Monday, June 3, 2019
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Life
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I recently made several entries to my personal diary about selfie deaths, and I realized that they would make a good blog post, so here they are. I have deleted the actual dates because there didn't seem to be any reason to keep them.
Entries from My Diary – May, 2019
Monday, 4:39 a.m.
I think the last time I wrote in here, I forgot to save the file when I was done. Then, I had to turn off my computer because it wouldn't go to sleep at the end of the night, and my entry was deleted. I remember writing about daredevils who climb buildings and such, but now I can't find that entry at all. I hate it when something I write accidentally gets erased.
This is a new phenomenon in the last 20 years or so – i.e., young daredevils climbing the outsides of buildings, towers and other high structures, or hanging off of cliffs. They do it to become popular on various social-media platforms, such as Instagram, YouTube and Facebook. They can even make money doing it.
These daredevils try to get the most heart-stopping, terrifying shot that they can to put on their media accounts. There is one Ukrainian fellow named “Mustang Wanted” (“MW”) who is particularly daring. He will go to the roof of the highest of buildings, and then hang over the edge with just one hand – yes, that is what I said. He will lower himself over the edge and hang in space by one hand, often by just three fingers – and to make it look more dramatic, he’ll extend his legs out into space. Just thinking about it gives me vertigo. Just as amazing is what the accompanying photographer will do. On one site there are several pictures of MW, taken from above, in which you can see the shoes of the photographer at the bottom of the picture. So while MW is hanging by one hand, the photographer will be standing two or three inches from the edge, usually on a wall, with the camera looking down hundreds or thousands of feet. In other words, unlike MW, the photographer isn’t holding onto anything. All it would take would be a gust of wind to make him lose his balance and fall off the building.
In another picture, Mustang Wanted is shown on a ledge, balancing himself on one foot on the edge, and he isn’t even holding on to the building. Most daredevils have the sense to hold on to something so high up, but this fellow was just balancing on one foot – and he had a heavy camera on his shoulder too. Here is the picture:
If he started to lose his balance, it appears that he would not have anything to grab onto, since right next to him is a smooth wall. Unbelievable.
In another picture, he is hanging off the top of a suspension bridge. His hand is being held by a companion who is standing on the top of one of the concrete towers with his right toes over the edge. (I can't tell if the companion is using one or two hands to hold MW.) To make the picture more dramatic, MW is pushing his body away from the side of the tower with his foot, so that his body is hanging out in space. Now, you have to visualize this: If the companion is holding MW, what would happen if either one of them lost their grip? MW would plunge to his death while the companion would fall backward. (There is a third person taking the picture.) Well, here’s the picture:
The companion is close enough to the left edge of the top of the tower that if either one lost his grip, the companion might plunge off the tower too.
What is wrong with these guys?
Just as disturbing is that some of the daredevils, including MW, will bring bicycles up onto these structures, and they will bicycle along some ledge or – even worse – across a steel beam with empty space on either side.
I might as well show you that image too:
It actually hurts me to see young people doing such things.
It looks to me like this fellow can't have a very secure grip of the beam he is holding because of its oblique shape:
It isn’t just the daredevils that I’ve been looking at on the internet. I’ve been reading about people who died taking “selfies” in dangerous places. There is an article on Wikipedia which lists hundreds of cases since about 2011. Many have died taking selfies while they tried to outrun trains, or while they climbed on top of a train car (the ones who climb the train cars get electrocuted – there are live wires on the top of electrified train cars). Dozens have plunged off cliffs, and dozens have been swept away in rivers. One man – a mature adult no less, at the age of 51 – jump into the air while on a mountain top overlooking Machu Picchu. He wanted to take a selfie of himself in mid-air. Well, he was close to the edge of a cliff (in a restricted area, no less); he lost his balance, and he fell off the cliff.
Tuesday, 4:26 a.m.
I have just spent another couple hours looking at horrible pictures on the internet. I started out looking at dangerous selfie photos, and then I looked at a video that showed murder victims from the 1910's to about 1960 or so. It's amazing how gruesome murder is. Then I saw a series of photos of people just before they died.
The dangerous selfie photos, though, are the most frightening. The ones that scare me the most are of people standing right at the edge of space without holding onto anything, and also the ones in which the daredevil hangs hundreds of feet in the air by a hand. Right now I'm looking at a picture of a young woman standing on a thin steal beam high up in the air. In that picture, there is nothing around her to grab onto if she loses her balance. Well, here it is, along with some others:
I don't suppose that any of these people want to die. That being the case, the risks they are taking just seem insane.
This picture is terrifying to me:
The thing about these Indian men sitting on the edge of the cliff is that the rock they are sitting on has been worn away so that it is sloping downward – that would make it easier for them to slip off. On the other hand, the rock is rough, so that must give them some traction. But then, I don't trust people enough to sit with my back to them on a ledge. I would also be afraid as I sat down and got up that I would fall off. The man holding the camera on a "selfie stick" would have that extra weight pulling him into space, although the camera and stick are probably light. He is also leaning forward. It's just hard to believe that people would put their lives in danger like that.
Here is a picture of a man who is taking more of a chance than he probably realizes:
This is a man with a belly, which makes the top half of his body heavier than it otherwise would be. Furthermore, by bending his knees, he is moving his center of gravity up his body. If the center of gravity shifts until it is over space, then he will fall backwards, pure and simple. I would never take a chance like this.
