US suicides hit an all-time high last year
Indeed. A quick check on the available studies on suicidal ideation (worldwide) led me to this study, which I can't vouch for, but still gives me an indication that it's not just our bubbles that's led us to thinking it's prevalent.
To quote its abstract:
The prevalence of SI (suicidal ideation) ranged across regions from 14.3% to 22.6%; the prevalence of SA (suicide attempts) ranged from 4.6% to 15.8%. Year was not associated with increasing STB (suicidal thoughts and behaviors) prevalence except for studies from the United States, which showed increasing rates of SI and SA since 2007.
Taking these figures at face value, around one out of five people worldwide have thoughts of suicide. Or by cobbling together estimates of world population aged under 25y/o and multiplying by 17% (harmonic mean of 14.3% and 22.6% to two sig figs), that's roughly 550 million people. More than the US population, according to Wolfram Alpha.
Of course, that's just very rough data, but still quite sobering if you ask me.
I think of the misery each individual must have experienced in order to come to the conclusion that death was better.
That someone not only have decided that death is better, but also have gone through all the steps to act on it is a measure of their resolve, if anything. And as you've said, they're still a rarity. On the spectrum of entertaining occasional thoughts to taking steps to actually doing it, the further you go, the less common it is!
That a lot of people have already gone this far, just how many more are mulling about it, questioning whether or not life is worth it, whether or not to do anything about it? And this "it gets better" mantra keeps some people from even speaking up! Why speak up when you're just going to be slapped with a thought-terminating-cliché? It makes it harder to know how many people are miserable enough to entertain "bad thoughts", and that the only objective measure we'd have is the number of people who've gone to the very end.
This will be a hot take for some but people opt out of a life that's pointless, miserable, painful, and hopeless. Preventing people from access to methods of opting out is but a palliative measure.
Sure, people can be dissuaded from making an attempt by making it difficult, but isn't it far better to address why people want to opt out in the first place? And of course, it's best to do both: prevent people from making attempts, and address any issues they might be having in their lives. Even better, provide "end-of-life" care for those who really have had it enough for whatever reason.
Why lock people into a miserable existence anyways? Someone might have been prevented from opting out, but if conditions don't change (and no, it doesn't always "get better"), you've got a person will just resent even being kept alive. What good does that do?
Now, for the trash take: I suspect suicide is a problem because suits can't make the line go up if people are killing themselves. The suits need people to consume and not kill themselves.
Hm, yeah, that's why I thought of comparing it to the zero-width-joiner. However, what I want to know if there are dangers that are unique to that character.
Even after looking up U+3164 (Hangul Filler), and reading (and rereading) the quoted paragraph:
The Hangul Filler character is used to introduce eight-byte Hangul composition sequences and to stand in for an absent element (usually an empty final) in such a sequence. Unicode includes the Wansung code Hangul Filler in the Hangul Compatibility Jamo block for round-trip compatibility, but uses its own system (with its own, differently used, filler characters) for composing Hangul. The KS X 1001 Hangul composition system is not used in Unicode, and the filler renders merely as an empty space; KS X 1001 composition sequences using modern jamo may be mapped to precomposed characters in Unicode. For round-trip compatibility, Unicode also includes the N-byte Hangul code Hangul Filler separately in the Halfwidth and Fullwidth Forms block, named the Halfwidth Hangul Filler.
I don't think I'm any closer to getting it.
Even more importantly, I don't get why it's any more dangerous than the various unprintable special characters (like zero-width-joiner, for example). Is it just because it's relatively obscure? Is it because it has a more complicated use (introducing, and optionally being a part of a Hangul composition sequence)?
What I'd love to see is news companies spinning up their own instances, for example, a CBC-owned Mastodon instance, with accounts such as journalistname@cbcnews. It'd work exactly like a company-assigned e-mail address, and would function as such. That each and every post on such an account would be seen as the journalist working under the company, and not their own personal views.
And if a journalist wants his own personal account, well, they can either spin up their own instance, or perhaps a union of journalists would spin up an instance, with journalists setting up their accounts that are not tied to any news agency or company.
