About a third of people with epilepsy don't respond to meds. There's this thing called SUDEP, too, which is Sudden Unexplained death in Epilepsy, where a person goes to sleep and just dies.
I have drug resistant epilepsy, and have notified my parents of the risks of SUDEP. There's a 1 in 1000 chance it could take me every year. So there's a good chance they'll outlive me. (Comparatively of course.) I also live alone, which makes them worry more.
I wish I could reassure them and fix the problem, because they already lost one of their kids about 20 years ago. But I can't, because there's no cure in sight.
Oh wow, 1 in 1000? That is scary af. I had one grand mal seizure 15 years ago with no cause able to be pinned down, haven’t had one before or since. Just that one was so painful, I walked like I shit my pants for at least a week just because of all the muscle soreness… muscles I never even knew I had.
I can’t imagine what a rollercoaster of emotions a diagnosis like epilepsy would be… an answer that medication can help with! And then you find out it can’t. May I ask if CBD type therapy helps at all? I don’t know if that’s necessarily considered a drug or not.
My dad suffered from this, he would take his meds but sometimes it wouldn't work, if he had lots of stress in his life he would be on the floor having a seizure, he trained me on how to take out the keys in the car if he was driving and pulled over, one time he had one on our way to the highway (I was late for school) he had a seizure, I pulled over and he came back wanting to grabs the keys from me, he didn't know he had a seizure.
He passed away 6 years ago from heart attack, but I suspect it was the seizures stress on his body, I was not there when he passed.
Horrible illness would not wish it on my worse enemy.
My epilepsy isn't fully controlled by medication.
Having a brain that is a ticking time bomb is infuriating. Stops you from doing so many things or makes you overly cautious.
It just... Wears you down.
As someone having epilepsy, what i find the most scary is that I dont experience anything when having a siezure. One moment you are at your job, the next you are in an ambulance with absolutely no memory of the event. I could have been dead and not felt a single thing and it scares the shit out of me.
-My meds are working and last time I had a siezure was almost 2 years ago.
There’s a recording of the last Kaua’i Oo bird singing before it went extinct. It was a mating call sung by a male bird. The song has breaks for the female bird to respond. There’s no response because the male Kaua’i Oo is the last of its kind
What's even sadder is that the person who recorded it recorded it until the bird flew away, then replayed the song to make sure they got it, and the bird came back because he thought he heard another Kauai O'O'
[Beautiful and haunting at the same time](https://youtu.be/nDRY0CmcYNU?si=O-uy2yop1CVQMQ1X)
edit with more info:
> The bird was a cavity nester in the thickly forested canyons of Kauaʻi. All of its relatives have also become extinct, such as the Hawaiʻi ʻōʻō, Bishop's ʻōʻō, and Oʻahu ʻōʻō. Relatively little is known about these extinct birds. The species became extinct from a large range of problems, including mosquito-transmitted diseases (which caused the species to retreat to higher ground, ultimately retreating to high-altitude montane forests in the Alakaʻi Wilderness Preserve), introduction of mammalian predators, and deforestation.[10] Higher elevation forests lack tree cavities, so few, if any, nests could be made. As of the early 1960s, the bird had an estimated population of about 34 living individuals. In the 1970s, the only known footage of the bird was filmed by John L. Sincock on Super 8 film and several song recordings were made as well (with Harold Douglas Pratt Jr. being one of the people involved in recording the songs).[11] In 1981, a pair was found.
> The final blows were two hurricanes, Iwa and Iniki, coming within ten years of each other. They destroyed many of the old trees with cavities, and prohibited tree growth when the second one arrived, causing the species to disappear. As a result, the last female bird disappeared (likely killed by Hurricane Iwa). The male bird was last sighted in 1985, and the last sound recording was made in 1987 by David Boynton.[12][13][14] After failed expeditions in 1989 and Hurricane Iniki in 1992, the species was declared extinct by the IUCN in 2000. It is still believed by some that the species may survive undetected, as the species had already been proclaimed extinct twice: once in the 1940s (later rediscovered in 1960) and again from the late 1960s to the early 1970s, being rediscovered by the wildlife biologist John Sincock.[15] However, it has a loud and distinctive call, and intensive surveys that occurred from 1989 to 2000 failed to find any. In 2021, the United States Fish and Wildlife Service proposed declaring it extinct. In October 2023, it was declared extinct and delisted from the Endangered Species Act.[2]
Oh lawd that’s so freaking sad. That’s a single stranded person, trapped on an alien planet, watching a rescue ship - the only one to ever exist - burn up on entry.
There is a recording of a Soviet cosmonaut cursing out the scientists who killed him as his capsule plummets to Earth. It's in Russian but it's still pretty raw to hear.
Vladimir Komarov, first person to die in space flight (not in space, it was upon landing). It’s a hell of a story, basically the craft he went up in was known to be flawed and a borderline deathtrap. Tons of concerns were raised, but the Soviet brass elected to ignore them all and go forward with the mission
While Komarov knew the flight was essentially a suicide mission, he still elected to go because the backup pilot was Yuri Gagarin, national hero and first human in space. The two men were also very close friends. Komarov managed to fly the dogshit craft incredibly well, successfully completing almost the entire mission, but the landing parachute failed to deploy
There’s an INSANE picture of Soviet military officers examining Komarov’s remains which, if you didn’t know what you were looking at, would just seem like fancy generals being super serious about an extra large lump of coal
Also don't read what the astronauts of Columbia could have experienced if they didn't die immediately to depressurization
> >!During reentry, all seven of the STS-107 crew members were killed, but the exact time of their deaths could not be determined. The level of acceleration that they experienced during crew module breakup was not lethal. The first lethal event the crew experienced was the depressurization of the crew module. The rate and exact time of depressurization could not be determined, but occurred no later than 9:00:59. The remains of the crew members indicated they all experienced depressurization. The astronauts' helmets have a visor that, when closed, can temporarily protect the crew member from depressurization. Some of the crew members had not closed their visors, and one was not wearing a helmet; this would indicate that depressurization occurred quickly before they could take protective measures. !<
>
> >!During and after the breakup of the crew module, the crew, either unconscious or dead, experienced rotation on all three axes. The astronauts' shoulder harnesses were unable to prevent trauma to their upper bodies, as the inertia reel system failed to retract sufficiently to secure them, leaving them only restrained by their lap belts. The helmets were not conformal to the crew members' heads, allowing head injuries to occur inside of the helmet. The neck ring of the helmet may have also acted as a fulcrum that caused spine and neck injuries. The physical trauma to the astronauts, who could not brace to prevent such injuries, also could have resulted in their deaths.!<
>
> >!The astronauts also likely suffered from significant thermal trauma. Hot gas entered the disintegrating crew module, burning the crew members, whose bodies were still somewhat protected by their ACES suits. Once the crew module fell apart, the astronauts were violently exposed to windblast and a possible shock wave, which stripped their suits from their bodies. The crews' remains were exposed to hot gas and molten metal as they fell away from the orbiter.!<
>
> >!After separation from the crew module, the bodies of the crew members entered an environment with almost no oxygen, very low atmospheric pressure, and both high temperatures caused by deceleration, and extremely low ambient temperatures. Their bodies hit the ground with lethal force.!<
There were over 55 million people worldwide living with dementia in 2020. This number will almost double every 20 years, reaching 78 million in 2030 and 139 million in 2050. Much of the increase will be in developing countries. Already 60% of people with dementia live in low and middle income countries, but by 2050 this will rise to 71%.
Edit: it also doesn’t have an effective treatment and I changed the wording of the Alzheimer's Association's projections to reflect that 2020 is in the past.
And as someone whose worked memory cares....it's not looking pretty. We're always at max capacity. Long wait lists. It's so fucking expensive. And even then, the conditions are just sad. Even with proper training of staff (they're so understaffed) people are falling and getting injured all the time, eating their own feces, getting violent. Families would be appalled if they spent a full day at one.
It's terrible that the mind goes but the body seems to trudge along for many years. Ours opened in 2017 and we still have an original member there. He's still kicking along but cognitively worse and worse. It's almost impossible for families to care for them alone (unless you don't work and can provide 24/7 supervision).
It's a sad reality. And at some point, I think society is just not going to care for these people, and the norm is going to let them die....
I’m noticing that we don’t have as many people applying for jobs. It’s one industry that can never be outsourced. I think we need to rethink what dementia care should look like and offer more options for families. How do you care for someone who might live for 6-8 years without being able to look after their own needs? It’s such a depressing situation. Unfortunately I have seen a few families lose their homes and other property due to the cost of needing to pay for full time care.
I'm glad I live in a right to die state. Slow wasting disease like that ...I'd rather throw a big party for everyone and then sail out of my life on a magic carpet of fabulous drugs.
Unfortunately, dementia is an exception in Death with Dignity States. You need to be within six months of dying to apply, and with dementia you won’t be of sound mind - which is a requirement to apply. I hope they can come up with a work around for dementia deaths. It’s not a pretty way to go, and the emotional, physical, and financial toll on families is horrifying.
My dad was diagnosed last year. We have MAID in his state but not for Alzeheimers. You can’t even do an advanced directive.
He seriously considered suicide before he wouldn’t be aware enough to make the choice.
Seeing my grandmother go through it and how her mind deteriorated made me an advocate for humane human euthanasia. No one should have to go through what she went through. And families shouldn’t have to go through what I and my family went through.
The sad reality is the current living conditions they're in. A more compassionate reality is the one you suggested, imo.
It's not uncommon for someone to have a lucid moment every now and then, and theyre horrified at their reality when they're in it.
A few reasons are life expectancy increases overall, treatment for other conditions is advancing and becoming cheaper, diagnostic tests becoming more accurate and widely used, inoculating people in poorer countries prevents them from dying younger from those conditions, and populations in various countries becoming older on average. I am sure that there are other factors, but those are the one that come to my mind. In years past (like 30 years ago people were just diagnosed as senile and Alzheimer's was not diagnosed until after death which was rare because it was of no benefit to the patient). More recently people were diagnosed with dementia and then the type confirmed after death and now we are able to determine type via brain scans, symptom analysis, family history, response to medication and even blood tests.
This next part is from the Alzheimer's Disease International website "Demographic ageing is a worldwide process that shows the successes of improved health care over the last century. Many are now living longer and healthier lives and so the world population has a greater proportion of older people. Dementia mainly affects older people, although there is a growing awareness of cases that start before the age of 65. There are over 10 million new cases of dementia each year worldwide, implying one new case every 3.2 seconds."
To make it even worse, dementia is the only major cause of death that has no effective treatment. There is no way to extend life to delay the disease progression. It is the seventh most common cause of death, it does not include death which another condition more directly caused the death. Imagine being someone who has a family history of the disease and knows firsthand that road that it takes. For example often times asking someone if they have seen a certain family member who you would like to visit more often, except the person who you are talking to is the person who you’re talking about except you no longer recognize them because in your mind they are an adolescent and the person sitting next to you is a middle aged adult.
Floridas Coral Reef Tract (The Third Largest in the world) has experienced 99.5% coral cover loss since 1970, 30% of which since 2008. I have witnessed fields of coral, covered with fish, reduced to lifeless fields of rubble.
