[HN Gopher] Discovering My Roommate's Death on Facebook
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Discovering My Roommate's Death on Facebook
Author : safaa1993
Score : 117 points
Date : 2024-04-14 18:06 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (medium.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (medium.com)
| delichon wrote:
| I'm afraid this poor guy will be besieged by people who heard
| about a vacancy in San Francisco.
|
| I've unfortunately had my share of dead friends and relatives. I
| wish I could say that it somehow has made me stronger, more
| mature, but I'm afraid that the opposite is more true. Each is a
| trauma that I never entirely recover from. They make the world
| more bleak, confusing, cold, scary.
|
| And it makes it harder to comfort people, to speak the lie,
| "everything will be alright, with time." It can be, but it isn't
| a conveyer belt. If you get there it's under your own power.
| baq wrote:
| After getting philosophical one evening I came to the
| conclusion that 'bleak, scary and just plainly shit' is the
| default state of any particular person's mood and this is how
| the whole humanity evolved. Happiness and bliss are what you're
| chasing after, not what you're supposed to be - if you're
| permanently happy, you've diverged from the mean and either are
| an exception or overdue for a mean reversal.
|
| That is in itself a rather bleak and scary outlook but I least
| I feel honest with myself. The human species won by being full
| of sad people, some of who fought the environment to be
| slightly happier for a while.
| silverquiet wrote:
| So sleep tight kids...
|
| I think this is why religion is so important and I say that as
| someone who is incapable of believing in any.
| ShamelessC wrote:
| Well since those two things are at odds and you haven't
| explained your stance more, your comment effectively serves
| as flamebait.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| I thought it made sense. Religion is the salve that I wish
| would work for me.
| silverquiet wrote:
| No flaming intended. It's pretty much just a joke about the
| existential dread that I (and presumably the GP) have built
| up over a lifetime. I presume it's why we craft happy
| stories for children who we've deemed too young to learn
| about harsh realities. Alternatively, people find a lot of
| comfort in religion, but it's not something that's ever
| worked for me. So I like to joke about it.
| em-bee wrote:
| incapable of believing is different from refusing or being
| unwilling to believe.
|
| even some of those who do believe in god sometimes have
| doubts, and here is someone who (i imagine) thinks that it
| would be nice if there was a god, but they just can't see
| how it could possibly be true, given many things they see
| in contradiction.
|
| so no, wanting something to be true, but not being able to
| believe it to be true are not at odds at all.
|
| in this context you may also consider pascal's wager.
|
| the key is to keep searching for the truth, and to
| investigate the claims that various religions make until
| you find one that does work for you.
| dgfitz wrote:
| Did you feel a visceral reaction when you saw the word
| religion? Maybe you should do some introspection.
| mcmoor wrote:
| A bit more general, I think the same about habits. "Everything
| will be alright, with time", or in this case "everyday it gets
| easier, but you gotta do it everyday" is a lie, it isn't a
| conveyer belt. If you get there it's under your own power.
| hackernewds wrote:
| > this poor guy will be besieged by people who heard about a
| vacancy in San Francisco.
|
| I struggle to believe this
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| I have experienced a few deaths and think they have made me
| stronger, more mature, and wiser. One very recently that was
| completely unexpected.
|
| My recommendation, take it or leave it, is don't speak the lie.
| andrewstuart wrote:
| I've been hit twice by a car (cars?) and had the good fortune to
| not even be severely injured. Many other near brushes with death
| have me down to only one or two of my nine lives.
| monkey_monkey wrote:
| I have lived in apartments.
| chasd00 wrote:
| i got hit once by a police car making a left turn while on his
| phone with me having the right of way. I rolled over the hood
| jumped up, said i was fine, and took off. I was late for a
| meeting. Sometimes i wish for a broken arm, i would be on a
| beach right now instead of logged on and coding.
| paulsutter wrote:
| Enforcement of traffic offenses is down 95% in the past 10 years
| in San Francisco. Explains the outcome and the claims that "crime
| is down"
|
| https://x.com/zachcoelius/status/1779373752905589221
| fwip wrote:
| Hang on now, you've begged the question.
|
| Your data shows that traffic citations are down. It doesn't
| show anything about whether that's due to lax enforcement or
| less occurrences.
|
| In fact, if you look at a lot of those graphs, they hit a low
| point in 2020 - right when covid WFH would have drastically
| reduced a lot of traffic, and in turn, traffic crimes.
| paulsutter wrote:
| Good point, now I realize that drivers all became 20x more
| conscientious. Gosh I should have thought of that /s
| fwip wrote:
| I could search my heart to try to interpret your sarcastic
| comments in good-faith.