The pictures of the murder victims from the 1910's and 1920's were interesting, especially the old-fashioned clothes and interiors. Interiors were not so bright as they are today. The walls in a lot of those places were dark. Every kitchen that they showed had a huge cast-iron stove. They showed many bodies in beds, and it was interesting to see how depressing the bedrooms looked. Many people apparently slept without sheets. At that time, the police used a camera that stood on a huge tripod with the camera in the middle pointing down, so many pictures showed these weird-looking spider legs surrounding the victim.
Thursday, 1:46 a.m.
Here is another picture of "roof-toppers" that terrifies me:
The woman has her foot right at the edge, and the man has his toe over the edge. What if a gust of wind came along? Big cities are known for gusty winds, though usually the gusts are on the ground. I guess it is the fact that they seem to be gesturing to each other, as if they might momentarily forget what they are doing and step towards each other.
Friday, 2:58 a.m.
This morning there is a news story about a young woman who stood on a stone wall in a park overlooking the Pacific ocean to get the perfect selfie. She lost her balance, fell off the wall, and rolled down a hill towards a cliff. A tree blocked her trajectory over the cliff, so that she didn’t fall into the Pacific ocean, but she still died.
Two years ago, a 26-year-old Japanese man named Wu Yongning, a daredevil who climbed buildings and such, fell during one of his stunts. He lowered himself over the edge of the roof of a 62-story building, did a couple pull-ups on the wall surrounding the roof (the pull-ups were part of his stunt), but then discovered that he didn’t have enough strength to pull himself back up. The video shows him trying to get a foothold on the side of the building, but the surface was made of a completely smooth material – probably metal, but possibly some composite material. He struggled to pull himself up for a while, looking down once to see how far he would fall, and then lost his grip. News stories say he fell 30 feet onto a terrace, but it was enough to kill him. Yongning had done this kind of thing hundreds of times, but it would seem that he had never done it on a building with a completely smooth surface. Even on a brick building, you can get a bit of a foothold to assist yourself up – bricks are rough, and there are indentations where the mortar is. Also, the ledge he was hanging onto with his hands was also smooth, meaning that it didn’t have any roughness for him to get a good grip on. So even though he was experienced at what he was doing, he still made fatal miscalculations. That building, with all its smooth surfaces, must have been like climbing on ice. Here is a picture of Yongning struggling before he fell. You can see him trying to get a foothold with both feet:
Sunday, 11:21 p.m.
Although I’m not doing it as much as I was, I am still looking at dangerous selfie pictures. Here is another picture:
Now, that picture horrifies me on many levels. First, the daredevil is standing on a metal strip, a bit of architectural detail on the building which was not made to hold weight. The metal strip is very thin, which means that his sneakers’ grip on the strip must be very tenuous. Then, he is holding onto the building with one hand, with the other hand stretched out into space holding the camera. And he has a glove on the hand that is holding onto the building, which would make his grip less secure. If his sneakers were to slip, his grip on the building isn’t good enough to save him from falling. If his hand slips, he’ll just fall away from the building. Frankly, I’m amazed that he managed to get into that position. There is a terrace below him, but it is so far down that he would still die if he hit it.
Some journalist wrote an article on the internet in which she criticized the “haters”, as she called them, that daredevils like this tend to attract. But it is hard not to hate people who put their lives at risk. For reasons I can’t explain, I care about these numbskulls (indeed, I care about people in general). I don’t want them to get hurt. Such people contribute to the chaos of the world, which, as a person who loves order, makes me angry at them. I understand why they attract “haters”.
One of the more horrifying clips I have seen was a video of a 15-year-old boy jumping off a 14-story building wearing a home-made parachute. That is horrifying enough, but what makes it more horrifying is that his mother, friends, and other relatives egged him on. Apparently, dozens of people watched. Wasn’t there anyone there who realized how dangerous the stunt was? Why did they think that a 15-year-old boy could make a functioning parachute? It is hard to believe that people could be so stupid and callous. This happened half a year ago in the Ukraine. Experts say that you must be at least 25 stories high, and have a professionally made parachute, for such a stunt to work.
The boy, who was handsome (they all seem to be) stood on top of the building for two minutes before he jumped. He must have been wondering if he was making a huge mistake, and wondering why his mother didn't try to stop him. Undoubtedly, he must have also been feeling huge pressure to go through with the stunt since everyone was expecting him to do it. When he jumped, he just plunged straight down and died. Poor boy.
Wednesday, 11:04 p.m.
I just watched a video in which a man stepped from a ledge that looked to be a couple thousand feet in the air and climbed up the side of the building, and then jumped back down once he got to the top. Here is a screen shot from the video:
I watched as this fellow first stood at the very edge of space on the ledge that can be seen in the lower-right corner (if you enlarge the picture by clicking on it). He was holding a camera and pointed it down to the ground. Doing that would be enough to give me vertigo and make me fall. And then the fellow calmly climbed onto the portion you can see in the picture (the portion that has a series of ledges), and then climbed up it to the roof, and then jumped down onto the level where the ledge is. One of the questions for me is whether the material that those ledges is made of is smooth or rough. If it is smooth, then what he did was incredibly risky. Those ledges may also have had dust on them, which would interfere with his grip.
I think that the people who become daredevils are the kind of people who don’t care if they live or die. They are the kind for which life is boring, and any excitement is worth the risk. They are the same people who drive motorcycles at 80 m.p.h. on public roads. They are people whose feelings are dead, so they have to do something dangerous to feel alive. I’m just the opposite. Every little thing upsets me. I would like to deaden my feelings a bit.