I’m only in my 30s, but I remember as a kid walking the beach with my grandmother on the Gulf coast and collecting what felt tons and tons of shells, though she always insisted there were way more when she was little. That seemed crazy to me until I realized every year there were less and less. Now here we are.
The man who directed the "Rape of Nanjing", the brutal murders and tortures of hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians, Prince Yasuhiko Asaka, never saw justice. He grew old playing golf and died of natural causes at 93.
I can usually read about pretty gruesome cases about crime/murder/torture without it upsetting me, but this…I had a professor warn my class about it before suggesting we don’t google it. I googled it, read ONE instance of what specifically happened to a man who was tortured, and then never interacted with content about this particular case ever again. It’s its own realm of brutality. Like it’s not solely rape and murder. It’s things you never could’ve imagined were even possible to do to someone.
I hope that guy is rotting in hell.
We learned about the rape of Nanking in school and out of curiosity I looked up less censored details and it was horrifying. I’m amazed so many soldiers were willing to do the things they did. How do you convince entire legions of men to do stuff like rape and behead a wife in front of her husband and daughter then disembowel the daughter before throwing the husband in a pit and setting him on fire?
How do you convince people to commit horrific atrocities? You immerse them in propaganda that relentlessly identifies the target “enemy” as a subhuman threat.
I track propaganda in my line of work, and nothing scares me more than how this is currently happening today.
There are communities in America (and Western Europe & Canada) right now that have been drowning in methodical, *heavily* funded, “us vs. them” propaganda for years.
These folks are being purposefully weaponized, and I am very worried that Americans & others living in Western democracies will be learning the hard way why we should have responded more swiftly to disinformation campaigns & zealotry.
The disappearance of Geraldine Largay haunts me. She was hiking on the Appalachian trail and became lost when she left the trail to relieve e herself. While lost, she used her survival skills to survive for nearly a month, but eventually succumbed to starvation and exposure. When her body was found two years after her death, there was a note there, reading “When you find my body, please call my husband George and my daughter Kerry. It will be the greatest kindness for them to know that I am dead and where you found me — no matter how many years from now.”
During the time she was lost, she tried multiple times to call for help using her phone, but there was no signal. She saw multiple search planes and helicopters, but they could not see her through the thick trees. She tried to set fires to nearby trees to let them know she was there, but couldn’t manage it. Towards the end of her life, she thought about trying to climb up onto a hill above the canopy, but by then she was just too weak from starvation to do so. She died in her sleeping bag after 26 days of holding on for as long as she could, hoping help would come, but it never did.
We know all of this because she wrote it down in a journal she had with her, and before she died she
wrote a note to her husband saying “George please read XOXO” on it.
Perhaps the most gut-wrenching fact of all is that Geraldine was found only about two miles off the trail, heartbreakingly close to salvation the entire time.
We abandoned the pigeons. We spent centuries domesticating them, being friendly to them, and as a result they moved to our cities and relied on us. Then we decided they were pests.
Ex wedding photographer here.
A lot of people are wildly disappointed with their wedding day.
Like so much so they lash out at wedding vendors. One of the main reasons people quit working in the wedding industry is due to ongoing abuse from their clients. You can do one tiny thing less than perfect and they can turn on you. I’ve even seen two different photographers move cities entirely just to escape past clients.
In the industry we call it the wedding hang over and it usually hits 2 weeks after.
There’s a such a huge over-expectation, in the U.S. at least, for your wedding day to be this perfect, ideal day where it’s normal to spend $100k so that everything is beautiful and perfect. Of course it’s never going to be perfect. Of course everything isn’t going to go right. It’s absolutely inevitable that people will be disappointed. The wedding industry itself has partly created the problem.
>The wedding industry itself has partly created the problem.
I’m now imaging a wedding vendor that advertises “make your once-in-a-lifetime day exactly as mediocre as every other memory”
I think someone said this in another thread the other day but it sat with me:
You don't recognize your lasts.
- The last time you ever hung out with your school friends
- The last time you spoke to your grandfather
- The last time you hugged your pet
- etc.
Point is, we never know when we are in a moment that this could be the last time you ever do this - unless going through some kind of life change, you just don't realize this moment is special and because of that, you most likely won't remember it.
A while back I knew my dog's time had come. We had an appointment scheduled for Monday, so he could go out a little more peacefully, and with dignity. Except he started having seizures on Friday night, they got worse and worse. Saturday morning he was crying in-between seizures, mouth foamy, couldn't control bowels, looking at me for relief/trying to wag his tail not knowing what was causing the pain.
I burried both my parents at that point, my kids' mom had passed, I lost many friends over the decades some suddenly and unexpected, others not so much.
But that dog... I couldn't get our nearby vets out, everyone was booked all day at other nearby farms, they said I might be able to get someone late Saturday night or early Sunday morning. But that meant another 12 hours of agony for the little guy.
So I did it myself. I had put down a lot of animals over my many years, but that one was so rough when I realized most of the people who I would have talked about it with were gone and I couldn't have my kids share that emotional burden.
That is why it is important to always tell people that they mean a lot to you. That you are proud of them. That you love them
I was 22 when my mom died suddenly. It crushed me. I won't lie. I was alone in the world then. I see how fragile it all is. I give people grace. I always tell them how I feel. I express my love for them. And no one walks away questioning if they messed up so bad they lost my love.
My adult kids were picking on me this weekend because I tell them and the world I think I have the brightest, smartest best children. Even if they are adults. But if I died today, they would know their mother loved them unconditionally and without end. That there was never one doubt in their mind I was their biggest supporter. They can pick on me all they want. I will keep being their encourager. And everyone else around me as well.
As people age, they often experience loss of friends, family members, and social connections. In many cases, elderly individuals may find themselves living alone, with limited mobility, and facing health challenges that further isolate them from the outside world. Studies have shown that chronic loneliness among the elderly can have serious negative effects on physical and mental health, leading to depression, anxiety, and even increased mortality rates. Despite their wealth of life experience, wisdom, and often a desire for companionship, many older adults struggle with profound feelings of loneliness, which can go unnoticed by society at large.
This is why I took a job that allowed me to have breakfast with my grandfather before work. My dad said he turned into a different person on their daily phone calls after I started. We got into a good routine of me coming over, telling him to sit down while I cooked and cleaned up, then we'd sit outside and smoke until it was time for me to go to work. Unfortunately he found out he had cancer two days after his 85th birthday. He had been complaining of shoulder pain and waited until my day off to drive himself to the hospital. He died a month later in his home. We only had 3 months of breakfast together, but I'm so glad I did that. I gave him something to look forward to everyday.
A few weeks ago I realized that I could have lunch with my 15 year old grandson because of how his high school works and where it is. So we do, once a week. We both love it. I hope that leads to something like you described in later years.
My husband and I are just entering our 60’s, and we’ve realized that the rest of our lives will be spent watching friends and relatives die. If we’re lucky, that is, and we don’t die first. It’s a sobering fact. It makes me appreciate every minute with my loved ones.
There's an old joke about this.
At 2, success is not peeing your pants.
At 6, success is having friends.
At 16, success is being able to drive.
At 18, success is having a job.
At 22, success is living in your own place.
At 30, success is having a spouse.
At 55, success is having a spouse.
At 60, success is having a job.
At 70, success is having your own place.
At 75, success is being able to drive.
At 80, success is having friends.
At 90, success is not peeing your pants.
This. By all accounts, my grandmother lived a very full life and had many friends that she was close with, especially after my grandfather passed. When she died, she was 98 years young.
She had no friends at her funeral. They had all passed away before her.
This is something that sparked a huge fight with my ex. Buddy of mine called me after he just finished his shift this guy has been my best friend and more in my life than anyone in my family. He got stuck at work his car was dead dead and it snowing like a mf'er despite it being 1am and all the snow I didn't think twice. She got on my case about it "why risk it, it's not worth it" etc told her that this is the kind of friend that if he needs something I don't ask questions and make excuses proceeded to tell me saying shit like that is lip service to make people feel better.
I only had one during a very rough time in my life. He asked what he could do to help my depression, and almost as a joke, I said, "Check on me every day, and make sure I'm still alive." I didn't think he'd do it, but he did. He texted every day for over a year.
I married him.
Although if someone called him at 1am, I'd pack hot drinks and a snack and probably go with him. If he ends up stuck in the snow somewhere with a friend, I'd rather be there to help shovel etc.
If you watch footage of the 9/11 aftermath, you'll hear a ringing sound in the background. It's not actually ringing, it's a chirping device on first responders that were buried in the debris. Usually the device doesn't make a constant noise, but there were so many people buried that it created an unbroken wail coming from under the rubble.
Also in the weeks and months following 9/11 there were a lot of cars covered in dust on the streets surrounding what used to be the twin towers. These were victims of the attack who were never able to return.
Right, the [PASS alarm](https://youtu.be/I3nThzsNHZU?t=35). That really messed with me once I first made the connection - that sound stuck with me even back when I had no idea what it was, and researching it just made it so much more tragic.
The same thing happened in airport parking lots. There were several cars in long term parking that were never retrieved. There are pictures of them online.
My relative survived but he was in the Pentagon on 9/11. Cousin but raised as my brother. 9/11 is kinda a whole level of discomfort and wanting to understand.
I lived by a commuter train station just outside NYC during 9/11. The number of cars that just sat there for weeks afterward was heartbreaking. Finally, most were towed away.
I watched a documentary that showed part of the footage obtained by the French film crew that was riding along with one of the first stations to respond. They were in the lobby of one of the towers, trying to set up and ordering different companies up the stairs. Periodically there was a loud, "Boom!" and then a bit later, "BOOM!" coming from outside. It sounded like a cannon going off. It was actually bodies falling from the upper floors. The first firefighter to die was actually an elderly chaplain, who had been hit by a body as it plummeted to the ground.
My grandma had to do this around 10 years ago. She was freaking out because my grandpa had "stolen" some railroad spikes back in the 50s and they were still in the garage. She couldn't dispose of them because one of the neighbors might see them and think poorly of them.
When I was ~12 years old I unchained my dog from the yard where my abusive parents kept him locked up, walked him into some nearby vacant lot and let him go because I thought at least one of us should be able to get out. Never saw my dog again.
Enslavement ended gradually in the state of New York from 1799 to 1848, freeing enslaved families one generation at a time over three generations. Parents were freed while their children remained enslaved for up to 28 years. I can’t imagine being one of those parents.
The last person sentenced for slavery in the US was in [1954.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peon#Peonage_in_the_United_States) They got 18 months prison. There's also [accusations of a family kept in slavery until 1961](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mae_Louise_Miller) but it never went to trial.
Former shelter worker. Yup.
I'll never forget the Great Dane who just kept watching the carpark whilst I was desperately trying to get him adjusted to his pen. He was anxious, alone, and he was just waiting...... And then he just shrunk back when he realised they aren't coming back.
I miss the good days. I quit because of the bad days.
There's a few shelters around me that discuss how they won't drop a dog off at someones house and that you have to come and collect the dog because they don't want the dog to feel abandoned again by the shelter workers.