|
| Like, maybe you mean, "Surely, there should be a roughly
| linear relationship between the number of cars on the road
| and the number of unlawful traffic activities, and the
| decrease in driving in San Francisco was only X%, not 95%."
| To which I could say something like, "Hmm, yeah, that's a
| good point. Maybe less people run red lights if they aren't
| feeling frustrated from traffic already - or maybe the
| opposite, maybe more people run them if there isn't any
| perceived cross traffic. Would it be okay, or even good, to
| loosen traffic enforcement if the actual risk of the
| illegal activity has decreased?"
|
| But honestly? You sound like you've got some really strong
| guiding narratives that you're not willing to talk about
| like an adult. So I'm not gonna play.
| kirubakaran wrote:
| Considering the chart starts in 2014, I can understand
| the parent commenter having difficulty taking your
| Covid-19 argument in good faith.
|
| What data would you need to see to change your mind?
|
| PS: I went looking for data, and the number of traffic
| fatalities per year haven't gone up significantly since
| 2014. So I stand corrected. It's a big relief, as an SF
| resident; parent commenter's chart was really worrying.
| Phew
|
| https://sfgov.org/scorecards/transportation/traffic-
| fataliti...
| genewitch wrote:
| traffic enforcement probably doesn't (strongly) correlate
| with traffic fatalities. One is a revenue generation
| stream, the other is just probabilities.
| runeb wrote:
| While you're correct that you would see the same graphs if
| drivers had become exemplary, observing traffic in SF
| anecdotally point towards the opposite. It's frankly
| shocking.
| genericlogic wrote:
| While I can't comment on the stats, I do have a story. A long
| time ago I was working and living in SF. I had just finished
| work and was heading over to a nearby bar. I was waiting at a
| very busy intersection for the cross walk to signal to go. I
| had recently moved to SF and all my new friends warned me about
| cars, so I was being cautious. There was a guy standing in
| front of me with big headphones on looking at his phone. He
| just stepped into the street. Out of the corner of me eye I saw
| a car taking a turn coming right at him too fast. I reached
| out, grabbed him by his backpack and pulled him back on the
| sidewalk. His eyes were firmly fixed on me as the car zoomed by
| where he would have been, him totally oblivious. He gave the
| the WTF is your problem face then safely crossed the street.
|
| I think about that guy sometimes and wonder what his version of
| the story is. Further I sometimes question if he was ever in
| danger and I was just being overly cautious.
| kirubakaran wrote:
| Despite what he thinks, I'm glad you did what you did.
| Thanks!
|
| It reminded me of the movie Due Date: Peter
| Highman: How have you made it this far? How have you not run
| yourself over in a car? Ethan Tremblay: I've done
| that. Peter Highman: How have you survived? That's my
| question. Ethan Tremblay: Mostly luck.
|
| https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1231583/quotes/
| temp_praneshp wrote:
| If it's any solace, I've had something very similar happen.
| An idiot was jogging near 4th and King, and a car jumped the
| light after the left turn was red and the walk lights came
| on. I had trained myself to wait and look, but he went on
| till I blocked him. He was annoyed at first (reasonable), saw
| the car go by, but never said sorry or thank you.
|
| I never put on headphones till I was inside the train, as a
| rule of thumb.
| saulrh wrote:
| SF traffic fatalities have not been increasing year-over-year.
| You can't cast blame for an outcome that doesn't exist.
|
| Data: https://www.chp.ca.gov/programs-services/services-
| informatio.... SWITRS hasn't published a report since 2020 due
| to the pandemic, but that works perfectly fine for my purposes
| because I'd have probably had to discard those years for other
| reasons, and since we're talking about a ten- or fifteen-year
| trend I'm perfectly okay coming to a conclusion based on data
| from 2011 to 2020. Traffic fatalities per city are in section 8
| chart E.
|
| Fatalities have also not been increasing per mile traveled.
| Data: https://vitalsigns.mtc.ca.gov/indicators/daily-miles-
| travele...
|
| I choose traffic fatalities as the metric because federal and
| state reporting laws mean that these numbers will be
| effectively complete - there is no sampling or selection
| effect, unlike numbers about traffic enforcement.
| forgotusername6 wrote:
| There's a really confusing gap between grief, or what I thought
| grief should look like, when losing someone close and the
| indifference or mere sympathy that comes with hearing about the
| loss of someone you don't know. A number of years ago I found out
| that someone I knew from university had died. He was young, and
| the whole thing was just so genuinely confusing that I didn't
| know how to feel about it. I'm in a similar position right now,
| learning about an old friend's terminal illness via their
| gofundme page. Do I reach out? Should I even be sad? All I seem
| to feel in this kind of situation is a derailing bewilderment.