Saturday, 9:47 p.m.
Now I’m looking at even more disturbing videos on You-Tube, videos that show people dying. I’m not sure I want to continue to look at them (I’ve only seen a couple so far). One of them is very sad. In China, two cars were in an accident on a highway, one having rear-ended the other. The car in the back had a dash-cam. The dash-cam showed the people from both cars collected between the cars, still lined up one behind the other, surveying the damage to the pumpers. There were six people standing between the two cars, including a girl who looked to be about eight. While they were standing there, a third motorist rear-ended the car that was in the back, driving the cars together and crushing the people between them. If they had been smart – well, not smart, but informed – they would have known they were in danger, and they would have gotten off the road immediately to avoid just such a thing. The police understand the danger and would have cleared the area, but there were no police around. So all these people stood between the two cars, putting their lives in danger. After the second accident, the dash-cam showed one young woman with her leg pinned between the cars, and an older woman crushed between the cars, probably dead. The other people, including the girl, were apparently thrown from the scene. How sad.
It is one thing to watch foolish people doing foolish things and dying, but I can’t really blame that group of people, can I? They just didn’t know the risk they were taking.
I had to stop watching that video. Too many people who died didn’t deserve it. Then I started watching a video about natural disasters. That didn’t show people up-close, so I couldn’t identify with them if anyone died. The most interesting natural disasters to me are landslides. Snow in an avalanche is less interesting because snow is not a permanent part of the terrain, but rocks and dirt certainly are. It interests me how dirt and rocks can become almost liquid.
Talking about foolish people, when I was watching the “Near Fatal” videos, it showed something that must have been fatal. The video was from someone's helmet-cam, someone who was riding a snow-mobile along a cliff. At a certain point he jumped over a snow drift, and the cliff suddenly ended. Underneath him was a pointed rock formation surrounded by space. The video suddenly cut out, but he must have hit the rock formation and then plunge into the abyss. I can only imagine that he died. Did he think that the cliff went on forever?
Sunday, 9:30 p.m.
I continue to read about young people who die while taking selfies. Tonight I read about an 18-year-old Israeli student named Tomer Frankfurter who was touring Yosemite national park, which has high cliffs and waterfalls. He was part of a group. They got to a high spot near a cliff, and the cliff looked like the perfect spot for a photo. He told the group that he wanted to have his photo taken hanging from the cliff, like in some pictures from Brazil that he had seen. The people knew about those photos and tried to tell him that the cliff in Brazil was an optical illusion, that it wasn't actually far off the ground, but he wouldn't listen to them. He gave his camera to a young woman and asked her to take photos of him. Despite being hundreds of feet in the air, he lowered his body over the cliff, holding on only by his hands. At first he was okay, and the young woman took a few pictures. But then his arms began to tire, as you would expect them to, and he said, “I need help.” People ran to pull him up, but his arms were wet with sweat (it was a warm day), and he slipped out of their grasp. All those movies which show one person saving another from falling by holding on to his hand or sleeve are just fictional nonsense. Pulling someone up in such a way is pretty much impossible, and even a group of people may not be able to do it. The park service police said that the moment he lowered himself over the cliff, there was nothing anyone could do to save him. One witness said that he screamed the whole way down – more than 500 feet – a scream he said he would never forget.
I can understand how Frankfurter would have thought that he could do such a stunt. One of the pictures that comes up when I do a Google search for "selfie deaths" shows a man hanging from a cliff with one hand. However, that cliff in Brazil is only three feet off the ground, though it appears to be a thousand feet in the air. It is called "Telegraph Rock". People do all kinds of crazy stunts on that rock, knowing that if they fall, they’ll be okay. Frankfurter must have been looking at one of those pictures. Then there are competition shows like American Ninja Warrior in which contestants go through an obstacle course hanging from their hands. That gives the impression that people can hang by their hands for long periods of time – but only trained athletes can do that.
The distance that Frankfurter fell was 580 feet to 800 feet (depending on which article one reads) – that is about 50 to 70 stories – and he fell onto rocks. The article that I read pointed out that the woman who took the photos at Frankfurter’s request may have enabled him to commit suicide. If she had said, “No, it’s too dangerous”, he probably wouldn't have climbed over the edge.
A man who wrote a book about deaths at Yosemite (1,004 since 1851) said: “In the old days people went out to have an experience. Now they go out to record that they had that experience.” The same man said that many of the people who die taking selfies behave as if they are on a movie set, not in the real world. Since they will be showing their pictures to friends, they want those experiences to be remarkable, and often that means "dangerous".
All this happened less than a year ago, in September, 2018. Here is a picture of Frankfurter:
Anyone who isn't anti-Semitic will have to admit that that is a handsome fellow. Not only is he handsome, but well-muscled and sexy. I wish I had looked that good when I was young. But what really stands out for me is that he looks kind, wise and mature. He was only 18 when he died, and I guess he just hadn't learned the wisdom of being cautious. He looks like a happy person who is enjoying life. Why did he throw it all away just to get a good photo of himself? He apparently had too much faith in his own strength.
The picture that he may have been trying to duplicate could have been one of these pictures taken on Telegraph Rock:
Telegraph Rock is only a few feet above the ground. The perspective creates the illusion that it is high in the air. Here is a picture of Telegraph Rock from a distance, which shows how close it is to the ground:
Monday, 11:05 p.m.