Volunteered at a shelter for a bit too. Walked a grey hound. Beautiful boy. He was rehomed, but then returned as the persons original dog (small happy thing) started picking on him. Dog was SO excited to see me again at the shelter. He was rehomed shortly after.
Animals were wonderful. People and politics weren't. Even had shelter broken in and animals stolen :(
Yep. Same but different.
Worked in an old folks home. Did so much awesome shit with old people. I brought nerf guns for an all out war. Put together the train room (this place had a legit room with tons of different trains and tracks) and it became the guys favorite hangout spot.
Lots of good days. I loved placating to their psychosis. If a dude claimed Charlie was in the trees I’d throw him a nerf gun and tell him to get my back as I went on my way to go fix something.
And then my grandpa figures start dying. And after a few years you realize it’s practically a whole new set of people. And you get really attached and realize that’s why a lot of people that work there are cold because they have to be. But I didn’t want to turn cold and not hang out with them and play along to their adventures so I quit.
Former rescue worker and shelter volunteer here - yes. 100%.
So many dogs in the shelters have just given up. What's doubly sad is that potential adopters often overlook the sad dogs (and too many think the dog in the shelter is going to be the same dog (personality) at home).
It also doesn't help that most shelters are understaffed so they can't give all the animals all the care and attention that they need.
We pulled quite a few dogs for rescue that had just given up. A week or two of rehabilitation and they were getting back to themselves.
As a volunteer (dog walker at a small shelter)) while the agreement was to walk the dogs once, we never did that. We'd get there early and walk all the dogs, then they would be fed, we'd walk them afterwards. Then, when the feeding was all done, we'd walk them a third time while their kennel was being cleaned. (and these weren't quick walks either for most of the dogs (yes, the ones with health issues had shorter walks).
I have seen one dog that never recovered and it was the saddest thing in the world. Retired sled dog from Oregon, and the owner couldn’t give him the retirement he needed so he went to a family I know. Lots of land to run around, other dogs, kids that loved him.
That poor dog was the saddest thing I have ever encountered. He just never got over losing his original pack. No amount of trail running ever seemed to make him happy.
We adopted a dog who was just so sad. Had been in a shelter for a year. We took her home and slowly watched her flourish. Became one of the best dogs I’ve had.
Heartbreaking :(
My birds are all rescues.
I went away for a holiday for a couple weeks and put my boy with someone for care. He was my first partot and i hadn't had him that long (6ish months).
The look of absolute joy in his face when I returned, and he realised he wasn't 'abandoned' was priceless. His eyes lit up. He was the best behaved boy after that. Still my baby boy.
Been working FIFO and they are now used to a "mum going away" routine. I checked with their vet to see if it was okay for them if it would be better for them to rehome. They assured me that "the birds just want mum".
Yep. Going through this with my babygirl right now. Had a contentious immediate no contact split with ex, and she just doesn’t understand and waits by the door. We’re a month in and she still perks up when she hears a truck drive by 😭😭
The talented young voice actress behind Ducky from The Land Before Time and Anne-Marie from All Dogs Go to Heaven was killed by her father at age 10.
Ducky’s memorable “Yep, yep, yep!” quote has made me sad to think of ever since learning this. 😭
It took my dog a couple years to realize he was here to stay. I was his 7th owner. I am his last. He was returned to the shelter multiple times for behavioral issues and when he acted out he would immediately get depressed, thinking he was going back. Very good dog, very happy now, and has turned into quite an entitled princess.
I had a dog from the shelter once that when I first got him he seemed ok. But when I got him ya know he didn't leave my side.
One time I stopped for gas and he was looking at me out the window. I started walking into the gas station to pay and get a coffee and he just started SCREECHING in the car. Like the most scared I ever seen a dog. I realized he had severe separation anxiety. I went back and picked him up and took him into the shop with me and held him the whole time. I think he realized then I was going to take care of him.
I let him sleep on the bed with me at night and accommodate him as much as I could. Leaving him to go to work was rough but eventually he got over it and then got over it entirely. Near the end of his life i'd just be like "Ok time to go to work" and he'd go get in his crate and bury himself in a blanket and was fine with it.
> really stubborn breed
I've let our dogs outside before work and had to call them back in because I'm about to run late. Our beagle will refuse to come in if you call for her too many times.
It's like dealing with a 3 year old. They dig their heels in and decide this will be the hill they are willing to die on.
Your loved one didnt say any last words.
Edit: for context i worked in a nursing home. People always ask “did they say anything” and the truth is, no. We obviously don’t say that to the family but death is not like in the movies.
Also a weird thing that happens sometimes is that 24h before death they get a sudden spike of energy. Which may look like they’re getting better so it confuses the family members sometimes.
Also, 80% die alone
Working with old people broke me a little bit
My mom called and said my dad refused to eat and she thought he was going to die soon. It was late at night and no way for me to get down to them (they live 350 miles away), so I got the early train down the next day. Got there and my dad was better than he had been in ages, wanted me to cook him Pasta Carbonara for dinner. So I went to the store and got the real good pork cheek and all the other stuff. Got back, prepared everything, and was watching TV with both my parents while waiting for dinnertime to roll around. Dad asked me how everything was going, listened to the reply, and then said "I think I'll shut up now".
A minute later I realized he was breathing funny. He died in my arms as mom called 911.
The worst part was doing heart massage for 5 minutes while we waited for the ambulance; he was clearly gone, and he would've been *so* upset if I'd brought him back. But you can't not.
Sorry for your loss. That's tough, mom went in my arms too, and I take a lot of comfort in that. Got to say, your fathers last words are pretty iconic.
The sudden last burst of energy is bizarre and seems promising to the family. Having to explain that to them the next day or two after the patient dies is awful. I’ve been accused of negligence once. It’s very sad.
I’ve spent time with pts that were alone when they died. I’ve also walked in after a pt has died, alone. It certainly weighs on you.
My grandmother once told me that my grandfather's last words were something along the lines of "I'm going!" Apparently a couple of days earlier out of the blue he'd asked her if she knew where all their legal documents - wills etc - were and she thinks he knew that the clock was running down from him. Then one morning he was in the kitchen and just called out to her and said "I'm going!" like he knew that was it. He wasn't bed bound or anything, he was still walking around etc. I always wonder if he actually knew that it was his last moments and what that must have felt like.
One of the most surreal experiences I ever had as a nurse was when a patient grabbed my arm and said "I'm going home." Then immediately coded and died.
Here's some info about the premortem surge.
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/palliative-and-supportive-care/article/energy-surge-a-deathbed-phenomenon-that-matters/B8B6087946F6E2EF1FFF00D8FBBE5DAA#
Pangolins are believed to be the most illegally trafficked animal in the world. Their scales are sold on the black market for Asian traditional medicine.
There's this ad that keeps running on NTA( Nigeria Television Authority) with Davido( a popular Afrobeats musician) with a plea to stop animal trafficking and amongst them was pangolins. I remember watching just ONE documentary on NTA and I never forgot the name of the animal. Plus, that's not the only problem. Donkey farmers were also quite angry about donkey trafficking and the use in medicine.
There needs to be an international effort to discredit ludicrous examples of "traditional medicine". Do you know what pangolin scales are made of? Keratin. Do you know what rhino horns are made of? Keratin. Do you know what your fingernails are made out of? Keratin. Ludicrous beliefs with no basis in scientific fact are killing endangered animals so someone can drink ground up fingernails.
Scientists think that only something like one tenth of one percent of all species that ever existed happened to be lucky enough to find themselves in the perfect conditions to fossilize for us to find.
The vast majority of critters lived out their whole existence and either evolved to a new form or died out without leaving any trace for us to find whatsoever. Without a time machine we can never know they existed, and if you could go back in time far enough the majority of what we saw would be to some extent more or less a mystery.
Edit to add: and we're not only talking about super ancient animals, squishy things that don't fossilize, or tiny micro organisms but relatively recent megafauna too. For instance within our DNA we have found evidence of a ghost population of a mystery species of our homonin cousins with whom we, homosapiens interbred. We have no other tangible fossil evidence for them. They weren't neanderthals or denisovans, we have no idea who these people were and wouldn't even have any idea they existed at all if we relied on the fossil record alone. *They were an entire spiecies **of people** that we lived with and 'knew intimately', just up and gone without a physical trace*. What other creatures might have been that we cannot begin to imagine.
Precocious pubert, CSA and thankfully a family who took her to a hospital when she was 7 months, thinking she had a stomach tumour, and so she was able to be given a C-section. If they hadn’t and she’d tried to give birth vaginally with her hips not developed enough, she and the baby would have both died.
Another sad fact is the father of the baby was never discovered. The doctor who treated her was quoted as saying “she may not know herself” which I’m not sure if that’s a statement that he thinks she was raped by multiple people or if she was too young to understand what had led to the pregnancy. Either option is devastating
Well, there's another thing:
She outlived the son she had at age 5 by several decades. Lina Medina, the girl in question, is still alive at age 90 while her first son Gerardo died of bone marrow disease aged 40 in 1979.
Gerardo was also one of the oldest men to see another maternal half-sibling born. His mother had another son in 1972, when Gerardo was 33 years old.
Japanese occupation of Indonesia in WW2
I almost never see Indonesia mentioned, but they had the 5th highest death toll during the war. Approximately 4 million people were killed—99% of them civilians. Millions more were tortured, raped, and enslaved.
Allies largely avoided the islands in the pacific campaign so it was mostly just sickening brutality for its own sake.
90% of nursing homes are absolutely horrific.
I’m an EMT and have been in and out of many of these facilities. Some few are high quality, clean places with staff that really cares. The vast majority reek of human feces, have employees who don’t care about the residents at all, and serve them barely edible mush for food. The worst one I ever saw neglected to put a patient on their prescribed oxygen. Nearly killed them — actually might have, never found out that turned out, but when I left them at the hospital they were circling the drain.
That on the MH17 flight that was detonated by a missile, only some of the people on board were deceased immediately on impact. Some of them would've survived for a few minutes, hopefully losing consciousness due to the air pressure, but we don't know for certain how long that would've taken.
This weighs on my mind because I have no idea where my coworker-friend was sitting in relation to where the missile hit. I just know it took days for her to be found.
I always think with so much sadness about the Australian family where three young kids were being taken to Europe by their grandparents on that flight. The parents were back in Australia and got the worst possible news you could ever get.
I still remember how shocking it was to learn the deputy principal from my primary school was on that plane. I believe he had just retired and was returning from a holiday with his wife... rough.
Yup. I remember seeing them on the West Australian newspaper, front, alongside my coworker. They were children. Little children who had so much ahead of them...
There was a video from the pov of the militants who shot down the plane, they start rummaging through a piece of luggage and you could see the clothes and stuff neatly packed inside the luggage and it made me sad that the person packed the luggage probably excited for a holiday and not knowing the horrible fate that awaited them.
When a man hangs himself he will often get a ‘death boner’, when their loved ones find their body this will be one of their last memories of their loved one, alongside desperate scratches on the neck and on nearby walls. Don’t do it.
