to enter a novice comp if you already have a 300kg deadlift.
My experience with stones seems to indicate that they come in an almost unlimited variety of sizes. There are boulders that are so large no human can lift them all the way down to stones that can be lifted by a small child or even a dog. You shouldn't have any trouble finding a stone with a weight appropriate for whatever level of difficulty you want to target.
It's a lovely website - I have bookmarked it for future reference! I have been to the Potarch cafe many times, for some reason I never noticed the stones...
Thanks! You'll definitely notice them now. If you go on the first Tuesday of the month, you'll see a group of lifters attempting to put themselves in the history books.
There's also a whole day event in August on the green with some stonelifting competitions! In the last few years, it's attracted some elite strongmen and strongwomen too.
Have you considered adding a highscore board or something similar? Athletes can add a profile, then post an image proof that they've lifted certain stones. It won't be fool proof, but could further increase interest by adding a progress bar and/or achievements :)
The map shows a concentration of stones in the UK, particularly in Scotland. Is that representative of the stonelifting community? Or maybe just an artefact of it being an English-language website?
A bit of both. Scotland definitely has a concentration of stonelifters in the community. But there are plenty of stones that I haven't added to the map (in Iceland, Sweden, the Faroe Islands, and Japan especially). I try to branch out to other countries and cultures as possible.
That's a really difficult question because the Husafell is so different to a barbell - along with the fact you have to carry it 35m. There are aspects of grip and wingspan involved, too.
I say this as someone who hasn't touched the Husafell in Iceland (yet), so take it with a pinch of salt: From what I've seen, if you haven't hit a ~200kg (440 lb) squat and a ~250kg (550 lb) deadlift, you might struggle with the Husafell stone.
I've been (mostly lurking) on Hacker News for about a decade, so I visit pretty often. I only caught it this time because of a traffic spike notification.
I'm don't know of any events in South East Asia - although I wouldn't be surprised if there were some. Japan, China, South Korea, and India all have stonelifting cultures, so it wouldn't be odd to see it elsewhere in Asia.
I did something similar back in early 2021 (that I ended up self-publishing for fun). It turned out ok at best, but it was a pretty fun project - it's now a cool snapshot of AI generation technology of the time.
The progress that has been made in text and image generation over the last ~2 years is insane.
Very excited about the new Air. The size (& weight!) to performance and battery life is unmatched as far as I can tell. It's literally the laptop I dreamed they would make after I stopped daily-driving my 2012 retina pro in favour of a desktop a few years ago. It's going to be great for traveling.
Weird coincidence, I met someone this past weekend who does exactly this. The one exception being that he targets models in developing countries - which makes it feel a lot closer to sex trafficking than an agency.
I believe the idea to set-up an OnlyFans agency like this is relatively popular among 'hustle porn' style "entrepreneurs" whose goal is to extract as much money from anyone as fast as possible. Which probably gives an idea about the general personality these people have.
And whilst I don't think that an agency like this is always morally wrong, there are a lot of grey areas and moral issues - potentially legal issues - that can arise depending on circumstances.
There's an obvious ethical issue with subscribers believing that they're talking to the model themselves, and yet they're actually talking to someone completely different. And to add to that the implications of the subscriber sending nude photos to be viewed by any random person is bad too. If the subscribers knew that they weren't actually interacting with the model, I seriously doubt they'd continue that transaction.
And I'm sure that fishing for models on Instagram to start pages can have issues too if the agency has some bad actors. What happens if a model no longer wants to work with the agency?
Looks promising - but performance on some of the demo maps was not good.
Having said that, performance when creating my own map was fine. It's not a perfect fit for me, and I'll still be using mapbox for now. But I'll follow the progress of this for sure.
I'd like to be able to embed on my own site(s) without using an iframe. And I would love to be able to use images (like the animals around the world example) as a clickable map marker + popup that scales properly with zooming.
I'm a independent product developer with a vast range of experience from the past 7 years. From custom controllers for autonomous vehicle hardware, to an AI generated book, a UI kit, and plenty more.
I love working with small teams to help realize their vision - especially if it's a niche product. Because of my love of early stage products I often wear many hats, and can plug gaps where they're needed in your team.
No micromanagement needed, and extremely responsive throughout the work-day.
Can I ask what made you think it was satire? Just disbelief that stonelifting is a thing?