Lately I have been watching YouTube videos of motorcycle crashes. I have to be honest that I hate bikers with a passion, so I haven't been sorry to witness so many crashes. That's really pretty awful of me, but I can't help it. My dislike of bikers is for several reasons: Their bikes are noisy; their bikes spew pollution; they are exhibitionists; and they embody bad personality traits such as selfishness, toxic masculinity and criminality – in other words, they like being "rebels". I have always disliked them, but my dislike turned to open contempt since moving to Rhode Island, where I have lived on roads heavily travelled by bikers. Every year, when the warm weather hits, they come out of the woodwork like roaches and make a huge amount of noise. There was one time when I was walking around Warren and was amazed that I could hear their engines coming from every direction. That they disturb the peace and pollute the air doesn't seem to matter to them. I got a heavy dose of them in the first two apartments that I lived in. The third time that I moved, I purposely found an isolated street so I didn't have to deal with them.
The YouTube videos that I've been looking at recently show a different kind of biker. The bikers in my neighborhood are mostly middle-aged poseurs, but the young bikers in the videos believe in their own bullshit. They appear to be a genuine menace to society. Unlike the older bikers, the young bikers take chances that endanger other people. They swarm in groups, riding too close to each other. They speed. They lean into curves so hard that they lose control of their bikes. They do "wheelies" (i.e., they raise their bikes up onto one wheel or do circles in the road). They don't stay in their lanes, but instead zip between cars. (I'm sure that both wheelies and zipping between cars must be illegal.) In some of the videos I have watched, bikers drive dangerously and do all kinds of stunts, but then they will confront and scold motorists for the slightest infraction. The egotism of these young bikers is just astonishing. And, of course, they have the same exhibitionism that the older bikers do, dressing up in ridiculous outfits as if they were professional athletes, and riding souped up, fancy-looking bikes. It is impossible not to hate them.
I just did some research. Driving between cars is called "lane-splitting" or "filtering". It is illegal in most states, but legal in California, where it must be done very slowly and carefully, and only through traffic which is completely stopped. But of course, these young hotheads zip through traffic at high speeds. What usually happens is that they hit a car which is trying to change lanes – and then (wouldn't you know it) they blame the driver of the car.
It is my opinion that motorcycles should be illegal in this country. They are dangerous, and they attract the worst kind of people.
Later
I've just been watching more motorcycle crash videos. They speed. Sometimes they go so fast that they can't stop in time to avoid another vehicle. Sometimes they crash while doing wheelies. Sometimes they just drive off the road. Often (very often) they engage in lane-splitting, and they hit a vehicle which is changing lanes. Sometimes one motorcycle hits another while lane-splitting. Sometimes they just lose control of the machine. And in some cases they are apparently so much in the moment – i.e., enjoying the speed – that they can't bring themselves to slow down enough to manage whatever obstacle presents itself, such as a curve or an intersection.
Motorcycles are obviously less stable than cars are. Also, it seems that it takes longer for a motorcycle to stop than a car, which would explain why so many motorcycles rear-end the cars in front of them. Given that it takes a motorcycle longer to stop, you would think that bikers would keep more distance between themselves and the cars ahead of them, but they rarely do.
In one segment, the motorcycle had the right of way and hit a car which just sailed through a red light. That was sad to watch, but it made me realize something: Bikers, even when they have the right of way, should use defensive driving tactics. I can give myself as an example. When I am entering an intersection on my bicycle, I enter it slowly and look both ways even if the light is in my favor. But bikers apparently don't want to slow down that much. Some of them act like their bodies are made of steel.
In one of the segments, on a one-way multi-lane road, a car was stopped on the right side of the right lane, next to a barrier which ran along the side of the road. A car pass the parked car at the same time that a motorcycle tried to pass the moving car on the right. As you would expect, the motorcycle plowed right into the back of the parked car. The driver of the motorcycle was thrown 10-12 feet in the air and landed right on his head, and the passenger on the motorcycle slammed into the car's trunk. It is likely that the driver died.
In one segment, a motorcycle tried to thread past a car on the left, only to hit another motorcycle which was also threading past, but moving more slowly.
In one of the segments, taken in India, two youngish teenagers – driver and passenger – are shown looking backwards at the camera for about eight seconds until they crash on the curb. They had vacuous selfie grins on their faces.
In one segment, a biker drives through a parking lot much faster than he should. A child who has just gotten out of a car runs across the parking lot towards the store. That should have caused the biker to slow down, but he didn't. Then the boy's brother runs across the parking lot, and the biker hits him. Granted, the parent of the boys should have kept the boys under control, but it doesn't change the fact that no vehicle should drive through a parking lot at anything more than about 10 mph.
In one segment, two motorists do a maneuver that sets up the biker for an accident. On a four-lane road, a car in the right lane stops to let a car exit a parking lot, a car which was turning to go in the opposite direction. Neither the motorist who stopped, nor the motorist who pulled out of the parking lot, considered that there were two lanes going in the same direction, and that there might be a vehicle in that lane. The biker who hit the car could just as easily have been a car. In instances like that, I have to be sympathetic with the biker.
Sometimes the motorist just doesn't see the motorcycle, and then pulls out in front of it.
But I have to say again, it is astonishing how often bikers get themselves into trouble – usually by lane-splitting – and then blame whatever motorist got in their way. Motorists have a right to change lanes on a highway.
There was one segment that I watched in which a motorcycle was about to zip past a car on the right, and the car lurched to the right purposely to hit him – that was very wrong. That motorist will go to hell for that.