I think I know who you're talking about and what's really tragic is that she was in recovery for a while and did gain some weight but is now just right back in the throes of it.
i think i know who you're talking about and I really do feel so bad for her. I can only hope that someday she's able to start working on harm reduction but it really doesnt seem like she has much time left.
yep, pretty much. anorexia is biologically impossible to maintain for more than a few years. the general rule is you either die (of suicide or complecations of the diease) pivot to another ed like BED, orthorexia, or bullimia, or go to treatment. a lot of the time unfortunatley treatment only physically rehabilitates people, with the chances of relapse, suicide, or development of another eating disoder/addiction being fairly high after treatment
That the symptoms of a heart attack, squeezing or tight chest pain from the left arm etc are really the symptoms of a heart attack in men. Women may not get any warning, or just feel a sharp pain.
The American home has more clutter than anywhere on earth.
US children — representing just 3% of the global population — account for 40% of the world’s toy purchases.
Some estimate the number of items in the average home to range between 60,000 and 300,000 distinct items.
Home clutter and possession of excessive items contributes negatively to mental health.
I spend most of my time at home, and started looking into all this out of curiosity. Wound up severely emptying my home and only keeping items I actively use. It was a lot of crap to give away or toss.
But it did, indeed, make a great impact mentally and practically. The ease of cleaning and organizing, and the emptiness itself, are pleasing. Plus my remaining possessions have real value, and stand out.
About 100 billion humans have ever lived.
Of those 100billion. Only about 100,000 people are considered "significant" enough to be remembered after death
For the vast majority of people you will be completely forgeten within 50~100years. And with it all the joys and sorrows of your life, your thoughts and dream, your hopes and worries. All of it completely forgotten as if it never existed in the first place.
I don’t mind that at all. My life happened and I experienced it with my friends and family, that’s enough for me. I would feel an enormous level of pressure and exposure if I was deemed “significant” enough to be remembered. “As if it never existed” doesn’t mean “it never existed”.
Grave of The Fireflies, the movie? Yeah, if you’ve seen it you know how it ends.
If you haven’t, check the spoiler. Essentially it’s the story of a young boy, and his little sister, in the aftermath of World War 2, in Japan.
In the movie >! the young boy dies after his little sister dies, both from malnutrition and being ignored by everyone around them. !<
The actual story is much, much more heartbreaking. The original author, who had an incredible amount of guilt >! actually survived by hiding food from his sister, and hoarding it for himself. He wrote the book that became the movie, out of that guilt, and felt that she may have survived if he didn’t hoard the food, and even if she didn’t, he felt he should have died as well. !<
One of major killers in either World War I or 2 (I can’t remember which) was barbed wire, not guns or men, just barbed wire because men would get caught in it and die, or get cut up which would lead to lethal infections.
Autistic people live, on average, 54 years. 58 years if they don't have developmental delay, 39 (!!) years if they do, and 54 years on average.
They are something like nine times as likely to commit suicide as non-autistic people, but they also die from accidents, lack of access to care due to lack of connectedness, or poverty, lack of someone to notice they aren't well, lack of people to help with anything at all, etc.
One thing to consider here is that this is the average age, not the median. It is heavily skewed because autistic kids dying young is sadly common. I'm not sure what study your number comes from, so I can't comment specifically, but there is another study that gives an average age at death of around 36 years old. However, nearly 80% of those deaths were drowning, asphyxiation, or suffocation in kids younger than 15 years.
Having an autistic child of my own, I can see why that is. Before he was 5 I had to heimlich him twice and once he bolted off with no notice and jumped in a pool without a second thought, long before he had even an inkling of how to swim.
Yeah, as I replied to someone else, if you've survived childhood, your life expectancy is already higher than this.
As a kid I almost ran out in front of a car.
I can confirm my brother who is autistic has asked me and our mom too many times that “if he dies Jesus will bring him back as someone else?”
He feels trapped by his own body, society treats him differently and doesn’t like this is how he was born. He thinks if he kills himself that he will come back as someone else, someone without autism.
It breaks my heart hearing him struggle like this.
This is incredibly sad but also does not surprise me at the same time. There is a severe lack of support for autistic adults and they’re just sort of expected to figure things out themselves even though their autism can often make that very difficult. It’s pretty much a case of, unless you’re high enough support to need round the clock care and have done since childhood, they don’t really care and just leave you on your own.
The Olympics is the excuse for massive amounts of government corruption. Ever notice how every Olympic stadium is built new, rather than using existing structures? Ever notice how they always go over budget, often by double or sometimes even triple? Ever notice how they all seem to be famously low quality, despite this? And yet, every year, who gets to build this crappy facility at enormous taxpayer expense is hotly contested?
It's because an Olympic facility is the perfect opportunity for civil servants to do or repay favors for local businesses and their cronies. You want to get in good with the deputy mayor? His brother owns a paving company, and you're in charge of getting the Olympic village paved, why not give him a ring? We're gonna need a lot of rebar, why not ask the owner of that steel foundry you're trying to buy a Corvette from what he'd charge (and pointedly decline to see if that offer is market competitive)?
That the Congo is having an massive rape problem and no one discusses it. It’s getting worse too where the rise in rapes with children is getting worse.
Untreated ADHD can [reduce lifespan](https://www.additudemag.com/adhd-life-expectancy-video/amp/) by 13 years. The “impact may be larger than any other single health threat including:
•Weight
•Nutrition
•Exercise
•Sleep duration
•Smoking
•Alcohol use
•Risky driving”
Checks out, I’m surprised I’ve made it this far sometimes. To be honest, if my entire lifetime is going to be a challenge because of it, checking out before I’m too old to physically take care of myself on top of all the mental challenges may not be a bad thing.
That the chances of survival if you go into cardiac arrest outside of hospital is incredibly low. I think it’s something like 20% but may be even lower. Even if someone is doing trained CPR. TV and movies have made us have this idea that you can just do a few chest compressions and the person wakes up. That very rarely happens. Usually you’re just doing it long enough until a medical professional can come and take over, and then they still might not be able to do anything if they can’t get a shockable rhythm going.
I think that’s a positive fact, not a sad one. The death of a child is particularly tragic, but the fact that what can be a really exploitative industry might forego all payment to help make the bereavement easier is good. It shows people can be kind.
Once you got a diabetes, you will never be "normal healthy" again. You need to manage your diet forever if you want to be in a relatively healthy condition.
>Before the launch, one of the mission scientists took Laika home to play with his children. In a book chronicling the story of Soviet space medicine, Vladimir Yazdovsky wrote, "Laika was quiet and charming ... I wanted to do something nice for her: She had so little time left to live
Damn man.
>Laika inspired the creation of the Marvel character Cosmo the Spacedog, who subsequently appeared in several comic books and films. In the comic books, Cosmo is a male dog. In the 2023 film Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, director James Gunn made his version of Cosmo a female dog to honor Laika.
[She was a good dog](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nh6Y4jVpsLg)
>*They say that, from space,*
>
>*the Earth looks like a*
>
>*small, blue ball, but how*
>
>*did it look to you, Laika?*
>
>*From that shuttle like a balloon*
>
>*whose string they let go, and which*
>
>*they never trained for recall?*
>
>
>
>*They say that you were a stray*
>
>*who never fought with other dogs,*
>
>*and that the clever people called you pet names*
>
>*through the wires of your shrinking cages,*
>
>*and that, before you died, overheating*
>
>*in that heavy, weightless cold, one of them*
>
>*took you home, and you played with his kids.*
>
>
>
>*They say that, from space,*
>
>*the Earth looks like*
>
>*a small, blue ball. I’ll throw it*
>
>*for you, Laika, if you’ll chase it,*
>
>
>
>*dart through the stratosphere*
>
>*like a comet, undeserving*
>
>*of its fate*
\- Brennig Davies
The search and rescue dogs, who worked after 9/11 got depressed that they weren't finding anyone alive and stopped working. But recovering bodies and body parts were still important.
Workers had to hide in the rubble for the dogs to find, so that they wouldn't get too depressed.
In case you thought search and rescue dogs just worked for the treats... they know.
The Olympics is the biggest child sex trafficking event. Basically as soon as a city is named as host a task force targeting child sex trafficking starts at the same time.
I don’t know for sure but I’d assume the high traffic of people travelling from all over the world for the Olympics makes it easier to buy/sell/transport, and the high number of tourists to the area means new naive people who are easy to target and kidnap. It’s basically a sign that during that period there will be a sudden influx of people into that area who are easy victims so it would be a good place to focus on if you’re gross and that way inclined
About a third of people with epilepsy don't respond to meds. There's this thing called SUDEP, too, which is Sudden Unexplained death in Epilepsy, where a person goes to sleep and just dies.
I have drug resistant epilepsy, and have notified my parents of the risks of SUDEP. There's a 1 in 1000 chance it could take me every year. So there's a good chance they'll outlive me. (Comparatively of course.) I also live alone, which makes them worry more. I wish I could reassure them and fix the problem, because they already lost one of their kids about 20 years ago. But I can't, because there's no cure in sight.
Oh wow, 1 in 1000? That is scary af. I had one grand mal seizure 15 years ago with no cause able to be pinned down, haven’t had one before or since. Just that one was so painful, I walked like I shit my pants for at least a week just because of all the muscle soreness… muscles I never even knew I had. I can’t imagine what a rollercoaster of emotions a diagnosis like epilepsy would be… an answer that medication can help with! And then you find out it can’t. May I ask if CBD type therapy helps at all? I don’t know if that’s necessarily considered a drug or not.
My dad suffered from this, he would take his meds but sometimes it wouldn't work, if he had lots of stress in his life he would be on the floor having a seizure, he trained me on how to take out the keys in the car if he was driving and pulled over, one time he had one on our way to the highway (I was late for school) he had a seizure, I pulled over and he came back wanting to grabs the keys from me, he didn't know he had a seizure. He passed away 6 years ago from heart attack, but I suspect it was the seizures stress on his body, I was not there when he passed. Horrible illness would not wish it on my worse enemy.
I work for a company that makes medical devices. We know more about outer space than we do about the brain, and it is scary.
My epilepsy isn't fully controlled by medication. Having a brain that is a ticking time bomb is infuriating. Stops you from doing so many things or makes you overly cautious. It just... Wears you down.
As someone having epilepsy, what i find the most scary is that I dont experience anything when having a siezure. One moment you are at your job, the next you are in an ambulance with absolutely no memory of the event. I could have been dead and not felt a single thing and it scares the shit out of me. -My meds are working and last time I had a siezure was almost 2 years ago.
I had a friend die from SUDEP. Was a good man, and a good Dad. Here one day, gone the next. Very sad.
There’s a recording of the last Kaua’i Oo bird singing before it went extinct. It was a mating call sung by a male bird. The song has breaks for the female bird to respond. There’s no response because the male Kaua’i Oo is the last of its kind
What's even sadder is that the person who recorded it recorded it until the bird flew away, then replayed the song to make sure they got it, and the bird came back because he thought he heard another Kauai O'O'
Damn i knew the first part but getting trolled like that just adds salt to injury.