| klodolph wrote:
| You're not alone. I think it's really common to question
| yourself and ask, "Is this how I should be feeling? How I'm
| supposed to be feeling? How I'm supposed to be acting?"
| jraph wrote:
| wrt feeling, fully agree, I think it happens to most of us,
| if not all.
|
| But I believe you don't really have a say in the matter. I'm
| not sure you should be supposed to feel one way or another.
| You can only accept your feelings as is and others should
| accept how you feel too.
|
| I think especially when someone close die, it is well known
| each of us has their own personal / specific way of reacting.
|
| (of course you can prepare yourself to face expected
| situations to some extent; also of course, if you don't feel
| well you should seek help, especially if it lasts)
| dgfitz wrote:
| I've come to the conclusion that what you feel is what you
| feel. There is no right or wrong.
| genewitch wrote:
| okay, fine.
|
| what about introspection? What about what is considered
| mentally healthy or not? what about how it affects others
| around you? If you have past experiences or trauma or other
| orangic or inorganic neurological or mental issues having a
| "flat affect" can be "wrong". If what you're feeling isn't
| helping you, how would you know that there's another way
| unless you get help?
|
| This sounds defeatist and if you peek just a little behind
| the curtain this can lead to all kinds of "bad". IMO.
|
| Just imagine the worst thing you can that someone could
| think, and then they say "it's okay, it's just how i feel,
| it's not right or wrong." I get that we shouldn't gatekeep or
| police thought, but obviously this isn't some "universal
| truth"...
| rickmode wrote:
| I'd say it's like the mental health distinction of a trait
| versus a disorder: if this is negatively impacting your day
| to day life, consider therapy / counseling.
|
| (As an aside, I think of counseling as "optimizing my
| life". Perhaps that framing may help those that find the
| idea off-putting.)
| lwhi wrote:
| Someone I met moving into a new co-working space died last week
| at work.
|
| He was working the night shift at the front desk. We'd
| exchanged hellos and goodbyes a few times, and got to the stage
| where we recognised each other and would refine our greeting
| slightly at each repetition.
|
| I figured we'd ended up chatting more and would get to know
| each other.
|
| But then he had a heart attack.
|
| I feel grief, in the sense that I no longer inhabit the
| universe where we got to know each other. There's a loss
| involved.
|
| But I didn't actually know him.
|
| I'm also more aware of the grief I'll feel in the future and
| I'm reminded how death can literally come at any moment.
|
| It does feel like a strange liminal state, though.
| semitones wrote:
| The last line made me emotional. Thank you for sharing this
| story, it was well-written. I'm sorry for your loss.
| anotherhue wrote:
| This may be the victim https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-northern-
| ireland-26180127
| ShamelessC wrote:
| Why would you try to expose that information?
| anotherhue wrote:
| Primarily to authenticate the story, secondarily to date it.
| People are already speaking like this is a recent thing,
| though TFA makes no claims. Instead it's over ten years old.
| heyoni wrote:
| A news article? Tied to some public blog post? Where's the
| exposure?
| hackernewds wrote:
| what value does it add to the discussion? besides preying
| on a private life
| HankB99 wrote:
| FB has been a little creepy about death. A FB "friend" (e.g. not
| a close friend) had died and about a year later FB started
| exhorting me to reconnect with him. I located his obituary and
| memorialized his account out of respect.
|
| Too many times I've been invited to wish a deceased friend "happy
| birthday." I go to their page and find it memorialized.
| Nevertheless, there are many friends wishing them happy birthday,
| oblivious to the indication that the page has been memorialized.
|
| The worse was the time my wife discovered her brother had died
| via FB. He had estranged himself from the family decades earlier,
| but still... A shared friend posted the status to his page,
| otherwise we might never have found out.
| wglass wrote:
| It's an odd situation when an acquaintance dies. It affects you
| but it can also feel like you don't have a right to grieve
| compared to those who knew them closely.
|
| Some years ago a neighbor of mine was hit by a light rail train
| after darting across the street, biking during his lunch break at
| work. I'd talked to him for a couple minutes almost every day for
| two years in the parking lot while he worked on his car or
| arrived home from work. Just like that he was gone. I have a
| vivid memory of a neighbor sharing the news. We went to his
| funeral. His parents and young wife were devastated of course. It
| was so unexpected. Thought about him for years afterwards.
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