Entries from My Diary – May, 2019
Monday, 4:39 a.m.
I think the last time I wrote in here, I forgot to save the file when I was done. Then, I had to turn off my computer because it wouldn't go to sleep at the end of the night, and my entry was deleted. I remember writing about daredevils who climb buildings and such, but now I can't find that entry at all. I hate it when something I write accidentally gets erased.
This is a new phenomenon in the last 20 years or so – i.e., young daredevils climbing the outsides of buildings, towers and other high structures, or hanging off of cliffs. They do it to become popular on various social-media platforms, such as Instagram, YouTube and Facebook. They can even make money doing it.
These daredevils try to get the most heart-stopping, terrifying shot that they can to put on their media accounts. There is one Ukrainian fellow named “Mustang Wanted” (“MW”) who is particularly daring. He will go to the roof of the highest of buildings, and then hang over the edge with just one hand – yes, that is what I said. He will lower himself over the edge and hang in space by one hand, often by just three fingers – and to make it look more dramatic, he’ll extend his legs out into space. Just thinking about it gives me vertigo. Just as amazing is what the accompanying photographer will do. On one site there are several pictures of MW, taken from above, in which you can see the shoes of the photographer at the bottom of the picture. So while MW is hanging by one hand, the photographer will be standing two or three inches from the edge, usually on a wall, with the camera looking down hundreds or thousands of feet. In other words, unlike MW, the photographer isn’t holding onto anything. All it would take would be a gust of wind to make him lose his balance and fall off the building.
In another picture, Mustang Wanted is shown on a ledge, balancing himself on one foot on the edge, and he isn’t even holding on to the building. Most daredevils have the sense to hold on to something so high up, but this fellow was just balancing on one foot – and he had a heavy camera on his shoulder too. Here is the picture:
If he started to lose his balance, it appears that he would not have anything to grab onto, since right next to him is a smooth wall. Unbelievable.
In another picture, he is hanging off the top of a suspension bridge. His hand is being held by a companion who is standing on the top of one of the concrete towers with his right toes over the edge. (I can't tell if the companion is using one or two hands to hold MW.) To make the picture more dramatic, MW is pushing his body away from the side of the tower with his foot, so that his body is hanging out in space. Now, you have to visualize this: If the companion is holding MW, what would happen if either one of them lost their grip? MW would plunge to his death while the companion would fall backward. (There is a third person taking the picture.) Well, here’s the picture:
The companion is close enough to the left edge of the top of the tower that if either one lost his grip, the companion might plunge off the tower too.
What is wrong with these guys?
Just as disturbing is that some of the daredevils, including MW, will bring bicycles up onto these structures, and they will bicycle along some ledge or – even worse – across a steel beam with empty space on either side.
I might as well show you that image too:
It actually hurts me to see young people doing such things.
It looks to me like this fellow can't have a very secure grip of the beam he is holding because of its oblique shape:
It isn’t just the daredevils that I’ve been looking at on the internet. I’ve been reading about people who died taking “selfies” in dangerous places. There is an article on Wikipedia which lists hundreds of cases since about 2011. Many have died taking selfies while they tried to outrun trains, or while they climbed on top of a train car (the ones who climb the train cars get electrocuted – there are live wires on the top of electrified train cars). Dozens have plunged off cliffs, and dozens have been swept away in rivers. One man – a mature adult no less, at the age of 51 – jump into the air while on a mountain top overlooking Machu Picchu. He wanted to take a selfie of himself in mid-air. Well, he was close to the edge of a cliff (in a restricted area, no less); he lost his balance, and he fell off the cliff.
Tuesday, 4:26 a.m.
I have just spent another couple hours looking at horrible pictures on the internet. I started out looking at dangerous selfie photos, and then I looked at a video that showed murder victims from the 1910's to about 1960 or so. It's amazing how gruesome murder is. Then I saw a series of photos of people just before they died.
The dangerous selfie photos, though, are the most frightening. The ones that scare me the most are of people standing right at the edge of space without holding onto anything, and also the ones in which the daredevil hangs hundreds of feet in the air by a hand. Right now I'm looking at a picture of a young woman standing on a thin steal beam high up in the air. In that picture, there is nothing around her to grab onto if she loses her balance. Well, here it is, along with some others:
I don't suppose that any of these people want to die. That being the case, the risks they are taking just seem insane.
This picture is terrifying to me:
The thing about these Indian men sitting on the edge of the cliff is that the rock they are sitting on has been worn away so that it is sloping downward – that would make it easier for them to slip off. On the other hand, the rock is rough, so that must give them some traction. But then, I don't trust people enough to sit with my back to them on a ledge. I would also be afraid as I sat down and got up that I would fall off. The man holding the camera on a "selfie stick" would have that extra weight pulling him into space, although the camera and stick are probably light. He is also leaning forward. It's just hard to believe that people would put their lives in danger like that.
Here is a picture of a man who is taking more of a chance than he probably realizes:
This is a man with a belly, which makes the top half of his body heavier than it otherwise would be. Furthermore, by bending his knees, he is moving his center of gravity up his body. If the center of gravity shifts until it is over space, then he will fall backwards, pure and simple. I would never take a chance like this.