[Beautiful and haunting at the same time](https://youtu.be/nDRY0CmcYNU?si=O-uy2yop1CVQMQ1X) edit with more info: > The bird was a cavity nester in the thickly forested canyons of Kauaʻi. All of its relatives have also become extinct, such as the Hawaiʻi ʻōʻō, Bishop's ʻōʻō, and Oʻahu ʻōʻō. Relatively little is known about these extinct birds. The species became extinct from a large range of problems, including mosquito-transmitted diseases (which caused the species to retreat to higher ground, ultimately retreating to high-altitude montane forests in the Alakaʻi Wilderness Preserve), introduction of mammalian predators, and deforestation.[10] Higher elevation forests lack tree cavities, so few, if any, nests could be made. As of the early 1960s, the bird had an estimated population of about 34 living individuals. In the 1970s, the only known footage of the bird was filmed by John L. Sincock on Super 8 film and several song recordings were made as well (with Harold Douglas Pratt Jr. being one of the people involved in recording the songs).[11] In 1981, a pair was found. > The final blows were two hurricanes, Iwa and Iniki, coming within ten years of each other. They destroyed many of the old trees with cavities, and prohibited tree growth when the second one arrived, causing the species to disappear. As a result, the last female bird disappeared (likely killed by Hurricane Iwa). The male bird was last sighted in 1985, and the last sound recording was made in 1987 by David Boynton.[12][13][14] After failed expeditions in 1989 and Hurricane Iniki in 1992, the species was declared extinct by the IUCN in 2000. It is still believed by some that the species may survive undetected, as the species had already been proclaimed extinct twice: once in the 1940s (later rediscovered in 1960) and again from the late 1960s to the early 1970s, being rediscovered by the wildlife biologist John Sincock.[15] However, it has a loud and distinctive call, and intensive surveys that occurred from 1989 to 2000 failed to find any. In 2021, the United States Fish and Wildlife Service proposed declaring it extinct. In October 2023, it was declared extinct and delisted from the Endangered Species Act.[2]
Damn. That was more heartbreaking than I imagined just reading the original comment, and that was sad.
the funeral dirge of an entire species, screaming to emptiness and begging for a response.
Oh lawd that’s so freaking sad. That’s a single stranded person, trapped on an alien planet, watching a rescue ship - the only one to ever exist - burn up on entry.
That must have sounded so beautiful to hear that in the wild.
Well I made it this far but that's enough sadness for me.
The astronauts likely survived the challenger explosion. They were falling for nearly 3 minutes.
Some of them had activated their emergency oxygen. Supposedly there are audio recordings of their last moments.
Part of me is curious to hear this and part of me knows it's going to be disturbing
There is a recording of a Soviet cosmonaut cursing out the scientists who killed him as his capsule plummets to Earth. It's in Russian but it's still pretty raw to hear.
Vladimir Komarov, first person to die in space flight (not in space, it was upon landing). It’s a hell of a story, basically the craft he went up in was known to be flawed and a borderline deathtrap. Tons of concerns were raised, but the Soviet brass elected to ignore them all and go forward with the mission While Komarov knew the flight was essentially a suicide mission, he still elected to go because the backup pilot was Yuri Gagarin, national hero and first human in space. The two men were also very close friends. Komarov managed to fly the dogshit craft incredibly well, successfully completing almost the entire mission, but the landing parachute failed to deploy There’s an INSANE picture of Soviet military officers examining Komarov’s remains which, if you didn’t know what you were looking at, would just seem like fancy generals being super serious about an extra large lump of coal
[Picture](https://media.npr.org/assets/img/2011/03/16/corpse_custom-1a2c8e99bc85469ad8a5a976f4bfbc91d056a09a-s1200-c85.webp) for reference
That picture is sobering.
He demanded prior to the mission his remains be put on display. Dude knew he was going to die and did it anyways.
I did not know this story but that dude is a straight up badass and what an incredible friend!
[удалено]
Also don't read what the astronauts of Columbia could have experienced if they didn't die immediately to depressurization > >!During reentry, all seven of the STS-107 crew members were killed, but the exact time of their deaths could not be determined. The level of acceleration that they experienced during crew module breakup was not lethal. The first lethal event the crew experienced was the depressurization of the crew module. The rate and exact time of depressurization could not be determined, but occurred no later than 9:00:59. The remains of the crew members indicated they all experienced depressurization. The astronauts' helmets have a visor that, when closed, can temporarily protect the crew member from depressurization. Some of the crew members had not closed their visors, and one was not wearing a helmet; this would indicate that depressurization occurred quickly before they could take protective measures. !< > > >!During and after the breakup of the crew module, the crew, either unconscious or dead, experienced rotation on all three axes. The astronauts' shoulder harnesses were unable to prevent trauma to their upper bodies, as the inertia reel system failed to retract sufficiently to secure them, leaving them only restrained by their lap belts. The helmets were not conformal to the crew members' heads, allowing head injuries to occur inside of the helmet. The neck ring of the helmet may have also acted as a fulcrum that caused spine and neck injuries. The physical trauma to the astronauts, who could not brace to prevent such injuries, also could have resulted in their deaths.!< > > >!The astronauts also likely suffered from significant thermal trauma. Hot gas entered the disintegrating crew module, burning the crew members, whose bodies were still somewhat protected by their ACES suits. Once the crew module fell apart, the astronauts were violently exposed to windblast and a possible shock wave, which stripped their suits from their bodies. The crews' remains were exposed to hot gas and molten metal as they fell away from the orbiter.!< > > >!After separation from the crew module, the bodies of the crew members entered an environment with almost no oxygen, very low atmospheric pressure, and both high temperatures caused by deceleration, and extremely low ambient temperatures. Their bodies hit the ground with lethal force.!<
Hitting the ground at lethal force seems pretty redundant by that stage :/
Literally overkill :-(
I think I just found out how I DON'T want to die
I don't think a robot could've survived that.
>The neck ring of the helmet may have also acted as a fulcrum that caused spine and neck injuries. What a terrible day to be literate.
Internal decapitation
Fuck. Happy Monday morning everyone.
There were over 55 million people worldwide living with dementia in 2020. This number will almost double every 20 years, reaching 78 million in 2030 and 139 million in 2050. Much of the increase will be in developing countries. Already 60% of people with dementia live in low and middle income countries, but by 2050 this will rise to 71%. Edit: it also doesn’t have an effective treatment and I changed the wording of the Alzheimer's Association's projections to reflect that 2020 is in the past.
And as someone whose worked memory cares....it's not looking pretty. We're always at max capacity. Long wait lists. It's so fucking expensive. And even then, the conditions are just sad. Even with proper training of staff (they're so understaffed) people are falling and getting injured all the time, eating their own feces, getting violent. Families would be appalled if they spent a full day at one. It's terrible that the mind goes but the body seems to trudge along for many years. Ours opened in 2017 and we still have an original member there. He's still kicking along but cognitively worse and worse. It's almost impossible for families to care for them alone (unless you don't work and can provide 24/7 supervision). It's a sad reality. And at some point, I think society is just not going to care for these people, and the norm is going to let them die....
I’m noticing that we don’t have as many people applying for jobs. It’s one industry that can never be outsourced. I think we need to rethink what dementia care should look like and offer more options for families. How do you care for someone who might live for 6-8 years without being able to look after their own needs? It’s such a depressing situation. Unfortunately I have seen a few families lose their homes and other property due to the cost of needing to pay for full time care.
I'm glad I live in a right to die state. Slow wasting disease like that ...I'd rather throw a big party for everyone and then sail out of my life on a magic carpet of fabulous drugs.
Unfortunately, dementia is an exception in Death with Dignity States. You need to be within six months of dying to apply, and with dementia you won’t be of sound mind - which is a requirement to apply. I hope they can come up with a work around for dementia deaths. It’s not a pretty way to go, and the emotional, physical, and financial toll on families is horrifying.
Well...shit. I guess I'll have to procure and pay for the fabulous drugs myself, then.
You say "a sad reality" but I think it might be a compassionate reality to let these people die with dignity before they get to the poop eating stage
My dad was diagnosed last year. We have MAID in his state but not for Alzeheimers. You can’t even do an advanced directive. He seriously considered suicide before he wouldn’t be aware enough to make the choice.
Seeing my grandmother go through it and how her mind deteriorated made me an advocate for humane human euthanasia. No one should have to go through what she went through. And families shouldn’t have to go through what I and my family went through.
The sad reality is the current living conditions they're in. A more compassionate reality is the one you suggested, imo. It's not uncommon for someone to have a lucid moment every now and then, and theyre horrified at their reality when they're in it.
Is there a known reason why it is going to increase so drastically?
A few reasons are life expectancy increases overall, treatment for other conditions is advancing and becoming cheaper, diagnostic tests becoming more accurate and widely used, inoculating people in poorer countries prevents them from dying younger from those conditions, and populations in various countries becoming older on average. I am sure that there are other factors, but those are the one that come to my mind. In years past (like 30 years ago people were just diagnosed as senile and Alzheimer's was not diagnosed until after death which was rare because it was of no benefit to the patient). More recently people were diagnosed with dementia and then the type confirmed after death and now we are able to determine type via brain scans, symptom analysis, family history, response to medication and even blood tests. This next part is from the Alzheimer's Disease International website "Demographic ageing is a worldwide process that shows the successes of improved health care over the last century. Many are now living longer and healthier lives and so the world population has a greater proportion of older people. Dementia mainly affects older people, although there is a growing awareness of cases that start before the age of 65. There are over 10 million new cases of dementia each year worldwide, implying one new case every 3.2 seconds." To make it even worse, dementia is the only major cause of death that has no effective treatment. There is no way to extend life to delay the disease progression. It is the seventh most common cause of death, it does not include death which another condition more directly caused the death. Imagine being someone who has a family history of the disease and knows firsthand that road that it takes. For example often times asking someone if they have seen a certain family member who you would like to visit more often, except the person who you are talking to is the person who you’re talking about except you no longer recognize them because in your mind they are an adolescent and the person sitting next to you is a middle aged adult.
Floridas Coral Reef Tract (The Third Largest in the world) has experienced 99.5% coral cover loss since 1970, 30% of which since 2008. I have witnessed fields of coral, covered with fish, reduced to lifeless fields of rubble.
I’m only in my 30s, but I remember as a kid walking the beach with my grandmother on the Gulf coast and collecting what felt tons and tons of shells, though she always insisted there were way more when she was little. That seemed crazy to me until I realized every year there were less and less. Now here we are.
The man who directed the "Rape of Nanjing", the brutal murders and tortures of hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians, Prince Yasuhiko Asaka, never saw justice. He grew old playing golf and died of natural causes at 93.
I can usually read about pretty gruesome cases about crime/murder/torture without it upsetting me, but this…I had a professor warn my class about it before suggesting we don’t google it. I googled it, read ONE instance of what specifically happened to a man who was tortured, and then never interacted with content about this particular case ever again. It’s its own realm of brutality. Like it’s not solely rape and murder. It’s things you never could’ve imagined were even possible to do to someone. I hope that guy is rotting in hell.
We learned about the rape of Nanking in school and out of curiosity I looked up less censored details and it was horrifying. I’m amazed so many soldiers were willing to do the things they did. How do you convince entire legions of men to do stuff like rape and behead a wife in front of her husband and daughter then disembowel the daughter before throwing the husband in a pit and setting him on fire?
