Have you heard of cyber suicide?
Nineteen year old Abraham Biggs overdosed on prescription drugs last week in Florida, while streaming live video to Justin.tv. It’s being reported that he had a history of depression and bipolar disorder, which is why he had the drugs he used to kill himself. He blogged that he was planning to commit suicide about twelve hours before he was found dead, after some kind of online altercation at a body building website where he apparently posted fairly regularly. [Read the MSNBC article here.]
This isn’t the first time something similar has happened.
A British man in his forties hung himself last year as a chat room full of people watched, some of them encouraging him to hurry up and get it over with.
There have been a few other cases reported, as well, and they’ve been given the name cyber suicide.
I can’t help but wonder what this tells us about how technology is changing the way we interact with each other. I can’t imagine how lonely I’d have to be to decide the people I wanted to talk about my desires to kill myself were random people I met in a chat room. And I can’t imagine feeling so completely overlooked by the world that I wanted to broadcast my death on the internet... or wanting to get back at someone I’d met online so badly that I’d actually kill myself.
Apparently they paid Matt here to travel to 42 countries to make this video. I'm trying to decide if I should write a letter to Stride asking for a job, or if I should send a letter to their competition explaining that I could make something even better. [More about Matt.]
It looks like Barack Obama will officially announce that he’s appointing Hillary Clinton to be the new Secretary of State sometime shortly after Thanksgiving. [Read more here.]
I’m thrilled about this. I think she will do a fabulous job for all the same reasons that I think she would be a good president. She’s smart, she’s tough, and she’s not afraid of being unpopular. Not to mention the fact that I think putting someone with her Senate experience and diplomatic knowledge in the position will go a long way toward showing the rest of the world that America is serious about changing the way we approach foreign policy.
On top of that, I think it might be a smart move if she’s still toying with the idea of running again when Obama leaves office. I can’t imagine a situation in which Joe Biden, who’s already over seventy and has a reputation for being less than electable, becomes a viable candidate to follow Obama. Serving as Secretary of State would place Hillary at a high enough rank in the Obama administration that it might make her seem like his natural successor. That’s what I’m hoping anyway. [Image source.]
A friend of mine has recently hopped on the coupon-cutting bandwagon, and she’s doing her best to take me with her. I was skeptical at first. But, as it turns out, I’m really starting to like it. It’s like a game to see how much I can save. And those of you who know anything about my current financial status know that any money I can save is helpful right now.
I’m not very good at the game yet, but I’m getting better. Here’s what I got last weekend for $25: three 2-liter Pepsis, a Mountain Dew, and a Sierra Mist, two packages of toilet paper, a box of Frosted Flakes, 3 packages of Pillsbury ready bake cookie dough, 2 cans of cranberry sauce, 3 cans of green beans, 2 boxes of Betty Crocker brownie mix, a five pound bag of potatoes, and 4 boxes of Kraft macaroni and cheese.
I was pretty excited about it. I saved about $11 with the coupons I got from the paper and Coupons.com, and another $16 or so on things that were already on sale. That means I spent $25 and saved $27, at least theoretically.
Scroll halfway down the video list above to check out the clip from Ford Model Yara’s African Safari. My personal favorite moment is when she explains what clothes you should pack so that you can be sure you match while on safari, followed by a helpful reminder that being on safari is a great excuse to wear a hat.
This makes me wonder why I haven’t been producing two minute clips of my global adventures for years now. I may not look like Yara, but I feel like I’ve done some things that would make for better viewing.
The economy continued its downward spiral today, and Americans continued to talk about it. Conversations about possible lay offs, the newest government bailout package, or the latest trends in Recessionwear seem to be everywhere these days.
Expendable income has become a distant, albeit fond, memory in my life. So, I’ve been looking for some ideas about how to earn some extra cash in a way that I won’t despise. I think I’ve found part of the solution. Or at least part of the solution.
One of the things that I really enjoy is blogging, and I ran across a website a few days ago that will actually pay me to blog. I thought that was a pretty amazing concept.
The site is called Snapbomb, and they pay you to blog about specific topics. Here’s how it works:
You sign up for a free account on the website, then enter your blog’s URL. Snapbomb checks the URL. You log in the next day, and they’ve calculated how much you can expect to earn from each blog post you write, based on site traffic, post quality, and other factors.