The pictures of the murder victims from the 1910's and 1920's were interesting, especially the old-fashioned clothes and interiors. Interiors were not so bright as they are today. The walls in a lot of those places were dark. Every kitchen that they showed had a huge cast-iron stove. They showed many bodies in beds, and it was interesting to see how depressing the bedrooms looked. Many people apparently slept without sheets. At that time, the police used a camera that stood on a huge tripod with the camera in the middle pointing down, so many pictures showed these weird-looking spider legs surrounding the victim.
Thursday, 1:46 a.m.
Here is another picture of "roof-toppers" that terrifies me:
The woman has her foot right at the edge, and the man has his toe over the edge. What if a gust of wind came along? Big cities are known for gusty winds, though usually the gusts are on the ground. I guess it is the fact that they seem to be gesturing to each other, as if they might momentarily forget what they are doing and step towards each other.
Friday, 2:58 a.m.
This morning there is a news story about a young woman who stood on a stone wall in a park overlooking the Pacific ocean to get the perfect selfie. She lost her balance, fell off the wall, and rolled down a hill towards a cliff. A tree blocked her trajectory over the cliff, so that she didn’t fall into the Pacific ocean, but she still died.
Two years ago, a 26-year-old Japanese man named Wu Yongning, a daredevil who climbed buildings and such, fell during one of his stunts. He lowered himself over the edge of the roof of a 62-story building, did a couple pull-ups on the wall surrounding the roof (the pull-ups were part of his stunt), but then discovered that he didn’t have enough strength to pull himself back up. The video shows him trying to get a foothold on the side of the building, but the surface was made of a completely smooth material – probably metal, but possibly some composite material. He struggled to pull himself up for a while, looking down once to see how far he would fall, and then lost his grip. News stories say he fell 30 feet onto a terrace, but it was enough to kill him. Yongning had done this kind of thing hundreds of times, but it would seem that he had never done it on a building with a completely smooth surface. Even on a brick building, you can get a bit of a foothold to assist yourself up – bricks are rough, and there are indentations where the mortar is. Also, the ledge he was hanging onto with his hands was also smooth, meaning that it didn’t have any roughness for him to get a good grip on. So even though he was experienced at what he was doing, he still made fatal miscalculations. That building, with all its smooth surfaces, must have been like climbing on ice. Here is a picture of Yongning struggling before he fell. You can see him trying to get a foothold with both feet:
Sunday, 11:21 p.m.
Although I’m not doing it as much as I was, I am still looking at dangerous selfie pictures. Here is another picture:
Now, that picture horrifies me on many levels. First, the daredevil is standing on a metal strip, a bit of architectural detail on the building which was not made to hold weight. The metal strip is very thin, which means that his sneakers’ grip on the strip must be very tenuous. Then, he is holding onto the building with one hand, with the other hand stretched out into space holding the camera. And he has a glove on the hand that is holding onto the building, which would make his grip less secure. If his sneakers were to slip, his grip on the building isn’t good enough to save him from falling. If his hand slips, he’ll just fall away from the building. Frankly, I’m amazed that he managed to get into that position. There is a terrace below him, but it is so far down that he would still die if he hit it.
Some journalist wrote an article on the internet in which she criticized the “haters”, as she called them, that daredevils like this tend to attract. But it is hard not to hate people who put their lives at risk. For reasons I can’t explain, I care about these numbskulls (indeed, I care about people in general). I don’t want them to get hurt. Such people contribute to the chaos of the world, which, as a person who loves order, makes me angry at them. I understand why they attract “haters”.
One of the more horrifying clips I have seen was a video of a 15-year-old boy jumping off a 14-story building wearing a home-made parachute. That is horrifying enough, but what makes it more horrifying is that his mother, friends, and other relatives egged him on. Apparently, dozens of people watched. Wasn’t there anyone there who realized how dangerous the stunt was? Why did they think that a 15-year-old boy could make a functioning parachute? It is hard to believe that people could be so stupid and callous. This happened half a year ago in the Ukraine. Experts say that you must be at least 25 stories high, and have a professionally made parachute, for such a stunt to work.
The boy, who was handsome (they all seem to be) stood on top of the building for two minutes before he jumped. He must have been wondering if he was making a huge mistake, and wondering why his mother didn't try to stop him. Undoubtedly, he must have also been feeling huge pressure to go through with the stunt since everyone was expecting him to do it. When he jumped, he just plunged straight down and died. Poor boy.
Wednesday, 11:04 p.m.
I just watched a video in which a man stepped from a ledge that looked to be a couple thousand feet in the air and climbed up the side of the building, and then jumped back down once he got to the top. Here is a screen shot from the video:
I watched as this fellow first stood at the very edge of space on the ledge that can be seen in the lower-right corner (if you enlarge the picture by clicking on it). He was holding a camera and pointed it down to the ground. Doing that would be enough to give me vertigo and make me fall. And then the fellow calmly climbed onto the portion you can see in the picture (the portion that has a series of ledges), and then climbed up it to the roof, and then jumped down onto the level where the ledge is. One of the questions for me is whether the material that those ledges is made of is smooth or rough. If it is smooth, then what he did was incredibly risky. Those ledges may also have had dust on them, which would interfere with his grip.
I think that the people who become daredevils are the kind of people who don’t care if they live or die. They are the kind for which life is boring, and any excitement is worth the risk. They are the same people who drive motorcycles at 80 m.p.h. on public roads. They are people whose feelings are dead, so they have to do something dangerous to feel alive. I’m just the opposite. Every little thing upsets me. I would like to deaden my feelings a bit.
Saturday, 9:47 p.m.