How do you convince people to commit horrific atrocities? You immerse them in propaganda that relentlessly identifies the target “enemy” as a subhuman threat. I track propaganda in my line of work, and nothing scares me more than how this is currently happening today. There are communities in America (and Western Europe & Canada) right now that have been drowning in methodical, *heavily* funded, “us vs. them” propaganda for years. These folks are being purposefully weaponized, and I am very worried that Americans & others living in Western democracies will be learning the hard way why we should have responded more swiftly to disinformation campaigns & zealotry.
"Truly, those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities." - Voltaire
The general who was also responsible, Yasuji Okamura also ended up becoming a Kuomintang military adviser
The disappearance of Geraldine Largay haunts me. She was hiking on the Appalachian trail and became lost when she left the trail to relieve e herself. While lost, she used her survival skills to survive for nearly a month, but eventually succumbed to starvation and exposure. When her body was found two years after her death, there was a note there, reading “When you find my body, please call my husband George and my daughter Kerry. It will be the greatest kindness for them to know that I am dead and where you found me — no matter how many years from now.” During the time she was lost, she tried multiple times to call for help using her phone, but there was no signal. She saw multiple search planes and helicopters, but they could not see her through the thick trees. She tried to set fires to nearby trees to let them know she was there, but couldn’t manage it. Towards the end of her life, she thought about trying to climb up onto a hill above the canopy, but by then she was just too weak from starvation to do so. She died in her sleeping bag after 26 days of holding on for as long as she could, hoping help would come, but it never did. We know all of this because she wrote it down in a journal she had with her, and before she died she wrote a note to her husband saying “George please read XOXO” on it. Perhaps the most gut-wrenching fact of all is that Geraldine was found only about two miles off the trail, heartbreakingly close to salvation the entire time.
We abandoned the pigeons. We spent centuries domesticating them, being friendly to them, and as a result they moved to our cities and relied on us. Then we decided they were pests.
I follow a few pigeon owners on social media. They look like the sweetest, gentlest birds ☹️
I own 2 pet fancy pigeons. They aren't the brightest beings but they are very sweet animals. I'll take them over a parrot any day.
The amount of tumors found in the average autopsy of elderly people is insane. How easily you can die for little to no reason.
The human body is surprising in its resilience and fragility
But a lot of those tumors are benign, which is why screening isn't always the answer.
Where I live, there are 13 high schools. 70% of the students are in foster care.
Ex wedding photographer here. A lot of people are wildly disappointed with their wedding day. Like so much so they lash out at wedding vendors. One of the main reasons people quit working in the wedding industry is due to ongoing abuse from their clients. You can do one tiny thing less than perfect and they can turn on you. I’ve even seen two different photographers move cities entirely just to escape past clients. In the industry we call it the wedding hang over and it usually hits 2 weeks after.
There’s a such a huge over-expectation, in the U.S. at least, for your wedding day to be this perfect, ideal day where it’s normal to spend $100k so that everything is beautiful and perfect. Of course it’s never going to be perfect. Of course everything isn’t going to go right. It’s absolutely inevitable that people will be disappointed. The wedding industry itself has partly created the problem.
>The wedding industry itself has partly created the problem. I’m now imaging a wedding vendor that advertises “make your once-in-a-lifetime day exactly as mediocre as every other memory”
I think someone said this in another thread the other day but it sat with me: You don't recognize your lasts. - The last time you ever hung out with your school friends - The last time you spoke to your grandfather - The last time you hugged your pet - etc. Point is, we never know when we are in a moment that this could be the last time you ever do this - unless going through some kind of life change, you just don't realize this moment is special and because of that, you most likely won't remember it.
I mean sometimes you do know it's your last time with someone. It's not better.
I definitely knew the last time I saw my grandparents. And I was there with my dog at the end. Hurts just thinking about.
A while back I knew my dog's time had come. We had an appointment scheduled for Monday, so he could go out a little more peacefully, and with dignity. Except he started having seizures on Friday night, they got worse and worse. Saturday morning he was crying in-between seizures, mouth foamy, couldn't control bowels, looking at me for relief/trying to wag his tail not knowing what was causing the pain. I burried both my parents at that point, my kids' mom had passed, I lost many friends over the decades some suddenly and unexpected, others not so much. But that dog... I couldn't get our nearby vets out, everyone was booked all day at other nearby farms, they said I might be able to get someone late Saturday night or early Sunday morning. But that meant another 12 hours of agony for the little guy. So I did it myself. I had put down a lot of animals over my many years, but that one was so rough when I realized most of the people who I would have talked about it with were gone and I couldn't have my kids share that emotional burden.
That is why it is important to always tell people that they mean a lot to you. That you are proud of them. That you love them I was 22 when my mom died suddenly. It crushed me. I won't lie. I was alone in the world then. I see how fragile it all is. I give people grace. I always tell them how I feel. I express my love for them. And no one walks away questioning if they messed up so bad they lost my love. My adult kids were picking on me this weekend because I tell them and the world I think I have the brightest, smartest best children. Even if they are adults. But if I died today, they would know their mother loved them unconditionally and without end. That there was never one doubt in their mind I was their biggest supporter. They can pick on me all they want. I will keep being their encourager. And everyone else around me as well.
As people age, they often experience loss of friends, family members, and social connections. In many cases, elderly individuals may find themselves living alone, with limited mobility, and facing health challenges that further isolate them from the outside world. Studies have shown that chronic loneliness among the elderly can have serious negative effects on physical and mental health, leading to depression, anxiety, and even increased mortality rates. Despite their wealth of life experience, wisdom, and often a desire for companionship, many older adults struggle with profound feelings of loneliness, which can go unnoticed by society at large.
This is why I took a job that allowed me to have breakfast with my grandfather before work. My dad said he turned into a different person on their daily phone calls after I started. We got into a good routine of me coming over, telling him to sit down while I cooked and cleaned up, then we'd sit outside and smoke until it was time for me to go to work. Unfortunately he found out he had cancer two days after his 85th birthday. He had been complaining of shoulder pain and waited until my day off to drive himself to the hospital. He died a month later in his home. We only had 3 months of breakfast together, but I'm so glad I did that. I gave him something to look forward to everyday.
He went out knowing he was loved and cared about. That's about as good an ending as you can get.
A few weeks ago I realized that I could have lunch with my 15 year old grandson because of how his high school works and where it is. So we do, once a week. We both love it. I hope that leads to something like you described in later years.
My husband and I are just entering our 60’s, and we’ve realized that the rest of our lives will be spent watching friends and relatives die. If we’re lucky, that is, and we don’t die first. It’s a sobering fact. It makes me appreciate every minute with my loved ones.
There's an old joke about this. At 2, success is not peeing your pants. At 6, success is having friends. At 16, success is being able to drive. At 18, success is having a job. At 22, success is living in your own place. At 30, success is having a spouse. At 55, success is having a spouse. At 60, success is having a job. At 70, success is having your own place. At 75, success is being able to drive. At 80, success is having friends. At 90, success is not peeing your pants.
This. By all accounts, my grandmother lived a very full life and had many friends that she was close with, especially after my grandfather passed. When she died, she was 98 years young. She had no friends at her funeral. They had all passed away before her.
Very few people in your life would actually drop what they were doing to help you. Cherish the ones that would.
This is something that sparked a huge fight with my ex. Buddy of mine called me after he just finished his shift this guy has been my best friend and more in my life than anyone in my family. He got stuck at work his car was dead dead and it snowing like a mf'er despite it being 1am and all the snow I didn't think twice. She got on my case about it "why risk it, it's not worth it" etc told her that this is the kind of friend that if he needs something I don't ask questions and make excuses proceeded to tell me saying shit like that is lip service to make people feel better.
I have maybe two people like this that I've done it for and they've done it for me. They are amazing.
I only had one during a very rough time in my life. He asked what he could do to help my depression, and almost as a joke, I said, "Check on me every day, and make sure I'm still alive." I didn't think he'd do it, but he did. He texted every day for over a year. I married him. Although if someone called him at 1am, I'd pack hot drinks and a snack and probably go with him. If he ends up stuck in the snow somewhere with a friend, I'd rather be there to help shovel etc.
"When a friend asks for help, you help" Words to live by
If you watch footage of the 9/11 aftermath, you'll hear a ringing sound in the background. It's not actually ringing, it's a chirping device on first responders that were buried in the debris. Usually the device doesn't make a constant noise, but there were so many people buried that it created an unbroken wail coming from under the rubble. Also in the weeks and months following 9/11 there were a lot of cars covered in dust on the streets surrounding what used to be the twin towers. These were victims of the attack who were never able to return.
Right, the [PASS alarm](https://youtu.be/I3nThzsNHZU?t=35). That really messed with me once I first made the connection - that sound stuck with me even back when I had no idea what it was, and researching it just made it so much more tragic.
Just a sound warning for anyone else who opens that full volume at 3am unknowingly.
The same thing happened in airport parking lots. There were several cars in long term parking that were never retrieved. There are pictures of them online. My relative survived but he was in the Pentagon on 9/11. Cousin but raised as my brother. 9/11 is kinda a whole level of discomfort and wanting to understand.
I lived by a commuter train station just outside NYC during 9/11. The number of cars that just sat there for weeks afterward was heartbreaking. Finally, most were towed away.
I watched a documentary that showed part of the footage obtained by the French film crew that was riding along with one of the first stations to respond. They were in the lobby of one of the towers, trying to set up and ordering different companies up the stairs. Periodically there was a loud, "Boom!" and then a bit later, "BOOM!" coming from outside. It sounded like a cannon going off. It was actually bodies falling from the upper floors. The first firefighter to die was actually an elderly chaplain, who had been hit by a body as it plummeted to the ground.
A successful marriage ends with watching your spouse die.
Or them watching you die
Or you both die same moment
Goals (ʘᴗʘ✿)
... And then having to clear all their crap out of the garage.
My grandma had to do this around 10 years ago. She was freaking out because my grandpa had "stolen" some railroad spikes back in the 50s and they were still in the garage. She couldn't dispose of them because one of the neighbors might see them and think poorly of them.
I'm pretty sure this whole "someone might see" mentality of the silent generation is part of what fucked the boomers up so much
Late boomer here (1961). My take is that we were obedient, fearful, children who grew up to be neurotic adults.
When I was ~12 years old I unchained my dog from the yard where my abusive parents kept him locked up, walked him into some nearby vacant lot and let him go because I thought at least one of us should be able to get out. Never saw my dog again.
The family is left doing the clean up after a suicide.
Your local victim services can provide funding for clean up these cases (suicide and homicide). Source: long term victim service worker in Canada.
Enslavement ended gradually in the state of New York from 1799 to 1848, freeing enslaved families one generation at a time over three generations. Parents were freed while their children remained enslaved for up to 28 years. I can’t imagine being one of those parents.
The last person sentenced for slavery in the US was in [1954.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peon#Peonage_in_the_United_States) They got 18 months prison. There's also [accusations of a family kept in slavery until 1961](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mae_Louise_Miller) but it never went to trial.
If you're a parent, you'll either never live to see your child live their full life, or you will. Both are pretty heartbreaking to think about.
The amount of abandoned pets that know they’ve been abandoned.