By this time, they’ve also matched your blog’s content with several opportunities to write a post for a Snapbomb advertising partner. Since the opportunities Snapbomb provides you with are content-specific, it’s very likely you’ll be making money to write about a topic that you’re interested in anyway. It’s a pretty good system.
You select an opportunity that you’re interested in, write the post as you normally would (within 24 hours of the time you accept the offer), and then provide them with the permalink. After that, your account is credited for your post.
Snapbomb pays you through your Paypal account, and there’s no minimum payout. Payments go out between four to eight weeks after you submit your post, depending on when your post is submitted. [Read more about the payment policy here.]
Snapbomb’s value database is updated daily, so it’s possible that your payment per post will increase if your site traffic increases, or if you get good reviews on the posts you submit.
You keep full editorial control of your blog. Essentially, you can write whatever you want, as long as it’s related to the opportunity posted on the Snapbomb site. The only requirement is that your post consists of at least 150 words of original content.
I’m just getting started, but so far it’s been a good experience. I’m excited about the opportunity to get paid for doing something that I like to do anyway. I thought that I’d pass it along to my fellow resource-poor bloggers. After all, even Recessionwear requires cash.
Last week, the BBC reported a recent groundbreaking study in which the UK's Cambridge University unearthed the truth about why people use Facebook--to keep up with friends, spy on enemies, and "online stalk" former significant others. Who knew? Besides the 132 million people who logged on to Facebook last June alone.
That's a quote from last Thursday's episode of 30 Rock. If you're not watching this show, you should be. The writing is amazing. It's funny, fast-paced, and smart. I love the pop culture references and commentary. And did I mention that it's funny?
Things are quieter here today, and I’m glad. No more negative political ads on TV. Less news stories about the election. But, in their places, I’ve been seeing and hearing things that are even more disturbing to me.
I can’t tell you how many people I’ve run across in the past 48 hours who seem to sincerely believe that Barack Obama being elected President is the scariest thing that they can imagine. The people responsible for hanging effigies of Obama in Kentucky, Indiana,Oregon, and California agree with that sentiment. So do many Christian conservatives.
Steve Sang, publisher of Charisma magazine, recently sent a mass email to Charisma’s distribution list with the subject line “Life As We Know It Will End if Obama is Elected.” Focus on the Family published a fictional letter from a Christian in 2012--which forecasted an end to faith-based adoption, traditional definitions of marriage, informed consent rules for abortion, laws against child pornography, Christian books, home schooling, and the Boy Scouts—in the weeks before the election. [Full text of the letter available here. It’s worth the read.]
And now, (for them, at least) the unthinkable has happened. In the past two days, I’ve come in contact with people who are stockpiling food and water for the coming riots which they’re calling “the war at home,” praying that Barack Obama will “find Jesus” before his inauguration, and reading Revelation with renewed fervor in speculation that the Apocalypse is coming now since Obama is clearly the Anti-Christ.
Conservatives are good at fear—feeling it and spreading it—partially because it’s such a big part of their theology. (I say that as a recovering conservative.) And they’ve done a good job of fear-mongering in the weeks and months and even years leading up to this election.
But let’s take a step back, friends. We have democratically elected a President of the United States. There are almost no reports of voter fraud. There was record voter turn-out. More people than ever were given a fair chance at choosing the person to lead our country, and they did. Decisively. Maybe I'm crazy, but that’s not my worst case scenario.
In its life, our country has survived a Revolution, westward expansion, slavery, the Civil War, Reconstruction, the Industrial Revolution, the women’s suffrage movement, the Great Depression, the New Deal, two World Wars, the Japanese internment, Nagasaki and Hiroshima, segregation, the civil rights movement, Watergate and innumerable other political scandals, the Cold War, and the September 11 attacks.
I can’t imagine how anyone thinks we could find a way to endure the division, the hardship, and the uncertainty of all of those events, but not be able to survive whatever the Obama presidency holds—good or bad. The thing we should be the most afraid of is our own reaction to the fear we’re feeling about the future.
The future is coming, whether we want it to or not. And that’s a good thing, since we can’t live in the past forever. Instead of dreading the future and clinging to some false belief that things were perfect in some by-gone days, let’s welcome it. Let’s embrace hope instead of fear.