Now I’m looking at even more disturbing videos on You-Tube, videos that show people dying. I’m not sure I want to continue to look at them (I’ve only seen a couple so far). One of them is very sad. In China, two cars were in an accident on a highway, one having rear-ended the other. The car in the back had a dash-cam. The dash-cam showed the people from both cars collected between the cars, still lined up one behind the other, surveying the damage to the pumpers. There were six people standing between the two cars, including a girl who looked to be about eight. While they were standing there, a third motorist rear-ended the car that was in the back, driving the cars together and crushing the people between them. If they had been smart – well, not smart, but informed – they would have known they were in danger, and they would have gotten off the road immediately to avoid just such a thing. The police understand the danger and would have cleared the area, but there were no police around. So all these people stood between the two cars, putting their lives in danger. After the second accident, the dash-cam showed one young woman with her leg pinned between the cars, and an older woman crushed between the cars, probably dead. The other people, including the girl, were apparently thrown from the scene. How sad.
It is one thing to watch foolish people doing foolish things and dying, but I can’t really blame that group of people, can I? They just didn’t know the risk they were taking.
I had to stop watching that video. Too many people who died didn’t deserve it. Then I started watching a video about natural disasters. That didn’t show people up-close, so I couldn’t identify with them if anyone died. The most interesting natural disasters to me are landslides. Snow in an avalanche is less interesting because snow is not a permanent part of the terrain, but rocks and dirt certainly are. It interests me how dirt and rocks can become almost liquid.
Talking about foolish people, when I was watching the “Near Fatal” videos, it showed something that must have been fatal. The video was from someone's helmet-cam, someone who was riding a snow-mobile along a cliff. At a certain point he jumped over a snow drift, and the cliff suddenly ended. Underneath him was a pointed rock formation surrounded by space. The video suddenly cut out, but he must have hit the rock formation and then plunge into the abyss. I can only imagine that he died. Did he think that the cliff went on forever?
Sunday, 9:30 p.m.
I continue to read about young people who die while taking selfies. Tonight I read about an 18-year-old Israeli student named Tomer Frankfurter who was touring Yosemite national park, which has high cliffs and waterfalls. He was part of a group. They got to a high spot near a cliff, and the cliff looked like the perfect spot for a photo. He told the group that he wanted to have his photo taken hanging from the cliff, like in some pictures from Brazil that he had seen. The people knew about those photos and tried to tell him that the cliff in Brazil was an optical illusion, that it wasn't actually far off the ground, but he wouldn't listen to them. He gave his camera to a young woman and asked her to take photos of him. Despite being hundreds of feet in the air, he lowered his body over the cliff, holding on only by his hands. At first he was okay, and the young woman took a few pictures. But then his arms began to tire, as you would expect them to, and he said, “I need help.” People ran to pull him up, but his arms were wet with sweat (it was a warm day), and he slipped out of their grasp. All those movies which show one person saving another from falling by holding on to his hand or sleeve are just fictional nonsense. Pulling someone up in such a way is pretty much impossible, and even a group of people may not be able to do it. The park service police said that the moment he lowered himself over the cliff, there was nothing anyone could do to save him. One witness said that he screamed the whole way down – more than 500 feet – a scream he said he would never forget.
I can understand how Frankfurter would have thought that he could do such a stunt. One of the pictures that comes up when I do a Google search for "selfie deaths" shows a man hanging from a cliff with one hand. However, that cliff in Brazil is only three feet off the ground, though it appears to be a thousand feet in the air. It is called "Telegraph Rock". People do all kinds of crazy stunts on that rock, knowing that if they fall, they’ll be okay. Frankfurter must have been looking at one of those pictures. Then there are competition shows like American Ninja Warrior in which contestants go through an obstacle course hanging from their hands. That gives the impression that people can hang by their hands for long periods of time – but only trained athletes can do that.
The distance that Frankfurter fell was 580 feet to 800 feet (depending on which article one reads) – that is about 50 to 70 stories – and he fell onto rocks. The article that I read pointed out that the woman who took the photos at Frankfurter’s request may have enabled him to commit suicide. If she had said, “No, it’s too dangerous”, he probably wouldn't have climbed over the edge.
A man who wrote a book about deaths at Yosemite (1,004 since 1851) said: “In the old days people went out to have an experience. Now they go out to record that they had that experience.” The same man said that many of the people who die taking selfies behave as if they are on a movie set, not in the real world. Since they will be showing their pictures to friends, they want those experiences to be remarkable, and often that means "dangerous".
All this happened less than a year ago, in September, 2018. Here is a picture of Frankfurter:
Anyone who isn't anti-Semitic will have to admit that that is a handsome fellow. Not only is he handsome, but well-muscled and sexy. I wish I had looked that good when I was young. But what really stands out for me is that he looks kind, wise and mature. He was only 18 when he died, and I guess he just hadn't learned the wisdom of being cautious. He looks like a happy person who is enjoying life. Why did he throw it all away just to get a good photo of himself? He apparently had too much faith in his own strength.
The picture that he may have been trying to duplicate could have been one of these pictures taken on Telegraph Rock:
(The picture on the left is a mirror image. If you look below, the buildings
are the same, but they mirror each other.)
are the same, but they mirror each other.)
Telegraph Rock is only a few feet above the ground. The perspective creates the illusion that it is high in the air. Here is a picture of Telegraph Rock from a distance, which shows how close it is to the ground:
Monday, 11:05 p.m.