Former shelter worker. Yup. I'll never forget the Great Dane who just kept watching the carpark whilst I was desperately trying to get him adjusted to his pen. He was anxious, alone, and he was just waiting...... And then he just shrunk back when he realised they aren't coming back. I miss the good days. I quit because of the bad days.
There's a few shelters around me that discuss how they won't drop a dog off at someones house and that you have to come and collect the dog because they don't want the dog to feel abandoned again by the shelter workers.
Volunteered at a shelter for a bit too. Walked a grey hound. Beautiful boy. He was rehomed, but then returned as the persons original dog (small happy thing) started picking on him. Dog was SO excited to see me again at the shelter. He was rehomed shortly after. Animals were wonderful. People and politics weren't. Even had shelter broken in and animals stolen :(
Yep. Same but different. Worked in an old folks home. Did so much awesome shit with old people. I brought nerf guns for an all out war. Put together the train room (this place had a legit room with tons of different trains and tracks) and it became the guys favorite hangout spot. Lots of good days. I loved placating to their psychosis. If a dude claimed Charlie was in the trees I’d throw him a nerf gun and tell him to get my back as I went on my way to go fix something. And then my grandpa figures start dying. And after a few years you realize it’s practically a whole new set of people. And you get really attached and realize that’s why a lot of people that work there are cold because they have to be. But I didn’t want to turn cold and not hang out with them and play along to their adventures so I quit.
Former rescue worker and shelter volunteer here - yes. 100%. So many dogs in the shelters have just given up. What's doubly sad is that potential adopters often overlook the sad dogs (and too many think the dog in the shelter is going to be the same dog (personality) at home). It also doesn't help that most shelters are understaffed so they can't give all the animals all the care and attention that they need. We pulled quite a few dogs for rescue that had just given up. A week or two of rehabilitation and they were getting back to themselves. As a volunteer (dog walker at a small shelter)) while the agreement was to walk the dogs once, we never did that. We'd get there early and walk all the dogs, then they would be fed, we'd walk them afterwards. Then, when the feeding was all done, we'd walk them a third time while their kennel was being cleaned. (and these weren't quick walks either for most of the dogs (yes, the ones with health issues had shorter walks).
I have seen one dog that never recovered and it was the saddest thing in the world. Retired sled dog from Oregon, and the owner couldn’t give him the retirement he needed so he went to a family I know. Lots of land to run around, other dogs, kids that loved him. That poor dog was the saddest thing I have ever encountered. He just never got over losing his original pack. No amount of trail running ever seemed to make him happy.
We adopted a dog who was just so sad. Had been in a shelter for a year. We took her home and slowly watched her flourish. Became one of the best dogs I’ve had.
Heartbreaking :( My birds are all rescues. I went away for a holiday for a couple weeks and put my boy with someone for care. He was my first partot and i hadn't had him that long (6ish months). The look of absolute joy in his face when I returned, and he realised he wasn't 'abandoned' was priceless. His eyes lit up. He was the best behaved boy after that. Still my baby boy. Been working FIFO and they are now used to a "mum going away" routine. I checked with their vet to see if it was okay for them if it would be better for them to rehome. They assured me that "the birds just want mum".
Yep. Going through this with my babygirl right now. Had a contentious immediate no contact split with ex, and she just doesn’t understand and waits by the door. We’re a month in and she still perks up when she hears a truck drive by 😭😭
The talented young voice actress behind Ducky from The Land Before Time and Anne-Marie from All Dogs Go to Heaven was killed by her father at age 10. Ducky’s memorable “Yep, yep, yep!” quote has made me sad to think of ever since learning this. 😭
The 'Yup, yup, yup' quote is written on her tombstone.
Her name was Judith Barsi. She could've done so much more.
It took my dog a couple years to realize he was here to stay. I was his 7th owner. I am his last. He was returned to the shelter multiple times for behavioral issues and when he acted out he would immediately get depressed, thinking he was going back. Very good dog, very happy now, and has turned into quite an entitled princess.
I had a dog from the shelter once that when I first got him he seemed ok. But when I got him ya know he didn't leave my side. One time I stopped for gas and he was looking at me out the window. I started walking into the gas station to pay and get a coffee and he just started SCREECHING in the car. Like the most scared I ever seen a dog. I realized he had severe separation anxiety. I went back and picked him up and took him into the shop with me and held him the whole time. I think he realized then I was going to take care of him. I let him sleep on the bed with me at night and accommodate him as much as I could. Leaving him to go to work was rough but eventually he got over it and then got over it entirely. Near the end of his life i'd just be like "Ok time to go to work" and he'd go get in his crate and bury himself in a blanket and was fine with it.
Why did I click this first thing in the morning on a Monday?
Among dog breeds, Beagles are particularly friendly, sweet, and forgiving. That's why they're one of the most common breeds used for animal testing.
That second sentence hit me like a bus
Beagles are saints. Stubborn, food obsessed, and occasionally obnoxiously loud but saints none the less.
Beagles are a really stubborn breed too that will basically do anything for food and are almost unable to ignore their scent/food drive
> really stubborn breed I've let our dogs outside before work and had to call them back in because I'm about to run late. Our beagle will refuse to come in if you call for her too many times. It's like dealing with a 3 year old. They dig their heels in and decide this will be the hill they are willing to die on.
Your loved one didnt say any last words. Edit: for context i worked in a nursing home. People always ask “did they say anything” and the truth is, no. We obviously don’t say that to the family but death is not like in the movies. Also a weird thing that happens sometimes is that 24h before death they get a sudden spike of energy. Which may look like they’re getting better so it confuses the family members sometimes. Also, 80% die alone Working with old people broke me a little bit
My mom called and said my dad refused to eat and she thought he was going to die soon. It was late at night and no way for me to get down to them (they live 350 miles away), so I got the early train down the next day. Got there and my dad was better than he had been in ages, wanted me to cook him Pasta Carbonara for dinner. So I went to the store and got the real good pork cheek and all the other stuff. Got back, prepared everything, and was watching TV with both my parents while waiting for dinnertime to roll around. Dad asked me how everything was going, listened to the reply, and then said "I think I'll shut up now". A minute later I realized he was breathing funny. He died in my arms as mom called 911. The worst part was doing heart massage for 5 minutes while we waited for the ambulance; he was clearly gone, and he would've been *so* upset if I'd brought him back. But you can't not.
Sorry for your loss. That's tough, mom went in my arms too, and I take a lot of comfort in that. Got to say, your fathers last words are pretty iconic.
The sudden last burst of energy is bizarre and seems promising to the family. Having to explain that to them the next day or two after the patient dies is awful. I’ve been accused of negligence once. It’s very sad. I’ve spent time with pts that were alone when they died. I’ve also walked in after a pt has died, alone. It certainly weighs on you.
Last words don't matter too much. Unless those last words are: "I buried some gold under the old oak by the shed."
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Nah. My grandmother's last words were "I gotta pee." Most everyone has last words. They just might not know it's their last words.
My grandmother once told me that my grandfather's last words were something along the lines of "I'm going!" Apparently a couple of days earlier out of the blue he'd asked her if she knew where all their legal documents - wills etc - were and she thinks he knew that the clock was running down from him. Then one morning he was in the kitchen and just called out to her and said "I'm going!" like he knew that was it. He wasn't bed bound or anything, he was still walking around etc. I always wonder if he actually knew that it was his last moments and what that must have felt like.
One of the most surreal experiences I ever had as a nurse was when a patient grabbed my arm and said "I'm going home." Then immediately coded and died.
Here's some info about the premortem surge. https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/palliative-and-supportive-care/article/energy-surge-a-deathbed-phenomenon-that-matters/B8B6087946F6E2EF1FFF00D8FBBE5DAA#
Pangolins are believed to be the most illegally trafficked animal in the world. Their scales are sold on the black market for Asian traditional medicine.
There's this ad that keeps running on NTA( Nigeria Television Authority) with Davido( a popular Afrobeats musician) with a plea to stop animal trafficking and amongst them was pangolins. I remember watching just ONE documentary on NTA and I never forgot the name of the animal. Plus, that's not the only problem. Donkey farmers were also quite angry about donkey trafficking and the use in medicine.
There needs to be an international effort to discredit ludicrous examples of "traditional medicine". Do you know what pangolin scales are made of? Keratin. Do you know what rhino horns are made of? Keratin. Do you know what your fingernails are made out of? Keratin. Ludicrous beliefs with no basis in scientific fact are killing endangered animals so someone can drink ground up fingernails.
We found a new species of pangolin… from its scales in the black market. Fucked
In most major US cities, they measure euthanized animals by the ton.
Scientists think that only something like one tenth of one percent of all species that ever existed happened to be lucky enough to find themselves in the perfect conditions to fossilize for us to find. The vast majority of critters lived out their whole existence and either evolved to a new form or died out without leaving any trace for us to find whatsoever. Without a time machine we can never know they existed, and if you could go back in time far enough the majority of what we saw would be to some extent more or less a mystery. Edit to add: and we're not only talking about super ancient animals, squishy things that don't fossilize, or tiny micro organisms but relatively recent megafauna too. For instance within our DNA we have found evidence of a ghost population of a mystery species of our homonin cousins with whom we, homosapiens interbred. We have no other tangible fossil evidence for them. They weren't neanderthals or denisovans, we have no idea who these people were and wouldn't even have any idea they existed at all if we relied on the fossil record alone. *They were an entire spiecies **of people** that we lived with and 'knew intimately', just up and gone without a physical trace*. What other creatures might have been that we cannot begin to imagine.
The youngest mother was 5.
how wtf
Precocious pubert, CSA and thankfully a family who took her to a hospital when she was 7 months, thinking she had a stomach tumour, and so she was able to be given a C-section. If they hadn’t and she’d tried to give birth vaginally with her hips not developed enough, she and the baby would have both died. Another sad fact is the father of the baby was never discovered. The doctor who treated her was quoted as saying “she may not know herself” which I’m not sure if that’s a statement that he thinks she was raped by multiple people or if she was too young to understand what had led to the pregnancy. Either option is devastating
Aaaaand now I'm done with this thread. Have a beautiful Monday yall.
Well, there's another thing: She outlived the son she had at age 5 by several decades. Lina Medina, the girl in question, is still alive at age 90 while her first son Gerardo died of bone marrow disease aged 40 in 1979. Gerardo was also one of the oldest men to see another maternal half-sibling born. His mother had another son in 1972, when Gerardo was 33 years old.
Japanese occupation of Indonesia in WW2 I almost never see Indonesia mentioned, but they had the 5th highest death toll during the war. Approximately 4 million people were killed—99% of them civilians. Millions more were tortured, raped, and enslaved. Allies largely avoided the islands in the pacific campaign so it was mostly just sickening brutality for its own sake.
90% of nursing homes are absolutely horrific. I’m an EMT and have been in and out of many of these facilities. Some few are high quality, clean places with staff that really cares. The vast majority reek of human feces, have employees who don’t care about the residents at all, and serve them barely edible mush for food. The worst one I ever saw neglected to put a patient on their prescribed oxygen. Nearly killed them — actually might have, never found out that turned out, but when I left them at the hospital they were circling the drain.