Let’s do what we can to make our country stronger and our future better. That’s what the founding fathers were concerned with—much more so than abortion, or prayer in schools, or carrying concealed weapons, or anything else I’ve heard people recently explain were fundamentally intended in their actions.
They were about freedom. They were about democracy. They were about giving people a voice. Sometimes, when you give people a voice, they don’t say what you want them to. But that’s still better than keeping them silent. Or at least it was according to the people who formed our country.
Whether you like it or not, we’re all in this together. Isn't it time we started acting like it?
I can't help but wonder if there's a conspiracy of Alaska and Minnesota residents to do something crazy every few years just to make sure we don't forget about their states under the layer of permafrost. Then again, maybe they're just bored.
I vote. Whether the election is for president or dog catcher, I vote if I can. I vote because I believe it matters. I vote because I believe in democracy, even though it’s not perfect. I vote because there are millions of people in the world right now who are ruled by governments that don’t give them a voice. I vote because laws change lives. I vote because I believe our country and our world can be, and should be, better. I vote because my great-grandmothers didn’t have a chance to, and because people made it their life work to make sure that I did.
Proposition K is a measure being voted on tomorrow in San Francisco that would decriminalize prostitution. (Read the measure here.) Legalization and decriminalization of prostitution are complicated issues. I don’t have all the answers. I don’t think that people who know way more than me have all the answers. But... I know this may come as a shock to some of you... I do have an opinion.
Here’s what I think is the most important statement related to prostitution in general, in case some of you lose interest before the end: The choices that we make are limited to the choices that we have. There are some very outspoken supporters of Prop K--and other legalization measures--who are very adamant about the fact that they, and others, have chosen sex work. They believe that prostitution being illegal infringes on their right to make that choice. There’s logic in that argument. But people also have a right to choose NOT to become involved in prostitution or exotic dancing or the porn industry. For many people, and for many reasons, I don’t think that’s the case. Many people enter the sex industry because they feel that they don’t have other choices. It’s not a choice if you “choose” sex work out of desperation, or because you don’t have an alternative. For me, that’s the upside of decriminalizing prostitution: it doesn’t turn desperate people into criminals.
There are some other good things about the measure in theory. It aims to guarantee that crimes committed against prostitutes and other people working in the sex industry are investigated and prosecuted. It also addresses some pretty serious allegations of corruption related to the sex industry as it exists in San Francisco.
That being said, I think there are a lot of problems with Proposition K. The most obvious flaw to me is that it completely eliminates funding for investigating prostitution, since prostitution would no longer be illegal. On the surface, that seems like a good way to save taxpayers money. But a sizable percentage of the funds being used to investigate prostitution are actually going toward identifying people working in the sex industry who have been trafficked. Legalization of prostitution in an area leads to increased human trafficking into the area for the purposes of feuling the growing sex industry. The area becomes a safe haven for prostitution, which means sex tourists begin to multiply, which increases the demand for sexual services, which causes traffickers to bring in more people to meet the demand. And all of that would happen after funds currently being used to address trafficking were eliminated. That seems like a pretty big problem to me.
That’s my biggest concern on a practical level, but the underlying basis of Proposition K doesn’t set well with me, either. Legalization measures are based on the theory that the existence of the sex industry is inevitable; prostitution, after all, is commonly referred to as “the world’s oldest profession.” Legalization is also based on the idea that prostitution is a victimless crime—that buying sex is socially acceptable, and that the act is mutually consensual. Proponents of legalization argue that buying sex is nothing more than a business exchange of money for a service, just like paying for your clothes to be dry cleaned or your car to be washed. I don’t think that’s true, at least not all of the time.
I think that the sex industry objectifies those who work in it, often without their consent and sometimes without their knowledge. So, while I support making the act of selling sexual services something that is legal, I think we need harsh penalties against pimps, traffickers, and those who buy sexual services. Would some people who say they choose to work as prostitutes be angry about this? Yes, because it would make some people less likely to pay for sex. That’s something I’m willing to live with. I’m willing to live with it because I think it’s one step toward our society deciding that turning people into sex objects that we somehow see as less human than we are is unacceptable.
te because I believe in democracy, even though it’s not perfect. I vote because th
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