Lately I have been watching YouTube videos of motorcycle crashes. I have to be honest that I hate bikers with a passion, so I haven't been sorry to witness so many crashes. That's really pretty awful of me, but I can't help it. My dislike of bikers is for several reasons: Their bikes are noisy; their bikes spew pollution; they are exhibitionists; and they embody bad personality traits such as selfishness, toxic masculinity and criminality – in other words, they like being "rebels". I have always disliked them, but my dislike turned to open contempt since moving to Rhode Island, where I have lived on roads heavily travelled by bikers. Every year, when the warm weather hits, they come out of the woodwork like roaches and make a huge amount of noise. There was one time when I was walking around Warren and was amazed that I could hear their engines coming from every direction. That they disturb the peace and pollute the air doesn't seem to matter to them. I got a heavy dose of them in the first two apartments that I lived in. The third time that I moved, I purposely found an isolated street so I didn't have to deal with them.
The YouTube videos that I've been looking at recently show a different kind of biker. The bikers in my neighborhood are mostly middle-aged poseurs, but the young bikers in the videos believe in their own bullshit. They appear to be a genuine menace to society. Unlike the older bikers, the young bikers take chances that endanger other people. They swarm in groups, riding too close to each other. They speed. They lean into curves so hard that they lose control of their bikes. They do "wheelies" (i.e., they raise their bikes up onto one wheel or do circles in the road). They don't stay in their lanes, but instead zip between cars. (I'm sure that both wheelies and zipping between cars must be illegal.) In some of the videos I have watched, bikers drive dangerously and do all kinds of stunts, but then they will confront and scold motorists for the slightest infraction. The egotism of these young bikers is just astonishing. And, of course, they have the same exhibitionism that the older bikers do, dressing up in ridiculous outfits as if they were professional athletes, and riding souped up, fancy-looking bikes. It is impossible not to hate them.
I just did some research. Driving between cars is called "lane-splitting" or "filtering". It is illegal in most states, but legal in California, where it must be done very slowly and carefully, and only through traffic which is completely stopped. But of course, these young hotheads zip through traffic at high speeds. What usually happens is that they hit a car which is trying to change lanes – and then (wouldn't you know it) they blame the driver of the car.
It is my opinion that motorcycles should be illegal in this country. They are dangerous, and they attract the worst kind of people.
Later
I've just been watching more motorcycle crash videos. They speed. Sometimes they go so fast that they can't stop in time to avoid another vehicle. Sometimes they crash while doing wheelies. Sometimes they just drive off the road. Often (very often) they engage in lane-splitting, and they hit a vehicle which is changing lanes. Sometimes one motorcycle hits another while lane-splitting. Sometimes they just lose control of the machine. And in some cases they are apparently so much in the moment – i.e., enjoying the speed – that they can't bring themselves to slow down enough to manage whatever obstacle presents itself, such as a curve or an intersection.
Motorcycles are obviously less stable than cars are. Also, it seems that it takes longer for a motorcycle to stop than a car, which would explain why so many motorcycles rear-end the cars in front of them. Given that it takes a motorcycle longer to stop, you would think that bikers would keep more distance between themselves and the cars ahead of them, but they rarely do.
In one segment, the motorcycle had the right of way and hit a car which just sailed through a red light. That was sad to watch, but it made me realize something: Bikers, even when they have the right of way, should use defensive driving tactics. I can give myself as an example. When I am entering an intersection on my bicycle, I enter it slowly and look both ways even if the light is in my favor. But bikers apparently don't want to slow down that much. Some of them act like their bodies are made of steel.
In one of the segments, on a one-way multi-lane road, a car was stopped on the right side of the right lane, next to a barrier which ran along the side of the road. A car pass the parked car at the same time that a motorcycle tried to pass the moving car on the right. As you would expect, the motorcycle plowed right into the back of the parked car. The driver of the motorcycle was thrown 10-12 feet in the air and landed right on his head, and the passenger on the motorcycle slammed into the car's trunk. It is likely that the driver died.
In one segment, a motorcycle tried to thread past a car on the left, only to hit another motorcycle which was also threading past, but moving more slowly.
In one of the segments, taken in India, two youngish teenagers – driver and passenger – are shown looking backwards at the camera for about eight seconds until they crash on the curb. They had vacuous selfie grins on their faces.
In one segment, a biker drives through a parking lot much faster than he should. A child who has just gotten out of a car runs across the parking lot towards the store. That should have caused the biker to slow down, but he didn't. Then the boy's brother runs across the parking lot, and the biker hits him. Granted, the parent of the boys should have kept the boys under control, but it doesn't change the fact that no vehicle should drive through a parking lot at anything more than about 10 mph.
In one segment, two motorists do a maneuver that sets up the biker for an accident. On a four-lane road, a car in the right lane stops to let a car exit a parking lot, a car which was turning to go in the opposite direction. Neither the motorist who stopped, nor the motorist who pulled out of the parking lot, considered that there were two lanes going in the same direction, and that there might be a vehicle in that lane. The biker who hit the car could just as easily have been a car. In instances like that, I have to be sympathetic with the biker.
Sometimes the motorist just doesn't see the motorcycle, and then pulls out in front of it.
But I have to say again, it is astonishing how often bikers get themselves into trouble – usually by lane-splitting – and then blame whatever motorist got in their way. Motorists have a right to change lanes on a highway.
There was one segment that I watched in which a motorcycle was about to zip past a car on the right, and the car lurched to the right purposely to hit him – that was very wrong. That motorist will go to hell for that.
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