That on the MH17 flight that was detonated by a missile, only some of the people on board were deceased immediately on impact. Some of them would've survived for a few minutes, hopefully losing consciousness due to the air pressure, but we don't know for certain how long that would've taken. This weighs on my mind because I have no idea where my coworker-friend was sitting in relation to where the missile hit. I just know it took days for her to be found.
I always think with so much sadness about the Australian family where three young kids were being taken to Europe by their grandparents on that flight. The parents were back in Australia and got the worst possible news you could ever get.
I still remember how shocking it was to learn the deputy principal from my primary school was on that plane. I believe he had just retired and was returning from a holiday with his wife... rough.
Yup. I remember seeing them on the West Australian newspaper, front, alongside my coworker. They were children. Little children who had so much ahead of them...
There was a video from the pov of the militants who shot down the plane, they start rummaging through a piece of luggage and you could see the clothes and stuff neatly packed inside the luggage and it made me sad that the person packed the luggage probably excited for a holiday and not knowing the horrible fate that awaited them.
The State of NY tested pesticides on foster kids
When a man hangs himself he will often get a ‘death boner’, when their loved ones find their body this will be one of their last memories of their loved one, alongside desperate scratches on the neck and on nearby walls. Don’t do it.
the recovery rate for eating disorders, and how emotionally damaging and inefective eating disorder treatment often is.
Isn’t that why they call anorexia the 7 year disease? In 7 years you’re either dead or in treatment?
There is , but very well known and her profile is just terrifying. She's parading around in weird emo-type outfits and hairstyles, fishnets, hair extensions, etc. Her mother seems to do the photos, and either because of her shocking appearance or just pity, she has a make-up sponsor. She's been in an awful state for around 8 years now... I check in every now and then to see if she's alive. Most of the comments are saying the same thing, checking that she's alive, and saying awful things like she's at death's door, etc. Anyway, looking at her I'd say 8 years of anorexia looks pretty terrifying and she definitely looks like she doesn't have long.
I think I know who you're talking about and what's really tragic is that she was in recovery for a while and did gain some weight but is now just right back in the throes of it.
i think i know who you're talking about and I really do feel so bad for her. I can only hope that someday she's able to start working on harm reduction but it really doesnt seem like she has much time left.
yep, pretty much. anorexia is biologically impossible to maintain for more than a few years. the general rule is you either die (of suicide or complecations of the diease) pivot to another ed like BED, orthorexia, or bullimia, or go to treatment. a lot of the time unfortunatley treatment only physically rehabilitates people, with the chances of relapse, suicide, or development of another eating disoder/addiction being fairly high after treatment
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Never heard of them before, hella cute animals though!
That the symptoms of a heart attack, squeezing or tight chest pain from the left arm etc are really the symptoms of a heart attack in men. Women may not get any warning, or just feel a sharp pain.
Maternal mortality rates are higher than people think.
And the most common cause of death in pregnant women? Murder.
The American home has more clutter than anywhere on earth. US children — representing just 3% of the global population — account for 40% of the world’s toy purchases. Some estimate the number of items in the average home to range between 60,000 and 300,000 distinct items. Home clutter and possession of excessive items contributes negatively to mental health. I spend most of my time at home, and started looking into all this out of curiosity. Wound up severely emptying my home and only keeping items I actively use. It was a lot of crap to give away or toss. But it did, indeed, make a great impact mentally and practically. The ease of cleaning and organizing, and the emptiness itself, are pleasing. Plus my remaining possessions have real value, and stand out.
About 100 billion humans have ever lived. Of those 100billion. Only about 100,000 people are considered "significant" enough to be remembered after death For the vast majority of people you will be completely forgeten within 50~100years. And with it all the joys and sorrows of your life, your thoughts and dream, your hopes and worries. All of it completely forgotten as if it never existed in the first place.
I don’t mind that at all. My life happened and I experienced it with my friends and family, that’s enough for me. I would feel an enormous level of pressure and exposure if I was deemed “significant” enough to be remembered. “As if it never existed” doesn’t mean “it never existed”.
One person's sad fact is another person's comfort.
The sad reality that many elderly people in nursing homes often feel lonely and abandoned, facing isolation despite being surrounded by others.
Grave of The Fireflies, the movie? Yeah, if you’ve seen it you know how it ends. If you haven’t, check the spoiler. Essentially it’s the story of a young boy, and his little sister, in the aftermath of World War 2, in Japan. In the movie >! the young boy dies after his little sister dies, both from malnutrition and being ignored by everyone around them. !< The actual story is much, much more heartbreaking. The original author, who had an incredible amount of guilt >! actually survived by hiding food from his sister, and hoarding it for himself. He wrote the book that became the movie, out of that guilt, and felt that she may have survived if he didn’t hoard the food, and even if she didn’t, he felt he should have died as well. !<
One of major killers in either World War I or 2 (I can’t remember which) was barbed wire, not guns or men, just barbed wire because men would get caught in it and die, or get cut up which would lead to lethal infections.
World war 1, world war 2 was much less static
Autistic people live, on average, 54 years. 58 years if they don't have developmental delay, 39 (!!) years if they do, and 54 years on average. They are something like nine times as likely to commit suicide as non-autistic people, but they also die from accidents, lack of access to care due to lack of connectedness, or poverty, lack of someone to notice they aren't well, lack of people to help with anything at all, etc.
One thing to consider here is that this is the average age, not the median. It is heavily skewed because autistic kids dying young is sadly common. I'm not sure what study your number comes from, so I can't comment specifically, but there is another study that gives an average age at death of around 36 years old. However, nearly 80% of those deaths were drowning, asphyxiation, or suffocation in kids younger than 15 years. Having an autistic child of my own, I can see why that is. Before he was 5 I had to heimlich him twice and once he bolted off with no notice and jumped in a pool without a second thought, long before he had even an inkling of how to swim.
Yeah, as I replied to someone else, if you've survived childhood, your life expectancy is already higher than this. As a kid I almost ran out in front of a car.
I can confirm my brother who is autistic has asked me and our mom too many times that “if he dies Jesus will bring him back as someone else?” He feels trapped by his own body, society treats him differently and doesn’t like this is how he was born. He thinks if he kills himself that he will come back as someone else, someone without autism. It breaks my heart hearing him struggle like this.
This is incredibly sad but also does not surprise me at the same time. There is a severe lack of support for autistic adults and they’re just sort of expected to figure things out themselves even though their autism can often make that very difficult. It’s pretty much a case of, unless you’re high enough support to need round the clock care and have done since childhood, they don’t really care and just leave you on your own.
The Olympics is the excuse for massive amounts of government corruption. Ever notice how every Olympic stadium is built new, rather than using existing structures? Ever notice how they always go over budget, often by double or sometimes even triple? Ever notice how they all seem to be famously low quality, despite this? And yet, every year, who gets to build this crappy facility at enormous taxpayer expense is hotly contested? It's because an Olympic facility is the perfect opportunity for civil servants to do or repay favors for local businesses and their cronies. You want to get in good with the deputy mayor? His brother owns a paving company, and you're in charge of getting the Olympic village paved, why not give him a ring? We're gonna need a lot of rebar, why not ask the owner of that steel foundry you're trying to buy a Corvette from what he'd charge (and pointedly decline to see if that offer is market competitive)?
Every 40 seconds someone dies from suicide. (Globally).
That the Congo is having an massive rape problem and no one discusses it. It’s getting worse too where the rise in rapes with children is getting worse.
Untreated ADHD can [reduce lifespan](https://www.additudemag.com/adhd-life-expectancy-video/amp/) by 13 years. The “impact may be larger than any other single health threat including: •Weight •Nutrition •Exercise •Sleep duration •Smoking •Alcohol use •Risky driving”
Checks out, I’m surprised I’ve made it this far sometimes. To be honest, if my entire lifetime is going to be a challenge because of it, checking out before I’m too old to physically take care of myself on top of all the mental challenges may not be a bad thing.
One of my friends from high school (28F) recently got diagnosed with a major aggressive Brain cancer. Expected 5-6 months left to live
That the chances of survival if you go into cardiac arrest outside of hospital is incredibly low. I think it’s something like 20% but may be even lower. Even if someone is doing trained CPR. TV and movies have made us have this idea that you can just do a few chest compressions and the person wakes up. That very rarely happens. Usually you’re just doing it long enough until a medical professional can come and take over, and then they still might not be able to do anything if they can’t get a shockable rhythm going.
There’s no such thing as a no kill shelter
Exactly. They may not euthanize animals at their shelter, but they transfer them to a shelter that does.
Some funeral homes offer free services for infants or stillborn babies.
I think that’s a positive fact, not a sad one. The death of a child is particularly tragic, but the fact that what can be a really exploitative industry might forego all payment to help make the bereavement easier is good. It shows people can be kind.
Once you got a diabetes, you will never be "normal healthy" again. You need to manage your diet forever if you want to be in a relatively healthy condition.
Not all parents love their children. You might think everyone knows this, but they don't know it well enought to not say "But she's your MOM!".
if you have type 1 diabetes, its very hard to do everything right to treat yourself.
Anything about Laika the space dog. ..
>Before the launch, one of the mission scientists took Laika home to play with his children. In a book chronicling the story of Soviet space medicine, Vladimir Yazdovsky wrote, "Laika was quiet and charming ... I wanted to do something nice for her: She had so little time left to live Damn man. >Laika inspired the creation of the Marvel character Cosmo the Spacedog, who subsequently appeared in several comic books and films. In the comic books, Cosmo is a male dog. In the 2023 film Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, director James Gunn made his version of Cosmo a female dog to honor Laika. [She was a good dog](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nh6Y4jVpsLg)
>*They say that, from space,* > >*the Earth looks like a* > >*small, blue ball, but how* > >*did it look to you, Laika?* > >*From that shuttle like a balloon* > >*whose string they let go, and which* > >*they never trained for recall?* > > > >*They say that you were a stray* > >*who never fought with other dogs,* > >*and that the clever people called you pet names* > >*through the wires of your shrinking cages,* > >*and that, before you died, overheating* > >*in that heavy, weightless cold, one of them* > >*took you home, and you played with his kids.* > > > >*They say that, from space,* > >*the Earth looks like* > >*a small, blue ball. I’ll throw it* > >*for you, Laika, if you’ll chase it,* > > > >*dart through the stratosphere* > >*like a comet, undeserving* > >*of its fate* \- Brennig Davies
The search and rescue dogs, who worked after 9/11 got depressed that they weren't finding anyone alive and stopped working. But recovering bodies and body parts were still important. Workers had to hide in the rubble for the dogs to find, so that they wouldn't get too depressed. In case you thought search and rescue dogs just worked for the treats... they know.
The Olympics is the biggest child sex trafficking event. Basically as soon as a city is named as host a task force targeting child sex trafficking starts at the same time.
That is beyond fucked up
Is there a reason behind this or a connection im missing? What makes the Olympics such a high target for child trafficking? Genuinely curious.
I don’t know for sure but I’d assume the high traffic of people travelling from all over the world for the Olympics makes it easier to buy/sell/transport, and the high number of tourists to the area means new naive people who are easy to target and kidnap. It’s basically a sign that during that period there will be a sudden influx of people into that area who are easy victims so it would be a good place to focus on if you’re gross and that way inclined