Am I being too naive and optimistic here? Maybe. But do I want this to happen regardless, yes!
Upon reading the article more closely, this is what the BBC is doing. My bad!
Yeah, I get that.
I'm just pointing out that there are ways to do that without sacrificing privacy (by using one's real name for example). The way I've personally settled on is through the use of persistent pseudonyms. And that a person might use more than one of those.
Dismissing such behavior (using more than one username to access a site/platform) as “hiding from accountability,” just seems unfair to me.
If there is abuse, impersonation, or whatever wrongdoing committed then let it be dealt with by the mods and admins with the powers they have.
Furthermore, you are free to branch out Lemmy source code, implement the features you think are needed (say, restricting one IP to one username and vice versa), and fire up your own instance using that fork. And if there are many others who share your view on things, then not only you could find others to code the features, you also could find people willing to share admin and other front-facing work with you.
Pseudonymity has been a thing on the internet for a long time. And while it can be used to “hide from accountability,” as you put it, it can also be used for a lot of other things.
For example, I can use the platform formerly known as Twitter under one account name to follow and interact with nerdy interests, while I can use it with a different username to follow and interact with more mainstream interests. A huge benefit to this is that I can prevent the algorithm from muddying things up (too much, and at least on my end), but also, I get to separate my circles in such a way that it's a lot easier to navigate. It can be argued, however that it's at the expense of having to juggle multiple usernames which makes it way harder, but that's the price I'd gladly pay.
That's too bad.
It'd also be hard for the DM to handle a player character who suddenly goes off to retire, and end up peddling mystery bird roast.
If I were DM though, I'd probably ‘promote’ that guy to ‘recurring NPC’. I'd have that NPC randomly show up whenever the party decides to long rest, offering a selection of mystery meat for ridiculously low prices.
I could also have that guy sell potions and stuff at a ridiculously high markup, lol!
That second property seems to be a great business opportunity. Unless its carcass disappears when unattended, an enterprising adventurer can just catch it, butcher it, and then expect another one to show up.
And then the butchered meat would then be cooked as desired. Peking Goose, anyone?
I'm looking at this as “various little breaking points” some very trivial, but when taken as a whole, could break someone's tolerance, causing someone to be an eX-user.
One name comes to mind: Ceaușescu.
Not what the image depicts, but you know….
I usually use a loofah or equivalent, but when I don't, I use one hand to hold the soap and rub it on against the skin, and the other hand to lather and spread soap around. Switch hands when necessary.
I also tend to soap up my face first, then the ears, then down towards the neck and the torso, arms (and hands), and legs (and feet), and then the areas that need extra attention (armpits, groin). And then rinse.
That whole routine is done twice, with shampoo and conditioner in between. I sometimes leave some parts soapy (like armpits and groin) if I think they need some soaking. I also leave the conditioner on my hair for most of the "2nd soaping", only rinsing it thoroughly (and making sure that the conditioner runoff don't touch any other part of my body) just before the final rinse.
wkwkwkwkwkwkwk!
Not that I am suggesting dumping pure, unadulterated SEA salt in there, ok? That's way too much work, and a crime against humanity.
Wow, this is real good! Thanks for the recommend!
I am not going to do it because I can't be arsed, but "put tank in a mall!"
Even if we give it the benefit of the doubt and say that maybe a group have waited until the guillotine have finished to strike back, it would have been traced back to actual users if they were indeed actual users.
Oh no, r?ddit admins being sneaky cheaters? How the hell could anyone have predicted that! Lol!
I've never really bothered with /r/place even in its earlier incarnations, but this just made glad I've never bothered with it, at all.
If I am reading the abstract of the study I linked correctly, yeah. The percentage is of the population size (of youths--which I didn't see a more stringent definition of).
The part I quoted also said, if I am understanding it correctly, that the year (hence, time) is only a factor in studies from the US. I guess you can say that it's saying two different things. The "14.3% to 22.6" figure is for youth worldwide, but not accounted for time (hence, can't say if it's increasing or not). Then the studies from the US indicate that it's rising (for the US).